#I love love love the new lestat BUT he be a lot more violent with louie than the books

[dumbledorathexplora]

I need to see lestat watch Louis cheat with armand the same way he cheated with antoniette I need to see it nOw

[indelicateink]

the Interview with the Vampire kink meme continues to be everything

there's been a scorching HOT loustat fill today: The Interview

a bouquet of thanks to @vampire-dove for maintaining this anon kink meme for us.

i'm going to share some of the prompts going on over there. please go add more. please fill prompts. these vampires cry out to be put in Situations.

Prompts [5/?]:

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Seduction, Vampire Turning, Drunk Sex, Marriage Proposal

"Parallel universe.

"In 1905, Parisian brothel owner Lestat de Lioncourt keeps his ungrateful brothers and father, and his frail mother, in comfort despite hating his life. When his new acquaintance, wealthy American Louis de Pointe du Lac, comes on so strong, he starts to think life could be different. There is an air of the preternatural about him, but Americans are probably just like that?

"Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac searches for a new life in the old world and finds a handsome man with a most agreeable disposition who he wants to convince to become his companion. Life certainly wouldn't be boring."

--

Armand/Daniel Molloy

"Minimal or no Devil’s Minion before 2022. Armand turns Daniel out of spite, but Daniel takes to vampirism immediately and revels in his newfound strength and immense power. And Daniel is so psyched about this new un-life that he kisses Armand, who kisses him back passionately. He then fucks Armand all around the penthouse and gives him the best dick he’s had in centuries. Armand is terribly confused by this intense, feverish passion between them, over thinks it, and flees out of self-preservation. and naturally Daniel gives chase!"

--

Claudia/Madeleine, Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Alternate Universe - Royalty, Weddings, Competition

"Royal wedding au. Now that she's in her thirties, Claudia's parents are putting their foot down: as their only child, she will be inheriting the throne, and she's going to need a partner as strong as she is. They've lined up candidates. It's tradition.

"Claudia has never forgiven Lestat for not using his magic to bring back her first love, Charlie, years ago, but he hopes he can make amends by introducing her to a beloved fellow countrywoman from his homeland who was…exiled…for being…a traitor?? Louis wants to know what the fuck is wrong with Lestat's head."

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Extremely Dubious Consent, Hallucinations, Episode: s02e01 What Can The Damned Really Say To The Damned? (Interview with the Vampire TV 2022)

"While traveling Europe with Claudia, Louis hallucinates(/fantasizes about?) Lestat forcing himself on him.

"Can be violent or just disturbing, can be physical assault (I know the hallucinations don't work like that but we can suspend our disbelief) or not include touching at all. Up to you how aware Louis is that the hallucination is his own mind torturing him. The important part is that Louis is really messed up and can only get off while also punishing himself. Bonus points for Lestat being in his bloody post-Mardi Gras outfit, throat slit and bleeding and all."

--

Armand/Lestat de Lioncourt Accidental Marriage, Accidental Bonding, Dubious Consent

"1795 AU. The Great Laws this, The Great Laws that. Magnus never told Lestat that when another vampire overpowers you with a bite soon after your turning, your body imprints on them and you become vampire-married.

"After Armand attacks Lestat at the party, Lestat finds himself craving sex with Armand against his will. He is determined to be strong! Gabrielle rolls her eyes a lot."

--

Louis de Pointe du Lac/ Oiginal Male Characters, Armand/Original Male Characters Serial Killers, Recreational Drug Use, Creampie, Felching, Rape/Non-con Elements, Service Submission, Under-negotiated Kink, Humiliation, Drugged Sex

"Louis gets lost in the high and never cleans up/finishes draining his hookups to kill them. Louis isn’t going to fuck him when he’s like this, but Armand dutifully cleans up Louis’s sloppy seconds to feel closer to his maitre.

"additional tags: unnegotiated bdsm, nonconsensual drugged sex (armand/louis’s half-dead hookups), nonconsensual blood drinking (armand/louis’s half-dead hookups)"

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Pregnancy Kink, Crack Treated Seriously

"fantasy m/m non-omegaverse vampire au in which ppl of any sex can get pregnant if they're fertile and are someone who has a uterus because reasons!

"lestat can bear children. louis desperately wants kids. lestat and louis knew when they got married they were not on the same page: children were a hard no for lestat. not having them was a dealbreaker for louis. they really should've sorted that out before they eloped.

"years later louis has one foot out the door when lestat bitterly caves, to louis's single-minded delight. gabrielle and armand are quietly appalled.

"five times louis got his husband pregnant and one time lestat volunteered the idea.

"(i am begging you on my knees for this fic please and thank you)"

[kaokhss]

*EPISODE 8 SPOILERS*

I don't understand all the negativity around this episode, from a certain part of the fandom. (actually i know very well why you're upset...but let's pass)

I absolutely loved Louis' revenge part, you could argue that it was way too fast paced but let's be honest, did you want it to last a whole episode? All the vampires were in the same place and asleep he had the advantage the only confrontation that we needed to see in more detailed was the one with Santiago, and as much as he is evil, Santiago is a ''young'' vampire right ?Louis could easily have the upper hand so it was a quick fight,it was satisfying .

I'm not going to dwell too much on the dungeon part because I don't think it happened like that. We're probably still in Louis' modified memories by Armand, so let's move on.

Why a powerful vampire like Armand would be threatened by Louis and not defend himself? Probably shame, disbelief and shock! He didn't expect that to happen at all! It was nice seeing Louis regains a little "power" i wasn't expecting a big fight and I think it's only the first confrontation.

Louis was literally glowing the moment he came back to New Orleans, chatting with the cab driver, smiling and all. He is not even back to the old Louis,no it's a new Louis!

Finally the reunion with a Lestat who was not even surprised to see him there, he was waiting for him and knew it was his Louis. Really appreciated that they spoke openly,one of their biggest problem is obvious lack of communication?? Them grieving the loss of their daughter and admitting they failed her .

I know that everyone has already made hundreds of metaphors about them hugging during the the hurricane but it was visually very beautiful. Despite all the storms in their lives it's always Louis and Lestat 🖤

So if they really met in New Orleans,it's Lestat's first real appearance on the show ?Well he was much more 'normal' than the way he was described by Louis and Armand, less flamboyant? But we must take into consideration that after the events in Paris he was surely no longer the same and lived a recluse life's, healing... I could never hate you Lestat.

I didn't talk about Armand/Louis and Daniel/Armand because I honestly don't know what to say there is probably more to come in s3. Devil minioners there's no better way to start the big DM Adventures!

Louis back in Dubai and talking with Daniel like two besties, please writers you absolutely have to develop this friendship we need to see their dynamic. I know that Daniel is thriving, accepted and adapted to vampirism so well

Claudia's dress and Paul portrait,can i cry? Two of most violent losses in his life, the ones to whom he never got to say goodbye and feels responsible for their deaths.They are here with him forever,the tree is gone just like Armand.

I'm not really sure about the interpretation but Louis casually declaring war on the other vampires,after finally accepting his vampirism? he is that guy!

Look at all the colors,he is Really free after almost 80 years in a black and cold controlled prison.The photography on this show is no joke each plans could be framed on a wall.

I probably forgot a lot but it's already really long! But I don't forget to once again thanks Jacob Anderson for his multi-layered interpretation of Louis. obviously i say it every days and i will continue to say it, give that man every awards.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hello again!

Reading some interviews I’m curious about the teaser that “Dubai will be explosive/spicy etc.”

What do you think will happen in Dubai this season- if you were to speculate freely? Will there be violence? Do you think there will be horror and even frights? What kind of horror in that case? Truths seem to be coming to the surface - from maybe all of our main characters? Also how(!) do you think stuff will play out - I feel there’s been a lot of good speculation and of course the books are there about the what - but I’m getting more and more curious about the how of it all - if that makes sense?

Would love to hear your thoughts! Thank you!

Hey!

I've spoken about this before, but... I expect some kind of Merrick-esque fallout in Dubai, coming also with some kind of reveal wrt to "The Groan".

So - emotional impact and also lore-story-line explosion: 1000% :)

I just reblogged a bit of a discussion-meta wrt the revisit of episode 5 here, and I really am nodding along there, because I also feel that one of the big emotional gut punches will be that Merrick-diary-reveal (that was also a sucker punch for book readers back then!). And the attempted suicide after that.

Now, if that is really Marius in the trailer... then "Those Who Must Be Kept" are likely near. IF that holds, then they could be connected to "The Groan". That said, Lestat has to show up for s3 in some kind of manner as well, soo...

I think that Dubai will be increasingly painful. Memories will come back, years of memory, as was said in the trailer. Both Daniel and Louis will be deeply affected. Truths will come out. About their lives, about what they believed of themselves.

About what happened, and why.

The why will be the horror I think.

And the who.

Now, there are a lot of possibilities flitting around my brain as to how the season could end, tbh, but it's a bit difficult to pin down:

There's

Lestat waking up to save Louis , literally shaking the tower's foundations (which would be in line with Merrick, but might be too much "white savior" for the show, however, there was a version that Anne thought about writing first that the show might play with). This is what I think will happen.^^

Akasha waking up in the basement, literally shaking the tower to pieces (she did destroy the tomb under the ice when she rose)

Lestat coming from somewhere else and crashing the party

or Lestat coming onto the radio/TV/internet after all with his rock career

or something entirely new which has to do with the "great conversion"

Personally I think the rockstar career happened in the 80s, it just didn't lead to the same events, in a way proven by Daniel being old now.

We will need to have Lestat "there" somehow for s3.

I think Daniel will continue the interview for at least the next season. I think he will also remember something wrt Lestat.

I do hope for a 4 person play in Dubai in s3.

Imagine Armand, Louis, Lestat and Daniel on a couch, all aware of what the other knows (well, apart from life stories). The bitching, the pettiness, the hidden aggression. Glorious. I would love that.

I do not think there will be violence. Armand loves both Daniel and Louis way too much for that, and Marius would not hurt them either. IF there is violence then that is coming from another source, and if it isn't Akasha... I cannot quite see someone becoming violent, not really. Self-destructive, yes. But against another there? Mhhh. The books coming down on Daniel will most certainly connected to a cataclysmic event, and that... will likely be connected to "The Groan", imho.

And that cataclysmic event will then carry us into s3 :)

Sorry if this isn't... precise.

There is a LOT they could play with and while I see the arc building they might choose to pull something else in, maybe, like the threat by Rhoshamandes, maybe. Or even a Talamasca threat, something Anne toyed with, but never really wrote up.

So there are... possibilities.

The only sure thing is, imho, that it's going to hurt, and that it will bring us to s3 :))))))

[jellybellyblimp]

I don’t know what’s not clicking with people that this all from LOUIS’ perspective, and therefore all colored by his perception of events. Like I know he explains to Daniel that “this is the more nuanced portrait” of Lestat, but it still is very clearly biased by Louis’ own emotions. This is far from an accurate portrayal of events “it’s an admitted performance” and there are several very clear examples of Louis misinterpreting Lestat’s actions.

The most clear example to me is the opera scene, where Louis is forced to act as Lestat’s valet in public. Louis interprets that moment STILL IN 2022 as manipulation. He sees Lestat expressing his loneliness and desire to be with Louis forever as Lestat preying upon Louis’ emotional weakness at being forced to act below his partner. BUT Sam Reid’s acting in that scene makes in clear that was exactly the opposite of what was happening. Lestat was attempting to comfort Louis. He was attempting to express that he saw them as equal, he was sorry that was happening, he loved him, and they had forever to not always be trapped by these racist social conventions. He wasn’t manipulating Louis, he was expressing his own feelings in an attempt at comfort, but Louis’ own tumultuous emotional states causes him to view that moment as uncharitably as possible. And it’s interesting and sad that even 50 years after the original interview, and having clearly reevaluated much of their initial relationship to try to see Lestat’s perspective of it, he still views moments like that as manipulative.

This isn’t a defense of Lestat necessarily, but this show has gone to great lengths to express, what always should have been obvious, THAT THIS IS NOT AN ACCURATE RETELLING OF EVENTS. This is Louis’ version of the story and we have no way of knowing Lestat’s version of events.

And I think people need to carry this with them as they continue on with the story. Because as much as we joke about Lestat “Baby trapping” Louis, when I initially read the book it was my view that that had never been Lestat’s true motive. Lestat hadn’t turned Claudia to trap Louis or even to have a child, it was because he knew Louis would never be able to live with himself if Claudia had died. Lestat would only lose Louis even more than he had already. It was his version of making the best out of a bad situation. It was still selfish and fucked, but Louis was just as complicit in her fate as Lestat was. It’s only Louis’ recollection that colors Lestat as more villainous. And I know people are going to disagree here, but seriously I am begging you to remember that all of the original Interview with the Vampire Novel is the uncharitable, bitter recollections of LOUIS. And that the more we see of Lestat in the rest of the books, the more obvious it becomes that IWTV was inaccurate portrait.

We already know the Claudia story has been altered. And I know speculation is predicting that Lestat will become violent, and that will prompt Claudia and Louis “killing” him and fleeing to Europe. I’m not personally fond of that if that’s what will happen, but I’m willing to suspend judgment because I was skeptical of some of the other changes and so far have been in love with every one of them. I think aging up Claudia changes her story, but also opens up a lot of new avenues of exploration. And frankly given how well they’ve handled the changes so far, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

So barring it being clear cut domestic abuse. I think we all need to remember that this is Louis’ perspective, and in the novels Claudia was canonically manipulative, (admittedly I feel understandably). Claudia intentionally worsened the wedge between Louis and Lestat. It’s absolutely possible Louis is interpreting any given moment as uncharitably as possible and his perspective of Lestat’s motivations have been skewed.

[lukeskyandante]

I’m very much in shock after the new episode and having lots of thoughts about the new versions for Claudia’s transformation and The Fight. I need to spit all of that somewhere, and is there a place better than this hellsite? Of course not.

First of, I believe that the version Lestat told about the big fight is closer to reality than what Louis told in season one.

That whole fight was very strange for me from day one. So, the relationship is already in a very delicate place. Claudia came back to take Louis away. Lestat attacks her and then he and Louis are fighting. Lestat is a fucking manipulator, we have no doubts about that, but he was never physically violent to Louis until this point. We se the house being destroyed, we se them flying and screaming and breaking walls. That seems all true to me, the problem is what comes next: Lestat leaving the house immaculate, with a broken Louis being dragged at his feet. I’m sorry, I don’t buy that. And I know that part of that is being documented on Claudia’s diaries, but we also know that she wasn’t present in the whole thing. We see the fight through her eyes, and she does not know what happened in the brief moment where things apparently are calming down. And what she tells about that whole dragging thing can be the way that she perceived it. After all, she hates Lestat, and loves Louis so much. And at this point, Lestat already stopped controlling whatever little piece of control he had, and he is undoubtedly stronger than Louis.

That being said, we all saw the fight between Louis and Armand on S2E5 (and how ironic that both fights happened in the fifth episode of different seasons). That whole fight, from the moment Louis attacks Daniel to the moment he leaves the room and walk into the sun, is not an event told by Armand or Louis. That was an actual recording of the fight, cold and real facts. And we see how cruel Louis can be with his words, when he wants to. We see him calling Armand boring and throwing his past abuse at his face. Imagine how many arguments he and Lestat had until that big fight. After seeing Louis and Armand screaming at each other, it’s not difficult to imagine Louis throwing hurtful things at Lestat, too. And that triggering the whole mess that came after. So, there was a lot of blood and both of them left the house wounded. Did the dragging thing happened? I don’t know. Maybe?

I’m not blaming it all on Louis, please understand that. What I’m saying is that Lestat is not the only demon living in this house. There was a whole family of them on Rue Royale.

So, seeing that flashback of what happened in the coffin room during the fight, I believe that there is truth in that. Obviously exaggerated to the point of becoming a caricature of an angry Louis laughing at Lestat (maybe that’s Lestat’s perception of it, like he feels like he’s being mocked or something). But is that so distant from “my daddy vampire groomed me into a little bitch”? I don’t think so. That line about “quivering, hateful lips” suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.

And then there is the whole baby trapping scene, that feels wrong for me in the same way that the original fight seemed, but I can’t exactly say why.

Maybe it is because it inverts the baby trapping? Like, instead of Lestat trying to trap Louis, it’s Louis using Lestat’s own love and fear of loneliness against himself? I don’t know. Up until this moment, the show is changing a lot of things from the books, but keeping the core events more or less the same (Louis’ turning, Claudia’s turning, Lestat’s death, the Théâtre, Claudia’s death). I don’t think they would invert things like that in such an important event. But again, they had Louis cutting Lestat’s throat instead of Claudia, so… I don’t know.

Louis said that it was the truth. But something feels wrong, so wrong. And we know that there is something wrong with Louis memories. We know that Armand is messing with the way that he is remembering things.

So I can finally scream at the top of my lungs WHAT IS REAL????? WHAT IS TRUE IN THIS WHOLE MESS??????

I am beyond anxious to see how the hell they are going to resolve all those things in the last episode. I wonder what will be the cliffhanger for the next season (because oh boy, there will be one).

Anyway, If you love Louis don’t be offended by what I said. I love him too, but he is not an Angel. Thats actually why I love these characters. There are no angels, only demons.

[latesummerfrost]

If any of you seriously went into an adaptation of an Anne Rice property on goddamn AMC expecting a trigger warning you're sipping some Olympic-grade delusion juice. Settle back down with a nice soothing episode of The Owl House on Disney and stop pussy-aching about media with blatant adult themes if you can't handle it. This is the network that ran The Walking Dead adapting a book about a wildly abusive relationship between preternatural creatures who literally kill people for sustenance and amusement. Seriously, disconnect from your idiot-box of collected trigger words and go kick open a DVD out of the Twilight collection for that wholesome, family-friendly, Mormon-skewed vampire experience you so dubiously crave. Lestat unrepentantly ate a whole damn baby in the books, sweets, you think this is the worst it's gonna get? 😂😂😂

Sidebar; as someone who grew up in an extremely violent household, I can safely attest that THAT scene was exquisitely done. Putting Louis and Lestat's relationship through the lens of Claudia's POV the last two episodes was nothing short of inspired. And sorry to say it, but every queer story isn't going to be sunshine and daisies (especially not one that is, again, about preternatural creatures who kill people for sustenance and amusement). I can binge Heartstopper on Netflix anytime I want, but I've been waiting for THIS particular show my entire life.

Horror isn't just about beings with special powers peacocking and monologuing between luscious set pieces. The real horror of this story has always been underneath all of that simmering in the protagonists' extremely flawed humanity. Did you seriously walk into a horror show and balk at people experiencing and perpetrating horror?

And as a lifelong reader, let me close with this; this IS our Lestat. This is Lestat in as many forms and personalities as he's ever held (countless, btw), fused into one being who is going to fit the trappings of this story as its NEW custodians lead us down dark new paths.

Jesus god between this all and the assertion that Rice hated women because - let me check my notes - bad things happen to women in The Lives Of The Mayfair Witches (because it would have been a much better series if Lasher was a friendly pet ghost who tied the neighbors' shoelaces together when they were mean to Deirdre, and Rowan just spent the entire saga cruising on her boat and patching peoples' brains together between calls home to her loving and unproblematic Aunt Carlotta), I don't know how to engage with fandom anymore. I don't know how to politely tell people to shove their weird puritanical ramblings into the orifice of their choice, so I'm just gonna word it like that. Get real; get a grip. Bad things happen to women and all you're doing when you bitch and moan about women writing about these things is passing the narrative torch on to men who can't fucking relate enough to themes like rape and forced childbirth to touch on them well. And YES, a lot of Rice's women are super horny. LET WOMEN BE HORNY. Are you people on crack? Ya'll smokin' that shit the conservatives be slingin' on corners about women needing to think more with their brains than their privates? Women have sexual agency. I didn't phrase that as a goddamn question, women can suck dick and eat pussy till their incisors fall out. Women being sexual has LESS THAN NOTHING to do with rape when it happens to them. Seriously, Mom's Got A Date With A Vampire is fully streamable on Disney, ya'll. God knows I love Caroline Rhea and Charles Shaughnessy enough to give it another watch myself in between maimings and tragedies on Interview.

[nightcolorz]

i’m late but for the ask game: armand 6, 8, 25

YIPPIE!! Thank u sm for sending this, I’ve been pretty severely injured lately and I woke up feeling so shit and sad, so getting this notif absolutely made my day. Armand !!! He is my favorite character in anything ever. I have literally never been so insane about a guy before. U picked some great questions so I’m super excited about this.

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

I identify strongly with Armand for a lot of weird little reasons. I think the root of it is transgender and autism stuff if I’m honest 😭 Im going to try not to get tooo personal 👍👍 but I will let’s be honest, I will get personal. I can relate to being fetishized and characterized for my sort of androgynous/pretty/boyish appearance while I feel like how I look doesn’t truly reflect who I am as a person. I definitely get the struggle of being demeaned and treated like a child bcus of the juvenile ish appearance transitioning can give you. I also can relate to being demeaned and treated like a child because of my social awkwardness (due to autism) that causes many ppl to assume I’m unintelligent or immature, need to be treated gently or talked to slowly, etc. I see these parts of myself reflected in Armand ofc in different more vampiric ways, and having a character who is infantilized and talked down to while also fetishized and sexually exploited for a perceived innocence that isn’t reflective of who he really is at all, a guy who is also very strange and awkward and doesn’t act right, who is also simultaneously very bad ass (imo lmao) in his shamelessness and his overtly violent and freak of nature attitude, is weirdly very validating and empowering for me, lmao. He is like the weak shameful parts of myself if the weak shameful parts of myself had teeth. 👍👍👍 Yeah 😁😁😁😁 Armand 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

lmfaooo, I’m so happy u picked this one bcus I love complaining and being a hater 😍 I am sorry in advance if I say anything that ruffles any bodies feathers, just bcus I don’t like these things ppl do doesn’t mean I don’t like the ppl who do them, y’all do u I’m not stopping u. Anyways.

I don’t enjoy how a handful of amc exclusive fans characterize Armand, because you can tell they rlly only understand him based on Wikipedia reads and his brief appearance in the show so far, which results in this sort of glaring simplification of his character in fan content. This wouldn’t rlly bother me if not for how prevalent it is 😭 like it’s genuinely difficult for me to find interesting and in character fanfic about Armand bcus so much of it is uniformed. The amc fandom sort of dominates the tvc fandom, it’s just so big. I don’t like when Armand is reduced to Louis’s new scary hot boyfriend/Lestat replacement/potential villain. It feels like he’s often perceived through this lens of a role in the story, like “hm this guy seems like a potential villain”, “no I think he’s a new love interest”, which is a conversation I find no appeal in at all considering you can’t fit the Armand I love into any of these narrative boxes. This isn’t rlly smth I have personal beef with bcus there’s no harm in fans of the show characterizing armand based on there limited knowledge while they wait for the next season, but for me it’s a pet peeve you know, as someone who rlly rlly likes armand a lot 😭.

(This is the exception to my no hate to u if u do this disclaimer btw, all the hate to u). on the subject of amc fans, I also often see this hostility towards fans of book Armand, where I’ll see amc fans talking about how perverse he is conceptually in the books and how gross ppl who like him are, which REALLY makes me very mad, because ok. Listen. Show armand is not a character yet, any and all things you enjoy about armand as of now as someone who hasn’t read the books are 1. How he looks. And 2. Things from the books that you apply to him in a new context. Assad’s performance, the people working on the show, the writers, everything that you base your enjoyment of armand in, is from the books 😭 But god forbid someone enjoy the source material over the hypothetical character who barely exists yet? God forbid someone do the same thing u do (take smth arguably morally dubious and interpret it in a way that u find interesting and compelling while acknowledging the morally dubious source material) just not in the context of an adaption. Ok. God forbid I enjoy and identify with an adult character trapped in the body of a child who is misperceived for his youth and sexually abused, it’s not like this is the same concept of beloved amc Claudia anyway. It’s also not like I am capable of enjoying something while criticizing it and disliking it’s flaws, and coming to conclusions based on critical thinking and analysis of concepts that may have been executed poorly, that I still admire and enjoy, bcus I am capable of complex thinking, and I don’t need to blindly enjoy every part of smth and perceive it as flawless to enjoy it. We all know that’s fake ! Anyways sorry for the angry rant 😭😭😭 moving on.

On a separate note, I also sometimes have beef with how fellow book armand fans portray him. This is small and sort of petty but it bothers me when Armand is drawn as like, very small and skinny. Maybe it’s bcus I head canon him as chubby and sort of cherub-built, maybe it’s bcus in TVA armand describes himself as strong in build and “not waif-ish”, but either or it does feel sort of wrong and off putting when I see Armand drawn as like, so small and petite that it’s emphasized. To me this reads as a missing of the point, if you will. An emphasis on physical qualities representative of innocence and youth that aren’t reflective of Armand’s character, only rlly how some other characters see him. I can often tell when an Armand fan enjoys him for the superficial qualities (eternally young, angelic looking, etc) over who he is, and it always encourages me to steer clear. I hope I’m making sense lol. This is also sometime present in fic but it’s more subtle and difficult to describe. Anyways

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

I was thinking about this yesterday! I was first introduced to Armand when I was maybe 11 or 12, my dad put on 94 interview with the vampire for me and my twin sister while he did work around the house etc. he started watching it with us (he loves 94 iwtv) but by the time Armand showed up at the half way point he got up and started doing other things, so my sister and I were alone in front of the screen. For some reason lost to time my sister and I were very excited about seeing Antonio Banderas, maybe because we knew him from Zorro, so in the aftermath of the buffoon scene with Santiago that we found really funny, when Antonio Banderas appeared on screen we were hyped tf up. We were so enthralled in the moment of his cunty ass entrance we started cheering and clapping and screaming 😭 I think shrieking ARMANNNDDD!!!! At the screen (with no knowledge of who armand even was) Till I started laughing to tears is in my top ten formative moments. My first viewing of iwtv was just like that 😭 there was smth in the water that had my sister and I loosing our fucking minds with excitement over that movie. Anyways, I only immersed myself into the fandom and got rlly into tvc just last year, when I read interview with the vampire (smth that’s always been in the back of my mind since my first viewing, I really did love that movie) and then the rest of tvc. When I was reading interview with the vampire I had that subconscious excitement over Armand’s half way point appearance brewing from the get go (every time my sister and I have watched iwtv together since we were 12 we’ve done the same screaming at the screen ritual for armand) so when I was re introduced to him I was instantly attached to him. I very quickly discovered how much I was enthralled by this guy, like by his first appearance and description it went from a weird little nostalgic affection to a “omfg I feel many inexplicably strong feelings for this guy”. He was just so magnetic and weird, I was intrigued by every thing about him, like Louis lol. I started drawing him a bunch b4 I’d even finished the first book, and by the time I was introduced to him in tvl he was my favorite character. Tvl really solidified my armand obsession, and queen of the damned made me the person I am today 😭 insane. I think my impression of him now should be obvious at this point 😔 he is my silliest guy every morning I wake up and he is the first thought in my mind I cry about him daily I worship him like he’s my god sometimes I see a blender and I am so overwhelmed with emotion I want to scream if a professional looked into my brain and saw all the armand in there they’d diagnose me with super mega autism. I like him a lot. 🫶

Thank you sm for sending this ask once again! I’m sorry it’s so long lol, hope my responses were interesting. This is the ask game in question for anyone who may potentially want to send me more asks: https://www.tumblr.com/nightcolorz/734243514562510848?source=share I would cry with joy if so.

[hekateinhell]

For Dungeon Anon. ♥️ Inspired by some of the stuff that's been going in my ask box lately lmao.

Teenage delinquents Lestat and Armand are dating Louis together while navigating their own situationship, when Louis leaves them to their own devices for two weeks and certain permanent decisions are made.

Modern Human AU, Lestat/Armand/Louis (Louis is there in spirit and also to dom through FaceTime), 5k, rated E (oral sex, video stuff, Lestat's praise kink makes an appearance). X-posted to the ao3 because this is lot for me (RIP).

9:02 PM: I'm bored. Everyone else's gone, come hang out if you want?

9:12 PM: K.

K?

What did "K" even mean? "K, you're bored"? "K, I'm coming over"? "K, I got the text"?

Lestat rolled over, phone on his stomach, annoyed and out of sorts. Leave it to Armand to say everything and nothing at once.

Were his bedroom lights always this bright?

It was never easy when Louis wasn't around. Lestat knew who he was with Louis; he more or less knew what Louis was with Armand, and he knew what he and Armand were with Louis around. But like this, on their own for the first time when Mrs. de Pointe du Lac had inexplicably decided her kids could stand to miss two weeks of school to visit her family in New Orleans. Sick Grand-mère perhaps, Lestat couldn't remember.

–

"Try and spend some time together. Please. Get to know each other without me," Louis had whispered to them both as he pulled away from Lestat's embrace to kiss Armand outside his apartment building while his sister slammed the Taxi trunk shut. "Please? For me?" he squeezed one of their hands in each of his, smiling the demure smile that he knew made them both weak in the knees and tight in the pants.

"Of course, anything for you, my love," Armand, damn him, beat Lestat to the punch.

Disgustingly, cloyingly sweet.

"Yes, yes, of course," Lestat acquiesced, stealing a last kiss for himself as Armand rolled his eyes and not-so-subtly kicked at his ankle with a combat boot. The little gremlin.

Lestat was of the opinion he spent plenty of time with Armand – too much, in fact! Armand on the other side of Louis during class, at lunch, on the steps of their school! Even every Sunday in Louis's bedroom, a 'shared day' when time didn't lend itself to being split neatly down the middle.

An experiment, was what Lestat had told himself as a consolation.

A few months of this before it all came to a head. Armand had cornered him alone in the music room, veritably hissing about how Lestat was purposely trying to shove him aside and drive a wedge between him and Louis and that he, Armand, wasn't going to allow it. Almost comical it had been, what with Armand's head barely reaching Lestat's chest on a good day, and he'd still managed to back him into a wall like a rabid little raccoon.

At first, it had been funny, but then it was simply ventured on annoying. Lestat had had Louis first, after all! Yes, fine, they had technically been "on a break" when Louis met Armand. And yes, there was that little aggravating detail of Louis insisting that he would only give Lestat a second chance if he were still permitted to date Armand. Lestat had given his trademark jovial, "Oh, course, mon chèri!" So confident was he that Armand would be yesterday's news by the end of the week.

But that hadn't happened, and now he had 5'6, 125 lbs of cranky Eastern European theater kid on his ass.

He couldn't hit him, it wouldn't be a fair fight, and the brat would probably spin it to Louis to make himself look like the victim. Never one to back down, Lestat had done the second next-best thing. He'd grabbed Armand's jaw tight in his hand, stunning him into silence, and bent down to kiss him as violently and punishingly as he could - the way he never dared to nor desired to do to Louis. Not a single loving touch in it.

"There, finally shut you the fuck up," Lestat murmured as he caught his breath, delighting in how bruised and busted Armand's already plump lips looked now.

See him complain to Louis about this.

Armand blinked those dark eyes at him, processing the words he'd spoken but making no move to pull away. Something akin to hurt flickered across his face, at the same time he shifted from one leg to the other, and Lestat smiled when he realized exactly why.

The second kiss was a lot gentler, sweeter, wetter, almost as though Lestat were trying to repair the damage he'd done with the same instrument that had done it – his lips.

Armand's hand came up to tangle in Lestat's hair, grinding himself against his thigh as he moaned while his other came to rest over his crotch, squeezing Lestat's raging hard-on through his jeans. Kissing Armand was so different to kissing Louis... Each person always so unique. Armand's mouth was smaller yet more commanding, aggressive yet simultaneously yielding, the cool silver stud in his tongue bumping against Lestat's top teeth with every delicious back-and-forth push and pull.

Didn't realize what was happening until Armand suddenly shuddered and broke away to slump forward, pressing his head to Lestat's bicep as he finished trembling through his orgasm.

A bit of an awkward moment until Lestat's cock decided to remind them both of its rather prominent presence and twitch against Armand's hand.

"I didn't..." Lestat panted, "I haven't..."

Swore he felt Armand smile against his skin. "Give me a second," he squeezed again for emphasis, "I'll take care of it."

And so he had, rather spectacularly – no gag reflex that one – while smugly maintaining eye contact the entire time. He knew how good he was. Louis knew how good he was. And now Lestat did too.

–

Fuck.

The doorbell ringing snapped Lestat out of his reminiscences. "Shit," he mumbled, quickly adjusting himself to right the situation going on in his leather pants just now, thanks to the memory from two months ago.

Think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts... Don't think about what we've done together, with Louis, since then.

"Hi," Armand looked almost shy for a moment, backing up a few steps so he didn't have to tilt his chin up to look into Lestat's face.

Lestat's instinct was to kiss him, depravedly, right there in the doorway where the neighbors and God might see. But they weren't dating, nor were they even established fuck buddies. A handshake would be too formal, a slap on the shoulder too "bro." He wasn't used to seeing Armand without Louis as a buffer; he'd never actually had to greet Armand as his own person before.

Armand made the decision for him, leaning up to press a quick kiss to the short, day-old scruff along Lestat's jawline before dropping back down and stepping into the house as though it weren't his first time there.

"So... What do you want to do?"

There were several things Lestat wanted to do, to him, just then. But most, if not all, of them would defeat the purpose of "getting to know each other" the way they had promised Louis that they would.

"I still have some booze? We could hit that and throw on a movie?"

Armand gave him a funny look, one Lestat couldn't quite decipher. "You invite me to the afterparty but not the party?"

Oh.

"I wouldn't call it a party," Lestat ran his fingers through his hair, tugging on the ends the way he did when he was starting to get uncomfortable. "Just me and the guys from band, you know. I didn't think you'd vibe with them."

The truth was he hadn't thought about Armand at all. Lestat wasn't a fan of his worlds colliding.

"But Louis 'vibes' with them, yes?"

It's a trap; Lestat can feel it as he's walking right into it.

"Occasionally, maybe. He's very easygoing!"

Armand scoffed. "Louis, easygoing? Just how high are you right now?"

"What's the fucking point of this conversation anyway, Armand?" Lestat's patience quickly found its end. "I invite you over, and you're being bitchy because I didn't ask you to hang out with my friends that I know you'd hate?"

"I'm 'bitchy' because you always act like you're ashamed to be seen around me!"

Oh.

"That's not-! I'm not-!" Not sober enough to even be thinking of having this conversation is what Lestat was.

He's about to tell Armand to forget it and go home; he'll sleep this off and text him in the AM.

"Where's the booze? I want to get messed up."

Gabrielle wasn't home, and wouldn't be home until Monday. She didn't care. Who did?

"Down that way, cabinet on the right."

Armand's a lot sweeter when he's drunk, kissing at Lestat's face and collarbone in an overly excitable, almost childlike way as he bounced on the bed.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered, staring into Lestat's eyes before bursting into a fit of giggles. "You should fuck me."

Lestat choked on the bottle. "Yeah, I don't think so." The look on Armand's face... "Not that I don't want to," Lestat hurried to correct his mistake, "I’d want you to remember it, you know? I've been told I am quite the experience." Couldn't resist punctuating that statement with a wink.

Armand snorted, his humor making a quick recovery. "Oh, I'm sure."

Lestat took another swig and passed the bottle. "Have you done it yet?"

"'It'? Really, Lestat? Am I a virgin? Have I fucked, banged, screwed, you mean?"

"Jesus. Yes, that's what I meant! I know we fool around, and I imagine you do the same kind of things with Louis when it's just the two of you."

Bitter, bitter thought.

"But are you a virgin?"

"Why do you want to know?" Armand seemed defensive all of a sudden, peering at him in that creepy, unblinking way that Lestat found vaguely threatening.

Something-something unpredictable and unsettling.

"No reason," he shook his head. "Just curious, that's all. And quit looking at me like that! It's very off-putting."

Rather than being insulted, Armand appeared to take it as a compliment. He smiled and leaned back against the headboard, satisfied. "Good, you should be put off."

"You literally just asked me to fuck you!" Lestat's booming laugh sounded more incredulous than anything else.

Armand stared down at his jeans, worrying at the seams of the dark gray denim.

"To answer your question: no, I'm not a virgin, but also, I have never..." He trailed off, his gaze darting around the room before settling on the helm of Lestat's maroon t-shirt as he lay propped up beside him.

Never what?

"Never what, Armand?"

"Forget it." He lifted the bottle to Lestat's mouth, tilting it back and holding it in place for him when he accepted. "Let's do something fun, yeah?"

Lestat nodded as he chugged the equivalent of three shots before pushing the bottle away, ran a hand down Armand's inner thigh, and reached over to kiss and suck at his throat.

Armand liked it, and Lestat liked doing it. "I do you and you do me?" he asked, having had yet to find his groove with Armand when Louis wasn't in bed with them, telling them what to do to each other.

Armand sighed as his hand curved over Lestat's shoulder, clearly finding the prospect attractive. Lestat already had a hand under the mesh top, grazing the soft hairs on Armand's lower abdomen, dipping two fingers below the waistband, ready to yank down his pants and slide into position when-

“Wait,” Armand smacked at his back and Lestat groaned in frustration, burying his face onto the giant paisley pattern on the duvet beside Armand’s hip, keeping his fingers right where they were until further notice.

"You're killing me, Armand. You're really killing me," he grumbled, humping the bed once for good measure – which predictably had the opposite of the intended effect and did nothing to alleviate the problem.

Armand shoved his shoulder this time, hard. “And you’re so melodramatic! Are you this whiny when it’s just you and Louis? Unbelievable.”

Lestat peered up at him through his hair, trying to force his body to cooperate with his brain and vice versa. “He likes it,” he countered back, feeling and sounding not unlike a chastised child. “Now, getting back to business,” he adjusted to nestle his forehead against Armand’s ribcage, “Was that ‘Wait, let’s pause,’ or ‘Wait, let’s stop’?”

A pause.

“It was a ‘Wait, let’s FaceTime Louis and let him watch.’”

Lestat scrambled up as though Armand had said, “The house is on fire.”

“You little minx… That’s fucking brilliant.”

Armand beamed at his approval, a tad too pleased with himself. "Here, call him," he shoved Lestat's own phone in his direction.

“Don’t boss me around,” Lestat quipped, as he did just what Armand had ordered, hitting the video call button and listening to it ring.

“Please. You like it,” Armand countered, ducking as Lestat made to grab his hair in response.

Declined.

“Ouch.”

“Oh, shut up, you little devil! I’m sure he hit the wrong button by mistake. Louis doesn’t decline my calls.”

Declined.

“Sure, keep telling yourself that.”

Smack!

“Did you just hit me?”

“No,” Lestat rolled his eyes, preparing to hit FaceTime again, “Technically, the pillow hit you. The force was all mine, though."

11:45 PM: I’m out at dinner with my family right now. Everything okay?? Love you.

“See,” Lestat crowed, “He’s not ignoring me!”

11:45 PM: Everything’s fine, beautiful! Armand’s here… We want to show you something ;)

Two minutes. Two minutes of Armand and Lestat staring at the little screen while the three little dots came and went several times.

“Too much?” Lestat’s insecurities began to flare up.

“No,” Armand snatched the phone out of his hand and opened the camera app. “Not enough… Now kiss me and make it dirty.”

Lestat didn’t have to be told twice. It was filthy, obscene, borderline pornographic-

“And… send!”

11:48 PM: look how much we miss you call us xx A

"He's not answering!" Lestat was aware of how juvenile he sounded then, and he couldn't care less.

“Give him a minute! And try to use the brain that I’ve heard you supposedly have… I’m sure he doesn’t want us to meet the rest of his family like this.”

Lestat took a minute to take Armand in – cheeks flushed from alcohol, eyes wild from excitement and arousal, hair mussed from rolling around Lestat’s pillows. He imagined he looked a lot like himself. “You’re right, mon petit,” he replied, unable to resist the endearment that he knew Armand would perceive as a slight to his height.

FaceTime Video.

“As always,” Armand remarked as he hit Accept Call, transforming the haughty, belligerent expression on his face into something downright innocent and wholesome. What an actor. “Hello, lover!”

Lestat leaned over Armand’s chest to ensure he was still in the frame, occupying most of it, in fact. “Bonjour, mon amour!"

Louis on the screen laughed, his green eyes exceptionally bright due to the lighting. “Bonjour to you too, my loves.”

“We miss you,” Armand complained with an exaggerated whine as Lestat interrupted, “But I miss you the most!”

Oh, how beautiful Louis was when he blushed – and it was ridiculously, delightfully easy to make him blush. “It’s not a competition,” he chided, “But I miss you both so much, of course. I can’t wait to be home.”

The rush from the alcohol was fading and Lestat cuddled to Armand’s side, dropping his head to his shoulder to settle his nerves. “I’m glad you picked up,” he whispered. Finally.

“Me too,” Armand nodded. “Where are you, sweetheart? I can’t quite tell.”

"Oh," Louis shrugged. "Hiding in the bathroom. I didn't know what to expect… after that photo." He blushed again and looked away.

Amazing that this was the same person that could have Lestat on one side and Armand on the other every weekend, a cock in each hand as he worked them to completion while murmuring sweet nonsense in a combination of English, French, and Creole.

The memory had Lestat subconsciously bucking his hips against Armand's leg and biting down on his lip to suppress a moan.

“That reminds me,” Armand shifted to sit up as he passed Lestat’s phone back to him. “We wanted to show you something.” Quickly freeing himself from his pants and underwear before snatching the phone right back, patting his inner thigh for Lestat’s benefit. “Go on then,” he told him.” He touched the screen and leaned back at an incline, “Camera’s on you, brat.”

Heard Louis gasp as he watched Lestat kiss his way down Armand’s navel, the tip of his cock grazing Lestat’s chin as he whimpered and squirmed in anticipation. “Don't drag it out,” he begged and when Lestat raised an eyebrow, he added, “We can't keep Louis in the bathroom all night.”

“Yes,” Louis sounded breathless, “Do it, Lestat.”

"Just where do the two of you get off, speaking to me this way?" He teased, drawing out the moment, knowing good and well the vision he presented to his captive audience. Hair escaping from the low ponytail to frame his face, the black eyeliner smudged around his eyes, making them appear massive and more mysterious, lips red and shiny and glistening from spit and precum.

Fluttered his long eyelashes shut and focused on taking Armand down to the hilt in one fluid movement, relaxing his throat and willing it to cooperate. Louis was watching, after all, and Lestat always performed better with a crowd.

“Good, so good, Lestat,” Louis cooed, and Lestat preened at the praise. “Isn't he good, Armand?”

"Uh huh," Armand moaned. "Really good. I'm not gonna hold out, baby. I'm sorry," he apologized to Louis, already linking his ankles over Lestat's back, using his free hand to tug on his hair.

You asked for quick, I'm giving you quick, Lestat wanted to say, but settled for smiling around the cock in his mouth, hyper-aware of both sets of eyes. Hollowed out his cheeks and hummed in the back of his throat, knowing he loved it when Armand did that to him.

"It's okay, love. Let go when you're ready." Fuck, that man's voice could hypnotize a lion.

Armand moaned again and shook his head at nothing in particular – the little obscene noises escaping his mouth and increasing in pitch with every merciless suck Lestat gave. “Oh yes, you will,” Louis soothed, “And Lestat will take it all, won't you, darling?”

He felt Armand’s thighs quivering on either side of his head and knew he wouldn't even need to answer Louis either way. He pulled back to grin at the camera, at Armand looking through it, mouth open and tongue lapping at the slit before closing his lips over the head once more as Armand groaned and went rigid, spine arching off the bed while Lestat's hands on his hips pinned him into place.

Lestat took it all, every drop Armand had to offer. Gave his softening cock one last suck for good measure, which earned him a cry from Armand and a "Good boy" from Louis before collapsing onto his side.

That was new. Interesting. Hot. He wouldn't mind an encore later.

“I'll do you now?” Armand's shaky voice cut through his thoughts.

"I don't think you have to," Lestat grimaced, noticing for the first time the mess he had made in his pants. He'd be so single-mindedly focused on putting on a good show, and hadn't realized he'd gotten himself off by grinding into the mattress.

Embarrassing.

"There," Lestat grabbed his phone back, holding it close so Louis would see just his face, see the proof of his labor. "I swallowed your boyfriend's load just like you told me to. Does that prove how much I love you or what?"

“How did this become about that? I know you love me, silly goose.”

“Not silly,” Lestat pouted while Armand narrowed his eyes at him, still too wrung out to move. “I wanted a chance to prove my love,” he grumbled as Lestat swatted at his hand.

“You're both so drunk! Sleep it off, my loves. I have to… clean up… and get back to the table before they start wondering where I am.”

Damn. "Alright," Lestat allowed, feeling the victor if nothing else. "I love you."

"I love you too," Armand's voice sounded small as he pulled himself up, using Lestat as leverage. "Call me later?"

"You'll be asleep! I hope. I love you both. I'll try to text you later." He blew them a kiss that they each pretended to catch, then the screen blinked and the call was over.

Lestat sighed and gently pushed Armand off in favor of getting up and stripping down, rummaging around the dresser for something clean to wear.

“You know what we should do?” Armand spoke loudly to the ceiling.

"What?" Lestat yelled from the adjoining bathroom, lowering his voice as he reentered, appreciating for a moment the fucked-out tableau Armand made.

At least Louis chose well based on aesthetics.

"What should we do?"

"Let's go into the city, it's Friday, and we have nothing better to do."

Not the worst idea Armand's ever had - the antics on the late-night trains in and out of Manhattan were worth the fare alone.

Midnight on Friday meant that most people were either on their way to the graveyard shift or just out and about and looking for a good time like Armand and Lestat. They ambled out of the bus at Port Authority and made their way to the subway at Broadway & W 41st. Lestat tried and failed to drunkenly serenade Armand around the Grand Central stop before bumping into a steel pole, much to the amusement of their fellow passengers.

“We,” Armand twirled around a pole and then dropped himself into Lestat’s lap, “Should get tattoos.”

Quelle surprise from the little imp. “Tattoos? Now? At midnight?”

“Yes.” Armand pursed his lips momentarily. “Tattoos to prove our love to Louis, as you so eloquently put it.”

“What, you’re feeling put out you didn't get to enthrall him tonight and you want to overcompensate?”

Mean, but Armand could handle it.

“I enthralled him plenty!” Armand snapped, arms crossed over his chest. “I just think it would be fun, you know?” tone softening, head to the side in a feigned gesture of submission. “C’mon, Lestat. It would make a great story." He sneered then, and the illusion dissipated, "Unless you're too chicken to do it."

"Chicken?! Who do you think you're talking to?" Lestat's left hand on his lower back kept him from losing his balance at a hard turn.

Intriguing, seeing as Lestat looked like he wanted to shove Armand onto the disgusting subway car floor himself. He settled for yanking him up to his feet by his wrist as though he were handling a toddler, heralding him to the nearest exit.

“If it’s a tattoo you want, we’re getting off here then,” Lestat announced, his voice dripping with irritation and perhaps a tad bit of excitement.

Armand gave him an icy look but made no move to separate his wrist from Lestat’s grasp, following him out of the subway and up the steps to Union Square. The January air cold and unforgiving, and he shivered in Lestat's leather jacket.

Hadn't been paying attention when they left the house – Lestat hadn't mentioned it, but Armand was sure he'd noticed and hoped he wasn't reading into it. Yet Armand was thankful for it now as it hit him at precisely mid-thigh and was infinitely warmer than his own unlined one would have been.

"It's a ten-minute walk to the place where I got mine done. They don't ask for ID if you pay upfront. Cool dude," Lestat seemed to be warming up the idea as they walked hurriedly.

“You have a tattoo? Where?” Armand demanded to know, evidently shocked, as he thought he had already seen every square inch of Lestat’s naked body.

“Guess.”

“I don’t know! Just tell me, for once!”

“You’re such a baby, Armand, I swear,” but there was no malice in it, and Lestat indulged him by pausing long enough to pull down his lower lip, revealing the BRAT tattooed on the inside. “Hurt like a fucking bitch too!”

Armand couldn't help it – he clapped his hands and laughed out loud. "Of course you would!"

“What did Louis think?”

"Told me I was a 'damned fool,' and I was lucky it was where nobody would see it or he would've dumped me for good right then and there."

“Hmm, such a shame it wasn’t on your forehead then.”

“Imp.”

“Idiot.”

Pretty Devil’s Ink was everything one might expect from a tattoo parlor that operated well past midnight and accepted minors as clients. Still, Armand felt a thrill of adrenaline as Lestat held the door open for him, waving him in dramatically.

“Hey, hey! The brat is back!” a big guy boomed in a decidedly Italian-American accent. “And he brought a little friend!”

Armand was about to open his mouth and challenge that statement when Lestat stepped around him to embrace the guy, clapping him on the back. “Hey, Nico! What’s up? Yeah, Armand here was ragging on my ass about wanting a tattoo, so here we are! He has the same problem I did, but you’ll hook him up, right?”

A dashing smile, a wink, an extra $20 on top of the cash Armand procured from his tattered old wallet, and they were going through Nico’s catalog.

More to the point, Armand was going through it while Lestat almost literally bounced from one end of the shop to the other and back – taking a swig from the half-full whiskey bottle he'd stashed under his coat earlier and touching stuff he probably had no business touching.

"So, what do you have in mind?" Nico asked. "And is it one of youse or the two of youse, because you only paid for one."

“I’m not sure yet… But it’s both, right, Lestat? We’re doing it together, right? For Louis?”

Perhaps it was the booze, perhaps it was how all of Armand’s confidence seemed to abruptly disappear at different points throughout the night, perhaps it was because Lestat never could say no to a grand gesture even when he very well should, but Lestat heard himself say, “Yes,” before he realized he’d done it.

Took a seat on the table next to Armand and picked at the black polish on his nails while Armand flipped to another page. “We should call Louis again,” he smirked, phone already out of his pocket. “Get his input.”

Declined.

“Oh, this is rich!”

“Maybe he’s still with his family, Lestat. And wouldn’t it be better as a surprise? As long as we don’t get on our faces… or somewhere equally ridiculous.”

“Whatever. Let’s leave him a voicemail.”

Declined.

“You’re breaking our hearts, mon chéri! …Armand, say something…."

“… going to prove our love to you!”

“… that’s right… prove our love to you!”

“… and then you’ll never leave us again!”

"… that's right! I must say, Armand, you have a dazzling way with words…."

"… both of youse are really drunk…  I don't know if I should be doing this…."

“… we’ll pay you double!”

“… yes, we’ll pay you double!”

“… Lestat, pay the man…."

–

Much more painless this time, given how much more cushioning that particular region of the body contained. Armand still had winced and reached for Lestat’s hand more than once – it was a different kind of pain compared to the ones he enjoyed, and he didn’t do well with the unfamiliar.

Lestat hadn't said much, having now reached the "quiet drunk" stage, but he lingered by Armand's head, allowed him pick of the music ('70s glam rock), and let him play with the tangle of bracelets on Lestat's wrists to distract himself.

Afterward, when Nico had proclaimed the job almost done ("just have to do the bandage"), Lestat took a selfie for Louis. His temple pressed to Armand's left butt cheek, next to the red half-heart – the kind that joins with another to form a whole on a friendship necklace – that had Louis written on it in cursive.

“And… send!”

“Same thing?” Nico asked when Armand stepped off the table and gingerly pulled up his pants. “Opposite heart piece, opposite side? And what goes in it again?”

“That is such a dumb idea, Lestat!”

"No, it's not! It makes perfect sense. Winner gets Louis's first name, loser gets last name! You just don't think you can win!"

“The odds are 50/50!”

“Exactly! So, heads or tails?”

“Fine… Heads.”

“Fuck!”

“I win!”

“Like hell you do, Armand… Last name is the married name anyway. It’s better.”

“That’s the booze rotting your brain, Lestat. Soon there’ll be nothing left.”

“Shut up.”

Armand appeared equal parts entertained and apologetic as Lestat struggled to answer. “It’s a long name, another ridiculous French name.”

"What about just 'DPDL'?" Armand volunteered helpfully. "He'll know what it stands for. So will you, and so will I. Who else is going to see, really?"

The unintended implication that no one besides Louis and Armand would ever see him that intimately again made Lestat's chest ache in a funny way, in a way he didn't want to acknowledge just yet.

“Yeah,” he nodded, climbing onto the table, hiding his face from Armand’s scrutiny. “Yeah, that works.”

–

"I'm going to pass out," Armand complained as they staggered back to the subway station. More so from exhaustion than anything else, the alcohol long gone and having since worn off.

He looked it too, and Lestat caught his elbow as he swayed in place. “You can sleep at my place if you’d like. Nobody’s home till Monday.”

"Thanks," Armand sighed as he linked his arm through Lestat's, both out of a desire to be closer and a need to stay upright. "My 'parents' don't even notice I'm gone. Or they don't care, you know? We're just government checks to them. Yay, foster care."

Lestat didn't know what to say, so he said nothing, but squeezed Armand's hand and hoped the sentiment came across.

“Hey, Lestat.”

They were outside the station now.

“Yeah?”

“I-”

“… You?”

“I-”

An ambulance sped by, the red and blue lights reflecting off Armand’s anguished face.

Oh.

“You don’t have to say it.”

“Why? Because you wouldn’t say it back?”

"No," Lestat brushed Armand's hair back off his face, tucking the thick strands behind his ears, taking a moment to free a rogue curl away from a little earring. "I would. I love you, Armand."

A radiant smile, a sloppy kiss, a sharp nip at his earlobe.

"Prove it then."

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Overall I’m glad AMC IWTV exists and I enjoy the new things it brings to the table. But I think it simply didn’t linger on the themes and emotional beats I personally loved most in the original story? It barely had them at all tbh.

As I’ve complained previously, I do feel really strongly about Claudia and Lestat’s dynamic and how Lestat turns Claudia into a vampire to trap Louis. And just how involved he is and how complicated all three of their relationships become.

The show I feel chose to focus on the messy *romantic* relationship Lestat and Louis have. Once Claudia and Lestat hate each other, that is that and there doesn’t appear to be much more nuance there. What matters is that Louis has an abusive spouse that he can’t decide whether he loves or hated.

Meanwhile I felt that the 1:1 depiction of domestic violence flattens the metaphor for a fledgling vampire and maker in a way that’s just not as interesting to me. The very conceit of a maker and fledgling can be so interesting as a vehicle for exploring suffocating dynamics, abuse, codependency, and various sorts of complexities, in stark stylized contrast. But the introduction of bluntly framed domestic violence feels like it collapses all of that potential into the simple metaphor of a violent spouse. I also just generally didn’t like how it chose to explore this, and I would admittedly likely feel much more generously if I had thought its take was incredibly compelling on its own. But I didn’t really.

I don’t know. The show generally felt like a mixed bag. I think it had a very strong opening, and likewise strong finale. The middle dragged on, exacerbated by the simplification imo because it frankly started to feel like they didn’t have enough content. Claudia and Lestat’s animosity, particularly, began to feel one note and her later choice to kill him much less emotionally effective as a result, because when even was the last time they gave a shit about each other? It doesn’t feel like a difficult choice. Once again it only matters from the perspective of Louis’ turmoil. Which is itself an interesting one! But losing complexity here doesn’t really feel like streamlining to me, and there was plenty of lingering on the drawn out feud itself.

So idk. I enjoyed the show. I think it’s good. I really appreciate a big budget vampire series that’s dedicated to the tone and aesthetic even being out there in the current, very barren, genre landscape. I’m also really happy to see renewed interest in the general series and characters. I respect a lot of the writing choices. And simply having black vampires, who are protagonists is itself really cool and necessary! Vampire fiction tends to be a very white and racist genre! And like it’s awesome to see it be so openly queer and casual. We’re told point blank that these characters are in love and we get to see them kissing and being casually romantic without any narrative balking. That’s fantastic! I’m so glad we have it! Its amazing that this adaptation exists.

But also yeah at the end of the day it did very much gloss over the dynamics and themes that personally drew me to the story in the first place. So at this point, I’m honestly more excited to see future seasons, once its finished with the first book’s storyline and delving more into the rest of the world and the characters.

I really loved the dedication to all the easter eggs and breadcrumb trails to future VC stuff. And it’s cool that they’re clearly already approaching the story with the rest of the world and future plot developments in mind — something I honestly doubt Rice did lol. So idk I think it’s going to be a fun, wild ride going forward! But I’m also mildly lukewarm about where we are with it now.

I’m hoping I’ll feel differently on a later rewatch where I know exactly what to expect from the story and where it’s going.

[kit-penman]

A slightly unhinged Interview with the Vampire theory of mine:

tw: references to episode 5 and also mention of suicide, nothing more than what's in the show.

Also; spoilers for season 1 and the Vampire Lestat (and if I'm good at theorising, potentially for season 2&3)

Ok, so, this may be a bit wild. But I've binged Interview with the Vampire and reignited an old passion for Lestat as a character. So, this is not unbiased. Also, a lot of this is a compilation of parts of theories I've seen circulating around the community, so I don't claim to be the originator of a lot of this, but also there are too many posts for me to competently credit here.

As much as I loved the show, and all the tiny details in Sam Reid's performance, episode 5 left me with some 'feelings'. I know I'm not alone when I say that that episode and that fight felt quite out of character. I mean, Lestat and Louis never fought like THAT. Sure, their relationship was toxic, but it seems very strange that the showrunners would call Louis and Lestat endgame when they've made their relationship that much more violent and abusive. Not to mention that it goes directly against what Lestat says about never showing Louis even half his power.

Plus the scene was shot in a weird way; the oh so rarely used first person perspective, the shot hovering over the city so far up that the background faded away...

Almost like...

It could be anywhere...

New Orleans,

Or...

PARIS!!! (Dun-dun-daaaa)

I HAVE SOME THEORIES AND NO ONE TO TELL THEM TO SO I'M GOING TO SHOUT THEM INTO THE VOID NOW.

So, I re-read the Vampire Lestat and re-watched the show with the context of that book combined with the knowledge of Armand hovering around Louis while his is telling his story. It provided some extremely interesting depth on Lestat as a character, the way that he thinks and what might be happening in the more questionable moments of the show.

I'm not sure how to put this, so I'll get to the point. I think Armand is manipulating the absolute shit out of Louis' story. I think three big moments for this are the fight between Lestat and Louis, the death of Lestat and the upcoming death of Claudia.

What I think happened:

I've arrived at the conclusion that I think that fight is likely real, but the end of the fight at least; is not in-fact a right between Louis and Lestat but instead Armand and Lestat. From what I've read Louis and Lestat never fight like that, but Lestat and Armand absolutely do. Particularly the 'dragging him along the pavement' was extremely similar. (Though, they never do fly up in the air and Armand can fly anyway... Though I'm pretty sure at that point in the fight, he wasn't able to fly anyway, since he was barely conscious and seemingly unable to use his other powers) I intend to make another post going into detail on this fight, as I don't want it to overtake the point of this post just being an overview of the theory. That said, I did read out the two fights (omitting some dialogue to not give it away) to someone not familiar with the books after watching the scene and they thought it was an adaptation of the Armand fight, so it's not just me. (also, that fight was in Paris, hence the joke at the start)

We already saw that Armand had likely influenced Louis to think he had Left Lestat for dead, Daniel was right and I think that Louis didn't think the death was justified, like in the books, and I think that was a big part of the Armand story making Lestat look worse. There are a couple of moments when Lestat's actions are framed very uncharitably; like in the theatre when they are talking before the show and Louis said he was trying to 'seize his opportunity to disarm me' but in reality, Lestat was likely reminded of the past, the theatre reminding him of Nicky, because he looks for a second like he's going to cry. It seemed more like a moment of sentimental vulnerability from Lestat to me, but I am biased. I think it's all part of a clearly well-rehearsed (as we can see when the interview is compared to the one from the 80's) effort to poorly characterise Lestat. (Something which makes sense since Lestat is the villain of Interview with the Vampire, but was re-written into a more nuanced and sympathetic character in the next book, so they had to account for people being against him for these first two seasons, but then routing for him in the next)

I believe that they are actually trying to sanitise the relationship between Louis and Lestat quite a bit, because if you look at what actually happens, like things that would be too big or unmotivated of a lie for the writers to write, he actually has a lot of tender moments, and the manipulations are cruelty are kept to only a few moments rather than weaved through the entire relationship like in the books. Claudia is a big part of that, they seem to be changing the relationship between her and Lestat quite a lot, I'm not sure how much of that is trustworthy, but one part that is obviously true is the change in how/why she was made a Vampire. In the book (and movie) Claudia was made because Louis was starving himself eating only rats and was in a plague district trying to find rats when he stumbles across a little girl and feeds on her in a desperate frenzy for blood. Lestat finds him and the girl and turns her to keep her as a constant reminder of Louis' guilt, so that he won't leave. But in the show, Louis is only kind-of indirectly responsible for her death and Lestat only turns her because Louis begs him, not out of a plot to force Louis to stay with him. This keeps the dynamic of Louis feeling responsible for her (though not out of guilt as much as because he wanted her to be turned) but now Lestat never really wanted her, so they aren't very close, she's just sort of in-between him and Louis. It's a little sad to see since Lestat was never a good parent in the books, but he clearly loved Claudia a lot. Though, they might be making Lestat and Claudia look more distant than they are because Armand has a lot of motivation to portray Lestat as hating Claudia.

Also, I almost forgot. When Lestat goes to get Claudia on the train- Antionette was shown in episode 7 standing in the park while Claudia is saying goodbye and I bet anything that she heard that Louis was considering killing himself and relayed it to Lestat, who then went to get her so that he wouldn't. That entire scene was very 'cartoon villain' of Lestat, like what a child would write of a parent she was mad at so it probably shouldn't be taken at completely face value anyway.

Speaking of which,

What I believe the motivation was:

So, in the Vampire Lestat, Armand is a reoccurring antagonist to Lestat. Lestat is not a fan of him (though he does think he's pretty, because it's Lestat and he can't not) and he is not a fan of Lestat (Debate-lorded his cult away, kicked his ancient ass as a baby vampire, had the absolute gall to be created by Magnus and born only a country lord (fake bourgeoise, they had to hunt to survive the winter) and, the worst grievance of all; he rejected him.) In the books Armand loves Louis, and travels with him after Claudia's death but Louis is unable to move past her death and it causes them to drift apart, clearly that has not happened to this Armand and Louis, so what changed? Could it be that he fixed Louis' damaged psyche by channelling that damage onto Lestat, so that he might feel as though he has closure? I don't believe this Louis knows that Lestat didn't come to Paris vengeful and get Claudia killed for standing against him, that in-fact, Lestat came to Paris to get help from Armand and was instead starved and tormented into saying it was her, by Armand.

How could it have been done:

Reading the Vampire Lestat has given me insight into the way that Armand treats people, even the ones he cares about and how easily he uses his powers to extract information, manipulate, delude and distort the reality of the people around him. I have no doubt that he has dabbled in the memories of Louis, making him a more unreliable narrator than the mere passage of time. Claudia's diaries are untrustworthy not only because despite how long she lives, she still has the brain of a child, but also because Armand has been tampering again. She is prone to exaggerate and dramatize with no thought to making a moderate and unbiassed account in her personal diaries.

There are two instances of Daniel pointing out that her diaries have had pages removed. The first was when she gets assaulted and the pages are torn, I believe that that was Louis being heartbroken and angry and tearing out the pages in the heat of the moment, he seems genuinely upset and protective over her memory, no reason to doubt it. However, the second instance, after Lestat's 'death' the pages are removed neatly, calmly omitted, Daniel says 'with a ruler' I believe that instance was Armand, trying to hide that Louis didn't want Lestat dead.

So that's mostly my theory for now. I'm still gathering screenshots and quotes from the book; I'm going to redo this post with a lot more evidence and probably better worded, but I wanted to float what I have so far and see if anyone had any feedback, areas that could use more elaboration, anything to add to the theory or counter anything I've said here. All feedback is welcome! I'll use it when I make my more polished post.

Also, just to be super clear, I absolutely love all the characters. This is my favourite show at the moment, and this is in no way meant to be unfair to any of the character, I'm just trying to predict what is coming since I can think of little else, and the next season is so far away.

Thank you so much for reading! Sorry if it was a little jumbled, just trying to get my thoughts out there.

[licncourt]

A concept: vampire midnight pool party. Any thoughts on the subject? I always love your headcanons!

Omg yes!! Excellent idea. You know Night Island has a private pool

So bathing suits would be a point of contention right off the bat. Armand and Daniel are the only ones being normal about it since they're used to Miami living and have a tasteful one piece and swim trunks respectively. Marius tries to insist on being naked because athletic leisure should be "a celebration of the male form", but is eventually coaxed into a Speedo for everyone's (relative) comfort.

Lestat tries to get one of those monokinis that's barely legal for outdoor wear, but Louis shuts that down and manages to talk him into some very tight mid-thigh board shorts with lots of flattery. Louis was 100% planning to go in shorts and a t-shirt ("the shorts are already a compromise, Lestat. No one sees my knees!") but is finally wrestled into something vintage like this, though he's a little sulky and spends most of the night in a coverup

Marius and Lestat play a game of water polo so intense that everyone else gets out of the pool. A human would've had broken bones. It progressed past full contact and into a brawl. Marius finally rage quit because Lestat kept cheating with his new powers

Louis does not like water, so he sits on the edge with his legs in. Lestat is high on life after the game with Marius and yanks him into the pool. Louis looks like a cat in the bath for the rest of the night and threatens to go back to San Francisco if Lestat gets one more drop of water on him

Daniel is a solutions guy, so he drags out a pool floatie that Louis can sit on to allow him to be in the pool but not the water. The stupid inflatable swan saves their marriage. (A few minutes later they're holding hands and laughing while Lestat ferries him around)

Armand won't stop sneaking up and attacking Daniel from underwater just to hear him scream, so Louis is nice enough to share his floatie with Daniel while they negotiate. They decide that if Armand is allowed to call and eat a pool boy to cure the hangry (a violation of Daniel's "employees are friends, not food" rule), he will stop being violent

Marius still tries to take off his Speedo, but Armand can smell Marius bullshit at 100 yards and catches him every time

[a-edgar-allan-hoe]

The Red Witch

Jasper Hale x Reader part 2

A/N: So here is the 2nd part everyone! I hope you like it!

Summary: Imagine being an immortal witch from the Middle Ages and being the previous love of Jasper before he was turned. You two were separated under certain circumstances and cross each other’s path once again, years later in the present era.

Warning: language. Blood

Part 1 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5

“(Y/N)? Are you ok?” You hear your friend Melanie ask you, her voice laced with concern as she places a comforting hand on your shoulder, bringing you out of your thoughts.

Your head was beginning to throb violently and the scent of everyone’s blood was beginning to reach you. You could sense their pulse, the flow of their blood through their veins, and a part of you, deep down inside, hungered for it. Not in the way vampires felt, but in a way that you wanted to rip their souls out of their bodies and bathe in their blood while you only gained more power. And it sickened you. It sickened you to the very core.

“I think I need some fresh air.” You turn to face her, only to hear her gasp when she stares at your eyes.

“What? What is it?” You ask her.

She pulls you to the back of the shop, making sure no one noticed before speaking to you in a hushed tone. “(Y/N), hun, I don’t want to freak you out but, your eyes are red.”

“They’re what?!” You stare back at her in confusion before pulling out your phone to see for yourself only to let out a gasp as well.

Both your eyes were blackened in this deep blood red that covered not only your irises but your sclera as well, resembling something of a demon from the pits of hell. You shut your eyes in response, not even wanting to look at yourself, the mere sight of your eyes horrified you.

“Shit shit shit. This isn’t supposed to happen. I haven’t had this happen to me in a long time, not since I was little.” You hiss, pinching the bridge of your nose.

“Does that mean?”

“Yes. I let my stupid emotions control me. And now look.” You run a hand through your hair as you open your eyes back up, staring at the floor. “I need to go. I need to go before this gets worse and I hurt someone.

“Don’t worry hun. You go and sort it out. I’ll close the shop early. And please, remember to breathe.”

You nod in agreement before taking out a pair of your sunglasses from your purse and throwing them on to cover your eyes. You slip on your black leather jacket, grabbing your belongings and rush out the shop. With a quickened pace, you walk over to your 1967 dark blue Shelby Mustang with white racing stripes and hop in. You strapped on your seatbelt and put your keys in the ignition to start the car, gripping the wheel as you closed your eyes, listening to and feeling the rumble of the engine. It was one of those things that calmed you down, you always loved the sound of muscle cars.

Taking a deep breath you rev up your engine and drive off, the sound of your car echoing through the streets as you race out of town and towards the woods so that you can be away from from everyone. You had your windows down and your radio up, enjoying the feeling of the wind against your face as the scenery around you blurred past.

You pulled up to a small clearing not too far from the road and got out of your car. Looking at the trees around you, you throw your head back and take a deep breath, taking in the smell of the forest. The throbbing in your head was still there but it was starting to fade. You slip off your gloves and sit down near your car. Glancing down at your hands you noticed that they were turning pitch black with tendrils that seemed to wrap it’s way up your arm, like a poison that runs through your veins only to reach your heart to provide an inevitable ending. Your powers felt like a poison coursing through your veins, and the thought of it ever reaching your heart made your blood run cold. You also noticed that your fingernails have grown to a sharp point, like the claws of an animal.

Shit. Shit shit shit. You needed to stop this.

You unlace your black dr martens and kick them off, digging your toes into the grass and feeling the earth beneath you as you closed your eyes, taking deep breaths as you tried to become one with your surroundings. Earth, fire, water, air, spirit.

You hadn’t used your powers in a long time and were out of practice. And yet, you felt like you needed to. You feared that if you didn’t learn to control it, you would eventually succumb to it and then your powers would eventually control you. And that was the last thing you wanted. With a deep breath you open your eyes back up and stare at your hands. Using your sharp nail, you slice into your arm and watch as the blood slips out of your wound before swirling around your fingers. You try to focus on a certain object and watch as the red substance slowly flows together, forming a red dagger in your hand.

So you weren’t completely out of practice. You let out a sigh of some form of relief, watching the blade melt back into blood, slipping back inside your wound before healing itself. Then slowly, your hands and fingernails returned to normal.

Thank goodness.

After a short period of sitting on the grass and listening to the peaceful sound of the wind and the birds, you pull your phone out of your back pocket to look at the time.

Shit.

Your little sister Harper was going to be off of school in a couple of minutes and you didn’t want to be late. You throw your docs back on and get back in your car before starting your engine and racing off out of the forest and towards Forks high school. You had your radio turned up and currently Led Zeppelin was playing as you pulled up to the high school.

You left the radio on and got out, leaning against the hood of your car with your arms crossed over your chest. You stood there, searching for your sister and finally see her appear out the front entrance.

She had her backpack slung across one arm, her 80s style windbreaker blowing against the wind. She was wearing her old white sweatshirt she found at the thrift store that had Scooby Doo on it, tucked into her high waisted jeans that were rolled up to show off her funky new socks that she just bought because they had dinosaurs all over it. The laces of her white converse were hastily tied as she makes her way over to you with her head lowered.

The way she dressed always made you smile, she always looked like she stepped out of an 80s sitcom, and it perfectly resembled her dorky and full of life personality. Standing next to each other, no one would have ever thought you two were related, with your dark choice of clothes and her bright and colorful ones.

“Hey scooter.” You smile at her once she approaches you.

“Hey” she mumbles out quietly, pushing her glasses up as she gets to the passenger side, making you raise your brow.

Huh. What’s wrong with her?

You turn around to get back into your car before a familiar face stops you in your tracks, making your clench your fist as your breath hitches in your throat.

“Oh you have got to be shitting me.” You hiss, looking away once Jasper catches your stare.

Great, so Jasper and the other vampires happen to go to the same high school your sister goes to. Just great.

You catch Harper giving you a wtf look before turning around to follow your eyes to see for herself what you were getting so upset over.

“(Y/n)?”

“It’s nothing Harper, get in the car.” You shake it off as you both get in.

You sensed Harper watching you carefully as you start your car back up and pull back out of the parking lot. You gave Jasper one last glance, feeling him staring into your soul as you drove off.

How could someone you’ve sworn to forget, someone who didn’t even remember you, still have such an effect over you?

“So how was school?” You ask her as you make your way back to your home, which was located away from town. You could still feel her staring at you.

“It was okay. Nothing special.” She shrugs, looking at the road in front of her before turning back to you. “So what’s up with you? How come you’re acting so moody?”

“So what, you’re my therapist now?”

“Well you were totally chill until you saw that weird pale, Lestat looking dude.”

Did she just call him Lestat?? Wheeze!

There was a pause before her eyes widened a little. “Wait, is he? Is he the same guy that’s in your necklace?”

You clench your wheel as your back straightens up, using your free hand to grasp the intricate gold locket you wore around your neck. The one Jasper gave you many many years ago that he had custom made to have a dragonfly on it. The one you put a small picture of him in to remember him by.

“Did you go through my things?” You raise your brow at her.

“.......maybe.”

“Harper.”

“Hey! I was bored okay. It’s not like I did it recently. And you have so much old shit anyways.”

“Hey, language.” You shake your head with a roll of your eyes. “And it’s not just any old shit okay. It’s stuff that means a lot to me.”

“Looks like a bunch of ancient junk to me.”

“Oh so you’re calling me ancient now.”

“Well technically....”

“Harper.”

“Ok! Sorry!” Harper laughs before getting serious again. “But seriously though, who was he? You’ve like never told me about him.”

You let out a sigh, feeling a lump in your throat that felt like it refused to go away. “That’s because it hurts to talk about him. Jasper and I, he used to court me back in 1862. Harper.....we were supposed to get married.”

A/N: Part 3 coming soon! I didn’t want this chapter to be too long so I had to split it. Thanks for all the support you beautiful people! 😁

Tags: @twilight-kpop @cricketlicket @bella-stenbakken @ineffabledears @elisemurphy06 @ashdab2611 @pancake-pages @toomanybandstocare @cammellia

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi! As someone who’s literary opinion I really trust, I was surprised that you’re a twilight fan? I know almost nothing except commen knowledge things about that series, and I always assumed it was actually bad/un-feminist. What is it that you like so much that others seem to miss? I’m just genuinely curious about your take on the hate it always seems to get vs. it’s actual quality. I’m not gonna judge bc animorphs is also one of those books where you see it and assume it’s bad.

In over 14 years of loving this series, I’m not sure anyone has ever asked me why I enjoy it instead of simply trying to convince me that I’m wrong to do so.  So thank you for that.

First and foremost, I love the Twilight saga because of the vivid detail in Stephenie Meyer’s writing style.  The descriptions are so lush and dense with sensory information that you can practically bite down on them as you read.  Bella and Jacob aren’t just sitting on the beach; they’re sitting on a gnarled log of driftwood, worn smooth at the top from where so many Quileute teens have sat upon it during bonfires but still uneven enough to rock on its branches when Bella suddenly stands to rage at her own mortality.  Meyer describes that log in Twilight, so tangibly and with such economy of detail, that we recognize it immediately when Bella and Jacob return to that spot in Eclipse.  I’ve always disliked the movies, because I’ve always felt that the best part of Meyer’s writing simply did not translate well to the screen.

Secondly, I love the feminism.

Okay, let’s take a quick pause to let everyone gasp and clutch their pearls over me calling Twilight a feminist work.  I will address the criticisms later.  For now, please just hear me out.

Twilight strikes me as a premier example of what Hélène Cixous means when she calls for “women’s writing,” or writing for women, about women, by women, with a strong focus on the concerns and strengths and desires of womanhood.  This is a series about building and maintaining close relationships, both romantic and platonic.  It celebrates beauty, and love, and care.  Bella moves to Forks because she recognizes that her dad is lonely while her mom is quite the opposite, torn between family priorities.  She doesn’t simply subsume her interests to those of other people, but instead actively chooses how and when and where to express her love for her birth family and her found families.  Most of the other major decisions throughout the story — Alice “adopting” Bella, Carlisle moving the family to Alaska, Jacob becoming werewolf beta, the Cullens going up against the Volturi, etc. — are motivated by care and devotion for one’s family and friends.  Even the selfish or morally ambiguous character choices are shown to be motivated by love.  Rosalie tells Edward that Bella died because she genuinely thinks it’ll help him move on.  Victoria creates an army that nearly destroys Forks because she’s avenging James.  Alice abandons Bella and the others before the final battle because if she can’t save her entire family, then she’ll settle for saving her lover before letting him die in vain.

Not only is there a striking concern with love and care, but there’s also a strong commitment to avoiding violence.  Bella’s eventual vamp-superpower proves to be preventing violence and protecting others, an awesome character decision that I’d argue gets set up as early as the first book.  She lives in a violent world — this is a YA SF story, after all — but she has the power to suppress violence and create peace, both in herself and others.  I was already sick of “power = ability to inflict damage” in YA stories well before I knew the word “patriarchy.”  Twilight was one of the first books to convey to me that power could be refusing to do harm in spite of hunger or anger, that power could be shielding ones’ family, that power could be about building enough friendships and alliances to have an army at one’s back when facing an enemy too strong to take on alone.

Closely connected to all of that love and care, I love how much Twilight is about navigating teenage girlhood.  Is it empowering, intersectional, or all-inclusive?  Hell no.  Does it still dare to suggest that a completely ordinary teenage girl could have valid concerns about the world?  Yep.  The main conflict of the story, as Stephen King so derisively explained, is about the romantic entanglements of a teenage girl, and the book therefore has no literary merit.  (To quote my dad’s response: “Bold words from the guy who inflicted Firestarter on the world.”)

There is, indeed, a lot of romance in Twilight.  There are a lot of clothes.  Alice and Rosalie especially spend a lot of time on makeup, and hair, and choosing the prettiest cars and houses.  Twilight embraces all the stereotypically “girly” concerns of adolescence, and makes no effort to apologize for or condemn them.  Bella isn’t particularly good at performing them — she likes but doesn’t excel at shopping, fiercely defends her ugly car as ugly, hobbles through prom on crutches — but she can still enjoy the feeling of being pretty in a sparkly dress while dancing with her sparkly boyfriend.  And Twilight, like Animorphs with Cassie, takes the daring step of treating that feeling as valid.

Speaking of sparkles, I love the commitment to the fantasy concept in Twilight, including the myriad mundanities that Meyer brings with that commitment.  If you have super-speed, why not use it to play extreme baseball?  If you’re a mindreader with a clairvoyant sister, why wouldn’t you two play mental chess games?  I couldn’t tell you, after seven seasons of Buffy or eight of Vampire Diaries, what Spike or Damien or Angel or Stefan does all day when not brooding or lurking in the bushes to creep on human women.  I can tell you what the Cullens get up to.  Emmett and Rosalie work on their cars, usually by holding them overhead one-handed.  Carlisle and Alice read plays, and sometimes talk the whole family into home Shakespeare productions.  Edward and Carlisle debate theology, Emmett and Jasper have dumb athletic competitions, Edward and Esme play music, Alice manipulates stock markets, the twins go shopping online, etcetera.  The Cullens feel real, feel like the vampires next door, in a way that Louis and Lestat simply do not.

To get to the elephant in the room — I just described Twilight as a feminist text! — let’s talk about the other thing the Cullens do for fun: they have sex.  Weird sex.  Kinky furniture-breaking sex.  Sex that Emmett (who would know) compares to bear-wrestling.  These books suck with regards to queer representation, but they are sex-positive.  They feature an old-school Anglican protagonist offering his daughter-in-law a medical abortion.  They treat Edward’s desire for sex only within marriage and Alice’s desire for sex outside of marriage as both being valid.  Like I said, not groundbreaking, even by the standards of 2005, but still more than most teen novels do even today.

There’s a passage from Breaking Dawn that people love to pull out of context as “everything wrong with Twilight in two paragraphs” because it describes Bella waking up the morning after sex with bruises on her arms.  That moment is shocking out of context, to be sure — but in context, it’s the end result of an in-depth consent negotiation that lasts four books.  Bella says that she’d like to become a vampire.  Edward says okay, but only if she spends a few more years living as a human and considering that choice.  Bella says okay, but only if Edward, not Carlisle, becomes the one to turn her.  Edward says they can use his venom, but that Carlisle, who’s an MD, really needs to supervise the process.  Bella doesn’t love the idea of Edward’s stepdad cockblocking what’s supposed to be an intimate moment, and so agrees only on the grounds that she gets to have sex with Edward as a human first.  Edward’s hella Catholic, so he requests that they get married first.  Bella’s super horny, so she demands that the wedding happen within six months.  Edward says that he might hurt her during sex, and Bella says that she wants a little hurt during sex.  They marry.  They bang.  During the banging, Edward makes every effort to be controlled and courteous and gentile, while Bella goes wild and crazy.  The next morning, she has bruises and he does not.  Edward apologizes, but Bella’s actually really into it.  She spends a while admiring her sexy vamp-marked self in the mirror, touches the bruises many times, and reminds us yet again that Bella Swan’s whole M.O. is being a monsterfucker.  Her kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.

To be clear, I think there are other aspects of the romance that get criticized for good reason.  Edward does not negotiate with Bella before sneaking into her room to watch her sleep, and he does make unacceptable use of their power differences when he thinks she’s in danger of being mauled by werewolves.  The text condemns Jacob’s “don’t wanna die a virgin” ploy to manipulate a kiss out of Bella, but not the wider conceit of all the male characters as possessing uncontrollable urges.  Bella’s struggles to adjust to a new town feel very feminine and realistic; her amused tolerance of Jacob’s and Mike’s sexual harassment as the price for their friendship does not.  Werewolf imprinting might be mostly platonic, but that doesn’t make it okay for Meyer to depict it as a form of soulmate bonding that happens with child characters. Those are good points, all around.  I just wish that most of them didn’t come up in the context of post-hoc rationalizations for loathing the femininity of a feminine text.

I’m not calling Twilight an unproblematic series.  I’m saying that it gets (rightly!) criticized for appropriating Quileute culture, while Buffy’s total absence of main characters of color and blatant anti-Romani racism are (wrongly!) not remarked upon. I'm saying that I’ve been told I’m a misogynist for liking Twilight but not for liking James Bond.  I’m saying that there’s a reason people tend to go “oh, that makes so much sense!” when I let them in on the fact that reactive hatred for “Twitards” started and spread on 4Chan, later home of Gamergate and incel culture.  I’m saying that Twilight depicts problematic relationship dynamics as sexy — but then so do Vampire Academy, Blue Bloods, Supernatural, Vladimir Tod, and Vampire Diaries.  All of which take the time to stop and thumb their noses at Twilight, smug in the superiority of having vampires that fly rather than vampires that sparkle, and for thoroughly condemning teenage girls for being girly while continuing to show men inflicting violence on them.

After all, as Erin May Kelly puts it: “we live in a world taught to hate everything to do with little girls.  We hate the books they read and the bands they like.  Is there anything the world makes fun of more than One Direction and Twilight?”  No one has ever called me a misogynist for liking the MCU, in spite of less than a third of its movies even managing to clear the low-low bar of the Bechdel test.  Because people are still allowed to like Harry Potter in spite of its racism, or Lord of the Rings despite its imperialism.  Because hatred for Twilight was never about its very real sexism, or the genuinely silly sparkle-vampires, until it had to justify itself as something other than hate for everything that teenage girls have ever dared openly love.

I enjoy the novels, and I enjoy the fan fiction that tries to fix some of the problems with the novels.  I appreciate the extent to which Meyer has elevated fan culture, and made an effort to acknowledge her own past mistakes.  I would love to be able to talk about my love for the series as a flawed but beautiful work of literature, but for now I’ll settle for asking that the world just let me enjoy it in peace.

[littlesmartart]

THE MIRROR MIRROR AU

Prince Lestat  Official Title: Prince  Actual Role: Figurehead, "Nuclear Deterrent", Resident People Person  Lestat is an arrogant, swaggering, violent, charismatic moron, who loves his family and loves fine clothes and loves how he looks in this crown, baby. He's beautiful and strong, and his husband is beautiful and smart, and that's why THEY'RE in charge.

Prince Consort Louis  Official Title: Prince Consort, Keeper of the Royal Treasury  Actual Role: Regent, Accountant, Responsible for keeping Lestat out of excessive trouble  A very calm, polite, well-mannered man who is smart but so weak he's mostly there for eye-candy. And isn't it nice that he stands in for the prince at meetings and councils, and aren't his little ideas interesting, and isn't it so helpful that he manages the Royal Treasury?

HRH Gabrielle  Official Title: Queen Mother  Actual Role: Spy, Assassin  Louis cut a deal with Gabrielle early on in his marriage that in return for her loyalty, he would excuse her all royal duties in the court and send her on "ambassadorial trips" where she could collect intel and murder. Gabrielle is a-okay with this arrangement. 

Princess Claudia  Official Title: Princess  Actual Role: N i g h t m a r e  This is a girl who has never been told no. She has both daddies wrapped around her tiny little finger; one daddy is the prince, and one daddy is very good at making inconvenient messes disappear, so Claudia spends most of her time taking out her frustration at being child-sized on everyone else...

Armand  Official Title: Advisor  Actual Role: Executioner, Spy  Armand has terrifying psychic abilities, a wealth of resources, and zero morals, so he is both a perfect spy within the court and very helpful for Louis to call on to clean up... indiscretions.

Daniel  Official Title: Human Liaison  Actual Role: Mercenary  As the youngest vampire, Daniel essentially acts as the human branch of Armand's job, and helps manipulate the human world to protect and benefit the court. Out of all of them he has the most morals so can be a bit of a wild card, but Armand knows how to handle him to keep him in line.

Mojo  Official Title: Good Boy  Actual Role: Good Boy  A GOOD BOY.

more details under the cut

this happened because I was thinking about why later canon Lestat sucks, and it's because AR made him a monster, but not like... a sympathetic or FUN one, he's just an asshole who tramples on everyone around him, and I thought... well if you're going to make HIM an irredeemable monster, why not actually make it INTERESTING and commit to this bullshit and MAKE THEM ALL UTTERLY IRREDEEMABLE UNSYMPATHETIC MONSTERS?

like, what would have to happen to make violent, possessive prince Lestat with unchecked power actually fun? give him a Louis who gives as good as he gets! MAKE THEM A NIGHTMARE POWER COUPLE!

SO. Prince Lestat rules over the vampire court (which I’m imagining to exist, in this world, as a whole separate functional court within but apart from human society, kind of like the HP wizarding world. Lestat took over when Akasha was defeated), and he's a swaggering violent ass. but in this universe, he's got Prince Consort Louis - who is manipulative and power-hungry, and cold-blooded where the Prince's temper runs hot. they actually have a relatively healthy relationship because Lestat knows that he'll get all the fancy clothes and parties and sex his heart desires, AND he doesn't have to deal with the boring/stressful minutiae of actually ruling, AND he gets to wear the crown... just so long as he keeps his fucking trap shut when Louis tells him. and Louis gets to run the whole show without having to do all that annoying personal stuff - which Lestat is actually very good at as he's as dumb as a bag of rocks but he just OOZES natural charisma. so Louis is effectively the Regent, whilst Lestat is the Figurehead and also strong enough to basically be the vampire equivalent of a nuclear deterrent, and they're both more than happy enough with those roles, so they're able to work together to TERRIFYING effectiveness.

this started as a pencil sketch that I drew on new year’s day, then scanned and was like “wow that looks like a lot of work I cba to colour that lmao” and then... completely abandoned so I am SO GLAD to finally have it done and out of my fucking WIP folder auughhh

[selchwife]

every time you post about a new au i go out of my MIND over it i’m!!!!! MÄR AS A SPIRIT(DEMON??) OF VENGEANCE?? lestat’s MOM the hero of ferelden?? this shit is impossibly good WHAt the hell. how does the inner circle feel about mär??? vengeance is a lot less benign than compassion (and in lore is usually the demonic mirror for justice so i LOVE this + lestat’s connection to anders) so i feel like opinions might be WILDLY diverse???

AAAAAHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH I AM SO SO SO SO GLAD YOURE ENJOYING THIS WAAHH

and OH MY there are uh. Opinions for sure. let me try to think of everyone plus the advisors, i always feel like i forget people when i list em

cullen: wants him OUT of the inquisition. before da:i cullen and lestat didn’t always get on, i think i mentioned that? and maer was, um, really not keen on that to say the least, so he tries to scare cullen into line. “don’t hurt my inquisitor iw ill GET YOU i am WATCHING YOU” and all that. obviously he’s already not keen on demons and so the whole thing is upsetting to him.

josephine: he’s actually very gentlemanly and polite to josephine. she is equal parts enchanted and disturbed.

leliana: she WANTS to keep an open mind, i would hazard to guess, given how accepting she is about mages and so on, but unlike cole maer really does not make it easy at all. she’s wary of him and keeps an eye on him, not out of undue fear but just recognizing he is kinda dangerous.

cassandra: hates him so much. in addition to being a demon, he’s frolicking around skyhold in a corpse body, which really grates on her and reminds her too much of nevarra for her taste. absolutely beyond suspicious of him

blackwall: goes OUT of his way to avoid him, will tell lestat to kick him out at every available opportunity, etc. he really is scared that maer will murder him for what he did and is hiding from, which is fair, because he probably would if lestat didn’t explicitly tell him that’s not allowed.

the iron bull: “scared” of him the way he’s scared of cole or vivienne, really. maer is more alarming to him because maer is very open about his intent and desire to kill on a dime when he feels it’s appropriate (and he thinks this often), but eventually i think he warms up a bit once it’s clear maer means him no real harm. (maer does enjoy scaring him for goofs though :/)

varric: fond of maer because he met him in da2, when maer was still young. he even caught him trying to tail/look out for lestat a couple of times in kirkwall. he isn’t so horrified by maer being dangerous because, well, all his friends are already dangerous. mostly sees him as a very violent kid.

sera: sera wants absolutely nothing to do with him, but tolerates him a little more when she finds out he has a particular love of punishing cruel members of the nobility. she just has a tough time talking him into playing pranks or inconveniencing them as opposed to, like, breaking their legs or something

cole: REALLY wants to work on maer’s anger and Help, and is a bit curious about how his mind works.

vivienne: is even more suspicious of him than cole, given he’s openly stabby. this is an issue for her because maer REALLY genuinely likes her in a totally normal way. she is convinced he wants to possess her no matter how many times he tries to explain he’s perfectly happy in his own corpse.

dorian: would love nothing more than to figure him out, and frequently tries to cajole maer into letting him test weird necromancy shit on him. sometimes maer agrees to this. they get on pretty well when it comes to snark.

solas: knows maer is aware, on some level, of What He Did involving the veil, and that maer would like nothing more than to permanently end him, or else snitch on him to lestat. they do not get along.