#could be a very interesting interview

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

A new Ze interview is coming - the German journalist Caren Miosga interviewed him today.

Air date: Sunday, 21:45 (German Time)

[pirateshelly]

As much as nearly every character she meets tends to act like there's something uniquely broken and wrong with Claudia, at no point does it truly seem to me like there actually really is? I mean, obviously she is extremely fucked up, she straight up went through a serial killer collecting trophies phase, but there's a level of fucked up that's sort of the baseline for every character in the show, and obviously being turned into a vampire as a child puts her at a unique disadvantage. But for all that everyone around her spends their time bemoaning how dreadful and doomed her life is, even Louis who genuinely loves her but also builds so much of his identity around feeling responsible for her Terrible Fate™, I really don't think she's like, fundamentally damaged any more than any of the other vampires are.

But Lestat is so unwilling to be wrong that every time her life hits an inevitable road bump instead of helping her through it he points and says "look! see! she IS a monster, I was right Louis, making her was a mistake!" (and I think he sees his own monstrousness in her but fails to also see her humanity)

And then Armand meets her and sees only someone who will inevitably lose her mind, so of course speeding up the "inevitable" and siding with the coven to plan her death is just a mercy, absolving himself of any blame. (and he projects his own frailty and desire for death onto her, failing to see her strength and her desire for life)

Which makes it so cathartic when she meets Madeleine, admits to her how broken she feels sometimes, and Madeleine's response is just. Well that's normal. Who isn't a little broken these days. Let yourself feel it, move on, let yourself feel it again if you need to. After spending her life having others act as if her emotions are something uniquely dark and worrying, Madeleine's incredibly blase attitude must have been such an incredible breath of fresh air for Claudia!

To spend her whole life being made to feel like something is Wrong™ with her, and then meet someone who's just like, "yeah, and?? Who isn't? Join the club I guess"

Which makes her death so incredibly tragic and frustrating because like. She was fine! She was making a life for herself! She wasn't doomed by her nature, she wasn't "doomed by the narrative" (whatever the fuck that even means), she was doomed for no reason other than that everyone around her (except for Madeleine) preemptively DECIDED she was doomed and never gave her a chance to prove them wrong.

[demonslayedher]

I finished posting the unabashedly educational Sword Fic.

It includes a detailed (but hopefully beginner-friendly) explanation of all the steps of making a Nichirin blade from a sunny mountain like Mt. Youkou, a touch of swordsmith and metalworker folk lore (including demons), meta about what must make Kimetsu no Yaiba's swordsmithing methods different from real life methods, some character exploration for Haganezuka and his polishing method, vocabulary and additional resources in the chapter notes, and hopefully, an endearing, silly POV character to learn this all through.

[the-woman-upstairs]

It’s just…so painful to watch Armand readily submit in order to obtain the love he so desperately craves. And while it’s most assuredly a manipulative tactic, it’s still one borne out of fear and desperation. He cannot lose this person he’s come to love and so will become whatever they want, do whatever they want just so they’ll stay with him. But it won’t be enough. No matter how much he acquiesces or seeks to control (himself, others, the environment), he won’t be able to make Louis stay with him in the perfect life, perfect self he built in the hopes of finally being loved. It will all crumble with Armand left alone in the rubble of what he created, the author of his own abandonment.

[lesbians4armand]

On Armand + Atropa belladonna

To begin this post, I'm sure I've mentioned somewhere my ongoing belief that the poison that killed Armand was Atropa belladonna, colloquially known as Deadly Nightshade. Where I posted this exactly I'm not sure, It could have been here or on either my main or private Twitter accounts. Either way, it needed more elaboration, so I'll write about it here.

For those unfamiliar with this infamous poison, Atropa belladonna, more often called Deadly Nightshade, Belladonna, or Devil's Cherries, is a flowering plant native to Europe and Western Asia, and naturalised in many parts of North America. They are well known for their light purple bell-shaped flowers, their pointed green leaves, and their highly toxic pitch-black berries.

My interest in these plants has been a long-standing one, and I even plan on having the plant tattooed on me, but another interest arose recently when I was thinking about the history and usage of these plants.

It's well established in the Vampire Chronicles that Armand died from poisoning, mirroring his own fledgling Daniel's death to alcohol poisoning centuries later. Of course, what truly caused their deaths and turnings was being made into a vampire, that's what ceased their mortality, but it does not change that they were both still already dying of poison, and although we know Daniel's poison was alcohol, Armand's remains a mystery.

What begins my theory of Armand's poison being belladonna, is the name itself. While belladonna has had many medicinal uses throughout history and even in the modern day, the most famous use remains its namesake- "Beautiful Lady" in Italian. During the Renaissance, the time in which Armand lived, died, and was made a vampire, this plant was hugely popular among noble women of Italy, particularly in Venetian courts, where these ladies would drop the juice into their eyes, as the toxins in the berries cause the pupils to dilate and the eyes look larger, which was considered a beauty standard at the time. (Interestingly,one of the tropane alkaloids found in belladonna and other plants in the Solanaceae family (Atropine) is still used in modern optometry for the dilation of the pupils.)

Immediately, there is a direct link to Armand's death. With belladonna being such a known and widely used poison in Rennaisance Venice, It is by no means unlikely that it was the poison that eventually caused his mortal death.

But other details in the Chronicles point to this as well. Belladonna was widely used by upper-class Venetian women during this period, but it was not a Venetian woman who killed Armand, it was an English Lord. But who was it that was a noblewoman, who had intimate knowledge and use of poisons, and the host of this very Lord? Bianca.

It's almost guaranteed that Bianca had access to and used belladonna, both as a poison and as a cosmetic at this time. This lord could have easily acquired this poison from Bianca through theft, asking for it, or having been given it freely. Bianca at this time was both a murderer and a courtesan, and with belladonna's widespread use as a cosmetic, it may not have seemed unusual to her to be requested the poison by a guest.

One setback to the theory is that Belladonna is primarily deadly when ingested, and Armand's poisoning was not caused by ingestion of the plant. However, it can still be absorbed through the skin, and if the essences such as the juice of the plant were coated onto a blade that was then used to cut someone as Lord Harlech cut Armand, it would enter the bloodstream anyway and likely be fatal-as it was.

It's described in TVA how the cuts where Harlech's blade had caught Armand began to swell, a side effect of topical belladonna not often seen in poisonings vis ingestion, yet no less real, as belladonna exposure on the skin can cause severe contact dermatitis, as well as its other more known symptoms also found in ingestion poisonings; dizziness, blurred vision, hot flushes, vomiting, fever, delirium, etc. All are also described within the book.

Overall, the time, place, symptoms and associations all line up to make Armand's death read as belladonna poisoning, regardless of what poison may have been Anne Rice's intent, if any specific poison at all. There is also of course the poetic irony of the associations between belladonna and beauty, and Armand's own beauty being somewhat of a curse to him. How perfect it would seem if his death was caused by beauty too, not just his own and how his murderer desired him, but the very poison that was the weapon being a symbol of beauty too?

(Another detail that could be interesting to AMC show fans is that another of the tropane alkaloids found in plants in the Nightshade family such as Atropa belladonna is hyoscyamine, which is used in medicine to reduce spasms in patients with Parkinson's disease, which Daniel suffers with in the show. This is a lot more minor, but interesting nonetheless that the association with nightshades is found in other places in TVC and adaptations)

[batsplat]

OT3: casey stoner/his neuroses/the concept of valentino rossi that mostly exists in casey’s head

y'know I have this casey stoner... idk what it is. thematic mind map (literal), let's say, that I like fiddling with and adding things to when the mood hits me. and it does always strike me just how many of his struggles during his careers and issues with the sport can in some way be linked back to the valentino rivalry

casey's sense of isolation? super valentino related. casey's feelings of cultural alienation in a paddock dominated by europeans? even when it's not really related to valentino, casey is the one linking those two things together. casey's issues with other riders not being respectful enough on track? very obviously repeatedly about valentino. casey's discomfort with the performance and entertainment-related aspects of the sport? more valentino. casey feeling treated unfairly by the manufacturers, the media, the marshals, the fans.... keeps coming back to valentino. casey's mystery illness really shouldn't be as relevant to the rivalry as it is, but somehow through this combination of public discourse and whatever comparisons casey's brain is cooking up at any moment in time... there valentino is again

one of the most charming things about valentino's feuds is that in each and every single one, both participants end up being deeply weird about each other? just keep knocking off these banger quotes about the other where you read them and go. hm. what's going on there then. I don't want to make it sound like I think casey is the worst offender with this (not when marc and valentino have their whole thing going on, bidirectionally)... but I do think he's the most susceptible to conflating his valentino issues with like... everything else that was going on in his career. to the extent where his alienation with the sport as a whole, his extreme disillusionment from everything related to motogp, really cannot be meaningfully disentangled from the valentino rivalry. at times it feels like, to casey, valentino literally is the sport. and that's the thing casey dedicated his whole life to!! which means you do inevitably end up regularly going 'wow there's a lot to unpack'. add in a dash of neuroticism...

and yeah you're so right anon!! the neuroses are what end up creating the version of valentino that mostly exists in casey's head, a version that casey is just a touch obsessed with. I always think it's interesting how aware casey is that he doesn't know valentino as a person - and to the extent casey does know him, he gets on pretty well with him... but valentino the person isn't all that relevant to him. it's valentino the character who matters - and can you even really know a character? in the end, all casey can do is rely on his own understanding of that character, as imperfect as it is. and, well, in a way casey is trapped with that character forevermore. if one man comes to embody a sport to such an extent and if that sport has been your life's work, how can you not be a little bit trapped? as he tries to make his peace with the sport and his experiences within it, so too has casey settled on a narrative of valentino that helps him make sense of it all... a very specific understanding of his rival that casey has shaped in his mind and still trots out now when he sells his own version of events to the media. casey learned from valentino, casey learned to be a little more like valentino, casey learned to fight valentino with his own tools, casey tells himself a story of that fight. he still continues to do so - and in the end he will never be entirely free of valentino

[oui-maitre]

god you know this whole show has been building up to the trial. in episode 6 we briefly see Claudia and Madeleine being happy and then the trial starts and you can't help but think 'Claudia had barely left the nest, she deserved to have more time'. but of course that's the tragedy. the parent burying the child, a perversion of natural order. Claudia was inspired (at least in part) by Anne Rice's daughter who died at 5 from leukemia. there is no version of this story where Claudia lives.

[symmetrycrypt]

thinking about how much i fucking hate totk again, like sorry, it really tainted my entire love for the series that was literally my special interest for so long growing up

[metabolizemotions]

Maybe Station 19 was like an experimental cubist painting.

There were too many stories to be told and too many people trying to tell them, from too many perspectives, with too many styles…

Each viewer saw a different picture.

It was the show that tried to capture the zeitgeist and represent the under-represented. Also the show that often struggled. With the tones and textures. With representing w/o tokenizing. B/w laughing with and laughing at. B/w realism and romanticizing. B/w deliberate and arbitrary. B/w educating and entertaining. B/w what they consider profane and sacrosanct.

At times, it touched our hearts deeply. At times, it frustrated us to no end.

Not every story was given the respect, sensitivity and intricacy it was due.

One moment could lead to a profound understanding of an aspect of a lived life some of us had never known; while the next could be a moment that was beyond confounding - about an aspect of ourselves that made us feel slighted, diminished and even erased.

It had often been an exercise in empathy to find our common humanity at the intersectionality of stories. Yet, the scale of empathy often skewed too far in favor of some characters with the differing standards, narrative frames and plot armors. Ironically yet reasonably turning people off these very characters they wanted people to root for. A persistent dissonance and disconnect.

But it was also the show that didn’t shy away from the ugly, the raw, the uncomfortable and messy parts of our shared human experience. The tribulations of oppression. The perils of ambition. The tests of morality. The trials of friendship and love. That we would make mistakes, but we could also make amends. That we're not defined by our worst. That our best lives could still be in front of us despite the current struggles. That sometimes life sucks but having your people with you makes it more bearable.

I would think it an interesting journey for the diversity of people behind, on, and in front of the screen. The evolving stories, evolving characters, evolving storytellers, an evolving fandom - all amidst an evolving media landscape.

It was probably not an easy show to make. The show had a bewilderingly lack of support from abc or shondaland. Diversity seemed to be both good for promotion (when there was any) and the reason for the prejudice against it.

Just as it had not been an easy show to watch - so biased, inconsistent and self-contradictory. Like when they kept telling us about the family spirit and deep friendships yet somehow spent more time showing otherwise. Or when the writing of systemic sexism was somehow inherently sexist.

Personally, I don’t think characters belong to the writers alone. Besides the usual constraints, the characters were often adjusted back and forth to fit the plots. We’ve also learnt how network execs' dislikes, writers’ personal experiences were factored into the stories. I fully respect the writers’ artistic rights. But actors who embodied the characters for years have a unique understanding too. Viewers also have their personal takes about what were true to characters. It's ok to agree to disagree.

There had been sparks of brilliance, but often extinguished too soon. It has been confounding how the greys-verse did not capitalise on its vast potential, esp. S19. Even while both shows share a show-runner. Grey's anatomy could have lent its scale while Station 19 could have injected renewed energy back into its mothership. Both shows could have been better for it.

Although the characters have the foundation of distinct and interesting backstories, their development often did not fully utilise the narrative potential and the talents of the cast. I’m sure the crew was also competent and hardworking. But somehow some elements b/w n within the shows seemed to just cancel each other out instead of amplifying their impact. IMO 704 and 709 were a few exceptions.

But I'll always be glad S19 existed and we got a S7. I believe they had tried their best to wrap up and give closure to everyone invested in the show. I truly appreciated the hard work given the circumstances even when I personally didn't agree with some takes.

In the end, I really do want to remember it as the show with heart, the show that made us laugh and cry and the show that tried. The show that's unique - in both its merits and flaws. I’ll definitely miss the characters. One last time - 19!

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Gotta love how in Archie anti Jules and the biggest shit eating grin while poor baby scourge looked so lonely , puny and neglected.

Yeah poor little guy🥲

[kulturegroupie]

I: You talk of this “race against time,” Jimmy. Where do you think you’ll be at 40?

Jimmy: “I don’t know whether I’ll reach 40. I don’t know whether I’ll reach 35. I can’t be sure about that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I didn’t think I’d make 30.”

I: Why not?

Jimmy: “I just had this fear. Not fear of dying but just...wait a minute, let’s get this right. I just felt that...I wouldn’t reach 30. That’s all there was to it. It was something in me, something inbred. I’m over 30 now, but I didn’t expect to be here. I wasn’t having nightmares about it, but...I’m not afraid of death. That is the greatest mystery of all. That’ll be it, that one. But it is all a race against time. You never know what can happen. Like breaking my finger. I could have broken my whole hand and been out of action for two years.”

— By Cameron Crowe for Rolling Stone, March 13, 1975

[helioptilie]

i wish i hadn’t seen so much hype around Armand before starting the show bc i think i was waiting for some shocking revelation instead of truly following the story and developing opinions on my own and now I really don’t know how to take him

[prismatic-starstuff]

Now I've been preparing myself for Mr. The Impaler to be many things, so I wasn't surprised when Miyazaki outright referred to him as Marika's son in the Kotaku interview

The part that had me doing a wide-eyed double take was when Miyazaki outright referred to him as a hero

[cementcornfield]

I could have been better on how I've been handling my business in my preseason. You know, I could lock in more on my details and, like I said, the things that I did wrong. But it's all about how you handle it you know, it's all about what it means to you. And I feel like I need to do a better job of showing how much this means to me.

[bluebellsinthedells]

I love the way he holds drinks with both hands, I do that too! ...because I have terrible grip strength and I don't wanna drop it 😔😭

[ishikawayukis]

was listening to an interview fall out boy did for their new album, and one of the things they said really struck a chord with me, they were saying how they would never make an throwback album because it would just sound as dudes that now have swimming pools making a throwback album. and it made me think (because my brain inevitably always ends up there) about how much people were complaining about svt's new sound, about how they should do songs like adore u again, like boom boom again, like pretty u again. it made me think just how odd it would be for groups that are in a completely different points in their lives to go back to their initial sound just because some people want a throwback, when also a throwback varies so much for everyone because everyone tunes in at different times, like for me a fob throwback would literally be 15 years ago but for some it could just be 5. point is, i guess, that sometimes people are too caught up in the what it was, specially sound wise, that they would rather have a group sound stagnant and unoriginal rather than letting them rediscover their love for music and what they do and why do they do it