i've seen a lot of people defend the increase in uncritical antiblackness and racist scripts in tvl/s3 by saying "well lestat and daniel are racist white men, ofc they make racist comments" and it's like, well yeah that's true but they shouldn't be making racist comments with the exact same voice and with seemingly the exact same pov. lestat is a french aristocrat from the late 18th century who grew up in a rural backwater and then moved to paris at the height of the french revolution, during the enlightenment when many modern ideas of "whiteness" were being defined, lived in new orleans during the jim crow regime in the early 20th century and then was significantly isolated from human society until 2022- daniel is an american man (possibly of jewish or armenian heritage since he's played by luke and eric) who grew up middle class in modesto california (a small city that had a significant population increase during the post-wwii baby boom) in the late 20th century and spent most of his adulthood in liberal urban centers around the states. there's little to no overlap in their lived experiences- lestat was in his shack era for the vast majority of daniel's lifetime. they come from radically different cultural contexts and even though they would both have racist views that fit the norms of white supremacist society, they wouldn't have the same racist views or express their racism in the same way.
but the show has both of them speaking in the same irreverent, quippy voice and cycling through the same types of jokes in a way that makes it clear this is what the writers think is funny, that this is a reflection of the writers' (esp rolin's) racism. rolin said the audience was gonna feel the whiplash of the show suddenly being taken over by lestat and feeling like we're in lestat's head, but the tone shift fails bc it specifically doesn't feel like we're in lestat's head or that the kind of narration and dialogue we're immersed in reflects lestat's character in any meaningful way- instead, it feels like rolin has taken the fact that the show is now set mostly in the present day and the general premise of "lestat is chaotic and terminally online" as a free pass to use lestat as a mouthpiece for his own voice and sense of humor. lestat isn't just any random mid-30s rockstar edgelord on tour, he's a specific character with a specific background, and while it's believable that he became terminally online and obsessed with pop culture in the 3 years since he reunited with louis in s2ep8, that doesn't mean all traces of his past and the history that shaped him is gonna vanish from the way he speaks, narrates and views other people.
for a season that's meant to be all about digging into lestat's character and everything that made him who and what he is, the writers seem to have completely disregarded that when shaping lestat's voice this season- and why "oh well aren't they supposed to be racist white guys anyway" isn't an excuse for the racism we're seeing in the scripts. (and honestly even daniel's voice, even though his context is a lot closer to the context the show's writers would have, doesn't always land right- a man who spent most of the 70s/80s in gay bars wouldn't be calling a 6 ft tall beefcake a "twink" and his septuagenarian ass wouldn't have adopted the 2020s derogatory use of the term where people use "twink" as a substitute for "fag" either. he'd just say fag.) if the writers had done more research and had lestat doing archaic 18th-century racism pulls while contrasting that with his misuse of 2020s slang he doesn't fully understand, if daniel was actually speaking like a white guy who survived the aids crisis and cut his teeth as a journalist in late 20th century good-ol-boy newsrooms, i could give the show more grace and say there was some intentionality behind their dialogue- but everything so far just points to the writers themselves thinking "so armand is an abused sub bottom, that's his defining trait" and shoving dialogue about that into every other character's mouth without thinking if that specific person would actually say or think that. there's no reason a 265 yo french former rural aristocrat, a 72-yo usamerican journalist, and a 20-something french-canadian bookseller should be making the same kind of "armand is a beta bottom lawl" comment- but they are doing that in the show, bc the writers think it's funny and expect the audience to laugh along with them.
