this is so going in my BLOG!

it really is so dire how many times they come back to the idea that love redeems an abusive relationship so what makes louis and armands relationship so evil is armand never loved louis and why lestat and louis' relationship is ok is because theres love like genuinely insane recurring theme on abusive relationships in general like ok <3

its just so baffling because it seems like they deeply resent that they have to like deal with the fallout of horribly abusive relationships or like think about the implications of what they wrote but its like literally nobody forced you to make the show just about abusive relationships like this you did this.. this was the adaptational choice you made why are you mad

truly fascinating that although chunks of TVL are enjoyable to watch, and Sam Reid continues to be excellent as Lestat, the show seems to be written by people who despise most of the non-Lestat characters

the thought i keep coming back to with the finale, and this season in general, is a sense of… infestation, i guess is the best way to describe it. because for the first two seasons, iwtv was a work that— even with all its gothic/horror themes— seemed deeply compassionate at its core, and it remained devoted to beauty and love in a way that felt like a reprieve from (even a small rebellion against) the rising fascism of the culture surrounding it. and now it feels like the hatefulness it was pushing back against has infested it somehow, like a swarm of fuckin termites, which has not only ruined this season but also calls into question the structural soundness of what came before it. like, how did we even get here? was this sort of mean-spirited derision always just lying in wait? idk. i don’t want to make a bad season of tv deeper than it is, but it does feel like witnessing another loss in the cultural battle when a careful, compassionate work that ostensibly cared about the marginalised experiences it depicted becomes just another conduit for hatred toward vulnerable groups. what a fucking bummer, man

There are some points of tvl criticism I'm willing to debate and where I can very much see both sides (or even think the #haters are stretching it a little) but like. You cannot really deny that this season has shown a pattern of prioritizing white characters and their emotional journey over characters of color. On top of that, so many of the jokes are "punching down", starting with the pronoun joke in ep 1 followed by a continuous barrage of throw-away comments. And then, six episodes into a season with a non-Black writers room, we have Claudia say "there's something etched in your ribs that says you're a slave". There's no reckoning with how horrifically racist this statement is, neither in the text nor the paratext. It's just sitting there, poisoning what otherwise could have been an incredible scene. Poisoning a season that felt like it was actually slowly finding its footing. It's white privilege to watch that scene and not feel, on some level, attacked by those racist words put in a Black actor's mouth by white writers. To not be haunted by the racist implications of "my bleak, black life." Before, a lot of the writing choices registered as thoughtless; at this point, it's hard to see them as anything but malicious.

that finale was shit. this show is ran by white supremacists. armand brands louis like he’s a fucking slave and carves an A(HIS INITIAL)in his chest. armand tortures louis’ dying body while lestat’s body is left alone. louis gets a painful victim-blaming apology forced outta him through torture and lestat gets a hallucination dinner. regina was used as a pawn by armand to torture louis with claudia’s face and lead him to breaking down. regina is forced to slit her wrists and watch a man slit his throat while shes tied to a chair across louis’ decapitated head. but armand is given a heartfelt apology from the black person he’s actively torturing and killing. oh and also lou’s torture is broadcasted and livedtreamed in a dark web snuffporn chatroom for random people to watch. how is this not the trial all over again??? armand’s “i took aesthetic pleasure in making your death visually exhilarating.” (an actual line from the show referencing why armand lynched louclaudia) all over again. this season and episode is horrifically racist. idk how i ever thought this show cared about black people.

iwtv is my dead wife and she was brought back wrong