#maybe i'm wrong

Here's what i mean. I think she's just meant to stand in for the large number of Armand fans who have found him fascinating (totally on board here - I've found him fascinating since circa 2002 when I speed read my way through the books).

The whole idea behind the scene is very funny - how would Lestat react when he finds out that the book Louis is behind is written such that everyone is going crazy over ARMAND?? Complete meltdown city, and absolutely hilariously played by Sam in that scene. No notes.

The PROBLEM is that they decided to add in the wink-wink reference to Armand show fans thirsting over him. This is where it gets complicated. On paper, it's again v funny and the thing MOST likely to make Lestat go insane. So I get why they went there.

HOWEVER. The missing ingredient here is Assad Zaman. Because in-show fans haven't SEEN his Armand, have they? So the writers decided to add in the 'funny' detail of fans who have gone to see his painting at the Louvre and made her thirst over THAT.

That's where it goes wrong. Because ICK. Fans did go to see the painting but only because it was featured in their favourite show. No Armand stan is lusting over that white-washed reminder of his horrible trauma.

The more nuanced explanation that some fans have come up with - and which gives the writers a whole lot more credit -- is that it's a dig at people who fetishize the suffering of POC. That is a very valid reading and entirely possible.

But I really do think that they just made a bit of a tone- deaf mistake. They were shooting for funny and I thought it worked very well. If they'd just stopped before mentioning the painting (because why couldn't she have just thirsted over Daniel's descriptions of Armand? You KNOW they were good). But they wanted to add that additional bit about the painting and ended up making it a bit weird.

i agree that the way that it ended didn't make the MOST sense plot wise, however, narrative wise it entirely did.

the franchise is clearly supposed to be some kind of commentary on animal cruelty - the entire plot of the second and third movies and the spin offs are the main characters freeing dragons and trying to change hunters' minds. it's obvious they wouldn't be able to continue that forever, but hiccup was too good of a person to allow dragon brutality to continue.

hiccup HAD to let toothless and the other dragons leave eventually, and i think that one deleted scene where valka's like "i fear our dream of a dragon utopia/well it just doesn't exist ... tame dragons are more vulnerable/their trust in us becomes their weakness" is so crucial to the plot and absolutely shouldn't have been deleted, it's clear the message of the franchise is that hiccup wasn't able to live the life he longed for because there was so many bad people in the world, and that it was better for his dream to just never exist in the first place.

but maybe i'm overthinking it.

"I want to go home."

Of course, we can't know what happened between s1 and s2 - but we do know what has happened during this shift so far. We've seen Princess hand her an energy drink when she saw Santos struggling. We saw, Mel give her advice about charting, and caring. We saw Whitaker reaching out and asking her if she was okay. We see Robby checking in with her, and caring about what's going on. They clearly have a good relationship.

We're not seeing Santos being treated like a "pariah." But she feels like she is; maybe because in a fucked up way she feels guilty. She shouldn't feel bad about reporting Langdon, she did the right thing. But she's a good person, so of course a part of her may felt guilty. May have feel like everyone hates her for turning Langdon in. But I don't think anyone actually does hate her, or resent her for doing it. I think the people who know, think she did the right thing.

is figure skating peaceful? that shit looks stressful as fuck to me. also aren't they all fucking each other? and doping?