Ravioli

Needed to put these in a full screenshot because this nails it. It’s not at all the content; it’s the narrative framing. This is the fourth time in which Louis is physically maimed or tortured by his significant other (firsthand or by a mob) to the extent of black and blue, visceral on-screen gore. To add insult to injury, this is the third time that this abuse is framed as retaliatory for Louis' actions.

Most of which, if you may have forgotten, DID NOT come with a trigger warning beforehand until massive backlash.

All of which have now become retroactively justified as “provoked” by Louis emotional manipulation or protective treatment of Claudia. We reframed the drop in the Trial as an attack that Louis verbally and physically escalated by fighting back and verbally taunting Lestat after Lestat physically attacked Claudia. We framed the torture of Louis in Episode 5 of Season 2 as Louis' learning not to test Armand's patience. (Again, the framing of good vs bad or proportionate is irrelevant, I'm questioning the framing of there being a lesson to be learned at all). The cast and the characters physically attack Louis to teach him a lesson.

This finale now marks the fourth and third, respectively.

And again, it is not about framing these abusive actions as right or wrong when, generally, Louis senselessly seems to be flogged with physical violence in pursuit of a “greater lesson” constantly. No other character has to learn their lesson; they simply ARE, and they can BE. Their evils are often tightly wound into their identities and flaunted as a matter of pride. To others, evil is a character trait that makes them interesting; to Louis, it's something he has to crawl out of or die trying. Even when his evils are significantly less or more sympathetic than the larger cast. (Again, no issue with this being part of Louis' self-flagellation, but the writers and showrunners themselves seem to uncritically target him with this framing IN REALITY without making this clear)

It’s a pattern FROM THE WRITERS (not the characters) for Louis to be physically abused in the pursuit of altering his thinking or treatment of others. This appears uncritically in this text, which is shockingly absent in the source material of the books.

Louis’ pain is intrinsically linked in the narrative to “Learning a lesson”, “humbling”, and apologizing. While others in the narrative, despite their wrongdoings, do not have their victimization framed as such. Again, my issue isn't with the presence of the violence, but rather its framing as Karmic justice while other vampires of all shades of morality do not seem to be punished narratively by the other characters. Their victimhood is seen as extraneous to their morality.

Abuse towards Armand and Lestat in their pasts is framed as something that cannot be justified. Rightfully so. The narrative, in fact, spends several episodes setting this up for Gabriella’s incestuous abuse. That is not to say it's always handled kindly and with sensitivity; I have many issues with how they handled the gratuitous on-screen incest of Gabistat and the way characters seem to throw Armand's abuse in his face.

However, there's this addiction to treating Louis' abuse as a simple cause and effect in interviews that is incredibly anti-victim and makes the gratuitous violence faced by Louis read as carceral. The same way one would justify beating their own children. In fact, it's a common Jim Crow-era trope. The insistence in both fiction and reality that a Black person must be threatened or punished with physical violence like a slave or an animal to learn their lesson. It's the same reasoning used to justify overpolicing, the same reasoning used to justify families beating black children. The idea that physical violence can flip a switch in one's brain to somehow see reason.

It is particularly a Black man’s pain that is framed in this manner. That Louis could do something different to avoid being beaten, kidnapped, or threatened with murder. The double standards become very clear. And not a single character has afforded him the luxury or comfort that the physical violence inflicted on him isn't warranted. The closest we got was Lestat's retelling of the drop scene in the Trial, where he admits it was a disproportionate act of violence for which he takes grave responsibility. (Again, this season tries to undercut it with the Akasha plotline, and it brings the carousel of what I'm writing here back around.)

And again, the writers are telling you to your face that there is a lesson to be learned here. And I have to ask, why hasn't anyone else been beaten to learn a lesson? And why hasn't a single character LEARNED a lesson other than Louis and Claudia?

And again, I love Louis whump; it is not the content. It’s the narrative framing and retreading of physical abuse that staggeringly resembles racialized violence that the narrative fails to address (or intentionally acts oblivious to). For example, the lack of actual content this season about the Trial and Lestat's canonical level of involvement. It’s jarring how often it laughs at or skims over the previously central instances of domestic violence and betrayal this season. We are not expected to care about the trial, the drop, the death of Claudia, or the implications of Armand truly playing mind games with Louis since prior to the interview. Those things are glossed over because the narrative is trying to tell you that, from S3 onward, we should no longer see these events as important. Because Louis "learned his lesson". And I do not feel like the same people who wrote the first two seasons are here with us now. Either because they got anti-victim brain worms or because they have left the team along the line.

I simply cannot believe in good faith that the same people who said, and I quote, "But I want to be careful to say that Louis will never be not believable as a victim," would turn around and write this finale and walk into the After Dark with a smile on their faces and genuine light in their souls. Especially not when you turn around and pretend like this was about Louis "learning" a lesson.

And I hate the fact that the toxicity of the Maitre/Arun dynamic is now overshadowed by the narrative trying to retroactively use it to torture a Black character physically for the fifth time in fewer than 25 episodes. Never wanting to discuss your own partner's trauma in depth because you feel guilty about your own past wrongdoings is such an addictive substance. In fact, they both do this to each other constantly to endure in this relationship. Armand with Claudia's death and Louis with his past in pimping. They are forcing themselves to be together and yet alone for 77 years, unwilling to actually uncover their trauma until Daniel. They sit and stew in that resentment, while Armand has to suffer in silence about his own abuse, forced to be needled with it again and again by people he cares about when it's convenient. And yet the show had to sandwich that between a double standard of violence inflicted on him and Regina for the fifth time in the series.

Having the two of them actually grapple with that would’ve been so interesting if they hadn’t had to do the whole "he must break him to learn," thing. Louis is not an animal that needs to be trained, and I hate the fact that the show's finale and After Dark want to pretend like he is.

Imperfect victims do not need to learn a lesson from their abuse, and the idea that abuse can be karmic justice or a lesson for ANYTHING is already blowing my mind in many ways.