He’s A 70 Year Old Man. He’s A Newborn Vampire. He’s A Bright Young Reporter With A Point Of View.

was trying to go to sleep last night when it hit me how the adoration with the shepherds scene is a refutation of AR's whitewashing her characters in real time by having vampirism take their melanin. like she very clearly associates power/beauty/mystery with whiteness, framing it as part of her allegiance to aesthetics over morality or social convention. but of course aesthetic is all about social convention, who is considered beautiful and who is not by cultural standards. in the adoration scene Amadeo's whitewashing is very explicitly linked to an intimate form of violence, a line of betrayal that leads to Armand turning his own internalized racism on Louis and Claudia.

ntm that the very fact that Amadeo's whitewashing is never mentioned aloud is what makes it so striking--Louis doesn't ask about why Armand looks so different from the painting, the differences are supposedly confined to Amadeo being "meatier in the forearms." they don't need to discuss it because they both already recognize the aesthetic strain of white supremacy that has been dominating their lives, their stories, for so long. and to top it all off you've got Lestat (the memory of Lestat, more omnipotent and inescapable than the real Lestat ever was) as the specter of whiteness, too, the mocking perfect ideal Amadeo and Louis have both been expected to modulate

it's white supremacy as a matter of course, like it was with Anne Rice's world building, except at the same time it's being held up to the light with the same kind of ruthless clarity that the show holds on Marius and Armand's relationship. which is of course also built on white supremacy (or ethnocentric supremacy in bookmand's case) and Marius's desire to create some kind of perfect vampire from the ground up, violently slicing Armand/Amadeo's perceived weaknesses by force if necessary and abandoning him for failing to live up to expectations. white supremacy and sexual violence are twisted-up threads that have always run through Anne Rice's work, rarely if ever questioned by the narrative or the characters, but the adoration painting combines and exemplifies them in a way that's impossible to ignore.

saw a new jacob anderson pic and had to draw it

🤓

I need more wholesome Disco Elysium character interactions with kids.

I don't know how to explain this, I know its out of pocket and especially in this fandom, but listen:

Harry playing tag or hide and seek with a group of kids in the middle of an investigation as a way to distract them.

Trant carrying Mikael back to the car after he falls asleep during a party they attended.

This is very niche, but Jean becoming Cuno's guardian/tutor during his junior officer training (their dynamic is running around rent free in my head, like a sort of bedgruging uncle)

I think Kim doesn't like kids? I cannot remember, but regardless I have this image in my mind of him writing something in his notebook, a little shy kid peeking at it, Kim noticing and tilting it towards him to see 😭

Feel free to add or correct these ideas as you like!

DANIEL! DANIEL! HES A VAMPIRE DANIEL HE WILL KILL YOU! OH NO HE CANT HEAR OVER HIS HORNINESS! DANIEL THE DRUGS ARENT EVEN THAT GOOD!

ARMAND IN EVERY EPISODE 1.05 A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart

My wife (ao3) lying in her hospital bed (down for maintenance) as I hold her hand lovingly, waiting for the moment she wakes again (waiting for ao3 to go back up).

Armand is not an iPad Baby, he is an iPad Grandpa and I will stand this mistaken understanding no longer.