i mean that song also mocked armand's hair (sure let's mock the curly hair of a poc it's all good) and said he should get his face did ie he should get plastic surgery because he's so ugly
it was laughably childish. we're rightfully pissed off about what they've done to louis, claudia, armand and gabrielle but what did they do to LESTAT? in his own season??
I'm not sure if I understand what you're talking about. I think it's the characterization?
Well, any way, it's related to the songs. I mean, there's something to them, they seem so shallow to me? Most of them anyways. Or maybe I just had very high expectations of them because I really love Daniel Hart's music.
And Daniel (the vampire lol) points it out, asking if Long Face is about sucking cock. But it's not just that. The songs are disrespectful both to the characters they're talking about and to Lestat, whose love for music makes him come alive, only to come up with the most point-blank lyrics and the shallowest perspectives of the topics he's singing about possible. Lestat, who recorded all the instruments himself in his song for Louis because the musicians weren't doing it right, and they don't utilize half of Hart's composition skills to make The Vampire Lestat's music?
BUT! They fix that. They made it a point in the episode with Regina that facing his grief head-on allows him to change the direction of his art into something more genuine, starting with his ballad about Claudia and his decision to remake the entire album. It's the soul he was looking for in the hundreds of takes he made the band record and couldn't find. He is finally making the art he is meant to. And the song he serenades Louis with later on? Yeah, that's Lestat's music.
And this happens time and time again; Lestat makes too many sex jokes? it's because he's processing trauma; Lestat makes fun of Daniel's apparent calling out of his anxious attachment, and we see him crying about Gabrielle's abandonment like one episode after. This is alright. Lestat is the one that suffers less from the writer's room biases.
Lestat is a very cruel person. He deserves empathy, and love, and to be understood. But he is very cruel, and he's a hot mess. All the characters here are. The problem is not his childishness, or that we see him crouching in front of a toilet throwing up, or having a panic attack on screen; that's kinda the whole point of the season, to redeem him and show his humanity behind the showmanship and the vampiric monstrosity he hides behind.
They could have picked a better vocabulary for him. They could have rephrased a lot of things to put artistry into the parts of the show that are lacking it while still maintaining the cool messy rockstar vibe. The way I see it, Lestat is too prideful to talk with Gen Z internet slang. You can't tell me that room full of white writers pulled the phrase "serving cunt" from AAVE or queer slang, nor that it served the scene in any way at all.
"But those are style choices." Fine. Lazy, but fine.
I'm more disappointed in the way everyone else's story lines feel so rushed in favor of making people feel empathy for Lestat. It is his season, based on his book (and we all know how Anne's love for Les basically sidelined all of the vampire chronicles).
But then why make up a whole storyline for Claudia if in the end you're just going to abandon all her character themes to make her tell Louis that he's a slave after everything he's done to get his power and freedom? That's not a style choice anymore, that's you delving into a social and historical issue and using it as an insult for Louis, a character that revolves all around it, coming from Claudia, a character whose arc doesn't really touch it.
It's the one singular instance where she's supposed to be able to speak without the veil of someone else's view of her. And not only is it horribly worded, they move on from it like two minutes after! Her main conflict is her loneliness, familial problems, generational trauma (all things Lestat actively deals with during this season), and they give her resolution of it the "well, that's happened" treatment.
Lestat gets a whole season to process his shit, Claudia gets like ten minutes to speak up about it, and they waste them.
And I know we're seeing things from Lestat's perspective, so certain people are bound to get flattened out. He doesn't care much for Daniel, so Daniel's gonna be reduced to the annoying journalist who aired his incestuous abuse problems to the world. Then save the fucking Devil's Minion storyline for next season, when we can have a different perspective and Daniel and Armand can go back to being whole characters again!
What about Gabrielle? The focus is her abuse of Lestat. Okay. But they make a point of how much he loves her, and they make a point of how he admires her, is almost fascinated by her. We don't see where that comes from. She's the horny character, and then she's the cunning character planning towards The Great Conversion. And of course, she is Lestat's abuser. Who is she though? The closest we get to seeing her is the scene by the beach, and that gets turned into "mommy abandoned me" so quickly as well.
Because in the end, it all revolves around the writers trying to humanize Lestat. But they end up not just humanizing him, but putting him above all the other characters too. If they have to rush the pacing of the secondary storylines to make us sympathize with Lestat, there's a problem in the structure of the show.
We don't need to squeeze loustat flirting right after the episode that's supposed to be centered around their grief for Claudia. We don't need Claudia to be in hell without Madeleine to justify her suffering in life. We don't need loustat beheaded right after they find some peace with one another for them to be tragic. We don't need the Devil's Minion to happen right now if it's going to make the highest stakes situation for our protagonists into something comical.
There's a lot of great moments; I don't see them making up a great whole. There's some really fucking horrible moments. God awful writing choices. And that slowly dims the enjoyment of the show for me, especially because I know they can do better and they just don't want to. It's no wonder to me some members of the cast were hesitating on recording this season.
I think this post explains what I'm trying to say way better. At least with less rambling. Lestat isn't the one suffering because of the writing, and at the same time he is suffering because a lot of what they're doing feels so pointless it's actually miserable to sit through. Oh and this post as well!
I'm waiting to watch the season finale and hoping it tidies and ties things up a little. Someone here on Tumblr said that it's full of the same racism episode six was full of and now my expectations are even lower, but we'll see.
