i'm buffy, the vampire slayer. and you are?

but lestat's narration, as far as i can tell, is composed of a combination of his songs, the documentary, and The Failures. which is already difficult, because we've got (respectively) the most hyperbolic, narrativised, performative version of events (see: your biggest fan, the music video-esque scene of magnus stalking lestat, him writing from the perspective of magnus and textually asserting that magnus loved him); you've got the version of events where he's just fucking with molloy, avoiding the question, obscuring any sincere emotion he might have, and never committing anything real to camera; and then you've got the dominant narration of lestat by himself talking retrospectively and remorsefully after the events of queen of the damned. which we the audience have not yet seen and have no context for unless we've read the books.

like i've been assuming that the visits to the past we see are mostly honest. but in fact everything that we have seen this season, barring the auction scene at the beginning of ep1, is maybe tainted by lestat's bias. he spells this out for us in the danlou restaurant scene - he doesn't know for sure this is how the conversation went, or whether this is where it occurred - this is just how he imagines it. and there is stuff to be read there - he presents louis as hurt and daniel as an asshole, and he presents daniel as a desperate loner and louis as much more cool-headed.

but it means there's literally no reprieve from that subjectivity. s1&2 at least had the dubai scenes to ground the subjectivity of the past. but s3 is so drenched in lestat's perspective there's no room for anything else to breathe. it's just sass, quip, meme reference, celebrity reference, quip, slightly cringy gen z slang useage, quip.

i'm sure it's intended to be this way. but it makes me so unbelievably disconnected from the story at this point, because the front lestat is putting up basically never falters (save for a few key scenes, like with magnus in the car).

but lestat's narration, as far as i can tell, is composed of a combination of his songs, the documentary, and The Failures. which is already difficult, because we've got (respectively) the most hyperbolic, narrativised, performative version of events (see: your biggest fan, the music video-esque scene of magnus stalking lestat, him writing from the perspective of magnus and textually asserting that magnus loved him); you've got the version of events where he's just fucking with molloy, avoiding the question, obscuring any sincere emotion he might have, and never committing anything real to camera; and then you've got the dominant narration of lestat by himself talking retrospectively and remorsefully after the events of queen of the damned. which we the audience have not yet seen and have no context for unless we've read the books.

like i've been assuming that the visits to the past we see are mostly honest. but in fact everything that we have seen this season, barring the auction scene at the beginning of ep1, is maybe tainted by lestat's bias. he spells this out for us in the danlou restaurant scene - he doesn't know for sure this is how the conversation went, or whether this is where it occurred - this is just how he imagines it. and there is stuff to be read there - he presents louis as hurt and daniel as an asshole, and he presents daniel as a desperate loner and louis as much more cool-headed.

but it means there's literally no reprieve from that subjectivity. s1&2 at least had the dubai scenes to ground the subjectivity of the past. but s3 is so drenched in lestat's perspective there's no room for anything else to breathe. it's just sass, quip, meme reference, celebrity reference, quip, slightly cringy gen z slang useage, quip.

i'm sure it's intended to be this way. but it makes me so unbelievably disconnected from the story at this point, because the front lestat is putting up basically never falters (save for a few key scenes, like with magnus in the car).

it's well made, well shot, well directed, the music is interesting, the costumes are both thoughtful and subtly period accurate, the sex scenes are intentional and, again, accurate to what hooking up when you're like 18 actually feels like...the actors are of course attractive but they look like real people. the characters are varied and well fleshed out, the acting is really, really strong

so many shows and films shoot and then slot in whatever music kind of fits or could be licenced in the budget after time, but you can tell that the scenes in hr were shot with that specific music in mind. and the same intentional approach runs through the whole thing