#this can be nandor!

[castielsprostate]

ugh i love fictional middle aged men that are emotionally unavailable, have a functioning drinking problem, harbour evil inside of them and have a crush on their male best friend

[rockin-robin19]

Something something privacy, something something coffin.. yeah.

Post-finale Nandermo truly has so much potential

[losthalfelf]

i know that if nandermo is finally gonna happen this season, it’s most likely gonna happen in the last episode of the season but i really want it to happen earlier in the season bc i would sell my soul to see nandermo couple hijinks. like them avoiding each other after their first kiss. being super awkward and trying to pretend like nothing happened because they both don’t know how to act. poorly trying to hide their blossoming relationship from the other vampires. nadja and the camera crew enter a room as nandermo are making out and nandor vampire strengt pushes guillermo across the room and pretends nothing happened. colin figuring it out from the start but not caring enough to tell anyone. etc.

[kyurochurro]

they did the monster mash!! 😳 🎃it was a graveyard smash!! 🦇👻

[kaykoko]

There's something about Guillermo holding the "Gay Guy" sign and gradually getting more into the parade that is SO healing. King is letting himself have that joy💖

[squircatlies]

Fictional gay people cannot just say "I love you" it always has to be some dramatic shit like "you are my purpose". Shut the fuck up. Your purpose is to look pretty and whimper while covered in blood.

[akitalockwood]

Guess who remembered that she owns a sketchbook

[michelle-jacksons-art-blog]

Try these out!

[homoquartz]

someone on twitter pointed out that it felt like the end of WWDITS was like, kind of laughing at fans of the show who expected there to be some sort of character growth or plot.

as if to say, there was never an intent for this show to be anything but shallow laughs, and no matter how touched or intrigued you were by certain plotlines, they were never intended to be anything more than jokes.

and i think i can see that now. but it's kind of unfortunate that 1. they created some genuinely moving beats on accident and 2. that they didn't take advantage of that when it did happen

[veryintricaterituals]

I'm quietly mumbling to myself: there's a twist, there's a twist, there's a twist

Plus this is what Harvey said about the series finale:

[sharkbath]

The Baron calling The Sire just a roommate was thoroughly devastating to me as someone who completely believes they are ancient husbands but it got saved by this line at the end.

[pleasureprose]

Relentless

[cookinguptales]

So… I’ve been turning all this over in my head since last night, and I wanted to make a post about vampiric transformation as sex, and how it’s being used in wwdits as a metaphor for sexual repression, sexual freedom, virginity, and cuckolding.

Before I even get into the obvious metaphors about virginity and cuckolding, I think we need to talk about the elephant in the room. Guillermo’s sexual repression and how that’s come to find an outlet in his vampiric longing.

Guillermo is highly repressed, sexually speaking, but I don’t think he’s asexual. He’s shown interest in sex several times, but in an uncomfortable “this can’t be for me yet” kind of way. He was clearly raised Catholic and has internalized a lot of that shame re: sex, especially gay sex. He wants intimacy, but he’s also internalized the idea that wanting these things is dangerous and shameful.

But… the vampiric world seems to symbolize all the things that Guillermo wants but cannot have. He wants to be strong, powerful, attractive, and sexually liberated. As much as their openness about sex embarrasses him, there’s a certain longing there, too. He didn’t just want to be handsome as a vampire — he explicitly used the word “sexy.”

A vampiric Guillermo is a version of Guillermo that gets to have sex. Loudly, proudly, and without shame. It’s a version of him that is wanted, that wants, and who gets to have the precise kind of intimacy he's always craved.

Now, how much Guillermo has actually done sexually is still up for a lot of debate in fandom, but I think that’s kind of immaterial. For most of the show, Guillermo clearly wasn’t having the kind of intimacy that he wanted to be having, and he only started to even begin to allow himself to seriously consider all that in s4, when he got a boyfriend and came out to his family.

As being gay and wanting to be a vampire. 

Guillermo is finally starting to own both his homosexuality and his vampiric life, and that means he’s finally starting to explore sex.

Now… At the end of s4, I talked about how Guillermo going to Derek in the finale had the air of a person who’d been fantasizing about losing their virginity in a certain way all their life — but then they finally give up on those dreams and hire a sex worker instead. There’s a resignation there in Guillermo that he couldn’t get it “the old-fashioned way,” he’s disappointed and jaded when it comes to intimate relationships, and now he’s tired of waiting for love and just wants a business transaction.

I wasn’t quite expecting for them to push that metaphor even more in s5! The money aspect was almost forgotten (Did… Derek even take the money? Why is he still cleaning toilets?) but the scene with Derek biting Guillermo was clearly a metaphorical virginity scene.

Guillermo’s nervous eagerness, his growing realization that this wasn’t actually the way he wanted it to happen. Asking Derek if he’d ever done this before and figuring out if he was “ready.” Taking off his clothes (that his grandmother got for him, even, that’s a whole meta post right THERE) and trying to make the vibe “right.” His insistence that though Nandor had never done this for him, they still had a caring and intimate relationship.

But… it was also a metaphor for bad sex. Many people lose their virginity in a way they don’t find satisfying, and Guillermo definitely seems to fall in this category. It was awkward, it was bloody, it hurt, his partner didn’t listen to him, they weren’t on the same wavelength, they didn’t connect, there was no emotional bond, and most importantly, he didn’t feel changed.

Like a lot of people do, Guillermo thought losing his virginity would change him. He’d be cooler, sexier, more powerful. His station in life would change. He’d become an adult his ideal form. But he’s still just Guillermo.

As he told Laszlo, as soon as he did it, he regretted it. He immediately knew that he’d been right, that this wasn’t the way he wanted to do it. He wanted to do it with someone experienced who loved and cared about him, who listened to him, and he wanted that person to be Nandor. But he wasn’t patient, he paid an inexperienced acquaintance for a one-night-stand instead, and he was left feeling deeply unfulfilled.

Most upsettingly, he immediately discovered that, like virginity, you can’t lose it twice. He can’t just have a do-over with Nandor now. He’s given something up that he can’t give to anyone else, and he’s going to have to live with the consequences.

Because like sex for humans, transformation has social implications in the vampire world. It can only be done in very specific situations. Guillermo seems to have grown up in a human world where sex should only be happening within a heterosexual marriage, and now he’s finding that in the vampire world, transformation is only supposed to happen between a master and familiar currently in a contractual bond.

So… him going to Derek and finding “outlet” in another relationship, so to speak, is effectively vampirically cuckolding Nandor. He’s given that honor to another vampire, which Nandor seems to find both vampirically humiliating and personally hurtful. It would in fact hurt him so badly that he would probably not survive it, in Laszlo’s words.

(There’s also definitely an element of an abusive “if I can’t have you, no one can” vibe in Nandor’s threat to kill Guillermo and then himself if Guillermo got what he needed from another vampire, but since when have we ever liked them well-adjusted?)

Guillermo is realizing that, as much as he’s been thinking of this in sexual terms, so have the vampires. He thought he was the only one who thought it was a big deal. He thought he was the only one placing intimacy and partnership and loyalty into this event. But now he’s realizing that as much as it meant to him, it might have even been a bigger thing for Nandor.

For Guillermo, vampirism-as-sex represents the idealized transformational aspects of losing your virginity. He’d built up this big event in his mind that represented his intimate bond with Nandor, he’d built up this idea that the event would change him, would make him better, would make him free. But he’s finding, like many first-timers do, that sometimes it’s not transformational. It’s just awkward and disappointing and the only thing that’s changed is that you ache in the morning.

He still doesn’t have the intimacy he wanted. He still doesn’t have the ability to be loudly himself. He still hasn’t been able to fully own his sexuality and ask for what he wants. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t enjoy it. He regrets it.

He also regrets it because now he knows it will hurt Nandor and the relationship they’ve built. Because for Nandor, vampirism-as-sex represents the societal aspects of sex. The rules people follow. The societal humiliation you feel if you’re cuckolded. The personal agony you feel when you’re cheated on. The sense that your home is broken if your partner goes to find satisfaction with someone else.

Guillermo, who has had to deal with societal disapproval of his desired type of sex in the human world his whole life, was viewing vampiric transformation as a way to be free of all that. The shame and the repression and the societal penalties for being himself.

But he’s just found himself in a mess of new rules, hasn’t he? Different culture, same struggle. And while the vampiric world has always symbolized a sexual liberation that both repulses and attracts Guillermo, he clearly doesn’t have as much freedom here as he thought.

So… to sum up, Guillermo always kind of thought of transformation as losing his virginity. He associated vampirism with sex, and he thought this would be his entrance into the sexual world. He wanted to have an intimate experience with Nandor, but eventually gave up on that and decided to pay for it — and then immediately regretted it, both because he found it personally dissatisfying and because it came as a betrayal to the man he loves.

The problem is that he thought he was the only person thinking of it as sex — he didn’t realize that Nandor does, too, just in a very different way.

Nandor was also thinking of vampiric transformation as this special act, and one that belongs only to him as Guillermo’s master/partner. He was thinking of it in intimate terms, but also in societal partnership terms. He’s thinking of his household, while Guillermo was thinking of things on more individualistic terms.

If only they’d both talked about all this shit even once. :’)

But that’s not how we do things here in Staten Island!!! We just long for things ineffectively, keep secrets, and fuck everything up!

(There’s also a whole thing here about how Nandor wasn’t keeping his side of the relationship bargain and that’s why Guillermo looked elsewhere in a moment of weakness, but I guess that’s probably a separate post. This is long enough already.)

[lesbicosmos]

please

just once

can we have this trope

NOT GO WRONG SOMEHOW

[meideixx]

[flysafepapi]

highly unlikely, given the fact that it's not intended as a comedy, that there'll ever be any iwtv crossover episodes even though there definitely should be because I love crossover episodes especially when it's only referenced in one episode and then never again

But I would give my left arm for Daniel to ask Lestat, during the interview, where he was and what he was doing between his attempted murder and the trial and his answer to be a nonchalant "Hm? Oh, I was just visiting some friends in Staten Island, we've known each other for over a century now. I've invited them to the next show on the tour actually, they should be arriving soon," and then the doorbell rings and it's Guillermo struggling to carry a comically large amount of suitcases with Nadja, Laszlo, and Nandor standing behind him.

The rest of the episode is just Daniel trying to keep the interview on track and slowly losing his mind when it keeps getting derailed, and then they leave at the end and it's just never talked about again.

I would like to see it.