#like claudia's was better but still

[raayllum]

You think I've done awful things, and I have. But I'm not evil. It's me. You know me. I'm still the same person.

I actually think these lines / scene from Claudia is one of her most interesting in the entire show, so let's talk about it, beat by beat.

You think I've done some awful things, and I have.

This line, along with others from Viren (his "I had to" is another form of justification, and what's to justify if you done nothing 'wrong' or nothing to be blamed for?), i.e. "In the name of love, you will perform acts so unforgivable, you will never forgive yourself" as well as Claudia's explanation in 4x01 ("I had to do things... I never imagined I would be able to do" with tears in her eyes) and Terry's assertion ("I've seen you do a lot of awful things, dark magic things") is like... while Claudia still doesn't see the error, I'm willing to bet, with the bulk of her actions (elves and dragons are still clearly not wholly people to her), she's still done things that she considers awful. Things that crossed her previous moral lines, beginning, I'd bet, with the deer in 2x09, and that which only escalated from there.

Claudia still thinks she's a good person (which we will get to in a second, believe me) but she doesn't think she's squeaky clean. She knows, just as Viren knows (and just as Callum knows/believes) that she's done genuinely awful, terrible things.

A character feeling bad about doing something, or a character recognizing that something they've done is terrible ("It's horrific, Viren" "We have no other choice"), is not a get off scot free card in this show, and it never has been. Not for Claudia, and not for anyone else.

While Claudia has been manipulated by Aaravos, everything she's done is of her free will, and without lying to herself about the exact nature of them (even if there's still plenty she's in denial of like the plague, but I digress).

Claudia is like 5 different cognitive dissonances in a trenchcoat, but she's not stupid, either.

But I'm not evil. It's me.

This to me shows the mask slipping the post, because if there wasn't even a hint of possibility at being evil, you would feel no need to declare otherwise. I forget where I've said this before but Claudia cares (esp in arc 1, less so in arc 2 but it's not nonexistent) about being a good person. It's kinda like how Viren doesn't really care if he's good or not, but he wants to be important (matter). Bonus points for Claudia's hypocrisy/shields being worn down over time ("She kidnapped you and Prince Ezran, how can she be good?" -> attempting to do the exact same thing an episode later). She's cracking, but desperately trying to convince them (for mostly manipulation reasons) and herself (genuinely) that she's not, that instead...

You know me. I'm still the same person. I am.

TDP has always been very interested in identity, most notably for characters like Callum, Rayla, and Soren in arc 1, but it's fun to see it be expanded and interrogated further by looping Claudia in during arc 2. S5 and arc 2 places a lot of emphasis in particular on the idea of knowing yourself ("That's not my name. I am Elmer") or knowing others ("She's not the elf, she's Rayla") / preserving your sense of self in the face of change or hard circumstances ("But violence tests us" "Callum, you're the 'destiny is a book you write yourself' guy").

Claudia highlights this twofold. She asks the boys to know her, despite how much time and bad blood has gone by. She appeals to the many years of friendship they had in contrast to their few months turned years of being foes. It's barking up the wrong tree (Callum's Spellbook asserts that even as of s2/s3, "I feel like I don't know who she is anymore" on his end) but I am actually inclined to believe her.

This may be a misread, simply because from S1 but especially S2 onwards I always figured Claudia would end up precisely where she is now, so I don't know if it's the consistency influencing my judgement call possibly clouding more intense changes (she refused to use Harrow against the boys in 2x02, to a degree) but... I don't think almost anything Claudia does in S5 is something she wouldn't have done the bulk of in S1, other than threatening the boys, and she's done that multiple times by the time the end of S2 and S3 rolls around, most notably towards Ezran.

She's still the same person, but her circumstances and therefore her responses have gotten steadily, consistently worse. But this has always lived inside her. She's the same person (but worse), they know her and see her more clearly than they ever did before, and both of those things are precisely the problem.

[vaguely-concerned]

since his ultimate fate is unknown to us for now, let's as a fandom get together and manifest that the watsonian explanation for rael averross being nowhere to be found in the clone wars era is that he quit being a jedi and is out there getting laid and going to therapy, rather than because he, y'know... died horrifically or eventually succumbed to the dark side after all or suffered similar jedi-related work hazards

[louisredsuit]

I’m sorry, but if you believe that louis deserved being dropped from the sky by lestat or asked for it in any way, you need to unfollow me. he is a parent who responded violently to the sight of his child being grabbed by the neck by someone infinitely more powerful than her. he knew he couldn’t kill lestat. he’s physically weaker so his words are all he had. that’s why he threatened him, then told claudia they were done fighting right after. if he’d had the ability to kill lestat, he would’ve done it, but he knew he didn’t. he was done fighting.

it was not his physical violence that enraged lestat. it’s that he chose claudia. it’s that he didn’t love him blindly, the way lestat wanted to be loved. there’s nothing louis could’ve done to appease him on this day. he wanted to leave, and he was always going to be punished violently for that, no matter how well-behaved he was. even lestat can recognize that he abused him in this moment. if you can’t, you need to seriously reevaluate your understanding of abuse.

[winepresswrath]

armand is out there asking if you really love your boyfriend and you need him to love you back but instead he maintains a vicious internal monologue about how you're pathetic & a dick. is it then permissible to kill his daughter so you have less competition for his time and affection? and he is not taking no for an answer.

[aether-friskets]

ended up making this in my attempts to figure out video editing stuff

It's nothing much but it was fun to experiment a little

(song: She'll Kill You - Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein visuals from Silent Hill 3)

the video might take a sec to load lmao I'm sorry

[cantsayidont]

ÉLITE (2018–2024): Trashy, high-gloss Spanish soap opera about students at posh private high school Las Encinas, initially a mix of rich brats and social-climbing scholarship students, whose conflicts result in murders, near-fatalities, and mysterious disappearances: Each of the first five seasons is framed by a police investigation of the latest casualty, a gimmick that really only works in the first season (where it provides a degree of narrative structure and gravitas that would otherwise be lacking).

Even in its best moments, the show's relationship to reality is never strong, and it's sometimes rather witlessly hypocritical (for instance, the narrative is capable of recognizing the injustice of the school forcing Palestinian scholarship student Nadia (Mina El Hammani) to remove her hijab in class, but not enough to not indulge in its own array of islamophobic cliches in its depiction of Nadia's conservative working-class family). Nonetheless, the show gets by for a surprisingly long time on the strength of its cast and direction, buoyed by a welcome refusal to descend into self-mockery even when the plot leaves the rails. None of the male characters is especially endearing, with Itzan Escamilla (as scholarship student Samuel) becoming particularly insufferable and Miguel Bernardeau (more recently the lead on the disappointing 2024 ZORRO show) a little too convincing as rich dickhead Guzmán, but the girls are consistently more interesting, with Mina El Hammani (as Nadia), Ester Expósito (as morally compromised aristocratic rich bitch Carla), and Claudia Salas (as the salty Rebeka, whose mother is a drug dealer, and who ends up one of the show's most genuinely sympathetic characters) making the strongest impressions.

It's not until the sixth season, with all the original cast gone (several of them feet-first), that ÉLITE starts to feel like it's overstayed its welcome, with some flailing attempts to examine serious themes like abusive relationships tripping over the increasingly orgiastic celebration of wealth and privilege (any interest in characters who aren't filthy rich having departed with the last stragglers from the original cast). Although more visually stylish, it feels like it's become a different, much weaker show, and the writers seem to no longer grasp the distinction between "entertainingly messy bitches" and "grating assholes who are no fun to watch"; by the seventh season, there isn't a single character interesting or sympathetic enough to sustain the plot's frequent lurid detours into cloud cuckoo land. (It does at least have the decency to throw one of its most hateful recurring characters off a roof at the end, which I appreciated.)

The forthcoming eighth season will be the last, but Season 7 was already at least two too many, IME. CONTAINS LESBIANS? One of the boys from the early seasons has two moms, but while there are a surprising number of acknowledged mmf and mmm triads, it's not until the fourth season that there are really any wlw relationships among the principal characters, and they always remain distinctly secondary to the boys. VERDICT: More enjoyable than it has any right to be, at least for a while, but its watchability begins a marked decline after the fourth season, and the sixth and seventh seasons are no longer much fun even as trash TV.

[in-kyblogs]

Jacob Anderson you talented brilliant beautiful actor I want you to know that I like Louis de pointe du Lac so much more after this season you needen’t be worried

[13eyond13]

What's confusing me most about the IWTV show right now is:

-why certain characters are behaving the way they are, since the circumstances and relationship dynamics and vampire powers and personalities in the show have changed a bit from the way they were in the books, and the changes aren't always easy for me to keep track of or understand

-how much these different character behaviours and relationship dynamics are because of the show making actual real alterations to the books' story, and how much are due to unreliable narration and edited memories from either one or more of the characters involved

[fayevalcntine]

A lot of Louis' declarations of love towards Claudia in the episodes prior to episode 7 start to feel hollow once you get to that ending and then rewatch the previous scenes. Him saying she "silenced all the noise, chaos and crisis of his former existence", her absence "revealing who he and Lestat were without her", him saying he tore out the pages from her diary in order to not have her be exploited. And in her return Claudia becomes his 'protector', the child who in a way becomes the emotional barrier between the docile parent and the abusive one, and they manage to "break free" from Lestat. But then the ending comes in, and it's revealed that Louis was miserable in their trip to Europe, it was not "the new adventure of their lives", Claudia hated him during their trip to Europe. And then we finally see a true scene that isn't narrated in the slightest by Louis towards Daniel, therefore isn't tinkered with, isn't 'prepared' to be fed to Daniel's ears. Louis betrayed Claudia by pinning her the same way Lestat did and forbidding her from burning Lestat's body. He was fine with taking out other pages of her diary that likely detailed her true feelings of anger towards him, and even in spite of this, Daniel says that it feels like she 'hated his guts' during their trip. Louis may not have "technically" chosen Lestat over Claudia during his murder but would that make any difference to Claudia herself, when she wasn't allowed retribution for being turned by Lestat and being frozen in a teenager's body? And it's not to say that Louis doesn't or didn't love her, but his love for her is not really well-reflected upon his treatment of her. He says he loved her unconditionally and spoiled her, but won't allow her the chance to burn the body of her maker who turned her.

[silentflashoflightning]

thinking of how armand manipulating louis’s memories could and maybe did bring him a twisted sense of relief in forgetting how he hurt claudia how he failed her how she hated him but how this softening of the story is coming from a man who became her demise & how it is robbing claudia of justice once again. so much easier to think they both couldn’t fully get rid of lestat

[mommalosthermind]

Sterek Beast's Beauty?

Okay! Yes!

@annechen-melo

Beast’s Beauty is a WIP I started…. Seven years ago? Directly after Mend and Make Do was published. Initial file was over 200k when I realized I was trying to hold too many plot lines together and had to go back to the beginning and untangle them to even begin to *find* a resolution. Current wip is broken down into an astonishing number of ‘keep your facts straight’ folders, with four completed chapters and four interlude chapters. Word count for revision is 63,952.

The overall plot started as a simple, “I want Erica and Stiles to be childhood besties who fell apart after his mom dies. Erica goes missing due to a shitty prank and Stiles drags Scott into the Epic Quest To Find Her. Werewolves happen, maybe some beauty and the beast references.”

…I attempted a summary but I keep getting excited and going into waaay too much detail lmao so bare bones of the revision: Stiles finds Erica, they get trapped on the old Hale property, despite the way the house itself should have burned down with the entire family inside years ago. Erica’s bitten, Stiles is sleuthing, Derek is traumatized and entirely unhelpful, and for some reason the pictures of his family keep... moving. Slow burn for Sterek, since Derek thinks Stiles Knows Things because He Should, but Stiles has holes in his memory and doesn’t know shit, and has zero patience for the cryptic bullshit. Also the whole, ‘biting as an introductory activity’ thing. Bad manners, really. So. An awful lot of beauty and the beast, actually.

Side plots are exploring Chris/John (the sheriff is john. He just is.) with the fun backstory of “they were in a triad with Claudia but then Kate Happened and Gerard Intervened” while Chris tries to help locate the missing kids while keeping his father at bay. Lydia keeps sleepwalking to the edge of the woods, Jackson’s trying to keep her safe from both herself and her father, who seems cruel for the sake of it. Hale family isn’t as missing as Stiles thinks. Stiles would really like to blame all the weird shit he keeps experiencing on the adderall withdrawal but he hasn’t touched that since his mom died. He’s pretty sure being able to spy on his dad through a glass of water is maybe not a noted side effect, either. Scott’s attempting to be a good friend but makes bad choices because he is a teenager. Allison’s trying to be helpful, but also thinks her aunt is great. Her aunt, who seems to be entirely too aware of what’s going on the in preserve, and a little too keen on Scott.

There is. A lot. It is messy and I love it dearly and I have no fucking idea how I’m gonna wrap this all together so it’s been sitting in the ‘please love me’ section of the WiPs. Re-reading through bits and pieces to find a chunk to share was fun, though. I didn’t realize I missed this disaster project so much.

Speaking of finding a snippet, I went with something in chapter 4. And by snippet I meant its like a thousand words because I have a problem and don’t know how to do Small Things, so I’ll tuck that under a cut. (Also entirely unedited from the last time I played in this sandbox so. Probably errors.)

“Alright, dickweed,” Stiles announced, barreling into the kitchen. “Time to—

Shadowman leaned against the island, head flying up from where he’d let it hang between his sloped shoulders. One hand shot out to slam a small frame flat against the countertop, laying atop it as though it could right itself without permission, as he stood tall, eyes wild.

“—Pony up some… what the hell, dude? What’s that?”

“None of your business. You shouldn’t be down here, she asked you to stay.”

Stiles pursed his mouth to one side, resisting the urge to squint across the room. He changed trajectory, letting his feet wander him around the far side of the island. “See, that, that right there? That’s kind of the running theme. You know things,” he swept a hand out in a grand gesture, noting the way Shadowman shifted to one side to keep Stiles in view, “things us mere mortals don’t—”

“Mere mortals.”

“‘Swhat I said, yeah. Point! You know, we don’t, you don’t share with the class, and I’m not digging this whole routine at all, man, so let’s try something new, like, oh, I don’t know,” he slapped his hands down on the edge of the island. 

Shadowman’s fingers, splayed across the frame, twitched closer to his palm. 

“Werewolves, for starters.”

Silence hung over the room. Stiles counted his breaths, forcing his hands flat against the countertop. Cloth swished as Shadowman went boxy, arms crossing over his chest. That sardonic slant to his mouth came back, a tiny upward pull of his brows sprinkling humor on top. “Took you long enough, Stilinski.”

“Oh fuck you, dude,” Stiles shoved himself away from the counter, only to immediately press around the corner and get into the taller man’s face. “You could’ve told us at any point in time—”

“I did,” Shadowman drawled, not acknowledging Stiles’ flailing limbs at all. “Repeatedly. She ignored me. You ignored me. You,” he took a step closer, forcing Stiles back enough to be able to look up the last few inches into his face. “Repeatedly told me you were both human.” He snorted, inelegant.

“Okay, first off, I? Am one hundred percent human.” Stiles waved a hand down his side. “This is prime unbitten human, right here.” He decided to be the bigger man and ignore the blatant way Shadowman rolled his eyes. “Second, your explanation was severely lacking in that it had zero actual explaining. At all. Ever. At any point. Don’t you take that tone of eyebrow with me,” he added, watching as Shadowman’s eyebrows did a funny little waggle as he mouthed Stiles’ words.

“Werewolves,” Stiles snapped, determined to wring out every ounce of information he could. “That’s a thing. Erica is a wolf.” He paused, staring pointedly at Shadowman until he nodded. “Erica is a werewolf because you are a werewolf, and you bit her. That’s the gift you mean. Being changed.” Another nod. “All the weird shit she’s doing is werewolfy shit. The senses, the healing— she’s gonna heal fine, right?”

“Yes, and yes, Mi—” Exasperation cut off in a clack of teeth. “Do you honestly not know this?”

“Uh, why the fuck would I know literally any of this? Was there a class I missed? Like, is it between Chem and History? No, I don’t know any of this!”

Shadowman gave ground instead of answering, retreating back to the kitchen table, expression indecipherable.

Rookie mistake. In a flash, Stiles wrenched the abandoned frame upright. Whatever he might have expected, he honestly didn’t know, but time fractured around the edges as he took her in. Long, wavy brown hair around an oval face. Huge, startled eyes swirled with brown and green. A sloping nose over a horrified, opened mouth. Parts of a whole his mind slipped over, again and again, unable to click sections together.

The frame clattered back to the counter from his numb fingers. Stiles hunched over, hands shooting up to press into his skull. They couldn’t stop the abrupt flashes of red hot iron scraping along the inside of his brain; the pressure made it close to manageable. 

“Mischief—” A man’s voice, far off and distorted, hands on his shoulders. “Stel? What—” the words broke down into unintelligible hisses. Stiles whined. Every sound rubbed against the raw edges of his head.

The headache drained away in small bursts, leaving him panting against the island. Shadowman hovered a few feet away, the frame cradled in one hand. Both forearms carried new black tattoos, snaking around each other in broad ropes. 

“I have… so many more questions now,” Stiles muttered. He gave himself three deep breaths before forcing himself to stand, more than half convinced the movement would jar the pickax in his brain back to life. 

It didn’t, but the memory made his movement cautious. He held out one hand, as imperious as he could manage with wobbly legs. “Give it back.”

Dark brows snapped together.

Stiles’ jaw clenched and his nose flared. “It’s pretty obvious you know more than I’ve even thought to ask yet,” he started, voice a low rasp in his throat. “Don’t think we won’t get to that, wolfboy, because we will.” The flinch looked unconscious, and was deeply satisfying to witness. “But first, give her back.”

Those stupid brows slid up, Shadowman's mouth falling open, even as his eyes darted around the room. His hand, though, held the frame closer to his chest. “Her?”

Stiles snorted, closing his eyes for a beat, hands on his hips as he tried to roll some of the tension from his neck. “You wanna play that game, man? Okay. Cool. We can do this dance. I know her.” It rang in his chest as he said it, so he said it again. “I know her. I know she’s about this tall,” he held a hand out to the side, above his shoulders. “I know she’s got a mole on the left side of her face, and tattoo. Tattoos? I know she smells like paint and fire,” he couldn’t stop once he started, even as the pickax turned into a power drill at the top of his spine. Despite the water in his eyes and the rocks squeezing his voice he added, “I know she makes me think of chocolate and playgrounds and stars, and I know that I don’t fucking know how I know any of that, but I’m beginning to think you do, so give her back.”

This time, when he reached out, Shadowman met him stare for stare. This time, the silence stretched until Stiles’ extended hand began to tremble. This time, mouth thin, Shadowman dropped his eyes to the side and pressed the body-warmed frame into Stiles’ grip.

[kresnikcest]

Think Julius should have to see Catalyst!child!Ludger during the game I think that would mess him up :)

[claudiaeparvier]

hm…the feminine urge to write an AU where Lestat doesn’t kill Lily

[queenoftheimps]

IWTV Episode 5 & 6 Thoughts

Is it just me or could they have literally skipped over everything people hated about Episode 5 and just had episode 4 run straight into Episode 6

Like we would have still gotten to 'Lestat's cheating & controlling, Claudia hates him and wants to leave, Louis is depressed, their whole dynamic is falling apart' and skipped over the assault & domestic violence scenes

[winepresswrath]

"She burn quick?" Yes, she did but she screamed a fucking lot, Louis.

I remain an antoinette apologist. Louis is lying about so many things I choose to believe that they were too busy fighting to finish the job and her charred corpse will be back.

[viridianstars]

not someone on twitter saying claudia is worse than lestat because she killed like fifty people in episode five 💀