Petty Musings Of Meat - Tumblr Posts

Imagine Armand slips up and calls Daniel “beautiful boy” and Daniel’s all like “HUH? What’d you just call me?” And Armand clears his throat and says “Mr. Molloy, of course. That’s your name isn’t it?” And then there’s this weird, awkward tension wherein Armand hopes that Daniel bought that and Daniel is just sitting there wondering if he misheard Armand bc it REALLY sounded like he said beautiful boy and now Daniel WANTS Armand to call him that bc it made his heart stutter when he thought Armand had said it the first time….

Anyway,

I’m gonna go eat some arsenic

I just had a shower thought

Is Armand still calling Daniel ‘Mr Molloy’ because it rhymes with ‘Beautiful Boy’ cause let’s face it he’s not being respectful

I think other fandoms are so used to their ships being explicitly monogamous and honestly pretty puritanical bc of long-standing cultural brainwashing. There’s an untrue and unrealistic sentiment perpetuated by most media that a person may only ever have one true love and that any other proceeding love they might feel for someone after meeting their “true love” cannot and should not be a love of the same intensity as their first - otherwise it would diminish or degrade the prior relationship.

“Firsts” are given so much credence and virtue in Western society, and any character who does not honor that belief is oftentimes meant to be seen as a harlot or as someone undeserving of love (bc look they can’t even respect the very foundation of it - lol as if Love is some deity you have to appease)

Iwtv skirts this trope simply because Anne Rice is/was ahead of her time, but also bc the characters are very much NOT human. In the eyes of many, these vampires don’t have to follow any sort of morality or ingrained code of conduct (again, equating goodness with traditionalism).

Anyway, let them eat more than one person out, i say

As someone who ships Devil's Minion, Loustat, Loumand, Lesmand, Armianca, and basically all The Vampire Chronicles ships except disgusting ones like Armand/Marius, I really do not understand the ship wars in this fandom. 🤷‍♀️

okay wait that’s-

hmmmm okay so the first interview in San Fran took place in ‘73. Four years later would technically be ‘77. However, we know that the initial interview actually took place at the tail end of 1973 bc the “Spiro Agnew” resignation Daniel overhears on the TV was a real-life event that took place in October of that year. So, “maybe fours years” later would land perfectly around 1978…

Also!!! Remember Louis’ comment abt the Berkeley Barb in 2x05. Berkeley is a suburb of San Francisco, for those that don’t know.

Did Armand alter Daniel’s memory of Pompeii and change it to a setting Daniel would be more familiar/comfortable with? ORR what if the “beautiful boy” scene takes place in San Fran instead of Pompeii this time???

rewatching iwtv s1e1 and noticed..... wAIT

1978?? why 1978???

and then a few pages later:

the best he's ever had

And like the beauty of death or of “being a corpse”, so to say, is that you’re not self-aware any longer. The idea of an easeful death and resting in peace, it’s the letting go of pain and fear and trauma and all the many burdens that come with living. The vampire is waking death. The vampire is conscious death.

Vampires are tragic because they’re frozen at the moment of death (as is the nature of corpses). They can’t grow, they can’t change. Whatever configuration their bodies and minds were in at the moment of death will be the state they stay in till the end of time. Lestat’s always going to have his nervous system frozen at the moment Magnus kidnapped and tortured him, Louis is always going to be half-mad and half-loving at the church, looking at Lestat, still grieving his brother and hating himself, and Claudia is always going to be fourteen and half-burnt to death, being held by a stranger. She’ll live longer, but she won’t get older. She’s a corpse. They’re all corpses. There’s no maturing, no changing, no moving past anything, because they’re permanently frozen at the moment of death. It’s a good metaphor for how trauma constricts your actions and freezes your development at the moment it happened, but it’s also just sad. Lestat will never be anything but fearful and desperate, because he was fearful and desperate when Magnus turned him. Louis will always half-love and half-fear Lestat, because that’s how he felt when Lestat turned him. And Claudia will always be a child. Her only blessing is that she wasn’t conscious while she was turned.

Mmkay so when are we thinking Dreamstat reappeared for Louis? After the San Fran incident, mayhaps? What about the year 2000 when Louis apparently stopped killing people? Ooh or what if Dreamstat never left and Louis made up that whole breakup story to appease Armand?

Also, what do we think Lestat has been interjecting with this whole time? I feel like he probably had a lot to say abt that fucking “love of my life” shit…

purely speculation but…

“Write me a song and put your lover’s voice on it, what the fuck is wrong with your head?”

“Write me a book and put your lover’s voice on it, what the fuck is wrong with your head?”

Andddd the theory that Louis is holding a rough draft of the book in the 2x08 promo image, and is in NOLA to give it to Lestat ANDDD he looks wet like he’s been rained on (or swam the Mississippi cough cough) and andddd the fact that we know there’s a song in the finale called “I Didn’t Know It Was A Gift”

*clears throat*

A gift like a dedicated song or book ???

Yeah it’s probably nothing.

I think we’re supposed to assume that what Claudia wrote in her diary is based on what Louis had told her happened the night of her making. She was so out of it - at death’s doorstep, practically - there’s no way she was going to remember things all that clearly. She knew the Black Angel saved her from the fire and the White Angel bit her. I think anything else she wrote in her diary (and I do think she wrote more than we hear her narration say), was the story Louis fed her afterward and Lestat just did not correct it (which, hey, pretty on par for his characterization). Hence why we have the scene in 2x07 wherein Claudia asks Louis “It’s all lies, right?” after Lestat recounts the true events of the night she was made. And at the time, Louis doubles down, but in hindsight he’s able to share with Daniel the truth - the truth being the version Lestat spoke at the trial.

so something that's been bothering me since episode 7 was the fact that we never saw Claudia's turning from Louis point of view. It was Daniel reading the diaries alone and Louis wasn't even there?! He comes to the room when Daniel gets to the Charlie's death so the whole "I'm sorry lestats version is how it happened I didn't think of it at the time..." it doesn't make sense to me

Yes, it’s Daniel’s imagination based on her words, and then the extended version at the trial.

It’s a bitter reflection on her having no say in her own story.

The only people who were there and are still alive to tell are Louis and Lestat. Louis‘ memory was edited to take his responsibility and shift it to Lestat’s, that’s why he is so taken aback by it as well. Supposedly.

I am not 100% sure it was that way bc it was used in the trial to make him responsible.

I guess it will be very interesting to see what Lestat’s POV of this is when we get to it.

Another thing that always gets me, and I think the fandom doesn’t acknowledge this enough, is that Lestat DID save someone at the trial.

Louis.

I’m sure the show is going to try to spin it, and maybe add some context or extenuating circumstances surrounding the trial and Lestat’s conditions therein, but I don’t think it’s possible for them to write themselves out of this narrative they’ve created. Lestat had the ability to save someone that day. Maybe only one someone. And he CHOSE Louis OVER Claudia. He chose the father of his child over his child.

Based on what we were shown, Claudia’s sentencing occurred before Louis’. Lestat did not use up all his power saving Louis - thinking he’d do the same for Claudia - only to find out that he was running on empty when the time for her verdict came.

The fandom loves Lestat. He’s their golden boy. And, I get it. Hell, I love him too. But, he is NOT perfect. He’s not even good. He’s a shitty ass father, jealous of his own daughter’s relationship with her other father. He’s a piss-poor partner, hiding important information from his husband in fear that he’d be abandoned, and abusing said husband when the aforementioned abandonment comes to pass.

He’s deeply flawed, and I wish that people would accept and acknowledge that bc it actually makes him a more compelling character overall. He’s also not book Lestat, as the show is an adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles, and that is made abundantly clear by the very extreme changes the show-runner’s made to his character (ie. domestic violence, being the one to save Louis at the trial instead of Armand, etc).

More than one thing can be true. Lestat can love Claudia, and still not love her enough to put her first. He can want to be good, want to be righteous or pious or moral, and still not act in ways that align with those wants. He can be sympathetic, with a tragic past, and an understandable amount of trauma leading to dubious decision-making, and still be held responsible for his actions and inactions.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say Lestat is the MOST at fault for Claudia’s death, but he sure is up there. Anyway, I’m done yapping now. Sorry, it’s a curse.

Lestat's getting away with murder. 😩🤦

BRUH.

Lestat's accountability is just a non-entity at this point, @aizenat.

I'm shocked everyone threw the blame at Armand's feet, when it was Santiago who broke into Louis' home and stole her diaries in the first place.

The Blonde Privilege is wild. 😔

Omg no one has ever responded to me so thoroughly and eloquently. Thank you OP!!!

I had a lot of fun reading the links you provided, so thank you for that as well!

I really appreciate your point of view on this topic. I think I’m still firmly in the camp of blaming Lestat and Louis, both, for Claudia’s death. However, you have made me realize that I may not blame them equally.

Out of the two, Lestat was the only one with over a century of vampiric knowledge and experience, and thus was really the only one who could make an informed decision when it came to the Turning of Claudia - which, in my mind, was her true death sentence, and the moment from which all her future suffering stems from.

Sure, Louis’ pride was the catalyst for the fire that should’ve killed her, and he was the one who brought her home instead of to a hospital, and it was he who begged Lestat to turn her, and it was one Mr. Louis du Pointe Du Lac who disregarded Lestat’s many pleas that a vampire teenager would be miserable for the rest of her days.

All of that sucks. Bad dad, Louis. Bad dad. Go sit in the corner.

But Lestat, unlike Louis, KNEW, with all certainty, what it would mean to turn her. He tried to tell Louis, I’ll give him that, but he folded rather easily in the end.

Once again, Lestat chose Louis over Claudia. He didn’t want to lose the man he loved, and Claudia became the “bandaid for a shitty marriage” as Daniel so poignantly put it. He failed her the second he decided to make her his fledgling.

The most tragic part, I think, is that both Louis and Lestat had many opportunities to atone or redeem themselves for Claudia’s sake, and they just never could do it.

I hope she haunts the narrative next season, in some way. She deserves to be remembered. It’s the least her fathers could do for her, literally.

Lestat's getting away with murder. 😩🤦

BRUH.

Lestat's accountability is just a non-entity at this point, @aizenat.

I'm shocked everyone threw the blame at Armand's feet, when it was Santiago who broke into Louis' home and stole her diaries in the first place.

The Blonde Privilege is wild. 😔