heliza24
sweetest in the gale
30-something queer disabled writer. she/her. multi-fannish to a fault but mainly into Young Royals, IwtV, and D20 these days.
781 posts
Last active 60 minutes ago
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
lisasalonbinjai
Untitled
lesbiandardevil
god's silliest soldier
sunny-prongs
Sunny
bow-echo
Paraphernalia Grotto
doodl3
Some stuff I guess
Text
Oh, so when some people who don’t understand social interactions ✨harmlessly✨ observe others in order to learn fascinating appropriate behavior it’s “scripting” and “a valuable coping skill,” but when I, the vampire Armand—
159 notes
·
View notes
Text
Luke Brandon Field & Assad Zaman
Behind The Scenes of Interview with the Vampire 2.05
#interview with the vampire#iwtv#cutiessssss#“Rolin has a good track record of casting people who become best friends#etc etc
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
I wonder how many of Armand's victims have actively fought back during his "easeful death" speech the way Daniel did.
Daniel's interruptions may be small — not loud or flailing or aggressive — but they're impactful. And while Armand remains composed throughout and continues his practiced monologue without wavering, I'd say for the first three quarters of it he's talking at Daniel. He talks over him, but not really to him. Not until the very end.
Daniel rebuts with:
"I don't want to rest."
"I like my life."
"I have a thing happening in the city."
"I'm a bright young reporter with a point of view."
He's trying so hard to cling onto life. He doesn't want death, even if it is an easeful one. Armand cuts that last interjection off with a "ssh-ssh-ssh," which makes me think this might be a point where Armand's patience is tested. Because things aren't going the way they perhaps normally go when he gives this speech! Daniel isn't begging for death! He's resisting!
And so then, Armand says "rest" a lot near the end of the speech, which we know by this point is an indicator of him controlling bodies. He says, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. It'll feel like a bath. Rest. Like honey on your tongue," etc, and maybe this is Armand struggling and fighting harder to get Daniel into the state of obeisance that he wants in his victims. The speech hasn't been working as intended, so he has to rely more on his methods of control and hypnosis.
And finally, after all this, you can see the moment when Daniel finally falls into the trance. It's after a lot of effort on Armand's part, and after he's resorted to his cheaper tricks.
So, if we do get a past Devil's Minion arc, I can see Armand fixating on the fact that Daniel was able to resist the pull and performance of Gentleman Death for an impressive amount of time. That despite all the words Armand said to him, he still longed for life.
Maybe this is what makes him fascinating.
206 notes
·
View notes
Text
Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio (1988)
Luke Brandon Field in Interview With The Vampire (2022 - )
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
These are all chef's kiss perfection and the one thing I'm gonna add is that I want Daniel to cover the 504 Sit In in 1977. Armand doesn't want to let him go, he worries about him, but Daniel is determined and he embeds with the sit in and waits it out with all the activists. And then Armand flies him out to DC so he can cover the capital crawl as well. And then he writes the definitive history of the ADA fight. Put disabled Danny in the middle of disabled history!!!
Disabled!Daniel Molloy hcs (because I’m disabled and can do what I want to my blorbos)
• Isn’t officially diagnosed with anything but has chronic fatigue and pain, as well as muscle weakness and balance issues
• As a result he uses a rigid manual wheelchair that has teal framing and rims!! He picked out the color in high school but will probably stick with it when he gets his next wheelchair
• When Louis bit him he picked him up by the shoulders (for the drama but also because Louis would not bend down or get on his knees for his food) and then carefully helped him back into his wheelchair followed by the whole “will I die” convo because Louis might have a disregard for human life but he’s not ableist <3
• When he arrives at Lestat’s house he stays on the first floor because he does not have the energy to climb stairs after his journey. He still ends up locked in the cellar though
• The chase years are much shorter than in canon because pre ADA being passed it was difficult to travel with mobility aids, and that’s if they even gave him the opportunity to travel
• One time during this Armand buys a five star hotel room for Daniel because the cheaper one he was trying to get refused to give him a ground level room
• Discussions of disability and ableism are of course had when they start having their philosophical talks, and Armand probably wouldn’t mention it but he’d definitely be thinking of the children of darkness’ rule to not turn anyone deemed imperfect
• As they continue to get closer Daniel will do wheelies to impress Armand and will sometimes let him ride on his lap when he’s not having a bad pain day
• Daniel takes full advantage of the swoon and will beg Armand to bite him when he’s having a bad pain day and wants the blood even more than in canon because of how much it helps
• Daniel is convinced to get a standard wheelchair for when he’s especially tired and Armand takes great joy in pushing him around
• When night island is built it is one hundred percent accessible and as a result a lot of disabled people flock to it
#he WOULD have a teal wheelchair he would#lol someone told me the other day that they want devils minion to happen in 2022 starting with the chase and let me tell you#if you think chronically ill Parkinson's Daniel is flying all over the world THINK AGAIN#truly cannot imagine trying to swing that in the pre-ADA era#interview with the vampire#iwtv#disability
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
Thoughts about Domesticity, Carework, and the American Dream in episode 2.5 of Interview with the Vampire
I’ve been mulling over episode 2.5 a lot. There was so much to love in the episode (the incredible writing, the kitchen sink off Broadway play of it all, the chemistry between Luke, Jacob and Assad, the vulnerability in Eric’s performance). But my mind keeps circling a couple of themes, trying to piece them together. So as usual I’m here on tumblr to try to work it out.
I keep coming back to the way that Armand was gendered in this episode. His big complaint to Louis was that he was “home picking lint off the sofa”. He arrives with “mop and misery” to clean up the mess. Louis insults him by calling him “the good nurse”. All those things are feminized. They’re also extremely of the era; these are Feminine Mystique, mid-century housewife type complaints. The wife’s job is to make the husband’s life smooth and never worry about her own happiness. Obviously in the 1970s we’re seeing this begin to change thanks to second wave feminism. We’re in the process of trying to ratify the ERA, Ms. magazine has just been founded, and things are shifting. The kind of cheery domestic American dream of the 1950s is definitely shifting, and we see this in the episode as well. Betty Hutton selling sewing machines competes with Spiro Agnew resigning on TV. The watergate scandal signified a loss of faith in American authority, a kind of parallel destruction of the country’s father figure (brought down by journalists, no less). The comfortable lie of domesticity, the “prison of empathy” that Armand has created around Louis is crumbling. Armand is boring but he’s also bored, like a housewife taking valium to get by. The whole episode is set in an apartment that reeks of divorce, according to Daniel, and we’re seeing it play out in real time. When Armand lashes out to hurt Louis, he does it not through direct violence, like Lestat, but by holding his failure as a father over him, telling him that Claudia never loved him. That jab, in combination with the way he’s edited Louis’s memories (gaslighting, another time honored form of domestic abuse) is enough to get Louis to hurt himself. LIke a wife who is always outwardly obedient to her husband but spends her time exacting petty revenge against him for the way he takes her for granted, Armand’s methods are never violent. They are soft and subtle and targeted.
I have to thank @bluedalahorse for first alerting me to the way the crumbling domestic American dream is threaded through this episode. And after she mentioned it I saw it *everywhere*.
Obviously there is a level of complexity here in the Loumand relationship that this metaphor cannot fully capture. For one thing, Armand is a man. He was turned in a time before modern understanding of gender and sexuality really solidified, so in some way it makes sense that he would be the most gender fluid of our main characters, but his position would be a lot different if he were a woman, even a woman vampire. And Armand is very powerful. His insecurities and crippling fear of being alone keep him from exercising this power and walking away in a way that would perhaps be healthier for both him and Louis. But he is not trapped economically or socially in the way a wife would have been in this era. (That being said, I get the sense that *something* about the way the fire happened in Paris has made Louis and Armand go to ground. Maybe there is an element of being “trapped together because of fear of exposure”. But even then, I think my point still stands.)
To drill down and become more specific, there’s an extra added layer to the way Armand is feminized in this episode. I’ve written a lot about disability in this show and also the way it approaches eugenics, and those things were very on my mind as I rewatched this episode. (To be fair, they are always on my mind when I watch anything. Being disabled will do that to you.) Anyway, the specific way that Armand casts himself in this episode is as a caregiver. He is a beleaguered, bitter caregiver to those weaker to him. I think you hear this especially when he describes to Louis what happened: “you said the worst things you ever said to me, and then you walked into the sun. And now you are a convalescent.” The absolute sneer on the word convalescent. The absolute disdain for being put in this position again. The way he denies Louis the blood and keeps him out of his coffin for so long. The “final act of service” in calling Lestat. And then the tenderness laced with fear. Will he “be on suicide watch for the next 1000 years?”.
Armand is fascinating to me because of the way he seems to instinctively reject people who remind him of his own past weaknesses. Those weaknesses are buried down deep in his characterization, but they’re there and they’re important. He was sick and wasting away when he was turned. And before that he was an abused sex worker. You can see the way he dismisses people in similar situations in the way he treats Daniel in this episode. He calls Daniel a “broken boy” when he’s talking to Louis. He casually rejects the idea that there might be any sort of truth captured in Daniel’s tapes. The interviews on those tapes are with a sex worker and gay veteran and his disabled refugee husband. All of these people are so close to Armand in so many ways. I even think this is why Armand comes down so hard on Claudia, and why he cannot abide the true empathy and love Louis has for her. Claudia was turned when her body was weak. Weaker and more disabled, so to speak, than Armand. But they are not dissimilar. But Louis loves Claudia anyway, and respects her strengths. No one ever shown the love Louis shows to Claudia to Armand. No one ever granted him true empathy. The only way he has been able to hold on to any love at all is to grovel, to manage, to care give. The only way he experiences care is to give it. Of course he’s broken, of course he’s bitter.
So now we come to Daniel. The broken boy who has suicidal ideation and a drug problem, things that make him imminently dismissable in Armand’s mind. But Daniel also has a drive, a passion for life, and a love for the people who slip through the cracks. Louis and Daniel definitely share this great affection for humanity, and it’s what allows them to connect in San Francisco and again in Dubai. And it’s what makes him inscrutable, and captivating, to Armand. Because there really is no greater act of service than telling somebody’s story. Daniel describes himself as a therapist ironically in Dubai, but what he’s doing is carework. It’s real empathy. And Armand doesn’t understand that. Armand doesn’t understand what someone is doing recording the stories of people who were just like him. A whole universe of possibilities opens in the moment when Armand almost starts telling Daniel his story. Out of all the ways Daniel tries to save himself, that little life line of empathy is what almost snags Armand. But then Armand clamps back down, realizes he’s staring into a “black hole”. He’s trying to insult Daniel when he says that, but to me it just sounds like he’s describing himself.
When Armand is lulling Daniel into death, the thing he chooses to describe to him is the American domestic fantasy. He describes it as a fate worse than death. He describes it as a boring trap. And he specifically casts Daniel in the masculine, straight role in that fantasy, with a wife “vacuuming on valium” who “counts down his thrusts”. In some ways Armand is painting his own relationship to Louis as the worst possible fate that Daniel could suffer. (And it makes me wonder– did Armand ever wonder if he would amount to anything? Does he think his life has any meaning at all, if you subtract the vampiric powers? Armand has never stopped to introspect like this, but I wonder what would happen if you forced him to.)
But Daniel is stubborn, and his desire to tell stories and empathize with people resists death. I love that he still defends himself, still claims that he’s “a bright young reporter with a point of view” and that that is worth something. Because it is.
When Louis asks Armand to save Daniel, Daniel unwittingly becomes a symbol of Louis and Armand’s continued marriage. He’s a wedding ring, a vows renewal. He’s emblematic of the continuation of failing vampiric domesticity. And when Louis tries to repair the damage Armand has wrought, he isn’t able to offer Daniel soothing words about his ability to find a spouse or raise children or understand love. Louis doesn’t understand those things, so how could he teach Daniel about them? But Louis has always understood stories and humanity, so he is able to gift Daniel his writing and his reporting back.
I think you can interpret Daniel’s failed marriages and difficult relationship with his children in a lot of ways. We could say that he was always going to fail at these things, regardless of whether or not he met the vampires, because of the discontent that Armand sensed in him. Maybe the trauma that this aborted gay hookup with Louis created was enough to re-closet him, and send him down a dark road of unfulfilled straight relationships. Or maybe Armand’s words really did echo around in his head and pull him down as much as Louis’s lingered and sustained him over the years. Maybe we’ll get more answers about this as the show goes on, or maybe it will live in the ambiguous world of memory and manipulation the show so often plays in.
Regardless, I think this episode was a masterpiece, and the way it firmly established these themes about the failure of domesticity and the burden and joys of carework are going to really matter, I think, as we hit the brutal conclusion of the season. When emotions are at a breaking point, especially between Armand and Louis, they are going to resonate because they were grounded in this little claustrophobic wonder of an episode.
As a little postscript, I’m not quite sure where we’re going with Devil’s Minion after this episode, or if we’re even going there at all. If a DM timeline happened in the past, it would require additional editing of Daniel’s memory, and I’m not quite sure if that reveal would work structurally. (I would love to be proven wrong about this though, because I would love for young Daniel and Armand to have interacted more, for Assad and Luke’s chemistry if nothing else. They were so wonderful together.) If it were to happen in Dubai, or to happen again Dubai, however… well that’s interesting. Because older Daniel is disabled. He’s even more firmly in this category of people that Armand is apt to dismiss. And if they were to get together, there would probably be some aspect of caregiving on Armand’s part. And there would also be some caregiving on Daniel’s part, in his ability to listen to Armand. So that has the potential to be really fascinating, and maybe mutually beneficial to both characters. But I think we have to cover a lot of ground before we would be able to get there.
#iwtv#my meta#interview with the vampire#i know this is long but I hope people do read and talk to me about it bc I find it fascinating#loumand#devil's minion#daniel molloy#louis de pointe du lac#armand
190 notes
·
View notes
Text
everything i know about interview with the vampire i’ve learned through my dash. um are there any women in there
#this made me laugh so hard#like look it is a Problem#would love for them to gender bend some characters maybe#if we've adjusted ages and races we could also do that#iwtv
32 notes
·
View notes
Text
"their relationship is strictly platonic" "they're so in love" well, more importantly, they are fucking weird and abnormal about each other in an undeniable way
17K notes
·
View notes
Text
Our boy.
813 notes
·
View notes
Text
Assad lurking in the background 😂
#interview with the vampire#iwtv#I love them#they know exactly what they’re doing and I appreciate their sense of humor so much
308 notes
·
View notes
Text
truly the best line in a show filled with best lines and the way toby schmitz delivered it is a work of art
621 notes
·
View notes
Text
204 notes
·
View notes
Text
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022-)
S02E05―Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape
9K notes
·
View notes
Text
This is absolutely true and it's why the scene is so fucking good.
In terms of the writing, it's also because you can feel the very defined beats of the scene and the way they ping pong back and forth between Louis and Armand.
Beats are the smallest units that make up a scene. Every time a character tries a new tactic to achieve their desire, they're doing a new beat.
All scenes have beats, they're in screenplays all the time too. But I find plays and playwrights are really good about thinking about the way they shift subtly over the course of a scene. They're good at having characters try new techniques, ratchet up cruelty, find new ways to twist knives into other characters' hearts. They're good at building up to the moment when a character changes their desire all together, and a scene totally pivots.
Sometimes in plays this is all you have; especially if you're writing a two-hander or a two person scene. You're laser focused into crafting that tennis match, the back and forth.
I end up paying a lot of attention to it now, as a playwright and a theatre lover. To me it comes across as fully a rhythm thing. You can feel it when it's working; the scene flows like music, and it's electrifying to be in the audience for. Sometimes I get there when I'm writing my own stuff and sometimes I never quite manage it. Sometimes I write a scene and I know it's not working, and I have to break it down, beat by beat, to try to figure out what each character wants and how each line is helping them achieve that goal. It's really fucking hard!
But that fight scene between Armand and Louis sings! The perfect layering, the escalation, the back and forth of the beat(s). It's like a dance, and Assad and Jacob execute it perfectly.
Not to be biased, but I do think all tv shows should be written by playwrights, actually.
the Big Fight Scene between Louis and Armand in S2E5 felt like watching live theatre.
it’s in the way the dialogue is written, in the way it flows. you can hear and feel it in both actors' delivery—particularly in Assad's, which isn't surprising given his extensive theatre background.
it's in the cinematography; there are minimal cuts or edits which make for a relatively uninterrupted flow. we’re just in this one room with two characters (well, technically three, but Daniel is unconscious at this point), and it's reminiscent of the duality of live performance; how theatre actors perform in front of an audience but often speak and react as though they are in their own bubble, their own little world. it's unfiltered and intensely vulnerable, even in its performativity.
there's a disquieting sort of intimacy to it. they're talking, yelling over each other as two people arguing in real life might. there's so much raw rage, frustration, and emotion.
there’s no music, no score to accompany the scene in the background, which makes it all the more confronting and vicious and, at times, even uncomfortably comical.
there are so many moments in IWTV where you can tell it’s written by brilliant playwrights, and this scene is the perfect exemplification of that. I loved it so much, and brb gonna study this scene for the rest of my life
136 notes
·
View notes
Text
Interview with the Vampire
“Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape”
Did I catch you in a fantasy, where the boy somehow fumbles his way to publication? Where Lestat strolls past a bookstore, your book displayed in the shop window, where he buys himself a copy, reads your nasty embellishments and comes chasing after you again?
#previous tag->#gotta love this show's commitment to casting the most beautiful men you've ever seen to enact the horrors <3#YES dear god#interview with the vampire#iwtv#iwtv spoilers
233 notes
·
View notes
Text
"Listen as though I'm the voice of God or an angel talking to you. Telling you this room doesn't matter, this night doesn't matter. You're not inconsequential or a junkie. You're a bright young reporter with a point of view. There are stories that need to be told. If things ever get bad again, these are the words you'll hear in your mind like a tape playing over and over, like a song stuck in your brain. These words will hold you up and carry you. They are your lifeline."
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
I'm sure someone has probably already done this but it's nagging at me and I couldn't hear all the insults as they yelled at one another. (Bold are my emphasis because I am seated!) Specifically the parts about Paris and Marius. I'm not making any comments at the moment, just fact finding because this episode was brutal. Beautiful, but brutal.
Season 2 Episode 5
Louis: What? What?!
Armand: It's morning!
Louis: I lost time. Things got a little heated.
Armand: With a boy! Things got heated with a boy. I was at home picking lint off the sofa!
Louis: I said to join us!
Armand: The night's gone. The room's soiled and once again, I'm here with mop and mindlessness to clean it up.
Louis: So the room got dirty, so what? I'll clean it up.
Armand: No, I clean it up! You make the mess and I clean it up! Mark it on the calendar, align it with Ursa Major. Louis' tri-annual fսck off and find me with apologies to follow.
Louis: ( laughing ) I'm sorry.
Armand: Seek comfort in the arms of lowlifes and unfortunates, and broken children, fine.
Louis: Oh, fine! The fine that doesn't sound like…
But revealing our nature to a reporter you met in a bar ten hours ago? What if it was published?
Louis: I was having some fun!
Armand: You don't have enough to fear from Paris?
Louis: I was in the middle of ending things, when you…
Armand: You'd have been passed out on the floor next to him, Louis! Out on your feet from the drսg you stuffed him with!
Louis: Oh, this is boring! You're boring! You are so boring!
Armand: And here come the drսgs.
Louis: Colorless.
Armand: Up the fangs, down this road.
Louis: Flavorless. Dull! Dull! Dull!
Armand: Into the heart and off with the fingers, feet.
Louis: Dull nights, dull weeks!
Louis: And wallowing brain.
Louis: Dull months, dull as fսck! Suffocation by the world's softest, beige-est pillow! The ten hours I spent with that boy were more exciting, more fascinating, than decades with you! Oh, there it is! The half-blank, half-apocalyptic look! But what does it mean tonight, huh? Does he want to lick my boots or chop my hands off? Is it the gremlin or the good nurse tonight? Huh?
Armand: Okay. Okay, perhaps. But am I as boring as the blather committed onto the ferric tapes of your fascinating boy? "Oh, it's so, so hard to be me."
Louis: "Picking lint off the sofa?!"
Armand: "It's so hard to kill humans."
Armand: "I can feel their feelings as I drain them."
Louis: You sat on your hands and put your ear to the wind.
Armand: "Everyone I know wrongs me."
Louis: Okay. Okay, let's wake the boy up and let's try you. "I'm the vampire Armand and my daddy vampire groomed me into a little bitch."
Armand: "My brother, he tossed himself off a roof!"
Louis: "Vampires who murdered my daddy made me pretend I didn't have a dіck for 240 years."
Armand: "My sister, she buried me alive.” My daughter was my sister was my throw pillow. “Well, he wouldn't look at me kindly.” "Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat."
Louis: I talked shit about him the whole time. So what?!
Armand: The name!! The name! Unuttered in our home for 23 years, said over and over again until it was pounding in my brain like a hammer.
Louis: Our problems aren't about him.
Armand: And you threw her name around just for cover, but it always circled back to him.
Louis: I loved her.
Armand: But she didn't love you. Not like he did, not like I have.
Louis: ( softly ) I know. I know! Yes! I know. ( softly ) Thank you for saying it. It's all creeping back. Paris and the, uh, what, what, what? But there's… all of it coming back. There's, uh, Paris. Paris. Can you hear that? Can you hear that, hm? Can you hear her? She's calling me.
Transcript (with some corrections) from TV Show Transcripts
#this scene is in the all time hall of fame for me#this is fucking writing in another level#like it makes me want to start writing immediately but also never touch my script again#because it’s never gonna be this good#godDAMN#interview with the vampire#iwtv#iwtv spoilers
184 notes
·
View notes