#that's a fair amount haha

[quaranmine]

Ye, Grian didn't have as much in the merch department this year but I felt it mostly went into the sweater. I can't imagine what the production cost on knit would be compared to the usual stuff. But Scar always knocks it outta the park with the merch designs -🤖

i LOVE my swaggon jellie sweatshirt i got last year. scar's merch is SO good. the only reason i didn't buy any of this merch drop was that i also bought jimmy's hoodie and had previously recently gotten a lord huron hoodie and was like. well maybe i should chill for a moment. time will tell if i regret that or not!

yeah i have to say i've yet to be particularly enticed by any of grian's merch designs. they're not bad designs per se, just not something i specifically want? i want grian merch so bad ssldfjslkgj but i wont buy something unless i know i'll wear it specifically. i did once check sites like poshmark/depop to see if there were any sahara shirts still floating around out there but didn't find any :shrug: i think the christmas sweater is probably very nice quality and it was a complex design so i hope the people that ordered that end up liking it a lot :D

i've been impressed with the represent merch though, it seems like everything i've gotten from there has been nice and the designs from the CCs who use represent always seem very nice. even if it's not always something i'd specifically wear you know?

[moeblob]

So in the base plot she isn't really mentioned but there is lore that one of the bartenders (James) is the work dad to the hot bartender. And he's got a girlfriend who is never mentioned by name. Buuuut in the Royalty AU there's a young woman named Erin who is hired as the new head gardener at the castle and while she is getting adjusted to the role, she has some assistance from someone she used to work with at the flower shop in town. And that's the hot gardener!

So basically, Erin exists more in the AU than she does in canon/base but I'm stressed and wanted to design her.

For those that are new/don't know my OCs, Hot Bartender (HB) will never be given a name. That's just him now. He's the hot bartender. He's got a huge crush on Paul (another side character). That's Erin's work son vicariously in main and her work son directly in AU.

[wooahaes]

ngl anytime someone calls me one of their fave fluff blogs im like

[pynkhues]

You write such great Louis meta that I was curious about your opinion on something. I’m not sure if you’ve written something about this before or not so if you have please disregard!

The show is very clear with us since the first episode that Louis is capable of violence against those he loves most obviously including Paul and Lestat. But I also see a connecting thread with Louis conflating/connecting sex and violence as well. The scene at Antoinette’s is the most obvious but when I started thinking about it, it seems like this is a common thing for him. The murders in the park in Paris, where he’s seeing dreamstat. The 128 boys in SF. Maybe his relationship with Armand, even. Maybe with Jonah, where he was biting his own arm to keep from killing him (probably also because of hunger so I’m less sure about that one, or maybe that’s part of it too).

I started thinking about this reading analyses of the long face lyrics and people’s confusion about Lestat calling himself piano and Louis forte. And on the one hand I’m like *shrug* maybe it’s not that deep or it’s meant to irritate Louis- and on the other I’m like welllll Louis does kind of come at him aggressively sometimes, so maybe this is Lestat’s actual pov.

Thank you for your kind words, anon! And yeah, I definitely see what you mean and agree. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the conflation of violence and sex themselves, but I do think an enormous part of Louis’ character is about the repression of self until that self explodes violently out of him. To me, it’s ultimately that that feeds into Louis’ complex relationship with power and control which is often reflected in exertions of physical autonomy, both over his own body and the bodies of other people (and not even just sexually – a huge part of his relationship with Claudia is in his platonic dominion over her body, from having Lestat make her for him in the first place, to trying to control what she eats, what she wears and, most significantly, her role within the family unit [her transition to sister is, after all, just a placation. Dreamstat proves that, just as the coven calling her a feminine denouement of his name ‘Baby Lulu’ is. She is always her father’s daughter]).

Louis’ repression vs Louis’ oppression

One of the most interesting changes that the show has made is in changing Louis’ race, and while there has plenty said about that, the shift from the book as a purely repressed character, to one who’s repression is fueled by racial and societal oppression has elevated not just the character, but the show. Louis’ limitations aren’t just the ones he internalizes anymore, they’re externalized – when we meet him, he hasn’t picked a role as he has in the book, it’s been a role forced upon him by the era, the city and the systemic structures in place around him. He has to play the tough pimp down in the Black brothels he himself runs to cement his social power there, but he also has to play subservient, placating, and second-class to white society to gain any social power there.

The result is Louis represses different parts of himself as a result of oppression twice over – he’s repressing the softer, loving parts of himself working the part of Storyville he has power in, while repressing the harder, more ruthless parts of himself working the part of Storyville he doesn’t, to say nothing of having to repress his queerness in a religious household and a homophobic society. I think this makes him a melting pot in more ways than one, because it makes his authentic self hard even for him to identify within himself. He spends so much of his time code switching and repressing different parts of himself, yes, to survive, but also to advance which I think is a less talked about part of his character.

Like, Louis’ not just a survivor of his situation, he’s an ambitious man who seeks to elevate his social position and gain social power. I do think that’s partially borne out of the implied fall from grace his father had, and being pushed into the role of family patriarch at a pretty young age, and his singular rage at being locked out of NOLA’s upper echelons in the 1910s through 40s, but I also think it’s just a vital part of his character. Louis’ a social climber first, and a capitalist second! It’s one of the things that I find most interesting about him, and I love that the show leant into it with Louis actually gaining social power through his relationship with Lestat, even if it doesn’t always look like it (i.e. him having to play Black employee to his white husband at the opera).

Louis leverages that social power (and Lestat’s whiteness) to allow first professional advancement through the acquisition of The Fair Play Saloon – both his biggest competitor and a symbol of the white society he was locked out of, and turning it into The Azaelia, but also I’d argue the perception of personal advancement through having Lestat make him a child, something he also believed that he was locked out of as a gay man. Claudia's not just self-affirmant to Louis, but a symbol of achievement over society in the same way The Azaelia was, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she was born out of the death of it.

Okay, but what’s that got to do with body autonomy, sex and violence?

Yes! Right! Get back on track, Sophie, haha. Look, both Louis’ survival and advancement are really determined by his ability to control himself and choose what to be and when. Like I said above, he has to repress different parts of himself to be able to work different parts of society, and I do think there’s a resentment of the fact that he has to do that at all. He can’t float through life authentically because he’s not granted the same privilege of straight, white men, and even when he has someone who passes for that on his arm, he’s still limited in how he’s able to wield Lestat’s social power out of the house in that particular era.

That – understandably! – stokes an enormous amount of feeling. Yes, rage is a big one, but I also think grief and hurt and sheer weight, and Louis as a character tends to repress all of that too. He struggles to self-manage his emotions because he’s never been allowed the space to, and even when Lestat tries to give him that space, Lestat has exactly 0% capacity to understand him. Louis and Lestat are very, very different characters from very, very different eras and countries, and I think fundamentally don’t understand each other, despite loving each other deeply, and in a lot of ways, that’s probably part of the appeal for them.

Louis though I think does view managing his emotions as intrinsically linked to controlling himself / his body, which comes to this point that Louis presents himself as a very cerebral character, but he’s not really. He might talk a lot, read a lot, enjoy art a lot, but Louis’ always been both practical and physical. How he handles himself, how he processes trauma, how he hides from himself and others, hell, how he enjoys himself isn’t necessarily something he thinks about, it’s something he does, and usually does with his or somebody else’s body.

He hides his sexuality using Miss Lily's body, he represses his vampirism with an animal diet, he combats feelings of powerlessness, boredom, malaise with exertions of power, pleasure, comfort over and with other people’s bodies, whether that’s making Lestat turn Claudia (an exertion of power not just over Claudia, but Lestat too), the scene at Antoinette’s (significantly being after an enormous loss of power with Lestat’s act of abuse), murdering Lestat at the Mardi Gras Ball (and saving him / grabbing Claudia too), depending on Claudia for his own happiness in Europe, grabbing Santiago’s tongue at the restaurant, his D/s relationship with Armand and using Armand’s body to perform power over the Coven, the murder of the coven and Alderman Fenwick to process trauma and oppression, the 128 boys in San Francisco with Armand waiting at home, the rocks in his ankles, the comfort of the embrace in the reunion with Lestat. Hell, even the interview becomes a physical act given the way he flies Daniel out and then weaponises his Parkinson's against him.

We spend so much time with Louis playing passive as he narrates the events of his life in Dubai that I think it can be easy to overlook how physical he actually is as a character, and the importance bodily autonomy plays in his connection to himself and his connection to others. The fact that that can and does manifest aggressively / violently sometimes (particularly after periods of feeling powerless, traumatised or overwhelmed) is absolutely a part of that, but even beyond that, I think he does have a real physical vocabulary that he often tries to depict as more cerebral because I think it makes him feel more in control of himself.  

So yeah, I think you're right in that Lestat thinking Louis' forte probably is pretty accurate to how Lestat sees him.

[sunstonespark]

making a blorb sheet is like.. literally the most self indulgent thing and uhm here it is uwu

[queer-reader-07]

the worst thing about me being a Gen Z with a Gen X father is that i routinely use Gen Z slang & internet lingo around him to the point that he's able to accurately parse what it all means. AND THEN HE GOES AND USES IT AT WORK TO IMPRESS HIS TWENTY SOMETHING COWORKERS

[moonlightvalleycomic]

omake

previous/next

beginning of chapter

chapter 1

[mrsmiroir]

i understand that a lot of the crows’ characterization in the show had to be cut for run time and adaptation reasons, but i find the take that it’s impossible to convey complex interiority in visual media and that much of this recharacterization (mischaracterization) “had” to be lost in adaptation to be lukewarm at best. it is possible, it just requires good writers. the problem is that the s&b writers are not good, at least when it comes to this show!

[meownotgood]

who is your fav csm character besides Aki ?

uuuuu it's so hard to choose, obviously aki is my favorite but I love all of the other characters so much too...

I'd have to say my second favorite is a tie between denji and angel... but I also really like power, reze and kobeni......

[redgearsmovin]

[palaeophis-fr]

I... got all of these today. The last two Eliminates in consecutive battles. RNG are you good???

[doctordonovan]

I don't know who needs to hear this but please: it's so important to not make the other person put in all the enthusiasm. I know some people are shy, or don't love plotting, but if you just reply with one word answers or 'fair enough' or anything like that? you're not just making the situation uncomfortable for the other person, but you're likely making them more hesitant to reach out to others.

I'm not saying don't be yourself. I'm not saying force yourself into things. but please try to match people's energies?

I know I've said this before but if you're the person always putting in 99%? look after yourself. step away from things that are only draining you and giving nothing back. it's not a reflection on you, and you && your muse are wonderful. but you can't always be the person doing all the work, RP is a group hobby not a school project. if you're carrying it all on your back you might as well just go and write a fanfiction, it'll be quicker and less depressing.

find people who value your creativity, your work, your enthusiasm.

[viatrixtravels-a]

"...Heh~ That was a piece of cake~"

"Woah! You got them all correct, Traveler! I wonder if we get some kind of prize now!?"

"Well, it says I've earned the title of Vigilant Yaksha, right? I guess that means I can now do this..."

She held one hand in front of her face as if putting on a mask.

"Evil conquering...!! ーー And all enemies will just drop, right~?"

[dopaminestarvedsim]

i think my new favorite thing is to wake up absurdly early and sit down at my lil pc with my lil cup of coffee and edit my lil screenshots of my lil sims 🥹

[graham--folger]

waking up sick to my stomach, making dinner sick to my stomach, thinking about homework sick to my stomach. the anxiety is fucking strongggg this week

[pallases]

okayyy got bored and finally watched the live action little mermaid. actually i liked it way better than i thought i would