#i guess this is just iwtv....

[bishonenvoicedbyadyke]

i guess it is not a particularly original insight to make the vampire/parasite/capitalist comparaison but since in the last episode they decided to outright say it i've been chewing on it... like the scene with louis praising his wols painting and making cold calculations of its monetary value, arousing himself into fucking armand.... the continuum between the art market, capitalism, wealth hoarding, masculinity, fucking as in topping....

the show repeated multiple times that the need for secrecy of vampire life makes it nearly impossible to kill anyone too important (like the alderman) and to maintain their existence the vampires have to kill "on the edges".

everyone went white liberal 🫵 at daniel when he made the point about algerians in france but EYE want to raise it again!! because i also felt louis and armand were being dismissive about it. because. who are you eating. like they were not eating the parisian elite every night. the vampire diet is made of : homosexuals, drug addicts, prostitutes, foreigners, night workers,... so surely they were also eating algerian workers who lived far from their family and who could disappear without anyone noticing.

so the vampire is this kind of parallel social class, not immune to discrimination : racial, gender-based or otherwise... but at the same time taking advantage of those social issues? they're like a contrast agent injected in the veins of society, highlighting where the vulnerable are. and of course their immortality makes it easier for them to own propriety, hoard wealth, wait for art pieces to increase in value etc... making them even more removed from the political reality of their human counterpart.

[poelenta]

from the womb of my brain i have birthed this iwtv ship alignment chart

[idontwikeit]

Interview with the Vampire 2.06 // Black Sails 4.06

[oldbutchdaniel]

what i need is for daniel to realize at different points that his past/present/future relationship with armand is EXACTLY like the parts of louis' and lestat's relationship he mocked the most. ie "is THIS the fucked up gothic romance?" "are WE the whiny existential queens?" he doesn't have to do this out loud but i want his relationship with armand to be so disgusting and hot and terrible that he reaches brief moments of clarity. and i'll be able to tell he's thinking it just based on the look in his eyes

[lizardkingeliot]

Fair warning this is going to be a mess and my brain is running on fumes so... bear with me lol.

I'm thinking about Louis not uttering Lestat's name for 23 years until he starts unloading on a stranger trying to convince himself Lestat was nothing to him. He wasn't in LOVE what are you TALKING about. He wasn't a great musician who wrote me love songs so infuriatingly perfect I swam the Mississippi to bite him like a cat and fuck him on the floor! Lestat wasn't that great at all I promise look at me, Daniel, do I look like the sort of guy who would lie about something like that!!!

I'm thinking about how what Louis was doing here wasn't actually that at all. Armand read him for filth because he's always known who the real love of Louis' life is, hasn't he? And Louis couldn't bear it anymore. He couldn't find Lestat (which begs the question WHY they were separated after Paris if Louis knows he isn't dead at this point but I guess the show will tell us that in the upcoming episodes lol), and this was going to be his way out. Had he been searching for him in secret? Did Armand know? I'm thinking prooooobably not but I guess we'll have to see what happens in Paris and in the final three episodes to be sure why Louis was so INSISTENT he didn't want to see Lestat even while very obviously trying to do just that. I assume it has to do with the events surrounding The Trial???? A desperate attempt to protect Lestat (wherever he may be) from Armand? Who knows!

I'm thinking about Louis insisting all he did was talk trash about Lestat and Armand immediately answering... that's not exactly how you talked about him to me. Yet Armand says Lestat's name hasn't been uttered in 23 years. Which would have been around 1950 in the timeline. Right after Paris. So clearly we're meant to understand Louis confided something about the true nature of his relationship with Lestat to Armand. Yet Louis insisted right there in that coffin that Lestat was his maker and nothing more. Again, I guess we'll just have to wait for the end of the season to see how we're meant to piece that whole thing together lol.

I'm thinking about the way the show let us hear Lestat's voice as he spoke to Louis through Armand. They let US hear Lestat insisting Armand tell Louis "I love you". Yet that's not something Louis could possibly remember because he didn't hear it. Which seems confusing but it's actually confirming this theory I've had brewing in my head that the show intentionally shows us things Louis isn't actually saying in the interview. Like making out with Dreamstat in the park. If you rewatch 2x03 there's no way Louis actually told Daniel and Armand about that. Or in this case, it's the show showing us something Louis can't possibly know himself.

And I'm thinking... why? The only real reason to do that is to drive home that what we're watching is in fact the Louis and Lestat love story at its core. I mean... think about it. Every iteration we've seen of Lestat this season has been so ROMANTIC. They were so in LOVE. All the stuff Louis tried his best to omit in season one is leaking in around the cracks like sunlight through the slats of a window shade and it's only a matter of time before that shade is opened...

Also. One more thing. Not to dump allll of this in one post but....... we finally got confirmation in this episode that Armand IS messing with Louis' head and erasing things and overwriting memories and I am foaming at the mouth waiting to see what else is in there Louis doesn't know about...

[noirve]

i will say the way they made armand fully to blame here was a little lazy to me like i think they could have gone for a more layered approach and this is NOT because i do not like seeing armand be evil bc i love evil armand. but i also love nuance

[toscrollperchancetomeme]

The fact that people say that Lestat shouldn't be a rockstar because that's not "a thing" in 2024 when Maneskin are just... right there.

[nandorsrelentless]

there seems to be far too many fans who can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that no relationship in the Vampire Chronicles is healthy. every relationship includes an element of abuse/power imbalance by normal standards. literally every single one.

they are all monsters who are no longer constrained by societal rules. so I don't think it's too crazy to expect them to do mosntorus things. the genre is Gothic HORROR. the show really prioritizes the HORROR element more so than other adaptaions, which i love.

i don't need louis to be a liar to enjoy lestat. if louis lied or misremebered things about the fight in episode 5, i literally do not care because it's never gonna make me hate louis. the baseline of what constitutes "evil" or "bad" is so different in iwtv because of the fact that they are NOT HUMAN. Claudia is literally a serial killer and she's still mother to me. ykwim?

the nature of vampirism is they have to kill to survive. so it would be really cool if people could accept louis, armand, and claudia as complex characters who are fundamentally not good people (because they aren't people!) without being racist about it. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS

im more interested in this exploration of the complexities of memory and seeing how the show integrates the other books into this story in a way that hasn't been done before than I am in discoursing about whether louis is a liar or not. who gives a shit???? grow up and realize that there are no good guys here and that's OKAY

[mannequinswithkillappeal]

[dxxtruction]

"Louis acting like a pimp to Armand" And what is a pimp exactly? Quickly. And, oh so sexual trauma survivors can't engage in kink now without it being all about that? Pet names? They can't be submissive anymore? Consensually? Sexually healthy? Be serious. I'd hardly say there's much power difference between them during all this anyway, except that Louis is freer than Armand and it's been putting a strain on their relationship. Louis wants more from Armand, and less of this 'being his past' for them both, and so helping Armand with this could fix that. It's healthy to want to help your partners get out of a rough patch?

I mean, the whole exchange was very clearly set up as a "I want to help you" after such a great moment of vulnerability Louis feels just how much Armand is desperate for it. Louis called Armand so they could work out a plan together.

And the bit with the umbrella was Louis' way of asking 'are you willing to listen to me?' and Armand said yes by unfolding it. Louis goes on and explains, Armand is allowed to argue against it, but Louis makes his point. And then he gives Armand a way to make his own choice in it too. Armand's already decided 'I want you, more than anything else in the world', but Louis still asks after if he's sure of his choice, and with a name, Arun, that is the one of his fullest agency, running the point home. Honoring the situation Armand calls Louis Maitre - as a way of being like 'I'll do as you've said then'. To make this work he's going to have to give Louis some of the control, yes. But it's the first time such a role is ever established, and it was his choice to do it. So so what if they do it in a very suggestive way? They can't like doing that? I think it's them having fun.

I struggle to find how Louis is being overly domineering here when really he's giving and offering Armand the most agency he's ever had. Same with finding it manipulative. The manipulation was more earlier in the episode I think, when he was stringing him along, giving mixed signals. He's no longer toying with him like that. Louis might be pushing Armand, leading him on to make a decision, but he doesn't mean bad by it.

But back to this pimp thing. I find it frankly offensive that this is where people are going with this. I get it, but to run with it being the case is, on many levels, wrong.

Louis told us episode 1 this was the only sustainable line of work to support his family and keep their standing, at the time. It was never his choice to be doing this either but his blackness allowed no other options. He did what he did so his family could stay in that house and maintain all their same comforts. It gave him privileges most black men didn't have at the time that he wanted to maintain and even have more of. Anyway, it doesn't and had never defined him the way 'being good at running things' had. And in that case he just likes having that kind of control where he can get it, which makes sense.

The world is what placed that kind of role onto him of what he was allowed to be able to run, not himself. And on that he actually treated the sex workers he employed well and respected them enough to give them more opportunity.** He recognizes they don't have much in the way of options either.

Louis employed sex workers, yes, but he didn't subject them to abuse, (like how Armand was)*. He didn't oversee things in a way that would go against their consent (see; episode 1 again)**. Sometimes a job is just a job. And Sex work is work.

Armand's particular past with sexual abuses may strike a particular cord with Louis, given all that, but the very last thing either is thinking is that Louis' pimping Armand out here. This is merely their decision as companions, and had nothing to do with adding another line in a laundry list of selling Armands body out to people at the command of someone else. Armand rescinds some of his control to Louis' wishes, because he wants him, and he trusts him, that's all.

If you aren't allowing Armand that choice, and are doubtful it's fully his, you're putting him right back in the box of being defined by his abuses. Putting him back into that space where he isn't given any agency over what he does. (Which is exactly opposite of what the intent of this scene is for)*.

*: (edit) added for clarity.

**: (strike through) numerous people are saying I'm misremembering these points so disregard it. (Thought he was siding with Bricks, it was the other way around). (Technically one aspect of those opportunities were for getting around the law). I don't have a perfect memory, it happens. Let's not get mad about it. Doesn't change much of the point which is that Louis, now, Louis then, was always considering more about the running things and for stated purposes. So I guess I'd say he may only have respected the SWers enough sometimes for what allowed him to do that, and there are moments he certainly expressed remorse over the fact, but he has a great deal higher respect for Armand that is genuine. It's incomparable. Please read my added notes in the tags, it should address most other concerns.

[littleragondin]

"Could you state your name for the camera?"

"... Justin Bieber."

[eerilywerollalong]

i need dirt amv // loumand breakup & homewrecker daniel <3

[shelfperson]

i definitely make jokes about daniel being a “cokewhore” on occasion but i feel like some of y’all didn’t grok that he was actually for real real prostituting himself for drugs and it’s kind of an import detail about his character that’s been alluded to throughout the show.

idk i’ve just been seeing a lot of posts about daniel’s sexuality lately and like. in addition to Older Queer Male Repression Classic Flavor, it kinda thunks your thinker that the time when Daniel was most sexually involved with men he was also in a really terrible place mentally and physically, and that sexuality was intrinsically related to his drug use and poverty, and now he does not openly acknowledge his obvious hOmOpHiLe status huh?

[idontwikeit]

Black Sails 2.09 XVII. // Interview with the Vampire 2.06 & 2.07

[oldbutchdaniel]

making daniel and armand the lesbians from red wine supernova in my mind right now. did you guys know you can think any thoughts you want and they can’t stop you

[prouvaireafterdark]

Hi! As someone just coming into reading the books but who's been with the show since day 1, I'm curious about why people take Lestat's narrative in TVL with 100% sincerity when the premise of the show seems to be interrogating the dissonance that everybody's versions create. Obviously there's some big things that are definitely going to be true, but I'd personally be disappointed if we got a straight adaptation of unfiltered Lestat perspective on events, haha!

I think you're conflating sincerity with some idea of omniscient, objective accuracy, which, as you note, is a useless thing to search for in a show where memory is continually shown to be an unreliable monster.

Lestat's version of events in TVL is sincere, though. He's speaking from the heart and he's trying to give the story of his life, mostly by sharing his truth about what his life before meeting Louis was like, and in part by filling in the gaps Louis leaves us with about what happened at Rue Royale. His recollection may turn out to be as faulty and biased as Louis' or Armand's has been shown to be in the show, but that doesn't make it any less sincere.

And I'm not implying that Louis is lying or anything. I'm talking about him not mentioning or glossing over the happy memories that meant a lot to Lestat and made up, for him, a big part of what it was to share a home with Louis and Claudia for so long. Giving Lestat the space to talk about his love for Louis and Claudia doesn't erase the abuse he inflicted on them in those moments of instability and rage. I don't get why people are so resistant to seeing that. It's not like it makes everything better. If anything, it makes it worse that he loved them so much.

What's important to note, too, is that at no point does Lestat in his retelling excuse himself for anything he did to Louis and Claudia and I doubt very much we would see him do that in future seasons of the show. Lestat even says it himself that he deserved what Claudia did to him. The way things worked out between the three of them is his greatest, deepest regret and it will haunt him for the rest of his immortal life.

Also, not for nothing, what we've gotten this season and last season are the unfiltered perspectives of Louis, Claudia, and Armand. That's not to say they're lying or intentionally obfuscating (okay, well, Armand totally is), but that is what we got---a narrative that was really challenged only by Daniel and not by anyone who was actually there who remembers it differently. I don't see why we shouldn't also get Lestat's unfiltered version, especially considered he is the main protagonist of the Vampire Chronicles series going forward.

For me and many others, it's not about excusing anything. It's all about contextualizing his decisions. Like, Lestat didn't just wake up one day and decide it would be fun to destroy his family. I want him to tell me in his own words (which, as a reminder, he has yet to do at any point in this series so far) what drove him to do the horrible things he did and how he really feels about it. When we do hopefully get that, I expect the fandom to interrogate his accounts as vigorously as they did Louis' and Armand's and Claudia's.

And to answer your question regarding the books specifically, we have Anne herself to blame for that. She wrote IWTV when she was battling some of the most intense grief and despair a person can feel. She had just lost her child. Writing the book was an outlet for that and you can feel it as you read Louis' perspective. When she decided to continue the series, though, she changed her mind about a lot of things---mainly who Lestat was as a character and how she had come to hate the "weakness" in Louis (which was really because she came to hate the "weakness" she saw in herself as she came out on the other side of her grief and identified with him less and Lestat more). There is a very real dissonance between who Lestat is in IWTV and who he is in TVL and beyond. The way she accounted for that in her own writing was that Louis was misconstruing certain events by leaving things out or straight up making things up like their reunion in NOLA at the end of IWTV, which Lestat claims never happened. The reason people take Lestat's words at face value sometimes isn't usually because they hate Louis or think he lied about Lestat's abuse. It's because Anne, as the writer of the story, wanted the reader to doubt Louis' version in favor of Lestat's because she had changed her mind about the direction of the story and the characters she created.

It's also worth noting that, in the actual text of the show, that version of events taken from the book, the content of the original interview, is described by Louis himself as an admitted performance. I think it's a perfectly legitimate reading to consider IWTV (the book) in the context of Louis trying to get Lestat's attention with something he knew would upset him, like Armand suggests was Louis' fantasy, because he wanted or needed to see him again.

This got long and rambley so I'll just leave you with the wise, wise words of Samothy Reid when asked to give one truth and one lie in the show: Everybody lies. Everybody lies.

I don't think that will change if we finally get Lestat's POV so imo people should just relax and enjoy the ride.