Treat People With Kindness

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

like they are NOT on good terms this season, but this is a moment of, "i am showing this painful, infected wound to you because you have a matching one, and you are the only one who can do this for me." like this is a big, extremely vulnerable ask from louis.

and even lestat's quiet "yes. okay." in this request even though things are bad, because this is a request of one parent to another and thus sidesteps the conflict of, "we are supposed to be something to each other, but you didn't even call when i was shot." like louis is louis and the great love of his life, but louis is also the person he raised a child with, and that bond still stands strong enough to call a favor in on.

and louis's tone when lestat brings up claudia's eyes and louis jumps in with, "i know, right? there's no spark." and there is SO MUCH pain in it but also such a moment of, "she was our child and you know her like i did. you know her eyes. talk to me about her because it's the only way she can still exist, and you are the only one she can exist for me with. she was ours."

With Nicki, the ultimatum is explicit. Nicki wants to be turned, and he frames it as proof of love… if Lestat loves him *enough*, then he should be willing to give him the gift. Lestat knows it’s a terrible idea. He knows Nicki is already unraveling. Yet he does it anyway, because Nicki has tied the act to love itself. Refusing would feel like a rejection; agreeing becomes an act of devotion.

Louis does something remarkably similar with Claudia. The language is different, but the mechanism is the same. Louis doesn’t say, “If you love me, turn her.” Instead, he offers Lestat something he desperately wants: the promise of happiness, stability, and permanence. He tells him that if Claudia is turned, he’ll stay. Their relationship can be saved. Their life together can continue. Lestat knows creating Claudia is wrong. He knows it goes against his instincts, his experience, and his better judgment. Yet once again, the person he loves most places the key to their relationship in his hands and asks him to do the one thing he does not want to do. And once again, Lestat gives in.

That is the tragedy at the heart of his character. For all his arrogance, bravado, and theatricality, Lestat is fundamentally driven by an almost desperate desire to be loved and understood. He spends his life searching for connection—for someone who will choose him without conditions, without demands, without asking him to become something else first.

But the cruel irony is that the people he loves most often make their love conditional. Nicki ties love to immortality. Louis ties companionship and happiness to Claudia’s creation. In both cases, Lestat is cornered into believing that giving them what they want is the only way to keep them.

So he does what he always does: he gives everything. And every single time, it fails.

Nicki’s turning doesn’t save Nicki. Claudia’s turning doesn’t save Louis and Lestat’s relationship. The sacrifices Lestat makes in the name of love never produce the outcome he hopes for, because the problem was never the thing he was being asked to give. The problem was the impossible expectation that love could be proven through self-destruction.

That’s why these moments are so heartbreaking. They reveal a pattern that defines Lestat’s entire existence: he keeps sacrificing his own judgment, his own boundaries, and sometimes even his own morals for the people he loves, believing that if he just gives enough of himself, they’ll finally stay.

I also think people are too used to not having to pay attention to a story and only half-watch it. Hence why Netflix is so insistent on summary-plot recaps being stuck into dialogue.

However, people are also not used to dealing with a narrator who clearly doesn't want to delve too deeply into his backstory and actually recognizing that about them (Lestat) vs one who expressly wanted to delve deeply into it in some way (Louis). And so mistakenly think there is a problem with the writing quality or whatever because of that.

I’m not sure at what point you picked up this little Harlequin gay sports romance and confused it for “Racial Trauma” by Kenneth V. Hardy, the DSM-5, “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” by bell hooks, or “Born on a Blue Day” by Daniel Tammet, but boy, you have opinions about it.

Two thoughts here:

1. As someone who has worked in advocacy environments for two decades, it has been deeply woven into me by equity denied advocates that we will never be perfect in our advocacy, but that’s okay. Write with love for the character when you write someone whose experience is not your own (ie ALL CHARACTERS). Rachel has been pretty clear about her love for both characters, despite expressing frustration when her writing wasn’t what she envisioned or how she wanted it to come out. That’s life and that’s writing. No writer is perfect, but if we tell them not to include diverse characters and experiences in their writing, how does that exposure begin?

2. In the genre she is writing in, she brings attention, she doesn’t teach. It is not her job in this novel to explore the complexities of an equity denied athlete in hockey, except for the ways it consciously and directly impacts the plot. It is to the reader to bring your knowledge or to expand their knowledge to connect with the text. That is literary analysis. This isn’t non-fiction, it isn’t dramatic fiction, it is romance. The requisites for a Harlequin romance tend to follow specific tropes and be light enough for people to pick up and put down without too much brain power.

My point is, by all means, wish it was more. Take the work, research, and write a dissertation on the real impacts of race on athletes, on neurodivergence in identity, on the impacts of childhood trauma on mental health, on neurodivergent, anxiety, and disordered eating. But don’t turn around and shit all over a writer because she didn’t use her vehicle, that was designed for something else, for not doing it. If you don’t like it, put it down. There is no need to lambaste and tear down someone because you dislike what they created, OR because you feel like you know their creations better than they do.

Interviewer: Last question for you Jacob, how many times a day do people stop you, ask you, talk about Game of Thrones?

Sam: I can answer because I spend a lot of time with Jacob. I'd probably say, like, when we're out in New York, probably like three times—three, four times a day. When we're out in the world...

OH FUCK!

SEDATE. ME. NOW.

The Vampire Lestat!

40 years in the making!