#Story I've been waiting to do for years

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[prouvaireafterdark]

Hi! As someone just coming into reading the books but who's been with the show since day 1, I'm curious about why people take Lestat's narrative in TVL with 100% sincerity when the premise of the show seems to be interrogating the dissonance that everybody's versions create. Obviously there's some big things that are definitely going to be true, but I'd personally be disappointed if we got a straight adaptation of unfiltered Lestat perspective on events, haha!

I think you're conflating sincerity with some idea of omniscient, objective accuracy, which, as you note, is a useless thing to search for in a show where memory is continually shown to be an unreliable monster.

Lestat's version of events in TVL is sincere, though. He's speaking from the heart and he's trying to give the story of his life, mostly by sharing his truth about what his life before meeting Louis was like, and in part by filling in the gaps Louis leaves us with about what happened at Rue Royale. His recollection may turn out to be as faulty and biased as Louis' or Armand's has been shown to be in the show, but that doesn't make it any less sincere.

And I'm not implying that Louis is lying or anything. I'm talking about him not mentioning or glossing over the happy memories that meant a lot to Lestat and made up, for him, a big part of what it was to share a home with Louis and Claudia for so long. Giving Lestat the space to talk about his love for Louis and Claudia doesn't erase the abuse he inflicted on them in those moments of instability and rage. I don't get why people are so resistant to seeing that. It's not like it makes everything better. If anything, it makes it worse that he loved them so much.

What's important to note, too, is that at no point does Lestat in his retelling excuse himself for anything he did to Louis and Claudia and I doubt very much we would see him do that in future seasons of the show. Lestat even says it himself that he deserved what Claudia did to him. The way things worked out between the three of them is his greatest, deepest regret and it will haunt him for the rest of his immortal life.

Also, not for nothing, what we've gotten this season and last season are the unfiltered perspectives of Louis, Claudia, and Armand. That's not to say they're lying or intentionally obfuscating (okay, well, Armand totally is), but that is what we got---a narrative that was really challenged only by Daniel and not by anyone who was actually there who remembers it differently. I don't see why we shouldn't also get Lestat's unfiltered version, especially considered he is the main protagonist of the Vampire Chronicles series going forward.

For me and many others, it's not about excusing anything. It's all about contextualizing his decisions. Like, Lestat didn't just wake up one day and decide it would be fun to destroy his family. I want him to tell me in his own words (which, as a reminder, he has yet to do at any point in this series so far) what drove him to do the horrible things he did and how he really feels about it. When we do hopefully get that, I expect the fandom to interrogate his accounts as vigorously as they did Louis' and Armand's and Claudia's.

And to answer your question regarding the books specifically, we have Anne herself to blame for that. She wrote IWTV when she was battling some of the most intense grief and despair a person can feel. She had just lost her child. Writing the book was an outlet for that and you can feel it as you read Louis' perspective. When she decided to continue the series, though, she changed her mind about a lot of things---mainly who Lestat was as a character and how she had come to hate the "weakness" in Louis (which was really because she came to hate the "weakness" she saw in herself as she came out on the other side of her grief and identified with him less and Lestat more). There is a very real dissonance between who Lestat is in IWTV and who he is in TVL and beyond. The way she accounted for that in her own writing was that Louis was misconstruing certain events by leaving things out or straight up making things up like their reunion in NOLA at the end of IWTV, which Lestat claims never happened. The reason people take Lestat's words at face value sometimes isn't usually because they hate Louis or think he lied about Lestat's abuse. It's because Anne, as the writer of the story, wanted the reader to doubt Louis' version in favor of Lestat's because she had changed her mind about the direction of the story and the characters she created.

It's also worth noting that, in the actual text of the show, that version of events taken from the book, the content of the original interview, is described by Louis himself as an admitted performance. I think it's a perfectly legitimate reading to consider IWTV (the book) in the context of Louis trying to get Lestat's attention with something he knew would upset him, like Armand suggests was Louis' fantasy, because he wanted or needed to see him again.

This got long and rambley so I'll just leave you with the wise, wise words of Samothy Reid when asked to give one truth and one lie in the show: Everybody lies. Everybody lies.

I don't think that will change if we finally get Lestat's POV so imo people should just relax and enjoy the ride.

[hanzajesthanza]

also i realize i'm saying all these noble and beautiful things about the channel from the purest depths of my heart. but actually i'm also just doing this because i fucking love the witcher books and it pisses me off that people don't know about them that much in english and i can only go for so long (seven years) with people not knowing that there are books. or that the witcher is from the 90s. or polish.

[honestlyvan]

I really don't particularly understand why people are so resistant and dislike the read of AW where Alan is simply a character created by Tom Zane. Like, Alan Wake already is a character written by Poison Pill Remedy Entertainment, but the idea of going one level deeper, of questioning who the storyteller is and who we, as the audience, are in extension to them, seems to make people really.... wiggly and uncomfortable.

I think the moment we saw fictionalised Sam Lake we were beyond being protected by the fourth wall, fellas.

[laundrybiscuits]

(wait for the season to come back to me tag)

It gets less strange, as time goes by. Eddie doesn’t make any kind of noise about him moving out at some point, and neither do Steve and Robin. Turns out they don't need to store any bodily fluids in the fridge, and in fact if Steve didn't know better, he wouldn't be able to tell that Eddie's drinking blood at all. Steve assumes he's getting animal blood from somewhere on a regular basis, but as far as either Steve or Robin can tell, he never takes it inside the apartment.

Anyway, it turns out Eddie can still technically eat human food, but about half of it tends to come back up afterwards. They’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Robin made a little chart with smiley-face and frowny-face stickers, which Eddie has been gleefully filling out. He’s drawn little fangs onto the stickers with a Sharpie.

That’s another thing: to Steve’s mild surprise, Eddie and Robin have been getting along like a house on fire.

“I really wish I’d known him in high school,” says Robin, slicing bell peppers for dinner.  “I think it would’ve made Hawkins a lot more bearable.”

Steve doesn’t really remember Eddie at all from school, which is probably a really good thing.

He can’t imagine the guy he was back then being this obsessed with Eddie. Well, no, that’s not true. He can imagine it, but he’d have been such a jackass about it. Probably would’ve fucked a few girls about it. Maybe would’ve even bullied Eddie about it.

“Did you come out to him yet?” Steve asks Robin.

Robin leans all the way out the kitchen door, practically horizontal. Steve grabs the back of her belt so she doesn’t overbalance. “Hey! Hey, Eddie!” she yells.

“What, Buckley!” he yells back.

“I’m gay!”

“Cool, me too!”

She lets Steve’s grip swing her back in, grinning. “Your turn, dingus.”

Steve’s going to. He is. The longer he waits, the more awkward it gets. He’s got nothing to lose. He—

Robin takes him by the shoulders, spins him around, and pushes him out into the living room.

“Uh,” he says. “I’m—bisexual.”

Eddie actually does, like, a full-body twitch; his eyebrows climb practically to his hairline for a second, and he sets down his book.

“I’m…very proud of you? Thank you for telling me?”

“Why are you being weirder about me than Robin,” says Steve, annoyed.

“Because you’re being weirder about it than Robin was! I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of practice with, uh, this. Also, Robin was a band geek who dressed like Annie Hall, and you were—popular.” He draws out popular like it’s got three key changes in it, waving his hands in the air.

“Yeah, okay,” Steve huffs. “Sorry I wasn’t, like, alternative enough to be a real queer.”

“No, c’mon, Steve, I didn’t mean it like that. I accept you! Buckley, get in here and accept Steve with me.”

“Ste-eve Harrington,” Robin sings out, wandering out of the kitchen to wrap her arms around Steve’s waist. “We accept you and your beautiful bisexual soul.”

“Thanks,” says Steve dryly.

Eddie points at him. “Feel accepted.”

“I feel accepted,” Steve says; daring, he holds out an arm, and Eddie hops up to let Steve pull him into the hug too.

“Good,” says Eddie into Steve’s shoulder. “You should be.”

[msnihilist]

Sorry, but Phineas and Ferb going to college as adults is soooo fake. 1) What the fuck is college gonna teach them? 2) They're both WAY too restless to study for four years or more for ONE degree. They spent a single afternoon building to the MOON. FOUR YEARS might as well be an ETERNITY. Spending that in SCHOOL?? WASTE OF TIME.

[ashcroft-writes]

Heehee guess who's probably posting ~40k words of fic over the next five Fridays

[ghostie-gengar]

the way i got so into splatoon is so wild. one day i just went "huh, i wonder if the funny squid game is fun" and now a year later i have dozens of splatoon drawings, an 83 page google doc of just splatoon fics (plus more other places), headcanons upon headcanons in the notes app of my phone, a whole ass neo 3 cosplay, various squid sister things, a haircut inspired by default inkling girl, and a handmade smallfry plushie

what happened. how did i get here. i used to be normal i swear

[sb-essebi]

"I was surprised you'd stick up for Astarion"

Shadowheart. GIRL. He's biting me every night. You sleep right next to us. I'm bending my goody-two-shoes paladin ass over backwards to get him to like me. Do you not have eyes? You tought I'd sell him out to a monster hunter??? Girl. Girl, I figured out what your hand wound does. It's selective blindness. Shar, goddess of darkness, makes perfect sense, girl, Shadowheart, listen-

[harbingerofdespair]

I bought vip😔

[lemonhemlock]

it's so frustrating dealing with a friend that seems set on finding imaginary slights against their person and seethes in silence waiting for you to figure out what you did 'wrong' this time 🤦‍♀️

[brainrotzora]

these things are always happening to the ones i like :////////

anyways the lighting in this dungeon is so nice

didn't get any good pics bc i was too busy dungeoning but so pretty...best dungeon music so far goes to snowcloak though btw

[non-un-topo]

It's only when I actually have time to write that I get into a slump.

[sergeantsporks]

Headbanging to rock music while sewing my fairy princess dress as god intended

[hideyseek]

9.09.2023

its so interesting as im writing narrative!fic the way that each subsequent draft / outline gets me closer and closer to a version of the fic that is ... true to the original conception? like i started gathering notes and ideas for this fic in earnest in ... 2021, like spring/summer 2021 and only today have finally put together an outline that FEELS like i am really, really close.

actually it's not even an outline it is a bunch of bulletpoint freewriting in a google doc that is roughly in the order of the series of events in the fic. i made a note to clean it into an outline later. but ohhh my god i finally!

like its been literally 4 drafts, i am slightly frightened to count how many words of draft material (probably about 60k give or take 15-20k), but THIS outline! i finally have the throughline of haiji's character arc through the fic, i've finally like .... idk. pared it down to the core parts and they magically (throug the power of thinking about this fic near-constantly since 2021) fit together now. THANK FUCK!

i told my old roommate i would send them a completed draft to beta like. two years ago.

i still don't know how this fucking fic ends but i have OPTIONS that probably will all require drafting out and revising before i pick sigh. but ohhhhhhhh my god this has NOT BEEN FUN but it is SO REWARDING to finally fucking hit (for like the third time) the feeling of "oh okay. i figured another thing out about how this story is going to work. it's going to come together now."

admittedly i said that to myself the last several times but THIS TIME I FIGURED OUT THE JOURNALING AND HAIJI'S WHOLE CHARACTER ARC and there is CAUSATION AND EVERYTHING which there sure was not before ahahaha. god this time i figured out the journaling!!!

and yes this is uhhhhhhhhhh an incredibly personal reading of haiji, i truly feel that my irl friends will kind of squint knowingly. but ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh A MILESTONE!

a milestone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[seithr]

Randomly remembered the half-reason i call my oc-verse by the name it has while laying in bed. One-half of the reason i still knew, but I had forgotten what had truly, really cemented it jointly until now

(it was a song from my favourite band I haven't listened to in a while.)

(the song fit so well at the time, still does, that i needed to hold onto it for the main protagonists forever, by partially naming their story in reference.)

Does this explanation make any sense? Does anyone know why I'm tearing up remembering this. Aahh