Multiverse irritations

[selenak]

Living in the darkest timeline continues to a horrorshow, so, to fannish things.

I would say it's a further sign of getting old, but no, I remember feeling a similar way back in the Torchwood days when the majority of fandom was all over Jack/Ianto and yours truly was monumentally indifferent to that pairing. But: right now, I having this sense of disconnect and/or deja vue when looking for fanfic in various fandoms:

Interview with the Vampire (TV): Look, I loved what the show did with Daniel Molloy! Snarky, rude-to-vampires old Daniel Molloy is my favourite! Whereas I was never much interested in young book!Daniel, his vampire fannishness, or his relationship with book!Armand. What is the fandom writing? Essentially book or book osmosis (the book question being not Interview with the Vampire, but The Queen of the Damned, specifically the chapter The Devil's Minion which in bookverse for the first time reveals what became of "the boy" from the first novel) fanfic, which ill fits the showverse characters, usually starring Young!Daniel from the 1970s. Don't get me wrong, (I thought the young actor playing Daniel in the flashback episode was terrific and really sold me as a younger version of Eric Bogosian, but it's still the older version I'm interested in.) It's not that I don't see much hostile UST between old Daniel and showverse Armand, but the emphasis is on hostile here, which is very different to the bookverse characters and their relationship, and so whenever I see the "Devil's Minion happened" tag I run. Then I thought, maybe I'll get vintage show!Daniel in stories that don't pair him with Armand, but not much luck so far.


LotR: The Rings of Power: Where the hell is autistic Elrond ("needs a hug") coming from? WHY? (I mean, he along with everyone else needs a hug in the finale, obviously. But look, there's a reason why Durin immediately knows Annatar is a liar when Annatar claims Elrond called him "the wisest of all the dwarves". And did we not notice Elrond's gigantic chip on the shoulder/disappointment venting at Galadriel during the first half of the season via pointed digs? Yes, Elrond can be vey kind (especially if you're, say, Disa), but he's also sharp tongued and definitely knows what he's saying when lashing out. If you want an Elven male woobie, this as in so many other ways is defnitely Celebrimbor's season.


(Lo and behold, Galadriel, whether paired up with Sauron or with Adar in fanfic, seems to largely escape damselfication and is allowed to continue being messy.)


Agatha All Along: show: delivers a delightfully messed up exes relationship between Agatha Harkness, villainous witch with huuuuuuge body count, and Rio, who is really (spoiler). Manages to flesh out Agatha as a character from her WandaVision introduction without prettifying or ignoring what she did and what she's capable of. Fanfic: here, the warning tags to run away from for me are "soft!Agatha", "soft!Rio", and all variations thereof. The reason why Rio saying something like "she is my scar" or the tender way she beckons to Nicky are so effective in the show is that she's not like that most of the time. Yes, she's protective of Agatha when the ghost of Evanora Harkness shows up. But this "nobody is allowed to hurt her but me" kind of protectiveness does have a "and we do hurt each other" implication, and while both of their physical fights in the season opener and in the finale have sexual elements of foreplay, they also have quite the viciousness - I mean "death by a thousand cuts"? Slashing Agatha's tendril? (All, mind, before Billy repowers Agatha.) A fluffy couple, this is not.

Also: the moment when Ghost!Evanora showed up I knew Agatha would be next in line for the specific brand of woobification where it's all the mean parent(s)' fault. Now, there's some canonical ground work here, to be sure. (There's a slight problem in that the ghost may or not have been actual Evanora, given that Billy created the Road, but since both Agatha and Rio treat her as the real deal, I'm assuming all she says, including "you were born evil" and "should have killed you at birth" were ic for the late Mrs. H.,E.) But I'm still having trouble buying Agatha as 18th century Carrie White, and also, it's been centuries since then. Again, the show is great in showing Agatha's unconditional love for her son (and the fact she doesn't turn harsh or mean on him when he starts disagreeing with her) side by side to her chilling indifference to everyone else, despite the fact after her original coven, all the other witches we see her meet at first are helpful and friendly towards her. I don't want to read about Agatha, Persecuted Woobie. I want to read about Agatha occasoinally catching feelings despite herself while also continuing to be a ruthless killer.

Back to Interview with the Vampire (TV version), some more thoughts unrelated to fanfiction: Unreliable Narrator is a big trope in both seasons, and I'm wondering and look forward to The Vampire Lestat (the novel) getting the same treatment in season 3, since I bet the show won't abandon the "questioning the narrator" gimmick despite the fact none of the later novel has the interview framework anymore. And of course it already used bits and pieces of the later novels in its s1 and 2 adaptations, hinting at what will and won't make the cut. Nicholas "Nicky" de Lenfent, Magnus, Marius, Akasha: in. Gabrielle?????? I'm assuming we didn't see her in the Armand-narrated 18th century flashback because they didn't want to cast an actress for a cameo and then possibly have to recast in two or three years if they couldn't get her back. But given what they did with Madeline, whom the show evolved from a thin sketch into a fascinating layered character, I'm resasonably certain that they not only won't cut the character but will likely expand her role and/or show us her from outside Lestat's pov as well. (After all, Gabrielle is still around and not dead, so could give her pov. Not least on how Lestat's early vampire days, err, nights really went, because there's already a big clash between what Armand tells Louis (and Daniel) - i.e. Lestat first cheerfully cheats on Nicholas with him, Armand, then dumps him as soon as Armand says "I love you" and leaves town for no other reason than he's just that flighty - and what Lestat says both in that one s1 comment (on the unnamed wonderful violinist he loved, i.e. Nicholas) and his description of his relationship with Nicholas during the trial in s2 (anything said in the trial is evidently skewered, but the Lestat/Nicholas backstory is irrelevant to the coven putting Louis and Claudia (and poor Madeline) on trial, so presumably that part was pure Lestat and unscripted, where Nicholas was his first great love and Armand never as much as mentioned. In the books, they never had a fling, not for lack of wanting on Armand's part, but then the tv show doesn't have to follow suit, though it could. In any case, I thought it's telling that Armand presents Nicholas as easily dismissed and irrelevant and all but handwaves away the fact the Paris coven drained him to near death before Lestat made him a vampire (or had to let him die), and that it might (as in the books) have been the becoming a vampire part and Nicholas' subsequent inability to cope with the vampire state that caused Lestat to leave Paris, not anything about Armand.

One big difference/twist/adaptation/whatever you want to call it between booklore and tv lore re: Armand is that while in both cases Armand is co-responsible, and not in a minor capacity. for the death of Claudia and at first lies to Louis about it, blaming it on the coven and presenting himself as an innocent bystander, the tv show has Daniel conclude that Armand was, in fact, willing to let Louis die as well at that point, and only went back to the whole "sharing unlives together" idea once Louis survived. Which is the opposite of what happens in the book, where he ditched the coven for Louis completely. (Note, though, what in both tv and book lore Armand in the 18th century as well as in the 20th was secretly sick and over being coven leader, emotionally went for the outsider coming in and effectively destroying the coven hierarchy, and was very willing to trade the coven for the guy - except that in one case, the guy didn't want him, and in the other case, companionship with the guy turned into a Strindberg tale instead of romantic bliss. What he wasn't willing to do, though, is leave on his own. And that's what's selling me on the fact tv!Armand in the weeks leading up to the trial was ready to abandon Louis (until Louis survived the trial) - he evidently didn't believe Louis would stay with him or prioritize him until then, and Armand, not least due to his own horrific backstory, is unable to function alone (or thinks he is) . He also really wanted Claudia dead in all versions. I think that's sometimes overlooked in fandom due to the coven members being that much more openly vicious to her. But the series has Armand predicting Claudia's imminent demise pretty much from the moment he meets Louis, though he keeps saying she'll commit suicide, unable to cope with her existence as an immortal locked in the body of a child teenager. Now at first glance this might look like an honest opinion. But see, in 2.05, the 1970s flashback episode, we get a graphic illustration of Armand, driven by jealousy and anger at Louis he can't express directly to Louis, torturing young!Daniel physically and psychologically for days until he's talked him into wanting death, and even near the end of that, we see Daniel saying twice he wants to live before Armand, psychic powers at full blast, breaks him, and all this in an episode where in the 2022 timeframe Louis early on confidently tells old!Daniel Armand is able to spot the suicidal ones. Also, we the audience have seen Armand - not Santiago, Armand - doing his best to make Claudia's initially joyful participation in the Theatre des Vampires a misery by letting her play the role of a child on stage, refusing her request to go back to backstage work once she's truly sick of it, and forcing her to dress as a child outside of the theatre as well. There's no reason why he couldn't have accepted her request to go back to backstage work; on the contrary, it would have improved the climate among the coven and soothed the clearly jeaous of Claudia's success othhers' ego, including Santiago's. But it was designed to make Claudia miserable, and I think Armand wanted to fastforward the development he predicted for her and drive her into despair, much as decades later, he wanted Daniel broken and dead because Louis had called him fascinating.

(Sidenote: Actually Claudia, any version of her, at no point in either the book(s) or tv show, or for that matter the movie, ever comes across as suicidal or longing for death. Her issues are around the body she has and how this deforms her existence, but she's never not fierce or a dedicated survivor. Could she have gone insane after centuries in a child/teenage body - depending on whether we're talking book or tv -? Possible. But she didn't in the decades she did live through. The tv show makes a point of letting Claudia, not Louis, be the one who in the midst of WWII finds ways to travel through Europe, pick up several European languages, find food, and come up with cover stories. So I'm currently going with Armand doing a mixture of wishful thinking and projecting his own malaise of being on some level a broken child/teenager made immortal in that (emotional) state on her.)

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Re: IWTV: I'm entranced by old!Daniel and fascinated by the possibilities for how the show might choose to develop the dynamic between him and Armand.

I can understand why, before we get any idea of how show!canon is going to develop on that front, fandom is falling back on book!canon for material. But the show clearly isn't the book on so many fronts, and book!Devil's Minion is not anywhere near what I want in terms of throwing old!Daniel and Armand together and seeing what happens.

Especially because part of the appeal of the latter is that old!Daniel can hold his own psychologically and push back against Armand in a way that young!Daniel utterly can't on any level.

Plus I just want the show to let Bogosian and Zaman play together more because they're both phenomenal actors.

[selenak]

I'm 100% with you there in all of this. The screen crackled when they clashed on screen. Also, I think someone who is neither emotionally dependent on him nor whom he's emotionally dependent on, who having lived a lifetime as a human has the one experience even centuries as a vampire didn't and couldn't give Armand, would be a completely new experience and dynamic.

[rydra_wong]

Also, to recap a point I saw someone make (but apparently didn't bookmark): Armand has clearly spent his entire existence presenting carefully-curated versions of himself in an attempt to keep hold of other people (sustained with mindwiping and gaslighting as necessary).

But wherever they go from here -- old!Daniel's already seen through his bullshit. He's already seen and been on the receiving end of (and now remembers) Armand at his most terrifyingly monstrous and "inhuman". He detonated Armand's entire construct of a 77-year-old marriage. Starting any sort of relationship (in the broadest sense) from there has got to be a new experience for Armand.

Also I feel like if Armand did have an extended relationship with young!Daniel AND THEN MINDWIPED HIM, old!Daniel's reaction to discovering this is not going to be "oh cool no probs, let's just pick that up then." Instead it'd go right onto the pile labelled "You Did WHAT, You Fucking Asshole".

[selenak]

Besides, it would snap my suspension of disbelief. I can buy that Armand can delete/repress six days from both Daniel's and Louis' memories, sure. Also, in Louis' case, probably a detail here and a moment there as the years went on. But months or even years? Young Daniel wasn't a vampire, and he did and does have a lot of curiosity and strong journalistic instincts. Time didn't fly for him. If there were, say, two years missing, as opposed to a few days he could write off to a drugs and terror induced bender, he'd have noticed.

This said, I agree as to what his reaction would be. And great point about Armand presenting curated versions of himself to other people all through his life so far. Basically, he tries to figure out what the people he is interested in and/or depends upon want and plays up to that and edits out what doesn't fit. (And btw, Louis' reaction when Claudia tells him Armand basically threatened her when he revealed he knew about Lestat - "that doesn't sound like him" - is so telling in that regard. Armand has led a group of vicious serial killers for centuries, but no, he's such a sweetie he'd never threaten Claudia to keep her in line.)

[schneefink]

I'm barely reading any IwtV fic so I don't really have any stake (hah) in this, but in the show Daniel and the way he could hold his own simply through perceptiveness and experience and skill was one of my favorite things for sure, so yeah I agree that popular fanon using more of young book!Daniel instead would be disappointing.

[ratcreature]

Not sure it's the darkest timeline considering how many bad things I can imagine that haven't happened (yet?), but I feel a strong case can be made for it being the stupidest. :/

[selenak]

Not arguing about the stupidest. Let's talk about darkest after the February elections when we know how votes much the AFD gained (or not, I hope against hope).

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, there's a strain of migratory f/f fandom who jump onto these fascinating characters who really have done bad things and immediately woobify and soften them. Shaw/Root from Person of Interest, Eve/Villanelle from Killing Eve, and so on. I don't really mind, because there's a strain of migratory m/m fandom who do exactly the same thing, but you do have to do a lot of sorting through to find what you want to read! I really liked that Agatha didn't learn a lesson from Nicky - she kept right on doing what she was doing only for a much more selfish reason!

[selenak]

. I don't really mind, because there's a strain of migratory m/m fandom who do exactly the same thing

Oh absolutely - I mean, my first online fandom was Highlander (the tv series) decades ago, and well do I remember fluffy horseman Methos who never did anything wrong - but as you say, it makes it harder to find fanfic to my taste in either case.

[redfiona99]

I am not looking forward to fandom getting hold of Marius

[selenak]

Good lord. Depending on how hot his actor is, and whether or not he gets some vulnerable moments upon on screen introduction, he's either The Worst Dad Of Them All, or he's been misunderstood and someone else did all the, err, questionable things.

Mind you, I would really like to know whether the show is going to roll with him having pimped young Armand out on occasion, because that's definitely added villainy compared to what he did in the books. (With the caveat that I stoppped reading after The Body Thief, so haven't read Armand's or Pandora's novels.) Then again, Lestat wasn't physically violent to either Louis or Claudia in IwtV the book, either, and he's way more verbally cruel to Claudia in the tv version on the show's first season, than he was in the novel, and yet the addition of those elements didn't mean he became one dimensional, au contraire, and the theme of control and abuse was certainly there in the novel already. So it's possible the addition of "pimping 'Armand out" does something similar for the tv Marius characterisation. Maybe to explain why he never ever bothered to tell Armand he was still alive/undead through the centuries. Or it could be that young Amadeo, recently liberated from years of sex slavery in a brothel, misunderstood Marius saying something like "go with Maestro X and model for him, be nice and we'll get a great painting" to mean "have sex with him".

[shadowkat]

I admittedly have similar issues with fanfic - I don't really like it when the characters jump too far away from how they are on screen. I've not been able to find any that works for me - in any of the shows that I'm currently into.

I remember feeling a similar way back in the Torchwood days when the majority of fandom was all over Jack/Ianto and yours truly was monumentally indifferent to that pairing.

Same.

[selenak]

There's a grain of truth in the cliché that a bad or mediocre source material makes for better fanfiction, because in that case none too layered characters and themes get fleshed out and made more interesting, whereas with really well done source material, the complicated characters tend to get flattened into stereotypes.

[shadowkat]

Agree with this. People have a tendency to flatten their favs into romantic archetypes or stereotypes. Noticed that happening a great deal in the Buffy/Angel, Doctor Who, BSG, Lost, and Farscape fandoms. Not always, there is some excellent fanfic out there on all of that.

[callmesandyk]

I was very much taken back when the read on the Evanora appearance was what an awful mother, omg! Etc since it did seem like Agatha was evil all along. The show was very enjoyable to me when reading Agatha as fundamentally selfish, and malicious. She has her moments, as you said, and I appreciate those more that they come from her not being at all a woobie.

I bounce right off Audrey Plaza in any role, so the dominant pairing wouldn't be for me, but I have been afraid to look for fic with Jennifer (I love Sasheer Zamata so much). Perhaps with all the fic being produced for the show there are some fun Jennifer fics lurking.

[selenak]

I was very much taken back when the read on the Evanora appearance was what an awful mother, omg!

I mean, I didn't think she was stellar myself. There's room between "toddler Agatha probably started to pull the wings from flies the moment she could and Evanora at some point just gave up trying to change her" and "Evanora was an abusive monster who hated baby Agatha and played out Margaret and Carrie White in Salem with her". I also get why anyone would cringe in sympathy at "should have killed you the moment you were born". In every performance of Shakespeare's Richard III I have seen, where they didn't cut out the role of his mother the Duchess of York (or merged it with Marguerite d'Anjou) and we get to the "I loathed you from the moment you were born, you monster!" scene, the audience around me audibly took a breath. And certainly Shakespeare's Richard is meant to be Evil McEvil. The idea that a mother loves her children, no matter how bad these children behaves, that's so deeply ingrained and socially conditioned into all of us that makes the curse of a mother extra powerful.

Back to Evanora and Agatha: in the flashback scene of Agatha's trial as presented on WandaVision (which is longer than the shortened bit we see in Agatha All Along, Agatha clearly has her insincere voice when pleading "I can be good", and Evanora sounds sad, not angry (which she does in the rest of the scene), when saying "no, you can't'", upon which she resumes attacking Agatha. And as I said in another post, before rewatching WandaVision I had misremembered Agatha killing Evanora right away along with the rest of the coven, which she doesn't, there's this dialogue first between the deaths of the other coven members and Evanora's, i.e. Agatha at first tries not to kill her mother. All of which gave me the impression it wasn't all hate, all the time from Evanora from the moment Agatha was born, and Agatha wasn't Damien from Omen, either, but that at this point Evanora had given up on Agatha for a long time already and that she'd probably seen her do damage multiple times (though obviously not in the draining witches to steal their powers way, the coven wouldn't have had attacked Agatha the way they did otherwise), and that Agatha probably had been the kind of child and youth who is constitutionally incapable of accepting responsibility for any misdeed and either denies doing it or decides it's everyone else who is wrong, and that this got worse when it became clear she wouldn't grow out of it when she became an adult.

I hope for Jennifer (and Lilia!) centric fanfic myself once the immediate "fixit" type of stories after the finale where Agatha and Rio kiss and make up (and out) peter off has trickled off somewhat. Jen's backstory is the one we got least off, so there is so much room to think of something, and since she's alive and able to use her powers again, so many possible scenarios. (I'm also interested in how she and Agatha originally met and didn't kill each other.) And given Jen actually has some real life problems potion magic won't help her with (such as impending law suits), I think she ought to be represented by one of the MCU's lawyers, to wit, either Other Jen the SheHulk or Matt the Daredevil for a crossover both hilarious and with emotional exploration. :)

[callmesandyk]

You make excellent points about Evanora! I do think there was a strain in the reaction I saw that surely, Agatha had never done wrong! But yes, it's pretty layered and full of nuance. Not always something that ends up in fanfic.

I think I will be patient and wait for the Jen and Lilia fanfic to show up. It was nice to see rumors that Sasheer will be back on screen as Jen, even if they're just rumors.

[grimorie]

I just wanted to say:

In every performance of Shakespeare's Richard III I have seen, where they didn't cut out the role of his mother the Duchess of York (or merged it with Marguerite d'Anjou) and we get to the "I loathed you from the moment you were born, you monster!" scene, the audience around me audibly took a breath.

It gives me a lot to think about and I wonder, if Schaeffer & Co., were pulling from that influence. I'm not as knowledgeable about Shakespeare, so this is a new perspective.

[elisi]

LotR: The Rings of Power: Where the hell is autistic Elrond ("needs a hug") coming from? WHY?
?? I am fannishly invested, so have not even glanced at the fandom/fic, but this is hilarious. He's a politician, like the worst job for someone with autism. He has very firm morals, yes, but he... certainly knows how play people.

Anyway, this is a fun glimpse into how fandom will always woobie-fy their faves. <3

(I love Eldrond, he's possibly my favourite character, alongside Durin & Disa - they sort of come in a bundle.)

[selenak]

They do! Disa and Durin are the best married couple in any Tolkien adaptation so far, and their dynamic with each other, individually with Elrond and together with Elrond is golden. I love all of those scenes.

And good to know there‘s somewhat out there as bewildered as I am at this fanon Elrond. :)

[elisi]

Just realised that I meant to write 'I am not fannishly invested' 🤦‍♀️, which probably goes to show how tied my little head is! ^_^

They do! Disa and Durin are the best married couple in any Tolkien adaptation so far, and their dynamic with each other, individually with Elrond and together with Elrond is golden. I love all of those scenes.
They're magical. And I think that the way we see... just sort of 'daily life' (of sort) for all the different races is what I like most about the show overall? It's a much broader view.

And good to know there‘s somewhat out there as bewildered as I am at this fanon Elrond. :)
Yup. I would... not have guessed that interpretation. I have had Galadriel/Halbrand (or Galadriel/Sauron) videos pop up in my suggested, and yeah I can see why. But Elrond is a surprise.

[eva_rosen]

I was a fan of book Devil's Minion (mostly of the brief bits of Molloy's snark, and thus was thrilled when the tv show gave us that trait of his multiplied by a thousand), but I feel your pain, because what I mostly want from fic is gen exploration of Daniel and Louis' odd friendship (or also gen AUs where Santiago and Claudia realize the trap they're getting into and flee together).

[selenak]

Santiago and Claudia actually had a real-feeling rapport there for two episodes, didn't they? But alas I think Santiago was too fixated on his entire sense of self worth being the star (in every sense) and center of the theatre. If you think about it, the vampires able to make it in the long term are the ones able to reinvent themselves or at least adopt new roles and dynamics. And I don't think Santiago had it in him. (Wanting to become Maitre of the Paris Coven doesn't count, as it was seen by him as an expansion of his star role.)

I'd love some gen fic, too, but I'm afraid it'll be even harder to find in this fandom than in others.

[saturnofthemoon]

It has been confirmed that Gabrielle will be in s3 of IWTV.

[selenak]

That is very good to know.