Raven

I can still feel weight of the one I had as a child in my hands if I think about it hard enough. They aren’t regular dolls. They’re called rag dolls because, traditionally, they were made of leftover material and typically stuffed with rags instead of regular stuffing which makes them heavy. Comparing a person to that, I’d even say corpse-like. I had a really old one and it was the same size as me when I was young, so it was like dragging a body around. I couldn’t lift it on my own for several years.

“Rag doll for sale”

Little Arun is someone who can be manoeuvred into any position, who will not fight back and will be anything you want him to be. He is so perfectly submissive and pliant he may as well be a dead body.

And good news! You can customise him to your liking! You can dress him in different outfits, you can style his hair, you can even rename him! He’s all yours and he can’t do anything to stop you! You bought him, after all.

the line "rag doll for sale" is firstly a call back to 2x03 to Lestat's comment about the "grubs" and how he wished to maintain his "jabot collar" and not end up in rags like the Children of Darkness. when Lestat mentions "for sale" he is talking about Armand's principles. he is calling Armand a SELL OUT who adapts and develops his own interpretation of the Great Laws when it is beneficial to him, and switches sides depending on who grants him survival. something that is repeatedly called out in s2, even with Daniel's line in 2x06 of "Maitre in the bedroom? or maitre only when it's hot or convenient?" in Paris, Armand gives the pretence that he has allowed Louis to have power over him ("are you sure about that, Arun?" 2x04) because he is getting what he wants from him (a committed relationship) so he completely ignores the fact he was supposed to kill both Louis and Claudia in accordance with the Great Laws, because he is personally benefitting. however, the minute Louis begins acting outside this limited power he has been given, Armand immediately sides with the coven once more "they gave him a choice, and he chose." 2x06 and then conspires to kill Louis, Claudia and Madeleine. his attempt to defend himself in 2x08 says everything you need to know about Armand's tendencies as a sell out: "it was [Louis] or my coven of two hundred years, and i could not count on your love on lasting as long." HAD Louis not still been in love with Lestat, had Louis entered their relationship out of genuine love for Armand and NOT to initially protect Claudia, Armand is saying right here that he would have violated the Great Laws for him! that is a demonstration of his hypocrisy as the 'Big Boss'.

then these two lines show Lestat demonstrating Armand's pattern of behaviour. he says, "Big Boss wants to get you in his bed" this is a reference to how BOTH Lestat and Louis had people (Nicky and Claudia) who were used as "bait" to "ensare" them into *beginning* a relationship with Armand. ("are you inviting me in?" / "that depends. are you going to kill me or not?" 2x03) and the line "his kisses put me in a coma" is Lestat clearly referencing the murky underside to Armand's obsession with Lestat.

and of course, the most obvious lines are "if you're a boo-boo then he doesn't want you"/" only the Big Boss gets to decide who gets to stay alive and who dies." the former being reference to Nicky and Claudia as Armand only ever saw them as liabilities and weaknesses to the coven. and the latter being once again a reference to Armand's hypocrisy. he is saying here that at the trial HE SHOULD HAVE ALSO BEEN SENTENCED. "she is of my blood. i broke the second law. when you sentence them for their crimes, you sentence me, too." (2x07) except Armand doesn't have Lestat killed as well because he is too obsessed with him to let him die, so he gives him a free pass on execution despite the fact (under the pressure of Louis) HE is Claudia's MAKER. the literal person who made her at "fourteen years old."

of course Armand's sexual history is a very tragic aspect to his character and informs a lot of his current behaviour, but the assumption that EVERYTHING has to be about the fact he was Arun/Amadeo gets tedious because there is a LOT more to his character than just that. you must remember that the Amadeo/Arun element to him is 100% about his victimhood, but 'Armand' is also reflective of his role as perpetrator. Armand from his experiences understands how power works, *cough cough* looking at you Bench Scene in 2x04, and he knows how to manipulate it to get what he wants. only ever picturing him as vulnerable as he was during the Amadeo/Arun days really stifles the other elements of his character (the gremlin ones) that i personally love to see.

Do you have any spoilers regarding louis being the next in armand's apology tour? the streets are saying louis' going to suffer even more when that happens and i am going to seriously quit this godamn show for doing such disserive to louis

yknow how i started coping with everything in this season? i think the only way to find any enjoyment in it is to fully embrace that this is purely lestat's pov. very biased one. the narrative he wants to present from the future. this obviously won't change the fact that this is a total waste of time to watch this season and how boring it is, but at least some things become less annoying.

louis' storyline this season will start making way more sense when you take this into account. because of fucking course lestat would depict louis struggling sooo much without lestat in his life, lonely, abandoned and unloved by everyone. ofc lestat would depict himself as a bitter reluctant knight who eventually runs to save poor louis from misery. this is basically the end of s1e1 again, except from lestat's pov.

Lestat "saving poor Louis from his misery" is expected because they are fundamentally best friends and lovers, the least you would expect them to do for each other at their hours of need is to go to one another and try their best to support one another. this works BOTH WAYS. Lestat is also at his lowest we have ever seen in the entire the show, there is not doubt that in this season we will see Louis also supporting him. it is simply how their relationship works. they bring out the worst in each other, but at the end of the day they are the only two people who truly understand one another, who can be completely vulnerable with one another. they are tragic lovers, that is just the plot of the show. im not really sure i understand your reference to s1 ending and would love it you could clarify :)

I've always said I don't think Armand loved Louis. He was always just the object Armand used as a proxy to Lestat.

I had a lot of anxiety leading up to this season as a rape survivor. I knew I would have to watch carefully, and filter the discourse I consumed. I am admittedly surprised by the season in some ways, but disappointed in others. I’m going to really zero in on two sequences, and talk specifically about framing and color. For reference, framing is what is shown in a scene. The details shown often tell us more about what the characters or writers want us to know. Color grading has to do with contrast, exposure, and the colors that are exaggerated in a scene. Color can also be used to tell a story.

CW for rape, abuse, and incest going forward. Please scroll by if you don’t want to read further.

I was shocked that Magnus’ scene was actually handled more sensitively than I expected, specially after the “your biggest fan” misdirect. When I look at this scene, I can see the anguish in Lestat’s face. The scene with Magnus and Lestat itself is clearly not consensual, and it’s not up for interpretation. He indeed did not ask for this. There’s a struggle, and even the still cap has Lestat’s arm bent at an odd angle.

Now let’s look at color. I just color picked from a few different spots in each picture.

Lestat’s face had this deep blue, sickly green, and brown tones. It’s a very subdued palette. Greens and blues are often used in the horror genre or in pensive, slow, or upsetting sequences.

The full body shot was similar- more prominent on the blues, and a strike of yellow. There’s actually some really interesting literature on yellow in horror movies as a sign of rot, decay, and death, which I’m sure the writers are aware of. But still, the scene is mostly blue. It’s a cold scene.

Now for Gabriella and Lestat’s scene- there are a few. I’m focusing in on the one after the priest. Lestat says they were mother and son when she tended to him after the wolves, in a last ditch effort to have her acknowledge their relationship as parent and child. She then says I love you and beckons him into bed, rejecting his wish to return to their familial relationship. He can accept her offer for companionship by sleeping with her, or he can have nothing.

This too, is a sexual encounter Lestat did not want. It is also not consensual.

That said, it bees my wilders that it was depicted the way it was.

We know from watching the scene this is horrific, and it left him with further attachment trauma. Out of context? It looks like a typical romance scene, complete with the lead going in for a kiss and a with a gentle hand on the shoulder for encouragement even though that is not what this scene is. It is abuse. The next frame doesn’t help that case. It is one of the most explicit sex scenes we have seen even though Lestat was coerced into it. His hand is on her bare thigh, yet we know he doesn’t want to be there. From the framing, you could almost forget that. Maybe you’re meant to. I would argue this is by design due to the color choices.

These are warm tones, and the whole scene has a much higher exposure than the Magnus scene does. A warm color palette is often associated with romance, or even intimacy. The high exposure can bring a dreamy quality- and perhaps on its own this would have been fine because a flash back is a dream like sequence, but paired with the warm, romantic colors it starts to send a message that “this is dreamy” and not “this is a memory” as the scenes with Magnus did, even with darker exposure.

Once again, a similar warm color palette and high exposure is used here. If we dig into it, some of these peachy tones are sepia like- associated with warm nostalgia. Which… maybe not the vibe being molested by your mother is meant to evoke.

Anyway. What have I come to with all of my thoughts collected here? I guess I’m relieved they didn’t totally fumble Magnus, but shockingly disappointed with where they’ve taken Gabriella at the halfway point. We can talk about in universe explanations, such as Lestat hasn’t come to terms with it yet (agreed) but if we look at choices made in our world to frame and color grade it seems there are still double standards for f/m and m/m relationships. They are there even when it comes to abuse, rape, and violence- which is deeply disturbing to me. But rape is rape. It doesn’t matter who does it. I’m a little disappointed it’s been treated a bit haphazardly in some scenes, seeing as I now know this team can do better. I didn’t expect to be talking about this, actually. I thought this post would look different. But so far, this is what I’ve gathered.

during 3x04, as heart breaking as it is to see, we see that Lestat is spiralling because he his longing for Gabriella. ("it didn't feel like nine days."), so could this "romantic" framing of the scene somehow be representative of that? it is implied that this is the moment they fully breach the sexual boundary in its entirety "when you tended my wounds, we were mother and son" so Lestat framing it as this shared moment between them as they 'transcended' into a new relationship as "dark monarchs" instead of mother son, gives the feeling that you see in old Hollywood films where two characters having sex for the first time or losing their virginity to one another is meant to symbolise a change in the relationship. could Lestat trying to present it in such a "nostalgic" like be another attempt of him trying to convince himself that he does want this different relationship by almost trying to romanticise the night things fully changed for them? by trying to convince himself that it's what he wanted in hopes Gabriella would return?

Claudia is Lestat's mirror character- a character who shares similar traits whilst being different in the way they respond to these similarities, which i take as this being their response to and rejection of victimhood, something i have written about previously.

So I saw this screencap from the review/recap above and got so pissed off about it that I wrote a whole response.

Not a production, an actual trial with definitive sentences of death.