Aging Trash

My two favorites that I have read are:

come with me friday, don’t say maybe by kittymand (please mind the tags if you check this one out, DD:DNE)

Got You on the Handycam by meowcia and thesundrinker (again, mind the tags!!)

2.If youre not reading Sliver of Midnight and the moon looks at me and tells me to look at you by @armands-airpods and @thunder-puss you need to. They do such an amazing job at world building, its insane

3. Ive been really into Daniel Molloy’s Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) and its sequel The Palimpsest of Daniel Molloy by @ariaste I was a little hesitant to read it at first since I wasn't really into the book lore at that point, but I'm glad I did. Such a beautiful look at Daniel and Armand's relationship. Oh, and the sex is deranged and fucking filthy 🥰

4. I recently found @xenoglossia on AO3 and I've become obsessed with their writing. They handle Armand and his past so beautifully, especially in please go easy on me. Their Daniel strikes a good balance between being an asshole and trying to be a better person and partner to Armand.

if anything, the arguments presented by iwtv and tvl are that nobody comes to violence on their own. hurt people, the show argues, hurt people. and perhaps most difficult to accept in a society like ours: harming other people can be, itself, traumatic.

this is a story about cycles of trauma and abuse, and it posits that breaking out of it is a choice a person has to make, for one. and two, that someone's ability to make that choice depends on the tools they have at their disposal (for example: louis and lestat finally realizing they gotta work on themselves AND understanding that they lacked a lot of the tools to arrive at that conclusion because of the time they were born in). yes, there's systemic shit, but individuals also have power within themselves to Choose to Stop, to be and do better.

worth noting, though, that the show isn't arguing for a can't we all just get along vision of breaking the cycle. sometimes you have to carry the fact you caused harm that won't be neatly resolved (like, say, daniel and his daughters). some bridges are burned (perhaps) forever, but that also doesn't mean the people that were hurt are caught up in their own pain. you don't need to forgive to move on, nor do you need to be forgiven to move on.

yet, i don't think the show is arguing against the possibility of reconciliation, either. the argument seems to be that there can be no reconciliation without acknowledgement that people have a right to self-determination. and perhaps the way to get there is through compassion.

ultimately, compassion seems to be precisely what the show asks of the viewer and the characters both. it does so by eliciting sympathy through interiority. that is, by exposing the private selves of these characters. through that exposition, the show invites the viewer to reflect on what suffering does to people as well as what it leads people to do.

ASSAD ZAMAN as Armand

I just have this hunch that something is missing. Tiny piece of a jigsaw. Somebody who should be dead is alive, or... somebody who should be alive is already dead.

This was given to me by a marquis who was beheaded by a mob 10 years after he gave it to me. Oh. I love it.