Crows... fuck yeah

yeah i'm thinking about daniel referring to armand as "dad" and the fluidity of vampire relationships. daniel and armand are both lovers and a father and his only son. a father who never expected to be one, who never wanted to be one, and a widower who never expected another love. just as lestat is simultaneously his mother's son and father and lover. just as claudia is louis' daughter, sister, throw pillow. parenthood is deep and obsessive and companionship is almost familial.

It's so interesting how lestat keeps ignoring everything gabrielle says about herself. Before she leaves him at that beach he thinks he finally has found love and belonging all in one person: his mother, his fledgling, his companion, his wife. But she passionately declared that she was no longer no one's wife, no longer a woman; that night when he goes to her room he reminds her of her tending to her wounds but ignores the part of that conversation where her face crumbled after he said that she'd only belong to her still. He clearly hates "his love is a small box he keeps you in" sentiment but he does indeed do that to everyone he loves. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, baby jenks was right "Then why you always gotta make it so hard for someone to give it to you?” his hunger for love and fear of loneliness AND entitlement makes him the way he is. His mum didn't love him enough but she was his mum so it wouldn't be wrong of him to think that he was entitled to his mother's love, the same way every child is, but since they crossed the lines of mother and child now he goes into every situation like that, he falls in love and feels entitled to that person's love. When he breaks down and cries "why won't you let me hate you?" it is so clear that what he actually needs isn't Gabrielle's love, it's the freedom to hate and despise her and put her in a different category to all other intimate relationships that he has in his life. Same for Gabrielle, what does she need lestat for anymore? She can do all those things she desires. Why does she keep coming back to him and trying to live vicariously through him when she is a powerful and a great vampire and could get what she wants? I can't fully tell what she wants yet, but it seems to be power and dominion over humans, so why doesn't she do it? I want to know more about her

with the implication that lestat feels obligated to fuck anyone who wants to fuck him, “non-discriminating” is such a sad way for him to describe his sexuality. babygirl maybe it’s time to start discriminating

armand ominously showing up out of nowhere just to read them his little apology letters 😭

daniel is floundering because he’s relapsed and he has transformational trauma and lestat is a brat, yes all of that is true. but this shit with lestat is also not his preferred mode of interview. in iwtv 1.1 he says “i do my best work one-on-one”, partially to get fake rashid/ armand out of the room, but also because it’s true. he’s an investigative journalist, not a documentarian, nor does he do “puff portraiture” (also 1.1). cut to 3.3 and he not only has a whole crew watching him try desperately not to look like he’s doing a puff portrait documentary, but he’s conducting the interview through an “interrotron”, a screen with disembodied heads mounted in front of the person he’s “interviewing” except it isn’t an interview, it’s an interrogation (it’s in the name of the device!). this situation couldn’t get more impersonal, couldn’t be more out of his depth, and it’s happening in front of a room of 40 professionals whose time are being wasted because daniel suddenly can’t do the job that’s been his lifeline, the ONLY constant in his world, for 50 years. AND armand won’t talk to him. that old man is about to throw a tantrum and i cannot wait

Something something both Magnus and Bruce died in fire something something rapists getting killed but the damage is already done and nothing can fix that something something

People who do not understand louis at all will say that it's "out of character" for him to use claudia's trauma as a way to process his own or to get revenge in her name when really it's very much a thing he would do and has done in the past. He's repeatedly violated her privacy and agency in the name of his love for her, but above all he has always chosen himself and the men he loves over her. I feel like if you've only now noticed him doing this then you've missed out on one of the biggest character traits of his... there's a lot of nuance to this, so perhaps some people just have a very two dimensional perspective of his character

fuck, man, that was a tough watch. best episode so far but holy shit i feel like a wrung out dish towel. the tonal whiplash from the “your biggest fan” music video to gabriella with lestat’s double to the reveal that the interview session was a hallucination to the parallel reading of claudia’s diary entry and lestat’s assault by magnus to the quiet tragedy of lestat’s performance as each character seems to wallow in their own loneliness in different ways. this is the true voice of the show, and it’s fucking incredible.

something something the inherent exploitation of the vampire capitalist something something Louis sharing Claudia's personal diaries in a memoir about his own guilt knowing once it's out there he has no control over what people do with it something something Louis owning 45% of merch profits from Lestat's "call for help" rockstar escapades, profiting off the book by investing in vampire themed property and media something something pimping out women from broken homes something something the value of pain is how much you can profit from it