roody

!!TW: blood

But I am worried about some of the things I've heard on there. Mild spoilers ahead, if you don't want any. Again, I have not seen it, so I cannot confirm or deny any of this.

It seems like they might have done Louis dirty? The whole season, the show and fandom have been acting like Louis is the worst of the worst, and I fully cannot see it that way. Oh, Louis fought Lestat once when Lestat was choking Claudia (Lestat never denied that part), so he's the violent one? Oh, Louis was a pimp in his human life, so that's worse than literally being a supernatural serial killer, a serial abuser, and a fucking French Aristocrat ahead of the Revolution? (This is about Armand and Lestat). Apparently, Louis is going to apologize to Armand??? They did the whole Armand apology tour, LEFT OUT an apology for Louis, which Louis was owed, and then had LOUIS apologize like Armand did nothing wrong??? Were they framing Louis throwing the 500 year old, super powerful vampire into the wall as, what, abusive? But erasing memories, controlling someone, killing their daughter through a sadistic play, and lying about it for 77 years is actually fine, actually? Maybe as long as they're a Black slave and pimp lmao.

And apparently, they won't stop mentioning the pimp thing, like being a pimp is the worst thing a human could possibly be. And IDK, that does feel kinda racist, to me. I didn't mind the choice to make Louis a pimp in the first place, because how to you translate the slave owner thing to a Black character in the 20th century? Well, probably the closest thing you can do is make them a pimp. But these white writers seem to be delighting in it in a way that is... uncomfortable. Not delighting in the pimping, but in demonizing Louis by harping on it. Pimp Louis, Louis the Pimp, you were a pimp, pimp, pimp, pimp. Okay! Lestat can drop Louis from the fucking sky and participate in his attempted murder AND the murder of their daughter and Madeleine, and poor baby, he's so traumatized over it, feel bad for him! But Louis was a pimp when he was human, so... you know, he's the most evil thing ever lol. More evil than a white French aristocrat was ahead of the French Revolution!

Also, it's not lost on me that they took out Lestat punching Nicki and shit (in the books), so we can pretend Lestat isn't just an abuser and that Louis maybe uniquely deserved to be abused by him. Which is dangerous! First of all, Lestat was hitting his first-ever boyfriend long before he met Louis! Second of all, NOBODY DESERVES TO BE ABUSED!

And I don't like them delighting in language like "slave" and "nappy head."

I can give them that this season is from Lestat's perspective, so he's making himself seem like less of a villain and more of a pure victim whose actions are justified through his own abuse.

But even still, the way Louis seems to be being characterized is... just awful. I feel like they realized that they redeemed the Louis character too much in s1&2, compared to book Louis, so they're trying to make him bad so that the audience won't like him. But nothing he's done is that bad. He's just not that bad. The stuff they keep calling bad and selfish is just normal reactions to conflict, IMO.

The seance? Not his doing, for one, and also not an abnormal way to handle grief, for two. People do them IRL in an attempt to speak to passed on loved ones. Characterizing it as selfish, like uniquely so, is weird, to me. Especially because LESTAT set up the seance to kind of help Louis.

The Regina thing? Weird, yes. Kind of unethical, maybe. Evil? Not really. It was more concerning on a mental health level. Regina was not being harmed. He didn't touch her, see her naked, ask her to perform any untoward acts. He just had dinner with her and took her on the lake. Weird behavior? Yeah. Explicitly harmful? No. And unless it's brought back up in this episode, kind of a nothing burger.

Big arguments with Armand, drug abuse, eating twinks in the 70s? Vampire behavior and like... incompatibility. Armand was not a victim of arguing with his boyfriend lmao.

Reacting poorly to learning about Lestat's incest with his mother? NORMAL AS FUCK. Y'all telling me that if you were human and in your 30s (like Louis & Lestat would be if they weren't vampires), and you saw a video of your human, 30-something boyfriend having sex with his mother, you wouldn't immediately be disgusted and freaked out? And if he kept lying and then making excuses about it, you wouldn't be angered or hurt? LOUIS COMFORTED LESTAT when he realized it wasn't sex, but coercion and r*pe. It took Louis like TWO MINUTES to realize that this situation wasn't consensual. But he's evil for REACTING to something DISTURBING!

Anyway... I also heard some nice Loustat things about it, so I'ma watch it.

But ughhhh. Louis is not being handled well. They need Black writers. Yesterday. And I need them to... to... to do better if they get a season 4.

I'm not like half of those fans who don't understand why TVL was about Lestat, or that the rest of the books are. I just also... I also don't want to watch a show with prominent Black characters who are treated like the worst of the worst for everything they do, while the white male lead can literally drop people from the sky and it's okay because him just a baby and him was abused uwu.

And them writers got poor Jacob convinced that Louis is the worst, and he clearly had a harder time on set this season. He even looks lowkey disappointed in a lot of interviews.