#AAA interview

[m00nlightshine]

230323 SEVENTEEN for 2022 AAA Interview [Special Press Cuts]

[maines]

aubrey plaza and patti lupone | hot ones versus ☽ come to me, powers of darkness, powers of whoreness and slutness... ☾

[felassan]

Ghil Dirthalen: 'Interview with John Epler || Dragon Age: The Veilguard {Marketing Spoilers}'

(Before deciding whether to watch this video, please note the spoiler warning in the title and in the video description below. ^^ also the segments of the video I mention below are not to do with DA:TV!)

Video description: "Welcome, welcome! I was honored with being able to go to the Veilguard preview event earlier this month, and I got 20 minutes of John Epler's time to ask him questions on the upcoming game! Epler is currently the Creative Director for Veilguard, but has been with the series for ages now. Near the tail end of the video, I do ask questions about some details of the game that were released in marketing so far, so please keep that in mind!"

[source]

Segment:

Ghil: "Kind of in the background doing a lot of heavy lifting in the fandom is a Tumblr user called Felassan." John Epler: "Yes." Ghil: "And they're actually a very good friend of mine. And I know that they would just be overjoyed if I asked to your face, is there any chance that we can get a Last Court just out, back out into the wild?" John Epler: "Last Court - the problem, I would say I don't actually have a great answer to that one, largely because that's not, that's not fully ours, that's owned by another company, so."

also

🥺🥺...

Also also,

DA Theme Park Ride also mentioned!! a glorious day. (cailan voice)

(you can find out about the Dragon Age Theme Park Ride Odyssey here, i promise it's better than gettin high)

[deerest-deer]

i'm sobbing so hard, claudia's nodding to madeleine to save herself and join the coven without hesitation and madeleine also without hesitation instead confirming her bond and loyalty with claudia ooo this is so sick and twisted i hate it here

[diningwiththeasquiths]

I have this really random mental image of Daniel exploring the Dubai penthouse, snooping around a bit, walking into a room that's filled top to bottom with Armand's massive Furby collection and being like:

[ennn]

OKAY FUN speculation time!

I suspect that they're going to do Rio's big reveal next episode since it's the ep before the two-parter finale and it just makes sense to generate peak buzz for the final week of the show.

Also, they've been building on the same bones as Wandavision and we had the "Agatha All Along" reveal at the end of ep 7. It's not a 1:1 match but the bones are definitely there.

So I wondered, hm can Aubrey Plaza sing?

Guys I will DIE (and it will be glorious) if they get Rio to do a number as part of her reveal.

[kamwashere]

agatha all along (2024) • interview with the vampire (2022—) • my tears ricochet / taylor swift

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

I think we have not thanked the Agatha All Along authors and casting crew enough for bringing Patti LuPone and Aubrey Plaza together. They're a match made in heaven. They match each other's freak. I just watched their Hot Ones Versus and I have genuine tears in my eyes from laughing so much.

[queenoftheimps]

Me when I see that Jacob Anderson's Louis de Pointe du Lac playlist opens with Kill Bill: Yes...ha ha ha...yes!

Me when I see Song 48 on the list: oh. oh nooooooo. (;Д;)

[donnapalude]

it seems to be a widely held opinion that claudia's attempt to be considered a sister was a sweet but unrealistic illusion. and i concur that you can't really stop being someone's daughter, insofar as the past can't be rewritten. but i don't know that i fully agree that lestat was "right" by saying you can't just change a family configuration. what he meant by it was accurate to the situation at the time, but i wouldn't say it holds universally.

translating the scene through lestat's lenses, what he meant to convey was that, by virtue of him being claudia's father-maker, it was impossible for them to renegotiate their power dynamic so that she could stop being subjected to his will. this due to a set of pragmatic considerations: i) in the context in which he was raised, there was little to no way for a child (or a wife) to obtain autonomy outside the patriarchal reach, and the situation in nola is not that different; ii) the difference in vampiric power between them; iii) his exclusive access to information and knowledge about the vampire world that would leave claudia and louis defensless without him. the factual nature of the power imbalance entails that by reworking the practical and societal conditions surrounding the family, roles can in fact change! there's still work to be done, but some years down the line from that scene a daughter will be able to stop being such! legally even! vampiric knoweldge can be gained and vampiric power also. it's still difficult to actually match your maker for both and there's the vampiric bond to account for, the role of which is not really clear yet in iwtv, but still the possibility exists. and despite the fact his words actually reflect lestat's worldview and, at the time of the scene, also the reality claudia and louis live in, lestat is also aware that some change can come. he has after all escaped his own patriarchs and abusers over time. and in fact he holds on even more tightly to those practical means of subjugation, because he knows everyone's role is predicated upon them.

apart from structural and material power, the specificity of a parent/child bond clearly contains other nuances. the main discriminators from other types of relationship are the intense responsibilities for caretaking (practical and emotional) that, ideally, should only flow one way. except this aspect also gets complicated, even in normal human relationships. once children grow and parents age, it is not uncommon for this paradigm to be inverted. and for younger children, heavy parentification over formative years eliminates the paradigm altogether. factoring vampirism in this makes the situation even more complex. as lestat is a father figure to both by virtue of being their maker, louis and claudia are in some ways also siblings under a shared authority. not at the beginning maybe, when claudia is so much younger that she would functionally be louis's child even if she was his actual sister. but that is certainly true later, as she matures and lestat is back to rule over them. on top of that, in the meantime, claudia also undergoes a more regular role-reversal, as for a time she is louis's sole caretaker while he is able to provide little but companionship to her. which is not only a change in the configuration of their daily activities. as a child your parents are not really full people: they exist only as the facet of their being that is supposed to provide for you. when you are forced to see them in their entirety, they inevitably stop being only your parents. other roles get added: friends, dependants, partners. but you can hardly go back to the before. and, as vampires have long lives, it is very easy for me to imagine the possibility of this kind of relationships going through a plethoras of iterations, until you feel little connection with the version of yourself that was once a child in someone's arms. this is not even touching potential incestual readings, because i am trying to stick to the show, which has mostly avoided them.

all of this is to say that framing claudia's proposal to be considered a sister as naive and unfounded fails in my opinion to capture the complexity of how actual families work and also the specific pain underneath this proposal. i don't think with her request claudia is simply trying to get flimsy recognition of a role that would make her feel less subjected to lestat's power (she knows she is not safe anyway). and i also don't think it's a way to justify exculpating louis to herself (she is already doing that by recognising his position as a victim of domestic abuse). although i do feel that with regard to louis specifically she at least sees a possibility to be a true sister due their solidal position as fledglings/children of lestat, while she would prefer being nothing to lestat and escaping him, i think what she is generally asking while she is stuck at home is simply for lestat and louis to recognise formally that their respective roles to each other have already changed substantially. lestat believes patriarchal power begets responsibilities over the family (protection from external harm, economic support etc.) and this regardless of the debate on how well he performs them and how hypocritical the system becomes when it doesn't include protection from the patriarch himself. and to an extent louis agrees (he also felt the same responsibility towards his family, although his patriarchal role was ill-fitting). but claudia is asking them to consider that actually the paradigm should be inverted and it is responsibility that should beget power. parents should have power over children only insofar as they have a duty to take care of them when they are unable to provide for themselves. even discounting claudia's age (as her mental age increasing while physically she remains a young girl complicates matters with respect to how much she needs louis and lestat to navigate the world) the fact remains that, by failing to give her care and protection, by withdrawing the support she was owed and leaving her to fend for herself, by actively harming her, they have renegated that responsibility and the power that comes with it. by making her take care of louis and then making her responsible for mainting the happiness of their marriage they have even shifted that responsibility to her. in other words, they have functionally treated her as an adult when it suited them, while still wanting to treat her as a child when they needed her to come to heel. this is why i don't believe her request to be neither delusional nor absurd. it may be naive in the sense that she is placing too much trust in two men that fundamentally do hold patriarchal values (although louis makes a good attempt at battling his). and of course she can never erase the fact that she was their daughter originally: even if betrayed, you never really lose the expectation of receiving that unconditional love that asks for nothing. if she was only sister, she would not feel the pain of disappointment. but saying it was inevitable and appropriate that they could only ever see her as a daughter removes a lot of culpability from them and frames her story as something that it is not. it implies that she was really only a child, that louis and lestat were correct in recognizing that and that the tragedy of her life stems from her inability to accept the impossibility of growing up.

i simply disagree. i think iwtv makes a clear case to say that claudia does reach emotional (if not physical) maturity and that she has all the abilities and responsibilities of an adult. so when lestat and louis don't recognize that, they are not right. or at least not fully. there can be sweetness in a parent's residual instinct for protection that does not translate to stifling. but in this case, they are also projecting their own desire for control (lestat) and guilt over failed father/motherhood (louis) on claudia and fitting her into the role that best serves the fulfillment of their needs. which could lead to the conclusion that her tragedy hinges on simply being an adult that is constantly infantilised. but i think it's a bit more complicated than that. in claudia's story childhood is not simply a cage to escape, its role is much more ambivalent. after her turning, claudia's world is still a place of magic and wonders. she has a colorful inner life, a joyously curious mind and a clear creative streak. she revels in the blood and the hunt and she is vicious only as a child can: there's no calculation to it, it just feels good! it's fun! she also has a measure of hope and faith in lestat and louis, and it's not perfect, but overall i think she feels protected and safe. killing charlie, seeing him burn, lestat's abuse, her sexual assault, all mark a violent end to this life in a way that irrevocably closes the door on it. she can never return to that girl that hides in her fantasies, she must face reality now. but the separation is not painless. a longing for it remains, in her search for the uncomplicated love of a new family and her desire to lose herself in plays and characters, to dream again for a little bit. however, a rejection is also there. that little girl was naive and knew nothing and bad things happened to her because of it. she must be strong and sharp now and never again be lulled in a sense of safety. what she is escaping here, is not the entire concept of childhood, but the powerlessness of it, which comes partly from the defenselessness of an innocent mind, and which her physical form and people's infantilisation keep pressing on her. claudia is not just a child wanting to be an adult or an adult treated like a child. her mind and body being at odds reflect the fact that she is somehow stuck between childhood and adulthood, subjected to the worst aspects of both according to the whims of others. what is tragic about her story does not relate to an unavoidable fracture in her psyche. it has everything to do with the very avoidable treatment she receives from people around her. and it is as much rooted in the fact that she was forcibly evicted from the ideal safety of her status as a child as in the fact she was forced to continously relive the lack of control in it. in other words, in the breaking of the illusion that children being brought to life and being subjected to parental power is always for their benefit.

the sister-daughter conundrum ultimately leads back to this. claudia's request to anoint her of her new role represents a desire to be at least spared of the hope of being treated like a daughter/child and move on by acknowledging the bitter truth that she is a sister/adult. however, the fact she needs to ask is very telling as is the fact she reverts to hope as soon as a new family is in sight. and i am sorry to always come back to her death by i find it difficult not to think about this circularly. her last glance at lestat also holds this contradiction to me. to say it's just condemnation or just yearning does not cut it. it must be both. it's a prayer already anticipating disappointment. it's a challenge to face her pain, belying the desire to have it recognised. it's a last request to be both loved as a child and respected as a woman. in my reading of her, i try to grant this request.

[m00nlightshine]

230323 SEVENTEEN for 2022 AAA Interview [Special Press Cuts]

[abstractfrog]

[image ID: A digital drawing of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor from Doctor Who. He is shown from the thighs-up, facing left at a three-quarter angle. His hand is outstretched towards the foreground. He is wearing an orange and blue striped shirt, high-waisted blue trousers, a long brown leather coat, two necklaces, and rings on his thumb and index finger. The background is a galaxy cloud of blue and pink, with a scattering of stars, smudged to look like they are falling. From the waist down, the Doctor is blending into the background. End ID]

_

mad scientist alien who has adventures and cares about everyone

[lornacrane]

got jumpscared by Leigh’s Death Sentence-era hair in the middle of the Making of Saw III featurette

[deerest-deer]

credits for the pics of rekha sharma edited with orange eyes to @dykesynthezoid <3

[kuromi-hoemie]

having vague thoughts about E3 and the current state of AAA game development in general..

like yeah direct promotions have had more of an impact than Big Events for me, and the main thing I'd want to see out of E3 are trailers for new games or the conversations that follow online - but a few points on that

I can just as easily look up “new games for [platform] [year]” on youtube

Something about the way AAA games are built these days makes me get bored of them ⅔ of the way through, if I even make it that far, on top of them charging more for less content and hiding away the rest behind multiple DLC packs

I've mostly been buying indies the past few years and have gotten a lot of fun out of them; they continue to deliver a nearly unrivaled experience of fun gameplay mechanics and interesting/emotional stories at a ridiculously low cost

I also have emulators for going back and playing old games I really liked so I'm not exactly desperate for new games

and idk!! weird to see E3 officially ending but I also think the landscape is very different these days including the game companies themselves. I'm not a game dev so I can't rly speak to what the change has looked like on their end over the past 10-20 yrs.

[hi-im-greenjunipertree]

I present this work in progress before I get some rest

Also, yes. I plan on doing more like this with some of the others. lol

I'm gonna go eep now