unreliable narrator

i really am quite fond of bookstat………

there are certainly bigger fish to fry with the sheer amounts of racism, misogyny, & transphobia running rampant this season but as someone who waited two years to see his favorite book character be adapted for the first time in a way that matters i’m soooo disappointed with nicki. for a character that we ONLY truly know through lestat’s limited perception of him we lose so much of nicki’s character in these flashbacks. one of the things that initially surprised me while reading tvl for the first time was how thoughtfully nicki was written. you assume he will simply be a dead wife montage, but instead you get such a rich exploration of his relationship to class & religion, his understanding of goodness & this inner struggle he has with it. all of which are completely lost in his shows portrayal. i think by far the worst change they made was armand’s role in his death, though. by painting it as a mercy killing it creates a very strange narrative about how the mentally ill are perceived. it's no secret that nicki is considered to be a failed fledgling Because of his mental illness. this has always been a theme since the books but the defining moment of his death is that he gets to choose it for himself after having to endure vampirism & armand’s punishments for a decade. rather than be "so far gone" that he needs to be pushed into the fire against his will. the calm choice of death vs the murder of a babbling mad man. in general i think so much of this season suffers from how Lestat Feels at the expense of the characters around him. they become less like people and more like cardboard cutouts meant to serve as a backdrop in the lestat show. it’s just sooo grim. it’s so grim.