The Pink Parade

They are dead set on monogamy. And it's hurting the characters' relationships.

I always kind of imagined that this would happen to a certain point, but this season really amplified it by 100%. I can tell they want loustat and devil's minion to be The Couples™, so they want no possible ambiguity that they could love anyone else.

Nickistat is okay, because Nicolas is dead. But lesmand? Oh, well, they MAYBE fucked around a little in the past, but really Armand is just unilaterally obsessed with Lestat, and Lestat only really dislikes him, and takes joy in mocking and humiliating him. Doesn't give a single fuck about him - "apathy", as they called it in the After Dark episode after E6. Loumand? You thought their relationship just deteriorated over time? No, turns out they NEVER loved each other! Yeah, Armand only was with him because it was the only thing left for him - being with a man he took "aesthetic pleasure" in torturing back then and, apparently, in the present as well, and willing to just let die both times -, and Louis was only with Armand as a cope that he couldn't be with Lestat, and really everything that he did with Armand was really about Lestat. A way to get back at him.

It's like they want to burn every bridge between characters that in the book cannon do love each other deeply, because they want to be sure we can only picture The Couples™ together and nothing else (and I'm going to refrain from speaking in detail about how shit DM's development has been this season, with most of it happening off-screen and all, and I'll also not mention how we barely got any physical affection or even a kiss - bare minimum - between any of these couples for a whole season, but it is all pretty funny). There can't be even an INKLING of possibility that maybe there was love between anyone else, or, god forbid, still is.

I didn't expect them to follow the book route, really, with everyone sort of loving each other very deeply and going back and forth between each other, because at the end of the day this is TV and I know that many people would flip at this approach. Not palatable, I guess. But taking such profound and nuanced relationships and flattening them completely for the sake of keeping the main ships intact is really annoying.

(The way they went about lesmand in particular is very upsetting to me, because the love-hate thing they have going on in so important for the both of them in the books, and it's so clear, so it's really sad to see what they made them into the show - a past fling at best, vaguely referred to as "ex" in one scene.)

(But also, there could be something to be said about how they make sure that these relationships between characters of color and white characters work, so for that they felt had to destroy the only relationship that was had between two characters of color in a way that doesn't even happen in the books. Yes, they were miserable together post-trial, but Armand just gave Louis space and left when he realized it was beyond saving. I guess he did try to hide that he left Claudia to die, even if if Louis secretly knew, so I can see where they got the manipulation from. But the gratuitous violence that was inflicted on Louis? That was 100% the show. There is a main character Armand tortures in the books, and that's Lestat, and with the humiliation he put him through in the show it would make some sense, but oh well. Interesting choice, to not say something else...)

I also feel like the books' general love could also say something about how vampires exist outside of the norms of society in so many ways, but I don't think the show is going for that. Still, maybe they could have embraced it as part of the queerness. Or they could have at least given these relationships the care they deserved to feel like there's something keeping these characters coming back to each other that isn't just circumstance. But maybe they will only be around each other because of circumstance, who knows.