things that are strange

the PROBLEM is that this show used to never shy away from queer intimacy. the FIRST EPISODE had one of the best sex scenes i’ve ever watched in a tv show. louis and lestat kissed all the time, they hugged and cuddled, etc. then season two, louis and armand of course, but also lestat and armand! and louis and dreamstat! narratively there was no real reason to show them making out and drinking from each other (more on that later). but they do! because this is the gay vampire show with gay vampires!

and now, what do we get from s3?

1. transphobic joke at the expense of a nonbinary vampire, they get misgendered, then they die.

2. CANON transmasc/gnc character in the books gabi is turned into a hyper femme dommy mommy character. so not only did they erase her identity from the books, but they decided to swing SO HARD in the other direction. it feels like they only made gabi SO feminine bc they really wanted to go with the incest plotline and god forbid they show lestat making out with anyone who’s not overtly feminine.

3. SO MANY sex scenes. with women. they age up baby jenks, seemingly just so she can fuck lestat. weird. then lestat kisses his mom in like every other episode, and they get PLENTY of sex scenes. NOT ONLY THAT, but she drinks from him in ep2 as well. so we get literal and metaphorical vampire sex. AND GABI ALSO FUCKS JARDA? we SEE. ON SCREEN. GABI FUCKING JARDA. it could have gotten the point across to just hear them moaning and screaming from the other room. it just feels egregious to include that but not any queer intimacy on screen at all.

4. all of the hype around dm for this season. ebogo saying he needed an intimacy coordinator, assad and eric alluding to sucking and fucking since s2 ended!! (for the record i’m not blaming either of them for the lack of onscreen queer intimacy we got this season. i’m just saying their comments led to an expectation that was not fulfilled)

5. a fetishized, gross, egregious lesbian makeout from regina and fake madeline, for louis’ benefit. i have a couple questions about this because like there’s no way louis ASKED them to do that right? he’d get nothing from watching his daughtersister make out with her girlfriend. and yes i UNDERSTAND THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE. but that means we’re allowed to have a deliberately uncomfortable lesbian kiss on screen but nothing else? doesn’t seem much better.

and what DONT we get from s3??

ANY QUEER INTIMACY THAT MATTERS.

sure, maybe lestat and louis aren’t at the point in modern day where they want to be physically intimate. we get the pinky touch and basically nothing else. fine. i personally think that’s a stupid justification for blatant queerphobia but fine.

lestat and nicki DONT EVEN KISS in the flashbacks of them in paris. i thought they were in love?? not enough for even a single kiss between them? louis was making out with dream!stat in s2 and lestat can’t kiss nicki even once?? if ANYONE deserved a kiss this season it was nicki and lestat. that even could have been a great narrative device! to show the difference between lestat’s intimacy with nicki juxtaposed with his scenes with gabi. but no. fine.

and in modern day as well, lestat is only allowed to be shown having casual sex with random women, or his mother. it just seems like a glaring omission from mister lestat “non-discriminating” di lioncourt. louis got to have on-screen casual sex with jonah in s1! this show has NEVER been scared of queer intimacy before, “casual” or not.

these omissions are GLARING. this problem is NOT just people missing hot men kissing on screen, and if you think that’s what literally anyone is arguing, you are being intentionally dense. this is a real problem with the season.

Assad’s casting should be the biggest strength of this adaptation because the colonial nature of Lestat, Gabrielle and Marius’ treatment of him and the kind of language they use to refer to him could be highlighted and critiqued. All those slights against Armand from Lestat and Gabi across the season could’ve amounted to something.

But they chose to neglect this completely, relegate him to the background and only focus on the hyper-violent side of the character. I think the scene will be enough to connect with the most casual viewers a little because it’s spelt out for them what they’d supposed to feel, but the deeper context deserves examining.

And then you factor in show!Louis and how he’s also been treated this season, and it’s so much worse.

Both characters, in different ways, were used as punching bags this season which would be something if it had gone anywhere, but the big climax is Armand taking out anger that ought to be directed at Lestat on Louis?

Look, I do think this is the work of people who just switched Louis and Lestat’s roles and didn’t consider the consequences. Perhaps that’s being generous, but it’s better than the alternative. But it still is what it is. It still looks how it looks. Can’t blame the budget for this one. This beautiful, nuanced exchange between Louis and Armand which was a conversation that needed to be had is buried inside this scene, and it’s a shame because Assad and Jacob carried this episode.

If there was anything I was absolutely SURE of, and was excited for, it was that we'd get this quote from Lestat talking about how much he loved Armand and how, before he slept, he wanted to tell him but didn't.

And that’s how you beat fascism tbh they’re so uncreative and they’re so going to get too cocky (did our characters have to act like they didn’t know what was going on and talk in codes to avoid detection?) If the villain THINKS he won, he’s going to let his guard down.

He’s not much of an artist, he’s literally just like reusing their favorite media and games and music. Fascism literally just views art as propaganda and mass media production.

The only time we're shown the same aspect ratio as the VHS Special Edition is in this surveillance camera footage:

VHS Special Edition:

Even Jonathan's camera footage, which is also recorded on VHS, isn't this exact aspect ratio.