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‘Can I Get Over My Debilitating Social Anxiety?’ by J.P. Brammer

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Crossover idea:

Armand takes Daniel to stay at the Overlook Hotel because he's excited about the horrifying lore, but Daniel's day to day life is so insane the ghosts don't even faze him.

Evil bartender shows up and he's just like, yeah pal fill er up.

(Armand is of course delighted by the ghosts)

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what are the odds that daniel stayed at a hotel that folds towels into swans and leaves them on your bed, and armand saw them and got obsessed

and so for weeks after daniel would wake up in their apartment with every towel in the place staring at him like

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TMI: periods/pms

Me: wow I really am loathsome human garbage unfit for public consumption, maybe I should crawl in a hole with a bottle of whiskey and cry about it

Also me: realizes it's been like 3 weeks since my last period 🙃

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It’s rare that he gets to see Daniel’s first meal of the day. He’s picked through his memories, he knows that on the Night Island he tends to wake in the afternoon, stumble down to the kitchen to graze. Daniel takes advantage of the ability to call their private chefs in to make him bacon, eggs. Food that sits heavy on his stomach so that he has to wander back to bed to sleep off the rest of the day. After that it doesn’t much matter, Daniel thinks. He’ll get Armand’s blood and that’s enough to hold him over. A cycle of snacking and blood sharing that repeats and repeats and repeats.

“LIsten, we need to make a pact,” Daniel mumbles between bites. “No more west-bound long haul flights. At least not without a couple days between each layover.”

Armand frowns. “Was it so burdensome to fly without me beside you?” 

It had been odd, departing in the evening in the cargo hold, trapped within the box that contained his coffin. Moving backwards through time. To leave in the dark but arrive in the middle of the morning- it creates a certain kind of inertia, he finds. 

Perhaps it’s what they mean when they say ‘jet lagged’. All of that effort to only be in a place for a week and then they’ll be moving on. Tickets to Thailand, to Nepal, to Greece. They wait in Daniel’s bag. More travel, pre-planned, predestined. A time limit on every stop. Armand wonders how exhausted they’ll both be by the end. 

Daniel spears a vegetable on his fork. He shrugs. “I don’t like it. Being without you.”

Without the blood.

This too, Armand recognizes from his youth. The ravenous fits that come between the tastes of blood. He remembers clearly being sixteen and not eating for days after the drinks his master had given him, and then falling upon the table and out eating all of the other boys.

There’s hollows beneath Daniel’s eyes. A sharpness to his cheekbones that hadn’t been there when they’d met, and perhaps that’s a sign of the march of time- he is, after all, creeping up on thirty now; no longer the wide eyed boy Armand had met but a man in his own right. But then-

His spoon clacks against the glass parfait cup. Daniel digs in straight to the bottom where the ice cream is, bypassing the fruit and whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Somewhere near his lap comes the sound of his insides churning. The wet sound of his stomach straining to accommodate that which he hasn’t consumed in- days? Weeks, perhaps. Armand can’t keep track.

He should be doing better than this. He ought to be taking better care of him but Daniel makes it so hard. The world makes it hard, with how anything and everything can catch his fascination. Like right now.

Something bubbles beneath the surface of him. A desire he can’t quite put a name to, a thread he’ll have to pull at until Daniel unwinds and he understands what it is that he seeks. Some unfinished business from the Copley, perhaps. The meal wherein he’d fed Daniel a bit of everything, only to depart before he could see the effect it had upon him.

There’s so much more he understands about Daniel now. And still so much to find out. He’ll never know him intimately enough.

Armand rests his chin on his hand. He takes in the way Daniel’s tongue sticks out the slightest bit when the spoon nears his mouth, the bob of his adam’s apple when he swallows. Daniel licks an errant blob of whipped cream from his upper lip and it leaves his mouth glossy with his saliva.

[AO3]

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what's the first movie you remember seeing in theaters? don't try and be all edgy and cool and say like tetsuo: the iron man. be honest.

Go!!

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One thing I wish we got more of in the show is the sense of the vampires being overwhelmed with a deluge of memories and emotions when they drink from a victim or share blood with each other.

It's one of the coolest things about the book lore imo and it really amplifies both the intimacy and the horror of the act.

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I saw Monkey Man and my life is now dedicated to making sure everyone else does too.

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<source>

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LMAO THANKS FOR RIPPING MY HEART OUT WITH THE POST ABOUT WHAT A BLIP IN TIME VENICE ERA ACTUALLY WAS I GUESS?!?! im at workkkk i cant deal with this!!!!! ! 😫😫😫 WELL EVEN SO, how do you think armand views/deals with this difference in how formative those yrs were for him vs what they meant to marius? they were extremely significant for both of them but i feel like for very distinct reasons / in very distinct ways.... 😭!

i think he deals with it exactly like this:

✨ I fear him. I don't know why. Perhaps I fear him because I could love him again, and loving him, I would come to need him, and needing him, I would come to learn from him, and learning from him, I would be again his faithful pupil in all things, only to discover that his patience for me is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in his eyes. ✨

I feel like there's a huge fucking mother wound maker wound going on with Armand and I think a LOT of his behavior can be tracked to his abandonment issues. Making himself useful to people or trying to Spell Gift manipulate people into loving him back, or seeing a version of him that he wants them to see, etc.

Making a fledgling is his biggest fear and he sees it as a curse! He knows that once you turn them, they stop seeing you as special, you can never communicate the same way, and you lose your lustre, you become boring to them, there is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in their eyes!!

I'm gonna die on the hill defending why Marius didn't rescue Armand -- I GET IT -- but Armand doesn't know any of that. All he knows is that his Maker never rescued him. Even when he was out of the cult, running the TDV, easily track-downable, Marius never came to him.

In the way I think Marius declined to rescue Armand for fear of rejection, Armand also can't bridge this gap back to Marius for a fear of rejection. He wants it! He wants what they had! But he knows they're too different now and it's never going to be the way it was, and they both have to do a lot of work to build a new relationship that could work for who they each are now.

But to answer your question I think it probably just really compounds the feelings of inferiority and the fear that he doesn't deserve love! 🤗

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20 Questions for Fic Writers! ✨

tagged by @monstersinthecosmos and @hekateinhell thank you! 🖤

1. How many works do you have on A03? 28, all public

2. What’s your total A03 word count? 70,744

3. What fandoms do you write for? Vampire Chronicles & AMC IWTV. I also write Hannibal fic and dabble in Star Trek (need to get into some ds9 fic one of these days.) I also have a twitter account (@murdertherapy) where I give advice as Hannibal Lecter, but I've back burnered it for the time being due to The Horrors. Might make a tumblr for it one day.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Touching and Touched, Only a Name, That Essence Rare, Amnesiac, By Any Other Name

5. Do you respond to comments? Absolutely, they make me so happy! But I get a little self-conscious about how to respond to them since I don't know how to take compliments, so I'm always just like, thanks 🙂

But I really do cherish all of them 😭

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Gotta be Gethsemane, the fic where I did what Anne maybe ultimately wished she did and killed Daniel. This is one of my favorite pieces I've written in fandom or otherwise and it really helped me process some things.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I'm sure it's my spirk fic Touching and Touched, they are so fuckin sappy I love them.

8. Do you get hate on fics? I've been pretty lucky in that I've never gotten a mean comment on ao3 or any shade about any of my fics (that I've seen lol).

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Listen, I think that horniness is the engine of all drama. All fiction is inherently erotic. What is a Greek tragedy but a super drawn out communal orgasm?

But yes, I write smut almost exclusively lol. People are (usually) at their most vulnerable and raw during sex, and this is an incredibly powerful way to explore character dynamics as well as their inner lives, traumas, and hidden drives. I'm especially drawn to BDSM/kink in general.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Yes! I just wrote a VC/X-Files crossover called Amanuensis in which Mulder and Scully investigate the Night Island that was tons of fun, but it's not something I make a habit of for whatever reason.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but it's something I would definitely be open to!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Devil's Minion, Hannigram, Garashir, Spirk, Mulder/Scully. They all make me insane in unique ways! I'm also partial to Armand/Marius/Daniel--any Armand ship really! Super normal about him :)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I WANT to finish my Knight of Swords series one day, but I'll try keep plugging away at it.

16. What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, 100%. I want everything to be a screenplay lmao. I have written multiple fics that are just text conversations, transcripts, etc.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I can be impatient when it comes to writing descriptions/actions, so a lot of that stuff is as bare bones as possible. I would like to become better at creating a sense of depth and scale and grandeur rather than just sketching things out (and writing longer fics instead of just oneshots all the time).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Neutral, I think it can work when used sparingly (but then I've dropped a few caro mios in my time).

19. First fandom you wrote for? Doctor Who in the ancient pre-ao3 times.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Apart from Gethsemane, I was really happy with how By Any Other Name turned out (the fic where Armand roleplays that Daniel is Marius without his knowledge). Basically anything that's a combination of heavy angst and smut with an optional lil sliver of comfort--that's the good stuff.

tagging: @fofoqueirah and @butchybats and @desertfangs (feel free to ignore if you've done this already lol)

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kacy i wanna know how much of a perv you think daniel is LOL so much fic centers on armand dragging him through an experience *armand* wants. so like what's the ratio of daniel being a freak in his nature (and knowing this about himself) vs armand nurturing this trait into him?

My friend, I’m so glad you asked.

THE THING IS IVE GIVEN THIS A LOT OF THOUGHT and in some ways it’s like, what all of my Devil’s Minion fics are about LOL. And yet! I don’t have a simple answer to this question, the way real questions of nature vs nurture are complicated in the real world in real people!

But let me sketch out a framework of the way I’ve questioned this, and everyone might come to different conclusions and that’s the fun of fandom, because there can exist several thousand versions of Daniel based on the same text! AND I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS STUFF, I HOPE IT DOESN’T COME OFF AS MANSPLAINING LMAO but I’m excited to talk about this topic. 

Here’s what we know unequivocally from the text:

Daniel is 20 years old in IWTV.

That’s it, that’s the whole list.

And here’s some fanon that people often try to extrapolate from the text: 

💦 That he met Louis at a gay bar. UNCONFIRMED, but I think it’s likely? In the short story the bar is named the Pink Baby, I think that might be a gay bar or a dick reference idk lol. 

💦 Whether or not the Pink Baby was a gay bar, he and Louis essentially cruised each other and left the bar together! Daniel has the excuse that he’s hunting for interviews for his job, Louis has the excuse that he’s an apex predator who preys on people, but ? Take this wherever you need to. (Also blah blah Ricean biting=sex symbolisms.)

💦 Was Daniel bisexual outside of the assumption that most of the VC characters are bisexual/omnisexual? The only clue we get is that when he and Armand practice voyeurism, he hooks up with men and women. There’s a lot of interesting information packed into the voyeurism paragraph, like this line: Yet he lay empty afterwards, staring at Armand, resentful, cold. and I’ve seen the “resentful, cold” comment dissected many times in fandom. Is it the general resentment of their whole relationship? Is it because he wants to fuck Armand and not randos? Is it because he only wants the Blood? Does he not consent to being used like a zoo animal? Is he gay and doesn’t want to fuck women? Is he straight (minus the orientation-defying vampire attraction) and doesn’t want to fuck men? I’ve seen all kinds of takes on this LOL. But still, no real definitive answer about his orientation in the text.

💦 What did the “roaming the bars of the world” comment mean? Sometimes I read Anne Rice’s language as being kinda lofty and exaggerated but was he ACTUALLY traveling the WHOLE WORLD or is he hyping up that he trolled bars in the Bay Area? Is he FROM the Bay Area or was it a stop in his travels? He worked for a radio station (not in the book, but mentioned in short story + The Vampire Companion and The Alphabettery) so did he live here, even if he traveled a lot? Was he wealthy before vampires if he was traveling this much, if you think he was a traveler?

AND AFTER ALL THAT, here’s some extra questions where Daniel is FREE REAL ESTATE that every fan has the freedom to make the fuck up:

💦 How much sexual experience did he have at 20? Do we assume that by default as an Anne Rice character he probably had ample teenage sexual experiences, and if he did, is there a quality over quantity aspect to consider? Is the sex we have as teenagers like, all that to write home about LMAO. Do we really understand kinks yet, or do we need to grow up and gain some perspective first? 

💦 As an Anne Rice character, by default, do we assume he & everything else is sexually charged LOL, are the interviews and cruising and taking people home a code for bringing partners home? What percentage of his interviews were also hookups?  

💦 When we talk about nature vs nurture for kinkiness, how micro and macro is this? As a fellow Off the Cuffs fan I know you understand the “radioactive spider bite into kink” concept, and some kinks are so specific to our experiences. But BEING KINKY in itself IS nature, isn’t it? I’ve read some sex & kink theory that kink is (psychologically) more like an innate orientation. IE: in the way you can be straight or gay, some people are also by default turned on by being smacked or by whatever paraphilia. Whatever that thing is, the way it takes shape, is the nurture half. But like, many people can have the same experience and 99% of them don’t develop a paraphilia right? So I think that capability exists in kinky folks at all times, especially when so many of the radioactive spider bites are things that people discover in childhood. ANYWAY I RANTED but I say that to say; DANIEL MOLLOY IS A MONSTERFUCKER, IWTV IS THE PROOF THAT HE IS A MONSTERFUCKER. IT WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME. 

So I bring up all those questions to encourage everyone to make up their own story with this, but I’ll tell you where I personally landed and how I approach it in my fics!!!

The Daniel in MY OWN fics is 20, single child, estranged from his parents, dropped out of college because he didn’t have ADHD support and was struggling, bisexual and promiscuous! I wonder if he went through that like college freshman thing where he got out of his parents house for the first time and partied a little too hard because he COULD! I like to read “bars of the world” as an exaggeration, I like to think he was a normal guy NOT globe hopping, sticking to the Bay Area, maybe he was out there for college, and guess what! There’s a thriving gay liberation culture there, so he finds some safe spaces to experiment with that! 

However, I think the text leaves space to think he didn’t have a lot of close friends, or wasn’t close with his family, due to the way that he simply ✨fucks off ✨ after IWTV. NOW, that’s just me! Because there’s potential here for a TRAGEDY of people looking for him or grieving him! But idk I just like thinking that he was already on the outs and the interview pushed him over the edge.

So I ask like, does the 20 year old have a ton of kink experience? Is he good at sex? WHAT DOES RESENTFUL, COLD MEAN? Was he celibate during the chase years? Are the voyeurism sessions the first time he’s had sex since his old life? Even if he had random hookups during the chase years, was this qualitatively good sex? Can you truly get into good BDSM on a hookup or do you need a trusted partner? (This is subjective, idk, but!) 

Also, how much kink is theoretical and private (to masturbate to) vs stuff you actually try? Especially if we believe that kink is nature, someone isn’t less kinky if they’re celibate, the way someone isn’t less gay if they’re celibate, or even a virgin. As Daniel becomes more and more obsessed with vampires, and with Armand, does it take over how he jerks off? Does he think about getting bitten? HE LIKES SNUGGLING WITH DEAD THINGS.

So like, there IS an element of Daniel being the unwilling witness of Armand’s rapidly shifting hyperfixations, and it’s natural that fandom pervs would extend that to sex acts and kinks. I LOVE IT, yes! It makes sense. 

But when you say like, which one of them is in charge, I wonder if it’s relevant if we assume Daniel enjoys it. (Does he? Would he? Resentful, cold?)

Here’s some points that come to mind when I imagine it as purely Armand’s doing:

💦 People sometimes misunderstand BDSM dynamics when it comes to power and control, because BDSM is a consensual fantasy between two adults. The sub is just as in control, because they allow it. In that sense: Do we believe Armand respects Daniel’s consent? Would he force Daniel to participate if he wasn’t enjoying himself? 

🩸 (How much can we compare this to Venice and how Armand was prepared for vampirism? I’m putting this in parentheses bc I’m putting a pin in this one, I CANNOT ADD A SUB-ESSAY INTO THIS POST ABOUT COMPARING VENICE TO DEVILS MINION but thinking of this too. Returning to the under-negotiated kink in Venice and how much is diegetic to the text, how does experiencing a spectrum of sexuality benefit someone’s last years alive ((sub-parentheses: does Armand flip-flop on turning Daniel as much as Marius did with Armand, does Armand subliminally know he’ll turn Daniel one day, does he go through these experiences as a precursor to turning Daniel eventually?)) are these experiences more for Armand to process the way he was groomed for asexual immortality vs being purely selfless and for Daniel’s benefit?)

💦 Armand uses Daniel as his usher into the modern age, and is it fair to assume he could sense Daniel’s kinkiness and knew that this was the person for him? 

💦 How dubious is Daniel’s consent here? How addicted to Armand’s Blood is he by the time they start fucking around? Is he already within the throes of Ricean Omnisexuality where he’s down for whatever? Does the Blood influence this as well? Is there a secret subliminal violence creeping into your body when you’ve been drinking it again and again? What about less violent kinks, like your feederism fic? Does the Blood encourage all types of excess and consumption??? 

But if DANIEL is the driving force here, I still must consider:

💦 He meets Armand and his life essentially ends when he’s 20 years old. Was he really self-aware of his kinks? Did he know himself very well sexually yet? 

💦 While exploring kinks can be mutually beneficial by sating Armand’s need for WEIRD HUMAN STUFF, maybe it IS something Daniel wants. It’s something he’s missing out on, because he checked out of regular human life when he was 20. Like, everyone’s different, so, I’m not saying that people can’t be sexually articulate at 20, but I know I fucking wasn’t! And I personally never fucked anyone that age who was good at it LMAO. So like how old would Daniel have been before he experimented enough to really know what he liked, and how much of him getting to know his sexuality involved Armand during the next decade?

💦 And this ties into Armand being his sugar daddy! That’s canon! Armand is his sugar daddy! If Daniel, at 28 years old, starts lamenting “I wish I’d gotten the chance to try watersports when I still had a normal life :( “ wouldn’t Armand have arranged that for him? 

🩸 (Again let’s talk about Venice and what did Armand learn there about being the vampire lover, how much does he process and repeat on Daniel, and for whose benefit?)

💦 If Daniel is an innately kinky person, and realizes as he’s approaching 30 that he never really got to explore it properly, wouldn’t Armand usher him through that experience? Even if Armand didn’t plan to turn him, I wonder if he saw the window of Daniel’s mortal experience closing, maybe he worried that this is the type of thing people need to be wild about while they’re still so young. And outside of stigmatizing Daniel's age, it's also about how he was becoming less and less healthy, dying of alcoholism at 32, so there was a small window here for them to have sex adventures.

So basically, I’m saying that the nature half feels very much like Daniel being a monsterfucker, the nurture half is the actual experiences he got to have. And I don’t think he’d be in this situation in the first place if he wasn’t a bit of a monsterfucker, and wasn't a innately into danger and pain. Like, we don’t get a TON of examples but Gretchen and Babette didn’t try to fuck vampires! We know that vampires give humans the heebie jeebies! What kind of sick fuck is into that?!?!?!? 

I don’t really have one single answer here. When it comes to the large library of kinks I think either of them can be blamed, and I also think it 100% makes sense to use Armand as a vehicle to write fic about them as if they’re another collection of human oddities for him to explore. But even using Armand’s weird bullshit to process that doesn’t mean it’s not mutually beneficial, and I think it gets into a fuzzier area that’s up to the writer when it comes to their take on the relationship, how dubious the consent is, how much do they actually like each other and get along? Can it be mutually beneficial in the end even if one person is driving? (see: the conversation about the second whipping scene in TVA and how it works out in the end.) Is it something they have fun agreeing to and negotiating in advance? 

I can totally see how someone might write this as a fun thing that they talk about beforehand as easily as it could be Armand forcing mystery adventure on Daniel and suddenly he’s tied up in some shitty apartment in Hells Kitchen with some man pissing on him, and did he ever even reveal this kink to Armand or did Armand pull it out of his head? 

The ship dynamic is so fucked up and coercive and resentful and toxic, even though there is real love here, so there’s this whole spectrum to use when you build your fanworks and headcanons!!!!!!! AND LIKE

IF IT’S COERCIVE AND FUCKED UP, DOES IT DRIVE THEM FURTHER APART OR BRING THEM CLOSER TOGETHER? IS DANIEL RESENTFUL AND COLD AND DOES THIS CAUSE FIGHTS? IS THIS A WAY FOR THEM TO PROCESS SOME OF THEIR COLDNESS AND RESENTMENT BECAUSE THEY AREN’T GOOD COMMUNICATORS? DO THEY DO BETTER AFTER THESE SESSIONS AND FEEL CLOSER BECAUSE THEY BROKE THROUGH SOMETHING NEITHER OF THEM KNEW HOW TO SAY?

Gosh idk.

Anyway I apologized in the beginning for mansplaining but I also want to apologize for this non answer LMFAO. I hope it doesn’t feel like a cop-out to not have a real answer, it’s just that I think this is such a rich context with a MENAGERIE of possibility !!!!!!! 

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Tagged by @artemideaddams thank you!

Last song: U2, "Magnificent"

Favorite color: all kinds of greens and deep reds

Currently watching: making my way through wwdits, enjoying The Great, stalled out on Atlanta but I liked the first season a lot

Sweet/savory/spicy: savory/spicy all the way! If a food can be characterized as a spicy pickle, it is going on my sandwich

Relationship status: married 🖤

Current obsession: still on these goddamn vampires, god help me

Last google search: what is the skin on milk

(it's proteins)

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Get attacked!! 💜✨🌈SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING🌈✨💜

Thank you so much 😭😭 big fan of your blog too!!🖤

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hi!

Get attacked!! 💜✨🌈SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING🌈✨💜

Omg thank you!! Back at ya ☺️

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my sister and I read fanfic out loud together recreationally (usually only bad or weird ones but sometimes we make exceptions when we come across smth so high quality and golden we r willing to spend our time on it) and one of those exceptions is ur tvc x files crossover, bcus I love tvc obviously and my sister loves the x files. Peak bonding activity we r thoroughly enjoying it thank u 🙏🙏

Thank you so much 😭😭 That is easily the most self-indulgent fic I ever wrote, so I'm thrilled that someone besides my inner 14-year-old is enjoying it! Happy sibling bonding 🖤

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can't sleep, too consumed with the need to write more top!daniel but unable to decide what the concept should be