Emotionally attached to fictional characters

[baker-chan-senpai]

armand is so kind 🥰

[ourholiestlove]

the seance scene... the more i turn it around in my head the more insulting and disgusting it is. not only it isn't given the weight it needs by making louis and lestat get over it so quickly and bonding over it (!!!!!) but it also destroys the tragedy of louis and claudia's dynamic. saying that claudia preferred lestat to louis and only chose louis to run away with her because he was easier to manipulate completely undermines the love claudia had for him. they had a complex relationship! claudia hated him and loved him so deeply all throughout her life. she loved him so much! she came back to rue royale because she knew he couldn't get out of that abusive relationship by himself. because she wanted to save him. she nurtered and took care of him for months after the drop. she tolerated lestat for him! even after he chose armand over her in paris, she still visited him with madeleine. she screamed his name in the trial after they dragged him away.

louis and claudia's relationship is tragic and doomed. it's not black and white! she hated him for what he did and how he failed her and she loved him deeply! that's her father/brother she couldn't save, who would never choose her first, who would always put someone else before her. that's why it hurts! it's crazy to even think she hates louis and lestat the same amount

retconning this to portray lestat in a better light makes no sense, because it doesn't even make him more likeable. instead of justifying his abuse or revealing that the poc characters were actually lying/manipulating each other they should've made him acknowledge his actions and look at what he did to those he loved in the eye. this is disgusting, cowardly and bad writing

[mommys-boy-lestat]

RIP Nicholas de Lenfent, you would’ve loved modern day antipsychotics and mood stabilizers ❤️

[lilacs-in-the-wind]

The showrunners chose to make Louis and Claudia black and experience life in the Jim crow era. They chose to do the full race swap in season 1, not just making the characters but also the story black. They chose to racialize the violence that both Louis and Claudia face throughout the first season. No one was forcing their hands and they got praised for the stuff they did in the first two seasons, for bringing in the added nuance of systemic racism. So why should I as an audience member of colour give them any grace when they choose to write dialogues containing numerous racialized and gendered micro aggressions not just towards Louis or Claudia but also towards minor characters like Dee or Lemuel who weren't supposed to exist as they are (black) in the show?? Why is Daniel (a white man) who is supposed to be a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist who was lecturing Louis on his own story about the racism he faced referring to him as a "bucket of Louisiana fried chicken"?? Why is Armand textually belittled for being a CSA victim while Lestat is endlessly provided with grace and understanding in the text of the show for his victimhood?? Who thought it was alright to adapt a scene from the books involving white characters talking about parental betrayal and insert racially charged dialogues (that too old school racist shit not even the n word) when it was unnecessary to preserve the nuance of the scene?? Why is this show denying the racialized nature of domestic violence that they chose to portray in S1 ??? (Lestat getting mildly annoyed that Louis didn't enjoy going to the operas in nola when he had to act as Lestat's servant to be allowed in tf??) Why is Gabriella like that??

I cannot help but look at this season of the show as a sign of the times tbh. IWTV aired during a very liberal era of entertainment and now that fascism and white supremacy are on the rise everywhere white entertainers have become comfortable enough to fall back into old habits. Never thought this show in particular would have this problem when I watched the first season but it is what it is I guess

[antigone-deactivated]

i think one major problem with TVL (among others) is the framing device being lestat's recordings instead of daniel's documentary. the use of the interview as a framing device in s1 and s2 allowed the story to delve into multiple POVs (daniel's, louis', armand's, and to some extent claudia's as well, via her diaries) as well as enabling the narrative to explicitly challenge the unreliable narration of the characters, which works beautifully for the themes of the story ("memory is a monster"). lestat's recordings in contrast lock us into lestat POV and lestat POV alone, and make it so that this POV goes completely narratively unquestioned. (and note the racist double standard here, of the white character's POV not being subjected to ANY narrative scrutiny while racialized POVs are. if this is the unreliable narrator show, then ALL narrators should be scrutinized). not only does this completely drop the ball on the show's theme of memory, it also makes every scene that does not have lestat in it just. extremely confusing. this is briefly addressed in ep2 but like?? are we nonetheless expected to ignore the framing device and take those scenes at mostly face value? alternately are we supposed to interpret all of them as lestat's fanfic of events he only knows about second-hand? HOW does lestat know about what happened when he wasnt there? if its all supposed to be second-hand info and/or we don't have any idea of how lestat knows any of this, presented from lestat's POV alone, how are we supposed to trust ANY of it? it could be argued that these questions will be answered in s4, but even if that's true, this nonetheless makes s3's framing both overly contrived and less coherent. the choice of lestat's recordings as a a framing device also makes the existence of daniel's documentary pointless, and robs daniel of any meaningful plot relevance or narrative purpose (armand could absolutely have Done All That without daniel's involvement, but honestly dont even get me started on armand and how they mishandled him this season). using daniel's documentary and associated interviews as the framing device as we'd initially anticipated would have allowed more complex, multi-POV storytelling in line with seasons 1 and 2, enabled a continued commentary on the theme of memory, circumvented the framing problem that arises in all scenes where lestat is absent, AND given daniel a proper narrative purpose. and i truly cannot come up with any reason why they'd make lestat's recordings the framing device instead - other than not wanting the white character's POV to be challenged by the narrative.

[antigone-deactivated]

speaking as an armand de doctor frankenstein enthusiast, i feel like the louis & armand finale scene could have been So much better if only armand had simply taken louis captive (instead of decapitating him) and tortured a beheaded lestat in front of him instead. because the two main black characters being the ONLY ones who are brutalized onscreen sure is A Choice (its racist. the choice is racist). but as much as it would have been nice to have armand and louis have a talk on equal footing, I do think it is in character for armand to not want to have that conversation with louis in ANY scenario except in one where he has all of the power (especially after being humiliated by lestat and daniel in his attempts to apologize to them). so armand torturing a beheaded lestat in front of louis instead has the obvious benefit of making the scene less racist, while also giving armand power over both of them in the scenario, and also: (a) forcing lestat to finally confront the armand-shaped elephant in his own narrative (b) setting up a scene where armand and lestat are forced to reflect on the similarities between their sexual-abuse related traumas, thereby making it a scene where all three of them are faced with the fact that theyve used each other's sexual abuse trauma as a means to hurt the other (c) furthering loustat's relationship development by setting up both an inversion of the s2e7 trial where louis has the (limited) power to save lestat AND a parallel to the s2e7 magnus' tower scene only THIS time louis admits lestat is the love of his life right in front of lestat (d) NOT making regina's torture be a part of the scene, thereby getting rid of the out-of-the-blue, overly-contrived, and out of character "armand set up the whole regina situation to manipulate louis" plot point and also again making the scene less racist. like we could have had it all. alas they decided to be racist instead

[thevampirealina]

i hate that the regina thing is now also armand's fault. as my beloved pointed out it cheapens that plot line. let louis take responsibility for his actions towards claudia/regina

[nestikogarana]

[blairhousemd]

that slutty bun. you knew what you were doing.

[lexdelioncourt]

Eric really said "we're here, we're queer, give us our own show so we can finally bang uninterrupted."

(Also talking excitedly of Daniel's future and not giving any indication he's leaving the show so jot that down)

Source

[sillystigmata]

The divorced couple of all time.

[alinaastarkov]

“I saw good in you. For a while.”

[lestatdelioncuort]

Assad Zaman as THE VAMPIRE ARMAND

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT | 3.07 "THE FAILURES"

[atsumarii]

what if frank does have adhd and/or dyslexia but he was never diagnosed and never noticed anything "off" huh. bet you didn't think of that, HUH RICHARD.

[holyblanchett]

Guillermo Del Toro reposting Frankenstein yuri art on main... oh carmilla you are next!!!

[cacartoon]

I did my best

[deathstars]

HELLO ! have you thought about Van Gogh’s First Steps today ?

[deathstars]

Here you go. This world is beautiful. Humans are beautiful. I love you