okie dokie

In the books he doesn't pretend he's a human playing a vampire, he says he's a vampire and spills vampire secrets in his songs. Most people just believe he's a human cosplaying a vampire from a somewhat popular book.

He seeks out Marius for years, leaving various messages for him before Nicki's death and Gabriella's abandonment lead him to going underground. Marius doesn't dig him up because Akasha told him to.

And in the books Lestat goes to play his violin for Those Who Must Be Kept behind Marius' back, he knows it's a bad idea but does it anyway, he can't help himself. In the show Marius shoves the violin in his hands and tells him to play and Lestat says "I don't know how".

He does the concert because he wants to and because he wants the vampires to redirect their anger from Louis to him. In the show he's doing it for Gabriella. Even the hunting of the wolves in the show is pushed by Gabriella.

Like just spitballing here:

Book Armand cuts off Nicki's hands to keep him in line, they changed that to Nicki self injuring bc Armand getting to be his violent and controlling self wouldn't fit with the uwu sadboi "friendless bottom twink sociopath" they wanted him to be in the show (they also took out Armand mutilating and experimenting on Claudia and Madeline, which I at first understood overlooking since iirc it was mentioned as a throwaway detail in TVA and not in IWTV itself but now it moreso looks like they're trying to make Armand look more uwu and helpless by taking away his more monstrous choices)

Book Marius chose to take care of TWMBK for 2000 years and very clearly found meaning and value in the duty, in the show he's reluctantly forced into the job and pushes it off onto Lestat after just ~20 years. Also like you said OP, he seeks out and exhumes Lestat by his own volition, not bc anyone told him to do so

Book Akasha wakes up when she does for her and Amel's own reasons, in the show it's bc Lestat's a bumbling idiot who feeds her blood (also idk where they got the TWMBK living on ashes thing but it's weird and I can't say I'm a fan lmao)

Book Nicki experienced depression his entire life and it was one of his core personality traits and the explanation for a lot of his choices (including moving to Paris with Lestat in the first place), in the show it's framed as 100% a consequence of vampirism driving him mad (and yes there is a parallel there in the book with vampirism making him first catatonic then extremely manic, but that was vampirism exacerbating his existing mental health issues rather than being the sole cause of them)

Hell even going back to the IWTV show, they took away Claudia's big moment of killing Lestat, one of the only major acts of agency she ever got to have in her short life, and gave it to Louis

Many of those movies/shows are very good and I like them but the whole time I'm feeling like it's tragic in a way. The thought of a creature giving up its otherness to assimilate into humanity is really fuckin sad to me. Or a human getting the chance to be something else freaking out and rejecting it.

In the books, all the abuse and power play is on a psychological level, which doesn’t make it better, it makes it more complex.

The relationship between Gabi and Lestat in the book is infinitely more complex and interesting than in the show (just like Gabrielle’s personality as a whole). I get they’re making an adaptation and thus changing stuff, but they’ve completely erased what made her interesting.

I think if they focused on Lestat’s abandonment issues and lack of love and self love from the book would’ve been enough, but no, they decided to add incest and sex to just make it eeeeeveeeeen woooooorse, as if the first issues weren’t enough (they are).

It is really not all that hard to get away with murder. A basic amount of foresight and prep will get rid of enough evidence that the police either won't find the killer or will be unable to make the charge stick.

Despite this, most murders do get solved, because someone who decides that murder is the solution to their problems is probably not the kind of person to be levelheaded and careful enough to avoid getting caught.

I think something very similar is true of sockpuppet accounts. It's not that hard to make a convincing sockpuppet. However, people almost always make sockpuppets as a way of defending their egos, of making it look like they have more support than they actually do. And this passionate defense of someone the sockpuppet ostensibly doesn't know and has no reason to care about is a dead giveaway. So if you want to validate a sockpuppet you have to lose an argument to it. You have to get owned. Once it makes you look like an idiot, basically no one will ever suspect it again.

WHY is the fucking AIR out here TOUCHING ME