#claudia yelling lestat YOU CANT SIT WITH US

[moondustinfj]

Armand: Lestat has a 'burn book'?

Louis: *nods solemnly*

Armand: What does it say about me?

Louis: .........uhh...you're not in it

Armand: That. bitch

[matrixwhore]

they tryna talk sense into miss mama but she drunk off the blood and wine like her daddies.

you know…i cant stop thinking about this post that talks about how mirrors are used and one of the things that’s pointed out in this and by others i’ve seen as well is that louis is often without a reflection in the mirror. louis is edited quite a bit in this episode. he doesn’t really ever have reflections. they say he didn’t read the diaries even tho we see him open the one in his hands back up to keep reading a few scenes back. and in this scene where they’re scolding claudia and laying into her ass about her behavior the only ones we see in the frame are claudia and lestat. louis is mostly framed out and yelling and we hear him, but barely see him. like in the picture below.

that’s until lestat’s says the thing. this is what louis wanted not him. (doomed to endure the thing he didn’t want. a suffering he passed on to claudia reflected back at him.) so its on louis to pick up the pieces and fix her. and they’re separated by death on the table. lestat’s arguing with louis about their relationship. there they are deciding on claudia, speaking as if she isn’t in the room. with claudia framed in the peripherals.

she’s sitting there musing over her own thoughts just like she was the night they turned her, but they aren’t listening to her just like the night when her death was on the table.

and when she speaks on the crux of the tragedy of her existence they’re framed out. and its just her and death and shes alone. and they’ll never love her like they love each other. and she’ll never have a love like theirs. the only dark gif she can give is death in finality. and the only things she gets to feel is hungry, angry, afraid and alone. what can she have? the perverts she experienced or to become the pervert she once feared?

lestat is such a villain. “i like a fuller figure” bc he knows that’s the issue and that’s how to hurt her the way he feels she’s hurting his life with louis.

i think about lestat’s anger at hearing she tried to make more vampires. like he of all of them knows she can’t. she said “tried” because she failed. lestat is worrying over her arm and i wonder if this is a moment of genuine concern. of seeing himself reflected in her desires not to be alone. louis asking how she figured it was going to go, but it wasn’t going to go in any other way but to leave her disappointed bc she literally can’t make one.

anyways he back to being a kicked wrinkled scrotum. grabbing her chin and calling her a bird and a mistake.

that broken winged bird metaphor is back. and i hate it bc it makes me so sad for her.

it’s so, so wild to me that lestat’s infidelity in their marriage totally eclipsed claudia’s issue all together. dead body still on the table and lestat is STUCK. i’m sick. it’s always about what’s going on between them. even in the face of a very alarming truth that they fucked up severely in turning claudia and resigning her to this life. but i guess not as much as lestat fucked up by stepping out. tho that is truly why we’re here in the first place is it not?

Lestat: i been entertaining myself

Lestat how about you DIE?!? so the rest of us can be entertained

iwtv ep 5 rewatch thoughts

opening with the scene within which i have built a home and become a permanent resident. right here in the moment rashmand smiles stupidly and louis slonks (🤭) every last drop of his blood. how anyone thinks they’re boring idk idk idk

they are being clear here that this isn’t consumption for the sake of sustenance. this is bloodletting as sex play and as power play. Danny is not having dinner. so its clear that this isn’t feeding as a meal but it is feeding as sexual exhibition at its most delicious. Danny is reading about claudia’s violent acts via the written recording of her victim’s last words while loumand basically vampire fuck at the other end of the table. this is also setting up the sexual violence to come for claudia and also for louis.

i think it is intentional that louis is the one feeding from armand for several reasons. one being because of what lestat does to him, which we see later on. this is power play for louis in a setting where he has voluntarily and possibly in some aspects dubiously relinquished control over to his lover armand. also bc of the connection between daniel and armand. they are revealing rashid as armand slowly here and his and louis’ involvement with daniel in the past. Daniel isn’t dumb. they know he can figure out the inconsistencies of louis drinking from armand and louis drinking from damek. this leads to daniels curiosity about how armand tastes like and his weight and louis puts daniel’s hidden attraction out on display against his wishes to throw him off. and daniel orders rashid around to take back some power.

i also think it’s a call back to the power dynamic of their first meeting. louis has power over daniel, and it seems he’s the one in control of the entire situation but then he checks in with armand before moving forward. in this moment in the present dubai 2020 setting louis has power over daniel (regardless of him no longer being that naive young man) and he plays the role of the one with the power over rashid, but the power he is receiving is from armands 500+ year old blood that he is offering to louis as the character he is playing. lord take me.

i think it’s interesting that daniel is feasting on claudia’s private memories but objects to louis reading and exposing his personal thoughts. even tho louis has shown time and again that he does that and would do it again. choices/consent is the big issue in this episode.

Daniel: man with green vest: please no. man with fat fingers: please stop. window washer: i can’t die like this. woman with purple shoes: please. boy with inner tube and dog: let my dog live. please no. please stop. stop. oh here’s a good one—man in the last row of The Son of Sheik picture show: You said you had cigarettes.

this is the first recounts we hear him read from claudia’s journal—claudia, who did not get a say in whether her voice and story be used by louis, armand and daniel in this way. He reads this and it’s clear that he [daniel] hadn’t actually consented to being the voyeur of loumand’s sex play given his visible discomfort/agitation. He continues anyways, trying his best to focus on the task at hand and not his bisexual longing for the men at the other end of the table bc even with everything he is reading and witnessing he is still attracted to them in all their insanity and monstrosity.

im interested in the fact that he pointedly reads out (“here’s a good one”) the misleading nature of the last one. “You said you had cigarettes.” i think it speaks to the fact that daniel came here to dubai for a supposed second interview and is slowly but surely realizing he is getting something else entirely. he continues “School teacher, guard your heart. i’m trying to think of something more fucked up than this.” he could be just talking about what claudia has written, but i think it’s also the fact that this is the section of his reading that loumand have chosen to be overtly sexual in front of him for as he reads. all this and he doesn’t even know yet of rashid being armand and his role in claudia’s death, though i’m sure he’s having suspicions of everything by now. also that louis, with being faced with the piece of claudia he doesn’t like to acknowledge, the monstrosity of her vampire nature, focuses of drinking from armand the man who killed his beloved daughter (something he said about “i run to the bottle” etc. etc). it does in fact get more fucked up danny.

and when armand implies that daniel is no better by revealing the danger it poses on louis and exposing louis’ suicidality without his permission (“he lives to share these opinions even when they are not solicited”) and revealing he doesn’t even want this book to happen, louis fights back by leaning into his power over daniel and exposing his thoughts about armand, and continues to, even when danny makes it clear his thoughts were not being voluntarily shared—that he did not want louis in his mind at all. he even interrupts rashmand in the middle of telling daniel he wouldn’t let him near his neck to offer up more information abt rashid (much to armands annoyance) that clearly isn’t even true after reading daniel’s mind again when daniel just explicitly told him not to. and when louis does that daniel fights back by leaning into his perceived power over rashid—louis’ servant—by demanding more of something to drink without even looking at him. and at this armand picks up his lil ipad and leaves without even picking up daniel’s glass, being the one who is actually the most powerful in the room. this is crazy. this is actually insane.

all this and armand is the one who killed claudia!!!! the only one who doesn’t get to fight back against her agency being taken from her in this scene!!! i’m going to fucking throw up. who is bored with them!? they are literally putting on thee insane sexy bdsm emo freaks show like…

“ The Son of Sheik” also alludes to the upcoming sexual assault btw. It’s a sequel to “The Sheik” where the protagonist is the son of the sheik in the first film who falls in love with a traveling dancer Yasmine. He rapes her out of retaliation for having been kidnapped and later whipped, which he believes to be her fault bc she is falsely accused of it. like in this episode and like claudia, yasmine’s rape is strongly implied in the movie with the use of pointed language and a scene cut.

this scene closes out with daniel pointing out he can’t get to accurate statistics of claudia’s murders to corroborate her accounts whether he thinks its more or less than what she recounts im unsure. louis points out that he wouldn’t be able to get an accurate account anyways bc of their disposal practices and how cities tend to downplay the dangers within them. daniel wanting all the details and louis making it clear he will have to accept that he can’t always have all the details will be a point of contention later on as we know.

[lestatisprince]

I will say, even though I've accepted that Rashid probably is going to end up as Armand, I am kind of disappointed that hes been aged up again (if that is the case and its not some elaborate red herring) because I've always interpreted him being "frozen" in terms of appearance at 17 as the fantasy version of a metaphor for how some people feel like they are "stuck" at the age that they experienced their main trauma. Im sure thats not what Anne intended when she was originally writing the character, thats just how I read it and it resonated with me.

But overall im so excited for this last episode and season 2 and how theyre going to put their own spin on these stories, and who the fuck knows what theyre actually doing w/ Rashid, maybe we're totally wrong and hes David or an alien or something or maybe he is Armand and I find things that resonate with me deeply in this Armand too. I cant believe we have to wait 2 weeks we're gonna be so starved lol

Sorry for sitting on this one for so long Anon! At least we don't have to wait 2 weeks anymore.

I know what you mean. I've been yelling about Antonio Banderas playing him for years. And when I saw the casting for Lestat, I relaxed a bit thinking if we get this, then it's also time for the world to meet our evil twink cupid.

But look at him tho, besides the age, (which I actually don't mind if it means we don't get that nasty pedo scene from his book) he's not actually far off from how he is in the book. And the whole Dubai set up reeks of his influence.

I really like the metaphor you used here. I feel like they haven't forgotten it though, just look at Claudia.

I do think it will be revealed in the next episode so we won't be left wondering for long.

I really don't think he's David since he's there in the 70's and Lestat turned him after queen of the damned.

Overall I would love it if we are all right and he is.

I'm 99.99999999% convinced.