love will be the death of me

While the spirit's vitriol matches the show version, I'm struck by how much more sympathetic the entire presentation of the scene, and all that follows, is to Louis. He's surrounded by people who are devastated on his behalf and fear for his well-being (whereas the show version seems to frame the spirit's attack as a justified punishment for Louis's shortcomings). And of course, Merrick's vehement insistence that the spirit's words aren't true (along with her later admitting to using her powers to manipulate David and Louis) does not appear in the episode.

(For context the protag of Merrick is David Talbot, so the "I" is him)

The seance:

Merrick's comments on the spirit:

Louis's reaction:

Louis's suicide attempt + being brought back to life by Lestat, David, and Merrick:

Aftermath, Louis grateful to be alive

It's kind of crazy to consider how the show has chosen to adapt Louis's suicide attempt and the seance with this context.

In the book, Louis is fed all the worst things he thinks about himself in Claudia's voice (by what is heavily implied to be a malevolent spirit and not her ghost), attempts to take his own life because it's what he thinks Claudia wants, is brought back to life by people who love him and would have been grieved by his loss. Where IWTV is a novel about grief, Merrick is effectively a story about the journey out of grief. Louis faces the deepest darkest fears conjured by his grief, is driven into death because he believes them, and is revived by the love of those closest to him. He emerges from his ordeal physically healed, stronger than ever, with no more desire for to escape into nothingness, the oblivion of death. The story ends with Louis resolved to go on living alongside his loved ones.

In the show, Louis is driven to suicide by Armand in the midst of a drug and grief-fueled haze, is pulled back by Armand to be scolded by him and punished with a long, painful healing process. Then he is emotionally ravaged by the seance, with no one to suggest his darkest fears are untrue, and isn't given the time to fully process his feelings before he's beheaded. Instead of being supported and cared for through his struggles with grief, he is mocked and physically brutalized.

Over and over again in the show Louis is punished and shamed for his love and his grief (his community shames him for his 'pale lover', Lestat shames him for his love of Claudia, Claudia shames him for his love of Lestat, Louis is punished for loving Lestat enough to not burn him by having Lestat come back and participate in the trial, losing Claudia, and then punished by Lestat again for loving Claudia enough to want to hurt Lestat when Lestat lets him go with Armand without telling him the truth...even Paul's death could be seen as an inadvertent punishment for Louis loving him, and Louis's turning is inadvertently the result of his grief over Paul). The Regina plotline seems to exist to make a mockery of Louis's grief, framing him as pathetic and ridiculous and creepy. Then the seance shames Louis for grieving and attempting to avenge and honor the daughter he lost.

Like, Anne Rice was not a huge fan of Louis as a character past book one, but the stark difference between showLouis being half-dead, screaming in pain from his coffin as Armand slams the door on his pleading - and bookLouis dying with dignity, his corpse surrounded by grieving loved ones who are desperate to bring him back, but only if that's what he wants, because they value him so much they honor his wishes above their own desires......it seems like the show takes every opportunity to hurt Louis and never to give him any respite.

Before I read these passages, I was a fan of Louis killing David Talbot offscreen (bc I don't like the character in Body Thief or TVA, the books I've read with him in it), but now that feels like another cruel slight against Louis! They had Louis never get to know him, to casually murder a character whose book counterpart was terrified by the idea of Louis killing himself and tried to stop him, who loved him so much he put himself at bodily risk to help bring him back from the dead...

I don't rly mind them not doing the whole Merrick plotline, but bc her role as a character seems to have been reduced to only her facilitating the seance, that's another character whose book counterpart loves Louis and doesn't get to give him that love in the show.

In the books, Lestat WAKES HIMSELF UP FROM A COMA to go see Louis's corpse and ultimately save his life (only when he's convinced that it's what Louis would want, which feels significant given how little agency bookLestat gave Louis in his turning). He bathes and dresses Louis and insists on giving him more blood so he will be as strong as possible in his rebirth. ShowLestat wouldn't even get on a plane to San Francisco......

omg i was TRYING to wait until post-finale to vent all my feelings but aaahhhhh twist my arm

Honestly ever since ppl started vaguely teasing "anti-blackness in ep6" ive had a tightness in my chest. I was so nervous for weeks and weeks and really built it up in my head as this big horrible thing, so when I finally sat down and watched it...it kind of underwhelmed me at first? My immediate reaction was one of confusion...because nothing about the character we saw in ep6 resembled Claudia. At all. I was so bewildered it took me sitting with it a while to even feel upset about it.

Which could also be attributed to how ineffective the writing is this season, bc none of it moves me. The jokes don't make me laugh, the 'romantic' parts don't make me feel tender, the tragic parts don't make me feel sad...even the most vile/over the top cruelty barely makes me feel anything. I didn't even feel bad for Louis in this scene!!!! Bc none of it felt real (and also bc he barely seems to feel anything about it himself. they aren't even invested enough in their own flogging of Louis to show him suffering over it...Louis tried to kill himself when he heard Claudia's voice in 205...Louis and Claudia parted on far less hostile terms with a heartfelt goodbye in 106 and Louis wanted to kill himself then. Louis would be ashes rn if this shit was serious!!!) This is a show that used to be a GOTHIC HORROR MELODRAMA ROMANCE all genres that LIVE on heightened emotion!!!!! And this season is a cynical dry passionless husk......they've really bled all these characters of their human essence and rendered each and every one of them a cardboard cutout of themselves. It's the most insane waste of potential I've ever seen.

The thing about this episode, is that it convinced me that isn't an accident.

With all the constant in-text mocking of iwtv ("missing the psychodrama of Dubai?", Lestat laughing at Louis's turning speech, mocking Louis's romanticizing of Dreamstat, the constant calling Louis a liar and ripping apart the book full of his words without meaningfully calling out any specific part of his account...Lestat is not pissed off at Louis bc he made up a ticket pocket, like to this day we do not know what exactly in this book is the big lie he's mad about. and he's spent the whole season being mad.....meaning the point here is not to dispute or provide a contrasting POV, but only to ridicule and illegitimize) and the marketing push to court a new audience, it seems like their final push to distinguish tvl from the thorny, nuanced, deeply emotional, queer niche critical darling that it once was is to make this season of television a hit piece on its first two seasons. Every single choice seems like it was purposefully made in order to spite the original series and everyone who ever loved it for what it was (with a special personal vendetta against the person who was heart and soul of that series, Louis/Jacob).

Its only natural that this season's climax is to attempt to retroactively destroy the emotional core of s1-2, which is Louclaudia.

Louis's story is a story of grief. The common jabs people like to throw at Louis about him being whiny or passive or brooding or a sad sack or whatever - that's because his whole character is built around the concept of grief. Louis is the embodiment of a mother's grief over losing her child, the grief Anne Rice was consumed with when writing IWTV. He is grief personified.

(From The Vampire Companion)

The IWTV novel does not exist without Anne Rice's incredible love for and grief over losing her daughter, and Louis's story does not exist without his incredible love and grief over Claudia.

At first I thought they were honoring Louis's characterization by having his storyline continue to focus on his grief. I had my doubts about the Regina plotline (bc what else do they have to say now about Louis other than 'he grieves'? what does this plot add? isn't it just a retread of his journey in s1-2? if he immediately regresses, what was the significance of "I own the night"?), but the core of it is still Louis's love for Claudia, and Louis's grief wouldn't fade away overnight just because he grew as a person. I was actually pleased that in The Lestat Season, Louis was allowed to spend his time, not thinking about Lestat, but still focused on Claudia, even as Lestat spends all his time bitching Louis out (which is also kind of a 105 retread now that I think about it).

But what episode 6 revealed to me, was that the new addition they had for Louis's story was to undermine his grief. Louis was wrong to grieve, he was selfish to grieve. The person Louis exists to grieve not only hates him, but hates him for grieving her. In the hands of the writers of s3, Louis's love for Claudia is forged as a weapon against him, and his pain at her loss is an indictment of his character.

S3's Claudia is angry with him for grieving her. The first thing out of her mouth is "couldn't keep me on the wall". Claudia, who knew all too well (and according to s3, actively weaponized) Louis's incredible depth of love for her, is upset that the person who loved her so intensely mourns her....why? It doesn't make any sense for her to feel this way...of course Louis mourns her, and always will. Would she rather have vanished from the world without a trace, having left no one behind who loved her enough to care she existed? Would she rather have burned in a house fire when she was 14, died alone and unwanted as an unnamed casualty, the way Lestat said was her destiny?

It's not only nonsensical, it doesn't feel like the character. Claudia, who was so desperate to be loved and seen, to belong, to be "put first" by someone.....begrudges Louis for doing just that? Miss "picked another one over me/never about me" would rather Louis never say her name again??

I really can't even see this being as representative of Claudia in any way. So much of what they have her say in this scene goes directly against her character, and, despite all its overwrought viciousness, she doesn't even take Louis or Lestat to task for some of what we know she saw as their greatest offenses!!!!!!!!

Things Ghost Claudia Mentions:

-Louis grieving her. She, in essence, tells him NOT to grieve her, implies it insults her to grieve her, "burn her diaries, burn this dress". Like I said, this is not something Claudia would fucking say lmao even if she was speaking from a place of deep anger, she would not want to be erased, even if the dress on the wall is just a symbol to remind Louis that he fucked up, and that she suffered as a result, she would want to keep a record of the damage.

-Louis being 'back with Lestat' (which he isn't, really, romantically speaking. like they are at most back in a talking stage. so its pretty unclear what the scope of her knowledge is bc she knows about stuff like Lestat's "song on the radio" but not their most recent interactions? idk)

-She says she only didn't kill Louis so she could keep him around to do her bidding until she found someone better. I believe there is a book quote where Claudia says something along these lines and thats what they're pulling from (I couldn't find it though..), but in the books Claudia actually needs a companion to survive. She is in the body of a five year old and is emphasized as being very physically vulnerable; regardless of whether bookClaudia loved/hated Louis, there is a practical element to her choice to keep him around.

But in the show, Claudia is not physically 5 but 14 and a prodigious hunter who goes on killing sprees alone. She has no physical need for Louis that would justify this idea of her keeping him around despite "hating" him. Her need for companionship in the show is solely reduced to her emotional needs (and if she hated Louis, he would not fulfill that). You just can't take any of this shit seriously if you watched the first two seasons...Claudia was always returning to Louis, she was ensnared by the coven because she returned to Louis. Louis was dead weight in Eastern Europe, an active hindrance, hallucinating, depressed, why not leave him? He isn't any help to her in that period, which was years of them not getting along; she was the one that spoke the languages, she was the one keeping him fed, she pulls the revenant off of him. She doesn't need Louis to survive there, she wants him. She returns to him time again because she wants him. Meaning disintegrates without him...

(Obvs Lestat is included in her statement about missing them, but we only see her follow Louis...I really thought we would get at least one flashback of Claudia bonding with Lestat or even just missing him like this esp if they're gonna try to sell us on him being "her favorite" but no.....there wasn't even an attempt so i have no choice but to call bs)

-Louis "read the diary pages seven decades too late". I already discussed how Claudia was averse to anyone reading her diaries in this other post so i won't go over that again, but it is another inept writing choice that even when they want to vilify Louis here, they can't do it right. Claudia saying something like "it took too long" for Louis to read the pages eliminates the entire moral dilemma of Louis reading and presenting the pages without her consent...shouldn't Claudia be more upset because he violated her privacy in the first place? Nope...apparently he should have done it sooner...? Not to mention that Claudia took years to open up to Louis about Bruce, so this idea that she was waiting around on him to do something about it doesn't add up...if anything s1 Claudia seemed to scoff at the idea of him being able to avenge her with her "knight in vengeful black" comment. also no mention of Louis killing the coven in her name....which he did do immediately lol....like...

(also the fact they have Claudia chastise LOUIS for crying like the sa happened to him when they literally overlaid her words with Lestat's trauma crashout and textually made her sa about Lestat.................LMAO!! unserious)

-She says she fabricated the train scene (or at least exaggerated it) to get Louis to cooperate with killing Lestat. Obvs there is a whole heinous layer where the train scene was evoking the imagery of runaway slave captures and these white writers decided to have a black character lie about this specific kind of racialised trauma which is fucked beyond compare. BUT ALSO!!!!!!!!! IT JUST DOESNT MAKE SENSE WITH THE PLOT!!!!!!!!!!! Claudia DECIDES TO KILL LESTAT AT THE END OF 106 BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LET HER LEAVE.......why would she return with Lestat if she didn't feel sufficiently threatened? and why would she decide to kill Lestat if he did not force her to stay against her will??

I've seen it floated that this was all Claudia's master plan to get Louis to go with her (even though she hated him sooooo much.........right....) as though she had her whole tearful goodbye and then magically changed her mind moments later and decided to do her big one and concoct a scheme to eliminate Lestat and ensure Louis would be 'on her side' and leave with her. Maybe that's even what the 306 scene is supposed to lead us to believe...only there is no scene of Claudia telling Louis what happened on the train, or ever using that event to convince Louis to turn on Lestat. All their telepathic conversations we hear about Louis trying to dissuade her from killing Lestat, and its never once a point Claudia uses to her favor. Ever. We get "we have no more use for him. He causes us misery with no horizon. I can kill him. You will enjoy it" etc. This idea of "oh daddy Lou he was ever so mean to me do you know what he said he'd do!" is a brand new invention for this scene alone.

Also.................

Uhhhhhh........no Claudia.....it pretty famously did not???????????

"Worked good, didn't it?" 😏 LMAO! They made her stupid??

Also they still can't decide what Claudia was threatened with. We get "I won't defile your pocket, I'll turn your bones to dust" in 106, "Did I threaten Claudia with rape on a train?" in 301 and "He'd do worse than rape me" in 306.....so.......which is it..........

-The blood thing feels too obvious to even be worth pointing out?? But they've invented this weird blood supremacy thing for Claudia to devalue Louis and value her maker more (even though they do have the same blood bc they both have Lestat's blood....that's why they're like....siblings....). When Claudia hated the idea of Lestat's blood THROUGH LOUIS being used to create Madeleine (supposedly the only character Claudia gaf about...but she forgot the whole lead up to her turning which was her begging Armand to do it for this very reason....mkay)

-And then ok the whole slave thing. Yes Claudia used the word "slave" in s1. But the context is everything when it comes to black characters using this kind of loaded language. Claudia uses "slave" in s1 specifically to refer to their lack of agency as long as Lestat is around. Claudia uses that very loaded language privately to Louis telepathically in order to emphasize the dire nature of their (shared!) situation! And obvs that phrase has a special resonance for them as black ppl living under the thumb of a white tyrant, and references the racialized nature of Lestat's control and abuse of them! She's saying "he treats us like his slaves! this way of life is not acceptable! we have to act!" Claudia was never using that word as an insult against Louis!!!! She used slave ONLY EVER TO DESCRIBE THEM BOTH!!!

Funny how the context of that word from its first use in a season that had black writers has been completely warped into blatant white supremacist ideology in a season without black writers...a phrase exchanged privately to discuss the oppression shared by black characters in order to encourage rebellion in s1, has become an excuse for a racist tirade from one black character to another in front of a white character in s3...

Also making Claudia spout this anti-black nonsense shows they never paid attention to her character bc she was the one most explicitly calling out Lestat's tyrannical whiteness; besides "he's made us slaves" she makes a lot of comments in 107 that align Lestat with violent white supremacy (calling Bach, which Lestat likes, the music of the master race, "Massa's had so much pain in his life" explicitly calling out that she and Louis should not give a fuck about the pain of their oppressor, "well-dressed tyrants, where have I heard that before" when Lestat compliments Nazi tailoring basically calling Lestat one of them). Like as much as Louis would go back and forth with Lestat about racism, Louis doesn't rly ever call Lestat out as espousing white supremacist thinking as harshly as Claudia does.

(Tbh they kinda fucked up this aspect of her character in s2 with her...y'know...dating a Nazi sympathizer and never giving Madeleine anything more than a raised eyebrow about it, but she was never fucking antiblack...and she at least has that "Armand's skin is darker than yours" comment to show race (and the race of Louis's partners) is a thought in her mind...the more i reflect, the more i acknowledge issues with s2 Claudia but my word i never would have foreseen this....)

This slave stuff combined with Claudia misusing nappy (bc that among black ppl means unkempt hair, and Louis's hair was extremely kempt in the scene - but ofc if ur nonblack and racist nappy just means any black hair so), "bleak black life" sounding like some bullshit from The Help, Claudia speaking to Lestat and referring to Louis as "your black queen" which is not a phrase any one of the three of them would ever use LOL, and even just Claudia's repeated use of "bitch" which is also not a word we have heard Claudia use - it's one of the most aggressively straightforward black stereotypes ive seen in modern media. They took a complex, beautiful black character who was treated with so much love and care for 2 seasons and made her an Angry Black Woman.jpeg. I know they wanted to work in a "MHMMMMM" or "OH HELLLLL NAW" sooo bad. Like Claudia's whole vernacular is different!!! She did not talk like that!! It's like every racist fanfic in this fandom ever!!

Things Ghost Claudia DOES NOT MENTION:

-ANY of the abuse suffered by her or Louis!!!!! In Claudia's last moments on Earth she was fighting through the pain of her slit ankles to cuss out Lestat for dropping Louis like an egg. She offered herself to be punished in Louis's place in 105, and then spent painstaking months nursing him back to health after he was dropped. One of the biggest rifts in her relationship with Louis was when Louis would not leave Lestat despite his abuse of them. Not a single mention of this from the ghost. Even if they wanted to focus on battering Louis in this scene, they didn't even have her bring up Louis choking her in 107, physically stopping her from burning Lestat's body! None of the physical violence that tore apart that household even gets a passing reference.

-Louis ruining Claudia's plan to kill Lestat. Louis's big misstep with Claudia was, in her mind, "choosing Lestat over her". Louis felt unable to leave Lestat in 106. Louis slit his throat, but wouldn't burn him, so they couldn't move on post-NOLA, and lived in fear of his return. She was calling him "dead weight" in Eastern Europe. He carried Lestat, "slowed them down". This was the principle grudge against Louis Claudia carried with her after s1, and it also is not mentioned.

-HER MAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The biggest fucking thing about this character in the books and show is that she forced into a child body for eternity without her consent!!!!!!!!!! It's the original sin of the unholy family, the first wedge to ever be driven between them, a point of contention between Louis and Lestat, Louis and Armand, Claudia and Louis, Claudia and Lestat, THE COVEN who kills her; it's the choice Lestat is haunted by in Body Thief! "Should she have been made or was she a mistake?" "Can she endure, or is she doomed by the circumstances of her birth?" "I WAS STILL BREATHING, WHY DIDNT YOU TAKE ME TO A HOSPITAL! I COULD HAVE LIVED A NORMAL LIFE SWEEPING FLOORS NURSING BABIES!!! WHO AM I GONNA LOVE, WHO WOULD WANT ME!!!!!" Even as late as the trial, Claudia is upset hearing about the extent of Louis's involvement in her turning. SHES IN ETERNAL VAMPIRE HELL BECAUSE SHE WAS MADE!!!!! BY THESE TWO MEN!!!!!!!!!!!! if there was ANYTHING the real Claudia would have screamed at them about it would be this!!!!!! AND HER GHOST DOESNT BREATHE A WORD ABOUT IT!!!!!!! It's so fucking egregious, you have to wonder if any of these writers watched the show

-The Regina stuff????????? If Claudia knows about Lestat's music career, surely she would have witnessed what Louis's been doing too, right? That's not something she would have some shit to say about?? If its the roast of Louis like how is that not her opener. "Yes its really me and not that broke bitch you paid to be my stand in". The Regina plotline truly had no bearing on anything ig

-Charlie???? This show hates black ppl now so I guess they couldn't have Claudia mourn a black boy (only her white gf they fetishized in the previous ep). but they literally showed a flashback to Lestat forcing Claudia to watch Charlie burn THIS SEASON (reshot with Delainey) and drew a parallel to Lestat watching Nicki burn. so....why make that parallel and not have that incident be important to Claudia? its almost like they dgaf

Literally everything about this scene does both Claudia and Louis a disservice. Make no mistake, it may seem like Louis is the target here, but BOTH their characters are being mutilated by this season. This person that we see in this scene is in no way Claudia. s1-2 are contingent upon having empathy for these black characters and being invested in the incredible, complicated, heart-wrenching, deeply loving bond they share. The story is built around Louis's grief over Claudia and therefore Louclaudia is the emotional backbone of the original iwtv series. Tvl has shown itself to be deeply committed to undermining, ridiculing, and eviscerating the notion of the Louclaudia bond and their respective integrity as characters.

It sincerely feels like this writers room has a vendetta against the original series and Louis as its protag by extension, and their hate for Louis so great they can't fathom anyone loving him. and Claudia loved Louis deeply despite all the pain and turmoil of their relationship, and they don't know how to write that, so they're dismantling that bond any way they can. It's disgusting and horrific but also kinda fucking boring.....this show was SO revolutionary bc it was a gothic genre show that took black ppl's experiences and pain seriously and centered them instead of sidelining them and handled them with an empathy that is so rarely afforded to us....and its been mangled into this ghoulish hateful conservative slop.

and they want to do a story with a black female villain next season????? fucking lol........like you just have to laugh.......

AWWWWW thank u thats so sweet!! 🥺😊 what a nice 💓💘💗💘💘💘💝💗💘

I thought it was uhhhhhh bad 🙂‍↕️ but less from a character perspective and more as a writing choice. It's a slightly odd decision for Louis, but I can find a way to rationalize it as being in-character for him...the way that the writers have chosen to utilize this diary entry narratively is what infuriates me. I wanted so badly to hold out hope (and I'm always saying this, but i would LOVE nothing more than for the rest of the season to drastically reorient my feelings on this!!), but I think the way they chose to go about this plotline is incredibly revealing of how little regard they've ever had for Claudia's suffering (or Louis's for that matter).

(this gets kinda rambly but here's some stuff about Louis's relationship to the diaries)

Claudia's diaries are introduced by Louis into the interview to provide an 'alternative perspective' on the story of his life. I think there are two big reasons for this:

Louis doesn't trust himself to understand/tell his story on his own. Louis is doing the interview to find 'truth and reconciliation', some greater understanding about his experiences, but he isn't sitting down and writing a memoir the way Daniel did, or recording a series of monologues like Lestat did with his "Failures". Unlike Daniel/Lestat, who are the sole arbiters of how their story is told, Louis's chronicle of his own life is a dialogue comprised of multiple voices and perspectives. Louis does not see himself as the ultimate authority over his own story. He routinely second-guesses himself, admits to his own misrememberings throughout the interview, and frequently cedes the power to others to define his narrative: he invites Daniel to assist him (a bright young reporter who has already undergone his own 'odyssey'), in s2 Armand joins the interview, in 207 Louis is deferring to "Lestat's version" of events, and obvs most notably includes Claudia's perspective in the form of her diaries. Louis is willing to consider others' perspectives even when they conflict with his, bc his interview is not about ego, but understanding - and he sees Claudia as particularly integral to that understanding bc he values Claudia's perspective above his own. Claudia was his light, a spark in the dark - when Louis feels muddled, he looks to her for clarity.

Claudia is very intelligent and perceptive, but she's also a person, who is not omnipotent or infallible, and who, like Louis, has been inundated with trauma her entire life (and trauma is the root of Louis's memory issues/faulty recall and part of why he doesn't trust his own mind). There isn't any real reason for him to view Claudia's account as indisputable or unbiased, but he does - he trusts her more than he trusts himself. It's why it shakes Louis to his core to realize something in Claudia's diary wasn't true (that one single awful thing he believed in, Claudia's inability to dream, wasn't real, and the reality was less painful) because he had this almost biblical reverence for her words.

Claudia throughout the show has been used as a kind of illuminating light/deliverer of hard truths for Louis (and I expect that to continue with ghost Claudia if we ever get to see her.......................................amc its been four episodes come onnnnnnnn), so it makes sense for Louis to see her diaries as essential for making sense of his story (which is also so much about her and his grief over her loss).

2. Louis's identity is so entwined with Claudia that he cannot tell his story without her. Louis was dependent upon Claudia to define him, and he couldn't really conceive of himself outside of her. I had hoped that his 'I own the night' era would entail some level of growth in that respect, but it seems like this may still be true as of s3. Naturally, Louis feels the need to cling to Claudia/her diaries as a reference point for his own sense of self.

Louis's story begins when he meets Lestat (Claudia's maker) and his story ends with Claudia's death. The 80-odd years after don't really matter, except for one time in San Francisco when he thought he heard Claudia's voice calling him into the sun. Louis ceases to exist when Claudia dies, and becomes an embodiment of the Rage and Madness her death sparked in him; after he's gotten his 'revenge' his Rage and Madness fade and he's left with nothing.

Stuff like this helped me contextualize Louis reading Claudia's diary pages. Maybe Louis reading the pages and recounting them with Daniel was the closest he felt to Claudia since her death. Maybe for a moment when Louis was reading her words in front of the man they were written about, he felt some semblance of the Rage and Madness he experienced on her behalf. Maybe he tapped into something that made him feel her presence. Even if Louis didn't get any real satisfaction from more revenge, maybe in the act there was a twisted kind of closeness he felt with her, even if it was fleeting.

What spoils that for me is the way her pages were presented.

Because s3 isn't about Louis anymore. It's Lestat's story. And as I mentioned, Lestat's story is very pointedly not a chorus of perspectives the way Louis's is. It's literally just Lestat sitting somewhere monologuing.

(its one of many writing choices that baffles me; they took something so multi-faceted, with built-in nuance and complexity by virtue of its contrasting voices, and flattened it into one voice...its like working backwards...the show should evolve and become MORE complex as it goes on, not the other way around?? When they started off with something so dynamic, Lestat's telling just feels overly simplistic and stunted by comparison...just let it be first-person limited if ur so insistent on a more singular perspective....since they wanna go for a disorienting tone anyway, just slip into and out of the flashbacks/non-Lestat scenes as needed, without beating us over the head with the narration...what is this framing deviceeeeee. but i digress...)

Everything we are seeing past the auction scene is presented as the story Lestat tells on his "Failures" recordings; it's Lestat's voice narrating the events we see play out to some undisclosed listener* who acquired his records.

This framing device means that everything we see this season is something Lestat is choosing to tell us about, either explicitly or implicitly (bc there is some occasional discrepancy between how Lestat verbally presents events and how we watch them play out, notably with regard to Gabrielle, but i think u can understand this as reading between the lines of what he's saying in his recordings, rather than the viewer having some omniscient access to events; bc the narration is very set on having you understand that this is LESTAT describing events, even when it doesn't make sense)

So, in the context of the show, it is Lestat who is choosing to share the graphic details of Claudia's assault with his audience. Lestat, who abused Claudia, whom Claudia sought to kill to free herself and Louis, who learned about the assault secondhand by listening to her rapist 'think of her often', because Claudia never felt comfortable sharing that information with Lestat. Lestat is now sharing those details Claudia never wanted him to be privy to, spelling them out in gory detail for the highest bidder at an auction.

And in the context of the episode, Lestat is sharing this information in lieu of describing the details of his own sexual assault. Bc the show is flipping rapidly between Lestat remembering his own assault and the scene where Louis reads Claudia's diary pages, there is no album break between the two scenes (the guy going "Album 25 Side B" or whatever to signify different scenes are being recounted on separate records), which means Lestat is conflating them in his retelling, using Claudia's story to support his own. Lestat will get on stage and sing a cutesy song about Magnus and make flippant remarks in front of Daniel, but he's not sharing those gory details about his own experience. He co-opts Claudia's words instead. Because Lestat has the ultimate authority over his own story, bc he is the season's sole narrator, HE gets to decide what details to share and what to gloss over - unlike Claudia, whom he strips of that agency.

I don't even know what's intentional in this show anymore, but there is a throughline of Lestat being active in/flippant about violating Claudia's privacy from s1; and Claudia being upset about her diaries being shared without her consent.

And it feels like a deliberate contrast that Lestat is the one to share these diary entries with the world when Louis was so hell-bent on keeping them out of the public record, ripping them out and hiding them from Daniel. I won't say Louis is without fault here, bc he does share Claudia's diaries in the first place (albeit in an interview he attempts to delete), but I think its speaks to Louis/Lestat's different attitudes towards Claudia that Louis understood how hard it was for her to share that event and sought to omit it to avoid exploiting her, and Lestat does the complete opposite.

(also this is random but idk if I've ever seen anyone point out books as a yonic symbol - the imagery of Claudia's diaries being cut and ripped apart, her boundaries transgressed, Lestat reaching into this pink box to take her privacy from her, and the entry he reads is explicitly about sex....her sa entries being torn and bloodstained...it's like very on the nose but also all these men violating her over and over for eternity.........where is Akasha actually. and then her willingness to share her diary with Madeleine is an intimacy she chose...remember when the show did interesting things. I guess in that lens Louis burning the pages is like putting them to rest, deciding not to let her be violated/exploited anymore? but then the content makes it into the show....idk. idk!!!!!!!!)

(tw sa more graphically sorry but //////// its a kind of minor thing but I think it's worth noting, when we see the flashes of Lestat's actual assault...he and Magnus are both fully clothed. Like all the sexual violence is implied with the visuals, how its cut and Magnus pressing him down and whatnot, but it isn't terribly explicit in terms of whats on screen. I'm not saying it isn't effective as is, but the most explicit thing about that sequence is the words from Claudia's diary - her story is literally doing the heavy lifting for Lestat's. I almost wonder if they couldn't be super graphic onscreen so they felt they needed that entry to be read aloud to pack more of an emotional punch? Idk its wholly unneeded imo and pretty shit in terms of respectful sa portrayals but I'm trying to parse the logic)

In the After Dark for this episode, Jacob Anderson expressed hesitation about the storyline for fear of it falling into classic exploitative rape-revenge tropes, and sadly his fears were valid - what we got is a textbook example of a story making a woman's assault about a man - two men, in this instance. Claudia's body is reduced to a vehicle for Lestat's pain and Louis's grief. Rolin commented in the same After Dark that Lestat's assault storyline was what they had in mind when they wrote Claudia's assault into the show in s1; her pain was always going to be in service of Lestat's.

The show violated Claudia in 105 to benefit Lestat's storyline later, and in presenting her diary's gruesome details for the audience's consumption against her wishes, Lestat and the show are violating her a second time.

They could have done both storylines without this. The show has already employed this idea of "some things are too precious to be shared in the dialogue" with us not hearing Lestat's full proposal in the church in 101, us not hearing what Claudia and Madeleine say to each other in 207, and Loustat's infamous unheard words in 208. The audience gets that like. rape is bad; its not like the words themselves were needed for comprehension. We could have had Lestat reliving his memories without narration alongside the Bruce scene and had a fade out on Louis's dialogue, or Lestat could have just described it himself, or the Magnus hallucination could have given his warped description of things (or, what i thought we would get, they could have intercut Lestat's assault with the Magnus song/a performance of the song to hammer home that stark dissonance between Lestat's lyrics and the event itself). Like these are creative professionals they could have done this in a million ways and they selected the bluntest possible instrument and it was artless and it was cheap and it was exploitative and it was fucking unnecessary.

(also we literally already had Claudia speaking about her assault on her own terms, in her own voice in 203, in a scene where she is sharing that info freely with Louis bc she wanted him to know. Lestat using words she never wanted to say to him to illustrate his own pain is just something fucking else - and the writers choosing to tortuously squeeze further detail out of Claudia's assault for a THIRD scene in three seasons is.......i don't have words)

The thing that snags my brain a bit is that Louis burns the pages at the end of the scene. I could totally buy Louis, with his connection to Claudia's diary, and the way he clearly struggled with processing Claudia's assault, wanting to give voice to her pain one last time before incinerating the perpetrator and the account itself.

But we have to remember that this is Lestat's narration within the framing device. So how does Lestat know line for line what is on those pages? Either Louis recounts the whole thing to Lestat in excruciating detail (which I doubt, though I would believe he remembers it all word for word), or this isn't actually a word-perfect recounting of her pages, and it is Lestat using what he gleaned from Bruce's thoughts about Claudia's assault to surmise what the diary entry said (since Lestat was open about making up some details of the scenes he wasn't in - "Did it happen in a bar with a view? I say it did" - any of the scenes without him could be read as pure conjecture if u wanted to) - OR what I think would be most interesting (but also very poorly telegraphed), if the details are not details of Claudia's assault at all, but Lestat's own explicit experience of his sa but presented in the shape of Claudia's diary entry...it would still piss me off but it would at least be some semblance of Lestat choosing to be vulnerable in his story within the safety of a facade, instead of Lestat just outright refusing to narrate any of his own assault and only exploiting Claudia's. Atp I don't rly think the show gives enough of a fuck to be that layered but idk u can interpret it a lot of different ways...

On a slightly different note, another thing that bothered me about equating Lestat's/Claudia's assaults is that it frames Louis as this outsider to the experience of sexual violence; these two ppl have a commonality that Louis is placed outside of, unable to relate (Rolin explicitly said as much in the After Dark). This is wild to me bc BOTH s1-2 detail Louis's abusive relationships where extremely dubious sex is happening......I know the show dgaf about Louis anymore lol but like...how consensual is the sex after Lestat has broken all the bones in his body bc "a thousand nights of sulking and the first sight of her you are gonna up and leave me" and the sulking in question was not having sex with Lestat. And Louis is dissociating during the sex with Lestat. And Claudia is projecting Bruce into Louis's mind and saying "They're not all like him, or him" talking about Bruce, and Lestat as Louis's Bruce. And calling their maker "Bruce" during s2. it felt like they were drawing a pretty straightforward parallel there to make a statement about sexual dynamics in abusive relationships but that was an oopsie i guess....and then Loumand's "you can have sex with me if you don't kill me" and the bargaining for Claudia's safety as pillow talk afterwards. There are really overt coercive elements there...and coerced consent is not consent which means it was like.... dubcon at best and nonconsensual at worst...

Idk it just displays a real disinterest in Louis as a character and everything they've put him through to do this kind of revisionist history around his experiences. It's actually wild how 1-to-1 the Anne Rice/Rolin Jones trajectory has been, despite s1-2 seeming to be interested in correcting so many of her wrongs wrt racism and abuse, from creating something poignant with Louis only to perform the most merciless character assassination of him to boost up Lestat...it's starting to feel like s1-2 were sincerely good on accident and all the stuff we thought was nuance was incidental. bc what!! I just feel like that scene could have been an opportunity to have Louis reflect on his own experiences alongside Claudia's (bc Claudia had already drawn that parallel for him in s1) which would be a more nuanced twist on the boring played-out "Father gets revenge for daughter's rape" thing but no, they just did the trope beat for beat and smothered it in Lestat. It makes BOTH Louis's and Claudia's pain ancillary to Lestat's. boooooooooooo

Traumatizing Claudia in s1 just so they can use her words to narrate her abuser's assault in s3