Chronic liker

You know.. Daniel Molloy, aka the Devil’s minion..

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

gosh I enjoy this website

Daniel's literally the only character with an excuse for using words the way he uses them. he's an accomplished journalist. he knows words. he knows how to string them together to make long, compelling sentences. he's also an old man. he uses words like Twink and bottom and sometimes he uses them well and sometimes he uses them awkwardly. he's a sarcastic piece of shit who loves the sound of his voice and can be Too Much. he's an angry man with angry words and hes probably rehearsed what to say to Armand millions of times, cause again, he works with words: they're his weapon. he's not a century old vamp, he's got no powers (yet), that's all he has. and even those seem to fail him, given the response with his book, given how shit his life is, given what he did with himself.

I personally think his monologues synthesized all that. those were ugly, biting words, verging on the "a little too much", stained in bitterness and also maybe fear. expressing convoluted thoughts that he's clearly been thinking about for two whole years, that's why they've come out as they've come out, so much so even Armand was stunned. this show works a lot with words and the way characters speak. Lestat speaks differently from Louis speaks differently from Claudia speaks differently from Armand speaks differently from Daniel. it's clear. they know. they make fun of each other's style, Lestat literally did it in the last line of ep4. and yet it's the old man people have been grumbling about because he's the older actor of the ensemble who's been accused of being cringe and stiff and weird. as if lestat or Louis didn't have their own convoluted little monologues in the show where you gotta suspend your disbelief about a bunch of things, monologue and usage of words included. come the fuck on. leave Daniel and Eric Bogosian the fuck alone.

also no, your little quirky one liners and pseudo-philosophical soliloquies on AO3 are not better than the shit actual screenwriters with decades of experience come up with on the show.

People always joke that he’s not acting, and I get what they mean and it’s funny, but he is still acting. It’s so difficult to not just play yourself when you have so much in common with a character. It can be helpful but it can be detrimental too. He doesn’t get the escapism the others get. You can’t so easily vanish into a character you see so much of yourself in and a lesser actor would just play a caricature of themselves. But Eric and Daniel are still distinct. There’s no point where you forget you’re looking at Daniel.

And he portrays Daniel with very thinly veiled vulnerability. You rarely see it, and then he lets the tiniest little bit and it is soul crushing every time. There aren’t these huge moments where he breaks down because the world has hardened him in a way that it hasn’t the other vampires. He didn’t have immortality to shield him. He had to build a shell around himself all alone.

and another species called the splendid fairywren

...and one called the lovely fairywren