n0atmilk

The way The Vampire Lestat has completely destroyed my interest in Loustat needs to be studied. I was a Loustat girlie first and foremost. I genuinely used to think that Loustat chemistry could get me through anything, any amount of nonsense the writers threw at them and at us. But boy was I wrong! I watched an episode centered on them and felt absolutely nothing. No butterflies. No smiling like an idiot. No excitement. Nothing.

How am I supposed to feel invested in Loustat when Lestat is calling Louis a whore for no good reason, a "cancerous jackal" for no good reason. He has the audacity to reduce Louis's anger over being beaten nearly to death and dropped 5,000 feet from the sky to nothing more than "redirected moods."This undermines his season 2 apology. I already had issues with that apology because of the context surrounding it. Still, I could at least point to it and say, okay, he's acknowledging what he did. He's taking accountability. After all, Lestat admitted that he broke Louis because he couldn't force him to love him. But how am I supposed to take that remorse seriously now when he's minimizing the grotesque harm he once acknowledged causing?

It does make me wonder: does Lestat even like Louis, let alone love him? Who is to say he isn't mistaking obsession for love? The narrative can insist that Lestat loves Louis all it wants, but at some point, we need proof. We need to see it in his actions. So what exactly am I supposed to point to as evidence of this supposedly great love? Am I supposed to see the fact that Lestat showed up for Louis despite being angry with him as evidence of his deep, unwavering love? Especially when the narrative frames it against Louis not checking on him after he was shot? Mind you, Lestat "I have the blood of Akasha in me" de Lioncourt was never in any real danger of dying from a gunshot. When his life was actually at risk, Louis showed up.

Because that's the problem. The show is asking me to treat these few and far-between moments as proof of Lestat's deep and unwavering love for Louis. But the rest of the time, what we're given is a Lestat who seems far more interested in possessing Louis than loving him. He wants Louis's love, devotion, attention, and availability. He wants Louis to be sexually, emotionally, and physically available whenever he needs him. And when Louis gives him what he wants, Lestat is affectionate. When Louis doesn't, suddenly he's a whore.

Now, you can tell me he was acting like that because he was still angry and hurt over the book. Fine. Let's look at what happens when Louis and Lestat are supposedly in a good place and he's no longer angry.

He gets irritated at the insinuation that he killed Claudia, which is true, by the way. He played an active role in Claudia's lynching and murder. He gets dismissive when Louis brings up his affair with Antoinette, suggesting that Louis mischaracterized her in the book.

Then we get his reckoning. This is supposed to be Lestat's big character growth moment.

And what does Lestat's subconscious have to say about Louis?

Lestat is now fixated on Louis having been a pimp. When we finally get a glimpse into how he sees their relationship, we're told that he offered the Dark Gift to a pimp, someone he apparently viewed as undeserving because of his profession. And what did he get in return? The pimp made his life miserable, baby-trapped him, slit his throat, and then fucked his ex. What's jarring is how much this framing glosses over the details that actually matter. The implication is essentially: I gave this man everything, and look how he repaid me.

The narrative is framing it as though Lestat's great tragedy is that he loved Louis too much, too deeply, too selflessly, and was punished for it. And despite all of Louis's faults, in all his benevolence, he remained steadfast in his love for him. What makes this so baffling is that Lestat genuinely seems to believe he loves Louis the way Louis needs to be loved, even as he frames Louis as someone undeserving of that love in the first place. He doesn't see himself as the perpetrator. He sees himself as the wronged party in the relationship. Meanwhile, Louis is the one who was beaten nearly to death, dropped from the sky, cheated on, manipulated, isolated, lynched, and forced to live with the loss of Claudia, a tragedy Lestat played an active role in.

What kind of DARVO nonsense is this? Because this framing sounds suspiciously similar to the way Santiago characterized Louis and Lestat's relationship during the "trial". The selfless lover who gave everything. The ungrateful partner who repaid that love with betrayal and cruelty. By the end of it, I was left wondering whether the writers intended for Santiago's interpretation of their relationship to carry more truth than I initially thought. In retrospect, Rolin's insistence that Lestat not apologize during the NOLA reconciliation, despite Jacob and Sam's objections that he should, makes a lot more sense. In fact, it made me realize that the seeds of Loustat's downfall were planted in that very scene. On paper, it was supposed to be a reconciliation. But in practice, the narrative framed Louis as the one who needed to make amends, the one who needed to express gratitude, the one who needed to reassure Lestat. Looking back, that should have been my first warning sign.

The thing about Loustat in past seasons was that, yes, Lestat was abusive, but I also believed that he loved Louis deeply. The appeal of their relationship, for me, was that the story allowed love and abuse to coexist in a way that could be explored safely through fiction. It allowed me to engage with dynamics that would be unacceptable in real life. Even at his cruelest, I believed Lestat's actions came from a place of love, however warped, selfish, and destructive that love might have been. Even after he dropped Louis from the sky, I struggled with it a bit, but I eventually came around. I felt the relationship had become more complicated, more tragic, and more interesting. The abuse didn't erase the love; it made the contradictions within their relationship more complex. That's why I was still invested.

Had the story followed that up with genuine accountability, had Lestat taken responsibility for what he did and sincerely apologized, with the narrative fully supporting that reckoning, it could have been incredible. We could have watched Lestat reckoning with what happened to Claudia and the role he played in her death. We could have watched Louis wrestle with the impossible contradiction of loving Lestat while knowing the part he played in Claudia's murder. We could have watched them mourn Claudia together and slowly find their way back to each other. Maybe even the séance scene could have been part of that, with Louis and Lestat working together to help Claudia finally find peace. That would have been compelling. That would have felt earned.

Instead of putting in the work, the writers resorted to abuse apologia and victim-blaming. They centered Lestat's trauma throughout the season while avoiding any meaningful accountability for his actions. Meanwhile, they increasingly nudged the audience toward viewing Louis (and Claudia) as the source of the conflict in the relationship, a pattern I only now realize began in the season 2 finale.

All I needed was for the narrative to acknowledge the reality of what he did and allow him to grapple with it honestly. Yet very rarely did the narrative ask him to truly confront the damage he caused. The writers keep telling us that Loustat is the heart of the show, and yet they have given me very little reason to believe it.

HE IS A DUDE!

via @ninjahijabimuse​