vampires + byler

racism in the writing - first of all, if i say i liked the season or defend some parts of it, i will never mean to defend its racist writing or like the way it has treated its black characters. the racism in the writing was definitely the biggest problem in this season by far. if reading that sentence makes you want to write a defensive statement in my asks, please don't bother. instead, go read this post.

you can like a tv series while acknowledging that it has problems. and if you care about anti-racism, you should listen when black people voice their hurt about racist writing decisions, and urge the writers to do better. and i wish that people who liked this season, could also acknowledge and talk about this.

but so, it is lestat's season, yes, but there was a lot of unnecessary humbling, torturing, brutalizing and villanizing louis that as it continued, started feeling like very clear micro aggressions. the season could have told lestat's story and make him more likable without it being at the expense of louis like this. although i don't subscribe to the strict lestat=abuser/louis=victim dynamic, and i do think it's interesting to balance out the scales in their relationship, the way this season did it was questionable. and i also don't mean to dismiss the abuse louis and claudia suffered in lestat's hands in s1.

also i think that the interview with the producers at the start of the season where they belittled s1-s2, cast really long shadows to the whole framing of s3. louis and claudia are the heart of this show, and it's a shame this season treated them like this. and paired with anti-black language and rhetoric, having claudia suffer in eternal hell, louis getting tortured while lestat is having a dinner party in the final ep, and other things like dismissing lemuel and dee's characters completely by the end of the season, it's all really unexcusable at the end of the day.

it's completely fair if people have dropped the show because of this. it's understandable. the show resonates to me still because of the characters and their actors (whose agency and opinions i also want to believe in and the way they have praised the show), and i want to see more of them, but i truly, really, wish next season will be better. and i hope the writers are held accountable for their racist writing, even if i sadly doubt it.

the general vibe - personally, i just liked the period drama atmosphere of iwtv more than the rockstar vibes. i didn't mind the songs and music aspect at all, but i think the season could have dived into the muses a bit more to have the significance of music to lestat stand out better.

i also wished there was more time for the flashbacks, which would have allowed more time for nickistat and lesmand for example. i was very excited to see these dynamics but sadly they didn't have that much screen time. i didn't mind the vibe switch in general and i found the rapid pacing of the season fun and enjoyable to watch at best points, though sometimes i wished stuff was slowed down to let scenes simmer.

the structure and format - this bothered me the most at the start of the season. i was yearning for something of an objective lens, like what daniel and his questioning was to louis' story. which is why i loved ep 3! i think the failures were a captivating format but i had hoped that daniel's documentary would have been showed along lestat's story telling. and even from lestat's perspective, we are missing so much information, judging by the numbering on the failures.

i think having someone be the viewer's eyes in this season would have also spared the writers a lot of critique; it's easy to forget that lestat's story is very subjective, so that when lestat portrays characters or events in a negative light from his perspective that the viewers disagree with, it has been ricocheting towards the writers. at some points people seem to have completely forgotten that lestat is a very unreliable narrator and his version is to be taken with a a ton of grains of salt.

fandom reception - this is my first time being in fandom spaces for a new season of a tv series i like and... damn. i was surprised to see how many people dislike lestat and especially loustat, like is this not the loustat show? but i think if that's the pov you're watching this season from, ofc you're not gonna like it. and i guess that's fair, i don't wanna say that people are watching the show wrong, since i think media consumption is so subjective. but i do think that expecting good moral choices or healthy relationships from morally grey characters from a horror show is setting yourself up to hate the show. let them be complicated characters! let them be evil!

i also have three other irl friends who watch iwtvl more casually, and all of them have liked the season a lot. so i do think twitter and tumblr easily become echo chambers for negative reception, and for casual watchers the season isn't that bad at all.

all in all - one more main point of critique would be that maybe a too much of this season relies on the next season that has not been confirmed. there's so much build-up in this season for ... something? that we MAYBE get to see. so many things that i think could be better and make more sense if revisited, and i think they will, but it's a risky game to play with a show that doesn't have a definite continuation.

the last seasons did this as well, but they didn't leave as many loose threads as this season. lestat's role in the trial? whole truth about nicki's death? lesmand? was it truly claudia's spirit? what did armand tell the truth about? did loustat really continue on from the seance that easily? devil's minion? does the band know armand killed larry? what is up with alex? armand's motivations? why does daniel hate loustat so much? simply a lot of what is going on?

i have hope that the next season would solve some of these questions, but in the event of cancellation, this season will fall very flat. and i hope we get a different pov next season that will compete with lestat's narration this season.