RedWithLipstick

Amaka Umeh as DEE PHARMA

so take this with a grain of salt (personally i think they're telling the truth about everything though not without possible bias) but according to the people who got screeners, the lesmand flashback scene doesn't go any differently to how it looks in the trailer. like that's the lesmand dynamic in the show. one of them actually mocked people expecting it to be different, but she's a lestat boymom who can barely hide her disdain for armand and his fans so i'm still waiting to see exactly how it plays out. i'm keeping my expectations low to hopefully avoid being too disappointed

all of them have also said lestat makes a "funny" comment to gabi about armand being a bottom/sub which is… something. like obviously we have to wait and see but if it's some bottom-shaming thing the writers can seriously fuck off. they've also said it's clear we're supposed consider lestat's version of events the truth and that they've left behind the unreliable narrator angle which would be such a bad look i'm hoping that's just their lestat bias talking again. even taking louis out of the equation (due to armand's "tinkering"), having only the black and brown characters be liars and fantasists before the big muscled blond blue-eyed white guy comes along to correct the story just looks so, so terrible i really hope they'd be aware enough not to do it

it doesn't matter that lestat is the main character, rolin chose to race swap other characters and it would be really stupid not to take that into account when it comes to how the characters and story are perceived in the real world

if they really have chosen to make it so lestat is completely repulsed/grossed out by armand without finding him at all attractive, and the only reliable voice in the story, then i feel comfortable calling it racism whether conscious or not. choosing to make a canonically desirable character from the books indian and then choosing to make him completely undesirable, evoking the pathetic, sexually unattractive, boring indian male character american TV has been pumping out for decades would be a clearly racist choice

there's a big difference between saying lestat can't ever be intimate with armand because of the blood rape and armand's general deal with manipulation while still finding him very attractive, and saying lestat would never be intimate with him because he's just soooo pathetic and creepy and unappealing haha isn't that funny? let's all laugh at the brown guy being sexually "humiliated"

seeing how much people are reveling in this is leaving a sour taste in my mouth too. i've even seen someone say he must've lied about fucking the coven too because "ain't nobody want him" 🙄

but of course any concerns we have about armand's character or about assad or about racism are painted as bitter armandcels who want him to be the main character and just hate lestat/sam!

"that's the lesmand dynamic in the show"

Literally no one:

Dinosaurs do not like containment, if we set them free, they lose their appetite for humans and become vegan

I would set them free in every major city

Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman at New York Comic Con (2025)

in honor of the cast saying armand with daniel is like a little kid with a toy… i had to draw it again :)

Sometimes when you love someone, you will do crazy things.