#commit a crime for evil reasons........

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

im SICK IN THE HEAD im going to KILL EVERYONE i was born filled with RAGE and A THIRST FOR BLOOD and NOBODY CAN SAVE ME

[professional-rat-eater]

I need people in the IWTV fanbase to realise that you can appreciate a character in all their complexities and enjoy their precense in a story and still wish they had a slow, painful death scene. For non-book readers, I hope to be able to clarify a few things about why a certain character is so hated.

Keep reading for more nuanced Marius de Romanus slander:

I feel like I post at least once a day something about hitting Marius with a car or something and I do it mainly because it’s funny but it’s also because there is a very valid reason he is where a lot of people draw the line, despite the scale of morality in gothic literature being utterly different from that of pretty much any other literature, and drastically different from real life.

I love him for what he brings to the story. He is fascinating and I am excited to see him in season 3. He’s a brilliant character and I want to put him under a microscope and study him like a bug. He is still absolutely vile even for Anne Rice, something she even hints at here and there in her work.

I could go on and on for days about him, but to keep it short (edit: I lied), he met Pandora when she was ten years old and he was twenty five. What makes him particularly sick is nothing to do with vampiric morality, which we’ve seen is completely different, within the world of the books and show, from human morality. We get onboard with Lestat because we get to know him as a human and then watch how he changes as he gets used to being a vampire. Lestat was not a monster when he was human. Marius was.

If you disagree with that, you can think so if you wish as I do not currently possess the ability to control other people’s thoughts (but as soon as I do, I’m coming for you!) but please do not try and make excuses for him on that topic. Most people will not be open to that sort of debate. I know I’m not. Pandora was a baby. He should not have felt anything towards her other than a desire to protect her as a parent might. Yes, yes, gothic morality. But you need to understand that that is just too much for most people.

And you know who else was a baby, especially in comparison to Marius? Armand. Armand, who grew up to do awful things because of how he was treated. He was already being taken advantage of (to put it lightly) before he met Marius. If Marius had cared selflessly for Armand, he would have taken him from that brothel and tried to help him heal from the trauma. That is what real love would have been. You should not look at broken children and think to make them your lovers. All he was was yet another grown adult taking advantage of a boy whose spirit had been utterly shattered by what he’d endured.

(I’m not suggesting that should have happened or it would have been better, but I dislike the insinuation that Marius’s love for Armand was anything other than exploitative. It can be sincere, and still exploitative. I believe he meant it. I also believe he fucked Armand up more than he already had been.)

Murder in a fictional setting can be justified and overlooked, but as soon as anything involves children, you have to accept that you will lose a lot of people, even in gothic literature. That sort of relationship may have been more normalised thousands of years ago, but there were always people who objected to the concept. Even within the narrative of Anne Rice’s books, Marius’s actions are called out here and there (usually subtly) so even there, they are questioned. Compare him to someone like Lestat (I only mention him because for whatever reason, people like to group them together as irredeemable characters???).

Lestat’s actions are deeply toxic but people still like him because we understand why his behaviour is the way it is. As dreadful as what he does is, we are endeared to him because of his suffering and follow his journey as a vampire. He is twisted, but he is behaving according to what his trauma has turned him into. Armand is another example of this. Vile behaviour that is a believable response to trauma. There comes in the gothic morality again. We love them and know they are awful at the same time.

It is not that you cannot like Marius or characters like him. I do like him very much as a character, but you have to get on board with the idea that most people never will. The lines he crosses are unlike many of the others crossed by different characters. No one looks at Madeleine and Claudia and thinks it’s weird because Claudia is not actually a child. Armand was. Pandora was.

I could honestly make a separate post about book!Louis too and why I think the changes from the book were necessary to make people actually care about him, but it is similar. Harming/exploiting children and anything to do with slavery is a hard line a lot of people draw. Marius is still a multifaceted, interesting, complex, humanised character, as all Anne Rice vampires are, but he is deeply disliked for a very good reason. People cannot switch off how they feel about what he did, even if they are invested in the story.

(But also let’s be thoughtful about this type of discourse. Do not look at anyone whose favourite character is Marius and assume they are a bad person. He is a great character, he is just not to many people’s tastes. They likely just find him deeply interesting which he is.)

Anyway, after he gets his screen time and we reach the end of the show and he has gotten his chance to chance screen time, I vote we tie him up and treat him like a piñata.

[lobotomize-d]

Butter roll cookie if... if he was.... uh. . . Student at the Parfedia Academy ...

[kwillow]

will theo ever be happy

Maybe in another life.

[charleemoon]

getting a little maybe irritated at how often i see autistic will being refuted because he "made himself out to be that way to avoid attention" ... ??? that's autistic. going out of his way to make yourself appear weird and unsociable so you can avoid socializing is. extremely autistic. lying and exaggerating about yourself out of fear of people getting too close and realizing youre a bad person is extremely autistic. the show honestly backpedals on will's empathy half the time, acting like it is only applicable when it comes to his job, but frequently showing that it isn't. in the first episode, hannibal literally notices his face getting red because they're near two people who are arguing. he's not exaggerating or faking his nightmares, his inability to deattach himself from others. yeah, he's got a complicated psychological profile that autism doesn't entirely cover or explain. that doesn't mean he's not still autistic. his person suit, the person he presents himself as to others, the choice to do that autistic masking. even if part of his masking is hiding behind being autistic in hopes it will make him less favorable to others and not further inspected, that is autistic masking. i think it is so insanely annoying that just because a character wasn't written with the intent in mind doesnt mean you cant accidentally write a valid representation of something anyways. fuller didn't intend on hannigram becoming as romantic as it did, but understood that it came along with the subtext anyways. acting like hes completely above fitting criteria of mental illness because he's "fictional" and has a "fictional" disorder that HIGHLY exemplifies autism is. incredibly stupid. and boring

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

if i can get even one person to listen to The Mechanisms i would have fulfilled my purpose

[metapphjores]

there is no future or liberation for any movements that sees their "enemies" as non-human

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Mmm, yes, the Phineas and Ferb Marvel crossover episodes were better than Infinity War and Endgame.

[atlantis-just-drowned]

Montressor smash or pass? (This is 100% a serious question 😌👌)

The only thing that would smash between him and me is my hand on his face, full speed, with pointy rings.

[mekatrio]

seeing people say that aa hates women: yasss

but for the wrong reasons: noooooo

[maryasmorevna]

one thing that must be said about coriolanus and katniss is that they both share such a snarky inner voice that despite the seriousness of thg saga (especially mockingjay - the last chapters almost reduced me to tears, it was that heavy) it made me chuckle more than a few times

[tovaicas]

some of the threads probably could've been handled better but as a whole I love alphinaud's HW character arc so much

[riotshotguns]

shitty employers teaching me to be sneaky as usual

[vinguist]

This is literally how I see seccolata

making a collection

[inflammatoryfandomblog]

honestly after being done with swtor's expansions: lmao. it's the most schizophrenic version of fascist apologia ever. like i can't believe the evil empire is supposed to be good now because of a (checks notes) dei program. amazing.

diversity win!!! cathar get to commit genocides too uwu

[hareallusion]

Really funny how Gale's little 'mission' is giving my cleric a crisis of faith