the autistic statistic

The books are focusing on the monstrosity of the vampire nature, the fact that they’re killing machines, that they have no morals, are feral and that everything is a question of power and influence over others including other vampires.

The one sacred thing vampires can share is blood.

They don’t have any mortal pleasure attachment left.

But the show changes that and keeps a lot of their humanity.

Making the show’s characters victims of abuse and rape diminishes the value of their original trauma: identity, violence and influence and manipulation. Mental abuse is real. They changed the core of their trauma hence we loose subtlety of their pain. People only focus on the physical assaults and no longer the mental abuse.

The best example imo is a comparaison between Armand and show Lestat/Daniel: in both the books and the show, Armand is sold into a brothel, then groomed by Marius, then gets sick and turned and becomes a very powerful vampire both for his abilities and manipulation/self control, who does wrong out of fear and cowardice. Show!Lestat is met with the same fate of being groomed, assaulted and eventually turned after a week long of torture in Magnus’s tower, and becomes the flamboyant and violent vampire we know. Show!Daniel is literally said to be a rapist, multiple times (which never happened in the book ??? Fuck why?). Yet…

Armand is considered a sneaky little bitch while Lestat is considered as a victim who’s done nothing wrong ever in his life and simply suffers the consequences of his abuse. As for Daniel, the fact that he’s raped people is mentioned once in a while but completely brushed over.

Same thing could be argued considering Claudia. In the book, her pain resides in the fact that she will never be a grown woman, that she won’t have a family of her own and never be loved for the one she is. She suffers from loneliness and being always sidelined. The show kept some of it with her loneliness being on display, and her need for Madeleine. Yet, the one pain the fandom focuses on during S3 is the parallel between her assault’s and Lestat’s.

The core is changed, it changes the dynamics between the characters along with their relationships. I guess, an adaptation is free of it’s interpretations. I think this interpretation erases the pain of the characters who’ve mentally suffered.

I like the show though but it is far from being a faithful adaptation.