#Ending the cycle of abuse

[swedenis-h]

[sarcastic-clapping]

LET YOUR DAD DIE: IT'S FINE IT'S FINE IT'S WHAT HE DID TO HIS DAD.

Lestat + Claudia: Patricide & The Cycles of Violence - INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022) - Catherine Lacy, "Cut" (2019) / Anne Rice, "The Vampire Lestat" (1985) / Anne Rice, "Interview with the Vampire" (1976)

[mortysmith]

try not to think too hard about the fact that your grandpa (the worst person you know) was literally exactly like you when he was 14 (pr/ship dni)

[onegothwillgraham]

The Blank Soul

[strawlessandbraless]

Live

Laugh

Lobotomy

[mochii-derogatory]

ive been watching the dog motif show... why is no one talking about this guy. isaac lahey come home from france,,,, sweet boy,,,, we miss you,,,

[unwillingtoreachout]

twinyards frankenstein au when?

[dxxtruction]

Louis' "You're boring!" Could mean so many things, but I think what's most apparent about that line is that Armand takes no initiative just for himself. He's not really anybody, because he never goes out and finds himself or gets attached to anyone but Louis. Without Louis as his guide he's literally just sitting on a couch picking lint! That's the thing.

He orbits constantly around what would make Louis happy, and never really fully going what would make me happy? Ultimately that drive to please Louis is what drives him to torturing Daniel, not so much that he'd care to just do it. Ultimately, not giving proper care to Louis is just a way to make sure Louis knows he has to orbit around him as well, with shoving Lestat onto him just that other nail on the coffin. So, even if he fails to figure out how to make Louis happy with him, he still knows what Armand is good for, and better than.

That dependency is what drives Armand's abuse. It really just comes down to that. Armand doesn't even realize how suffocated he is by his own dependency. This is just how life is to him. (It shouldn't be lost either that dependency is a theme considering this episode also deals with addiction).

Daniel's fascinating because he's just so driven to be somebody. He's largely independent, he seeks things because he wants them. It's his drug to poke and prod at all the things that he shouldn't. Daniel's exciting because he lets Louis in to something different, lets him in to all this potential in another person that he can also do the same with for himself. It's a real connection. A two way street. It's easy to tell how Armand can be smothering then because he's never introducing him to anything really new, and most the ways both of them connect are all painful and traumatic. It's never just fun because there's always that layer of that pain. Fun died with Claudia.

50 years on they've gotten to a lot better place, both of them, but it's still that same shit. No seriously, "How is this any different from last time, Louis?"

Well... Because Armand's going to be, at the very least, making one [1] decision only for himself - and that's to hold power over Daniel's life. Fucking sick foreshadowing.

They aren't driving each other to the brink anymore but "The vampire is bored" STILL. Maybe it's even worse, despite being in better places, because Louis' sort of just been defeated by it. (I mean, can he even really leave this either?). He's accepting the dependancy cause he kind of has to. He'd literally ended up letting all the enjoyment be up where he can't reach [The book shelves]. Armand so desperately wants Louis happiness but what really ends up happening is that Louis ends up having to give Armand all his own. He's got no one or anything else to get it from. But like an iPad and an over the top eating ritual. Two extremes of what's just more lint picking.

This whole relationship is one I find just tragic inside and out. You have to just pity it, really. There's ways in which you can find yourself feeling bad for both of them. But you can only really be mad at Armand for any of it. Armand, who isn't even 'free' in any sense, having so little concept of his own independence, but is at the same time so controlling over other's. It's a tragic cycle. It's an infuriating one.

Louis at least has the mind to know when enough is enough. If just needing that extra push to get there. Armand's too scared of it being over to even try.

[hunting-for-sport]

"It’s about breaking out of whatever prison you’ve allowed yourself to live in, whether you built that prison for yourself or whether it was built around you and you just accepted it. The message in the whole record is just: Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation that you’re in — whatever it is that you don’t like."

"Fetch the Bolt Cutters," Fiona Apple + Isaac Lahey & Derek Hale, Teen Wolf (2011)

edit: i can't fucking believe i have to say this but if you rb this and tag it as a ship thing i hope you choke

[sleepyvib-es]

idk man the thing about the series post pjo is that it wants you to be aware of all the fucked up traumatic childhoods and systematic abuse all the characters experience but it doesn't want you to be too aware to the point that you're hung up on it and are calling for fundamental changes to the system.

if you dare call out all these issues the response you usually get is "these books are for kids :) what did you expect" "what you want out of it won't happen because this is children's media" .. but like dude look at all the heavy topics we're dealing with here lol. my bad for wanting all these issues acknowledged to the point where there's genuine resolve for these characters

[lightleckrereins]

No one had netflix releases a good adaptation of a Latin American literature classic that was considered impossible to adapt to screen on the bingo card.

Even less after the netflix releases a decent but nothing more adaptation of another latam classic also considered impossible to adapt. And the HBO butchers a third one that should be easy to adapt and perfectly setup for a tv show incidents in the past few months.

[billy-royalton]

so i was going to write out all of my thoughts and feelings about the finale of cobra kai and i realized how vastly different some of us are watching this show.

for example: i firmly believe that the main character of the series has always been johnny lawrence, that we as an audience were always meant to root for him, and that he was always meant to have a redemptive happy ending. now, sure, there are some supporting characters that have large arcs within the show but the main narrative focus of cobra kai is johnny lawrence's story. if you disagree with that basic premise, we are going to have some major disagreements about the analysis of the show.

a case can be made that daniel is also the main character but i would still disagree because the show sets us up with johnny's story literally from the beginning. in season 1, we're introduced to johnny first. we follow johnny before we follow daniel and, for the most part, we already know daniel's story. we know far more about daniel larusso than johnny lawrence going into cobra kai and the point is to learn about johnny (and, by proxy, everyone else in his orbit).

so for me, i found the ending to deliver more than i could hope for but that's because i've been rooting for johnny from the beginning. if he had failed, if he had gotten nothing, if cobra kai did not return in his image, i know some fans would have been happy with that and felt it more appropriate but i'm so happy that it didn't end that way.

[zykamiliah]

on the topic of lestat, loustat and the cycle of abuse, it's really striking to me how lestat ends up reproducing the same of abusive family dynamic that he had in the past, with him as his abusive father, louis as his mother and claudia as the child, probably because he really hasn't internalized it and examined himself in the light of it, and overlooks how much he's like father. well, he does know he has "his father's temper" but that's a way to absolve himself of the blame and not really examine and be aware of how he'd be capable of doing the same.

i mean everything he says at the DPDL dinner table is basically what happens later: even the part where he drags claudia back home against her will is hauntingly similar to what was done to him by his father and his brothers.

goes to show how being abused doesn't really prevent you from developing abusive behaviors later in your life. he's one core part of the cycle of abuse, and i really hope the show will eventually address how he needs to change his ways (he admitted at the end that he wronged louis but i would like to see him enumerate the many ways he hurt louis and claudia)

[asthedeathoflight]

I understand why people might be bothered by people over-romanticizing what Claudia and Madeleine's life might have been like if they'd lived but I think that ultimately trying to say they'd have broken up or had relationship problems is missing the point. I'm not arguing that we should flatten their characters and ignore their nuance, but we have to take them in the context that they're in. Trying to say oh Madeleine was a Nazi sympathizer so she would have abandoned Claudia or oh Claudia would have killed herself like Armand said is on par with saying Romeo and Juliet wouldn't have been happy together if they'd escaped Verona. Thats just not the point. Its a tragedy. There has to be a phantom of joy and hope, otherwise what's the point? When people depict Claudeleine surviving and being happy together forever they're drawing on that flicker of hope, and trying to fact check them by saying them surviving wouldn't have fixed all their problems (while true) is meaningless. We as the audience need to believe that they could have been saved, that it could have all turned out alright, that they would have been happy forever, because that makes it hurt all the more that they weren't.

[saurongorthaur9]

For some reason, I've been feeling Extra Emotional about Sauron the last couple days 😭 I mean, I have felt Emotional about Sauron for the last twenty years, but it's hitting me harder than usual.

[revenantghost]

What a manipulative piece of shit