#dude i think claudia would kill me first

[teecupangel]

What if scenario: Desmond dies and is reborn in AC2 and ends up somehow being betrothed to Claudia instead of Duccio. (Duccio still gets beaten up though lol) Desmond has his memories like in yew branches.

I’m sure there’s going to be at least three people (one of them being Claudia herself) who would joke that he only wants to marry Claudia to finally be Ezio’s brother. XD

Okay, in all seriousness, let’s talk about how this would work.

Betrothals during this era is quite… early. Claudia herself is betrothed to Duccio by the time she is 15 so it won’t be surprising if their betrothal happened when she was 13 or 14.

Now, you mention Yew Branches and I think that we would have an easiest way to make this happen by just kicking Desmond into a canon character that would make sense to be betrothed to Claudia.

Of course, the first target that comes to mind would be one of the Medicis, mainly because that would fortify the alliance between House Medici and House Auditore and Claudia would be marrying ‘up’ but the oldest son of Lorenzo would be Piero and he has an 11 year difference with Claudia and would be 4 when Claudia is 15.

Claudia would definitely complain and say no. Honestly, pre-tragedy Claudia feels like a girl who would be into older men because she’d think they’re sooooo mature and ‘dashing’ and ‘mysterious’. A bit of a hopeless romantic keeping her Auditore audacity at bay.

So…

May I suggest… kicking Desmond into being reborn as Lorenzo’s unfortunate will-die-in-the-Pazzi-conspiracy younger brother, Giuliano?

He would be 8 years older than Claudia but that’s fine. There are larger age gaps in Renaissance Italy (Lucrezia’s 14 year gap with Giovanni Sforza for example) and it would be funny if Claudia is actually attracted to him because he’s cool, strong and sooooo mysterious.

Desmond… Desmond just wants to save everyone, goddammit.

Also… this gives us an excuse for Desmond to have complicated feelings over having Lorenzo as his brother.

If you’re still iffy with the age gap, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici is only 2 years older than Claudia and marrying Claudia to a branch family member of the Medici would be a better move because Lorenzo is trying to lock in the Auditores’ loyalty (and the Assassins’ support) but marrying from the main family seems a bit… ‘wasteful’.

Either way, pre-tragedy Claudia? She’d definitely be attracted to Desmond.

Post-tragedy Claudia? Yeah, she’d cling to Desmond more because she’s so lost but, once she gets her feet to the ground and starts understanding the ‘freedom’ she has in Monteriggioni, she’d probably be the one to break off the engagement (especially if this is Brotherhood!Claudia).

Desmond accepts it but, shit… He can’t believe he’s saying this but…

He…

He might have accidentally fallen in love with Claudia already???

[sorinethemastermind]

Family

In which Corvus realizes that he's a part of Soren's family. #Sorvus

 They didn’t talk much on the walk back. What was there to say? Aaravos was out, and they all had to assume that it had been Claudia who had freed him. Who else could have cast the spell? Not Viren after-

 Corvus tried to keep pace with Soren, but the other man seemed to be processing his grief by walking as swiftly as possible. But exercise couldn’t fix everything. He could hear him muttering something under his breath, his breathing focused. 

 “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

 Corvus doubted Soren knew he could hear him, so didn’t mention it. Sometimes space was the best thing you could give someone. 

 It wasn’t fair. None of this was. Soren had already blamed himself for what happened in Katolis enough, and now knowing that the real pearl had been there all along? It had crushed him. He hadn’t said anything, but Corvus had seen it in his eyes. And Claudia… 

 Soren didn’t talk about his sister much, if ever. But Corvus remembered the two of them from when they’d first met. They had been inseparable. Sometimes Corvus forgot that his and Soren’s first real interaction had taken place after he hit him in the head with a rock. What a way to meet the man he loved.

 Lost in thought, he nearly walked straight into Soren, who had frozen on the path ahead of him. Coming to an abrupt halt, Corvus stepped up beside his partner, following his gaze. He let out a sigh of relief. Callum and Rayla were back. They would know what to do. And, by the looks of it, they had brought help.

 The elf standing beside them had deep blue markings similar to Rayla’s and the same, faintly curved horns twisting back from his head. His long, white hair was held back from his face in a loosely braided tail. 

 Corvus placed a hand on Soren’s shoulder, turning to reassure him, only to find the other man’s expression not at all relieved. He looked, and felt, tense.

 “Is there something wrong?”

 “It’s complicated.” Soren said with a heavy breath. Then he blinked, turning back to Corvus. “But I guess that’s the sort of thing we talk about now, isn’t it?”

 “Yes, I guess it would be.” Corvus replied, feeling a smile cross his face despite the circumstances. 

 “Do you want to talk about-” he began, but Soren was already barrelling into an explanation.

 “So that elf guy was one of the assassins - oh yeah, from back when Harrow uhm, you know - anyway, he was the one who did it and afterwards I was gonna kill him - cause bad assassin dude, obviously - but then Cla- my sister said that would be a waste so Viren locked him in the dungeon and I sort of assumed he was dead? But I guess he’s not. Oh, and also he’s Rayla’s Dad. One of them, anyway. So she wanted to bring him back from the dead? Except he wasn’t dead. But that was a while ago so I sort of thought she’d given up but apparently not and this time it worked! Yay! But also not yay because the last time I saw him I tried to kill him and also he tried to kill me and he did kill King Harrow and yeah.” Soren took a deep breath. “Tell me if I did that wrong.”

 Corvus stared at him, still processing everything he had just said. Soren blew a strand of hair out of his face. 

 “You deserve a break.” Corvus said finally. It was all he could think to say. Katolis, his father, his sister, and now this? Soren deserved a proper night’s rest without worrying about the end of the world. He needed one. Even though they’d managed to rest a bit earlier, Corvus could still see the bags under his eyes and the slightly slumped way he was holding himself.

 “How about this. I’ll go and talk to Rayla and Callum, tell them about the pearl-”

 “No.” Soren said it quickly, shaking his head. “She’s my sister. I need to be the one to tell them.”

 “Soren, she’s not your responsibility.”

 “Yes. She is. Corvus…” Soren wouldn't meet his eyes, his gaze instead drifting to his shoes. “I’m not going to give up on her. I can’t.”

 “Of course not.” Corvus placed both his hands on Soren’s shoulders, turning him to face him. “But you can’t do anything right now. You’re exhausted and the others need to know about Aaravos.”

 “You can tell the-”

 “No.” Now it was Corvus’ turn to shake his head. “We’re going to do this together. I just got you back. I’m not letting you go again.”

 They both stared at each other for a moment. Corvus hadn’t meant to say that last bit out loud. “What I meant was-”

 Soren leaned forward and kissed him quickly. It was all they had time for right now. 

 “I know what you meant. Me too.” he said after he’d pulled away, eyes sparkling.

 Corvus felt his face grow warm and hoped Soren couldn’t tell.

 “Well.” he said briskly. “If we’re going to do this, we’re not going to be able to do it alone. Those people over there.” he pointed towards where he could now see Ezran standing with Rayla and Callum, the two brothers embracing fiercely. “They’re your family. They’ll want to help you.” 

 “I don’t want to drag them into this.” Soren said with downturned eyes.

 “You won’t be. They’ll want to help if you just tell them what’s happened. That's what families do.”

 Soren seemed doubtful. Corvus knew that family was a loaded subject for him. It probably always would be. But he also knew that Soren had one of the strongest families he’d ever seen. 

 “Trust me.” 

 “I do.” Soren said. And that would have to be enough for now. 

 He squared his shoulders, turning to walk into the camp, and Corvus followed him. He saw Soren’s fingers twitch towards his empty scabbard as the other elf turned and looked at them. He was standing apart from the others, hanging to the edge of the camp. And now Corvus knew why. He’d thought that the past was just that, the past. But now he saw just how many old wounds were sitting just below the surface, waiting to be reopened.

 “Soren!” Rayla called, spotting them. “You’re okay!” she stopped, seeing the look on his face. “Soren?”

 Everyone turned to look at them then, and Corvus could see the lines of worry on Callum’s face, the tightness in his shoulders, the way that his hand still rested on Ezran’s shoulder The way that the king leaned gently against his brother’s side, as though the contact would help to alleviate some of the burden he carried. The nervous glances Rayla shot in Callum’s direction, as though to make sure he was still there. That he was okay.

 “We need to talk.” Soren said, voice low and quiet. “Someplace private.”

 “Soren, what happened?” Callum asked, grip tightening on his brother’s shoulder.

 “He’s out.” 

 The words were inconspicuous to anyone passing by. Trivial, even. But to them it was world shattering. 

 “How!?” Callum exclaimed, earning worried glances from a few passing civilians. He lowered his voice. “We had the pearl with us the whole time. We took it somewhere safe.”

 “We shouldn't be talking out in the open.” Ezran said, stepping out of his brother’s protective grip. “We don’t want to cause a panic.” And so that was how they found themselves, all five of them, crammed into Soren’s small tent on the outskirts of the encampment. Callum was sitting beside his brother, Rayla leaning her head against his other shoulder. They had left the other elvish man - Runaan, Rayla had called him - outside. Rayla had asked him to keep watch so that they weren’t disturbed, but they all knew that wasn’t why. He’d seemed to understand.

 As the hushed murmurs of explanation began, Corvus stepped back himself, ready to leave them to their discussion. He was a part of the council, sure. But this was far more private than that. A council within a council. Or, as Soren called them, the Dragang. They were more than just a governing body. They were a family, just like he’d said. 

 So he tried to step away, happy to leave them to it and not wanting to insert himself where he didn’t belong. But Soren’s hand closed around his wrist, pulling him back. 

 “I’d like you to stay, maybe. If you don’t mind.” he said, voice quieter even than the whispered discussion around them. 

 Corvus paused, glanced around at the group of them. There were no looks pointed in his direction to tell him that he was out of place. So he sat back down, clasping both his hands around Soren’s. 

 “Okay. I’ll stay.”

[mastercherry]

More Sterek for you.

Have you seen The Truman Show? If not let me just recap it for you. Some TV director/producer dude had the idea to create a TV show that followed a human life like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was the world's largest TV set, a whole island. Everyone in the town was in on it. Even his best friend. His parents weren't his real parents. He finds out in the end and tries to escape.

Anyways, it's interesting I think. Jim Carrey plays Truman. Give it a gander if you'd like.

So here's my Sterek idea. Inspired by The Truman Show.

First of all, the supernatural world is known. Maybe there's even like a Men in Black situation where government agencies specialize in this type of stuff. OR maybe aliens exist too. Who knows?

Anyways, Stiles is a supernatural creature. A very powerful one. Powerful enough to destroy the world if he wanted. But here's the thing, he has no idea.

He thinks he's just a normal human from a normal small town in the middle of a normal little nowhere. Nothing crazy ever happens to him. Really, the only bad thing to happen is his mother getting sick and passing away. Other than that, he's really lived a golden life.

He dreams of travel but he can't just leave his dad behind alone. And what about Scott? His best friend needs him too. So he's never even left Beacon Hills.

Weird stuff starts happening when Derek Hale blows into town. It was a huge tragedy when his whole family died in a fire. Why would he come back?

Anyways... so Stiles is an orphaned little baby who could one day destroy the world if he ever awakened his powers. So what does the government do? They put him in a little small town with some agents to raise him as their son. They infiltrate the town easily enough. And as he grows up, the town builds up around him, actual townspeople slowly being replaced with just agents instead. The Hales are a stubborn group though. When the gov finally convince them to leave they had to make up a pretty great story: house fire.

His "mom"? Claudia? An agent. She's alive and well but she got attached and wanted to tell him the truth. So she had to be "killed". And his dad? The sheriff? He's attached too. But he doesn't say anything because he doesn't want to be "killed" off.

You see what I'm doing here? Stiles' whole life is a lie. His entire experience has been curated by the government in the hopes that they keep his power locked up. Why didn't they just kill him as a baby? They wanted the chance to use his power if it even came to be. He could be an ultimate weapon.

Anyways..... yeah it needs some work but that's the gist.

[jainydoe]

rook questionnaire

tagged by the wonderful, magnificent, the amazing @emmg truth be told I also don't care about my rook but hopefully showing mine will make you show me yours

this is claudia

1: Where in the Thedas is your Rook from? nevarra!

2: What is your character's alignment? uhhhh is true neutral an answer? I think she's the type to follow rules until they don't suit her

3: Race and subclass? rogue elf

4: If your Rook was a companion, where would they be found? excellent question, maybe either at like a museum in Orlais that they're casing or a casino? very danny ocean

5: What emotion did they usually pick? mm I think when chatting with companions they'll make jokes, but with strangers just the neutral polite option - very rarely gruff

6: What companion are you platonically close with? neve and bellara, mainly because my first rook was close to davrin and lucanis

7: Romantically close with? emmrich obviously cmon

8: Who are they suspicious of? solas and that dude who introduced harding to that lady? you follow?

9: Does your Rook get along with their chosen Faction? oh yeah, she's a nevarran darling, just too slippery sometimes

10: Are they proficient in playing any instruments? never considered it. maybe piano?

11: Weapon of choice? ooh I think she's more comfortable as a ranger but happy to go melee when it comes to that

12: What is their orientation? mm I would say straight but comfortable messing around with whoever joins in

13: What are their thoughts on killing? Is it a necessary evil or do they enjoy it? ooh. I think my first rook enjoyed it but claudia doesn't really care

14: What hobbies does your Rook have? probably going to ballets, painting, playing cards, I imagine dancing is what made her such a talented rogue

15: What NPCs do they like? Which one's do they dislike? ooh I think she probably has the same reservations about Taash originally that emmrich has but they find common ground. I think she's also like cordial with antoine and evka but is very happy to leave the wetlands

16: Do they have a favorite creature in the Thedas? the fat crocodile things in the wetlands - only good thing there

17: Do they enjoy life as an adventurer? I think it suits her devil-may-care attitude but she's a creature who enjoys her comforts. if she has a lighthouse to return to she's fine

18: What would your Rook be doing if they weren't recruited by Varric? probably hustling idiots with the help of spirits or shacked up with some artist

19: How do you think they'll meet their end? woof, maybe an old enemy come to pay their debts? poisoned tea type shit? but also maybe she'll just fall off a cliff who knows

20: Would they side with Solas or fight him? don't know yet!

21: What is your Rook's favorite ability? ooh probably the charged up shield break, or that spin move flurry of knives

22: What languages is your character fluent in? ok yeah here we go, definitely antivan, common of course, elvish, orlesian, and I think she studied tevene as like an extra curricular in youth

23: What do they do after an absolute crisis? smoke and take a bubble bath

24: Does your character believe in the afterlife? I think she's agnostic but wants to believe, giving her nevarran upbringing

25: What specialization best represents your Rook? not sure how to answer this?

26: What animal best represents your Rook? ooh. maybe like a persian street cat. something you know once belonged somewhere but now is a creature of the night to be feared

27: What was their life like before the events of Veilguard? I think she was a high-level thief

28: Is your character the de facto leader of the party? Or do they consider someone else to be the leader? I think she's the "leader" but doesn't care if someone feels passionately about specific aspects. that being said, she's never worked in a team before but knows jobs can go awry when there's a fucked chain of command so she always makes sure plans are clear, even if they're not plans she came up with

29: If you could choose a different faction for your Rook, which one would they have joined and why? probably the crows. just suits her skillset

30: What's your favorite thing about your Rook? she's ultimately kind. I find her amiable and lovely

this was fun I didn't know all this random stuff about my rook thanks for tagging me emm. I actually do wanna know about yours but will also tag @farore05 @caffeinatedmunchkin and @eavangeek because you're all writers I really love the work of and would love to get to know better!!!

[alex51324]

OK, so I'm now caught up on Interview With the Vampire (TV). I have some observations:

Wow, was that trial ever a master-class in poor-little-meow-meowification! I was legit getting flashbacks from the (season 1-hiatus) Izzy Trenches, with the whole, "Pointing out that he doesn't have to put up with my behavior, and he wouldn't recommend anyone else do so either, is--due to Meow-Meow's personal circumstances--an act of such exquisite cruelty that it excuses pretty much anything he does while he's upset about it," and "sure, yeah, this thing Meow-Meow did sounds bad to you normies, but because we're pirates vampires it's barely anything; a slight loss of temper for which he should be forgiven completely because the other dude said something mean", thing, plus the side of "Oh, but that threatening to leave is the most brutal form of abuse thing applies only to Meow-Meow, and in only one direction; it's fine for decide to part ways with anyone else at any time for any reason, and nobody else has any right to find that at all upsetting."

(To be clear, I genuinely liked this in IWTV; it was interesting seeing an audience falling eagerly into this trap, when the audience is also fictional, and the show itself is winking and nodding to us about it.)

(I do wonder if the show is going to grapple with this at all next season--the reunion suggests that Louis had also fallen into this trap. I'm unconvinced by the fan-theories suggesting that Lestat was an unwilling participant in the trial; there might have been some use of vampire mind-powers to keep him on-script during the proceedings, but I think he genuinely didn't realize he gave a shit about Claudia until it was too late.)

2. The aging-up of Claudia's character (she was a little little girl in the books) puts her at right about the same age as The Vampire Currently Known As Armand was when he was originally sex trafficked as a human, and I wonder about that stirring up some long-buried feelings. Does the grotesque parody of innocence inherent in Baby LuLu have some parallel in his experience as a sexually exploited child? What happened to Arun--or to Amadeo, even--if he failed to play his part with a reasonable facsimile of enthusiasm?*

On the one hand, I'm interested in these potential parallels; on the other hand (glancing back up at point 1), it's a tricky needle to thread, to see these parallels as contextualizing Armand's actions, but not excusing them. I do not entirely trust fandom not to turn this into, "Well, she reminded him of His Worst Trauma, so everything he did to her was basically self-harm, and he pretty much had to kill her in order to achieve closure on that period of his life**."

(*Some of this may be addressed in the books? The Vampire Armand came out on the waning edge of my Anne Rice phase; I'm pretty sure I read it, but I don't remember much about it, and I don't have a copy. The parallels with Claudia wouldn't be, though, because in the books she was 5.)

(**Izzy Trenches flashbacks again.)

3. As someone who read the books back in the day, I appreciated the brief mention in S1 that Louis's grandfather had owned a plantation, worked by men who "shared his complexion but not his circumstances." To me, that line opened up the possibility of reimagining Book!Louis as also being Black.

(To be clear, he canonically could not have been; beyond that fact that It Would Have Come Up, in the first few pages--which I just re-read--he is described as being bone-white. Even if he was mixed and white-passing, it doesn't quite work.

However, Anne Rice did write a book, Feast of All Saints, about a mixed-race protagonist, who was the son of a slave owner and a woman he enslaved. I remember almost nothing about it, except that the white father had promised to free him and send him abroad to be educated, but broke that promise. Porting some of that over onto a book-canon-era Black Louis could be very interesting.

I'd have to re-read both books--and probably TVL, too--to be able to even think about writing it, which is...unlikely, but I put that idea out into the universe.)

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Ep7 Musings - RIP Claudeleine

Here we effing go, y'all. 🤧

The coven tortured them b4 the were put on trial--W T F 😱

Yep, in the rat box--what practical PURPOSE or POINT was there to put Claudia in there to get gnawed on by feral rats, other than sick sadistic viciousness? We know Celeste & Estelle used the Mind Gift on Roget--you mean they could'n't've done that to Claudia like Santiago did on Madz? You HAD to stuff her in there? EVIL.

Daaaaang, they used a wombo-combo Mind Gift to tell her to STFU; her effing nose is bleeding!

"In all their chilling premeditation"--yep, this is why criminals should never leave diaries or use social media! 😅🤦‍♀️ And omfg they let the audience read her diaries, I can't. 🫣 And the Baby LouLou fangirls aren't in the front row this time; effing fair-weather fans! 😒

GOD the coven frikkin hamstrung them, too!? 😱 To the BONE!

"Evil of my evil," SAY IT. Claudia laughing like she finna dance in his innards. "It moved Claudia, right up on her [HAMSTRUNG] feet," I was AGHAST. If y'all don't step TF back and give my daughter room to tear his a-hole wide open!

I love how AMC changed Ghost!Claudia's legacy, cuz the diaries were all Lou had, which implied that Claudia died "hating his guts," as Daniel said in 1x7. But by regaining his memories of the Trial, AMC!Lou gets to see that Claudia actually went out DEFENDING him. The one she REALLY had beef with was Lestat. Ofc she resented Lou, but most of all she loved her Daddy Lou, and was traumatized seeing him broken like an EGG from an airplane that SHE tried her darndest to piece back together. And Lestat can't say EFF ALL, cuz he already admitted that he broke him to hurt him.

EXAAAAAAACTLYYYYYYYYY! 🗣️🗣️🗣️

(Girl we all know you ain't sorry, lol. But PREACH!)

SPITE! 😫 Lestat was being SPITEFUL. Yes, this IS his big revenge; he DGAF about Claudia, he came there for Louis, YES! Did he expect Claudia to die? No, he EXPECTED Armand to get TF up and save ALL of them. But he DID go in there ready and willing to throw Claudia under the bus to get Louis out of there.

Claudia called herself "just a roof shingle" that flew off Loustat's townhouse, as she shuffles her way back to her seat. Chile, this whole audience us dumb as a pile of bricks to not notice that she's LITERALLY hamstrung. The unbelievable pain she must be in, omg.

FACTS! 😫👏

"Took the air out of the place with that one" EMMYS WHEN 😫 "Got a lot less fun real quick" EMMYS WHENNNNNN 😫

("'RHIIISE!" Santiago's campy accents & pronunciations STAHP.) WHY ON EARTH would anyone wanna join this nasty AF coven after seeing the hypocritical effed up way y'all treat people!? Y'all shoulda just kept her hypnotized and made her say yes, which proves that y'all really didn't care if Madz joined or died anyway! She was just collateral; and I guarantee if she'd joined they'd've used her in their actual mock trial plays, making her relive her shame the same way they did with Baby LouLou.

I get that Claudia shook her head, only wanting Madz to join so she'd stay alive, but I'm with Madz--they'd've killed her for some bogus reason sooner or later. Might as well die with her companion.

😭 MY COVEN IS CLAUDIA, TOO! 😭 Claudia finally feeling like someone in the world picked her first. 😭

STFU Santiago. 😡

STFU Lestat. 😡 (I had to make a separate post for this, cuz it's both ironic AF but also wildly in-character that Lestat of all people would mock Madeleine for doing this.)

Flip them all off, yaaas! 🤬🤬🤬🤬

I was on the edge of my seat; I knew my BAMF daughter was gonna do or say SOMETHING crazy. 👀

My daughter said "Until you do right by me everything you THINK about gonna fail!" 😤 Armand said moment of defiance; PLEASE! ALL HER LIFE SHE HAD TO FIGHT!

Rest in power, Claudia! ❤️👸🏼👸🏽👸🏾❤️

My life every time a new IWTV episode airs.

That's the same flute dude AND SONG playing when Armand set that Children of Darkness/Satan vampire on fire. Execution dirge WTF 😭

The ultimate gaslight.

Not Claudia embracing Madz as she singing that effing song take me out back and end it. 💔

Look at Lestat's bish arse standing back there watching while HIS BLOOD DAUGHTER burns to ash--Mr. I Could Not Prevent It #2! The last thing she saw on earth was her deadbeat father not doing a effing thing to help her--

--but Louis leapt through FIRE and a whole burning building to save his daughter; a girl he didn't even KNOW, and already loved unconditionally! Blood ain't thicker than water, eff what ya heard! 😤

EXCUSE ME!? 😱 Santiago I hate you so much, wow.

"Tweedley deedly dead" written on the mirror in Claudia's (or Santiago's?) booth at the Theatre; you can see her yellow dress in the corner too; omg this coven is nasty. That BETTER NOT BE her ashes.

We been expected this my guy; the movie's like 30 years old and the book's 50+, be serious. But y'all did an AMAZING adaptation; adding in things I definitely didn't expect, like Claudia singing the song. 😭👌

Claudia's the GOAT. 🐐

[apparitionism]

Tabled

Hi @barbarawar , and happy Gift Exchange to you! Here’s what you said to anonymous-me: “Okay, so we know up until Instinct HG wasn’t in contact with Myka, but after it seems maybe they were from Myka’s reference to HG’s girlfriend in the finale for example. Did they ever get that coffee? Do they talk regularly? If you could do something with that that’d be awesome!”

First, I should say that from Instinct onward, the show seemed committed to forcing its characters into shapes that fit (or “fit”) an apparently predetermined, clichéd outcome, and I share the resentment that many feel about how awful that was. However! For the purposes of your gift, it’s that sense of “fit,” in quotes, that I’ve set out to push at in this piece. When people (well, characters) are forced—or feel themselves forced—to “fit” into particular narratives, what damage is done? How much of that damage is irreparable? And what does it mean for damage to be irreparable, anyway? This story offers some maybe-answers.

(P.S. This is going to be two parts, both because I’m incapable of being succinct and because I would like to get it right. Right-ish. Second part will appear in due time, with apologies for making you wait.) (P.P.S. The book referenced herein is real, which I hope comes as no surprise.) (P.P.P.S. Much gratitude, as always, to @kla1991 for the @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange management!)

Tabled

Myka sits at tables and tells lies.

She wouldn’t have imagined she’d take up these conjoined activities—an irrational hobby if ever there was one—but: here she is.

At times, this joint doing is an obstacle course, but today it’s simple. Artie, stationed across from her, asks, “Are you making unauthorized use of an artifact?”

He’s asking everybody, one on one; Claudia had been the first interrogatee, and she’d told Myka to brace herself, with a groan of “Why does he have to turn into Torquemartie like this? ‘Oh, the ping’s coming from inside the Warehouse!’ Dude. Artifacts get weird. They make pingy noises. Doesn’t mean we’re running around punching our downside cards.”

In the past, Myka wouldn’t have needed the heads-up, for she would have been innocent and indignant. And in fact she doesn’t need it now, for now she’s a practiced liar, so: “No,” she says (innocent), and “of course not,” she adds (indignant).

“If you run across anything that... strikes you,” Artie says.

“I’ll tell you.” Also a lie. Things that strike her, she keeps to herself.

Unlike her table-set lying, that’s not new.

“I think I might be a writer,” she’d said to her father, before she was old enough to have learned better. Eight. She’d been eight, and in school she’d written a story about a girl who tamed a lion. Her teacher had asked her to read it aloud to the class.

“You know nothing about that,” he’d snapped back, and the sting of it taught her: if you love something, if it sets you on fire, that’s wrong. Kill it.

And if you can’t? Then hide it.

Myka, having discovered after much effort that she had no talent for killing her love for anything, had become adept at hiding it, particularly from her family: she’d hidden her love of writing, after that first young cut; later, she’d hidden her affinity for law enforcement, every scrap of satisfaction she took in the accolades she received for valor, dedication, marksmanship, all of it; she’d even hidden the perverse pride she took in her adept ability to hide.

She hid everything, from her family and then from everyone, and she was adept at the hiding. That didn’t keep her clandestine investments from going south—witness Sam—but she was adept.

Until Helena.

Helena short-circuited Myka’s hiding mechanism. So much fire, so uncontainable, and it all spilled out, so loud, so open. So... unhidden.

So Myka has reasserted her old ability, augmented as it has had to be, here where she dwells in so many layered aftermaths. She’s hiding—which, fine, maybe that’s passive lying, but at least it’s a sin of omission. And she’s uttering (but not only uttering) untruths: this new, committed sin.

If she were paid by the lie, she could retire. Oh, and if she retired now, how about this: evil, crazy, dead; she’s got the trifecta too. Evil because she tells lies, which is no good in any cosmos; crazy because that’s what those lies render her in her head; and dead... well.

She could lie to herself and chalk that, too, up to those table-lies, but what would be the point? She wouldn’t believe herself. She remembers too much about what being alive felt like. She can’t fail to understand the contrast now.

****

“Just coffee next time,” Helena had said, and while Myka had counterproposed “save the world,” she hadn’t explicitly turned down the coffee proffer, and that had resulted, via a weird press of obligation in her head that hurt like hope, in her having to accept it when it was in fact proposed.

When Helena had contacted her—by text, and the Helena of before (before, oh, before) would never have begun “R u available,” so the texter seemed from the start a stranger—Myka had thought, Sure, I can do this, only to think, T–minus five minutes, I can’t do this.

Because she’d compartmentalized, until that zero-nigh moment, the implications of what had brought Helena near: a forensics conference in Nebraska, which had to mean Helena was still working that... Myka tried to say “job” in her head. Instead it came out “con.”

Thinking that word, doing the work of thinking it further into a sneer, helped paper over at least enough of her panic to allow her to walk into the designated coffee shop, a walk she tried to take with no expectations or intentions. I will see Helena. That was all. I will see Helena.

And see her Myka did, her face in profile against a window that offered, in stark contrast, a plain gray Nebraska sky. Its neutrality set Helena’s beauty in high relief. She was striking enough, as always, to instantly take a heart and break it, and yet to Myka’s gaze, this first sight after a length of time, she struck uncanny, like a painting of herself. Or not even that: instead some inartistic facsimile, an AI-generated irreality unworthy of her name.

Even so... even so, Myka could have regarded Helena forever—show me her, any version, and I will hungrily look—but looking, now, seemed an endpoint, not at enticement. Before (before, oh, before), Helena had been a magnet, aligning Myka’s entire compass of being to her true-north pull.

Now, with Helena dead metal, Myka had no way to orient herself.

She stood in the coffee shop’s entryway, trying to decide, and I can’t do this echoed in her head. Doing this, making it real, would put this fake-Helena in place of the ideal-Helena to whom Myka still, even after the Boone-crash, clung. I shouldn’t do this.

Her body gathered itself to leave, so as to not do this, but Helena—as if she sensed both Myka’s presence and her ambivalence—moved her even-now-so-beautiful head, turned to catch Myka’s gaze, and there was no escape.

So Myka sat at a table across from Helena. Having coffee. What wouldn’t she have given for this chance, this quiet chance, at so many hinge points of their history?

“Are you well?” Helena asked. Her voice was as uncanny as her face, emanating from an elsewhere that admitted none of that history.

There Myka sat, at a table across from Helena, hating the chance, hating that she now hated the chance. And from the depth of that hate, she told a lie: “Yes,” she said. She did not know—could not have known—that it was the first of many.

She had tried to logic herself out of culpability, there in that first lying moment, away from what exams and scans seemed to be revealing. What does “well” really mean, anyway? She’d driven a car to get here, and she hadn’t committed any moving violations while doing so; she was drinking coffee (terrible coffee that tasted of slag) without spilling it on herself; words emerged from her mouth in a language she spoke with reasonable fluency. She was functioning, and any reasonable person might consider the ability to function a measure of wellness, so, “Yes, I’m well,” she reiterated. Re-lied.

As their conversation, if that was the word for it, continued, Myka’s first impressions were borne out: Helena’s aspect was wrong, as in the lab in Boone, when she and Pete had witnessed her strange matter-of-fact performance of something that didn’t quite rise to the level of amnesia: rather than lacking her memory, as in the first Emily Lake disaster, in that lab she’d had no depth. H.G. Wells with no depth! The first of so many Boone sacrileges...

And there in Nebraska, the sacrileges had continued. “Home��� was a word Helena used, over and over, and Myka experienced each utterance as an accusatory taunt, as if Helena were saying, with emphasis: You told me to do this, so I did.

Had Helena made the accusation aloud, it would of course have been no lie. Myka had said the words; the responsibility was hers. She deserved this punishment. Because that, some snake agreed in a whisper, was when your lies truly began.

Once their conversation (that was not the word for it) had petered out—leaving Myka mourning their ability to talk for hours before (before, oh, before)—the goodbye was awkward: in its too-formal words, for they clanged against the intimacies of the past, but also in its estranging absence of physicality. The latter was Myka’s doing, as she made sure to keep the table between their bodies. She’d made the mistake of touching Helena in Boone, there at that bitter end. She was certainly not going to do that again. Those burns on her body had not healed.

Driving back to the Warehouse, she tried initially to keep her composure, but it was no use; she gave up and yelled at the Helena in her head: Why couldn’t you be yourself! Make sense! Break through! (She aggressively refused to understand that she was yelling just as loudly at whatever lying version of “Myka Bering” she’d been performing, there during “coffee.”) She told herself the car-yelling was perfectly normal, or at least—in keeping with her justificatory theme—perfectly functional: she was getting Helena out of her system, so she could fit herself back into her nothing-is-the-matter Warehouse suit.

As if she were ever going to get Helena out of her system.

“How was your... coffee?” Steve had asked her, back at the B&B.

Myka hadn’t confided in him, not fully, but he had a tendency to ask discerning questions, and she had a corresponding tendency to answer. Sometimes, it was a relief.

This time it was not. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she had said.

He whistled, a muted but sharp little inhale. “Ain’t that the truth,” was his verdict.

Myka laughed. It hurt.

****

Artie’s concern about unauthorized artifact use is surprising to Myka only in that he took as long as he did to realize it was occurring: for personal enlightenment (if not gain, but really, what was “gain”?) Myka has twice consulted a book. Its title is The Fortune-Teller; or, Peeps into Futurity, and its publication date is 1861, but neither that title nor that date is its salient feature. No, its salience lies in the artifactual ability of one part of it—known as “The Ladies’ Oracle”—to predict the future.

These consultations had begun as a result of that initial “coffee,” which had rendered Myka bereft, even more so than Boone had (as if her bereavements were rankable). In its wake she’d needed something, anything, to grasp and hold. She knew she couldn’t find comfort in the past, that treacherous country, and the present was merely something through which she was struggling to swim. That left the future.

So she had researched, furtive but diligent, until she found her little candidate.

You’re doing this because turning back time didn’t do what you wanted it to, did it, some truth-insistent fold of her cerebral cortex had jeered when she’d first considered using the book. You’re praying this direction will be different.

The accusation was fair. Reasonable. Thus, standing before the book, considering its perils, its unknown downside, she’d tried to resist: Don’t, she told herself. She’s alive and in the world. That has to be enough.

But it isn’t, said the lizard at the bottom of her brain.

It sounded like Steve.

The book’s divination process was elaborate and, in its way, entertaining, entertainment being what the book was initially intended to provide: Myka read that she was first to choose a numbered question from the list of sixty in the book, then close her eyes and touch a pencil to a chart on the following page. From that chart, her blindly directed point of lead would select a symbol, one of twelve, each comprising small circles in a distinct mantic-pebble pattern. Her next series of tasks: look up the page associated with her question’s number that corresponded to that symbol, turn to that page, and discover her pebble-pattern-designated answer.

At first she thought to be clever, to game the outcome, working backward from desired answer to symbol to question, so as to contrive a prediction that would yield some light. The book resented this idea enormously. In the wake of her considered (not even attempted!) subversion, it refused to open to “The Ladies’ Oracle,” instead offering her pages related first to the reading of cards, then to the interpretation of dreams. She knew from her research that these pages had no artifactual significance. These seem more suited for a charlatan such as yourself, the book was conveying, with what Myka took to be great disdain. You don’t deserve the access I afford.

“I’m sorry,” she told it, and that was entirely true. “I really want to know.” That was true too—or true-ish. She wanted to know... but only if the knowledge would help.

Beggars can’t be choosers, said another lizard. This one sounded like her father.

The book took its time deciding whether to believe her... no doubt sensing some residue of her dishonesty, adding that to her offense against its power. But rule in her favor it did, riffling to its oracular pages with a sigh of surrender. Or was it triumph?

She chose her question, that first question, based on her overall disquiet.

The question was numbered twenty-five. It read, “Shall I long remain as I now am?”

Pencil in hand, Myka closed her eyes. She moved the lead until it encountered bookish resistance... the symbol on which it rested, when she opened her eyes, resembled a little pebble cairn, upright, proud. She consulted the page-map and learned her destination: page thirty-seven.

The book, unmoved by her anxiety about what she would discover, allowed her to turn only a single leaf at a time.

Show-off.

On page thirty-seven, the pebble cairn nestled at its very bottom.

Its prediction—Myka’s future—her fate.

“That is impossible; so much the worse.”

****

For some time, Myka had thought the book must have been wrong—maybe it had decided in the end to withhold true knowledge of her future out of spite?—for her status remained quo. Artifacts. Retrievals. Warehouse business, world-shaking in the strangely run-of-the-mill ways it tended to be.

The looming presence of cancer as a possibility had kept her tensed for “the worse” to emerge from that quarter... and she did on some level find it hilarious that the likelihood of having some you’ll-probably-die-soon disease hadn’t been enough to push her to seek an oracle, but an emptied-out Helena had.

But then, abruptly, cancer had been removed from the table.

Myka had tried not to dwell on how wrong that removal could have gone, given what Pete had done. She had tried to be content that the most significant upshot of that entire series of episodes seemed to be the adding of a benign category to her catalog of untruths: she sat not at but rather on a table and told a lie. “I guess I’m just lucky,” she had said when her oncologist’s PA expressed the team’s surprise at having found no malignancy.

But then Helena had texted again. “I’ll be in South Dakota soon, relatively near Univille. Can you believe it?”

As if belief had any right to be any part of anything anymore... but Myka should have believed the book. The second coffee (“coffee”) had not allowed her to remain as she was. It was, truly, so much the worse.

This one happened to happen on Valentine’s Day, a fact on which neither Myka nor Helena remarked, despite what Myka couldn’t help but read as its bracing irony.

And speaking of bracing. Myka had braced herself for more extollings of “home,” its charms, its warm certainties...

...but: “Oh, that ended,” Helena said. Dismissive. Breezy.

Myka had put so much anguish into making Helena’s “home” in Boone make whatever tortured sense it could... justifying it as Helena needing to make her own choices about what she could face and what she couldn’t, what she could wake up to every day and what she couldn’t, what she could bring herself to need every day and what she couldn’t... and Myka had further worked very hard to keep all of that torturesome rationalization from spiraling into “why not face me, why not wake up to me, why not need me.” Her hard work there had failed to hold, so: Because you are not Nate, she told herself, again and again, in cut after cut. And because you don’t have a daughter. Cut. Cut. You. Don’t. Have.

Yet here, now, Helena had simply waved her hand at the entire chapter. It unmoored Myka—was this a weight lifted? or was it yet another burdening betrayal?—such that she for a moment couldn’t speak, and for that moment, she didn’t understand that Helena was waiting for her to speak. Eventually: “Ended,” she managed to echo, and she did not recognize the sharp breath she then took.

“Yes. Because there’s someone else.” As Helena said that, she was not performing the uncanny copy of herself—instead, she sparked.

The spark smashed Myka with the realization that her breath had signaled hope. Stupid, naïve hope. And she was defeated, bitterly, both by that hope’s instant dashing and by the knowledge that it still could spring. Would spring. Would, apparently, always spring.

“Is there,” Myka said, as blankly as she could.

“A woman,” Helena said.

She might as well have pulled out an actual knife, but Myka was ferally not going to let that show. “That’s great,” she said, reaching for something beyond blank, something even more resistantly telling, trying to channel Steve at his most calm, like water unsubject to weather.

To that, Helena’s reaction was to sit back and say, as if she resented the idea, “Yes, it is.” Then she said, “Shall I tell you about her?” Still sparking. A challenge.

I don’t need any more challenges. But: “Sure. Why not,” she said. At this point, Myka was certain she could sit through anything. “What’s her name.”

“Her name...” and Helena tightened her jaw, making Myka think she was trying not to unleash an incongruously outsize grin, “is Giselle.”

And Myka said Sure; why not again, but under her breath.

Helena had then begun to relate seemingly endless anecdotes conveying the attributes of this apparent wonder of the world named—sure, why not—Giselle.

You should be enjoying this, Myka told herself as the accolades unfurled. The one and only H.G. Wells is deigning to tell you stories, but here you sit, getting picky about content, all surly and—

“You know what? I’m happy for you,” she interrupted, because she could not, in fact, sit through anything. She could not suffer more, from herself or from Helena. Steve would have clutched his head and screamed at what she’d said, but at this point, what did lies matter?

Driving home this time, she did not yell. Instead, she practiced. “Helena is with a woman named Giselle.” Over and over she said it, to make sure she understood it, and to make sure her mouth knew how to repeat it, because someone, Steve or Claudia or even Pete, would ask, and she would need to say. Out loud, she would need to say these words that told the harshest of truths (though she wished she could sit, at or on a table, and lie that truth away): Helena wants a woman, and that woman is not Myka Bering.

So much the worse.

****

“Well, book,” Myka had said late that night, facing it, facing up to it, “you were right.”

Did the acknowledgement prompt it to offer a self-satisfied ruffle?

She had then asked, “Where do we go from here?” She wished she could have asked it of Helena...

This occasioned something legible as a sort of shoulder-shrug: the book opened to the first of its question-pages.

“You think I want to know more?”

Provocatively, the page turned, as if catching the waft of some future-breeze.

Scanning that next of the list, Myka’s eyes—and her mind—were drawn to, were powerless but to settle on, question 37: “Is a certain person thinking of me?”

That was about the present, not the future. The book wouldn’t really know. Would it?

But Myka was powerless to resist divining the answer. This one corresponded to a pebble nabla (Myka could not help but think of slopes and slipping): “Some one is thinking, dreaming, and talking unceasingly about you.”

Upon receiving that statement, she had suffered another of those stupid hope-leaps... “some one”! Never mind the future; if it could be true in the now: “some one!”

She had soon been forced to realize, however, which “some one” the book must have meant. That was made painfully clear by the events of the most improbable, yet to date consequential, table: that voracious, hateful Round Table. It had brought Myka’s lies home. Literally.

Sitting at that table, Myka had prepped for more lies, these to sell a supposedly “defining” story, for she of course could not allow her definitional truth to be seen. Worse, extracted. She had tried to maintain confidence about being able to exert her will: My brain might not be as big as some brains but it’s big enough to beat you, table, she sneered. But then she admonished, Don’t sneer. No attitude. Because who does attitude make you think of?

She felt herself almost almost almost picture, almost almost almost name, her attitude-ideal...

And so Myka had redoubled her thought-efforts, thrusting every shred of attitude, every shard of emotion, every bit of real definition, from her mind, forcing it to produce for consumption the most anodyne memory possible: something she’d come as close to forgetting as she ever could, some ridiculous ninja-something that wasn’t worth the neurons firing to deliver it to the table’s dumb demands.

But then... everything had gone wrong. Not in the way she’d feared, but in a way that, given the book’s answer, she should have thought to fear. Her imagination had failed her, for the taking of cancer off the table had been the salient change after all: not what Pete had done, but instead, why he’d done it.

Sitting at that selfish table, Myka had at last come to understand the expectations surrounding her response to that why. With Mrs. Frederic and Steve both looking like examiners at the worst imaginable viva voce, she knew what she—she who had never failed a test in her life—had to say in order to pass.

So she’d said it.

The roiling in her gut had come as a surprise, for shouldn’t her soul have been resigned by now to endless perjury? She resented this unwelcome vagus-nerve stimulation of her earlier, righteous self.

In the immediate aftermath she’d stumbled away, trying to find a space to breathe, to assess, to plan how she would act a convincing version of the play she had stupidly—or, no, functionally; she needed to know it that way—let begin. The aisle in which she stopped was dim, its shelves full of metal, pieces of things, things she wished she could herself wright into a bunker of such artifactual strength that no one would dare approach her. Ever. No one.

She hadn’t realized Steve had followed her until she heard his voice. “Are you okay?” he asked, quiet behind her.

So much for her wish: his question, and his solicitude, were absurd. He’d seen her state; he’d encouraged her state. “Obviously not,” she snapped. He had the grace to wince. But because it had all gone so wrong, because she was still so angry that he had helped all that wrong along, she said, harsh, “What was with that ‘hello’? Why did you start that business about my face?”

His face spoke of pain. “I had to. I had to. Because today, honestly: today Mrs. Frederic had to hear what she wanted to hear. From all of us.” His desperate sincerity rang very true.

Myka breathed. Metal coated her throat; further hard words would snag and twist on it, wounding her more than Steve ever could. “I’m pretty sure she’s been wanting me to say that for a while,” she conceded.

Steve winced again. “You looked like you might throw up, and I felt like I would, hearing you... saying what you said. I wish I could’ve given you an out.”

Myka didn’t, now, doubt him. “Me too. And I wish I could’ve taken it.” She meant it, but that was all it was: a wish. For a different world. A different timeline? She said, with a wince of her own, “But I think I have to play along.”

“I see that, from the Mrs. Frederic angle. But you sound like... like there might be something in it for you. Not what I said there was—and I’m sorry I had to say it, or felt like I had to, or couldn’t figure out how not to—but something.”

“Backup,” Myka said immediately. It was the only answer.

“Backup,” Steve echoed, and “backup?” he said again, as if it were a word from a language in which he was not fully fluent.

“I need something—I need something—reliable.” Another hurt: that that was what she needed. So short a time ago, she would have claimed a different need. Such a crashingly different need.

“Need,” Steve said. “Not ‘want’?”

“No.” And Myka admitted: “That’s too dangerous.”

“I have to ask you about it though. Want.”

Myka braced herself. She braced herself, even as she thought on how tired she was of having to brace herself.

“Do you want me to keep protecting you? Primarily from Mrs. Frederic, but...”

It was a less dangerous ask, about a less dangerous want, than she’d feared. Or maybe it was the same want, the same danger, but more gently expressed. “Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Frederic aside, the problem is that if you do play along, I don’t know what ‘protect’ means. Should I keep covering your lie or tell Pete the truth?”

“I don’t know either.” Another admission. She wasn’t proud of it. “For now, just let it... lie. Sorry.”

At that, he didn’t wince. “Tell me when things change. In whatever way they do.”

“If they do.”

“They always do,” he said.

“So I guess I’ll be telling you.” But she believed neither him nor herself.

Steve said, “If you could be happy.” Helpless.

Sweet Steve. Helpful, helpless. Myka gestured into the air. Conjuring speech took her a minute, and even then, all she managed was, “If I could.” Steve just kept looking like he looked, with his base of sympathy (and she had never so appreciated, or so responded to, sympathy), so she asked, because she didn’t know, “Why don’t you want to protect him?”

He offered her an exhausted smile. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but: you said ‘need.’ Who needs protecting? I like Pete, but if it comes down to it, it’s you.”

Leave me alone! she wanted to yell. But she also wanted to curl up in Steve’s protection. Backup. Backup.

****

Even as Myka found Artie’s interrogation easy to lie through, she knows that her lying footing as a whole is becoming unsteady, even vertiginous. If she could have restricted her lies to those sitting utterances... but the expansions are depleting her, and she is trying to resign herself to what she sees as her only realistic option for narrowing her scope. As for any objections her heart might be raising? She is shutting those lights out, one by one.

****

“I think I have to play along,” Myka had told Steve, and she had continued to convince herself of that necessity. So she had taken the initiative and done it, in at least the first of the ways she knew she would have to, in order to act her role.

To act your role? Really? No. To sell your con. Was that a lizard or a snake?

No matter. She sold it. She was not sitting at a table, but a kiss was a lie that was worse.

So much the worse.

After that—that demonstration, that acted untruth—she could not reach her lifeline fast enough. After that, she ran.

“Book,” she said, facing it. “Book.”

Her third try was not the charm; rather, it was the compulsion: Tell me something, anything, that I can’t already see about what’s next. Because an oracle must know more than I do, must know different. If not... Myka had not been ready, not then, not yet, to think on any consequences.

Some days—certainly that day, but not only that day—what she wanted more than life (literally, more than life) was to go back to protecting the president. If a bullet, then I take it. Simple. Clean.

She hated how resentfully, brokenly beholden she had become to people for saving her life. They set her up with the saving, but they didn’t bother with the consequences: with the fact that she had to keep on living. And nobody seemed to be interested in saving her from that.

So: “Book,” she said again, and if that word had never before meant “save me clean,” it did that day.

But struggle as she might, with increasingly desperate fingers into which she tried to wish and pray prying strength, the book refused to open.

Was this the downside? No response in one’s hour of true need?

“What am I doing wrong?” she begged.

But if that was her question, then of course the book was right: it could reveal nothing to her. She knew the answer.

Everything.

TBC

[alwynwitch]

YESSS!!!! One thing I noticed too, is that when Lestat talks about Armand, Gabrielle, Nicki etc, he mentions what they're doing, how they're doing it and his own impressions of it and what his reactions were... But the focus is on what Lestat thinks and how he feels about them, not the other way around. Now, with Marius, he makes assumptions of what he believes are Marius's intentions. He talks about Marius being patient and gentle, wanting to calm him down etc, but those are his own projections because he didn't know Marius enough at the time to classify the nature of his actions, Marius didn't say any of those things and he wasn't even able to read his mind like that. For example, with Gabrielle he would be "she put her hand on my shoulder and it brought me comfort", while with Marius it would "he put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me" (those are made-up examples just to illustrate it, but the books have a lot of receipts if we look at it). It's such a small and yet enormous difference. He was seeing things he wanted to see. By the time they part Marius declares affection to him and we can argue if he were saying the truth or lying, but on the early days? Those were his issues and traumas taking over.

(For context: see this post)

Wow, that's a really nice observation! I don't think I noticed that, but I'm definitely going to analyze it the next time I'm going to re-read The Vampire Lestat. Lestat's relationship with Marius is so interesting, because it often seems Marius is nicer to him than to Armand, but still... it is super weird whatever mentor/pupil or father/son dynamic is going on between Lestat and Marius lol.

For example, Lestat in TVL when he goes badly wounded to Paris (after Claudia and Louis tried to kill him):

Yet not once in all this time did I call out to Marius, did I try to reach him over the miles. I could not beg for his healing blood. Better suffer purgatory for a century than Marius's condemnation. Better suffer the worst loneliness, the worst anguish, than discover that he knew everything I'd done and had long ago turned his back to me.

Hmmm okay, better to suffer purgatory and the worst loneliness than to have Marius, this dude you only knew for a few (intense) days, turn his back on you and express any disappointment. Sure, sounds completely normal.

And again, right before Lestat has to play his part in the trial that will condemn Claudia to death... he is thinking about Marius:

And where was Marius? How many countries, rivers, mountains lay between us? Could he hear and see these things?

However, the dynamic is certainly weird from BOTH sides. Marius spied on Lestat before they even met and knew all the details of his life already... hmmm.... definitely not creepy at all.

And then when Marius shows him Those Who Must Be Kept:

"I don't want to look at them anymore, Marius, honestly I don't," I said, trying to get my hand free, and shaking my head. But he was holding on to me as firmly as a statue might, it seemed [...].

Marius is physically restraining Lestat (for some moments at least but Marius definitely noticed and was doing it on purpose lol)... that's of course not a red flag at all. Another weird moment:

"Marius, please let us go out of here. I beg you. Forgive me, I can't bear it! Please, Marius, let's go." "All right," he said kindly. He squeezed my shoulder. "But do something for me first." "Anything you ask."

Hmmm okay, so Lestat feels like he has to ask permission if he can leave the room and Marius says yes but only if you do something for me. This is super manipulative. And the constant touching? Weird. But somehow Lestat still describes this as "kindly".

[meganwasbored]

The Dragon Prince Thoughts Season 3 Episodes 5 and 6

i could’ve sworn i posted these immediately but turns out these have just been sitting in my notes app since february so here comes the rest of season 3 and 4 for anyone who cares

Episode 5

-i’m still very confused why ezran is in jail what did he do can someone please explain

-WHY are the chains necessary??? what do they think he’s gonna do, squeeze through the bars???

-bait taking advantage of the absolute chaos that is happening in the castle to steal jelly tarts for ezran is just the best

-“see? this isn’t so bad!” the child says while sitting in the jail cell he may or may not be in for the rest of his life

-“still as a mouse” mice are the least still creatures ever what are you talking about

-the snakes REGENERATE???? that took like 10 seconds there was no way they could’ve gotten to safety in time anyway

-seriously who the heck is this dude and how does he benefit from all this

-i feel so stupid right now but how does a king stepping down land him in jail???? he’s 9????

-Opeli is the only competent one here viren was literally just arrested for treason you’re telling me not one other person is concerned about this???

-claudia looks so unfazed

-callum literally risking his life to not touch rayla just so things aren’t awkward but in doing so makes things much more awkward

-“it’s subtle but if you look closely you can see the ambler’s tracks” girl anyone with eyes can see those tracks they’re bigger than you

-YES SOREN IM SORRY I KEEP DOUBTING YOU

-this is the first show in a long time that genuinely makes me laugh out loud

-the guards continue to be the funniest characters in this entire show

-they’re trying to make viren look somewhat redeemable by caring so much about claudia as if he didn’t just tell soren to his face that he doesn’t care if he dies like idc what happens i will never forgive this man

-not to sound ungrateful but what the heck is the baker doing here

-honestly i support nyx in all that she does, you snooze you loose

-“no need to paint a picture”

”i would only need one color for that picture”

*walks away annoyed*

“brown”

-“ezran in his last act as king insisted that whoever didn’t wish to fight could lay down their arms” can’t you just… change that?

-RESPECT

-zym couldn’t have done that the first time she tried to kidnap him?

-did phoe phoe just… come out of the moon???

-when your girlfriend is so impressive that you risk death just to watch her fight

-“you are so….” YOURE TRYING TO KILL ME

-the fact that she literally kissed him yesterday and kissed him back right now yet he still feels the need to apologize for kissing her like trust me dude i think she likes you back

-after rewatching that three times i just realized they’re kissing literally right in front of nyx and i’ve never seen anybody acknowledge this

Episode 6

-is the ambler just immune to snake bites like how has it not been bitten by now

-is “amble” a word because my phone keeps autocorrecting “ambler” to “amble”

-cuties

-i love that no one is even surprised about viren’s “little bug pal”

-still don’t get how aaravos’s… soul(?) can go outside of the mirror like he’s practically not even imprisoned

-ANOTHER KING HARROW FLASHBACK LETS GOOOOO

-y’all will never understand how much i love that man i still can’t believe he’s gone

-dude why are you explaining to this man in detail how his wife died

-genuinely don’t know how much of what past viren is saying is true, how much of this does he actually believe and how much of it is he just saying to manipulate harrow into doing the spell

-“i will leave you with your grief” who SAYS THAT???

-i’m sorry i know some of you like him for some reason but prince kasef is just a loser with a crown he’s just so unpleasant to be around like he’d be on the cover of spoiled-entitled-judgmental-princes magazine

-“is you father talking to himself?”

“no, of course he’s not talking to himself, that’d be crazy! he’s talking to his little bug pal!”

-still kinda blown away that the dragons can talk, like they practically have human brains at this point what is even considered an animal in this world? like in theory elves could be considered animals (not that i consider them animals because i don’t) i’m just saying where do we draw the line?

-“are you okay? are you hurt? let me look at you” MY HEARTTTTT

-IF THIS BIRD DIES I BURN THIS HOUSE DOWN

-CRYING

-this is so frustrating because callum has every right to hate thunder(i’m just not gonna remember his real name i’m sorry it’s 2:33 am) and runaan for killing his parents but rayla has a personal connection to both of them (one was (is?) practically her dad and the other was her king) so like we’re in a tough spot here and i respect rayla so much for being so understanding

-oh my gosh how did it not occur to me that they’re literally right there, like they’re so close to the cave

[zoominsainz]

Hiii!! For the book ask i need to know #3 and #13!! Pretty pleasee🥺🫶

Ow thanks for asking!

So top 5 books is weird bc I don’t think i read truly amazing books, last year was better but

1.- notes on an execution. This is so good and engaging although a bit on the fantastic side while the autor really tried to make it realistic. It’s about a dude that’s on death row bc he’s a lady killer, he’s truly terrible but the interesting bit is that his story is told through the voices of the women around his life. His mom who gave him up, his childhood foster home fellow resident, his girlfriends sister. I do recommend this one!

2.- cursed bread. Weird little book about the life of the main character, Elodie, the baker’s wife in a dull little town until a new couple moves in, the ambassador and his compelling wife Violet, elodie becomes involved in their lives in a game of prey and predator full of erotism but it’s unclear who plays what role until the very end when the whole town is caught in a hysteria induced fever dream. This is a retelling of the unsolved mystery of the mass poisoning o f a French town in 1951

3.- drive your plow over the bones of the dead. This is the embodiment of I support women’s wrongs. The story of Janina in a small polish mountain town, she had a pretty uneventful quiet life with the reputation of being a recluse and loving animals a little too much, until one of her neighbors dies and it quickly becomes a murder investigation. She’s trying to help solve the murder but is cataloged as a batty old woman, this becomes a story about her training to validate herself in accepting her weirdness and how that doesn’t mean she’s less reliable that anyone else and by like 3/4 of the book the twist settles in and you know what happened but it’s pretty satisfactory. I really enjoyed this book and it made me want to read more books by Olga Tokarczuk.

4.- Elena knows. A small book that explores morality, family relations and what comes with being female. Rita is found dead hanged on the church and her mom Elena is adamant that someone killed her, she has mobility issues and everyday is a struggle but she’s moved by the passion to clear her daughters name, she goes on a journey, taking the matter of investigating Rita’s death on her own hands. A truly uncomfortable read but so good and the themes Claudia Piñero explores in a subtle yet compelling manner.

5.- do androids dream of electric sheep?. Classic sci-fi novel. When earth is finally spent and humans have to leave they create androids as inferiors to them, to use as companions, slaves, unpaid workers. Rogue androids scape back to earth where Rick Deckard a bounty hunter in charge of exterminating them, only being able to identify them with an empathy test as humans are the only ones able to have that feeling? begins to question what really is humanity and what makes us really different from this beings that we created. The book from which Blade Runner was based.

Honorable mention to the shining which is one of my favorite books and reread at least once a year!

What were your least favorite books of the year?

I guess it has to be Foundation by Isaac Asimov, people are so gonna come for me but I just thought it was meh, lots and loooots of exposition, very little action and I’m aware that the centre of it was to build the broader foundation universe and criticize the politic power of the dominant nations and explain how they attain power and control and that was interesting but idk I guess it’s my fault for watching the tv show first and thinking I would get as much drama.

And Rebecca bc it was so underwhelming and I was screaming my little feminist ass at the new ms. De Winter to leave that pathetic sorrow of a man!

Oh man this was so good, thanks again! Let me know if you read bc I’m so interested in asking you some of this questions too!

[insert-inconspicuous-name-here]

For personal reasons I will be breaking down a few interactions between Sofia and Raúl in season 3 of Control Z because them not being together until the very last scene hurts the part of my heart reserved for this specific ship. This got waaaay longer than I first intended.

In episode 1, Sofia keeps trying to convince Raúl to go to the police, more than the others. She grabs him by the arm while the others are walking away and they keep facing each other until Javi drags her away from Raúl in what seems like a more "stay away from temptation" than "let's go" sort of way, and she just looks back at Raúl while he looks a lil hurt. Then he is super snarky and bratty whenever he has to stand the sight of them (her and Javi) together and that kills me (in a funny way). When Sofía received his message, there were more messages between them and I really wanted to know what they talked about even after they kept apart for a year. Adding, that last flashback scene, where he just confesses that he went to see the widowed husband for her, so that he wouldn't disappoint her again, in front of everyone was golden because Claudia sort of looked at the others like "... what's happening right now?"

Oh. Is was also nearly nothing, but when Rosita and Darío catch Sofia and Javi, and she covers herself in Raúl's shirt, is like she's conscious of it. It's barely something and she quickly let's go, but from where I stand, It looks like it was put that way into the scene as a hint to the fact that she still likes him. After all she looks at it and is a little off, quickly letting it go. You can barely tell, but I would still like to think is something. Also, i love the boyfriend shirt moment from season 2. And the jacket in season 1. Maybe it's like a "each season" thing. . .

Episode 2: I'm only rewatching for the second time, but I remember that when I watched this one, it was very clear who the hacker was this season. * Wrote the first episode after watching it. Currently watching the second one, so there's a probability I'll just narrate everytime I see them together *. Raúl looks so surprised that Sofia believes is not him, it's even comical. Also, how Raúl doesn't fist-bump Quintanilla and just stares at him, is so hilarious. He's way more compatible with Sofia than all-friendly Javi. And the snarky lil remark to this fact by Raúl himself. Awesome. (I wrote it and when i pressed play, Raúl said it himself that is weird they are together lol).

-Unrelated: I hate the drama teacher. Fucking ass. Drop dead , please? Bernardo does resemble Luis a lot-

"Pues, lo primero, recuperar a mi novia"

-Unrelated: one of my favorite things about this season are the little, random, plot irrelevant scenes with Dario and Ernesto.-

Sofia telling Bruno Raúl does everything she asks is peak self-awareness.

Episode 3: they interact only once because Sofia gets worried when she sees something's wrong with Raúl. Also, comparing sex with Raúl and sex with Javi, Sofia seems way more lost in pleasure with Raúl... Or I just want to believe that because I don't like seeing her with Javi. We'll never know. I'll keep doing this tomorrow

So my edit on Episode 4 simply vanished i guess... They interact at the hospital. Javi offers Raúl to stay at his place because it seems like Sofia is building up to it, and she also did that with Javi's ex. The way she smiles when he says he likes how she looks, tho. Also, i had added this before, both Sofia and Raúl making sure the dude stays quiet while Javi and Natalia act civilized is so beautiful; it just shows how fitting both couples are. And then Raúl just hanging back after Natalia gets out of the car lol . He looks so pissed to leave them alone together. Why are Raúl and Natalia going to see Adrián too?

-Unrelated: masked person attacking random kid because he's wearing Javi's school jacket, which all students from his school have, in a complete different neighborhood is so off-

Oh, Sofia taking Natalia to see Adrián with the busted leg just to confirm her theory is showing that Sofia had quite the manipulative side as well. And this also leads me to think she might've been "manipulating" Raúl by being with Javier for over a year (this theory gets weaker when i think about the fact that it was over a year). Like, she's teaching him a lesson, since he lied to her twice, about major things, and maybe she's also making it harder for him to get her back, since everything changes when Raúl tells her that the easy things are not worth it. Seriously, is so funny how pissed off Raúl is to have to get out of the car lol

Episode 5: the dude in the braids is so gay and crushing on Gerry very hard. The look of satisfaction in knowing Sofia and Javi broke up, he's so cute. Gerry and Bernardo win the best hot scene this season (only gets me down because Sofia and Raúl won the two first seasons, still super good). Rogelio having a double life fits but also feels like a stretch.

Now the good shit: Sofia and Raúl: Raúl paying for her dad's lawyer seems like such a good deed, but it's obvious he doesn't care if Rogelio is in jail or not and is just for Sofia to be happy. The parallels going to Javi+Natalia to Sofia+Raúl BUT Javi and Nat get to kiss, but Mr. Fuck Ups and Sofia don't (understandable, but still).

I love the scene on the park because it's the first actual Raúl x Sofia scene we have this season. He tells her he would do anything for her, and I seriously do not understand her response. But then he says she should stop thinking so much and she just doesn't want to stop thinking because it's obvious if she stops thinking she'll go back to him immediately. And then she pulls back and Natalia pulls in and FUUUUUCK. Raúl has never been this pissed off this frequently even with Pablo in season 2 lol. Ok. I just don't get Sofia's replies during that whole walking down the street arguing with her boy scene. "you know you like me" her reply: "who do you think you are?" Like, huh? This scene also made me think she is over him. Which looking from a healthy point of view (not mine) would be nice, but it just hurt the first time I watched it.

"Haz lo que sientes, carajo" "¡No!" And here that first thought of mine went down the drain: what did she feel like doing and why didn't she want it? I think it was being with him, but that is my biased opinion.

-unrelated: they reference Sherlock twice for the first and only times this last season. Which is to add to the fact that Sofia is a She-lock. and I want to punch Quintanilla again-

Episode 6: Claudia was right tho: when they play with other people she's down, but when it's with her, Sofia just drops everything? Raúl is such a fucking snarky lil shit. The way Sofia just drops the cellphone like is contaminated. I love this scene.

Raúl's threat is nothing. A pic taken by his ex: Woooow. I'm shaken. And here we have it again: the obviousness of Raúl's plan- Sofia being left all alone, except for him.

-Unrelated: I don't understand Clau and her teacher here. Like, he's sleeping with her so she'll paly the part in his play? Isn't it the other way around?-

Sofia sobbing uncontrollably as Raul wreaks the cafeteria... Wtf. I get it that she's shaken, but actually crying like that? That's the first time we see grown Sofia crying like that, no? Is it possible that she figured it out at that moment? Because she proceeds to telling Javi she wants to work it alone... I keep creating theories and they all seem so empty. I love this show.

Episode 7: i just don't get it. So many things don't make any sense to me at this point. Why is Alex so upset that Gaby wants her to go to Spain for them to be together? How making the dude that killed your son stay in your immaculate son's room a good idea? Poor guy will go insane. The last song was awesome

Episode 8: just like in season 1, Sofia uses what Raúl says to her previously as to somewhat see that he's the hacker: first it was that lil speech about how easy things are not worth it "las cosas fáciles no valen la pena." and now it was the fact that she can't resist a mystery. It's very cute how they are locked up and in "danger" but they keep playing around and making each other laugh. I forgot they had another "almost kiss" SHIT. Sofia realizing they are all reading and saying "this ass lied to me" and Raúl having a minor heart attack before she says she means Bruno, not him, since she's looking him dead in his eye lol.

Last scene: when they are talking at the restaurant the way she reacts to Javi's theory is either: 1- she just figured it out at that moment, listening to Javi, since she didn't want to believe it before. 2- she already knew it, but didn't expect anyone else to know- not even Raúl. Also, the way she looks at him (Raúl), like she's proud or something lol.

I really hoped Sofia would be the one behind everything this season. But what if she was? Like the Halloween Heists on B99- she "plants the idea" on Raúl's mind beforehand or she knows what'll happen anyway: he'll go and to something exaggerated to win her over again. But still, the only thing that got me confused, both times I watched it, was Sofia's reaction to Javi's speech. Did she know or did she only realized when he said it?

[kneelbeforeclefairy]

Okay okay okay so I need to process. I do not know why I am so upset over a fuckingtv show but I am

Okay so this is not the books. Now I do think any adaptation has to be...somewhat...faithful to the source material, or it becomes an adaptation In Name Only, and at that point why not do your own thing? However that doesn't mean it's BAD per se to change a lot of things, all media requires adaptation. Sometimes you can get the details wrong and hit the spirit. I use Howl's Moving Castle as an example of this. Pick up the book after you've seen the movie and the only thing similar is there's a dude named Howl with a Moving Castle. (Actually like the first 60 pages are the same and then they diverge wildly) but because like the SPIRIT felt similar, book fans tend to like the movie, and just accept them as two different things.

So initially I was a HUGE skeptic about some of these changes as they dropped. Why change the time period? Why age up Claudia? Why the framing device of the "second interview?" And I was pleasantly surprised as more trailers came out and FINALLY the first two episodes, that my fears were unfounded. The setting update was pretty cool, you didn't really notice it, the second interview became an interesting device to play with the idea of unreliable narrator. I'm still not crazy about 14 year old Claudia, but to be fair, being 14 eternally would suck, and it's a fun thing to explore, it's just not my favorite.

But this last episode. I mean--my chief criticism of Lestat so far was that he was too nice, and I wasn't seeing the Toxic that this relationship needs to get to Claudia Kills Lestat which is where it has to go. I was rejoicing at the moment where Lestat makes Claudia watch Charlie burn. Finally, FINALLY Lestat's brand of Awful. Other than that, aside from a few bitchy remarks, that one outburst at the table and a sort of tendency to ignore engaging with Louis emotions when he can throw money or sarcasm at them, he seems a decent guy.

And I was wondering how they're going to make him Awful, Abusive even, bad enough that when Claudia kills him we lose no sympathy for her, but also sort of mourn him, but also acknowledge it had to be done BUT ALSO when Lestat becomes protagonist, we still have to love and root for this guy. It's a fine line to walk. You can argue Anne Rice, goddess of inconsistent writing, doesn't always pull off.

But I think the answer was not just make him explode like that and beat up a man who he claims to love, who either can't or won't fight back, all because he's...jealous?

Thing is to me, it reads like lazy writing. They couldn't figure out how to show a relationship that was abusive without it being physically abusive, nor a relationship that is bad for everyone involved but does still have it's happy moments. They couldn't push Claudia to the point where she has to kill him without him doing the one unforgivable thing, and I think, to most audiences, that beat down is unforgiviable in terms of what you forgive of your protagonist. There's a line, you know? Withholding information, lying, and gaslighting people--sure, tell me your side of the story and I'll agree you have a lot of growing to do before you're a good person, but I'm still here, watching you become one. I still like you As A Charecter. Do THAT, over, let's face it, as tawdry an emotion as sexual jealousy and I frankly don't care WHAT happens to you. Thats like Tale of the Body Thief levels of "I'm not sure you can recover from that, Lestat."

And the reasoning behind it? They made it almost a love triangle. Lestat is jealous because Louis doesn't love him, he loves Claudia better? I mean, we got a good look at Louis' depression mode when she was gone, and I get Lestat gets angry because he's HERE, isn't he ENOUGH for him? And I think that's worth exploring, and I certainly think that's part of the Issues between the three of them. But that's not what we saw. We saw One Happy Family, even if Louis and Claudia are closer. We didn't see Lestat upset about it. And why should he be? I guess he feels left out? Idk it just seems...cheap. tawdry.

Oh, and I also Don't Like that the shorthand for Lestat is losing his investment in the relationship is him cheating. I didn't like it in episode 3, I really don't like it now. I think it's once again, a lazy shorthand of Bad Relationship, a sort of shortcut. I also think it falls into that old Depraved Bisexual trope and Bisexuals Won't Be Faithful To You trope. And I think there are better ways of doing that than just turning everything into sexual jealousy.

It's too....human. one thing that always set the Ricean vampires apart was how...non human...their way of love is. Most of them are polyamorous. Most of them are queer. Their love seems almost a little mixed in with platonic and familial. It's... interesting. And one thing that never happens is sexual jealousy and love triangles. That's too....easy. Boring.

The other thing that really bothered me is Claudia's assault. What. Exactly. Did it add to the plot? I get the OMG she leaves home and meets another vampire. Now she KNOWS there are others like her! But she could have left him for a million reasons--hes not as fun as Daddy Lou and Uncle Les. He talks down to her, calls her fledgling, she doesn't like that. He's old and stodgy, wants to pull her into some vampire cult. Not Claudia's style. Or best of all, he treats her like a child and that's a Trigger. But to take the only female main charecter, a black female character, and have her be sexually assualted--why? What does it add? Cause I'll tell you what it feels like. This Claudia has been aged up and sexualized--she not only is looking for romantic love, she's looking for sexual love. Now that's not MY preference in honing in on What's Eating Claudia, I think an eternity as a 14 year old is enough angst, but sure let's make it she wants sex and believes she'll never find it. (it also bothers me her snap is after 5 years. Like...girl....you might find love you are still 19. ) But whatever, okay, so she's very sexual. But the second she leaves home the first thing we see happen to her is she gets assaulted? It looks to me like a punishment. Claudia wants to get laid and that's what happens to naughty little girls who are too sexual too soon they get into bad situations that for some damn reason, a freaking vampire can't fight her way out of. (I mean if it was a 200 year old vamp, at least there's some textual basis, but that guy was her human and vampiric equal, give or take a few years. ) And the fact that this happens to a black teenager--when the sexualization of black girls is such a problem in media and in real life....it's not a good look, show. It's not a good look.

And that weird She Tore The Pages Out thing? Wasn't that a FUN way of dwelling on the assault of a black woman without showing it and getting the criticism for SHOWING assault a la Game of Thrones? Felt very have your cake and eat it too.

Anyway, I am just... Angry. Yes I'm angry as a Book Fan. But I've been enjoying this adaptation on its own merits until this episode. Sometimes it REALLY hits the spirit of the thing, despite so many detail changes. Sometimes it goes left and starts telling its own story...and that's FINE. But at this point I feel like it's not longer got much of a resemblance to the books, it's not telling that story any more, but I don't know what story it wanted to tell. I can't figure out what this is about. And I feel like the COMPLEXITY that is the Lestat/Louis/Claudia household has been thrown out the window in favor of ...almost a love triangle? Romantic jealousy, sexual jealousy and the only way the writers can show a bad relationship, infidelity and physical abuse.

It's lazy. It's lazy and I hate it.

[abybweisse]

Crack theory: Sins of the dead

@stainedglass-wings had some late night thoughts and shared them on another post, and it got me to thinking. I still think the last initials of the lockets could represent musical notes, and the order could represent a leitmotif.

However, this new idea would shed light on the motives for their deaths, since I think we can probably all agree they didn't die simply from natural causes. And then Yana-san had to choose specific words for these things, so that the initials could still represent musical notes and not repeat each other (wouldn't be confused which locket was for which thing).

But what do I mean by "things"? Sins. Cardinal or deadly sins. This would be another parallel to s1's Ash Landers' obsession with purging the world of "impure" humans. And it would work very well, if John Brown turns out to be an angel or something bent on a deranged version of divine justice.

Ok, so here are the lockets again, with their order:

Emile C. -- Lust. The "C" could stand for "cravings". Lust is sometimes thought of as a type of gluttony, and "cravings" (as well as "appetite") can describe aspects of one's libido just as well as one's desire for food. So, this Emile fellow (if Yana-san isn't playing with name genders again) could have been killed for the sin of lust. And considering I've long thought the "C" might be for the name Chambers (the Viscount of Druitt's family name), this would make sense. The Chambers line could have a particular penchant for the more lustful or hedonistic pursuits.

Oliver A. -- Avarice. That's an extreme form of Greed. I have no idea what last name this would be or where they might fall into place within the narrative, but this Oliver dude might have been seen as far too greedy for his own good.

Alex B. -- Blasphemy. It's not what's typically listed as one of the "seven deadly sins", but it's considered one of the unforgivable ones. I came to this one because I couldn't think of a "b" word for Wrath. However, when our earl watched his older twin being stabbed to death, his unbridled anger led to him making a blasphemous statement. That blasphemy is apparently what really interested the demon that was summoned.

So, Alex could have been blasphemous and/or wrathful. Again, I don't know what last name the "B" might be.

Cloudia/Claudia P. -- Pride. We know the Phantomhives can be a prideful lot, and Vincent says the Phantomhive women tend to be particularly strong-willed. Apparently, Undertaker repeatedly warns them about it, too... saying they keep losing touch with the fact their power comes from support they receive from others, and how they will fall if they lose that support. Our earl wearing that ring like a collar around his neck by his own volition also seems to be a matter of pride, and Undertaker warns it could end up "choking" him someday. So, perhaps our earl's grandmother was a particularly prideful sort of person. Vincent might have been, too. Francis/Frances sure seems to be....

Molly/Mally G. -- Gluttony. No idea who she is, but she's the one who died first, among the people represented by lockets. I'm reminded by some old research I did on Queen Victoria and her early scandals, back when she was new to the throne. She ascended the throne in 1837 (coronated in 1838), and an early scandal involved a female servant whom Victoria accused of getting pregnant out of wedlock. Her belly was so swollen that she looked pregnant, but it turned out to be a horribly large tumor in her abdomen. I had once wondered if Molly/Mally was a Kuroverse version of that unfortunate woman. The possible "sin of gluttony" reminded me of that swollen belly mistaken for pregnancy. And pregnant people are said to be "eating for two".... 🤔 It's a long-shot, but she could have been a royal servant repeatedly caught stealing food, or something? Accusations against her could have been some huge misunderstanding, too, particularly if Victoria acted against her before John Brown was by her side... or if he was there and knew the truth but did the queen's bidding anyway. It seems like a weak motive to kill someone, but the queen might not see it that way. Not if she truly believes the person is committing a deadly or unforgivable sin.

Gilbert D. -- Dejection. That's the term sometimes used by the orthodoxy instead of Sloth. Gilbert could have been someone who was too overcome by depression or even just apathy. If we are talking about someone who specifically pissed off the queen, it could be that he neglected to follow her orders. I used to think the "D" could stand for Dalles/Durless, which is apparently Madam Red's married name. If the death was in 1885, it could have been Madam Red's husband, supposedly killed in that carriage accident, but I don't think the accident was really an accident. He was the Baron of Burnett, and he showed deep affection for his wife and unborn child, despite the fact Madam Red was still in love with Vincent. If it was him (another long-shot), then he could have been killed for not giving a toss about the queen's intentions or goals. If the death was in 1862, as one image of the locket shows, then who knows. March 1, 1862 was a few months after Prince Albert died, so it could have something to do with Albert's death. Like a physician whom the queen blames for not doing enough to save her beloved Albert's life. This is me using a lot of words to say idk who Gilbert is.

Harry E. -- Envy. How Harry's envy leads to him being targeted for death, idk. I also have no clue who he might be. Perhaps he was envious of the queen herself. There were many attempts on her life, especially early in her reign. I found a total of 8 known attempts on her life, committed by 7 different people (one failed twice), but none of them happened in 1851. However, Vincent was born in 1851. Harry could have been involved in some plot to kill or overthrow the queen. Otherwise, I got nothin'.

Well, I don't know if any of this will pan out, but it sure is an interesting idea! Also, it doesn't take anything away from my leitmotif theory, so I kind of like it. We all want to know why and how these people died, right? Deeply hidden clues about their "sins" is a cool concept, and I think it's still worth pursuing, even if their last initials don't end up being that clue.

[lehdenlaulu]

Final episode, let's see how it goes:

Oh yay, another domestic violence warning.

Moonlight Sonata, huh? A little on the nose but alright.

"Those Who Must Be Kept"???

Well, at least you're not spilling all of the secrets, my dude.

Buenos Aires, really? The Nazi metaphor is a liiiittle heavy-handed here.

Aw, I guess it makes sense with the plan but it's interesting that we're finally really seeing Lestat and Louis acting all coupley.

Claudia's taken aback too, it seems.

Rashid hanging out in the sunlight again, huh? Though Louis conveniently left sunlight out in his list of how to kill a vampire at the beginning of the episode Though it was established before.

Though if he is Armand, I guess Daniel doesn't have to make any phonecalls on his behalf in this version. 😜 Guess he won't be attempting suicide by sunlight, either.

Louis is amused. Honestly, what's the fucking deal here?

Hmm. Very Théâtre des Vampires. Only even more public -- and in much more modern times with modern means to spread information. Marius shouldn't be happy.

I mean, I don't know if this, even beyond the excessive goriness that is certainly not book accurate, is something these three would ever do in the books, but hey, at least it's sort of fun?

Still not a fan of how Antoinette was used on the show.

No swamp for Lestat this time, eh?

Nice, Daniel, niiice. 👏

I guess I should say it again now that it's confirmed: Hello, Armand.

Love of your life, eh? Well, guess you've been together longer now than you ever were with Lestat.

But mate, you gotta start giving me more if you want me to buy you as Armand. Especially if we're setting up a love triangle of any kind. In the books Armand is the perfect foil to Lestat because he's just as fucking extra but in a different way.

Interesting thought, though: I was thinking how Rashmand's eyes were generally really flat and expressionless when they were what I assume is the actor's natural dark brown eyes, and there are three options: 1) it was by design because that's what contacts do to your eyes 2) it was by design to try to convey the inhuman stillness of older vampires 3) our man went to the Brad Pitt School of Sleepwalking Through Vampire Roles. The first option would be preferable, all in all, though still kinda weird. Because honestly, we should have been able to see more glimpses of his real personality through the servant act. It's not like most of us book readers didn't immediately suspect anyway.

I mean, I'm relieved he's at least still Armand and the Théâtre des Vampires storyline is still happening, but I still want to know why the 'human servant' charade was even necessary. It's not like the gloves and contacts disguise was very effective if they thought Daniel might remember him. 🤨 (I must say I'm also a little bummed the disguise was so mundane because Armand as a witchy little bitch adept in the Spell Gift should have been able to make Daniel see him as a huge pink flamingo if he wanted to. That's the route I would have taken as the showrunner. Oh well.)

I'm also assuming we've dropped the "Armand stalks Daniel for years and teases him with power and immortality" part. Unless Daniel has conveniently forgotten that as well. Though from the way they've both lowkey been playing with him, I have to wonder whose idea this whole interview was in the first place and what the real reason is.

All in all, much better than the previous one. Full verdict of the season to follow.

[vividxp]

Part 3 of Liveblogging my second watch of IWTV Ep 5 because I need to process and get it all out

Part 1

Part 2

So the reveal that Claudia has been trying unsuccessfully to turn humans into vampires. She demands for Lestat make her one, otherwise she’s going to go and find other vampires. 

Louis finally gets angry at Lestat and tells him to shut the fuck up. Like dude, same. Like is Lestat right that other vampires are most likely bad news? Probably. Is he still being shitty? Yes. Like...his resentment of Claudia is pure and strong. He really has deluded himself into blaming her for the downfall of his relationship with Louie. The delusion is powerful. Everyone knows this isn’t true, everyone knows Louis straight up left him...that as much as Lestat wants to blame Claudia for ruining things, it was Claudia who managed to salvage scraps out of the burning trash heap of their relationship. And what does Claudia get in return? An eternity of horrors.

Claudia asks Louis again, “He treats us like shit and you take it, why is that?”

Girl, I’d like to know too.

The reveal that Antoinette is still in the picture is shocking to me. Like what the fuck is so special about her that she’s still in the picture? Is it the fact that Lestat knows that it would hurt Louis? That Louis showed jealousy for the first time over her? 

“He’s gotten tired of us Daddy Lou, the housewife and a mistake”

I will now transcribe my reaction to Lestat daring to open his mouth to speak words after this bomb was dropped. “Shut the fuck up, no seriously, shut the fuck up, don’t even try it. just shut up.” 

And then he’s like “I’ll kill her soon.” Bitch, fuck outta here. The fuck?

Claudia tells Louis to think about his decision to turn her. And I agree with her. Actually you know what, I’m Team Claudia this episode. Like even though she is being reckless, the way that her new family has treated her has been bad and I commend her trying to make something out of her situation. 

Louis’s examples of explanations for his actions were all bad. “Vampires were born out of trauma”. Yeah, but like she said, she could have lived if he truly cared about her well being. She could have died. There was a line that Lestat says at the end of the episode and it rings devastatingly true “it was never you”. It was never about Claudia it really wasn’t. That’s the tragedy. 

Daniel telling Louis that he and Lestat are boring and annoying and that Claudia’s story is what’s going to get the people going. Which judging by reactions so far seems to be correct. I saw someone mention that Daniel’s remark that "once you put it out there, they decide what it is” is something that fans have to keep in mind when viewing this episode.

I absolutely disagree with that sentiment. IMO this feels like a meta commentary on the writers themselves. Are we not seeing exactly what Daniel is saying play out? Whatever the writers’ intentions were with this episode, viewers are deciding what is it for better or worse. This self awareness does make me believe that the writers know what they’re doing with this turbulent ride of the episode. I don’t know how they’re going to be able to land the plane but I’m willing to see the attempt.

We’re getting to the halfway mark of the episode. I think this is a good spot to end this for now. 

[elisaintime]

I’d honestly feel so bad for Louis if all he gets is one sloppy bj lol, while Lestat get’s a side chick for decades. There is absolutely nothing wrong with open relationships and having multiple partners, but like…how can amc promote the show as this epic, beautiful love story if Lestat has a side chick for YEARS and flaunts her, while Louis only gets one bj one time from a dude he never sees again. And Louis and Claudia are cool with Lestat showing off his mistress….it doesn’t make sense lol (especially if Louis was already jealous of her beforehand) . If this really is the reason as to why Antoinette is in multiple episodes, then Louis should have his own side piece too!

I agree with you! This is why I'm holding out hope that Antoinette is NOT Lestat's girlfriend past their affair in episode 3, for however long it lasts (weeks? months?). The fact that she's NOT in episode 4 makes me think that once Claudia gets made, Antoinette is out of Lestat's life at least for a while. Claudia gets made in episode 3 (I'm guessing at the climax/end), then they spend all of episode 4 as a happy family doing vampire things... and then for SOME reason, Antoinette comes back in episode 5 and sticks around until the end of the season. Episode 4 covers 1923, so 6 years after Lestat met Antoinette. Episode 5 then would either start in 1923 as well, or perhaps even later. Maybe after being apart from Lestat for 6+ years, Antoinette and he get back together? Because the new-kid-induced-honeymoon is now over for Louis and Lestat? OR, as I am hoping, maybe Antoinette serves another role in the show? Maybe she becomes some sort of adversary for those last 3 episodes in the future of the vampire's lives? If Antoinette is in her 30s in 1917, then she'd be in her mid to upper 50s by episode 7 in 1940. 🤔🤔🤔

We do know that IF the TV show gets a Season 2, it will cover Louis and Claudia's time in Europe (meeting Armand, etc), but unlike a book where you can just cut a character out of it for half the story, you can't do that with your lead actor in a TV show. Actors have contracts that demand screen time! So the show will have to come up with a B plot for Sam Reid to be doing as Lestat during Season 2 while Louis and Claudia are in Europe. I was personally hoping this B plot would be mostly flashbacks to Lestat's past, BUT its possible that Antoinette will feature as his companion in Season 2. Since she's still around in Episode 7 of the first season, there's no reason not to suspect that they'll bring that actor back for the next one as well as part of whatever they're having Lestat do. Maybe her fate does end up being the same as Antoine's after all, and Lestat makes her a vampire after Claudia "kills" him? She'd be in her 50s, and seeing him with an older woman vampire companion (who's not his mom) would certainly be a change! UNLESS he made her a vampire way back in 1917 in Episode 3, and she remains as ageless as they do. In which case, why is she missing for all of Episode 4?? I am so curious!