Night of 1000 Kates 🐈‍⬛

I know we all have our complaints about AMC’s IWTV merch but I just learned for Orphan Black: Echoes they sell a slime with an “sophisticated fragrance befitting of the show”. Show aired in 2024 and this slime is still for sale, btw; AMC is sending someone a rock in a jar.

@amadeogroomer @reve0314 Fascinated by this interviewer’s perspective on the books because what do you mean Raglan is more complex than David? He’s one of the few characters where everyone who knows him is like “I think he’s just a moron?” and then his plan only works because Lestat is slightly dumber.

I’m not saying any of this is more than hinted at, esp since Armand mostly peaced out once Louis was on Regina’s hook. But I can see connective tissue that ties this storyline in to the themes surrounding long-term adverse reactions to abuse that have been explored thru the show.

while of course still continuing not to examine how much of the power held in their relationship was in fact his, since Louis was the one trading sex for safety while Armand clung for psychological survival (plus all the brainwashing).

As well as the threads about how Armand’s history of abuse in the form of trafficking impacted his view of their relationship, as was brought up in this episode. Armand creating a new transactional relationship to torture Louis and himself with, etc.

Which connects to threads about his relationship with Marius and how that impacted his relationship with Louis, Armand wanting a master but needing a love that will cradle him like a child, “no one has painted me in 400 years,” being seen and not seen by Louis the artist, etc.

It brings another layer to the incest dynamics thru the season in that, while it certainly touches on the emotional incest between Louis and Claudia present since S1, this is also an incest *fantasy* crafted by a romantic partner putting himself in the role of daughter.

I didn’t initially know how to feel about that revelation, but thinking about it through the lens of Armand wanting to interact with Louis through the eyes of someone whose face he actually looks on with love -a proxy for his daughter- actually ties some threads together a bit.

#tvlspoilers Didn’t think there was much more to say about Lolita connections for the rest of the Regina plot but the fact that it was all engineered by Armand, who became a victim of CSA at 12 as Dolores did, feels like it might be relevant.

@soft_serve_hky Yeah, Baby Jenks is also the first vampire in the books who was born in the modern era, and her chapter gives insight into the new generations of vampires - she’s in a gang, they use street names like Baby Jenks and Killer, they’re poor and young instead of old aristocrats, etc.

@katyterror Yeah the baby part does make sense in that context, baby jenks as a name altogether also feels like a bit of an americanism or nickname for the gang, just a bit random i guess

She’s Baby Jenks because, just as in QoTD, she provides a revelation about the metaphysics of the universe. She’s the first soul that Lestat sees in a season that concludes with Lestat having his own soul judged and weighed as he dies.

@hamstercrime You’re welcome! I love trading all the little threads (silver threads, I guess) from the show back to the books so I’m glad you also enjoyed reading it!

@katyterror omg thanks for this, I genuinely did not Get That

@soft_serve_hky On the show her husband “Killer” is the pedophiliac rapist who went after Claudia, so we can probably assume she has a similar background of exploitation, especially since she was also used as a honey trap by the Fang Gang.

@soft_serve_hky It’s just the name that the character who serves the same purpose has in the books. In the book Baby Jenks was a 14 yo runaway who was trafficked before becoming a vampire. Her pimp emphasized her youth by putting her in pigtails, so that’s probably also where her name came from.

(Over in Mayfair Witches world there’s ghosts all over the place so “proof of the existence of the soul” really should be less of a revelation to Raglan, at least, but we get to have our own metaphysical revelations here in TVL land.)

But in the hindsight of The Failures recording, he recognizes Baby Jenks as his first soul, and the first evidence that a soul in fact exists in this show. She’s also a sad little tale of vampiric life as she is in the book, but her primary purpose is as a seer of the afterlife.

@JustLittleBaby @LaFaarah To be clear, if he was not rehired in retaliation, that is shitty, but in a different way than racial discrimination. I also thibj the point he makes about lack of firing protocols is incredibly valid and AMC should have treated him better, but he also says that’s pretty common.

@JustLittleBaby @LaFaarah He also was a WGA Strike Captain. My assumption is that the general nature of writer’s contracts only being for a season means he doesn’t have enough evidence to say his firing was retaliatory for his strike participation, but he included that detail to suggest it.

I can’t help but laugh at you for making that writer that was let go becoming your new angle to attack the show… He was let go after S1, that didn’t affect S2 at all but somehow it’s because of that S3 is bad? I wish I could have believed you to be really concerned for what happened to this writer but I know better.