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Awebo!

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Danny Rowton

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*smirking* you couldn't waterboard that out of me, but even if torture was an effective method of information extraction and not a futile display of state-sanctioned sadism, the high percentage of false confessions it produces would mean that even if you could waterboard it out of me, could you even trust the veracity of my statement?

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assorted dogthings (ink marker & green apple posca pen)

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The gods' favourite daughter

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today i am thinking about one of louis de pointe du lac’s primary character traits being his eagerness to punch down and how i feel as though this aspect of him gets incredibly defanged within most discussions of him. far from a helpless fool or a stereotypical perfect victim, louis’ relationship to his own victimhood at the hands of lestat, armand, and wider systems of white supremacy is deeply complex. he is a character that comes from a sharecropping family that can no longer turn a profit—likely because of their race—and so he turns to a mechanism of exploitation of primarily black women where we see him onscreen basically tell one of those black women she’s overreacting to being sexually assaulted, and i believe this is because louis not only sees the alderman as too important for a sex worker to criticize, but also as someone he’d like to emulate and have the same social respect as because of a false belief it will relieve him from his subjugation.

louis is a character that is convinced he *deserves* a lot—deserves wealth, deserves a seat at the white man’s table because of his willingness to exploit whatever economic avenues are available, etc. he advocates for himself to “deserve” these things through his participation in primarily misogynoir—his dehumanizing treatment of miss lily for instance, up to and including him and lestat’s first time happening *over her unconscious body* and him not realizing she’s dead until he’s seeking out emotional comfort. it’s essential to note none of this actually erases the realities of white supremacy and that again and again, louis is victimized by it, and again and again he struggles against it with very little tools and no solidarity with others or solidarity from others to him (including lestat’s refusal to understand his experiences when he is the only person in his life for seven years). of course this extends to his treatment of claudia, who, in his misogyny, he was hardly able to comprehend having her own internal world that extended beyond his and lestat’s fight over who she “takes after”/who should be her primary patriarch.

we even see it in his threatening of grace, a character the fandom is honestly incredibly unkind to in their interpretations, despite her being extremely reasonable as she sees her brother participate in systems of exploitation and become increasingly violent. in their relationship i really do believe vampirism is primarily a metaphor for the parasitic ruling class and that louis’ insistence on self actualizing himself and providing for his family at the expense of others is one of the primary reasons their relationship dissolves. grace, who married levi (dark skinned, implied to be less wealthy) doesn’t seem as interested in as florence in staying bourgeois for instance. i could make an entire post about how complicated grace and louis’ relationship is and defend grace dpdl all day but that’s for another post.

of course it is lestat who is the head patriarch, mostly by virtue of his whiteness and ability to weaponize it, where he places louis in what’s referred to as a “housewife” like position. once lestat is displaced however—in this case through death—louis’ strangulation on claudia (who is structured in the story as being a replacement for the brothel workers) tightens significantly. claudia is kept from being her own person by both lestat and louis, to the point where she starts omitting things from her diary like her own dreams probably bc she is afraid louis will betray her trust and peruse them again. and dreaming is a very literal internal world—one claudia keeps away from louis bc of how he’s abused access to it in the past, up to and including her sexual encounters. it also doesn’t escape me that the way he discusses her experience with bruce is very reminiscent of fathers believing their daughters have become “unclean”—centering a violent revenge narrative of murdering bruce before really extending anything emotionally helpful to claudia. and *of course* he can’t be emotionally helpful to claudia, because he hasn’t even processed his own experiences with lestat coercing him into companionship and sex.

but he still understands it deep in his bones, the anger and shame it makes him feel, and we see him direct this inability to grapple with his own victimhood to armand, whose victimhood he mocks (also by using language like “good nurse” and “little bitch” both bc because being a victim is emasculating as lestat emasculated him and because if louis sees armand as less of a man he doesn’t need to provide him with emotional bandwidth to consider how their experiences might mirror each other and make louis come to terms with his own abuse). i find the 2x4 bts really interesting because jacob describes seeing armand as more of a “doormat” and “easier to manipulate” than lestat, which is a big motivation for seeing him as a potential companion (and let me actually make the caveat i don’t think this is malicious but moreso that he sees armand as something that needs protection and by golly does ldpdl love resolving himself to save people that might not even need it) and even though this turns out to be untrue, i still think it’s a fascinating look into how louis rationalizes his relationship with armand and how he does see it as a mechanism to reclaim his power and with it his manhood.

in sanfran specifically, he even targets gay men (and v likely survival sex workers with what we know of daniel) during the AIDS crisis, an incredibly vulnerable group that could be killed without any attention from members outside of their community. he lives in dubai where he and armand (also a big fan of punching down on the most vulnerable) keep a blood farm and employ primarily south asian migrant workers in an economy built on the slave labor of those communities. louis is a character that i believe likes to have a layer of separation from cruelty, and a man who wants to be good, but who also has no qualms about using exploitative systems and circumstances to make things convenient and/or affirming for him.

he’s just as complicated as every other character in the show but discussion of him either swings in the direction of refusing to discuss his participation in abuse ever, and it’s frustrating particularly with how much it disregards claudia’s own recollection of her experiences, but at the same time you can hardly fault people for that bc it’s an overcorrection to the other way it swings—where louis is positioned as lestat’s abuser with the same sort of racist defamation 2x7 spent its entire runtime deconstructing. but regardless, iwtv is fantastic at showing how “abuser” and “abused” are not stagnant categories and how many of the characters we empathize with as victims will participate in subjugation of others 1. because they want to be their own person and 2. they’ve only ever seen individuality and power as represented by unilateral violence at the hands of their abusers.

i’m rlly rlly interested in where this will go in s3, because so much of his interview was about accountability for what he did specifically to claudia, but i also love him as the “most vampiric vampire” and how a vampire, by virtue of their existence, cannot escape hurting others. louis just doesn’t necessarily do it through hunting humans for blood, but by hunting them for labor. he devours them still, just in a very different way.

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sorry zipping my pants back up I just needed to talk about it again for a second

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the part of Challengers that cemented this is the scene where they're making out and someone startles them and they DO NOT come to their senses afterwards and just start making out harder. yeahg.

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rewatching challengers (2024) the way it was meant to be watched (with two bisexual men)

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I think it's a shame that "Oedipus complex" refers to fucking your mom instead of the actual point of his story, fulfilling your destiny through your attempts to avoid it. It just so happens his destiny was to fuck his mom

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Anne Michaels, from "Infinite Gradation," originally published in October 2017

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you can tell this site is full of chaos sorcerers bc of all the psychic attacks we toss around. like its nothing

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Square Bloom

quilt by Jo Wollschlaeger

2nd place in American Patchwork & Quilting Transparency Quilting Challenge, QuiltCon 2025

this challenge focused on the illusion of transparency in quilting.

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© Richie Culver

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[ID: Several stuffed flowers on a plate with a slice of lemon and a fresh hibiscus flower. End ID]

Hatmi çiçeği Dolması (Turkish rice-stuffed flowers)

Hatmi çiçeği dolması is a Turkish dish made from ağaçhatmi (Hibiscus syriacus) flowers stuffed with rice. The rice is flavored with cumin, pepper, parsley, mint, and sometimes dill or black raisins.

Hibiscus syriacus—known in English as rose mallow, common hibiscus, or Syrian ketmia—is a flowering plant in the mallow family (Malvaceae). The Turkish is from "ağaç," or "tree," and "hatmi": from the Arabic "خِطْمِيّ" ("khiṭmiyy"), which refers to any marsh mallow, rose mallow, or hollyhock. Rose mallow is native to southern China and Taiwan, and has been introduced in large parts of Europe and the North America.

Rice-stuffed flower dishes are common throughout western Asia and the Mediterranean. Zucchini flowers are prepared this way in Greece, as Λουλουδάκια γεμιστά ("louloudákia gemistá"; "little stuffed flowers"); they are also a delicacy in the Aegean region of Turkey. A similar Italian dish is known as "fiori di zucca ripieni," or "stuffed zucchini flowers." In Cyprus, zucchini flowers ("athoi") are stuffed with a mixture of rice, tomato, and mint. In rural Palestine, a محشي ("mahshi"), or stuffed dish, is made from foraged عصا الراعي ("'aṣan al-rā'ī"), or "shepherd's staff," a flower known in English as wild Persian cyclamen (Cyclamen persicum).*

The natural tart, fruity sweetness of the hibiscus flower is enhanced by additions of lemon and pomegranate molases to the cooking water. The thin flower petals melt together with the aromatic, earthy rice stuffing to make each flower a tender, self-contained, well-balanced morsel.

*Yatir Sade, "Like an invisible fence: foraging of wild herbal food as a traditional ecological knowledge vs. nature protection law in Israel." Master's thesis. P. 36, FN 27. Attained through personal communication.

[ID: A close-up of one flower cut open to reveal the rice filling. End ID]

Recipe under the cut!

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Ingredients:

For the flowers:

About 20 hibiscus or other mallow flowers, such as hollyhock

150g (3/4 cup) short-grain white rice

345g (1 1/2 cup) water

1 yellow onion

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp crushed red chili pepper (optional)

Small bunch fresh parsley

Small bunch spearmint

2 Tbsp black raisins (optional)

Salt, to taste

If you don't have mallow flowers, you can substitute any other large, edible flower, such as daylily or zucchini flowers.

In Turkey, they usually use a local short-grain variety called "baldo" when making dolma. Any short-grain white rice (such as Japanese "sushi" rice, or paella rice) will do.

To cook:

1/2 cup water

2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp pomegranate molasses (optional)

A few lemon slices

Instructions:

1. Wash flowers by submerging gently in a bowl of water. Snip the stem and stamen from each flower with a pair of kitchen scissors.

2. Heat olive oil in a large pot on medium and fry onion for 5-8 minutes until translucent. Add spices and raisins and stir to combine.

3. Add rice and salt and toast for about 2 minutes. Add water and bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 15 minutes, until water is absorbed and rice is cooked through.

4. Add chopped herbs and stir to wilt. Remove from heat. Taste and adjust salt and spices.

5. Place a spoonful of the rice mixture in each flower, then bend the petals down over it one after another and press gently to close. Place each flower face-down in a thick-bottomed pot.

6. Place lemon slices over the flowers. Mix oil, pomegranate molasses, and water and pour the mixture over the flowers.

7. Cook, covered, on low for 10-15 minutes, until flowers are wilted and a shade darker.

Serve hot, alone or with yoghurt.