there are a lot of things iwtv and now tvl do with the explicitization of incest dynamics between louis/claudia and lestat/gabrielle that i understand make for better television. but it grates on me that they've simplified them in doing so, since what i really enjoy about a lot of these character dynamics is how insidious and relatively subtle they are in the text.
lestat doesn't think of his relationship with his mother as incest because he is unable to untangle her complicity in his father's violent abuse of him via her passivity because he understands her as a victim of him as well, and is deputized as a replacement husband because he is her favorite and the son theough which she lives vicariously, which he sees as his duty.
meanwhile, claudia sees louis as her lover because he is fulfilling her needs as a caretaker while also desperately missing lestat and the surety (of misery) that he brought louis. she is using him in a caluculated manner because she knows he cannot leave her due to his guilt, and their relationship, while visually a father/daughter one, takes on more of a husband/wife dynamic as she takes the reins of their search for answers.
as much as i, as a pervert, usually love the explicit sex elements being brought to the screen, having claudia's rape (emotionally a pediphilic assault from both louis and lestat) literalized via the bruce assault and lestat's incest explicitized via classic heterosexual penetrative sex with his mother waters down the canon stickiness that can't be shaken off, cannot even be addressed- the gothic narrative that festers and rots.
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