#not this has taking me damn near three days to get through 😵‍💫

[matrixwhore]

the scene opens on a frame of the fire and a burning body.

noooowwwwww. dont come at me crazy behind this.  i am someone who resonated with what happened here. i was someone who learned the hard way cis men dont need the security and secrecy of a private home to show you nightmares. they can be walking monsters out in the open. and it really drove home that the rules are very different for them. when i left home and went out in the world just like claudia. i thought leaving home was all i needed and i wasn’t prepared for any of what came at me. so i feel for claudia. i don’t think it was bad writing just because it was added at all or where they did this to make her stronger. im not even sure i would say this made her stronger more than it made her incredibly hyper vigilant. she was already observant, but she never lets her guard down again especially after what happens when she comes home, which is why she picked up on lestat turning antoinette. it made her mind tunnel vision on murder to the point where she lost sight of whats true about louis and that was the fatal flaw in her plan. 

more than anything it added to her wanting to kill the man (lestat who she likens killer to) that crushed her illusion of heaven and introduce her to this nonlife in hell with demons that she had to become and depend on and fear endlessly. like i have to wonder what that does to a person. to believe you’ve died and gone to heaven only to fully wake up and realize you’re in a worse hell. bc she lived in a hell already and then the fires of that hell took everything she knew in life and she did succumb to her imminent death so she probably did think heaven was next. she thought she was free of it. so what does that do to embrace death and to know heaven was snatched from you? that there is no rest in peace for you and you inherited damnation and you didn't do anything to deserve the eternal suffering you’re being made to endure but you have to endure it. if you get me started on my thoughts on this irt heaven and buffy i will just start barking. yall say she came back wrong i say she should have come back worse and she’d be right

what do you do when the world around you insists you be a monster when all you want to be is a woman. what can you do but lick the flames they would have burn and consume you back and become a dragon. so the next time they allow you to say your peace you set everything ablaze with your fury and remind them they denied you ever knowing peace.

claudia’s living hell was a mother who died and a father who abandoned her with an aunt who abused her. growing up poor in the jim crow south with no prospects and no way out. her hopes and illusion of seeing heaven was shattered by the worse hell filled with damned men conditioning the care they show her with what they feel entitled to take from her. doomed to never really grow up but simply to exist always in stasis and in proximity to wealth with no real access to it and no way out. dying too young and never living and never staying dead and always in pieces and always being shuffled around and placed and never seen as a whole anything. not even outside of her cage. she doesn’t get gentle. she doesn’t get easy love. she doesn’t get companionships without horrifying power imbalances. it was right there in the “who’s gonna fuck me scene” and they never addressed it bc it was sidelined by lestat’s infidelity. by the relationship that takes precedent over everything. over helping her learn to be in this way not that they could. she is theee immortal tragedy amongst them even in death.

she’s has faults that make sense for what she is. a child vampire. so how much can you hold against her. she is not in any position to ever be able to properly cope or reach an emotional maturity. she is turned into a forever victim whose only outlet was to kill with impunity—so she doesn’t get empathy either.

breaking her leg was a call back to louis breaking the wing of the bird and lestat calling her one. it was breaking her ability to fly the coup, and live free of their gothic house of lies. so they pluck her feathers fine. she’ll learn to see the scars as scales and become a worse monster than they ever imagined. one you shouldn’t ever underestimate. idk that this was a weak narrative to make her stronger or whatever it was that rolin was getting at in that after interview. to me it fed her understanding that some things can only be stopped with the only dark gift she can give. death in finality. i know the fucking feeling

iwtv ep 5 rewatch thoughts

opening with the scene within which i have built a home and become a permanent resident. right here in the moment rashmand smiles stupidly and louis slonks (🤭) every last drop of his blood. how anyone thinks they’re boring idk idk idk

they are being clear here that this isn’t consumption for the sake of sustenance. this is bloodletting as sex play and as power play. Danny is not having dinner. so its clear that this isn’t feeding as a meal but it is feeding as sexual exhibition at its most delicious. Danny is reading about claudia’s violent acts via the written recording of her victim’s last words while loumand basically vampire fuck at the other end of the table. this is also setting up the sexual violence to come for claudia and also for louis.

i think it is intentional that louis is the one feeding from armand for several reasons. one being because of what lestat does to him, which we see later on. this is power play for louis in a setting where he has voluntarily and possibly in some aspects dubiously relinquished control over to his lover armand. also bc of the connection between daniel and armand. they are revealing rashid as armand slowly here and his and louis’ involvement with daniel in the past. Daniel isn’t dumb. they know he can figure out the inconsistencies of louis drinking from armand and louis drinking from damek. this leads to daniels curiosity about how armand tastes like and his weight and louis puts daniel’s hidden attraction out on display against his wishes to throw him off. and daniel orders rashid around to take back some power.

i also think it’s a call back to the power dynamic of their first meeting. louis has power over daniel, and it seems he’s the one in control of the entire situation but then he checks in with armand before moving forward. in this moment in the present dubai 2020 setting louis has power over daniel (regardless of him no longer being that naive young man) and he plays the role of the one with the power over rashid, but the power he is receiving is from armands 500+ year old blood that he is offering to louis as the character he is playing. lord take me.

i think it’s interesting that daniel is feasting on claudia’s private memories but objects to louis reading and exposing his personal thoughts. even tho louis has shown time and again that he does that and would do it again. choices/consent is the big issue in this episode.

Daniel: man with green vest: please no. man with fat fingers: please stop. window washer: i can’t die like this. woman with purple shoes: please. boy with inner tube and dog: let my dog live. please no. please stop. stop. oh here’s a good one—man in the last row of The Son of Sheik picture show: You said you had cigarettes.

this is the first recounts we hear him read from claudia’s journal—claudia, who did not get a say in whether her voice and story be used by louis, armand and daniel in this way. He reads this and it’s clear that he [daniel] hadn’t actually consented to being the voyeur of loumand’s sex play given his visible discomfort/agitation. He continues anyways, trying his best to focus on the task at hand and not his bisexual longing for the men at the other end of the table bc even with everything he is reading and witnessing he is still attracted to them in all their insanity and monstrosity.

im interested in the fact that he pointedly reads out (“here’s a good one”) the misleading nature of the last one. “You said you had cigarettes.” i think it speaks to the fact that daniel came here to dubai for a supposed second interview and is slowly but surely realizing he is getting something else entirely. he continues “School teacher, guard your heart. i’m trying to think of something more fucked up than this.” he could be just talking about what claudia has written, but i think it’s also the fact that this is the section of his reading that loumand have chosen to be overtly sexual in front of him for as he reads. all this and he doesn’t even know yet of rashid being armand and his role in claudia’s death, though i’m sure he’s having suspicions of everything by now. also that louis, with being faced with the piece of claudia he doesn’t like to acknowledge, the monstrosity of her vampire nature, focuses of drinking from armand the man who killed his beloved daughter (something he said about “i run to the bottle” etc. etc). it does in fact get more fucked up danny.

and when armand implies that daniel is no better by revealing the danger it poses on louis and exposing louis’ suicidality without his permission (“he lives to share these opinions even when they are not solicited”) and revealing he doesn’t even want this book to happen, louis fights back by leaning into his power over daniel and exposing his thoughts about armand, and continues to, even when danny makes it clear his thoughts were not being voluntarily shared—that he did not want louis in his mind at all. he even interrupts rashmand in the middle of telling daniel he wouldn’t let him near his neck to offer up more information abt rashid (much to armands annoyance) that clearly isn’t even true after reading daniel’s mind again when daniel just explicitly told him not to. and when louis does that daniel fights back by leaning into his perceived power over rashid—louis’ servant—by demanding more of something to drink without even looking at him. and at this armand picks up his lil ipad and leaves without even picking up daniel’s glass, being the one who is actually the most powerful in the room. this is crazy. this is actually insane.

all this and armand is the one who killed claudia!!!! the only one who doesn’t get to fight back against her agency being taken from her in this scene!!! i’m going to fucking throw up. who is bored with them!? they are literally putting on thee insane sexy bdsm emo freaks show like…

“ The Son of Sheik” also alludes to the upcoming sexual assault btw. It’s a sequel to “The Sheik” where the protagonist is the son of the sheik in the first film who falls in love with a traveling dancer Yasmine. He rapes her out of retaliation for having been kidnapped and later whipped, which he believes to be her fault bc she is falsely accused of it. like in this episode and like claudia, yasmine’s rape is strongly implied in the movie with the use of pointed language and a scene cut.

this scene closes out with daniel pointing out he can’t get to accurate statistics of claudia’s murders to corroborate her accounts whether he thinks its more or less than what she recounts im unsure. louis points out that he wouldn’t be able to get an accurate account anyways bc of their disposal practices and how cities tend to downplay the dangers within them. daniel wanting all the details and louis making it clear he will have to accept that he can’t always have all the details will be a point of contention later on as we know.