#b&g

Day 1, prompt 2: Loss

Amadeo losing Marius because of Santino and the Children of Satan

Pretty much, blood and gold is explicit about this - marius specifically removes armand from the brothel because he views his life as forfeit because any further exploitation would’ve resulted in his death and this seems to entitle him to total possession of armand’s body. Armand is also quite literally his property - he’s purchased from sexual slavery in a commercialised setting just to be later transferred to sexual slavery in a private setting with no real say in what happens to his body. Marius notes that armand is his experiment and attempt at transforming somebody who can’t articulate any desire for life outside the parameters marius creates (that is, to be freed of him) because the language for it is beyond him and his earliest memories are lost following his traumatic experiences - his understanding of what constitutes normalcy is severely limited from enforced isolation and dependency. Any hesitation marius conveys is very performed and seems to only indicate that he’s indulging in philosophical and intellectual exercises (he’s called ‘marius the philosopher’ in the book for many reasons).

But if you also pay attention to the plot 1. his brush with eudoxia’s coven of child vampires gives him the necessary inspiration to create and predate on vampiric partners who’re incapable of standing up to him and challenging him in any meaningful way unlike pandora, an adult vampire who’s able to exercise her social and sexual freedoms maybe too easily for his liking (again pointing to him explicitly being the vampire humbert humbert in many ways) and 2. his determination to turn armand is also specifically set up in contrast to his lack of desire to turn bianca and botticelli who’re both deemed more necessary and even vital to the social and cultural life of the renaissance whereas marius views armand as more disposable for not having had any inherent value to add to this society besides whatever he ascribes to him.

On "Can vampires create art?"

@thedramanticist posted her first video of her reaction to 3x01, and I thought the delightful question she asks as soon as she finished the episode was so interesting, especially when looking at what we have so far this season.

Anne was an interesting-and-very-complicated author who posed a lot of philosophical inquiries in her writing. Often times, she answered those inquiries inconsistently, or with a lot of purple prose, so the answer becomes highly interpretable instead of an active dialogue. Her most common answer was "no," but characters like Armand and Lestat - and even Daniel's model trains in B&G - seem to create a space where the answer is more nuanced. Is a vampire's "inability to produce art" something inherit, or is it a result of trauma, OR does it depend on the eye of the beholder? The reason I bring up B&G is that Thorne was really impressed with Daniel's models, finding a joyous wonder in them, while Marius was critical that not everything had been crafted by hand, since Daniel instead used pre-made sets to support the things he *does* make. To Marius, Daniel was mad and wasting his existence doing empty-sensory seeking. To Thorne, he was weirdly intense and focused, motivated beyond a casual interest to be engaged with his work, but nevertheless creating something interesting. Depending on who you ask in that scene, "is that art?" would have a different answer.

The TV show is taking a very similar approach to the question with season 3, and even pushing it further into "what's the difference between good art and bad art?" What is vampiric art, and what is mortal art, and how does one tell the difference? Is it all in outside criticism about numbers and audience, or is it about the person making it?

One thing from episode one that I remember really liking is why Lestat is able to reach a point where he falls in rhythm with the music instead of fighting against it. He was able to let go of HIS vision of the music because he had a panic attack on stage, and instead made music TOGETHER with his band. That's where he reached freedom, and connected deeper with the art. He let go of ego, and became a performer.

This ties in with a scene from episode 3 about performing for yourself vs performing with people. Daniel is also making art when he is acting as an interviewer, but then comes with question: when is Daniel being a good-yet-tough journalist, and when is he just being a bully? When is he an artist, and when is he a vampire? Is it the emotional connection he reaches when he guides his subject to an answer they couldn't have reached on their own, or is it when he gets them to break down their barriers?

Daniel's documentary is straddling the line between Daniel making art with the knowledge and skill he had when he was alive, vs the desire to take what he is OWED from his subject, and that's where I think we pin how the book is vampiricly exploitative with that mindset, and why Lestat's prank on him hits so deeply. Daniel got his vampiric wish, but Lestat recognized it as Daniel feeding as a vampire, so took away the art Daniel thought he received. Daniel isn't working with Lestat to find a story - Lestat is too evasive for that - but he presses and presses past a point of necessity because if Daniel doesn't get a story from this, what's the point of doing it? Is Daniel doing this because it's his job and skill, or because it"s his drug?

I think that this presentation of the philosophy continues Anne's question and makes it more interesting. It isn't "can vampires make art" it's "can a vampire make art if they are feeding on it?"

It makes for an interesting perspective when looking at Louis, who wavers between empty and fulfilled with photography and art collecting, and Armand and the Theatre des Vampires. Louis was making art when he was moving with the photography. Maybe it wasn't "great," but it was art that meant something to HIM. He takes criticism of it not being "good" personally, and abandons the pursuit of that art, and instead cultivates his eye on recognizing good art into its own art. It becomes empty again by Dubai, however, because Louis is art collecting to fill the hole in himself, rather than doing it because he is moving in the community to find potential.