blueteainfusion

It's complicated because on the one hand I can absolutely see Lestat's version of Daniel being a kind of dialed up version of reality, making him extra rude, extra loud mouthed, and also tacking on him being loudly racist and homophobic too. But if that was the case I think they should have made that more overt in Lestat and Daniel's dynamic, even if it was just a throwaway line from Lestat implying that Daniel is probably a racist or something, just something to lay a trail of breadcrumbs to that. It's annoying because I don't want this show to have to hold my hand and explain it's intentions, but they've kind of dug their own grave with this one.

The problem I have is that the show has kind of lost any grace I might have been willing to give it by being so loud and insistent about this season being something entirely new and trying to separate it from the previous two seasons. If this was Interview With The Vampire Season 3, I might have been a lot more willing to let my trust in the writers from their racial storytelling and sensitivity carry forward into this season, but instead they've axed their Black creatives and hailed this as a separate project, something that can be watched without the first two seasons (I do not agree AT ALL that that is the case either), something that an audience who didn't enjoy the first two seasons can love. And I just have to question who exactly this new audience that they're trying to reach is, because unfortunately the more the season goes on the more it looks like they're trying to bring back a white audience who were alienated by a show which centered around a Black man and his racial identity.

I think he's actually the weakest written character BECAUSE of rolins blatant favoritism toward him because thus far he's largely relying on Sam's charisma, a pre-existing book fanbase, and fandom bias toward hot white men rather than actually writing him well

Honestly this doesn't need much added to it; it's a whole thesis statement. You're absolutely, perfectly right.

The producers/writers/creative team is acting like Lestat is so iconic everyone already knows (and likes!) him. They don't have to bother explaining certain things, or making their characterization make sense across seasons.

They've been hugging that copy of TVL and treating it the way other big franchise adaptations treat their source material. But the thing they don't seem to understand is that The Vampire Chronicles are VERY different than say, like. Lord of the Rings. Or Game of Thrones. Or Marvel.

In the audience makeup. In terms of what this particular bookish audience wants. In terms of how iconic and well-known and well-liked the source material even actually is. Including (and even especially) Lestat as a character.

Lestat isn't like Spiderman. Half the fandom barely knew who Lestat was before they started watching the show, which has so far given us

complicatedly shitty husband Lestat in s1

a mirage of a guy who wasn't really there so isn't actually the real character in most of s2

brief moments of the guy again being maybe shitty or not, for the moment left ambiguous, in one single episode

plus one nice reunion scene that addresses none of the rest of anything directly at the end the first 2 seasons.

And that's all just stuff the show-only audience would have to work with, in terms of buying into this guy at this point.

That's not even getting into it being much more complicated when you think of the book readers. Many of whom, unlike more traditional genre fantasy, don't tend to put Anne Rice and her writing on an uncritique-able pedestal.

The other half of the fandom that came from the movies/books already has a complicated and at times unpleasant relationship to the character and his centrality. Because Anne Rice also infamously did a bad job justifying her shift from Louis to Lestat as protagonist in the books. When it comes to greenlighting a TVC adaptation, anyone who actually spent any time in the fandom would know when they went to adapt this whole thing: Anne Rice's approach to character writing and POV shifts is definitely a bug, not a feature. (I genuinely believe part of what has been going wrong with the show overall is that amc seems to have bought the rights to TVC thinking it was going to be some sort of franchise cash cow. When uhhh. I absolutely hate to say it, but. Queer stuff usually doesn't work like that. Because it's not mainstream enough in its viewerbase. And that's not to mention that they just seem to have a very odd understanding on a fundamental level of like. Who even really likes the TVC material. What kind of fan those people even are.)

Many book fans were excited and hopeful to see the show writers try to make sense of the nonsensical, unexplained twist that came from that shift in who the real main character was. And why they were so suddenly expected to care. Anne Rice infamously sort of flubbed this with her own audience. A lot of her own readers were very ready to see it get handled better. Not to see it get LESS justified. Not to see more of the same.

So yeah. The idea of treating Lestat like he's so iconic he needs no explanation or re-introduction? That being expected to like him requires no justification? Especially with something as jarring as a POV shift?

Wild. This is a particularly risky fandom to take that tactic with.

I once read a beautiful meta about how at his core Louis is lonely character. He withholds telling his lovers how much he loves them- but does that not in turn make him lonely too? Louis De Pointe Du Lac was a gay black man in Louisiana during Jim Crow. How much did he withhold- how much had he had to cut and trim himself like a bonsai to survive? Weight of the racist world, weight of a family who wants him to take up the mantle and be the MAN of the house, worry and love and grief over his brother...my God can you even imagine? All of those things bottled up within him. How can anyone ever expect him to shrug off all of that weight of him? And so who to tell so as to not compromise the image you have built to survive? Whom to share with? Who is there? So he used to visit Lily. And he brought back Daniel and talked to him throughout the night and into morning. And he reached out again to Daniel and invited him back to Dubai.

And that’s not anything against Regina either! She read the book and decided that yes she would be willing to playact his dead daughter-sister for half a million dollars. Kinda obsessed with her.

Ripping Bruce's spine out would become an aggressive choice rather than a meaningful action. That monster would die not knowing who wished for his execution. We would never get Lestat's story connecting with his daughter's.

It would immediately become about Louis' revenge rather than the survivors of the tale.

I do write this in response to the several takes on Louis' violating and selfish actions which is ironical since this scene ISN'T supposed to be ABOUT HIM. Yet yall make it about him in such a nasty way.

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If you want to talk about Louis at all, THINK. What allowed Louis to walk right back into the same empty feeling he left at the burning theatre all those years back?

"All the rage and madness exited my body and nothing replaced it." ~ ldpdl

He knows the empty feeling very well. There is no catharsis. No satisfaction to revenge.

This is duty. No second thoughts to it. Just has to be done. For which he pays a price.

This tells me 2 things.

Louis is entirely alone. There is NO one in his life with any authority or emotional reach, who can keep him from walking right back into this harrowing emotional space!

During the initial 2020 interview, he is trying to let her speak for herself, leaving in her anger and disappointment in him + passages that indict him as a faulty/abusive parent. It can be said that by removing some pages, he is acting in self-interest, and I don’t put it past him. However, knowing that some of the pages he did remove were her SA, it can also be said that some of it was him trying to protect that vulnerable part of Claudia from being laid bare in his memoir. These don’t have to be separate motives, he can be removing pages he felt were too vulnerable to her and in tandem (unconsciously or consciously), he was also protecting himself.

THIS.

I hate when people say Louis doesn't take accountability, because if that was the case, he'd've NEVER given Daniel her diaries to read, to acknowledge--let alone understand/empathize with--her perspective and see her thoughts about Louis (& Lestat) in her own words. AMC could've let Louis do what BOOK!LOUIS did, and given the entire interview WITHOUT Claudia's diaries whatsoever (a la the 1973 interview/Anne Rice's book/the movie). But instead, AMC!Louis KNOWS about her diaries, and what's said in them (he memorized them!) and STILL lets Daniel read them and add them to his memoir, so the world can know that his own daughter said he was a p.o.s. father who PICKED ANOTHER ONE, OVER ME! He's NOT trying to come off as a stainless perfect angel or perfect victim--despite what the antis keep falsely claiming.

But with Bruce, he DOES try to be Claudia's avenging angel; knight in vengeful black. Bruce NEEDS to pay for what he did to Claudia. Seeing the human victims trapped in his Farm, we see that Bruce's degeneracy has gone looooong unchecked, and even gotten WORSE, since he's now the leader of the Fang Gang, a whole new generation of Children of Satan/Darkness--the same cult that KILLED Claudia. Louis can't bring back Claudia. He can't even gain fulfillment or peace by killing Killer.

But you know who was saved, that literally no one's talking about?

This is how I know the fandom hates Louis, cuz folks REFUSE to give him any grace or credit or flowers whatsoever.

YES, Louis is deeply flawed, often hypocritical, and largely self-serving. But he still TRIES to DO GOOD, and balance his evil with deeds that he thinks/hopes will at least make a SMALL difference. That will make his existence worth something to someone out there. That he CAN be a better type of vampire than the degenerate monsters crawling around.