the desire to assign them both traditional gender roles by fandom feels very gender essentialist to me and veers into TERF talking points
I’m glad you pointed out the whiff of terfiness, because from what I could gather the main argument for the Louis=wife theory is his victimhood and frankly that IS terfy, like he can’t be a victim unless he’s ‘woman coded’ (not to mention the incredibly gender essentials points used to reinforce this idea, like his interest in art and literature or in having a family). I find it…galling that’s it’s framed as denying a black man softness and sensitivity when to me it has always felt like tying acknowledging his less stereotypically masculine traits with pushing him into a wife role is just reinforcing the same stereotypes that fuel the culture of toxic masculinity he has to contend with and he himself points out onscreen.
I completely agree with you, anon.
I also think people fail to consider the eras that any of these characters are from across the board, and particularly where the appreciation of things like literature and art were not only considered masculine traits, not feminine, but indications of class and privilege (and honestly, I don't know how ready this fandom is for the ugly, messy privilege conversation around Louis as a character who is highly literate and educated, and Lestat having been illiterate until relatively recently - a fact that the show's already leant into with Louis weaponising it against Lestat in an argument in s1, and all the spelling mistakes in his letter in s2). There are a lot of shifting balances of power that don't even consider gender in this context, and include at least race, class and wealth (which Lestat has an endless supply of in the NOLA era while Louis still has familial dependents!) and I think to reduce them to a gender binary is just really limiting across the board.
