Learning The Backstories Of Any Of Your Female Relatives Always Amounts To Taking 500 Points Of Psychological

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).

lbf has given me the so-called ick seven times, i have borderline cyber bullied him on tumblr with everyone + used him as a human niche white boy shield for our shared morrissey appreciation, and generally would have not considered him a man i’d go to war for so imagine my surprise when i saw a comment of genuine lbf disdain today and was suddenly filled with the rage of a thousand riots and arsons

listen I will rag on AMC all the live long day but i will also thank them for giving us horny eric bogosian and The Most Beautiful Man in the World assad zaman and they're gonna kiss and AMC made that happen so

i didn't get a minor in art history for no reason, so let's talk about

The Adoration of the Shepherds with a Donor by Palma Vecchio, c. 1520-1525 (held at the Louvre under the French name L'Adoration des bergers avec une donatrice, here's its collection details)

What's fascinating about this painting (done in the very very late High Renaissance to early Mannerism) is that the identity of the commissioner of the painting is the one kneeling to the far right, who Armand in the episode says is modeled by him, is actually unknown. (So that makes it very handy for the show to claim it's Armand without actually being inaccurate or anachronistic)

What this depicts is the Christmas story (though yes, I know, it doesn't look like Christmastime in the painting) where the shepherds pay Jesus a visit after he's born. There's a lark sitting in the window on the left, which often symbolizes rebirth, and there's a dog all the way to the very right, which usually symbolizes loyalty.

Of course, within the IWTV verse, the choice of using this painting (which doesn't have much, if any literature on it by itself--maybe because for a long time it was attributed to the painter Titian by mistake instead of Vecchio) is extremely fascinating to me. There's a lot of dimensions here: most notably, as another user I saw pointed out, Armand was the model for this, and the painter (Marius de Romanus in the show, Armand's maker) whitewashes Armand. Now, Armand is immortalized in room 711 in the Louvre forever as a 20 year old, looking nothing like himself, his identity effectively completely erased, while thousands of people pass and see this painting every year.

It raises a lot of poignant questions, also: since the commissioner of real life (who is the real life model) doesn't exist in IWTV, what is the motivation for Marius to paint Armand in a Christ scene? Because obviously, Armand would not have commissioned this painting. What spurs him to do that? Since the real life artist, Vecchio, was very influenced by Titian at the point when this painting was made, was Marius also? I really do want to know the team's thought process behind choosing this painting, because it's endlessly interesting to me. It's definitely one of the lesser known works in the Louvre, even just a cursory glance over JSTOR barely has any information. I might literally email my art history professors and ask if they have any material on this or Vecchio because I'm so intrigued... anyone else wanna discuss <3?

Albert Mason, in a way, mirrors what Arthur could have been if he wasn't outlaw. While they both share a love for nature, they represent different sides of it; Arthur embodies the rough, dangerous, and wild side, while Albert symbolizes the innocence and delicacy of nature. They both find beauty in the world, but in contrasting ways; Albert gets to experience nature purely for his enjoyment, but Arthur is in a way, like an animal, in a constant fight to survive.

What Eric sees in his dreams every night

fun fact, in the brazilian portuguese version of Queen of the Damned the Devil's Minion chapter was translated into "O Favorito do Demônio" which means The Devil's Favorite (Boy) and I think that's soooo cute and funny

imagine being real rashid and you work for these weird gay vampires and one day they come to you like hey rashid we're gonna give you a little holiday! armand will take over your duties for the time being, for a cool disguise during my interview, not a kink thing :) and you're like okay these are my weird gay vampire bosses so it probably is a kink thing but who am i to judge. and then you find out they are roleplaying this weird exhibitionist slash master/servant scene with your own real actual government name. fuck interview with the vampire, interview with rashid WHEN??

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.