cool

Thank you SO VERY MUCH for your time as a reader and as an artist!

This is remarkable. I am really just so moved by this!

Paul du Pointe du Lac was someone Louis "loved more than anyone on earth" and was never really allowed grieve for on account of being hunted by Lestat. As a consequence of that, he loses the ties and love of his sister, Grace, who buries the memory of him before leaving NOLA (IIRC).

So, it makes sense that, in their journey to absolve Lestat of all wrongdoing against Louis, perhaps to shake the ever persistent audience suspicion that he may have had a hand in his death, they would drag Paul from the grave. Drag him out and get him to thank Lestat for loving his brother how "he needed to be loved".

It's quite the death knell, turning Paul into someone sympathetic to Lestat, where his last words were were telling his brother, "Do not trust that man". And had the opposite effect (lmao), apparently. Because now I'm seeing people say, "Damn, he did kill Louis's brother!"

With Loumand (as it is referred) there were a lot of ways to handle what is, effectively, the fallout of yet another abusive relationship. But the writer have shown time and again, they see Louis committing normal relationship woes (arguing, questioning, being emotionally distant with his partners) as equal to abusive behavior.

And yet, none of it is comparable to what the writers had Armand do (i.e. the murder of his daughter, Claudia, the mind manipulation) and then do again to Louis (beheading him, torturing Claudia's doppelganger, branding him). In the end, everything comes back to that sham trial/lynching.

So, naturally they avoid it. And for them to go in the direction they did - again, largely to avoid making Lestat pay the piper to anybody - is not only predictable (at this point), but also feels like the writer's malice expressed to its fullest intent.

And in the end, after stripping the apparent nuances in Louis's past role working the red light district (the politics that therein with with regard to his class standing, and even the relationships he had with those minor sex worker characters), the writers suggests Louis's former occupation puts him on level with Marius who groomed and abused Armand. Marius, who has more ties to Lestat, and how Lestat tended to talk about Armand and his abuse.

For the writers, Louis did not meet a specific criteria of talking to Armand about his past or loving him, "Louis used him" and this Armand getting his well earned lick-back. The Loumand scream fest from 2x05 is a greater sin than Armand torturing him not once, but twice, and doing it with a live audience in mind.

And then they have Armand brand him like an enslaved negro, which cozies up nicely with Claudia's ghost to calling him a biologically determined slave and saying Lestat is actually her favorite father.

Of the other things I've read about TVL, the showrunners saying, that the previous two seasons were about "Louis navel gazing" (this specific term being used to say "selfish" or "narcissistic") vs. trying to reckon with his past and the relationships therein, certainly says a lot.

A lot, a lot, a lot.

TL;DR

The story isn’t over yet. 🐈‍⬛🤍

Hannah Moscovitch don’t think I’m letting you off the hook!! You were not only a writer but an Executive producers this season.

Shame on YOU!!

You were the one who mainly wrote Louis being abused, and a domestic violence survivor. You exploit black bodies, write them being harmed, abused and tortured over and over. All for your own creative success!! No care for survivors, black history, or racism!!

I know this was insincere and exploitation because you then have the audacity to do the DARVO Louis show?!?!?!!!?

A SEASON WHERE LOUIS IS BEING LYNCHED AGAIN. TORTURED AGAIN. VIOLENCE DONE TO HIM ON SCREEN THAT NO NON BLACK CHARACTER GETS PUT THROUGH ON SCREEN.

ALL WHILE LOUIS IS BEING TREATED AS THE ACTUAL PROBLEM. ALL WHILE ENDURING RACIST ANTI BLACK SLURS ALL SEASON. DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE CLAUDIA STUFF.

All while Ryan Kattners wears an awful hip hop sucks shirt - I see you. You don’t deserve to mention hip hop. Hell you don’t even deserve to mention music.

TVL team - I see you. You want to earn success, fame and fortune on the exploitation of black pain and racism. I see all of you.

Ending it with some love @coldeveryseason posts and critiques are very well made, and better than mine. Let’s praise and support the black creators who built Iwtv to what it was.

(Their reaction when Rolin talks smack about Louis)

If you don't like what you saw: stop watching. This isn't me saying you can't be critical, but that is all they will care about. Cancel your subs. Unfollow their socials. Stop engaging.

Otherwise, they do not care. They care that you pay them money. They care that you help them sell ads.

I'm gonna be completely honest, if you think silence is the way to go about this, you're just complicit in systemic violence. They have the numbers already. If we don't tell them the numbers are angry, they will think it's a success.

If you think that's exclusively to their merch page, then I guess their merchandizing department is gonna find out how much we hate the show.

Contact them. Or don't. I can't force you to do anything, I just don't think anti-black writing should pass without an uproar. We don't fight fascism and racism with silence.

If this is what we were supposed to take away from a character like Louis why would anyone love/like him? It begs the question what are Louis’ redeeming qualities? Why do these men continue to stay with him and obsess over him?

Original post

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this. Ultimately, I think this is all a response.

I still think Season 1 was fine. I think they knew the story they wanted to tell and approached it with open minds and excitement to adapt it. But then AMC gave them the green light to expand Louis’ arc across two seasons. Surprising but okay! And so, at least in my opinion, they did create S1 out of genuine creativity and love for the material.

But then it released and seeing how popular Loustat was, seeing people actually really like, some even love Jacob’s Louis, it made them approach S2 differently. Nobody behind the scenes was expecting for Loucob to be as loved as he is, whether people like him for himself or like him as an extension of Loustat. Even Jacob seemed to be surprised, having initially viewed his arc as a stepping stone before they’d dive into Lestat later. His shock & confusion in interviews after S2 but before they started shooting S3 was clear. He was surprised to still be brought on for in-depth interviews at all.

I wouldn’t call it lightning in a bottle. That would mean intent. It’s more like they were drinking beers in the backyard just shooting the shit before lightning freaked everybody out by zapping past the lid. While of course they didn’t plan to tell a lackluster story, I think the richness of Louis’ character was a complete accident. I think they all thought it could be perceived as good, not as fucking great.

this pissed me all the way off so I’m also posting this separate from my longer critique.

Hannah what the actual fuck is this DARVO ass logic?

You guys wrote Louis as a victim of undeniable domestic abuse and a lynching? By both Armand and Lestat.

And now Armand does it again?! And is framed as the victim?!

And then she also wants to frame it like Louis is being a lying liar during his lynching

Jacob Anderson (he did many times this episode) stood up to Hannah and Rolin…

AND ROLIN HAS THE AUDACITY TO INTERJECT TO SAY THIS GARBAGE

DOUBLING DOWN ON THE DARVO BULLSHIT !!!

And when god forbid Jacob Anderson speaks against a writing and framing choice you shut him down and make him seem like the unreasonable one…. What is this gaslighting of the audience like we didn’t see s.1-2 and knew what happened.

The audacity to outright shut Jacob down completely, interrupt him and not let him explain or defend Louis… hm. I see why all the actors are so uncomfortable around you two this episode.

It's complicated because on the one hand I can absolutely see Lestat's version of Daniel being a kind of dialed up version of reality, making him extra rude, extra loud mouthed, and also tacking on him being loudly racist and homophobic too. But if that was the case I think they should have made that more overt in Lestat and Daniel's dynamic, even if it was just a throwaway line from Lestat implying that Daniel is probably a racist or something, just something to lay a trail of breadcrumbs to that. It's annoying because I don't want this show to have to hold my hand and explain it's intentions, but they've kind of dug their own grave with this one.

The problem I have is that the show has kind of lost any grace I might have been willing to give it by being so loud and insistent about this season being something entirely new and trying to separate it from the previous two seasons. If this was Interview With The Vampire Season 3, I might have been a lot more willing to let my trust in the writers from their racial storytelling and sensitivity carry forward into this season, but instead they've axed their Black creatives and hailed this as a separate project, something that can be watched without the first two seasons (I do not agree AT ALL that that is the case either), something that an audience who didn't enjoy the first two seasons can love. And I just have to question who exactly this new audience that they're trying to reach is, because unfortunately the more the season goes on the more it looks like they're trying to bring back a white audience who were alienated by a show which centered around a Black man and his racial identity.

LUCIUS AND PETE GOT MARRIED!

ED LOOKED AT STEDE LIKE THIS!