Plants Just Wanna Have Fun

So now, imagine you're turning someone you’ve known for a very long time.* You see flashes of their life from their perspective, not your perspective or an outsider's perspective, including parts of their life that you were around for and parts that even involve you... again, from their point-of-view. Whether those are bad memories or good memories, that would potentially be really painful and unsettling.

And then imagine that as fast as you’ve received that information it goes away. No more getting into their head. You can’t clarify or investigate further. Your access is revoked. Because of you.

Anyway, that's why I think Armand ran after turning Daniel.

Okay let me give my two cents on this.

First of all, there weren't that many sex scenes in IWTV to begin with, especially not explicit ones. The only two "graphic" sex scenes we had in this show prior to s3 were:

Loustat hooking up for the first time in s1e1

Loustat hooking up while Louis has a telepathic conversation with Claudia in s1e6

Other than that? It's mostly just implied:

Lestat taking off his pants and saying "you can be on top" to Louis in s1e2

Lestat sneaking into Louis' coffin when they think Claudia is asleep in s1e4

Loumand lying in bed in s2e4

Loumand hooking up in s2e6 (not "implied" perse but we cut away before they take any of their clothes off)

And none of scenes are just here for the heck of it. They add to the characters and story:

The s1e1 and s1e2 scenes are meant to show Louis' growing acceptance of his sexuality.

The s1e4 scene is meant to show Claudia being introduced to sex and queerness.

The s1e6 scene is meant to highlight the emotional incestual undertones and lack of boundaries that Louis and Claudia seem to have due to their abusive circumstances.

The s2e4 scene is meant to show the status of the Loumand relationship at this point (which is that Louis only sees their relationship as casual sex while Armand sees it as something more intimate and romantic).

The s2e6 scene is meant to fully showcase Loumand's BDSM dynamic.

And the sex scenes in s3 serve a purpose as well.

Lestat's threesome with Dee and Baby Jenks (combined with his narration) is meant to highlight Lestat's obsession with sex, which looking back is clearly a trauma response of his.

I don't really qualify Lestat's scenes with Gabriella as "sex scenes" since he is literally being groomed/abused (for comparison, I imagine we all agree that calling the Lestat/Magnus scene a "sex scene" is wrong). However, I see people who say that s3 doesn't have "enough" gay sex, use Gabriella and Lestat's scenes as evidence of season prioritizing straight sex. And... Guys the show has made it clear from the jump that they're not portraying the incest as a "sexy taboo kink". This is not about getting straight audiences off. Each scene is meant to paint a picture of how fucked up this relationship truly is. Gabistat kissing at the end of ep 1? It's meant to establish their relationship. Gabriella only comes to Lestat when he is in pain and her form of "comfort" is sex. Her groping him in ep 2? It's meant to show when their relationship (supposedly) started. It's meant to show why their relationship is this way (the fantasy that Gabriella tells Lestat implies that she does this as a way to reclaim power she doesn't have as a woman stuck in an abusive family in the 1700s. Basically, she copes with being an abusive victim [specifically of men] by becoming an abuser [of a man]). The Jarda scene? While I agree that it went on maybe a tad too long, it does serve a purpose. It's meant to show how controlling Gabriella is, loudly having sex with Lestat's body double as a way to "punish" him for refusing her advances. Gabistat having sex in ep 4? It's meant to show that despite Lestat being at least somewhat aware that Gabriella is abusing him, he will relent to what she wants because at his core he is a child desperate for his mother's love. (Sidenote: This was honestly more uncomfortable to me than the ep 2 groping. With the way that Lestat's demeanor and facial expressions are, he's almost like a confused child. Like it looks like Gabriella has to guide him through on how to have sex with her). Each scene gives us new information about their relationship.

I won't deny that AMC is homophobic and is likely reluctant to have gay sex on screen. However, I don't think this is some huge loss for the show or something we're desperately missing from this season.

Honestly, I don't think people are actually upset that there isn't enough gay sex in this season. I think what they're actually pissed about is that there aren't any presently ongoing queer relationships.

Season 2 didn't have shit for sex scenes but I haven't seen anyone complaining about that. Which imo is because even though we didn't see Louis and Armand having sex, we still saw them being intimate. We see them acting couple-y onscreen the whole season, we still have current onscreen queerness.

But this is not the case for season 3 (at least so far). The characters are all pretty separated from each other which makes sense since this is a consequence of the fallout at the end of s2. Loumand broke up after the trial reveal. Loustat are strained because of the book. Armand and Daniel haven't seen each other since Daniel's turning because Armand is off doing who knows what. Daniel and Lestat fucking hate each other and the same can be said for Lestat and Armand.

like, there's magnus who was so "in love" with lestat that he stalks, abducts, rapes, kills, and forces him to become a vampire. there's the fang gang that hates lestat so much due to an obsession with armand and the great laws that they attempted to kill him—and given how graphically violent and sexual their shrine of hatred to him was along with harassing him at the urinals while inviting him back to their place and using baby jenks to drug and have sex with him as part of their plan to kill him, i don't think it's exactly outside of the realm of possibility that they planned to rape him as well (or again, given how extremely dubious the circumstances of the threesome with baby jenks in the elevator was.) and then with the last episode, there's the conspiracy theorist, vampire truther that was brushed off in the first episode of the season only to return in this one, trying to prove that lestat is a vampire by shooting him multiple times.

You have the right to remain cunty.

Everything you say and do will be held against you for the rest of eternity.

me: I have the blood of Akasha in me 🥰

Like, he was an actor, in paris, at a time when "actor" and "sex worker" were basically treated as the same profession.

(ESPECIALLY for actresses. It's always a lot harder to talk about male sex work, since it tended to be much less "official" and fly under the radar a whole lot more. But it 100% existed.)

This informs (normalizes) his relationship with Magnus. From Lestat's perspective, since he is actor, it is not actually out of line for Magnus to just assume he's sexually available. The rest of it, the kidnapping, the serial killer stuff, maybe we can talk about that, but the sex. and leaving him with a big pile of money afterwards. I think that's sort of... excused by his worldview, in a way that complicates the whole experience.

And now he's on the stage again, and we get little exchanges like -

CHRISTINE. His lawyer says he's a fan and would appreciate an exclusive fan experience. LESTAT. Do I have to fսck him? CHRISTINE. Yes.

ep 1: feeling lonely, he seeks her out all ep as he literally spirals bc of drugs.

ep 2: speaks of her fondly, doesn’t really address how abusive she was as a human. gabi in present day crosses his boundaries and he blames it on both of them.

ep 3: lestat recalls how cruel she was in the past with nicki, and she punishes him for setting the no sex boundary by fucking jarda loudly to humiliate him. he becomes upset with her.

ep 4: she has left him again likely as a punishment for leaving her after the interview, triggering his abandonment issues (which she caused). he recalls more of her coldness and we see the first time he’s coerced into having sex with her to earn her love.

then we see him actually confront her about it when he says “why do you come back? why don’t you let me hate you?” (like he tried to the first time they had sex after he brought up that she touched him inappropriately when they were still human) and just like before, she just ignores his distress and he find he is still so powerless in their dynamic.

idk it’s not unnecessary when it shapes literally every part of lestat’s personality. ppl say they’re depicting it badly when this is one of the few shows i’ve seen depict incest as what it is: abuse. mfs out here watching house of the dragon where incest is like…. normalized… but a show actually taking you through a victim understanding he was abused is too much?

He always wears a mask around other people. A different persona for each one of them. The apology tour was real, but still staged to the point of sounding fake.

But in his last scene with Daniel? There are real emotions there. There is no pretence. He is just a boy, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love him.

Hannibal (2013-2015)

2x08 - “Su-zakana”

— then it's art nouveau

and if the sexy lady has a bob cut or a hair cap and is wearing a column or flapper dress; there's a lot of geometry like rectangles, arches, rays, and diamonds; angels have super sharp wings and a lot of muscles; everything is steel, concrete, marble, gold, and red velvet seats; everything is VERY angular; and all the foliage is basically papyrus fronds; things feel vaguely Egyptian or Turkish or Mesopotamian; the fonts play with being very skinny or very thick and are sans serif with extra lines; or Gatsby would be found floating dead in that pool

— with lots of lush flora, tiny insects (like dragonflies) or graceful birds, stained glass, iron, warm golden lighting, lots of wood and wood carving (but now it's more wood paneling), a stylistic fondness for Japan, line weight variation in the font, and tile (but this time it's carved or sculpted on, not tiny mosaic)

but you're worried it's art deco

— because the forms (especially foliage) are very symmetrical and slightly more angular or blocky and graphic looking, things are more rectangular than circular or curvy in architecture, the patterns repeat more often, and more of the lamps are pyramids or rectangular, and there are nods to Egyptian or Ottoman style, and they used the color red (probably in an accent chair or carpet rug)

BUT there's no steel, concrete, gold plating or gilding, marble, big muscles, spiky or radiating diamond shapes, angular people, or flappers,

AND the vibes are jacobean, gothic, or spanish mission revival; they love some brick and stone; the wallpaper is an explosion of colorful pattern that could give you arsenic poisoning or help depict a descent into postpartum psychosis in a famous short story; but there are NO people to be seen, not even sexy ladies,