but wasn't it so for mortal fathers?

Claudia has been dead for three seasons, and they have somehow managed to bring her rape storyline back in 3/3 of those seasons. At this point: LET THIS PLOT DIE.

In season 1, I gave them the benefit of the doubt with the Bruce storyline. Maybe that was a mistake, but I had reasons:

First, I hadn’t read the book, so I didn’t know this was a change. I took what the show gave me at face value.

Second, they made the deliberate choice to keep the assault offscreen. The show explicitly framed this as a decision not to be exploitative or make a spectacle of the details of Claudia’s suffering. That was a choice I thought was genuinely good and gave me hope: they at least seemed to understand that a female character shouldn’t be reduced to an opportunity to depict her being raped.

But then season 2 happened, and this is where my goodwill really started to evaporate.

In 2x03, Claudia tells Louis about what happened, and the show essentially soft-retcons the storyline into something much more extensive. It wasn't just the one time assault we saw implied in season 1; now she was kidnapped and repeatedly tortured. There was basically no indication in season 1 that this was the backstory they were building toward, and to me it very clearly felt like a choice made for season 2 to make the material more severe in retrospect.

And I was already like: okay. So we're bringing this storyline back and retroactively making Claudia's experience of sexual violence significantly more horrific.

But I still tried to give them some credit because, at least, Claudia herself was the one telling Louis about it. It wasn't another person reading her diary or the audience being given a voyeuristic reconstruction of her trauma.

She was choosing to tell him, in her own words, because she trusted him. I could at least interpret that as Claudia reclaiming some agency over the story and finally being able to speak about it and move forward.

Then we got episode 6 and I understood the actual reason they made her mention it again.

Because apparently the only way these writers could conceive of a romantic relationship between two women was: have them bond over being sexually assaulted.

And Madeline's assault is even worse in terms of how the show depicts it. At this point it basically feels like: oh, here's a female character. Let's have her get raped on screen because thats what happens to women. We get the gratuitous, lingering shots of the attempted assault, Claudia intervenes and saves her, and that becomes the catalyst for their relationship.

The narrative logic is basically the same as the most tedious dark-romantasy trope imaginable: male love interest saves female character from being raped by some random bad guys → shes so grateful she falls in love → romance. Except they put it between two women and apparently expected that to make the trope less grotesque.

And to be clear, I am not saying anything about people who enjoy Claudia/Madeleine, nor do I particularly dislike Madeleine as a character. My problem is entirely with the writers' decision to develop their relationship this way and chosing sexual violence as a the narrative shortcut.

So by season 2, this was already becoming a pattern.

And then season 3 comes around and they bring Claudia's rape storyline back again.

It was finished in season 1. Then they revisited it in season 2, expanded it, retroactively made it worse, added another woman being sexually assaulted and then used that assault as a means for developing Claudia's romantic relationship.

I genuinely cannot think of many examples of a television show spending three entire seasons progressively fleshing out a dead female character's rape in more and more detail. How much do you have to hate your own female character to keep finding new ways to make her sexual trauma narratively relevant after she's been dead for years?

And don't even get me started on Bruce being brought back.

Sometimes a rapist living without facing consequences is actually the point. That is, unfortunately, the reality of sexual violence: perpetrators frequently do go on to live their lives without facing anything remotely resembling justice. That was a perfectly coherent place to leave the story.

He simply did not need to come back.

And the decision to have him change his name to Killer, the nickname Claudia gave him, is especially weird to me. It makes it seem like Claudia had this enormous, life-defining impact on his identity, like she fundamentally shaped his life and he carried this piece of her with him, when, from her perspective, he was a random man who violently victimized her.

Why are we giving the rapist that kind of narrative significance?

Why is the story so interested in making him into a character?

And there was absolutely no reason they needed to use that time on him. They could have explored Lestat's memories of Claudia instead. They could have given us a flashback about Claudia that was actually about Claudia, something he remembers about her that isn't her being sexually assaulted.

Instead we're talking about a man reading Claudia's diary including accounts of her sexual assault out loud to her rapist as he kills him as some sort of heroic power fantasy of righteous vengence. And dont say "that's the point! it's supposed to be hollow and meaningless!" But its also supposed to be lesdaughter pararells so which is it?

Are the writers actually critiquing the voyeuristic misogynistic consumption of her trauma? Or are they just repeatedly doing exactly that, reconstructing and revisiting this girl's rape long after she's dead to use it as material for men's emotional arcs?

At some point, you cannot keep saying "look how exploitative these characters are being with Claudia's story" as though that automatically means the show itself isn't benefiting from the exploitation. The writers are the ones choosing to put this material on screen. They are the ones deciding that Claudia's rape needs to be revisited again and that we need more details every season and that her private account of being assaulted needs to become a plot device.

1. Mutuals

2. Friends

3. Coworkers you like

4. Strangers

5. Coworkers you don’t like

6. Enemies

The "Come to me" of IWTV!Lestat was not only the seduction of Louis De Pointe Du Lac- it was a call to seduce us as well. It's the vampire story reeling us in, and we are both mesmerized and horrified on account of Louis. IWTV weaves its sensuality from the very first frame; Daniel Molloy in his own apartment, all alone in a pandemic. We are allowed to see him in an intimate setting. He is watching his own commercial, he is bored, he is listless and then he gets a package and suddenly he is breathing heavily- Daniel is afraid (fear and arousal both are enmeshed in vampiric stories). The way that scene is shot with Daniel going through his things to find the old recorder letting us get a glimpse of the life he has lived, to those tapes being played and the camera staying in on Daniel and letting us stay with Daniel as we hear the voices on the tape before it abruptly cuts off with the shout of a young Danny Molloy; I don't think Eric Bogosian has ever looked so good throughout IWTV/TVL as he did in that first scene. It is also here that for the first time we get to hear Louis! And oh how blessed are our ears to hear Jacob's voice in that cadence. Come to me is what he says to Daniel Molloy basically; I have watched (over) you, your whole life Daniel..Come to me. And off we go following Louis's voice to Dubai and then we are in his penthouse.

Usually it is the vampire who has to be invited in, but in IWTV we are being invited into Louis's coffin itself! ( Where's your coffin?/ You are standing in it). There's something so deliciously vulnerable in being invited into a vampire's "coffin" (where would you run to now?) and lo and behold it is here he wants to tell the journalist his story. It's intimate, vulnerable and yes it is sensuous. There's nowhere to escape, no room to move, they are trapped in the penthouse ( here's the horror, neither of them knows just how trapped they are and who has keys to the door- iPad controlled protective windows). I think we all talk about Louis's beauty but what about his sensuality? Louis is a sensuous being. All those feedings set up across from Daniel at the dinner table, the whole Rashidmand thing-> there always has been a very tangible push and pull between the interviewer and the interviewee. It's what made the Dubai setting come alive. This was what made it interesting. And not only in Dubai. Think about Louis in his red suit with Jonah. Think about Louis with Armand and gang going to hunt together for the first time. Think about him telling Armand " been thinking about you". Think about Louis and Armand's first time together and the shot of Louis in his undershirt with birth of Venus painting in the background ( if I am not mistaken), think about Louis in 1973 meeting Daniel for the first time- there's a lot going on in that convo including hints at Louis being suicidal ( what's in the bag? Is it a gun? are you an assassin? Are you here to kill me?)- but again there's always an underlying sensuality woven into these scenes. Episode 5 of s2 starts with Louis being playful with Daniel; Daniel is embarrassed with his "so we have never..." And Louis giggles out a 'No'. He goes onto tease him about if he wants to do it now since Armand lingers to watch the boats. What I am trying to say is in s1/s2 Louis has been filmed to be both beautiful and sensuous and playful in his sensuality.

I am not going to lie, this series always had a problem of subjecting Black bodies to the most graphic violence, but it also once knew how to show beauty and desire too. I will never not be mad about how Claudia and Madeline never got to kiss onscreen, some stupid decisions were made to have it so I am sure; but even then we knew how desire looks on Claudia. We saw it when the smell of Madeline's blood hits the air. Madeline getting her period and bleeding through leaving little droplets of blood all over the floor. Madeline saying she is leaving behind a trail, like in Hansel and Gretel and Claudia's fangs dropping. It's Claudia's sexual desire intermingling with her deepest wish to attain "womanhood". All of it filmed in a way that's just incredibly hot. What horror is it then that as Louis is draining Madeline, Claudia dives in for a taste? The blurring of lines and boundaries between her and her father-brother who later makes himself throw up the blood.

Vampirism is erotic. The monster has to penetrate the victim to suck out their life force to satiate itself. Think about Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. Think about the ethereal vampire feverishly grabbing onto the hands of the young girl ( Laura) and confessing how she loves her. Carmilla is in parts rapturous in pleasure and in parts manic during her confession, and at night she crawls into Laura's bed to drink blood from her bosom with every intention of draining her dry.

Where is this 'terrific' eroticism in The Vampire Lestat? In IWTV, Lestat massacres the priest to get to Louis. Louis is stumbling and falling and Lestat crawls over to him, hands outstretched offering him a way to be all the beautiful things he is without the world ever hindering him from doing so. Louis accepts and of course not all of it is so simple or straightforward since he is reeling from his brother's death, but when the camera flashes onto Lestat, we see him drunk on Louis's blood. He is drunk on Louis. Again I ask you where is the horror intermingling with the erotic in TVL?

What this season has done, and which I think is another problem is that it's unnecessarily voyeuristic without having any intention to address this voyeurism in any meaningful way. Which is crazy because many interesting things could have been said about the voyueristic use of camera, in reflection of our current times where we don't really know if we will end up on the net because some asshole decided to film us and post it. But for it to be so the documentary style for the season would have had to be treated seriously and Rolin and co, just abandoned it halfway through.