#mortified spoilers

[trialsofthedas]

Rook: *sneaking in through their window after a night at the villa*

Viago: *turning in their chair and flicking the light on* You want to tell me where you've been all night?

Rook: I was out with Teia?

Teia: *turning in their chair* Wanna try again?

[curapicas]

This whole scene is so mind-blowing that I missed the obvious shape of Laios' speech bubbles here. At first I thought it was a cheerful roundness laughing at the absurdity of what he's saying, but looking closer; it's wobbly. It's fake cheeriness, passive aggressive even. He just heard he was lied to for reasons he doesn't understand, and now this man is trying to sell an even more outrageous, sweeter lie?? Laios is SO hurt, and while he wasn't understanding what Kabru was saying, he was trying to be patient. Now he's not even trying to hide it.

So it's on Kabru to double down and convince he means it, which he does by /punching/ him and screaming "actually I DO want to be your friend, dumbass!!! I've been looking from afar and think you're interesting, you idiot!!! There’s things I find weird about you but that just made me invested enough to even eat harpy eggs!!!!!" and I just have to cry. I HAVE to

[vaguely-concerned]

rook falling asleep on the red couch in the lighthouse dining room while lucanis is making dinner....... they were helping out by keeping him company and peeling and chopping potatoes for a while there but then the potatoes are done and the room is so safe and warm and smells like coffee and good food and lucanis is trying to explain something to spite and his voice is low and soft and good to listen to and rook's eyes only slip closed for a moment. they'll get up to save the world again or whatever in a second just. one moment. while the world is warm and kind. and then they're being shaken gently awake an hour later because it's time to eat and everyone's starting to drift hopefully dinner-wards

[germultiple]

ok everyone has beaten me to this joke by now but surely they went on with the wedding right

[gemsalive]

okay i have no idea where on the scale of Hot Take to Restating The Obvious this falls, but i remain entirely convinced that bonnie has never actually hated puns.

of course it’s a fun trait to play up for comedic effect sometimes, but the moment i saw them let out that unguarded little laugh at siffrin’s goof at the third floor door before catching themself and remembering to correct back into The Rage (TM) the possibility that said rage could be genuine pretty much instantly wiped itself from my mind. like ohh okay that is a preteen doing the classic preteen thing of overperforming an opposite reaction to hide how much they truly care, got it 👍

[thevulturesquadron]

And in that moment I swear I could hear Zevran picking up his blades again. He even had retirement plans. Y'all had to go and ruin it.

[romanbridgers]

the more certain folks try to insist buck and tommy have no chemistry the more convinced i become that we are watching two different shows because i can't speak for anyone else but oliver and lou are convincing ME that their characters actually LIKE each other and desire each other (and that the other stuff, the comfort and ease that comes of KNOWING someone, will come with more time)

[hangonsnoopy19]

Okay, so, more thoughts on this earlier post post-finale…

I love Daniel’s journey. He tries to jump the gun in ‘73 and insert himself into the story, wrongfully. The show took the ending of the original story and movie - Daniel’s mistaken disruption and misreading - and made it the beginning instead, and I love that. They are barely half way through Louis’s story in episode 5 when Daniel interrupts. He claims to be another Lestat or Claudia even when he has no idea who those people are really. He says he has “something they don’t” but fails to see his uniqueness outside of that incorrect comparison. He’s punished for it, and what’s left behind after his memory is wiped is an unbeaten curiosity, a “point of view” that defines him.

When he comes back for interview part 2 he ends that marriage and he does it through LISTENING to the details. He is reminded that his job is to listen (by Armand lol, that backfired) and he’s shut down (and mostly abides by the rebukes) when he occasionally falls back into previous habits and tries to rush or project. He keeps Louis on track and lets Louis lead, but also cracks through the shell, needling until Louis becomes more responsive and insightful and himself. He waits until the end of the story. He ends the recording. He has a LIST of questions. He has documentation in his hand before he fires his shot. He uses what Armand calls an “insignificant detail”. He’s got the story straight now, finally. And then he tears the whole thing apart.

Again, he fixes his original sin and grows so much as a journalist in his understanding of truth and narrative. And his punishment/reward? He gets what he originally asked for, and post-dark gift he is thriving on being both the storyteller and, now, part of the story.

I’m a devils minion sucker and OF COURSE Daniel is the only one for Armand. Of course the king of gaslighting and smoke and mirrors is undone by the journalist questing for the truth. And now that all the mirrors are smashed and only Armand is left - whoever that is when he’s not in a codependent relationship - he’s going to be tied as maker-fledgling to the only person who will always SEE him. And Daniel is CHASING him now. That 500 year old is about to be KNOWN.

Side note: I also love that Louis and Daniel are friends now - Jacob Anderson said he was the “annoying baby brother” and it feels like Daniel is not a replacement for Paul but is a person who fills that family role. Paul is in many ways the first loss for Louis and I’m happy that after their ‘memory quest’, both he and Daniel get that relationship.

[themarsbar]

Crown Prince Wilhelm of Sweden Wille

[dani-dear]

i didn’t realize i flirted with gale and had to deal with the consequences IM SO SORRY GALE

[saecookie]

TimeRogue collage !

[boggiethefroggie]

Adaine asking the important questions

[three--rings]

So for obvious reasons I have been thinking about IWTV a lot recently, and thinking about the books a lot. I was OBSESSED with The Vampire Chronicles when I was in middle school, into early high school.

But something that I think may not really be clear to people reading them now, or to people who only know the show, is that there's a reason the books got away with being so incredibly queer and being Bestsellers in the 70s, 80s and 90s: there was no sex.

If you're unaware, in the books, Anne Rice's vampires cannot have sex. They are impotent, sex in the human way is just not a drive they have anymore. Instead physical connection is all about sharing blood. (For the record I think the show is right to have changed this. It's not worried about censorship on that front and having sex as part of the relationships makes them way easier to communicate to the audience.)

So while the books are very homoerotic, homoromantic, and at times quite suggestive, they never have on page sexual activity, they never label relationships with explicit romantic terms like lover or husband, characters never declare their sexuality. (In early books at least.)

What this meant is that The Vampire Chronicles existed in this Plausible Deniability space where anyone who had read them realized they were gay, but they weren't LABELED AS SUCH and therefore mainstream audiences didn't know that was part of it.

So me and my friends could be 11 or 12 carrying these books around our Catholic school and didn't get anything said about it. One of my English teachers had read the first one, and we talked about it, and her only complaint was that it wasn't philosophical enough for her. But she was cool.

So, I KNEW Louis and Lestat were in love. I knew Lestat had male and female lovers. And it affected me PROFOUNDLY because it was the first depiction of queerness as anything but a joke I ever encountered.

But it wasn't "gay fiction." If it was the target of right wing criticism it was about being satanic, not queer.

I was thinking of the 4th book in the series, which I read when it was first released, in 1992. In it, (spoilers) Lestat becomes human again. And he turns to his human openly gay friend David and says "omg I'm human. Let's HAVE SEX!"

Reading that and the fucking THIRD EYE that opened for me is BURNED into my memory. I remember how scandalous that was, because it was ON THE PAGE. Here was a book with men talking about having sex with each other. And I was reading it! And it was just casual and nonchalant. (Unfortunately they don't actually do it, to my young disappointment.) Despite all the queerness that i'd experienced (and recognized) already in the series, THAT was shocking.

You can't know what that was LIKE to a kid in 1992, before the internet was anything more than bulletin boards, before fanfiction online was really a thing. And these weren't niche novels, things only people in liberal literary circles read. They were massive, massive bestsellers.

IDK, you know. I have given Anne Rice a LOT of shit in my time, and she's deserved a lot of it. But she also performed some miracles of representation that affected a lot of people. IDK if I even have a point. Just. I was remembering what it felt like. To encounter a gay character in fiction for the first time, talk about gay sex for the first time.

I don't think it's an accident that me and my friend who shared this obsession both ended up being bi. We passed the books back and forth and pointed out the really juicy sections and other people were never quite as into these books as we were even when we made them read them.

[vaguely-concerned]

this screen, this companion combination, with davrin having this shield equipped, cracks me up so hard every time I see it. davrin really is stepping up and keeping hard eye contact with rye like 'hey. hey loverboy. we need your attention elsewhere right now. eyes off the insufferable killer for hire abomination for five minutes please we're on the clock chop chop'

[nat-20s]

I have already gushed about how much Shaun Temple loves and adores Donna Noble but I cannot emphasize enough that I am 100% certain she is JUST as wholly besotted with him!! I know in my heart they are like. An EMBARRASSINGLY lovey couple. I know Donna's like SHAUN!! HEY!!! and he's like YES HON?? and she's like. You have a cute butt :3. Hell it's probably WORSE now that her other special little guy is back and she's not trying to work around an open wound of inexplicable grief. Hope she has flex time at UNIT because she's been repeatedly late due to a impromptu 20 minute snogging session.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

love thinking kipperlilly spends her afterlife looking for lucy in a familiar forest