#he still abused her of course but the relationship between him and claudia

[bogunicorn]

Interview with the Vampire is, in terms of genre queer melodrama, what fandom really wanted something like SPN or even Hannibal to be. It has the longing, the drama, the messiness, the blood and violence, and it also lets the vampires fuck.

And it made Claudia and Madeleine lesbians who get to tell the other characters to fuck off and Madeleine refusing to be saved because "Claudia is my coven" is everything I want in a tragic love story. RIP Claudia and Madeleine, you would have been amazing vampires and would have been happy if you weren't surrounded by fucking idiots

[heliza24]

No Children, etc in ep 2.6 of IWTV

This episode is all about children and women, isn’t it? And how difficult and painful having a child as a vampire is.

Misogyny is big theme in the episode: way the plot moves around Claudia and Madeline, Madeline’s almost rape, her abuse at the hands of the mob. The women are cut out of waiting for Godot; if Godot is hope, and never arrived for the pair on stage, it never arrives for Claudia and Madeline either.

It also makes Armand exposed because it lets the coven plot around him. His kind of feminized role and his trauma leaves him exposed too, torn between Louis and the coven. Armand is the wife being asked to reproduce here. The way he reacts to Louis asking him to turn Madeline is so interesting. He doesn’t even want to watch Madeline’s turning, and the only way he would have conceded to that was if Louis had stepped into the dom role (the “masculine” role, if you will indulge outdated gender roles in order for me to make thematic point) to make him. This is likely based on his own trauma of his turning and his relationship with Marius, but maybe also because he’s already torn between loyalties to the coven and Louis by then.

The way his refusal to turn someone plays in Dubai is so fascinating. In some ways Daniel reacts to Armand like some people react to women without kids. He’s just totally shocked about how it could be possible that Armand has never made a fledgling. (of course this whole interaction is complicated and given layers by any history Armand and Daniel had together, including times that Daniel may have asked to be turned. I am sure that is playing on Armand’s mind; he’s delivering everything in that scene directly to Daniel. Daniel used to know, extremely intimately, all of Armand’s hang ups about creating a fledgling. And there’s still grief and bitterness tied up in that conversation for Armand.)

The fact that the magnolia tree in the Dubai penthouse could have been propagated from a cutting taken by Armand in Paris is so interesting. I think that can symbolize a lot of things: the hope that Louis feels in their relationship, the intertwining of New Orleans and Paris, Armand’s own sentimental attachments (to Louis and the world) that he rarely lets himself vocalize. It’s even in some ways a painful reminder of Armand’s betrayal of Louis and Claudia, a monument to his false promises. There’s also the fact that he was intentionally growing the tree in Paris, giving it new life in a way he won’t give a fledgling life, and that if the tree in Dubai is related it was propagated, artificially replicated, and not grown from a seed. But I also think it’s fascinating that we find this out in the same episode that Armand is inserted into a scene that has strong Adam and Eve symbolism. In his interaction with Madeline, Armand is the unwilling serpent, trying to scare Eve out of eating the apple she’s taken from the sacred tree of knowledge. So his connection to the tree feels important! And here’s that theme of misogyny again. Even though the roles are somewhat inverted here, Eve still gets punished for her acceptance of vampirism and of Claudia.

I do love that Madeline is the first person to make Armand question- even just for a second- his certainty that he knows exactly how Claudia will end. Nothing is prewritten according to her, and of course she’s right. But it’s not enough to shake Armand out of his other biblical role this episode. He still plays Judas, and self fulfills the prophecy he created for Claudia, and all child vampires, in the process.

I think it’s so fascinating that Louis’s one fledgling is not his child, but a partner for his child. Turning Madeline is like walking Claudia down the aisle at her wedding. It simultaneously reinforces how distant he is from Claudia (they didn’t have this turning experience together) and how much he would do for her. And there’s something so painful about how deadened he is to everything afterwards. Something about seeing the true love between the women and of letting go of Claudia takes the last pieces of feeling out of him. It’s what makes it so uncomfortable for him when Madeline still senses the love he has for Armand/Lestat (I do think she was feeling both in that scene, in a complicated way).

In this episode that’s all about children and the characters’ complicated relationship to them, it feels significant that Claudia is seen, really and truly, as an adult for the first time. As much as Louis has claimed to be thinking of her as a sister, he can never really let go of her as a daughter. I think it’s really beautiful the way that Madeline sees her. Claudia’s younger body isn’t a forbidden subject between them; they discuss it in one of the earlier episodes. But Madeline sees her agency and her joy and her hard won wisdom before anything else. I’m so glad we got to see Claudia through Madeline’s eyes, as she would like to be seen, at least once before next weeks’s episode.

@bluedalahorse and I have talked a lot about the queer phenomenon that sometimes happens, when someone’s lover also becomes their mentor and maybe even parental figure, guiding them into queer culture and making up for nuclear family that may have rejected them. I think this is hard coded into the concept of makers and fledglings, and is a big part of why vampirism works so well as a metaphor for queerness, amongst other things. I think this episode did a really good job of exploring the complications of those type of relationships.

[murfpersonalblog]

Hello! I have been engaging in your analysis recently and I am satisfied by how thorough and sourced they are. I have been thinking about the possible parallel between Gabrielle and Louis of late and I was wondering if you think anything about it being possibly explored in the show. Gabrielle is masc presenting so I wonder if Louis' feminity will also be explored. There's so much I'm wondering!

Omg thanks so much for asking, and thanks for liking my stuff @timotheeronan! Tuck yourself in for a long AF post, cuz I've been wanting to get things off my chest about Gabrielle for a while (X X).

I FULLY expect S3 to make parallels between Gabrielle & Louis, yes. Their complex power dynamics with Lestat as Mother/Son, Fledgling/Maker are interwoven with their roles as spouses: Gabrielle as the Marquis' literal unhappy housewife AND Les' temporary Blood Spouse; and Louis as Lestat's metaphorical "unhappy housewife" and endgame Blood Spouse; and the ways they BOTH broke away from this to forge their own identities separate/free from him; "I'm companion enough for myself now."

On top of this, there's the CRUCIAL exploration of gender expression Gabrielle goes through. Gabrielle is so iconic, as someone I've seen over the decades labelled as everything from a feminist icon to masc presenting to GNC to nonbinary to trans to etc etc. It HAS to happen, I'd be shocked & appalled if it doesn't. Esp. considering how Les reacts (both positively AND negatively), wrt those aforementioned socio-gendered power dynamics & roles.

Cuz like I've BEEN stressing wrt Les' Matador pjs & Mardi Gras dress (X X); and Louis' power suits & cardigans: clothes are just ONE aspect of a larger societal framework these characters are operating under (x x x x). There's a "visual hierarchy of power" Carol Cutshall describes, where clothes reflect MORE than just gender expression, but also reflect power: agency/autonomy/freedom, or the lack thereof. Gab's masculine presentation goes farther than just her outward appearance on the surface. Deeper, there's what it says about how she felt about her her immediate relationship with Lestat, and her broader treatment & place in her family, and the world at large. Clothes can be a form of resistance; a power move.

So if S3's take on TVL goes the direction I hope/think it will, Lestat's Redemption Tour will be part defensive/reflective, as he deals with his repressed traumas and the many wrongs done to him; but also the many wrongs he's done to others: Louis & Gabrielle (and ofc Claudia & Nicki).

Cuz contrary to what braindead fans/stans lead people to believe, AMC's adaptation is 100% about the cycles of abuse & trauma; and how power imbalances between vampires are merely a reflection of IRL social inequality due to things like class, race, and gender; which vampires just DELUDE themselves into thinking they're above; but meanwhile can't help but perpetuate--cuz they ARE still human.

Whatever this "documentary/tour" manifests as, Les is gonna have to be confronted with the ways that his actions in the past impacted his actions in the present; so that Les realizes he needs to course-correct in the future, to become a better person/monster/vampire "WORTHY of Louis' love" and forgiveness.

But he also has to reconcile with his mother; when Gabrielle finally reappears after ~200 years of deliberate radio silence (x x). She follows him on his tour when he pisses off the vampires of the world & they try to kill him (& Lou) for blabbing about their secrets.

In QotD, Les, Lou & Gabe share close quarters with one another for Les' tour. When he's is kidnapped by Akasha, Lou & Gab team up together as they grieve his absence & wait/hope for Les' return, forming their own bond.

So I'd bet Monopoly dollars that AMC's take on TVL & QotD will be an effing circus full of funhouse mirrors being held up to their faces, as they all see aspects of themselves (reflections of the past repeating itself) in each other. It's gonna bring up uncomfortable truths; but help them all better understand/realize WHY Les is drawn to Gab & Lou and loves them so much, but also where he went wrong with both of them; and where they went wrong with him, too.

And it all boils down to Family vs Freedom.

Les' oppressive nature come from his overwhelming outpouring of love. Lovebombing is his love language; overcompensating for how he felt insecure & inadequate & ashamed. He wants what's best for his loves, but he also thinks he KNOWS what's best for them, too. He hated being poor country-nobility, broke as a joke in that crumbling chateau. He was ashamed. When faced with the horrific reality of his mother dying, his grief's wrapped up in wondering about the things she'd wanted, & fantasizing about the all things he'd wanted for her.

Cuz their relationship, as strained as it was, was marked with "grand and loving gestures" of GIFT-giving.

Les saved both Gab & Lou's life when he Turned them. Lou was suicidal (& no doubt careening towards alcohol poisoning); while Gab was dying of consumption. The Dark Gift is his ultimate show of love for those Les turns, his way of saying: I love you, I want you to live forever, and I wanna live WITH you forever, "be my companion;" we can keep each other company forever. But because vampirism is damned/cursed, the gift comes at the price of him potentially losing them anyway--cuz vampirism gives them power, and ultimately: freedom. (Hence: Les' abandonment issues.)

For Gabrielle, an 18th-century woman trapped in that awful chateau with that awful abusive husband raising awful abusive sons, books were her escape from reality; and her library was her nest/shelter.

We don't get much of Gab's POV/thoughts, but Anne Rice talked at length about how books & stories & writing were her outlet/escape; her Dreamworld when she was lonely/depressed/grieving/etc.

"Sometime in that year when seven-year-old Alice was gone for hours every day, my personal dreamworld was born, the detailed and complex paracosm in which I started to live the major portion of every day with my own secretly imagined characters. I know for certain that the dreamworld was in full swing by the time I was eight, and had been with me “forever.” And several of the characters who peopled that dreamworld then in 1949 are still with me today in a vivid cast of thousands.".... "Now and then I abandon the ancient dreamworld. But I have never since 2005 abandoned the primal dreamworld, the most important one, the one born to me when I was a little girl, the one that existed from the 1940s up through the early 1990s without interruption, and that is with me now every day. I myself am not in this dreamworld. There is no place in it for someone like me. I’ve had fantasies of actually discovering it, or being somehow transported to it, but I play no role in it whatsoever. I watch and listen and inhabit its various characters individually, just as I do characters in my books.... "Before I draw the obvious comparison between this dreamworld and the world of the Vampire Chronicles, I want to make several specific points about the dreamworld...." -- Anne Rice: Alphabettery

Gabrielle H A T E D being jailed/cooped up that chateau as much as Les did--heck, she likely hated it even MORE; cuz unlike her son (a MAN free to go out and hunt & act & preach--if his father let him, ofc), a WOMAN/"tradwife" was to be seen not heard.

Some of the only times she really makes herself heard--exerting her limited agency/autonomy/freedom--is when she's FIGHTING Les' FATHER the Marquis, to DEFEND HER CHILD's agency/autonomy/freedom (the Mama Bear to Lou's Papa Bear with Claudia (x x)).

Cuz ironically, SHE was the breadwinner in the family--it was HER dowry money that financed everything, when the shiftless de Lioncourts went broke generations ago. (And we see the same family dynamic with Louis' family, where Papa DPDL ran the estate into bankruptcy, and Levi Freniere mooched off of Grace--how "tradwives" had to become independent & self-sustaining & break social norms & become the surrogate head of the household when the patriarch let them down; and how that affected Lou's struggle for self-worth when it was left to him to become the (reluctant) man of the family--it's a VERY familiar scene fort Les, and another reason why he felt akin to Louis. But (as usual) Lou FAILS where Gabrielle succeeds--he loses the Azalea, and becomes a cripple after getting dropped 2km from the sky; so Claudia becomes HIS mother, defending him from THEIR p.o.s. patriarch, Lestat; exerting her own limited agency--but pressuring Lou to do the same (the Murder Plot).)

She squirrels her jewels under her pillows, withholding her money so the Marquis & her sons don't BLOW it all; withholds her knowledge/literacy cuz they don't value/respect it; withholds her affections cuz they HAVE blown it. Gab's outnumbered in that medieval castle stuffed to the gills with toxic masculinity; she hates her husband; pumps out sons he raised to disrespect & ignore her; is isolated in the middle-of-nowhere Auvergne; & depressed AF. She resented her life; and comforted herself with books. She loved Les the most, but she kept him at arms length too. Les loved his mother the most, but he resented her, too.

I see so many posts about how "selfish" Gab is, and I'm like this is the same exact nasty AF attitude people have against AMC!Lou. They're DEPRESSED, ffs! The same women online who go on & on about feminism & misogyny & female autonomy/agency & how men don't understand/respect postpartum depression and battered-wife syndrome; and then look at Gabrielle AND Louis like they've got two heads just cuz they don't kiss blorbo Lestat's arse 24/7, like wtF????

YES, depression can express itself as petty spite & meanness/coldness & resentful hostility. Gab never taught Les how to read, cuz the books were her comfort/escape FROM motherhood/reality; just like Lou's books were his comfort/escape FROM vampirism/reality (read: violence/homosexuality/marriage/Lestat). It's an ANNE RICE self-insert about her lifelong "Dreamworld"--ALL of her characters represent parts of herself at different times in her life.

They're UNHAPPY, and only find pleasure in the fantasy of stories--ofc Gab wouldn't want Les intruding on her Me Time by teaching him how to read--esp. when Les could be sent to the church to learn instead--which he was. (Unfortunately, his father only wanted him there long enough to learn the basics, not to commit himself to the church as a priest.)

Art imitates life--fantasy tv shows about vampires included. Les' behavior is PATENTLY familiar, and I fully expect S3 will mirror plenty of celebrity scandals involving IPV--Chris Brown's Apology Tour to the press immediately comes to mind, after he beat the breaks off of Rihanna. There are countless IRL cases where battered/abused/depressed women are negligent to their kids; and those kids grow up to be abusive to their own partners & families:

"Rocky was...high-strung, jittery. Energetic. (His family describes him slightly differently, as quiet and sometimes devious, also on the shy side.) Before he shot himself [and his wife Michelle Monson Mosure, and their 3 kids in 2001]...he’d written a message on his arms. No one was meant to see it, and no one can exactly remember what it said. Something like 'I deserve to go to hell.'" "Rocky was quiet...troubled, rebellious, but he loved the outdoors. Fishing, camping...the outdoor stuff, the quiet, even his real name, Gordon, he shared with his father. The nickname had come from his dad when Rocky was a baby, a tribute to the boxer Rocky Marciano. Gordon and his first wife, Linda, had three kids, of whom Rocky was the eldest.... When they divorced, Linda gave him full custody of all three kids.... [Gordon] had met someone at work pretty quickly after he and Linda separated: Sarah.... Although the kids had always had some trouble with school, after the move Gordon and Sarah discovered the kids were further behind than they’d realized, and though they hired tutors, the kids remained behind. None of them wound up graduating. Gordon claims that Linda planted the kids in front of the television or dragged them around with her wherever she went during the day, shopping or whatever. “Instead of teaching them ABCs and all this, they hadn’t gotten any of that,” Gordon says. When I spoke with Linda she remembered things differently, of course.... Rocky was in trouble after the move almost immediately.... By seventh grade, Sarah and Gordon knew Rocky needed help. They sent him to Pine Hills, the home for troubled boys.... In a family counseling session once, the therapist asked Rocky if he was sad his mother had left, and he said...'Yeah, it was better after she was gone because then we got to hang out with [Dad] more, but not have the big fighting between them.'" -- No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, by Rachel Louise Snyder

-- Letellier & Island: Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence

Lestans keep acting like he's called an abuser out of thin frikkin air; that there are no parallels b/t Loustat's dynamic and IRL cases; and that Les's above censure just cuz he's nicer in the later books. Yeah he gets better--cuz he got REJECTED by Gabrielle/Nicki/Louis, BESTED by Claudia, HUMBLED by Akasha, DUPED by Raglan, TORTURED by Memnoch, and CHALLENGED by Rhoshamandes! Les LITERALLY went to Hell, for crissakes!

(x x)

Les pulled ish on Lou that he would NEVER pull on Gab, specifically BECAUSE she's his MOTHER. Les had a HARD time divorcing that image from his mind, even when he reveled in the power vampirism gave them to be free, and live the lives they'd always dreamed of back at the chateau.

Even when he knew she was The Vampire Gabrielle, and he was her Maker/companion/paramour, he held onto that image of her as his mother--"my mother's boy, my mother's man" (a la the pilot script).

The Vampire Gabrielle fully embraced her new identity; being an apex predator (better than even Les did; she's a BAMF), shedding all human attachments & trivialities (the social constructs of long hair & dresses; morals & mores alike). But that came at the cost of her shedding her her motherly role too. She was finally TRIUMPHANT: POWERFUL & FREE, and she dressed accordingly: as a man, with all of the societal affordances, liberties & freedoms that entailed.

(Gabrielle & Nicki & Louis are even tied together through Paris' Ile Saint Louis, where Nickistat lived & loved; and where Les turned Gabrielle.)

Patriarchal male privilege and vampiric gendered liberation for Gab works similarly but differently/separate but equal than it does for AMC!Louis, not just cuz of his sexuality, but esp. cuz of his race. As usual, Gab triumphs where Lou fails. Although he IS a man, he's a gay BLACK man, which put him even lower on the racist/sexist social hierarchical pyramid than a white woman (Gab included). From slavery times (Gab) to Jim Crow (Lou) down to the Civil Rights Movement, the youngest white girl (called "Miss") had more rights than the oldest Black man (called "boy"). For all Les' promises that he & his fledglings would be "equals in the quiet dark," white male Les was the ONLY one with rights over BOTH of them--as such, they're both on similar levels in Coven Master Lestat's household; even when they tried to exert their own autonomy. (The same holds true for Lou & Claudia, ALSO put on the same level.)

Les was just as conflicted with book!Gab's newfound freedom & choice of victims as he was with AMC!Lou's, for opposite but similar reasons, all boiling down to how HE thought his fledglings should act. On one hand he encouraged embracing vampiric nature, while on the other hand wanting to curb their killing to fit human laws he swore didn't matter anymore, like wtf--am I a lion(court) or a housecat? He was a pisspoor teacher to Gab AND Lou (and yet people wanna point the finger at Gab & Lou for leaving him, or blame megaladon!Armand for taking advantage of Lou' & Claudia's ignorance, like HUH?!?)

[EDITED TO ADD:] Lou & Gab are both oppressed by societal/gendered expectations. For Gabrielle, tradwife domesticity/femininity was her performance, her CAGE/JAIL. The masculine ideal for her was being someone like Wolfkiller Lestat: a macho hunter, slaying dangerous animals in the wilderness, dressed in men's clothes with her hair cropped short; not being called "Mother" anymore or having to raise kids & deal with her psycho husband.

[EDITED TO ADD:] But that macho-masculinity was performance for Lou ("Did I WANT to pull a knife on my brother? NO."). He was a "rougher thing, then," passing as straight, and it made him miserable. He wanted a completely opposite life (the domesticity of being boo'd up at home with his man, always dressed in cardigans, "smothering" his daughter Claudia, and just being a homemaker)--but what is the opposite of masculinity but femininity? What's the opposite of a businessman but a tradwife (the feminine ideal pre-feminism)? How can his pride/life as a Black man tryna be respected in a white world survive without nosey white women like Antoinette & homophobic white cops always asking about his 1 bed upstairs? For Lou, domesticity/"femininity" was FREEDOM--until Les took advantage of Lou's vulnerability and the townhouse became his CAGE/JAIL; and he became just as miserable as Gabrielle was--cycles cycling.

And unlike Gabrielle de Lioncourt, who had the honor of being Les' biological mother/maker/creator (the one who knew everything about him), with the almost sacred idea(l) of her in his head as his childhood champion/savior that allowed him to defer to her and accept her wanting to do & go her own way, even as he clung to the idea(l) of his "Mother" that made him resent her abandoning him (again); Louis had no such privilege.

Les was HIS Maker--"I put you on this earth." "I chose you!" Lou was CREATED to be Les' person: his bespoke companion; groomed & Vegas Married to not know a thing about Les' past/nature that Les didn't want him to know; seduced to love the monster first (not the man). Les expected Lou to be happy; not reject Les/vampirism & read books at home rather than go on sexcapades & killing sprees; ashamed of his true nature full of "self-loathing" he projected at Les.

Even when Lou was too weak & hungry to have sex, he still spent his time reading; and cuz Les can't read his mind, it's the best way to shut out everything and focus on his fantasy rather than his body's needs, let alone Les' emotional needs. He gets so much worse during the Great Depression, when Claudia's gone & he's given up all pretenses that he's anything but the "unhappy housewife;" and Les gives up the pretenses of not resenting Lou for "not honoring the Blood [read: ME] as he should." Hence: Ep5; "crushing what you cannot own;" and Les pissing all over Lou's name & reputation in the Trial; as abusers often blame their victims, or outright lie to make them seem crazy, evil, or abusive.

Thankfully, Les has already come face to face with how effed up the Trial was, and how badly his participation in the Trial/smear campaign hurt Lou's feelings; "Come to Me!? Those were HIS words! F-- you!"

So while I fully expect S3 Les to emphasize his own childhood traumas & abuse, and while I fear Gabrielle will carry the lion's share of censure in Les' POV (and in the fandom) for abandoning him, hopefully Les doesn't do what many abusers do and make it all about him and his man-pain. Hopefully he's candid about how Gab was wronged too (by his p.o.s. dad & brothers, AND he himself); and that his resentments towards Gabrielle bled into his resentments towards Louis. But I ALSO expect Les to still have self-improvement to do--TVL/QotD is NOT where he pivots from being an a-hole to a saint; he does some ATROCIOUS stuff in those books, and in TotBT.

The Prince Lestat trilogy is Les's final redemption arc, his pride humbled & then rewarded--and even then he's still a work-in-progress ("I'm, a lot, I'm not perfect").

Lou (& Claudia) emancipated themselves from Massa Lestat after the Murder Plot (or at least, Lou tries to--Loustat canonical endgame, after all). But they only get back together after a long period of on/off stints, as Les gradually figured out how to be a normal effing person for once; and how to respect Lou's agency/autonomy/freedom.

Likewise, his relationship with Gabrielle also vastly "improves," as she, like Lou in PLAtRoA, finally decides to live with Les at the renovated Chateau de Lioncourt; letting go of the past to build something new.

But he STILL can't help but revert to treating her like his bride/wife, doll, and mother, all in one (until she gets sick of it, ofc, LOL).

At Prince Les' celebratory Winter Solstice fete in BC, Gab dresses to the nines as the belle of the ball to please him, as Queen Mother of his Vampire Court; just as Lou's his Prince Consort/Blood Spouse. Les gets everything he ever wanted, his happily ever after, and AR tries to make you feel he "earned" their forgiveness, but YMMV.

TL;DR:

Regardless of what Gab presents as externally, or the way she WANTS to be treated; the way Lestat TREATS her is consistent with the way HE thinks it is appropriate for her to be treated BY him--same with Louis. Gender/sexuality/race be darned--Les "wins" by virtue of being the white cis male protagonist & hero of TVC. 🙄

So yeah, I expect/hope S3 will show a lot of subtle/nuanced parallels & even explicit intersections b/t Gabrielle & Lou. But I don't expect them to dump it on us all at once, cuz this process of accountability, forgiveness & acceptance is protracted over the entire length of TVC, all the way to the very last book.

Hope my long AF rambling & tangents answered your question even a little bit, omfg. 🤦😅

[saintarmand]

wait I need to hear about the Daniel Lestat parallels

in answering your question i ended up typing a lot about a lot of things... some of which i think is pretty good and some of which is messy nonsense. enticing sneak preview:

daniel and lestat's similarities

the show overall as a story about how substance abuse affects families

how daniel mirrors both louis and lestat as a husband and as a father

facts, conjecture, and lots of theories about different aspects of daniel's backstory:

how antoinette may parallel armand, madeleine, and daniel's daughter

how daniel might mirror claudia???

like lestat, daniel can be pretty arrogant. they both love to lecture. "this is just how it is, listen to me, i would know! i have so much experience and knowledge to share." classic old white man behavior. hell, they're both old bisexual white men even. like lestat, daniel doesn't think of himself as racist but is still throwing microaggressions at both louis and armand.

daniel & lestat, danlou & loustat

lestat and daniel are both judgmental of some of louis's life choices (though usually different ones) and are not shy about saying so. they both make faces at louis eating animals—daniel also just louis eating in general ofc. but WE KNOW he still secretly thinks it's sexy and is also perhaps a bit jealous when louis is drinking from a hot guy, much like lestat. (don't pick the jacked sailor louis!!! great aesthetic but NO.)

so personality-wise, daniel is a combination of both louis and lestat. (he even has some claudia in him with his quest for the truth. i bet claudia would love to be a journalist, digging up dirt on people, exposing corruption! she's already a prolific writer too. but i'm getting sidetracked.)

both loustat and danlou are fond of each other, attracted to each other, but are also constantly bickering, sometimes in all good fun and sometimes not.

we see daniel yelling at louis in the show, and he's always yelling at armand in devil's minion. like lestat, he has a lot of anger in him. i bet he could throw a punch too back in the day. and while i don't think he was abusive to his wives, we know he wasn't a good husband either. especially while he was using.

and this is where we get to the most important parallel between them: lestat's "overindulgence" in killing is analogous to substance abuse. of course drinking too much blood doesn't actually make him act the way he does, but what happens in the show is still very reminiscent of the way alcoholism and drug abuse contributes to relationship problems. the substance itself doesn't lead to abuse, but it exacerbates things.

human blood is drugs actually

in the books, lestat talks about getting drunk a lot when he was human. louis calls himself a drunk too, and in the show their relationship starts by them going out all night almost every night. then they start going out every night to drink human blood. louis feels pressured to drink in order to please lestat, but eventually he wants to cut back. lestat is angry, telling louis it's stupid, there's nothing wrong with drinking, it's pointless, it's gonna be so hard, you won't be able to do it. and of course he feels like it's an attack on his own blood drinking. louis doesn't ask lestat to quit with him, but out of respect for louis's choice, he doesn't drink around louis anymore. lestat starts having parties at the house all the time. louis is totally fine with it, he's there, it's fine, it's fun. at least until it starts to get out of hand. and then lestat's fucking around on him too. eventually louis has a big relapse, things get way out of hand, it costs him his job even, lestat's like lol welcome back! told you this would happen! so louis breaks up with him.

but whooops he comes back carrying a child. you know, in his arms! he really wants to keep the kid. lestat acquiesces. louis doesn't go back to drinking human blood, but he doesn't have to because lestat has a new drinking buddy, a 14-year-old girl! he gave her a taste and she loved it! yay! louis tries to warn her about potential consequences. he's had a lot of them. she was a consequence even, but a good one. but she likes drinking with lestat, and eventually she starts going out on her own. and it gets out of hand.

daniel is sober now, "like louis", but he had a big drug problem back in the day. louis asks him about the "best he ever had." black tar heroin is nothing compared to what lestat gave louis that first time. yeah, it's not just drinking, it's hard drugs that lestat gave his kids.

louis's family doesn't know what the hell he and lestat get up to all night but they know it's nothing good. he stopped coming over for months, even years, but one time he showed up, watched the baby for just a second, dropped him on the floor. he wasn't invited to the kids' birthday party cause they're afraid of him. he showed up late and broke the door. they cut him out entirely. are he and his... partner, the right kind of people to adopt?

one time the cops get called. they raid the house but the evidence is well hidden. mostly. they refrain on calling the child welfare league but they don't like what they see. louis and lestat lecture claudia; louis about the drugs themselves, lestat about not hiding her tracks well enough. and speaking of, are those track marks on her arms? we don't do that kind of thing in this house!

claudia tells louis he's the one who brought her into the house. enabled lestat to give her a taste. she leaves home, staying somewhere new every night. she's still using, on her own and in dangerous situations. eventually she returns home. it's safer with someone watching your back.

lestat and claudia say louis's abstaining comes off judgmental. so he starts using again too. they throw a big big party with great party favors. claudia puts something in lestat's.

in season 2 (and i'm spoiling the whole plot), claudia and louis will travel around looking for people who are into the same stuff. the ones they find are pathetic, living like trash. then they find a group having some real fun, big parties. louis's not into it, but he's into armand, who doesn't mind that he doesn't use as much. claudia will get sick of the parties but get louis to give this woman she meets a little taste like lestat did with her. but armand doesn't want claudia around. armand and louis will keep using together, meet a guy in a bar. give him a taste of the good stuff. eventually louis will want to cut back again, and armand accepts it, even helps him. but louis's not much fun anymore.

just this once, daniel is a step ahead of louis; daniel's second marriage has already fallen apart.

daniel and alice

daniel compares louis to his first wife when he tells her about her dyeing her eyebrow; she thinks she has a flaw and tried to cover it up, but daniel likes her the way she is. lestat treated louis's aversion to killing like a flaw, and louis internalized that, calling himself a botched vampire, but daniel likes that about him. louis is like alice in a way.

some wild conjecture: what if alice was an addict too? what if daniel somehow contributed to her addiction like lestat did with louis? what if alice stopped using like louis, while daniel continued like lestat? or maybe she never used any drugs, but started drinking due to strain on her marriage; a more indirect cause. and what about the kids? what if, like claudia becoming a blood drinker like her parents, daniel's kids ended up inheriting his addiction too? becoming alcoholics as teens or adults? or maybe it affected them even more directly, like one of them accidentally ingested something he left lying around, and almost died like claudia? okay, that got dark... maybe daniel avoided getting his kids directly involved, perhaps by simply not being around much, and that's one of the differences between their stories. narrative foils aren't supposed to be identical after all, just further the same themes. a parent's substance abuse affects the children, one way or another. we don't know the details, but like lestat's fledglings, daniel's kids don't talk to him anymore.

daniel proposed to alice "after he got his shit together" but we don't know when this was. we do know daniel had a daughter by 1978 (7 years before car seats are mandatory) though we don't know how old she was—probably under 6 given he was imagining her in a car seat. we can probably assume alice is the mom, and based on her commenting on this part of his memoir that he never owned a buick, we can probably assume they were together around this time, or at least in contact. we also know he used black tar heroin in 1978.

this is only like semi-canon but on his linkedin page it says he started working as a freelance investigative journalist in 1982. it could be a random date but i imagine he's "got his shit together", working real jobs. so maybe it was around this time that he and alice got married. if we're assuming the devil's minion mind wipe theory is true, it would also be very fitting if the confusion of lost memories was what drew him specifically to investigative journalism as opposed to the portrait pieces he did before that. he doesn't know what the truth is anymore, so he starts looking for it wherever he goes.

and speaking of devil's minion, if daniel was cheating on alice with armand, then he's a lot like lestat indeed. but his secret lover is so secret he himself doesn't even know about him anymore. (or maybe alice did know there was someone, and felt very gaslighted when daniel suddenly started insisting it never happened after basically admitting it before? or maybe daniel's denials just suddenly got so convincing she agreed to marry him?)

two marriages, two children?

in 1985, daniel and alice were talking past each other when she told him she was pregnant. he was like remind me again later

louis and lestat didn't have another kid together, but lestat did make another vampire: antoinette. lestat had a child! while the marriage was going badly, a few years after getting (back) together. just like our boy danny.

after "breaking up" with lestat, louis will also have a "child", madeleine. he's giving claudia a "sister" while he's dating armand.

so here's a two-part prediction: 1. alice dumped daniel before their second child was born. 2. daniel met his second wife before his second child with was born.

so like lestat turning antoinette, daniel got alice pregnant BEFORE getting dumped like lestat (pun intended).

and like louis turning madeleine, daniel's second child was born AFTER he met his (soon-to-be) second spouse.

what if, like armand, the second wife didn't like daniel spending much time with his kids? it's been known to happen. we know absolutely nothing about this second marriage but i think we'll get something in season 2. is there something daniel shares with armand as the types of husbands they make? i bet there will be

daniel's childhood?

we know where daniel is now, and a little bit about how he got here. but the thing we know absolutely nothing about is where he started.

daniel was already struggling with drug abuse by the time he met louis and armand, doing what he "had to" to get high. we know it's not really the only reason he frequented gay bars, but still. he was at a point where he was willing to play the crack whore. so what led to it? addiction doesn't come from drug use alone, and genes aren't enough either. there's always something you're struggling to cope with that leads you to drug abuse. so what was it? his sexuality could be enough, but i bet there's more to it than that.

if we're looking for lestat parallels, rape trauma works. maybe his interest in claudia's assault was personal, his flippancy a defense mechanism? certainly a possibility. but childhood trauma seems like the safest bet, doesn't it? lestat certainly had it. but i don't wanna focus on him now.

i mentioned earlier that daniel and claudia share a passion for the truth and for writing. what if he had some of her childhood too? abusive parents, parents abusing drugs or alcohol, parents fighting a lot, parents cheating on each other. pick as many as you like. maybe he was even a band aid for a shitty marriage. maybe there was a difficult divorce. maybe one of his parents had an awful new partner and said they'd dump them but never did, or got back together every time. picked someone else over him over and over again. he certainly had a lot to say about that! maybe he gets so incensed over being lied to because his parents always lied to him too. maybe his outburst wasn't about louis at all. maybe memory is the monster. maybe his parents cursed him into the darkness. lestat's did, and he cursed his own children in turn. i bet that's what happened to daniel too: they fuck you up, your mom and dad; the poison drips through; we dance on the strings of those who came before us; memory is a monster. maybe daniel became his own father too. his father or his mother or both. it's usually both, right?

this is louis's story first and foremost but parts of it are claudia and lestat and armand's too, and daniel functions as a funhouse mirror for all of them!!!

whew

in adding the chapter headings i ended up moving things around so idk how coherent this is but i fear proofreading would only result in me editing this forever and i would really like to avoid locking even more posts into the drafts vault. 😭 hopefully it coheres? thank you for reading and please let me know your thoughts!

[galaxyspark-6e16]

spoilers for the dragon prince book 6

yes yesim late life got in the way but basicly this is the season of tears, jumscares, dread and more tears..

let me explain:

e1

oh pretty sk- wait whos cryi- ohh were getting his backstory aren't we..

man i can actually feel his grief over the screen

wtf do you mean for an instant?

omg viren is dead already

IS TERRY GOING TO BE THE ONE TO FIND HIS CORPSE!! NO HES BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH ALREADY

WAIT WHAT

aww i love their relationship terry and viren the come so far

ohhhhhhhh yeah i kind though there 

rip sir sparklepuff

honestly viren if you had your redemption arc earlier you couldve avoided this outcome but also it not entirely on you since sacrifice in your family is kinda tradition at tis point

prop for viren for taking responsibility but this is just going to damage his relationship with claudia whos going to see her efforts were for nothing

god that claudia cry.. her VA is nailing it

pff oh opeli so much to catch up on

ohh yeah callum def susceptible to aaravos call

o right zubeia was infected..damn i kinda forgot about her please let her be okay

nooo callum nnooooooo

oh that was a jumpscare

haha rayla

he took our blankie man hahaha

and soren too the comedy of this show

damn baker didnt know you were that innovative

ohh claudia jumpscare

for a minute i she was gonna do something to terry bt her leaving nim first is surprising, but unexpected. everyone has left her entire life so her leaving first as a way to protect herself is just soo heartbreaking AAAGGHHGGRR

terry convince her please shes not alone.. he truly loves her even at her darkest

e2

ohhhhhh are we gonna get a civil war?

oh claudia is now his pawn now

oohhh corvus is back yyeahhhhh

and the dynamic duo is formed

man thing are that dire in lux aurea

oh its not your fault you did your best to be fair and just is not your fault there were traitors among you

corvus on making sure soren doesn’t poisen himself 

and it seem he used to soren shenanigans at this point

aw ezra comforting zym as they say goodnight

best duo EVER

ohhh janai of course amaya has faith in you don’t ever doubt that

the parallels of janai and karem speech and cause between truust and devotion just sooo 

oh thank god zubeia is ok bt won’t be at full capacity anytime soon

awwww its confirmed ezren and zym brothers coded yeah

awww wedding time

e3

it doesn't aspire me all those flashback of callum slowly using dark maic as aaravoos is lurking man i really fishy

aww terry waiting for claudia 

really smooth callum

whoa never seen terry this focus on magic

GASP claudia!!!

o misteri sip

aww look how terry is gently taking care of her the details..he truly loves her

tHE HAIRCUT!!!! 

callum know well hos to rizz up 

!!!! lore?!

me too stella and sneezle me too

damn little matchmaker

AAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

GASP so thats what he was doing making her a prosthetic leg ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

and the way she started to walk towards him am i really for the antagonists, yes i am

mom and dad are fighting

and that promise is back..

viren§?! oh you werent kidding oh you going to face a lot of judgement

e4

its gleaming time!

ohhhh claudia the darkness is showing

oh boy here comes sol regem

wait what?? 

are celestial elves startouch or sky cause its starting to confuse me

wai is that viren staff?!

i really thought sol regem wised p in the years but is still led by his anger and misdjugement

cool a prophecy

oh soren you in for a surprise 

e5

oh soren going through the emotional toll

honestly not sure about this prophecy

oh soren, he finally got the recognition and approval of his father buut all the abuse and gashlight made him wary of him and can’t believe a good thinng viren says about him

so much lore!!! 

they can finally see

wait wdym darkness noooo

damn viren youre relly milking this whole remorse thing

e6

aguh i knew it i hoped i was wrong of course aaravos manipulated to take the fake pearl

whhats with the black and white shift?

ohhhh we re getting the origins of viren and how he started this path

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so kosmo saw the future and saw the possibility of telling the actual truth thats really clever writing

aww viren and harrow were really good friends (and unknowingly setting him down the path of darkness 

no callum you need to believe in yourself to find your truth- WHOA HEY YOURE FALLING

even if she understood why yo did wat yo did it was still orrendce what you did to get her tears now wonder she left even if you regret it back then and now it still not an excuse

gasp theres a star for you AWWW ITS RAYLA

SHES YOUR ONE TRUTH Ah

i think he did the right thing by not telling the truth to soren because as kosmo said are you helping or just shifting the blame and burden

 YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY EVEN THE PETS ARE CHERING

and at least it ends on a happy note

e7

red wedding wh is it called th- ooohh nnooo

aww rayllum

ohh no not the sunnfire elves conflicts

ah anya back

clouds?? feels like an omen..

aawww gren he was there since the beginning of course hes gonna get emotional 

aww ezren i know you want to help but karim isnt going to listen be careful

pff not now gren 

am i cryingover the vows? yes aghgghrhhu

yeah YEAH THEYRE MARRIED AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

OHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO THE RED WEDDING NOOOOOOOO

Wait what happened

wait is his plan was to take vengeance on the humans? or aaravos is controling him??

e8

the title man…

oh hes really wants revenge

soren NO

wow soren really has grown up he really is the crownsguard

gasp he going to save his father

ahhhhh better yet using dark magic to save them bt i dont think viren will do it soren

NOOOOOOOOOO SOREN NOOOOO

OH VIREN 

one thing for certain, he truly loved his family…and his last word…

oh of corse aaravos was beid all of this

ohhhh what truth

seriously what happened back then

and now claudia 

and now she s vulnerable

ohh lujanne we missed you

oh noo the ca ol save two

e9

is the title reference to the first line in the premiere?

 hahe terry face soo done with aaravos bullshit

wait wat- bAWWWWW WAIT LIKE THE STAR? theyyyre connected

never thought i a see soft dad aaravos

o raylla

waiit so leola was the catalyst to the madness that followed??

that kinda explains why he hates sol, because he snitched

is rayla parents about to cross over??

how could they doo that, she just a child scared and wants her father to protect her

so thats why he cried in the beginning

sp she became a star- ahh no which is far worse

and bro took cry me a river to whole other level which is testament that he couldnt go on without her..man

come on runnan come back

gaps shes your daughter awwww

yeah go back to the living

terry has a point, as much as aaravos is doing it for love for leola, hes doing it in revenge to those who wrong him and honestly he not wrong but how do you deal with grief and unjust retribution czasted upon you, who teared his world appart, sorta like viren for what he did to save soren

wow im seeing parallels two spells to bring back the dead one for for love and one for misguided justice

“love is the star of life” wow 

ohh terry

oh nno here comes news of the fall

we re getting a magical girl resurrection wait he’s a giant?!

nooooooooooooo and it ends here whhyyyyy

and all of this started with the death of a child..

[pynkhues]

Thank you for answering my Magnus question. That does make sense that the show will go there and yeah, I'm curious how they handle it too. I'd forgotten that it all happens on a bed in the book--that the metaphor, if it's even a metaphor, is that clear, and it makes sense that the show wouldn't shy away from that (I don't know how far they'll go or what they'll show, but I do think they'll make it clear that there's a sexual element). I'd forgotten the extent of the parallels with Claudia too -- that is fascinating and so sad. I wonder too if, from Lestat's perspective, ANY of his reaction to Claudia in that area is going to look different -- like from his perspective, instead of being purely callous, is it going to be concern that comes out wrong, or an attempt to "toughen" her because he thinks it's necessary? I wonder.

(x)

You're welcome, anon! It's definitely a complicated thing to explore, and y'know, probably something for people to prepare for in whatever form the show chooses to depict it in. I can't imagine they'll be especially graphic, given they haven't been, but I also can't imagine it'll be something they can easily shy away from either given Lestat's actual turning takes place during what is largely alluded to as rape, and the dialogue of that scene is so important they had Lestat literally quoting it in Magnus' tower in 2.08.

I think a lot of how they do it too will depend on whether or not they're still leaning into the interview format with s3? I'm inclined to think they will be, given that's the name they chose and stuck with, but what that actually looks like is anyone's guess at this stage.

With Claudia and Lestat too - - yeah, it is sad. I don't know what the show is intending to do, of course, but their dynamic kind of reminds me of a few recent studies around the conecpt of a perfect victim, and how survivors of violence, including and especially rape, can sometimes (and sometimes often) not believe each other, or diminish what happened to each other. It's such a destructive act, and there's this sense of like - - it happened to me because of x, and how could it have happened to this other person when x wasn't a factor for them?

Claudia and Lestat's assaults are so different, yet have so much crossover too - they both happened after they left the quote-unquote "safety" of a family home, they both happened when they sought to explore and experience a larger world, but Lestat was stolen from a hotel room, and Claudia briefly trusted a man who would steal her, and I think there's that element there between them, particularly given their relationship as we know it in canon, where they point the finger at each other as imperfect victims. Lestat could - wrongly! and I'm sure patronisingly! - accuse her of naivety and stupidity because of course that is something that could happen to her and didn't he teach her better, maliigning her as his daughter, just as she could - wrongly! and I'm sure also patronisingly! - accuse him of lying (which she does say explicitly to Louis!) because she only knows a version of him that is an abusive and controlling father who she refuses to share a real experience with, and ergo refuses to see as a person in his own right.

Like! It's tragic! But I also think it's tragically real, and I think there's some really interesting themes to explore there, especially with Louis as a satellite to this particular sort of trauma because while he's a man with many wounds, this is something outside of his experience.

[ofekma]

I am having a lot of troubles with accepting Claudia as a villain.

You see, a good villain is a person who with different choices could have been a good person, but simply chose the wrong actions.

A good villain is a person with agency.

Of course, a good villain can also be manipulated, misguided, used. But they still need any sort of agency if we want to accept them as a villain and not as just a puppet.

Claudia doesn’t have nearly as much agency as the show wants us to think she does.

The first and most major problem: dark magic.

look at this picture, she couldn’t have been older than eight at that time.

The show made it clear for us that dark magic is Always Wrong No Matter What (which I have a lot of issues with, but I’ll get to them later), with even Callum’s soul being ‘tainted with darkness’ as Aavaros says in season four, after using it one single time and then swearing off this for good.

So has Claudia had any chance to not head down The Evil Path, even before we first met her? or was she always destined to do so?

Why can’t we just blame every single bad choice she made on the magic that ‘corrupted her soul’?

We can’t even blame her for using dark magic at all, because of how early she was introduced to it.

Also, if dark magic being evil is an undeniable fact of life, you would expect humans to catch on to that at some point? instead of it being just some regular skill you can choose to learn. Especially after it got them kicked out of their homes and locked away from every other magical creature all those years ago. Because in general most humans want to be good right? so you’d expect them to catch on the fact that it’s evil and just ban it.

But it was so normalized that even Katolis’ own advisor was openly using dark magic.

Unless it’s not as evil and corrupting as we are told it is.

Callum didn’t think that it was evil when we first meet him, only after getting it hammered to his skull by Rayla and the moon illusionist elf that it was wrong, we see his aversion of it the next time he meets Claudia.

Claudia herself had no reason to stop using dark magic throughout the show. She didn’t believe it was evil, and she was convinced that the only people who thought it was were elves and dragons, who simply didn’t like the idea of humans having any sort of power. She hasn’t seen any proof of that being ‘evil’ until way into the middle of the show where Viren started using it for doing shady stuff openly in public, and at this point Soren told her that she already changed for the worse.

So, at this point, where Claudia starts helping Viren in his conquest and sees him killing sun elves and stuff, she is already corrupted by dark magic. Is that a villain with agency?

Now, let’s look at the second point in Claudia’s lack of agency:

She is being manipulated.

When we first met her, she was 16. She was a minor looking up for her father and biased towards him, to think the best of him, to trust him.

And he and the Aaravos who was ironically manipulating him at the time, used this for their advantage.

Soren broke free of Viren, but he was told to do a horrible thing, got gaslight and neglected.

It’s easy to see that your father is messed up actually when he tried to make you kill two children who were your childhood friends (kinda), lied about doing that and proceeded to dismiss you and ignore you.

Well, not easy, it’s never easy to break out of an abusive relationship, especially with your guardian who you crave the approval of, but easier than when it came to Claudia, who he didn’t let see his true face until she was in too deep.

Claudia’s main character motivation is to keep her family by her side, which makes it even harder for her to leave. It’s important that she didn’t choose to leave Soren, he left her. Once again, Claudia refused to choose between her loved ones, so the choice was made for her. Once again she stood powerless as her family split.

And then? and then her father got killed. The only person who didn’t leave her died.

Claudia was all alone...

Wait no, not alone. She had company!

The main villain of the show that apparently has been pulling the strings and causing every single bad historical event ever.

Claudia was what, 17 at that time? And has just lost every single person she had.

Is that what you call a villain with agency?

And I doubt that she could have just came back home, both because that villain told her that there is a way to get it all back, and because what kind of a welcome would she even have home?

As forgiving as Ezran is, she’d likely sit in jail.

Rayla was looking for Viren despite the guy being very much dead, being desprete for revenge (because apperenately killing him wasn’t enough), what would have happened if she would have found Claudia next to his body?

I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that she won’t just let them be, She’d still want her revenge, and since Viren isn’t her for her to take it on, she’d likely take it on Claudia herself, who’d likely want revenge too because this girl took her father from her. blah blah “cycle of violence” as the show calls it.

Point is- the only person who was looking for Claudia did not have any good intentions for her. Callum, her childhood friend who was in love with her, spent those last two years thinking only about Rayla. Because I guess that since he got a new gf Claudia doesn’t matter anymore.

Soren, her brother, seemingly never bothered to look for her after the final battle, if he even thought about her at all. He had the duty of guarding Ezran and that was more important than what his traitor of a sister did, right?

When does he start thinking about her?

Once he concluded that she must have been the one to try to free Aaravos.

desperate, you say? I wonder why is that. So at least you already realize that she isn’t doing so swell right now.

Then the next time they meet, Soren proves that he still cares about her by shielding her from the impact of a fall after her bag gets caught in a branch, and that’s wonderful, but it came after two years of Claudia having no one, so no wonder that he couldn’t talk her out of freeing Aaravos.

Well, not no one, she has Terry now.

I don’t know when they met but this guy is the single reason why she isn’t completely off the rails yet. Someone by her side to love her and support her. Someone who would even kill for her, and she’d undoubtedly do the same.

Some people theorize that she is going to sacrifice him to get her father back for good, and that’s not out of the realm of possibilities, but the fact that she gave Rayla the coins with her family after he showed dissapointed in her shows to me that she cares about him and his opinion of her.

With Terry, Claudia gets to goof off and be free, like she’s been all the way back in season one. With Terry, Claudia is more herself than she is with anyone else.

It’s enough that one person had her back she needed it most, for her to still have light in her.

"Some light in her?” you may ask, “the girl must have done horrendous things in order to literally bring Viren back from the death”

That is a good point, but also:

1. wanting your father back is a pretty understandable motivation tbh, so whatever she did it wasn’t out of malice, or revenge, or power hunger, it was grief and loneliness.

2. we don’t even know what she did.

We are neither told or shown any of this. Yes, there is a boot in the corner of one shot, and yes, it was likely horrible and included killing sentient creatures due to what other dark magic spells seemed to cost, but this is all speculations. Am I just supposed to accept that she’s irredeemable now when I don’t even know what she did to get to this point? Terry at least knows some of it and he seems accepting, and the guy called her out on being cruel with the coins, and cried himself to sleep after he killed someone, so at least we know that it wasn’t horrible enough to make him leave her.

And another important aspect to show is that Claudia isn’t only willing to sacrifice other creatures for her loved ones-she sacrifices herself too.

When Soren and Viren look at her with worry after she struggles to stand, breaths heavily and her hair turning white, she brushes them off.

“the only important thing is that you are better now.”

she says.

Dark magic isn’t a fast, easy shortcut the way the show paints it as, it’s a sacrifice. A sacrifice both from the user and from the creature needed to preform it, and it’s a sacrifice Claudia is willing to make for her loved ones. A sacrifice she pays a visible toll for and we all know that sooner or later will catch up to her and cost her a lot of her health. Claudia knows it, too.

A sacrifice the protagonist trio is always saved from having to make.

Let’s start with the easy one- Ezran. Ezran is a human. Ezran can talk to animals and has a telepathic connection with the dragon prince. Why?

If it’s explained somewhere, I missed it. He was just born like this.

This is a really cool power that fits his ability.

But it’s also unexplained (as far as I know).

He has this power because he just does. Same way that elves and dragons just have magic.

You know who else has an unexplained ability? Callum!

Who just has sky magic now! because...protagonist reasons!

Because....idk, apperenately not a single human being in history has ever wanted to do primal magic as hard as he has???

So he basically breaks the established laws of the universe to have an easy path where he doesn’t have to sacrifice anything. Heck, he can even fly now. Only some rare master sky elves can learn how to do that and even that takes time, but Callum once again just Does It with the power of wanting it hard enough!

This way we can give out protagonists what they want and have them have super cool powers without having to get their hands dirty by the Evil Magic.

And Rayla.

The first time she met the two brothers, she chased Callum over half the castle trying to kill him, thinking he was prince Ezran. She then discovered who her true target was and while being caught off guard by how small he is, didn’t seem any less determined.

The reason why she ended up not killing him is that they conveniently ended up at the location of the dragon egg, giving Rayla a third option where she’d be able to get out of killing a child without having to go against everything she was taught. (and then of course she got to actually know and care for the kid, so any thought about killing him flew out of the window).

Then she has her ribbon that would have gotten tighter and tighter til she lost her entire arm because of that choice. But she was saved out of having to face the consequences of said choice because we can’t have one of our protagonists lose an arm! that would be horrifying! so....baby dragon magic! because dragons can just do that now, I guess. No explanation needed.

Good guys don’t have to play by the rules. Good guys don’t have to face the consequences of their actions. Good guys are rewarded by the narrative on the premise of being Good.

When Claudia had to face hard choices she didn’t have a sudden third option that would let her not lose anyone or not get her hands dirty.

Her first hard choice was who to go with as a child, she couldn’t choose so the choice was made for her. Claudia would have lost a parent regardless of what she done.

The second hard choice was to choose Soren or the dragon egg. She chose Soren of course, because her defining trait has and will always be loyalty to her family, but the plot didn’t reward her for this. Soren was alive, but he was paralyzed from the neck bellow, and if she wanted to have him back her only choice was to kill a baby deer to get the needed magic.

Do you think that she wanted to kill this baby deer? She adores cute things and she even apologized to it before doing that. That doesn’t seem like someone who has a disregard for other living creatures.

But since the show didn’t give her a way where she could heal her brother without getting her hands dirty, she had to make this choice. Again- a choice that affected both her soul and her health.

The third choice was between Soren and Viren. Claudia refused to choose. Not only that the show didn't give her a way to keep both, she ended up without any of them because one left and the other died.

Claudia did not get protagonist privilege.

Claudia is surely not innocent, she has done a lot of bad things. But is she a villain? or just someone who came from bad circumstances and had to make hard choices, some of which she got wrong?

If our main characters faced both similar choices AND real, lasting consequences for said choices, would they really choose better than she did?

But it’s been clear since way before season four that Claudia is going to get much worse, regardless of what I have to say about this.

Claudia has been destined to decline since the moment she was introduced.

Just look how sinister she seems in her concept art.

Besides, the story would not WORK if she won’t fall into the dark side. Not while being made as a cautionary tale about the damaging effects of dark magic. Not after allying herself with the villains of the show, and actively work to release the most dangerous one. Not when being willing to cross more and more moral boundaries in order to get what she wants.

It was predetermined from the moment she was introduced.

There would be no conflict without her moral decline.

And yet, it pains me seeing the girl who at least used to be sweet, compassionate and kind, who’s primary motive is to protect her family and keep it together, who has the same curiosity and hunger for knowledge as Callum himself has, going down this path.

[llycaons]

IWTV s2 ep1 (thank you vero!!!): a few thoughts

yayyyy new setting!!!! I love when shows set in warm places go to cold places. weirdly specific but when max and anne and jack black sails went to philadelphia I was clapping and cheering away. I love to see snow

I miss bailey bass but delainey hayles was really well cast. obviously she resembles bass closely, but she's also captured her character very well too. it ALSO helps that claudia and louis underwent a huge fracturing of their relationship at the end of s1 so of course things between them will be different. as of the time of this writing, she hasn't even looked at him. I imagine it's easier when they don't have to recreate the exact dynamic with a new person, but can build something new after a huge rift

speaking of, louis's recollection of claudia and his discussion of her losing faith in him and viewing him as someone she can no longer connect with is just devastating. my god

armand is REALLY annoying to me😭just so smug…and apparently he and daniel were a thing in the books which is really odd to think about at this stage but sure.

daniel is such a crotchety old bitch. you're going to whine about how a VAMPIRE talks about trying to avoid SUNLIGHT???? shut uppppp

THERE'S A REAL RASHID????

bringing lestat back, even as a dream, this easrly, was a mistake I think. he's a tremendously impactful and popular character, and by drawing out his first appearance a little longer, the show could have 1. reminded the audience who the show is actually about and 2. give lestat's reappearance some more punch

WHAT THE FUCKKKKK I gotta finish my rewatch of s1

I WAS WONDERING THIS TOO!! it seemed like a stupid misdirection bc daniel doesn't know armand's name, but in hindsight I guess armand doesn't want his name in there at all

EMILIA <3

THIS SCENE. EMMY!!!!

this song is so gd creepy

what the fuckkkkk

she's got the vampire aesthetic down SO well

WHY DID SHE DO THIS. like. why. like it truly doesn't compute at ALL. she seemed excited! she was talking about all the great things they'd do, all the pleasures!

oh their fancy bedroom looks so open and cold...maybe louis likes that tho. it certainly doesn't appear that armand has trapped him in a gilded cage and has control over all his food and movements like everyone was speculating after the end of s1. it IS a bit weird tho

I mean he doesn't seem unreasonable here, just cautious.

wow....marital intimacy. but unlike his relationship w lestat, they do rationally and respectfully have a discussion and both of them are satisfied with the compromise. also I don't think we've seen them speak privately about the interview yet!

omg so since the 50s...

this is so kjdhsfk. daniel's face! obviously I'm going to compare to his relationship with lestat again because THEY were so intimate in private while being more distant in public while armand and louis are the opposite, except that one big finale kiss, but just because that relationship was full of passion didn't mean it was good or healthy or louis's ideal scenario. maybe he likes this distance. maybe the physical separation and the independence is something he craved after being tied to a codependent, jealous, paranoid, melodramatic, maniacal abuser for decades. I don't think I could say with certainty he's unhappy, or it's armand who's making him unhappy

I hate 'stop feeling sorry for yourself' as a pick-me-up because it just makes an unhappy person feel WORSE. they're not feeling 'sorry for themselves' they're just feeling sad....man louis she just watched her dearly cherished hope throw herself into the flames 😭

end of the episode.....oof. me and you and me but LESTAT STILL THERE. HAUNTING THEM!!!!

[shelfperson]

i think a lot of this comes from the fact that some people don’t seem to recognize what daniel’s doing as a form of prostitution? the textual narrative surrounding that era of his life does not frame him as a victim, except for when in contact with vampires. but vampires, and especially THESE vampires, have always been symbols of sexual “perversity” and sexual danger.

which, in my opinion, is a big contributor to the moralizing that pops up in this fandom. trying to determine the True Villain in a way that just doesn’t pop up in hannibal, for example. this is a show highly concerned with sexuality. not (always) sexual IDENTITY, but the physical act of sex and it’s psychological/social effect.

and every single main character is either subtextually or textually a sexual “deviant”, assailant, or otherwise has a warped sense of their own sexuality while ALSO being the victims of sexual violence. this obviously creates a charged fandom environment, because sexual violence is for good reason the ultimate tabboo, and the show’s approach to it is to take for granted that you the viewer knows sexual violence is bad on principle, and then explore the topic from all angles. which is. hard for some people. so even if you grasp the sexual discussion, people tend to miss the nuance.

especially when, like the Paper Bag incident, the sexual exploitation at play is rarely rape. obviously armand bears the most explicit burden, and his backstory been pretty extensively covered so I don’t feel the need to rehash. same with danny.

but louis’ role as the house wife places his body under a certain amount of ownership, attempts to leave resulting in violent retribution. which is only exacerbated in his relationship with armand where consent goes out the window when mind control is involved and, like i said before, this is not a relationship where things like safewords happen. all the while, at the same time, louis is actively working as a pimp and/or killing 128 young lovers he lured to his house with drugs.

claudia’s relationship to sex can never be normal just by virtue of her body. and like louis, she spent several years extensively murdering her sexual partners who were by her own admission either much younger than her or literal paedophiles. still haven’t forgotten the breasts cut off and kept in her vanity. and none of this takes away from her experiences with sexual assault, or the horrible, horrifying violence she endured. and yet i never really see people talk about this aspect of her character, because it IS uncomfortable. Incredibly so. And her relationship with Madeleine is the natural evolution of this discussion, which is why i’m so surprised when people act blindsided or betrayed by their relationship OR when people act like there nothing at all weird happening between them.

i’ll admit, lestat’s backstory is the shallowest connect to be made here, but that’s mostly because we haven’t SEEN it. even so, there’s still a subtextual throughline here. he’s an adulterer and a domestic abuser, who was himself made subtext to the patriarchal machine that placed ownership over his body. kidnapped and left for death, after the explicitly sexual metaphor of his turning. and of course however they adapt gabrielle remains to be seen, but it’s impossible to discount an incestous relationship with one’s mother.

idk, this is really just a rant but i think a lot of the divisiveness that crops up sometimes really comes down to this. like with loumand, for instance. despite it being very clear their power dynamic is the Most Complicated, people see the very real and intentional commentary in louis being a former pimp and armand a former prostitute and make the a surface level assumption about who is at “fault” in the relationship, who exactly is the predator, when in fact there’s a whole dialogue about sexual autonomy at play here i’ve barely even gotten into.

while i see where some if it comes from, i feel like way more people took “as a former sex slave, armand is disgusted by teenage daniel’s sexual behavior” from the torture scene and not “daniel has been prostituting himself for drugs presumably for years, and armand both relates to and is repulsed by daniel as a form of projection” and i think that’s extremely fascinating.

like it’s a very consistent vampire trait that they only really get up in arms about social issues that affected them in their mortal life, and even then only when it would directly affect them now. i.e, claudia and louis being aware of and condemning racism but not really caring about european nazism despite very real parallels.

and there is. a big difference. between the ultimately consensual gross misogyny of the paper bag incident and armand being sold to a brothel as a child, then kept as a rich man’s catamite experiencing regular sexual assult.

AND armand is a man who does not experience that kind of day-to-day indignity. those are completely separate circumstances and armand doesn’t give any reaction to the memory aside from what it means for daniel. in fact, that remark has very little to do with how armand feels and everything to do with daniel’s lifelong feelings of guilt for constantly being a fucking asshole.

and the vampire armand, specifically, is not a creature prone to sympathizing with people who share his struggles anyway. especially not strangers he doesn’t know. look at the way he treats claudia, specifically. she’s in a spot similar to him, both growing up and now. constantly robbed of agency, both infantilized and adultified depending on what’s convenient, and in the books of course they’re both child vampires. and he doesn’t offer her any compassion whatsoever because he’s the type of person to take his suffering out on others and reenact his trauma with himself in marius’s place.

like mr. i-constantly-mind-control-my-lover, duchess of unsafe bdsm practices, is not offended by daniel’s understanding (or lack thereof) of power dynamics or safe and respectful sex. he’s throwing the boy across the kitchen because he doesn’t understand what makes danny special when, despite all similarities, he himself is not.

[princeescaluswords]

Invisible Empathy Gaps

You know, as irritating as the majority of fandom can be, it can also be very, very enlightening.  Since many of the participants work from a position where they believe they can do as they please because they imagine that their actions have no real consequence, they tend to reveal things that in what they would consider a ‘real-world’ situation, they would take pains to hide.

Often, the problem when people like me talk about the phenomena of “minority pain being invisible” and “empathy gaps” is that they can seem very abstract to some people, who think it’s just about ‘liking’ someone.  They don’t want to think about racism, they want to enjoy what they want to enjoy.  But these phenomena do exist, and they can be shown.

Take Derek Hale.  Tyler Hoechlin is a very attractive white man and a fine actor, while Derek Hale as a character occupies a very popular niche in entertainment.  We frequently talk about his tragic backstory, but here’s the thing: all we know for the first ten episodes of the show is that his family died in the fire and we’re only told that.   We aren’t even shown how it was accomplished -- it’s still murky even three years after the show is over -- but we know bits and pieces. Sheriff Stilinski slowly puts it together that the murder victims were possible Hale arsonists.  We learn that Kate seduced and raped Derek to accomplish it.  But we don’t see even a brief scene of the fire until it’s burned into Scott’s brain in Episode 10.

Yet, that’s all that seems necessary.  Fandom instantly wanted to fold Derek to their breasts on the strength of these bits and pieces.  The point is we had no idea of the pre-fire relationship between Talia and Derek or Peter and Derek until Season 3; we have no idea of the relationship between Derek and Laura ever.  But the sympathy was immediate and overwhelming.  The cry goes: Derek Hale deserves nice things!

Compare that to fandom’s response to what Scott goes through in Season 1.  We watch the horror on his face as claws grow out of his fingers in the bathtub.  We watch him wake up in the middle of the woods with no idea how he got there and then chased by a deformed monstrosity.   We watch him struggle with the idea that he might have killed Allison and then he might have killed Garrison in the third episode.  We watch him pinned to the gymnasium floor by Peter in Night School.  We watch him writhing on the ground while memories of being burned alive get stuffed into his head.  We watch him coughing up black blood, dying in the middle of the woods.  We watch him see Allison, the girl he loves, react in horror to his transformation.

And what does fandom respond with?  He’s stubborn.  He’s sexually obsessed.  He should be grateful for the Bite.   Unlike Derek, we’re not told what happened to him; we see it happening before our very eyes.  The fandom’s reaction to the first season is finding the nearest white boy with which to sympathize: compare their reaction to Scott being exposed to their reaction to Stiles scared in the McCall Hallway after the moon-crazed werewolf he just taunted screams at him.

Empathy gap?  What empathy gap?

And it’s not just once.  Let’s take Season 5.   

By that season, Scott has been criticized thoroughly by the fandom to the point of nausea about his willingness to give people like Jackson and Deucalion second chances.  He’s been scolded for not dealing with Allison’s dark phase correctly and not executing Gerard on sight.  He’s been mocked for trying to save everyone and failing and castigated for getting others to do his killing for him (which he never did).  He counts Derek -- who beat him, manipulated him, and lied to him repeatedly -- as a mentor and a brother; he has hope for Peter; he trusts the mercenary Braeden; and he doesn’t share fandom’s racist distrust of Deaton.  But the moment Stiles is overwhelmed by fear that his self-defense killing of Donovan will be answered by his losing Scott’s friendship, the fandom went into a paroxysm of tear-laden empathy, even though we never ever saw Scott hate someone before, even to the people who threatened his family and tortured him.

No one criticized Stiles for letting his emotions overwhelm his common sense, no one put him to blame for not telling just Scott or anyone.   They recognized the power of the event and the way Stiles was handling it as a product of previous trauma (mostly the death of Claudia and the nogitsune possession).

And yet, at the exact same time, Scott mishandled the imbalance between Kira and her inner fox spirit.  Unlike Stiles’s hallucinatory possibilities, we actually see Kira’s fox spirit attempt to execute a downed opponent, operate independently of Kira, and speak through Kira’s mouth (because Kira doesn’t know Japanese).  Of course, Scott remembers being tortured and losing Allison at the hands of a fox wearing a loved one’s face.  Scott (and the audience) isn’t dealing with an imagined scenario.  It’s actually happened before and happening before our eyes.  

But the fandom literally believed that Scott concealing his fears from Kira (and the fox spirit inside of her) was a terribly shitty thing to do, even while Stiles was busy lying to the entire pack at the same time.   

Empathy gap?  What empathy gap?

The fandom demonstrably heightens their sympathy toward white male characters while simultaneously dismissing or just missing sympathy toward minority characters.   Talia and Laura have been painted as suspect in order to heighten sympathy for Derek and/or Peter even though there is scant information that they did anything wrong (Talia was supposedly a tyrant though no one even hints at that; Laura neglected and abandoned Peter even though Peter never even suggests it).   The Sheriff’s fraught relationship with alcohol has been turned into child neglect, child abuse, and outright alcoholism even though Stiles rejected that idea explicitly.  There’s not a single scene which even implies that Stiles had to take care of himself in the aftermath of his mother’s death.  

But when we have an actual alcoholic who literally confesses to endangering his child with his drinking and literally confesses to child abandonment and we see demonstrations of his neglect on the screen (”I’ll send a follow-up e-mail”), fandom falls all over itself to downplay that into a one-time event not worthy of sympathy.  

We can put that into the same category as Boyd’s sister Alicia or what happened between Mr. Tate and Malia that she ended up in Eichen House or Braeden’s post-murder-attempt relationship with Deucalion as things in which the fandom ... just ... seems ... uninterested.   As compared to, say, the burning question of who is Liam’s mom?

There’s a reason that people try to make the point that audiences tend to downplay and erase minority pain, sometimes to such a degree that you forget it actually happened.

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[thehollowprince]

Proof that Claudia beat Stiles repeatedly? / His memory in Required Reading. It’s the very same episode in which Lydia remembers her grandmother bleeding to death and Scott that his dog got attacked. Honestly, did you even watch the actual show? Or you are too busy trying to crawl out of Scott’s ass and painting Scott as a rape victim like Derek canonically is or a victim of domestic violence like Stiles and Isaac canonically are to deflect criticism and justify Scott’s abusive actions/behavior?

Okay, hear me out... what if Scott hadn't been bitten?

I love Scott, you love Scott, we all love Scott. There wasn't a single character like him on the show, but I find myself sometimes thinking what if Scott had put his foot down and not gone into the preserve with Stiles? Or, what if they had gone out there, but the Sheriff had found the both.

Who would be the titular Teen Wolf?

How 'bout Danny? Slinking around in a preserve to look for a dead body would be something that a rich brat would do, but Jackson doesn't do anything by himself, so he naturally dragged Danny with him. Or maybe Danny's with him because he's avoiding his parents trying to show him love and affection or something. Either way, they're out in the preserve and they get separated (maybe Jackson is picked up by the Sheriff's Department) and Danny is trying to find his way out when he's attacked and bitten by Peter.

Now, we all know Jackson isn't the type to really care about other people, even his best friend, to the point of identifying lycanthropy based on his friend's suddenly superhuman skills (he'd probably get jealous, actually) , but you know who would notice?

That's right! Scott!

In this "what if" scenario, Scott was aware of Deaton being a druid, and was maybe his apprentice or something. But Scott is still Scott, werewolf or not (ha! I was a poet, and I didn't even know I was rhyming those words) and can't just let Danny suffer through this alone with no idea of what's going on, or let Peter have his way. So, he puts his druid training to good use and helps Danny at every opportunity.

"But druids are supposed to be neutral!" People will cry.

Which is why I put forth the idea that, since Scott can't just sit there and do nothing, he's no longer a druid, though he would still study under Deaton, but now he's at curandero, a healer and cunning person of Latin America.

Amazing, right?! Between him and Danny we could explore both Hawai'ian native culture and Mexican-American culture. I mean, personally, I would have loved to have seen Scott celebrating Dia de Muertos.

And, of course, because of their close working relationship, they develop feelings for each other, and maybe that closeness would inspire some jealousy in Stiles (and Jackson) and suspicion in Allison as to why Scott is always ditching her to hang out with Danny. Maybe have the Alpha Pack start to come in sooner, with Danny dating Ethan and Scott being both jealous and apprehensive because of the twin's allegiance.

But in the end, Scanny would win, because I said so!

Oh, but I'm also a Scisaac shipper, so I could see this whole situation playing out with Isaac as well. Maybe he's in the preserve to escape his dad for a bit, or maybe Peter wanders into the cemetery when Isaac is there by himself, and Scott, after sussing out that Isaac is a werewolf, does his best to educate him and keep him out of Peter's clutches and plans.

Ooooh! So many possibilities.

[iwillhaveamoonbase]

Replay ch. 3

Chapter is rated M

------------------------------------

Rayla got up at seven, eyes heavy from the lack of sleep last night.  “Noooo.  UGH.” She turned to angrily glare at her alarm that had interrupted her rain noises.  Aberdeen wasn’t the rainiest place in the world, but the sound of a rain storm always helped put her to sleep.  Her mum and da always joked she was named ‘Rayla’ because she was born right when the moon shone through a stormy night.  

Rayla went through her emails quickly, making a note in her phone to call both sets of her parents this weekend.  She missed the days in Scotland when Runaan would speak French with her and talk cheese or helping Ethari in his jewelry business.  Runaan ran the books while Ethari ran the artistic side, his work with metal and jewel placement both tasteful and modern while taking classic elements from Celtic art.  

Her parents had yet to retire from being bodyguards, but they regaled her with stories of Africa and Asia and Australia, how kind people were, the different foods and cultures. Sometimes, she wished she could have grown up going with them.  Other times, she knew they had made the right choice leaving her with Runaan and Ethari. They wouldn’t have had much time for her anyways.

Sighing, she rolled out of bed.  She had a breakfast date with Corvus before she had to be at the office.  God.  She hated those pricks sometimes; a lot of old money lived in that office.  She had thought she was leaving classism behind when she did her study abroad in the States for her law degree.  Apparently, America just hid their classism really well instead of openly displaying it like they did back in the UK.  

She lived well, was paid well, did better than anyone had expected her to do, probably.  She had been more focused on athletics as a kid, leading Runaan to force her into ballet (‘you already know some French. It’s perfect!’), Ethari insisting on Irish step dance (‘Lain’s mother was Irish.  It’s a world wide sensation, Rayla!’), and her own parents signing her up for kickboxing when she was in high school during their vacation from work. Her teachers had been frustrated that she was smart but didn’t ‘apply herself’ whatever that meant.  She got good grades, did better in college, got into law school in another country, and passed the bar.  She could apply herself just fine.  She just liked to be active.

Rayla sighed as she stepped into the hot water of her shower.  She had made a good choice buying this shower head.  Slowly, she felt the burn that had started last night begin to build back up again.  Green eyes entered her mind again, as well as a voice that she would love to hear calling her name out while she rode him.  ‘Calm down, Rayla.’  She couldn’t meet Corvus horny.  Rayla sighed, putting her forehead against the shower wall before starting to massage her breast.  She tried to imagine it was Callum’s hand stroking her, dipping down to touch between her thighs where she ached.

Would his hands be soft or rough?  There hadn’t been any obvious calluses when she had shaken his hand at the cheese shop. She moaned, dipping her fingers into her wet heat.  Her thighs rubbed together as she tried to chase that elusive release.  She didn’t have time for this.  The more she tried to speed up, the more it just wasn’t happening. Growling in frustration, she tried to play with her clit, breathing deeply as she finally found a rhythm that was working.  Rayla bit her bottom lip and sighed as she came, inwardly crowing with satisfaction. There was no worse start to a day than being unable to cum after a wet dream or being too horny to function.  

She washed and dried off, stretching her muscles before dressing.  The green pantsuit and black top showed off her toned figure without drawing too much attention to any one place.  Her heels made her even taller and, hopefully, a little intimidating to jerky clients or coworkers.  She grabbed her purse and went out the door.  When she finally made it to her car, she leaned her head on the steering wheel. Had she really started her day off by masturbating to a guy she met YESERDAY?  

She shook her head, driving off until she made it to the little café she and Corvus frequented. Corvus also worked in the same building, but for a different law office, specifically divorce.  Rayla had no idea how he did it, but someone had to.  She saw Corvus at their usual table, smiling at something on his phone.  “Your boyfriend sent you a naughty text?”

Corvus smirked back up at her.  “Nope. Just something about one of my latest clients.  Well, their soon-to-be-ex.”

“Good news or bad news?”

“Well, considering it’s a custody case, it’s good for my client.”

“Abuse?” Rayla frowned.

“I would not be smirking if that was the case.  No.  Apparently, the ex has been mismanaging the children’s money.  Lying about putting it in a back account for them and spending it on gambling debts.”

“You don’t call that abuse?” Rayla smiled up at the waiter who came over, ordering an earl grey, a coffee to go, and an omelet.

“Thank you,” Corvus nodded to the waiter.  “I do, personally, but everyone views that differently.  The children were never struck, no record of emotional, mental, or oral abuse.  It seemed like it was going to go 50-50 custody, which tends to be the ideal situation, but my client was concerned about the gambling problem.”

“So best case scenario, gambler’s anonymous and supervised visits eventually leading to 50-50 custody?”

“Best case scenario. Probably won’t happen, but we can all hope.”

Rayla shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.  I didn’t do criminal law or divorce law because I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing evidence of child abuse all day.”

“It’s a lot.  We try to spread those cases around as much as we can, because it gets to be too much when it’s all you see.  When police reports come into play, it’s even worse.” Rayla nodded.  “While you work for old money.  Tell me, how’s Kasef doing?”

“Hitting on me, again. Got upset when I told him off for glaring at a guy in a cheese shop for asking me a question.”

“He comes down to our office on his breaks and hits on half the women there.”

“Believe me, I know.  His father gets really upset about it.”

“How is Mr. Ahling?”

“Still insisting we call him ‘Mr. Ahling’ and not the proper ‘Mr. Patel.’  His health is starting to go downhill, so we’re hoping his daughter graduates soon and can start to learn how to take over the office.”

Corvus shook his head, smiling at the waiter with her when they brought their food.  “Thank you.  I’m telling you, join our office.  You could be really good at gathering information.”

“Thank you, but, no thanks. I grew up believing in true love with both sets of my parents.  I’d like to continue believing in it.”

“You still believe in love. I love my boyfriend so much we’re moving in together.”

“Well, congratulations to you both.  You moving in to his apartment or is he moving into your’s?”

“Mine’s bigger and closer to both our jobs.”

They talked work for a few more minutes, keeping an eye on the time.  Rayla sighed as she looked at Corvus.  “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“My hairdresser would love to do your hair.  Those layers are cute, but maybe you need a new look.”

“Ha ha.  My hair’s fine, thanks.  You remember me mentioning a guy in the cheese shop?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he asked to draw me. He said it’s cool that I brought a friend and I would like to bring you.  I don’t really have any other friends in the city.”  She finished her tea, opening the lid of her coffee to put some cream in.

“He seem legit?”

“I saw his art.  He also runs a YouTube channel with his friends and little brother?”

“What’s his name?”

“Callum Evans.”

“Katolis Squad!”  Corvus smiled, clapping his hands together.

“You know them?”

“Of course.  They do a lot of food stuff.  I found this café because of one of their videos.  Also, my boyfriend’s a baker, remember?  Ezran and Claudia do a series on baking and sweets and he likes to watch them.  Callum Evans is also kind of known in the art scene in town and I’ve met his aunt a few times.  Lovely lady, so’s her wife.”

“Huh.  Apparently, I’m out of it.”

“You just arrived in Katolis last year.  I grew up here.  You remember my boyfriend’s beignets you liked so much?”

“Those were delicious.”

“Ezran’s recipe.  His grandmother’s friend was from Louisiana and she taught him how to make them like it’s done in the French-Quarter.”

“Huh.  So, you’ll come with me?”

“Sure.  Callum Evans seems harmless, but since he already approved it, might as well take advantage.”

“Agreed.  I can take care of myself, but, you never know.”

“Where’s it going to be?”

“At his house.  He said he has an art studio there.  At least, that’s what he implied.  I’m waiting for a text from him to iron out the details.”

“Maybe he’ll ask to draw you nude?”  Rayla flushed red at that, looking down at her almost finished breakfast.  “Oh?  Something you want to share with the class?  A reason you were distracted during kickboxing last night, perhaps?”

Rayla glared up at him, taking a few harsh bites of her omelet.  She swallowed, keeping eye contact with him.  “He’s cute, I’m single, that’s it.”

“He’s single.”  Rayla paused.  “He broke-up with his last girlfriend months ago.  She made a big Instagram post about it, saying they wanted to focus on their careers.  Which was weird because no one even knew they were in a relationship.”

“So, he’s probably used to people trying to use him for fame.”

“Most likely.  He keeps to himself.”

“I saw that when I went digging online.  His step-father’s the governor and his mother was in the military for a few years, rising through the ranks very quickly.”

“Yeah.  They try to keep their channel separate from all that, though.  People are always asking them questions about it and they’ll either ignore it or say they aren’t a mouthpiece for Harrow Williams.”

“Fair.  I’ll text you the details.  I’ve got my coffee, gotta go.”  Rayla put a $20 on the table and waved good-bye to Corvus, leaving to head to the office.  Well, this just got even more interesting, didn’t it?

---------------------------------------------

Callum rubbed his eyes as he looked up at the ceiling.  All night, he had dreamed of Rayla.  Her white hair down and around bare shoulders, purple eyes starting deep into his. ‘Come on, Callum.  Make me feel good.’  He tossed and turned in his bed, suddenly thankful for the fact he lived alone.  His cock was at attention and it was not going to be going down any time soon.  Rolling out of bed, he took his sleep clothes off as he made his was to his shower.  He winced at the cold water, but sighing in relief as his erection went down. He had no time to rub one out.  He was already running late for his meeting with Ezran, Soren, and Claudia.  They had to go over whether or not to actually hire a crew now that their channel had six million subscribers.  

It would be a smart move. Claudia’s home-made beauty series was getting a lot of attention, as were her and Ez’s baking series.  Soren and Ezran’s sub channel and Twitch channel was getting a lot of attention in the video game community for their let’s plays and commentary.  Even Callum’s art sub channel was getting more and more attention.  He was just worried about going bigger because, if they did, what if drama followed?  It had been a PR nightmare when his ex-girlfriend had posted on Instagram about going their separate ways for their careers.  Callum had asked her to keep it between them because he wanted to keep his personal life and his YouTube life separate.  She had apparently felt that, after they broke-up, what he wanted didn’t matter.

As he quickly ate breakfast, he couldn’t get the idea of Rayla from his dreams or of her in a forest out of his head.  Those eyes haunted his every though.  ‘She’s a freaking fae.  That must be it.’  Callum rubbed his eyes again, sighing.  He sent a quick text to Rayla asking if she would be alright with her modeling for him in the woods outside of town.  She would probably say ‘no’, but Callum needed to get this image out of his head and out of his system.  He had just met her and she was distracting him already.  Still, Callum wasn’t so sure he could ever get someone like her out of his system.  Even if they had sex a week straight, he would probably still crave her.  ‘Stop getting ahead of yourself, Callum.  She’s probably in a relationship, you just want to draw her, and you have other things to focus on right now.’  

All day, as the group discussed the benefits to do YouTube full-time, barring Ezran because he was still in college, a Scottish accent and a pair of soft eyes stayed in the back of his mind.  Beckoning him to find her and take her under a waterfall in the forest.  Would she scratch and like it rough or did she like to go soft and slow, like a wave?  

Ezran snapped his fingers in his face.  “Callum, focus.”

“Right.  So, I think taking a step forward is a good idea….” He didn’t have time to be thinking about faeries in suits from Scotland.  

[sterlingarcher]

okay. i dont typically comment on shit like this. let alone at all. but given as how this show and these books are currently my number one special interest, i am apparently lacking self preservation and choosing to open up the flood gates by providing my take on what im reading here, and that is, if im reading this correctly.

“the unholy family” dynamic is not some made up fluff or fanon, it has been said by the writers and delainey hayles herself can be quoted as saying that she indeed has happy childhood memories with her fathers:

link to the full article if you would like to read the full context of the whole thing yourselves:

she admits that herself in her take on the character shes playing, that the hatred for her father is surface level. that if you dug down deep with claudia, you would indeed find more nuance to their relationship.

something else we have to, once again, remember, is the fact that we have had all but 2 objective glimpses of lestats character on the show. 2 objective glimpses that are not through the lenses and angles of other peoples century-old memories. the first glimpse is of lestat when armand calls him in san francisco. the second is of him at the very end of the season in the shack. this sentiment can be seen being echoed by the actors and the showrunners:

link:

link:

this isnt about fanon or limited representation, this is about reading deeper into the text and having a level of trust for how these actors are performing their characters, as well as how theyre being written.

my analysis of the way the show is handling claudia and lestat and louis’s relationships, both separately and together, is obviously going to be informed by my life experiences and my readings and my knowledge of whatever is being discussed just the same as you or anyone else. however, my analysis, as someone who has HAD abusive parents, one of whom has made great strides in self improvement, in contrition, in genuine shows of remorse and love: is that it is nuanced. my view is that this is a theme in the show as well as millions of peoples real lives: sometimes, someone can love you so desperately, but simply not know how to love you correctly. your parents are human beings too, abuse begets abuse, the cycle, etc etc. this is not to condone abuse, or condone shitty fucked up objectively traumatizing behavior, or justify anything, which i am not arguing that lestat didnt do anything wrong. my point is that he did love her, but he didnt know HOW to love her given his own trauma/abuse/experiences (crack open the vampire lestat and have a read).

he continued the cycle.

but the difference between him and our parents in the real world is that he has a literal eternity ahead of him for contrition, remorse, guilt, growth, and change. which does, indeed happen for him. given the fact that hes our hero, he definitely has a whole arc in the source material.

not to mention that, as has been made abundantly clear by rolin “carries a tattered copy of the vampire lestat around comic con” jones, that while they are going to adapt certain things to fit the television screen so to speak, they are still remaining undyingly faithful to the core and the themes of the text that anne rice wrote. love or hate the woman, love or hate the source material, they are emphatically following her design.

and anne rices design is that lestat is the hero of our story. lestat is MEANT to be loved, MEANT to be empathized and sympathized with. anne rice quite literally refers to him as the hero. he is the main character.

so if youre watching this show hating lestat with a passion, thinking he never loved claudia, characterizing him as some irredeemable devil,(not saying you do hate him, i see your icon, if you have a lestat icon im sure you at least enjoy his character) then you are fundamentally misunderstanding the text. and i am quite frankly confused as to how you are enjoying yourself when you consume this show? idk maybe i just watch tv differently, but it seems miserable to go into a show in such bad faith toward the literal main character.

lestat is supposed to be beautifully complicated and complex. hes supposed to be a character that you can love and hate, a character you can see yourself in but also challenge yourself with. his character is rich, and can even be interpreted in so many interesting ways regarding trauma, queerness, grief, mental health etc.

anne rice wrote lestat to be her own personal hero, a catharsis, a character that can “get shit done” where she couldnt. she put a fuck ton of herself and her own grief into him, and claudia is also based off of anne rices own 5 year old daughter who passed away of cancer. to say lestat does not grieve claudia, to say he does not love her, to say he never loved her, is obtuse. it is a willful misinterpretation of the text. to say lestat did not love claudia is to say that anne did not love michele, and not only would that be wrong, but it would be cruel.

im not telling anyone they have to read or enjoy the books, im not telling anyone they even have to bend to my analysis and takes on some of the finer details. but i just feel that there are some elements that are objective, and i dont understand why some of you are so insistent on consuming an entirely different show. come season 3, some of you are going to be on black tar copium, because again, rolin jones has made it very clear that season 3 will be our foray into the second book, which i have read, and paints a very nuanced sympathetic picture towards lestat. so like, believe me, i cant tell any of you what to do, but i genuinely suggest that some of you kind of reevaluate the way youre watching the show, otherwise i can guarantee you youre really gonna hate season 3.

saying this now, this uptick in unholy family content is what i view as overcompensation for their very limited positive representation in the show itself. the family truly revolves around louis in a supremely horrific way to where one parent actively came to resent the child in the family, the two mutually plotting each other’s murder with the child nearly succeeding in her attempt and ofc the parent actually succeeding in killing the child which led to the ultimate demise of the parents’ relationship and where lestat finally came to an understanding in how he failed his daughter only after losing louis. i only consume this fluffy shit as fanon. you can’t convince me lestat was a good father to his ‘infant death’, you can barely even convince me he loved her 😭

[pynkhues]

the iwtv finale was great i cant wait for s2. what im curious about is why armand would set up all this pretense and play pretend for daniel .... i could be wrong but the sense i got is that its seems like he's in control of whatevers happening in dubai but louis is also quite dismissive of him up to that point and he seemed genuinely annoyed about it

I can't wait either, anon, and I totally agree about Armand seeming in control and like he's playing a role for Louis. One of the things I really loved about the series is how much it demonstrated Louis' own need for control - both in his circumstances and in his narrative - and that actually being one of the attraction points between him and Lestat. Their backgrounds are wildly different, but for both of them there is this sense of having tried to forge their mortal lives in a particular way and having that curbed or stamped out - Louis by the overt structural and personal racism of 1910 New Orleans, and Lestat by an extremely abusive father who repeatedly sabotaged his attempts to create a life of his own.

These circumstances have really different ramifications on both the characters, of course, and they don't really understand each other - even though I think they both want to - but I do think they see that it inspired a similar thing in each of them about the need to step forward into a life that they have power over. Lestat's manifests though in indulgence, and Louis' kinda does too for a minute, until his specific context - a Black, gay man drenched in Catholic guilt - sees him go the other way and practice a different sort of control. He controls his diet, his environment - as seen through the very artificial look of his Dubai apartment - and it seems in the modern timeline, his relationships.

Of course, that's probably less of a reality than Louis would like it to be, but I think Armand does seem to want Louis to feel in control, maybe as a means to get him to stay? One of the things Louis' narration really emphasises is that he feels he had no control over these important relationships in his past - he couldn't control his brother, and even when he weaponised the house, he couldn't get his mother and his sister where he wanted them, he couldn't control Claudia, and he certainly couldn't control Lestat. The spill out of all of these relationships in the past are really directly contrasted to the power Louis has in the modern timeline over Daniel and Rashid and the men he feeds on, but it feels as manufactured as the Rashid character does, and what that last moment seems to say is that Armand is the architect there, not Louis.

What Armand's motivation is in that sense is anyone's guess at this stage (although people familiar with the books probably have a few guesses, haha), but I agree that he didn't seem to love the way Louis spoke to him at times, and I kinda think Louis came off as oblivious to that, which feeds into Claudia's depiction of Louis in her diaries as occasionally cold and capable of cruelty.

So yeah, I think there's a precarious balance happening there between Louis and Armand, and that Louis feels he holds the power in the relationship, but it's a power offered carefully and deliberately by Armand likely as a tool to keep Louis where he wants him. Louis can tell him to open the blinds, but Armand is still the one holding the remote, y'know?

[cilliankelly]

UNFINISHED THREAD 002

FEAT: cillian & @judetaylorhq

MENTIONS: @claudiafernandez96​​

WHEN: 12/26/2020

DESCRIPTION: (cut down only slightly) this takes place directly after this text thread. after their fight over claudia’s involvement in their relationship/claudia using again, jude returns home and asks cillian not to see claudia anymore.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: brief mention of drug abuse

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

honestly going back home wasn't something jude had planned to do after finding out about claudia. he was furious with her, with cillian for not telling him, with himself for not noticing. for letting himself trust claudia after everything he'd been through with his mom. never trust an addict. he said it all the time. he knew it was true, but he'd loved claudia, and that had clouded his judgement, again. he was hurt and angry and felt stupid. he wanted so badly to be just as angry at cillian but...he wasn't. he felt guilty, for bring claudia into their relationship, for pressuring cillian to feel something for claudia that cillian claimed wasn't there. he felt sick that he'd almost let claudia come between himself and the one thing in his life that made him truly happy, cillian. it was why he'd sat in his Gran's driveway for twenty minutes and couldn't bring himself to go in. because as comforting as his gran could be, as happy as she could make him, all he wanted was to wrap himself around cillian, and stay there until he didn't feel like shit. it was why he'd come back home, peeled off his clothes and climbed into the bed, curling up to cillian as best he could with cillian's cast and letting out a long sigh. "i love you so much." he murmured, pressing his face against cillian's neck and closing his eyes. "i'm so sorry for everything, babe."

Cillian

there was a moment there, a really small moment, when cillian feared that he'd lost jude's trust altogether. he knew that he should have told him that claudia was using again, but cillian had been hopeful that maybe things would get better and he wouldn't have to know. that had been stupid and uncharacteristically optimistic, but it seemed that what he'd feared, jude trying to cut claudia off entirely, was actually happening. and though cillian understood it, it was upsetting regardless. but cillian had told jude they didn't have to talk about it. that he would just be there to hold him when he got home. and he was so relieved when jude crawled into bed and snuggled into his side. cillian wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close, his fingers lightly brushing through jude's curls. "don't apologize, okay?" he murmured. "you wanna forget about it, we'll forget about it."

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

jude sighed, pulling back to look up at cillian and shrugging, "I just..I pushed you. And she's..a liar. I never should have trusted her. I never should have let her into our bed." he spoke quietly, "I hate her for it." He added, leaning back in and letting out a heavy breath, "fuck. I almost fucked us up over her. I'm such a fucking moron, baby."

Cillian

cillian frowned, looking down at jude as he spoke. he didn't believe that jude hated claudia. he was angry with her, sure. and maybe he was right to be. but cillian wasn't sure jude was capable of really hating anyone. "we're okay. i'm right here, and we're fine now, okay?" cillian assured him, turning his head to kiss jude's head softly. "you're not a moron. you didn't know."

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

"baby...I...I was like..about to let this girl back into my life." He whispered, shaking his head and sitting back, pushing his fingers through his hair. "Fuck I love you Cil, but...you have to stay away from her, she's a ticking clock. You can’t trust an addict." He stared at Cillian for a moment, "She's not welcome here." He added more sternly, "You understand that, right?"

Cillian

cillian stared at jude, his forehead creased with worry. he knew this was important to jude. he knew that he was being serious. but cillian couldn't stop thinking about the way claudia had asked him not to leave her. not to cut her out. she'd said please. "you want me... to cut her off? to never see her again..." he asked slowly, his voice even.

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

Jude watched Cillian, staring at him for a moment, "It's not like that. Cill, I mean you see why it's better to distance ourselves from her? Right?" He reached for Cillian's hand, "Babe?" He pulled away, "She's trying to come between us, I mean..she lied to me this entire time, Cil."

Cillian

cillian nodded slightly, looking away as he squeezed jude's hand. "was she trying to come between us? is that what she wanted?" he didn't want to upset his boyfriend, but he also didn't know that he was thinking all that clearly.

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

Jude hesitated, moving away and standing at the edge of the bed, "Clearly she already has." He shook his head, "Of course she has." He chuckled, bitterly rolling his eyes, "Great." He leaned over, grabbing his pillow and walking towards the door, "I'll take the couch I guess. You can invite her into my bed, Cillian."

Cillian

cillian sighed, throwing off the covers and... what? he couldn't exactly chase after him with this stupid fucking cast on. "jude, come on. don't do that. i just-- regardless of what happened between the three of us, she's or friend. you can't tell me that it's that easy to just... tell her to fuck off."

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

Jude turned and shrugged, "she's no friend to me. She lied. You two fucked after I begged you both to stop! And then she...she fucks around with my head, and I try to get her into my relationship, with the guy I waited months for. Fuck this. Honestly, I'm tired." Jude frowned, "You know, I love you. But you sure to try your hardest to make me question why I do." He sighed, walking over and leaning down, kissing Cillian's forehead, "Do whatever you want. But I mean what I said. She's not welcome in this house. So if you want to see her, find someplace else."

Cillian

cillian's frown deepened. he still felt guilty about that. he knew it was fucked that he continued to sleep with claudia after jude had asked them not to, that he hadn't told him that claudia was using again. cillian reached up, his hand on the back of jude's neck, keeping him close. "i'm sorry. i didn't mean to upset you. don't leave. please," he said, looking into jude's eyes before pressing their foreheads together.

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

"Cillian..no." He sighed, "I knew you loved her." He murmured kissing Cillian slowly, "It's okay. I loved her too." He lifted a hand to touch Cillian's cheek. He so badly wanted to hate him, but he didn't. He knew it was irrational to expect Cillian to cut Claudia out just like that, but that didn't change how he felt. Deeply insecure about the growing connection had with a woman he'd never trust or love again. "I need a smoke. I need to think about something that isn't you loving her. And her lying to me again. I'll come back, in a minute. I promise."

Cillian

cillian's eyes widened a little and he bit his tongue, because as much as he wanted to fight jude on this... he couldn't. and it wasn't going to get him anywhere. "i love you," cillian told him, though he let his hand drop so jude could pull away, already missing the feeling of his lips pressed against his. cillian felt like he needed to say something, something that would make this all make sense and be okay again. but he had no idea what that was. so he looked away, feeling useless again. he was so shit at this. "okay," he sighed.

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

jude nodded, "mm, i know." he spoke softly, pulling back and staring at cillian for moment, "but..." he shrugged, "nothing..." he added on after a moment, it didn't matter. cillian would keep seeing claudia even if jude begged him not to, they'd been through this before. under slightly different circumstances, but it felt the same. "just forget about it, okay?" he sighed, "i'll be back in a minute." he mumbled, stepping out of the door and moving towards the balcony, grabbing a pack of cigarettes he hadn't touched in weeks on his way out.

Cillian

cillian watched jude go, letting his head droop slightly as he eyed his cast. it wasn’t that long ago that claudia had been here painting it while they watched tv and got high. as messy and confusing as things had gotten, cillian had hoped that maybe they could all be friends. at least that if nothing else. but it seemed impossible now. it wasn’t that long ago at all now that jude was telling cillian he didn’t want him to have to make a choice between the two of them. but now it seemed like that’s where they were, and cillian was balancing somewhere between the two of them, alone. he sighed, falling back onto the mattress with a rather dramatic thud, and stared up at the ceiling. to quote the canada’s own pop punk princess avril lavigne, ‘why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?’

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

When Jude finally returned to the bedroom, three cigarettes later, he didn't say anything, instead climbing into the bed, laying next to Cillian and flipping through the channels on the television until he gave up and finally turned to Cillian. "I know you're not going to stop seeing her." He spoke quietly, "So I won't stop her from coming here but, I don't want her in my bed. And please, Cil. Please don't cheat on me with her." He wasn't sure if he trusted them together anymore, they couldn't keep out of trouble but could they at least not fuck? He hoped so. "And once you're better, I don't want her here."

Cillian

it was weird how cillian, who didn’t used to really believe in love or relationships or monogamy of any kind, could be mildly offended that jude would even suggest he would cheat on him with claudia. it wasn’t at all an unreasonable thing to ask and cillian knew that but it still stung a little. he nodded, slowly. “i won’t. i wouldn’t,” he said, his eyes cast downward to avoid revealing how much that had stung. “listen if you don’t want her here...” he trailed off, looking up at jude then. “i mean... she doesn’t have to come here. if it’s going to upset you, i don’t want that.”

𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫.

Jude nodded, "Okay. Thank you." He spoke, shifting closer to Cillian and shrugging his shoulders, "It's fine. I'll just leave if she's coming here." He assured Cillian, "Just give me the heads up. I don't trust her. I will never trust her again, twice was enough times for her to break my heart, Cil." He sighed, "Can we go back to us not talking about it now? I just want a quiet night with the guy I love."

Cillian

cillian didn’t like where things were at the moment. he didn’t like that he felt like he was betraying jude’s trust by wanting to spend time with claudia. and he didn’t like feeling like he was betraying claudia by even considering cutting her out of his life. but he didn’t really want to talk about it either. so he leaned over and pecked jude lightly on the cheek. “sure,” he hummed, looping an arm around jude and pulling him a little closer. “that sounds nice.”

[t-n-c]

Some of my worst fears regarding Aaravos under the cut

The person that Aaravos cared about so much was violently killed and/or abused and all Aaravos wants is revenge for them regardless of what it will cost innocent people. He’ll have no other redeeming traits besides his love for his former friend/lover/whoever-they-are

Aaravos has only cared about that one person and not anyone else before or since because apparently having a character feel empathy for others and/or be conflicted about his actions and still do bad things is impossible in tdp

Aaravos never really cared about humans; he sees them as lesser beings just like the other elves and dragons. His only ‘interest’ in them was how he could use them and their struggles to help his own agenda and/or bolster his own arrogant ego. He gave them dark magic so they’d revere him and follow him against the rest of Xadia. He doesn’t care about the physical (and potentially mental) scars it leaves on them; his ‘advocacy’ extends only so much as “I gave them magic because I felt sorry for them. Who cares if it hurts them or drives them mad or causes them to die early? They live short, meaningless lives anyway! They should be grateful that someone of my prestige is helping them, lol!” 

If he does care about humans it will be little more than thinking they’re cute pets

If/when Viren confronts him, his response will be essentially “you really thought you mattered to me or that we were equals?? Lol!!” He’ll humiliate him, remove him of his magic (if he hadn’t lost it already by that point), manipulate Claudia into turning against him, and leave him to die. Because a relationship between the two of them being actually complicated is too much to ask for. Having Aaravos hold any genuine affection/liking for someone in the present story is too much to ask for. And, of course, Viren is a Bad Person(TM) so it’ll be depicted that he deserved to lose his magic and Claudia and/or he’ll only be able to change if he loses everything and ‘humbles’ himself.

Alternatively, if Aaravos doesn’t cast Viren to the wayside, he’ll use his love for Claudia to control him. He’ll threaten to hurt her or reveal the truth of Viren’s manipulations to her. And once he’s sure that Viren won’t leave him, he’ll continuously taunt him for thinking they were actually equals (“Really Viren? You were only ever a tool to me!”) or act like nothing has changed in their relationship and continue to try and evoke cutesy banter and/or confide in him (“And then the Sunfire queen tricked me into following her to Avizandum’s lair...What’s with that look? Cheer up! Just because you’re naturally lesser than me doesn’t mean I don’t still like you!”). Because, again, he can’t be a villain and feel any sort of compassion or remorse for the people he’s hurt/is hurting. He can’t feel affection for anyone beyond surface-level “they’re so cute!” or “they’re remarkably powerful for a human!.” Viren will be depicted as deserving his manipulation and abuse because he’s a Bad Person(TM).

Just as he’ll use Viren’s love for Claudia to control him, he’ll use Claudia’s love for Viren to control her

The invasive, creepily sexual undertones between him and Viren will continue in the worst ways possible. And it’ll be depicted like Viren deserves it.

He’ll have a Tragic Backstory(TM) that’ll be used to excuse him/redeem him; he won’t have to work to make amends or apologize.