#i feel very strongly about this can you tell

[queenoftheimps]

Artistic Expression as a Form of Love: aka Some Meta About Interview with the Vampire

hey guess who spent all of today putting off a really boring work task

So I'm just suddenly just having a lot of feelings about how love is tied to creation in Interview with the Vampire.

Specifically, each character's artistic impulses and what they say about their relationships, and how they use their creative output as a sort of love language.

From the very first episode, we see hints of this. Miss Lilly asks about Lestat's music box, which plays a song he wrote for Nicholas once upon a time, evidence of his love for someone who's been dead for over a century.

He later writes his own song for Louis, 'Come to Me', and Claudia makes the connection explicit while deliberately poking at him -- he wrote a song for each of his true loves, but does one signal love more strongly than the other?

She's being facetious to prod at him, but the show seems to genuinely make the point that we can track each characters' relationships through the art we see them create.

After all, we see it with Claudia herself later -- even before there's any discussion of becoming companions, we can feel Madeleine's compatibility with Claudia in the way she makes dresses for her.

Madeleine dresses Claudia as the grown woman she wants to be seen as, as she really is, even before she fully understands the circumstances of Claudia's age. It's telling that in Madeleine's dying vision, the one that convinces Louis of her love for Claudia, that Claudia is wearing a dress that Madeleine made for her.

By contrast, we see how Claudia is incompatible with the coven in the role that they have quite literally written for her. If Madeleine shows her love by treating Claudia as an adult, the coven shows their lack of caring by creating artwork where Claudia is forced into playing a part that diminishes her.

In turn, we can see Claudia's enthusiasm for the coven tied into her willingness to perform -- she starts off trying to smile her way through the situation, before quickly growing tired of the performance (and, relatedly, the coven itself).

But then again, how does the coven show its real loyalties? Well, with a painting.

We don't know who painted Lestat (Armand, possibly?), but having artwork of him in a place of prominence is pretty telling. But then again, the theater's creation is itself a reflection of art as a signifier of love & bonding -- Lestat suggests a theater to a lonely Armand as a way to regain a family/coven structure, after the last one fell apart.

Which makes particular sense for Armand, the character who most explicitly equates artistic expression with love and understanding. We see him underline it in his own telling of his backstory -- "No one has painted me in over 400 years." He associates painting with being seen and cared for by his maker --

-- and yet we, the audience, can plainly see what a warped, toxic relationship it was from the painting itself : a whitewashed version of Armand's face that doesn't truly look like him.

Hell, we even see Armand's betrayal of Louis in the form of creative expression -- to quote Daniel, "He directed the play!"

His treason isn't just that he sold Louis & Claudia out, it's that he participated in a creation that would condemn them. Artistic expression shows us love and loyalty in this world, yes, but it can also be used as a tool of abuse or betrayal.

Which brings us to Louis, he who has the eye for art but maybe not the skill for it, who never said 'I love you' to Lestat and wouldn't call Armand his companion, who ultimately gives up on creation in favor of becoming a collector.

It's especially interesting that his abandonment of photography is also explicitly tied to the end of his visions of Dreamstat. Even the one photo he takes that garners praise is one he tries taking of Armand & Dreamstat at the same time -- as if the closest he can get to expressing love through creation is something that blurs the lines between both men he has complicated feelings for. (Note that the scene where he develops the photo is directly after the "Show me the only way you know how to love" sequence of Louis bashing some guy's head into a wall.)

Hell, if we want to take it even further, we can even see some of this pretense in the inclusion of the Fred Stein photos (assuming Armand actually did sneak them in). On one level, we can see it as Armand trying to build up Louis' happiness, but on the other, it's him trying to build up the image of their romance.

After all, if artistic creation is a sign of love -- especially to Armand! -- what does it mean if Louis is openly disparaging his own abilities to make anything at all?

Taking it further, what does it say that he and Armand have a collection of photos of various boys over the years and expensive artwork hanging on every wall, but Louis doesn't seem to have taken any pictures of Armand in almost eighty years?

And hey, speaking of fascinating boys: what does it mean when Louis hasn't made anything creative of Armand since the 1940s, but he has no problem writing a book for ten hours with some guy he picked up at the bar?

Hell, writing a book where Louis spends ten hours talking about his life and hasn't even gotten up to the part with Armand yet? The supposed love of his life doesn't even garner a mention, to the point where Daniel didn't even know he existed when he arrives fifty years later.

And what does it mean when that book you never wrote is a giant hanging thread in your life, enough to create a connection strong enough that you remember that guy fifty years later and go back to that writing it? Even over the objections of the love of your life?

Especially when find out that Daniel's entire writing career is sparked in part by inspirational words given to him by Louis -- a sign of their bond withstanding the test of time, enough to make them friends after a fifty year absence.

That said, if we're working with the idea of artistic expression as proof of connection -- especially when it comes to Armand -- then it also makes perfect sense why Armand would insert himself into the interview once he's been revealed.

Then it's no longer about Louis & Daniel, or Louis & Lestat, it's about Louis & Armand and artistic proof of their connection! They're both now creating a story, a book that will include their entire romance! It's the first time that Armand has had the possibility of being an artistic subject in decades, so no wonder he's quick to latch onto it.

Even then, though: I think it's interesting that when Armand is talking to Daniel alone, the first story he thinks to tell him about is his relationship with Lestat. Make of that what you will.

(Also, I've said this before, but I am very curious what Armand's feelings towards Daniel will be after having an entire book written in which he plays a starring role.)

I think that this is all very rich with subtext and possible further progression, especially since we are about to enter a season where a new book is being written by Daniel and there's going to be an entire tour's worth of music being performed, all of it ripe with potential for further relationship nuance.

And while I don't want to wander too far into book spoiler territory, I think this might even neatly factor into a potential Season 4 -- especially since book fans will know that a specific musical performance is the catalyst for a lot of what happens in The Queen of the Damned.

[drugsorgasmsandcheese]

so sorry i'm the ignorant one. though i aware the game creator and some of the cast are supporting isarel, i don't know about the zionism propaganda at part 2 content as i haven't played the game. would you mind tell me a little bit more about this? thanks so much!!

of course! one of the largest topics is how WLF is seen to be the israelis and the seraphites are palestinians. for example, the way the wolves use violence to gain control, the same violence is used by another group, that strongly matches israeli caricatures of palestinians.

however, there is a large discussion of debate around this. so the best comparison is FEDRA.

as we’ve seen in the game and the show, FEDRA controls the food supply, the education system, the people, and they also bomb areas of infected so order is kept, which is very much similar to what the israelis are doing right now and have done for almost eighty years.

druckmann has also stated that the theme of vengeance within the second game was inspired by the feeling of vengeance he felt upon seeing the 2000 killing of two israeli soldiers by groups in ramallah.

when discussing the first time joel kills someone in defence of his daughter, druckmann compared it to israel’s release of hundreds of of palestinian prisoners in exchange for the captured israeli soldier gilad shalit in 2011.

seattle has checkpoints, security walls, and barriers that look exactly like the watch towers israel started building through the west bank in 2000.

emmanual meiburg did an article about the zionist propoganda in the game back in 2020 for vice, i have been referencing this article in response to this ask, but if you want to read it yourself it can be found here

[chemblrish]

The atomic radius, shielding, and the lanthanide contraction

As you hopefully already know, there are several trends of the elements' properties that you can squeeze out of the periodic table. The one I want to focus on in this post is the atomic radius.

The shorter and simpler explanation is as follows: if you move from the top to the bottom, the radius increases, which is simply the result of more electron shells (“layers”) being added to the atom. Moving left to right, the radius decreases and that is caused by the growing positive charge of the nucleus attracting the valence electrons more strongly like the swole doge and therefore shrinking the atom.

But chemistry is a science, and the sciences are beautifully complex, so let me tell you about this one intricacy affecting the radius. We’re going to need some knowledge of the electronic structure of an atom, but I'll try to fit all that you really need to know inside a single paragraph.

The compact version is this: inside the atom, there are little pockets of space where electrons can be, so to say. Those pockets are called orbitals and they have all sorts of funky shapes. The s orbitals, for example, are ball-shaped, while the p orbitals look roughly like balloons attached to the nucleus. (They're sometimes described as dumbbell-shaped. What sort of dumbbell looks like that. They're balloons.)

[source]

Back to the radii! I'm going to use the second period as an example here, but there's nothing special about it. It just happens to be quite a simple case. Lithium and beryllium only have s orbitals, so that's not very interesting, but the rest of the period has both s and p orbitals.

As we move from lithium, across the whole period, and to fluorine (there's no need to engage the noble freaks), three important things happen: the radius decreases, each next element has one more proton in the nucleus than the previous one, and also each next element has one extra valence electron. Duh. The number of electrons "inside" doesn't change, it's only the outermost shell that gains electrons.

But remember, an electron is not a marble sitting in one point at all times. When it comes to electrons in atoms, it's better to imagine them as lil clouds of negative charge in the shape of their respective orbitals. As a result, the core electrons obscure the nucleus from the valence electrons. Not entirely! But the attractive force felt by the valence electrons isn't just equal to whatever Coulomb's law would give us - it's a bit smaller. This is called the shielding effect and the charge that valence electrons actually "feel" from the protons in the nucleus is called effective nuclear charge. The atomic radius is therefore a tad bigger than we could assume without acknowledging shielding (but the trend of a decreasing atomic radius across the periodic table still stands, of course).

So, what about the lanthanides, those poor, misunderstood outcasts thrown under the periodic table?

God I love pubchem's periodic table it's so pretty!

There's no plot twist here, they don't break the trend. Cerium is the biggest one, lutetium the smallest. So what gives? See, lanthanides begin filling up their f orbitals, whose shapes are so absurd even I am afraid of them.

[source]

Because they're so ridiculous, they are supremely bad at shielding the positive charge of the nucleus, which in turn makes the lanthanides significantly smaller than they would be if this effect didn't take place - so much so that we call this phenomenon the lanthanide contraction. Actually, the f orbitals suck at shielding so bad that the radii of the (d-block) metals of the sixth period are very similar to the radii of the elements in the period above them - even though they should be much larger!

[source]

Really. Chemistry is like psychology for electrons. Everything that happens here is caused by these guys' weird behavior.

[nicosraf]

sort of a Big question, but—do you have any advice for someone trying to write their first book? it's...very very intimidating and it's hard for me to keep everything organized

You have to be more specific! A lot of advice is very dependent on things like genre and also your writing goals. (Whether you want to be a tradpub author, an indie author, or just write books for fun (not publishing)). I can try to be extremely general though:

You'll see a lot of advice for your first book to be "simple" but I've come to kinda disagree with that. My first book (not abm, i mean my first real book) was incredibly ambitious, but it took me a long time to write and it was extremely hard. Still, I learned a lot, and I knew I wasn't going to publish it.

So either 1. write a very difficult book and do not publish it because it will be bad (you can always rewrite it later), or 2. write a simple book.

Simple as in keep the characters minimal, keep the setting undetailed and with little worldbuilding, and don't overcomplicated any arc/plot/theme-ing. You can use the known "plot guides" ("Save the cat", for example. Note: I don't use this, but a lot of friends do. I actually don't really like this plot guide at all, but it's helpful if you're going for a "movie" feeling, I think).

For more general advice, before you outline, you might want to think about what's a reasonable length for your book to be. (Epics are fun to imagine but remember you'd also have to edit that, and if you're an indie you're gonna have to pay an editor by the word count. If you're tradpub, then they're gonna ask you to cut it.) A romance book, for example, might be 80k(?) words. If it's your first book, consider how long you want chapters to be, then divide by total word count goal to have an idea of how many chapters you have to tell the book's story.

I strongly advise you look at genre conventions to understand how long your book should be. You might think you're above genre conventions but consider your readers. Most romance readers aren't going to want to read a 400k epic unless you have an established audience.

As for organization, pretend you're writing an extremely brief wikipedia summary on your book. Hyper focus on this. Make sure the heart of your story is simple. Even big elaborate series are simple at heart: consider ASOIAF, which is just "a dynastic war for control of a continent in a fantasy world." ABM is just "the devil grows up in heaven, falls in love, and falls." When you plot, you wanna build off a simple premise, not try to find the simple story in a massive over-complicated web.

My last piece of advice is that once your start drafting, don't stop. Just keep going even if it sucks. Learn to say "I'll fix it once the draft is done" or else you're never going to finish. And take my advice with a grain of salt, of course. I'm just a guy

[damnfandomproblems]

Response to 5851 and replies:

Anyone wanna tell me why no one disputes "gay" as an objective neutral description when that has DEFINITELY been used as an insult, and based on this site's age demographic, almost certainly used as an insult FAR more frequently than "queer"? Is that what's gonna be next up on the chopping block? Gay people can't be called gay, they'll have to go instead by some corporate slop sounding acronym like "SGAP (Same Gender Attracted Person)" or something?

I get that "LGBT" / "LGBT+" / "LGBTQIA" and its variants are considered the most palatable term these days, I strongly dislike it though. Every time I hear it to me it just sounds like someone got peer-pressured into lukewarm acceptance but is still so squeamish about our existence that they're only comfortable referring to us euphemistically. "LGBT" is "sure, we'll put a gay couple in our paper towel commercial!"

Queer also sounds more natural conversationally, it's just a neat, one-syllable description --"He's tall." "He's blond." "He's queer." "L-G-B-T" is awkward and clunky by comparison, and gets even more so the longer you extend the acronym in an effort to avoid sounding exclusionary, whereas "queer" is an umbrella that already covers every possible nuanced variant, including those whose identities can't be easily sorted into neat little boxes, without the suggested undertone of "okay but what TYPE of gay are you actually? So I can play 20 questions interrogating your identity to decide if you're one of the ones I respect or one of the ones I don't."

It feels like the same conversation as "don't say 'black' that's racist, you're supposed to say 'African American'" when in reality most black people have no issue with being described as black, and treating it like a bad no-no word just makes it sound like you don't actually know any black people.

762594261147484160 -- Sure, I'll play your game.

Some people may be okay with LGBT+, Call me it and I’ll be very angry, regardless of your tone or intent. I detest that phrase, full stop. I'm queer.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[lilflowerpot]

Now this is a... heavy tone ask but. What is the galra cultural view on people with mental disabilities, stuff you can't fix with surgery like many physical ones. People who needs support their whole life. Again feel free not to answer but I just feel its a subject worth discussing

So I've spoken about the galra view on mental health before, when addressing PTSD & service animals, and I’ll say now what I said then: in imperial circles, mental health is almost entirely destigmatised. As with everything, there are always exceptions to the rule, but broadly speaking the galra don’t think of poor mental health as any more a show of weakness than, say, a broken limb… it’s simply a medical issue that needs professional treatment and support so that the affected individual may be as happy and healthy as they are able.

That addendum of as they are able is, of course, rather a key component in this, because mental health isn’t typically something that can be “cured” in the way that physical ailments often can. As I’ve reiterated several times before, the Empire is a collectivist culture wherein the galra people function within a hive-like hierarchy of one Imperial identity⁠—one mind⁠—which is not to say that individuals don’t have their own wants / needs, only that the collective (a family of sorts, spanning billions of galra across the universe) is priority number one. Supporting members of the community is not just the norm, it’s a time-honoured duty that no true galra would so much as //consider// shirking, irrespective of how well they personally know the individual(s) in question, and to suggest as much would be a rather shocking thing indeed.

By virtue of being galra, any given individual would be considered a beloved child of Sa, and there is an inherent and entirely unmatched value in that; the true glory of the Empire is, after all, only as brilliant as the kindness and dignity with which its most vulnerable members are treated.

[bluevelvetea]

KN8 x AO3

All tags found on @dear-ao3

[moeblob]

A lil guy !

[spaceagebachelorstan]

me when i somehow hop universes and find the successful version of myself with a good job and a good house and a good record, and i am torn apart by the knowledge that i am the worse version of myself only to be utterly wrecked by the revelation that i can always get worse and no matter how many therapy sessions i go to and how much disgust i feel over my urges i cannot escape their existence. i cannot escape the blood on my hands and i cannot escape the fact that it’s simultaneously too much and isn’t enough. my murderous rage and the reason for it stay with me always, and no matter how far down they are locked away i will always know that they are there because they are me, even if i can separate myself from them i can never be whole without them both because i am the sum of my parts and my life is not my own, the best life i can lead comes from my worst self and there is no way to ever go back the way i came so im stuck trying to rectify every mistakes my worst self has made. i can hide it well, but everybody knows i do not belong.

[alsojnpie]

hey. um. i love him

[soullessjack]

conservative X-men fans will see a franchise about an oppressed group of people who fight for their civil rights and freedom in a world that sees them as freaks and monsters and imagine themselves being on the mutants’ side but then can’t even handle masculine cis women in sports or a man with painted nails or cisgender teens on puberty blockers for health issues.

conservative X-men fans will see that oppressed group of freaks and monsters constantly facing the threat of an apocalyptic future specifically caused by hate mongers in powerful positions who very blatantly will and do destroy the same humanity they claim to be protecting if it means destroying Those Freaks and think “wow cool robot.”

conservative X-men fans will agree with the villain who was based on Malcom X and specifically came to hold his beliefs through surviving the Holocaust and claim that he can’t even be considered a villain anymore because his ideology makes sense and is consistently proven right by the humans’ unwavering intolerance, but go into hysterics the minute a real life minority holds any sort of hatred or resentment toward their oppressor.

conservatives in general will always pretend that the media they consume doesn’t have any deeper meaning or purpose other than being entertainment slop because they almost always retreat into media for some type of “comfort” or escape from having to acknowledge reality and their own bigotry. they want the freedom to be bigots without any pushback or consequences so they surround themselves in an echo chamber of fictional characters and universes who can’t argue with them or tell them they’re wrong and bad.

conservatives have to constantly and deliberately turn their brains off to consume a specific piece of media because they know that they would be the villain in it if they gave it an ounce of deeper thought and that’s exactly why they push back so hard against anything that drags them out of their comfy echo chamber, anything that threatens their blissful ignorance.

they thrive on the idea that their media isn’t “that deep” or based in/affected by reality; that there’s no such thing as representation or allegories or coding in media (and alternatively, that representation doesn’t matter or is just propahanda). they thrive on willful ignorance and they want to convince everyone else to be just as ignorant and the death of media literacy is exactly how they’ll achieve it

[whoblewboobear]

Ooooh I’m having Porter thoughts. His masculinity is so performative, he knows how to play into it. He’s comfortable in it but he’s also comfortable not presenting typically masculine. He’s connected to his body and the feelings of it and he can notice a change in it the minute he wakes up and find a way to get back to his base level normal.

But he can’t comprehend his emotions to save his life. He knows rage, he gets anger, but he can go beyond that, he hasn’t stopped at anger in years. He feels and expresses love in the way he does everything else: physically.

Whether it’s through sex, fist fighting, screaming, squeezing the thing so hard until it pops, eating a gift, whatever. If it’s a physical, tangible, bodily expression of love it makes sense to him. But saying it? Hardest thing in the fucking world. Because it requires so much vulnerability and he doesn’t do anything vulnerably. It might fucking kill him.

He loves giving gifts though. He loves cooking. He loves saying “I love you,” in all the ways that don’t involve saying it. The person will understand, right? Jace will understand?

His Jace that is so in tune with his emotions, so vulnerable but in a way that’s so strong to him. He looks at Jace and sees strength in his smiles and soft touches and the kisses he leaves at the corner of his mouth. His Jace that doesn’t hesitate to say I love you for the first time.

Porter still kicks himself for not saying it back in a way that Jace would appreciate. He should’ve said it back, he just didn’t know how.

[humandisorderincarnatedean]

i remember… this post i saw like, ages ago that remarked how all of dean’s arcs were about emphasizing his violent side and forcing him to become nothing but a weapon meanwhile sam’s arcs were about him being tainted and impure and becoming a creature who dean eventually has to kill or let die. and i’ve been thinking about that, and i agree a little bit about the first part (though obviously, not literally *all* of dean’s arcs were about this; the michael sword arc for instance was more directly about agency, the arc with amara was more about powerlessness) but i disagree about sam. the only time where i think the description i paraphrased above really fits is in season 4, where throughout the season sam is becoming more demon-like and dean is ordered to “stop” him by the angels (and even that season ends on sam almost killing dean- you could point out a whole different pattern if you take that as your focus point). what i think is a better encapsulation of some of sam’s biggest arcs is that they’re about something happening to sam, and dean having to step up and “save” him from whatever it is. for example the psychic kids storyline, where dean refuses to entertain the option that he can’t save sam and which ends with him bringing his brother back from the dead in exchange for his own life. the demon blood storyline, where sam is turning into more and more of a monster and dean has to save him from the slippery slope (and fails). endverse, wherein dean learns that without him there sam will eventually capitulate to the angels and say yes to lucifer. the soulless storyline, where dean had to get his brother’s soul out of the cage and back into his soulless body. the hallucinations storyline, where dean was forced to stand by and watch his brother almost succumb to his own broken mind but at the last moment managed to find and bring in castiel who saves the day. the trials storyline, where sam’s mental health is affected in such a way that dean has to make a big speech declaring how much he cares for him just so sam doesn’t wanna kill himself anymore. the lucifer storyline in season 11 where sam gets himself in between four walls with the devil again and relies on dean and castiel to come to the rescue. it’s watching out for your little brother because it’s not only what you do, it’s what you are.

[gio-cosmo]

The soundtrack to this game is absolutely phenomenal btw

[bueris]

okay maybe I should seriously reconsider my path in life and sell my soul to marketing or journalism instead

[crescentfool]

guys. isn't being alive so cool. there are. so many swag people in my life. some of them don't even know i exist but i know that they exist and they're doing cool shit and i look at them with fondness that's enough for me.

the people who do know that i exist are also wonderful and i cherish them so much beyond human comprehension its unreal to me that in another lifetime i wouldn't know such splendid souls but they are here with me now and i think that's all that matters.

and there's so many cool little creatures and animals and plants and whatnot and even if i don't know shit about them i think its so cool that somewhere out there these things spark whimsy and joy and breathe life into people that their brain is like a cozy little library of encyclopedia knowledge.

the way in which life can take us on so many fun journeys and paths even if it may not look like anything to us in the moment i think it's so fucking neat to be able to walk this path and that even in hardship there will be good for us eventually and stories to tell for getting through these things.

guys i love being alive im so happy i love life and i'm so glad that i can feel a depth of emotions because it means i can be grateful for so many cool things like this.

i hope you all have something to love in life too you are so epic and swag for reading this and i think you will absolutely be able to skyrocket out of the universe to do the thing you want to do. keep on keeping on fellow humans!!!