Amadeo's Sketch

that old man is once again occupying my every waking thought

getting compliments from npcs on my horse is so satisfying; yes, I brush him before and after every ride, he gets endless pets and treats, I love him, Thank you for noticing <3

it's been said before but Armand putting Daniel in front of the TV when he's too busy to deal with him... he'll be such a good parent to his only fledgling 🥰

was trying to go to sleep last night when it hit me how the adoration with the shepherds scene is a refutation of AR's whitewashing her characters in real time by having vampirism take their melanin. like she very clearly associates power/beauty/mystery with whiteness, framing it as part of her allegiance to aesthetics over morality or social convention. but of course aesthetic is all about social convention, who is considered beautiful and who is not by cultural standards. in the adoration scene Amadeo's whitewashing is very explicitly linked to an intimate form of violence, a line of betrayal that leads to Armand turning his own internalized racism on Louis and Claudia.

ntm that the very fact that Amadeo's whitewashing is never mentioned aloud is what makes it so striking--Louis doesn't ask about why Armand looks so different from the painting, the differences are supposedly confined to Amadeo being "meatier in the forearms." they don't need to discuss it because they both already recognize the aesthetic strain of white supremacy that has been dominating their lives, their stories, for so long. and to top it all off you've got Lestat (the memory of Lestat, more omnipotent and inescapable than the real Lestat ever was) as the specter of whiteness, too, the mocking perfect ideal Amadeo and Louis have both been expected to modulate

it's white supremacy as a matter of course, like it was with Anne Rice's world building, except at the same time it's being held up to the light with the same kind of ruthless clarity that the show holds on Marius and Armand's relationship. which is of course also built on white supremacy (or ethnocentric supremacy in bookmand's case) and Marius's desire to create some kind of perfect vampire from the ground up, violently slicing Armand/Amadeo's perceived weaknesses by force if necessary and abandoning him for failing to live up to expectations. white supremacy and sexual violence are twisted-up threads that have always run through Anne Rice's work, rarely if ever questioned by the narrative or the characters, but the adoration painting combines and exemplifies them in a way that's impossible to ignore.

the real reason book!armand didn't take daniel with him when he was feeding is that daniel would've become soo jealous if he saw armand do that whole easeful death thing with some other guy

It Tastes Different Playing Armand

A moonlit hotel room, just him and the devil 🩸🦇

when i see armand sink his fangs into daniel i will fall to the floor like an elderly victorian lady who’s just seen ankle

i did not appreciate the dead part in red dead redemption

If Armand ever calls Old Man Daniel "beautiful boy" I swear I'm gonna run up and down my street in my underwear screaming and banging pots and pans together