#Story Of The Year interview

[prouvaireafterdark]

listen I know it's heartbreaking that Claudia dies and it's understandable to wish she didn't, but let's please not accuse the writers of fridging her. to do so is a fundamental misunderstanding of the story and is frankly insulting to the intelligence and skill of the writers of the show.

Claudia's death, and the overwhelming grief and regret her parents experience because of it, is quite literally the point of the entire story. she dies because Anne's daughter Michele died of leukemia when she was five years old and there was nothing she or her husband could do to prevent it.

writing IWTV was how Anne coped with the unimaginable loss of a parent losing her child. she created a story about a little girl that could not die and then killed her anyway. Claudia's death is a senseless, unavoidable tragedy, just like Michele's was. the grief that haunts Louis and Lestat for the rest of their lives is the same grief that haunted Anne and her husband.

so when you're accusing people of killing Claudia off to benefit a story about two men, please remember that in real life sometimes parents lose their children. please remember Michele Rice.

she's the reason Claudia exists.

she's also the reason Claudia cannot be saved.

[spotlight-report]

Interview: Ryan Phillips of Story of the Year

Story of The Year are hitting our shores in August to celebrate two decades of Page Avenue, and Spotlight Report sat down with Ryan Phillips to talk about the record, twenty years of growing up in the industry, and their upcoming tour with Senses Fail and Behind Crimson Eyes (talk about nostalgia). SR: The first thing I want to say is that last year was 20 years since Page Avenue and that’s a…

[hangonsnoopy19]

Just rewatching episode 3 in the context of episode 5, and that early scene…

“You held Louis’s attention.”

“Louis thinks I’m boring….”

“Do you find me boring?”

“No.”

(A fascinating vampire meets an eager black hole)

Gif credit: @loumandiel

[o0anapher0o]

„Armand’s not crazy enough“ this, „the show makes Armand look like the victim of Louis’ cruelty“ that. Yes, that’s what happens if you let Armand sit in on the interview. Louis doesn’t know about how half the things went down in Paris, Claudia’s accounts are unreliable at best, full of holes and outright falsehoods at worst. The one who fills the gaps is Armand who has absolutely zero reason to tell the truth and every reason to make himself out to be the innocent beguiled who is cruelly being strung along as Louis’ extended rebound (and I don’t blame him. If I was carrying a torch for someone for 80 years knowing the only reason they’re with me was out of spite, I’d make them feel crap about it, too).

Do you think is a coincidence the only time we see Armand in something near his full unhinged glory is when he’s not in the room, in the memories he very carefully erased?

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[evilasiangenius]

He didn't so much hear Armand come in as he felt Armand come in. Like a moment of nullity moving through the room, a presence that was not a presence. A ghost.

“Daniel...” Armand sat down on the bed, his weight depressing the mattress lightly.

“No...go away.” Daniel tried to turn away but he was sweating and shivering, too cold, too hot.

“It's all right, Daniel. I'm here.” Armand shifted, bringing his legs up and lying down beside Daniel, moving into Daniel's arms. “I'm here.”

“You feel good.” Daniel pressed his cheek against Armand's cool forehead, sighing. He wrapped his arms tight around Armand and it was as though he could feel the heat melt away from him, soaking into Armand.

“My poor Daniel.” Armand stroked Daniel's pale hair. Daniel had only the faintest roughness of stubble clinging to his jaw, and his mussed hair had been cut and clipped in a slick modern style that suited him. Even his ruined clothes were new. That man had taken good care of him.

Daniel shifted, so he could move closer to Armand, so he could press his entire body against Armand. The fever was burning up inside Daniel, and Armand felt the twinge of that old fear, the fear of sickness and the death it brought. So often over the years he had seen Daniel shrug off coughs and chills that it had made him wonder at the strength of these modern mortals.

Death. His fingers brushed through Daniel's hair and Daniel sighed, turning so Armand's hand moved against his cheek. Just hiding under the skin, just beyond the bones. He wondered if he pressed his ear to Daniel's chest, if he could hear the little cells inside of him slowly dying, bursting and floating away.

“I won't let you.” Armand kissed his eyelids, speaking so softly that it was more for his own sake than Daniel's. “Not right now.” And he made that little cut on his throat and guided Daniel to to it. Daniel's dry lips moved against him, at first sluggish, but then he caught the taste of it and his mouth moved hungry.

x

[the-innefable-idiot]

Armand shouting ENOUGH and all vampires passing out has awaken something in me. sexually

[fayevalcntine]

The way some people continue to talk about Claudia surprises me every time because her looking towards Louis while being scolded by Armand, only to see him shrug it off and continue reading his book, is not supposed to make you disregard the blatant disrespect she's going through. Even if she's in her 40s, she's still younger than any of the vampires she's surrounded by. She's technically still a child, both as a vampire and physically, yet she should just "shut up and accept it because she made her choice like any other adult"? When her lack of say is precisely what the coven and Armand use against her.

[shannonsketches]

years ago Toriyama said 'i didn't really like vegeta but he was really helpful to the story' and honestly?? more of that. more of those. you don't have to like him but is he good for your story? he'll be good for your audience too, bet

[invinciblerodent]

Hm.

This looks like a thought I should scoop up and run far, far away with, don't you think?

[noirve]

armand intending to kill louis after all and actively orchestrating his death in the trial is not my favorite choice narratively but it does hilariously reframe his entire character and motivations. like he just seems like a complete psychopath now, flailing his way through life and making detached decisions based on random opportunities. he chooses the coven over louis out of loyalty and because of doubt about their relationship, essentially betraying the person he claims to "want more than anything in the world", then when said person doesn't actually die as planned, he suddenly decides that he can save his life after all so he helps louis escape, THEN he sees the opportunity to get back in louis's good graces by pretending he is the one who saved him, decides NOT to warn the coven about the impending attack, despite having been ready to kill the man he loves for them like a WEEK AGO, resulting in the entire coven being murdered. and then he stays with louis for 77 years, while fully aware that louis is only with him to spite lestat. like his switch from "i’ll orchestrate louis's death to remain a part of the coven" to "actually fuck the coven, i'm going to be with louis" in such a short time span is.... unhinged, to say the least. did he secretly want the coven destroyed and is that why he did not inform them?? did he make a last-minute decision that it was better this way because the coven being wiped out would mean no live witnesses of his role in the trial which would give him a shot at fixing his relationship with louis? but then why go through all the bother of picking the coven over louis and setting up the trial which would see him executed in the first place? was he just like hmmmm louis wants to go on a suicidal killing spree so... let's just see what happens!! whoever comes out alive i guess i'll pick :) like do you care about anything actually???

[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.

[spotlight-report]

Interview: Josh Willis Talks Story Of The Year’s Upcoming Album ‘Tear Me To Pieces’

Check our #Interview with Josh Willis of @StoryoftheYear ahead of @@KnotfestAu & the release of their new album #TearMeToPieces

There is no denying that Story Of The Year’s popular singles ‘Until The Day I Die’ and ‘Anthem Of Our Dying Day’ left their mark on the rock and pop punk scene. The band has performed on tour with legendary artists such as Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance and Deftones, and will appear at Knotfest Australia this year alongside Slipknot, Parkway Drive, Megadeth and more. Ahead of the release of…

[dravenscroft]

"Hey man, how's the search for that missing expedition going?"

"Hahaha, not well!"

Anyway a little snippet from my novel THIS SAVAGE KINGDOM, currently with my agent 👀

[lgbtiwtv]

the fact that. that claudia’s words are….so carefully chosen as the episode goes on. she’s telling a story for herself, she may be writing from an honest place but you can tell that she’s wording her experiences with such fascination and detachment, how even though she writes every day you can see the discrepancies between her words and the emotions that we get to witness as the audience. the fact that she’s talking about just getting started and trying to rewrite/recontextualize the trauma she just went through by writing those words. the fact that she’s saying them with that same fascinated detachment over a scene of being in such intense emotional pain that she’s burning her arm in the sun…..

[loelett]

i usually don't care for swap aus but this one is turning in my brain like a little microwave