endless night

#no seriously they CHOSE to do this #they CHOSE to change Louis's Claudia's and Armand's race they decided on this no one twisted their arm about it??? baffling #and now that I'm thinking back... what did Rolin say again about why he cast a black man as Louis? like don't quote me on this #but wasn't it bc he didn't want to deal with the fallout of having Louis being a plantation owner??? #actually do quote me on this I just found the article from Den of Geek where he talks about it: #'To be perfectly frank I didn’t know how to tell the plantation owner story. I wasn’t going to be the writer to do it.' #like... in hindsight that was a warning sign this man did NOT think the race change through he simply didn't want the story to have to deal #with having to write around a topic he clearly considered too complicated and uncomfortable to engage with #and so decided 'okay what is the farthest away from white stuffy plantation owner in the 1800s? I know a black pimp from the late 1900s' #on top of that they CLEARLY didn't anticipate the fallout of the drop during episode 5 and they've been playing catch-up ever since #I firmly believe that's where a lot of the resentment comes from #rolin's writing team during s1 created a story about abuse and privilege and multi-faceted complicated characters. #but rolin himself always wanted a fun vampire romp with no consequences and sexy lestat and iwtv was meant to be prologue to that #but after season 1 he had to engage with topics during promo and interviews that he never wanted to deal with #like how much responsibility Lestat carries for the abuse heaped on his black family and how his privilege allows him so much more space #and gives him social power and influence over them and how that creates a palpable wall between them which makes his abuse even worse #rolin never WANTED iwtv to be this sort of success where people engage with it so deeply and care about all the details and the stories #of the characters that rolin himself - from the way they have been shown in tvl - clearly thinks are just side-pieces to Lestat's main show #he wanted to be able to focus on Lestat and only Lestat (the ooc version of him that lives in his head) #and instead people were asking Lestat be held accountable and for him to be shown as the flawed complicated difficult character that he is #and Rolin - as shown by tvl - clearly doesn't like that #that's also why the s2 finale had the narrative bend itself (and the characterization of several characters) into pretzels just to make su #that we got the Loustat reunion and Loumand divorce #bc they had to hurry the story along and into a direction that looked contrived then and looks actively malicious now #like that was when the cracks were really starting to spread but clearly that was forced into the story so they could start with tvl #and through tvl they continued to systematically dismantle the story that they build for the first two seasons #those... are a lot of tags sorry but god this really - in the end - once again comes down to a writer not thinking through their decisions #when they start a story and then flinching away from the consequences of those decisions when the narrative demands a fallout