#wwdits 1x10

[mchristelle]

[darkshrimpemotions]

Fun Things in WWDITS 1x10

Guillermo talking in his lovely calm voice about his job as a familiar as he dusts, writes in his diary, and dismembera and disposes of rotting and bloody human corpses with a chain saw (I love my unhinged little guy).

Guillermo being so excited about his surprise for Nandor.

Guillermo and Nandor once again hanging out in Guillermo's room.

"I'm a granddad?" 🥺

Nandor lounging and fidgeting while he talks about his turning and his wives being freaked out by him, leaving, trying to visit his children and them being afraid of him. 😭

"Hey, you've got my nose!"

Nandor getting distracted looking around Guillermo's room and grinning at how he has it set up.

Nandor being excited about having a grandkid living nearby.

Nandor and Guillermo presenting the DNA results to everyone and Nandor telling Laszlo and Nadja off for being mean and hissing at Guillermo.

"Tell them my other news, Guillermo!" THEY ARE SO FUCKING MARRIED

Nandor bringing Madeline a teddy bear. 😭😭😭

Nandor needing support so he brings Guillermo and Colin Robinson along.

Nandor asking Guillermo to explain his emotions for him.

Nadja "that's why you don't get attached to humans" oh no.

Guillermo calling in a bomb scare so Nandor can attend Madeline's funeral (sweet but unhinged really is his brand).

"The Jeebus Man!!"

Nadja and Laszlo enduring the pain of slowly being boiled alive from the inside out to attend the funeral because Nandor needs support.

Laszlo not caring that Nadja is fucking around with Gregor, but not being able to stand that he makes her sad. 🥺😭

Nandor noticing Guillermo seems off and asking of he's okay.

Nandor being interested in the results of Guillermo's ancestry test.

Nandor only having two braincells but using them both to try and encourage Guillermo to feel pride in his heritage.

The delightful beginning of Guillermo's slayer arc!!!

[wwditsdaily]

It's the last time I saw them. Probably dead now, I suppose...

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 1.10

[harveyguilleniconodelamoda]

Costume Spotlight: Guillermo's Sweaters in WWDITS Season 1

One of the things that makes WWDITS so visually compelling is the way the characters have the real-world equivalent of cartoon uniforms. But instead of wearing the same thing every day, they wear variations on the same theme every day. This serves not only to establish a strong visual identity for each character, but also provides opportunities for visual shorthand to underscore a particular bit or even a major character or relationship arc with a wardrobe change.

Guillermo has undergone just such a transformation many times over the course of the show's current five seasons, with his clothes becoming better fitted, more coordinated and intentional, and more functional as his arc has developed. But throughout it all, the sweaters have remained a key part of his character uniform.

If there's one piece of incontrovertible proof that vampires have no taste (affectionate), it's the fact that Nadja, Laszlo, and Nandor keep calling Guillermo's sweaters shitty. Never have I so envied a character's wardrobe as when I first saw Harvey appear on my screen in a seemingly endless succession of gorgeous, thick, intricately patterned and textured, cozy sweaters. But as I said in a recent post, that proved to be a massive undertaking, so I've broken it down into somewhat smaller posts by season. Starting, of course, with season 1!

Guillermo wears sixteen different sweaters and cardigans over the course of season 1 alone (and at least five different jackets, not counting the suit jacket he wore to Madelin's funeral in 1x10--I'll do a separate post on the jackets at some point). These tend to fall into a few broad categories.

Fair Isle Knits

Though many of us in places without year-round sweater weather may think of Fair Isle as primarily a winter holiday motif, the term actually refers to a particular method of knitting that allows the knitter to incorporate multiple colors using two strands of yarn or more. Traditional Fair Isle patterns incorporate five colors. This method originated in Fair Isle, Scotland, thus the name. (Source)

Fair Isle sweaters are typically made of high quality cotton or wool, and can create intricate patterns such as the bird motif on this sweater from 1x02 and 1x07.

Guillermo wears Fair Isle pullovers and cardigans the most often throughout the series, especially in the first season. The most distinctive of these is the bird pattern above, but he also wears a multicolor cardigan in 1x01, as well as a more abstract gray-toned Fair Isle sweater, a brown one, and even a red one throughout the season.

These sweaters are not cheap, either, at least not when of the quality he typically wears (many cheaper Fair Isle sweaters only feature the technique on the front or collar of the garment, with the rest of the garment being all one color). A well-made Fair Isle sweater can easily cost in the hundreds, and Guillermo has around half a dozen or so of them in the first season. This lends credence to my personal headcanon that Guillermo, who works for no pay and owes $1200 a month in rent, most likely gets a lot of his clothes by gift or by thrift--that is, they're presents from family members or he gets them heavily discounted at secondhand stores or websites.

Mosaic Knits

Mosaic knitting, like Fair Isle, is a technique for incorporating multiple colors into a single garment. In this technique, however, you only knit with one color per row. It is meant to be easier than other colorwork methods of knitting, and does not have floats (loose strands of leftover yarn on the back of the knitted work) the way Fair Isle does.

Mosaic knitting is great for creating colorful, repeating patterns, and can be done flat or in the round. Mosaic patterns can also be made to be reversible, due to the lack of floats, and the finished product is generally stretchier than the results of other techniques. (Source)

I also just really like the texture of mosaic knits? There's something about the way the threads fit together that scratches my brain pleasantly.

You can see an example of this style of sweater in 1x03 and 1x04, as well as throughout 1x09, when Guillermo is helping to plan the Orgy.

Fun fact: there's a goof in the editing of this episode! Throughout most of it, Guillermo is wearing this thick, crew-neck mosaic sweater. This is interspersed occasionally with images of him wearing a thinner brown Fair Isle v-neck pullover with a polo-style collar. This kind of switch-up is not uncommon, as talking heads meant to be filmed at a different time are often interspersed with in-the-moment action.

But when Guillermo bursts into the room toward the end of the episode and finds Jeremy losing his virginity with Constantine, he is wearing the mosaic sweater. However, when he steps out of the room and pulls the door closed behind him a second later, he is suddenly in the brown v-neck pullover from his talking head snippets.

(Thanks to @karofsky for inflicting this cursed knowledge upon me. <3)

Guillermo also wears this Fair Isle sweater in 1x03, and at the beginning of 1x10.

Guillermo wears one other sweater which, based on the texture and pattern, looks like it could be a mosaic knit:

This is the sweater he wears at the beginning of 1x04, when Laszlo asks his opinion about the witch skin hat and when Nandor is "flying" him around in front of the mirror.

Coogi Sweaters

These are the most elaborate and unique-looking sweaters Guillermo wears in the show.

Coogi is an Australian clothing brand originally founded in 1969 (then called Cuggi), known for its unusual textures, organic patterns, and bright colors. Egyptian designer Hazem Elsheltawi is the original creator of Coogi's unique fabrics, which have been inducted into the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt museum. For more facts and a brief timeline of the brand, check out this blog post by Filthy Rebena Vintage.

The distinctive Coogi style is achieved by combining several different knitting methods, including Fair Isle, Intarsia, ribbed and warp knitting, and stockinette and reverse stockinette knitting to create layers and textures that no one of the aforementioned methods could achieve on its own. The sources I found were conflicted on whether these sweaters are made by hand, or whether making them by hand would even be practical or feasible. For a thorough breakdown of a Coogi sweater and the various techniques involved, see this Reddit thread on r/MachineKnitting.

At first, I thought Guillermo only started wearing Coogi sweaters later on in the series, but upon closer inspection it appears he wears at least four Coogi or Coogi-style sweaters in the first season.

The first of these is in 1x02, an elaborately-patterned sweater in blues and reds that Guillermo wears to accompany Nandor to the City Council meeting (in what I like to call his Politician's Wife scene).

He wears this same sweater in 1x08 when he is assisting Nandor with studying for his citizenship test.

The second is the cardigan Guillermo wears in 1x06, 1x07, 1x08, and 1x10.

The third and fourth are also from 1x10, which is a very Coogi-heavy episode! Guillermo wears two black and white vertical striped sweaters that are very similar at the beginning and end of this episode.

I know I said I was going to leave the character analysis for its own post later on, but I find the choice to use two very similar sweaters in a single episode so interesting, especially given that he wears a total of six different sweaters just in this episode alone! Looking at them side-by-side, it strikes me that though they're both black and white, the one he wears at the beginning of the episode is on balance more white, and the one at the end of the episode has far more black.

At the beginning of the episode, Guillermo is still (as far as he and we know) just a human familiar. By the end, he has this dark secret to contend with. Comparing these two looks, it's like he's literally begun to be embraced by the shadows he lives among, like they're not just something he aspires to but already a part of him that he's slowly discovering.

I feel as though I've also definitely seen that Coogi cardigan in other seasons as well, so I'm excited to see what parallels there are to be drawn when I start to look at when he wears specific sweaters across the seasons!

These sweaters gained and grew in popularity in the mid-90s and early 2000s as various hip hop and rap artists began wearing the brand and mentioning it in their lyrics. The first of these was The Notorious B.I.G., who mentioned the brand in not one but three different songs. The brand has also been mentioned in lyrics by Kanye West, Rick Ross, Tyga, ASAP Ferg, Christian hip hop duo Social Club, and MC Suffa of Hilltop Hoods, who owns a collection of Coogi sweaters. The brand is sometimes mistakenly called the Cosby sweater, however Bill Cosby never wore Coogi sweaters as the costume designer on The Cosby Show hated the sweaters and thought they were too tacky for Dr. Huxtable.

Though they faded in popularity in the late 2000s, the sweaters saw a resurgence around 2014. Their popularity has waned somewhat since, but Coogi sweaters still signal 80s and 90s counterculture coolness for many fashion aficionados. Coogi clothes are now billed as luxury goods, which makes sense as a single Coogi sweater bought brand new can cost between $400-$600. There are, however, many pre-loved and vintage Coogi sweaters out there, often available for under $100.

Affordable Options

As I mentioned above, high-quality knit sweaters can be damned expensive! But we can do as Guillermo almost certainly does, and embrace thrift shopping! I don't have specific links this time, as links become irrelevant quickly on thrift and consignment sites. I can, however, provide a few tips on how to get your hands on a nice, pre-owned sweater that will have you saying "my name is Guillermo de la Cruz" like you mean it.

Recommended Sites:

Depop

Etsy

ThredUp

eBay

When using any of the above, be sure to search for "Fair Isle sweater," "Mosaic sweater," "Coogi sweater," or just "Coogi" and narrow down by your sizes before you start to browse. Also always check the label and garment details to make sure you're getting a fair price! There are a lot of imitations of Coogi sweaters especially out there, and you might have better luck with those if your Coogi findings are on the sparse side (though I didn't encounter this issue when searching).

Some good search terms include "Protege sweater" or Canadian brands like "Tundra" and "Consensus." They all make nice sweaters in a Coogi-esque style, but should never be costing you anything near Coogi prices, as even a genuine Coogi sweater typically goes for under $75 on any of the above sites. I'd also recommend looking when sweaters are off season; they're going to be in much higher demand, and thus harder to find for a good price, in the fall and winter.

Focus on vintage sweaters from the 80s and 90s where possible, as those are going to give you the most Guillermo styles. For colors, look for patterns with a gray, brown, deep forest green, or muted/navy blue base. Reds should typically only be accents within the pattern, not the dominant color (unless you want to create your own unique vamp!Guillermo look).

Go forth and get cozy!

Note: The information about knitting in this post is the result of several weeks of research on hobbyist sites and video tutorials, but I am not a knitter. If I have gotten anything wrong or misunderstood anything about these techniques, please send me an ask! I'm always eager to learn more!

[ghostbustermelanieking]

the way i originally started ofmd is interesting, too -- i started watching s1 as a pick me up during a very bad bout of depression, actually on the night that 1x09 and 1x10 dropped for the first time. i think i'd expected it to be similar in tone to wwdits, and was surprised that the show actually did take itself seriously; i actually quit that night in the middle of 1x04 because the scenes of stede being sad in his marriage were so depressing to me. but then!! that weekend, i got up and binged the rest of 1x04 -- significantly, finally getting to the part where ed and stede meet -- all the way through the finale. and then proceeded to lose my mind while listening to miles from nowhere for the rest of the summer

[martha-dobie]

history was made

[starlightmesss]

adding to my last post, I would absolutely cut the head off a man every single time he gets reincarnated through the centuries just because he'd make my future spouse cry

[parttimesarah]

When you see one of these signs…

…but you don’t HAVE kids…

[xroub]

What We Do In The Shadows S01E10 | Ancestry

[obaewxn]

Nadja of Antipaxos and Laszlo Cravensworth

1.06 → 1.10

| 1 |

[i-hatethisgoat]

ok so nadja has her lil flip phone, but i would like to draw attention to laszlo's old man pipe. i love it.

[mchristelle]

Funny how it didn’t hurt when hand holding was involved.

[caifanes]

[lux-mentis]

wwdits episode 1x10 (finale) thoughts: 

guillermo working at a panera bread before becoming a vampire’s familiar? we stan. i love panera 

guillermo is self-aware of his lackey-ship. the mention of renfield was a nice touch too--wwdits awards its audience for consuming other vampire media w/ little easter eggs which is quite nice. also, as an aside--i wonder who thought a (i assume to be) taxidermied bear was a good interior decorating choice. probably laszlo & nadja tbh 

guillermo’s vampire-sona is great omg. also he’s an artist?? i love it! just another thing he has in common w/ nandor if we count the pilot & the glitter portrait thingy he did. personally a fan of ‘guillermo the great’ of all the options we were shown

i also wonder if we’ll get anymore dracula parallels--first the renfield reference & then we’ve got guillermo being a descendent of van hellsing. anyway, i’m glad that everyone’s favorite fan theory ended up being true--guillermo’s got a real knack for vampire killing & i’m curious if we’ll get a more serious exploration into this internal struggle (wanting to become a vampire vs. succumbing to his ‘nature,’ that of a vampire hunter) guillermo. in other words, can someone fight against their own destiny? 

awww, nandor’s excitement on having living descendants is super cute. he was so excited to be called a ‘grandpappy’ like alksdjfds i /love/ him. & at the end of the day, not even vampires can live alone--obviously family/culture/history is very important to nandor. 

since i thought the 37 wives line was a throwaway line, i wonder if the fact that nandor only ‘loved’ 35 of his wives has any importance. perhaps they’ll come back as vampires/some other supernatural creature? who knows 

oh also!!! slightly worried that since guillermo sent off the vampires’ dna, this will eventually come back to haunt them in the form of skilled vampire hunters. i mean surely vampire dna would look different/have diff markers than human dna? either way, y i k e s

nadja just carrying around a skull? once again, proving to be a favorite character of mine. this might’ve also been a slight nod to the end of the ep where poor gregor loses his head (again) but idk, it’s a stretch for sure

nandor’s “that wasn’t very nice,” when laszlo & nadja hissed at guillermo was a nice touch. in some ways nandor really is trying to make up for not defending guillermo in the night club... in his own way lol

colin being 100% white was so hilarious--i lowkey hope this was ad-libbed or something lmao 

laszlo better watch out lmao--w/ how he’s treating guillermo, it’s not gonna go well for him if guillermo has a change of heart & joins up a vampire hunter’s group next season (which i doubt would happen but u never know)

in madeline’s defense, if a floating vampire was tapping on my window saying “wakey wakey” while holding a stuffed bear i too would probably just,,, die 

nandor asking guillermo for help in pinpointing what emotion he was feeling (grief) was oddly sweet? he grew attached to madeline so quickly :’( unlike the other staten island vampires, nandor doesn’t seem to heed the ‘don’t get attached to humans’ rule too well. kinda reminds me of the ‘citezenship’ ep where he’s sad abt his home country not existing anymore & he lets his meal go. he still cares abt humans in a way that differs from laszlo & nadja (i.e., nadja immediately turns humans that she is interested in while laszlo has shown zero interest in any human at all).

shout out to the found family trope being represented w/ nadja, laszlo, colin, & guillermo coming to madeline’s funeral. i mean colin left early, but nadja & laszlo stayed for as long as they were physically able to. once again, nandor’s dedication to his bloodline is very sweet, going thru physical pain to say goodbye to madeline 

this ep really solidified how much laszlo & nadja love each other--poor gregor, but i’m sure he’ll be back next season in some capacity. whether thru mentions, flashback, or perhaps even as a zombie (since those were canon in the wwdits movie)? the topiary of nadja must’ve taken laszlo so long to make... we stan forever

the parallels between the finale and the pilot ep were /real/ for guillermo and nandor. while i think nandor has (somewhat) started to show his appreciation for guillermo more, he was upset & in pain so i’m not surprised he lashed out by booping guillermo’s nose & yelled at him. extending his time as a familiar for another yr tho? not nice D: 

this insinuates that nandor actually plans on turning guillermo eventually (like no offense to nandor but i don’t think he’s manipulative/vindictive enough to be stringing guillermo along forever). 

guillermo staking the portraits like oof, he looked so upset over it. i’m guessing that the fallout of submitting his dna (as well as the vamps) will be explored soemwhat in season 2. i could see one of guillermo’s relatives or something tracking him down bc they realize that he has van hellsing blood. like from what we’ve seen, it makes him a natural at killing vampires so... if i were a hunter, i’d want him on my team. & if i were a vampire... well, i’d want him dead. so next season should prove interesting for poor guillermo--maybe less of him being a familiar and more exploring his background, family, and strengths? idk; either way i’m excited™ 

[mchristelle]

[mchristelle]