drifting about.

Interview with the Vampire + Headpieces

adonis' flower; painful recollection

So Claudia hates Louis so much that she doesn't want him honoring her memory, but she has nothing to say about Lestat, who played an active role in her death, honoring her with a song? She doesn't call him out, challenge him, or even acknowledge it. Not even to mock him. Man.....

the scene where he gets buried in stones was actually a nightmare for jacob to film. he said that swallowing small rocks was not that big of a deal for him in comparison. the first few times they tried to shoot this scene they actually used white menthol candies, with all the horrible menthol dust getting into his eyes, nose and mouth. only then they switched to the actual rocks, which he said he swallowed a lot of. jacob doesn't tend to complain about his experience on set, but he said a few times how physically exhausting this whole sequence was.

the fact that s2 was so emotionally and physically difficult for him, and then they convinced him to join tvl just to add another grotesque torture scene is making me angry beyond belief. and he mentioned that tvl ep7 scene was also physically challenging because he apparently had to film most of the footage squatting (and it's... a lot of footage). i mean yeah, ofc all actors unfortunately have to deal with some discomfort on set, i just don't get why the writers needed to add another torture scene for louis which wasn't even in the book and was also unpleasant to film.

Gabs is throwing shade at Louis, by saying she only ever saw "the aftermaths" of Loustat's failmarriage:

Lestat with a slit throat slow to heal (from Claudia poisoning him)

Lestat after the 2x8 Reunion still in the SadShack with a rotting roof, dressed in a rotting robe (the same robe he wore after he popped Louis' cherry)

Gabs is saying she only ever saw the fallout, the disasters--but ironically, she'd've seen a whole lot more than that if her trifling arse had bothered visiting her son more than twice in the entire 20th century; only ever showing up when he was in shambles after Louis dumped him.

Ironically, it's a very similar attitude to Akasha: only ever seeing the worst of man(kind) and drawing the worst conclusion, because she never actually saw the full picture (book!Akasha was never really "asleep"; she would use astral projection to go into different women's minds and live vicariously through them--but she always chose women in the worst situations; and used it as confirmation bias that all women were suffering and that all men were trash).

Back to Gabs though--there's something FAR more insidious about this reveal, esp. the Mardi Gras one.

Because we see in 3x1 how she arrived when Lestat had a near-death experience, the Fang Gang having effed him up. She gave Lestat her blood to heal his injuries--in exchange for sex, ofc.

Which means that unlike the books, Lestat never went to Paris injured & weak, needing Armand's help/blood to heal from his injuries--GabriellA had already fully healed him. Meaning: Lestat arrived in Paris at FULL STRENGTH; Lestat was NOT at a physical disadvantage when he spoke to Armand and found out that Louis & Claudia were captured. Which confirmed all my deepest suspicions: Lestat did EFF ALL at the Rehearsals/Trial DELIBERATELY. 🤦‍♂️

Which explains why AMC!Lestat showed up at the Trial sharp as a tack; while in the books/movie Swamp!Lestat showed up at the Trial all effed up and weak, still injured from Claudia poisoning & stabbing him, and Louis setting him on fire--Rolin KNEW he had GabriellA in his back pocket as the reason Lestat was FINE before Paris; why he told Sam Reid Lestat was only psychologically injured; NOT physically injured.

Which is why the only time we see Lestat start getting weak & tired & shaking is AFTER he drains all his power saving Louis with "Banishment," and has no power left to save Claudia. Yeah, at the rehearsal he's being a brat and not really cooperating, but he's not being PHYSICALLY forced, and S3 did NOTHING to contradict that--

HOWEVER! ☝️🤓

There's only ONE (1) hint in 3x1 that Lestat pitched a fit at the Trial:

Cuz AMC showed us Lestat breaking the red chair (which we already saw in S2 blooper reel footage):

But there's also the unused footage of Louis(?)/Lestat(?) setting fire to Celeste's robes; that we never saw in S3. 🔥🔥🔥

TL:DR: So the Trial more than likely will get revisited EVENTUALLY, since AMC's clearly sitting on a ton of unused footage. The question is: WAS LESTAT TORTURED BY ARMAND PRE-TRIAL OR NOT? 👀

If the Trial's ever revisited to reveal that Lestat really was injured on that stage the WHOLE time, Hannah would have to do the retcon of all retcons in order to say that Armand tortured Lestat after he got to Paris, to confirm the fan theory that he did have bruises and was weak THE WHOLE TIME. It's book canon, which is why I've always HOPED that the fan theory was true (x x), but the show never gave us ANY verifiable proof to back it up (beyond the fans pointing out that there were maybe some bruises/discoloration around Lestat's wrists).

It'd be a HUGE retcon that would once again contradict everything Sam Reid said about Lestat having agency (x x) (WHEN in S3 did Lestat de Passive have any agency? 🤨); and contradict everything Assad Zaman said about Armand NOT being a mustache-twirling villain (3x7 hello? 🤨).

So yeah, who knows what's going on with this frikkin Trial. 🤷‍♂️

Like, NGL part of me doesn't even CARE anymore. Or rather, it doesn't MATTER anymore. All it would do is further confirm that:

Armand's a gigantic p.o.s. who's been lying on everyone about everything

Lestat de Passive never had a lick of control or agency--eff all that "man of action" bullcrap, if every action he takes is REACTIONARY because he's just the universe's punching bag and never makes any decisions on his own terms without someone LITERALLY controlling his physical body

It makes Big Boss even more childish & impotently anticlimactic than it already was, if Lestat's biggest Eff You to Armand is a diss track after he not only killed your daughter but also tortured you beforehand to assure that there was nothing you could do to save her--eff a song; Louis shoved him into a wall; why TF haven't you STRANGLED this man yet, Lestat!?

AMC keeps talking about the corners they wrote themselves into in S3, but we're still dealing with heaps of unanswered questions from S2--and THE TRIAL is the biggest one! 🤦‍♂️

I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen a more disastrous and quick decline in quality between seasons - or even just in between episodes - in any show ever. Like I do not know how you could be able to watch this after the two seasons of IWTV and not see it as a complete bastardization of everything that came before it. This goes beyond being a competent adaptation or handling changes of tone, this is about pissing on the ashes of your previous work. 

It truly seems that the showrunners were so wrapped up in their idea of making something entirely new and different that they forgot to make it fucking good. 

In hindsight it’s hilarious that they even bothered to change the name of the show to The Vampire Lestat in the first place, because nothing in the actual season shows any care on Lestat as an actual complex character with his own interiority. 

The show systematically refuses to ever actually bring forward a compelling narrative arc for Lestat or to look beyond his insufferable persona to show the emotional core of the character. It refuses to actually do… anything with him, actually. 

The show skims Lestat story in favour of a vapid, utterly empty and charmeless modern plot and a series of songs that are supposed to be a view of his interiority but with lyrics so awful and surface level that all they accomplish is derailing the plot further. 

The narration of his past is sped past without care, characters and events just pop up and are robbed of all narrative and emotional weight, nothing ever actually gets reevaluated or deconstructed by him - nothing means anything at all in the end. How do you adapt a book that is ultimately about identity and introspective without any of it? What is even the fucking point? 

And frankly, I don’t understand what a non book reader would understand from half of the scenes, and I don’t get why they would care about the rest. The two main examples of this are the scene of the wolves and the character of Nicky: the wolves scene is pivotal for Lestat’s character in the source material, as proved by the repetition of the name “Wolfkiller” by the other characters and, crucially, his maker - in the show the scene is given maybe less than a minute, almost nothing is shown on screen and the narration moves on from it quickly; yet, the repetition of the name Wolfkiller is maintained, even when no weight is given by the actual writing. Nicky is similar, he’s cited as the one first true love of Lestat, once again pivotal for his story; this is expressed by the show in quick words but never really shown - Nicky appears for a moment, before rapidly descending into out-of-context madness. Why would someone that hasn’t read the book care about any of this? The show doesn’t seem to care either. 

And this isn’t even mentioning the many events just… happening off-screen? Who made the show-not-tell rule passé? This is again not a matter of adapting book material, this happens with big events added by the show itself.

Lestat is then, hilariously, further rendered into a vapid character by being absolved of any possible fault by the writing. The complex relationship with Louis and Claudia? The suffering he has caused? Well actually, you see, he has the blood of Akasha in him, so it’s really unfair to judge - and Claudia did say Louis was actually the worst of the two, so it’s alright. The trial? Oh, just forget about it. Nicky? Well he never actually abandoned him or did anything, Nicky just cut his hand off because he was crazy. Marius and Akasha? Well he didn’t go look for them, Marius actually found him. The vampire apocalypse? Well yes he did bring it down, but actually, really, his mommy manipulated him into it. You just have to laugh. 

Why do the writers wanna rob Lestat of all complexity and agency so desperately? They really don’t seem to have any interest of doing that to any other character. And really, why do you want to convince me he is a moron unable to talk without a quip every three words? 

It’s also incredible how hard the writers work to disenchant you from any possible narrative. Not even the previous seasons are safe, everything is covered in fake self-aware irony - embarrassed by a detail from your own past writing? Annoyed by the constraints of a previous season? No worries, a sarcastic self referential quip will fix it all. It’s just cowardly writing all the way down.

There’s none of the subtlety or subtext of the first two seasons, and there’s certainly no sincerity to be found anywhere. 

It’s incredible how depressing it is to try to have a conversation about the quality of the writing and narration on here or any other site, because no matter what you will still get people responding with a variable of "well Lestat is narrating and he’s chaotic / well Lestat is this and that". And like, newsflash, Lestat isn’t real and Lestat is a character written by people, not an ancient spirit that has magically gained sentience; I think it would be good for everyone to remember that while desperately trying to excuse bad writing with in-universe reasons. And obviously this is a known and general fandom issue, but it seems that the concept of having unreliable narrators has opened the floodgates for finding any possible excuse.

It’s endlessly frustrating, because I know they were able to write good characters - or, at least, the writers (mostly black btw) that got sacked were. 

Both Lestat and every other character in this season is victim of a complete bastardization, both by the standards of the characterization set by the book AND by the fucking SHOW. They have the gall to reference things from the book while completely removing the context that surrounds them - because why would we want narrative coherence?  Even new characters aren’t safe, as they are simply flattened to their most uninteresting and moronic self; Gabriella being the shining example of this (and many other issues that I don't even have the strenght to bring up rn). 

This is not even mentioning the disrespect brought onto the actors of color; the choice to race swap characters and then abuse them beyond any measure and scope of the book, in an undeniably racialized manner, is beyond disgusting and it’s impossible to ignore at this point. The scene in the finale has particular connotations for both Louis and Armand in different ways (atp you cannot call what's happening to Louis anything other than lynching, and Armand, a muslim man (in the context given by the show), livestreaming a beheding in a jewish butchery specifically during Shabbat goes beyond just bad optics) and this ignoring so many other moments of writing. 

In general, Louis is no more the complex character still too close to human morality; he’s a pimp and a long string of unrepeatable racist remarks; his relationship with Claudia is not allowed to be complex anymore, he’s uniquely at fault for anything that happened to her and she never held any love for him in the first place, he’s not struggling with grief and culpability for events that also saw him as victim; he’s again at fault and must endure endless brutalization to make non-specified amends. 

Armand is no more the ineffable beauty core of his tragedy, he’s a gremlin, boring and repulsive or simply a twink; inaction is not his fatal flaw anymore, he's actually the one with an evil masterplan all along; he’s not acting out of desperation or for any deep-set reason, he’s just the cartoony psychopath of any mediocre show, evil for the sake of evil. 

How can anyone not see this as the ultimate insult from a show that was built from day one on the shoulders of actors and writers of color? 

How is every fan not losing their minds over it all. How are so many people uncritically loving S3. What the fuck man.

Claudia tells him that she hates him more than her rapist and the vampires who killed her. She essentially tells him (and Lestat) that she is damned to wander alone in nothingness for eternity. And Louis just... shrugs it off. The daughter he spent 77+ years mourning tells him that she hates him and that she will be miserable forever, and his reaction is essentially a shrug.

And honestly, it all leads back to the Bruce's storyline earlier this season. I remember watching an interview with Jacob where he mentioned that he was uncomfortable with the whole "Louis is avenging Claudia by killing Bruce" storyline because he didn't feel like it was something Louis would do. He said there was a lot of back and forth between him and Rolin about it, and Rolin told him it was necessary for Louis's character arc this season. Like I said in one of my previous posts, the Bruce storyline was a trap.

The Bruce arc served three narrative purposes. First, it gave Louis a reason to read Claudia's diary entries describing her assault. This reflects poorly on Louis, especially when combined with the fact that Claudia herself never wanted him to kill Bruce in the first place. As a result, Louis comes across as self-serving to the audience. Second, it provided another opportunity to push the "Lesdaughter" narrative by drawing a parallel between Claudia's assault and Lestat's, reinforcing the idea that Lestat understands Claudia in ways Louis supposedly never could. Third, it gave Louis the opportunity to throw in Claudia's face that she should be grateful he killed her rapist, provoking shocked reactions from both Claudia and Lestat. That's another shared moment between them, another way to fuel the "Lesdaughter" narrative, and an opportunity to show that Louis's love for Claudia and the grief he carried over her death were more about himself than about her. For Rolin, Hannah, and co. , killing Bruce becomes the perfect vehicle for elevating the supposedly "bond" between Claudia and Lestat while casting Louis in the worst possible light.

The problem is that this only works if you're willing to disregard not only the events of seasons 1 and 2, but also the events that took place earlier this season. Louis is still grieving Claudia. Her loss continues to define him throughout this season. He becomes fixated on Regina because she reminds him of Claudia. He can't let go. He can't move on. As a last ditch attempt to find closure, he even arranges a séance. And what does he get in return? He learns that the daughter he has been mourning for decades hates him more than she hates her rapist and the vampires who killed her. On top of that, he finds out that she has not found peace and probably never will. That should devastate him. It should completely shatter him. This is the same Louis whose grief over Claudia defined entire chapters of his life. The same Louis who tried to end his life because of his grief over her. Yet after the séance, he basically shrugs it off. Minutes later, he's discussing his future with Lestat. And I'm supposed to take this as confirmation that it was never really about Claudia, rather than blatant and shameless character assassination?

Can we be serious for a moment? How does that even make any sense? Even if you argue that Louis's grief was primarily rooted in guilt and self-serving, hearing that his daughter has not found peace and probably never will should still send him into a spiral. It should wreck him emotionally because it confirms his worst fears. It means there is no forgiveness, no redemption, no closure, and no possibility that Claudia's suffering will ever end. The séance doesn't ease his guilt; it validates it. So whether you view Louis's grief as genuine love for Claudia or as guilt over failing her, the end result should be the same: he should be emotionally shattered by what he hears. Instead, the narrative barely pauses before moving on to Lestat and him discussing their future together. That's why I can't take the séance as some insightful revelation about Louis. The emotional consequences simply don't match the scale of what he's being told. The daughter whose death has haunted him for decades tells him she hates him more than her rapist, tells him she's suffering, tells him she'll never find peace, and somehow all Louis takes away from that is that he needs to work on himself.

This show has been sabotaging Loumand's relationship from the beginning. They refused to have Jacob and Assad do any interviews together despite that part of the story largley focusing on their relationship and Louis/Clauda. Loumand had some of the most romantic moments from IWTV novel, some of the best lines (one of them that these writers stole to give to Loustat). Anyone who tries to tell us that the books were the same, they're fucking lying. The show wanted to destroy them even further by having Louis tortured in SF and AGAIN in s3? Book Armand would have NEVER subjected Louis to this. When he learned that Louis was kidnapped in the last book, he beat his fists bloody and freaked the fuck out! Louis was emotional and nearly in tears to see Armand alive and safe. They loved each other even after breaking up! But the moment this show cast black and brown actors cast they decided that they could inflict more brutaility on the black character in his relationships, dismiss everything he had suffered through and frame the South Asian man as a "nazi", the very same show they had a character call him a slur used against Romani people.

The show inserted Dreamstat in Paris Loumand scenes and tried to make it seem like they were each other's rebounds for Loustat, Bullshit! Louis and Armand CHOSE each other and that was the tragedy of Claudia, the very reason why Armand felt competitive with her and got her out of the picture because he wanted to be with Louis. When they had their Dubai breakup, you can actually hear Jassad acting their asses off with how much Armand was panicking, how hurt and angry Louis was and this stupid show decided to focus on Daniel's laptop issues instead like WTF. Writers didn't have to make these two endgame but their dynamic was complicated and interesting and we could have gotten more compelling interactions post divorce, Jacob and Assad were talented MOC with beautiful onscreen chemistry, but fuckass Rolin and this creative team decided to waste all of it because GOD FORBID we decide to like a couple without at least one white person. They couldn't even show Louis and Lemuel having scenes for more than one episode like that's how ridiculous this is.

I hope Jacob and Assad find better projects and leave this shit behind because viewers could tell how uncomfortable it was for these actors to sit there and listen to Rolin and Hannah and that host whatever her name is spout more bullshit during AFTER DARK about why Louis was so awful and deserved punishment. These white idiots are fucking up and expecting the POC to justify their terrible decisions for this show. I'm beyond done.