make them in love

this was not meant to be a blog about gay vampires and yet she/they/28

[coldeveryseason]

one of iwtv's key narrative themes was "love and abuse can coexist in the same relationship" but tvl has seemingly replaced that with "love redeems abuse"- instead of engaging with the weight of louis as a survivor of antiblack violence/gaslighting/psychological abuse or engaging with the weight of lestat as a survivor of incestuous sexual/emotional abuse, the narrative condemns loumand and gabistat bc armand and gabriella didn't truly love their victims. the show has this really weird and problematic idea that as long as there's love in a relationship, that can make up for all kinds of harm and violence...but if there's a lack of love that's the breaking point. and i just find that really weak as a theme and disconnected from the emotional reality of abuse survivors- it also feels like a cop-out for the writers to avoid confronting the nature of the abuse of either fan favorite (armand) or author's darling (gabriella) characters.

textually engaging with the fact that armand is a lyncher and the violence he does to louis is often directly pulled from the violence done to black people under enslavement and segregation would mean the nonblack writers would have to textually engage with blackness as a central theme and question their own impulses like why the show disproportionately and voyeuristically depicts the brutalization of black bodies- textually engaging with the fact that gabriella has been raping her own son for over 200 years would mean the misogynistic writers would have to engage with the subject of sexual abuse and assault beyond "louis the pimp" and question their own impulses like why so many of gabriella's scenes with lestat are played for taboo titillation or "comic relief". it's a lot easier to sidestep all of that and go "oh these relationships were fucked up and doomed bc there's no real love there".

and this reductive and anti-survivor take on "love conquers all" even reflects in how the writers approach relationships that aren't meant to be narrative dead-ends. the lack of care in how they wrote loustat this season makes a lot of sense when you realize the writers think they can depict lestat doing and saying all kinds of shit to louis and it doesn't matter, they don't have to show lestat expressing true contrition or growth bc they love each other (or so we're told) abuse doesn't matter if there's love ok

[bringonthemuses]

One thing that is bothering me about some of the changes in The Vampire Lestat is that they remove Lestat's agency and recklessness.

In the books he doesn't pretend he's a human playing a vampire, he says he's a vampire and spills vampire secrets in his songs. Most people just believe he's a human cosplaying a vampire from a somewhat popular book.

He seeks out Marius for years, leaving various messages for him before Nicki's death and Gabriella's abandonment lead him to going underground. Marius doesn't dig him up because Akasha told him to.

And in the books Lestat goes to play his violin for Those Who Must Be Kept behind Marius' back, he knows it's a bad idea but does it anyway, he can't help himself. In the show Marius shoves the violin in his hands and tells him to play and Lestat says "I don't know how".

He does the concert because he wants to and because he wants the vampires to redirect their anger from Louis to him. In the show he's doing it for Gabriella. Even the hunting of the wolves in the show is pushed by Gabriella.

Book Lestat rarely thinks before he does anything and if he does the thought is "this is probably a bad idea" before doing it anyway. It's an aspect of his character that I really love and I miss.

[blackjame]

https://www.instagram.com/staydancingdave/?hl=en

Patricide (Button Poetry)

Dave Harris, 2019. Harris' stellar debut collection of poetry takes a nuanced look at the complexities of black masculinity.

Kearney Blvd. | A. Zell Williams | Substack

I'm A. Zell Williams and Kearney Blvd. was the first place I called home, hints the name. I'm a playwright, TV writer, podcaster, a dog dad,

https://www.instagram.com/azellwill/

https://www.instagram.com/benphilippe/?hl=en

[bicreature]

Episode 7 early (and possibly last) review:

This is a very anticlimatic and downright incomplete feeling episode. It's now clear this is a 'part 1' and not a whole story. I wouldn't call it even a half season, it feels more like an intro

This episode kind of feels like they realized 'oh shit this is the finale already, we need to do some character and plot development' and then rushed quickly through something that doesn't feel earned or even make sense. The only progress this episode brings is Lestat realizing his mother is evil. The last line of the last scene in the current timeline being him screaming at Gabriella 'you fucking monster' could've been good if Gabriella as a character and Lestat's relationship with her hadn't been so poorly depicted

This episode has essentially three sections: Lestat, Louis/Armand/Regina and Daniel/Talamasca and they're all bad in different ways

Daniel has become an incredibly bland and irritating character. He's bowling, he whines to Lestat's head, he's randomly says something offensive about autistic people. Alex is there and does nothing. Justin Kirk shows up and chews some scenery, the show seems to expect people to know that Talamasca is supporting the great conversion (i had forgotten that despite watching that spinoff). Daniel's 'companionship' with Armand and his sudden indifference to Louis makes no sense and i'm not sure does the show know it doesn't make sense

Louis and Armand scenes are some of the most violently antiblack scenes i've seen in my life. Despite having read descriptions beforehand nothing could prepare you for it and i still feel nauseous. Just to make clear Louis' entire screentime in this 54 minutes episode consists of him being brutalized. They wouldn't show Armand harming Lestat or Nicki like in the books but they had him do a literal snuff film of torturing Louis and Regina. Unless i missed it Lestat's severed head isn't even shown (!) but almost every time we see Louis' face it's his head on a spike

Jacob, Assad and Delainey are all phenomenal of course but the writing of this storyline is horrendous. Armand's words and actions are inconsistent with his earlier characterization and even from a scene to scene. I don't think this episode is necessarily framing Armand's actions as 'right' but i feel it's framing them as understandable and redeemable. Armand decapitates Louis and sticks his head on a spike and threatens to sews it to Regina's body and brands his body like a slave and broadcasts his torture for people's enjoyement, and the writers consider this something the characters can come back from, to the point that in the future auction scene Louis doesn't appear scared of him and is smiling at him. Magnus and Gabriella are considered pure monsters for what they do to Lestat, but things that are done to black characters are considered forgivable. Like 1.05 which was also written by Hannah Moscovitch and included extensive graphic domestic violence againt Louis

Despite the extremely hateful racist treatment of Louis in this episode he's actually depicted in a way that makes him seem better. It's revealed that Armand carefully engineered the situation with Regina and it's not likely what Louis would've pursued it otherwise. Louis is genuinely worried about Regina and ready to sacrifice himself for her. Even when Armand did all this to him he still feels sympathy for him, he cries when talking about Armand being abused as a child, and i think it's meant to be genuine especially when Armand is satisfied by it

One of the most heartbreaking things in this episode (most things just made me angry) is when Regina thinking they're going to die sincerely tells Louis that she liked him even though he was a bit messed up. I think it's one of the only times this season anyone has show kindness to Louis

Everything with Lestat left me just frustrated and tired. The concept of Lestat sitting at the long table where his fledglings and makers judge him is great. In practice it's mostly lackluster and doesn't go anywhere. Couldn't even enjoy Louis and Nicki commenting and sitting next to each other. The most important things aren't addressed. Lestat in the end is seemingly still in denial even about those things that are said. The table scene is presumably from Lestat's subconscious. Gabriella says 'kills the daughter, saves the pimp' which once again implies that he actively wanted to kill Claudia when he went to Paris, and that he views Louis with disdain, which is also shown in the earlier part of the scene. Everything towards Louis this season is spiteful

Because this season ended up being a part 1 Lestat's arc is interrupted and vague. This episode makes me think they likely do have an intention to explore the unsaid things later. You can literally see him go back into denial and put his arrogant 'i'm a monster so what' mask back on in the hallucination. The last line of the season set in the future being Lestat saying 'the fault was mine. all mine' is poignant. The problem is that i don't give a shit. This show has used up all the goodwill i had for it. I don't care if literally everything in Lestat's narration is revealed to be fake. This season still remains one of the most racist, misogynist and anti-victim pieces of television i've seen and in addition it's just terrible storytelling. This used to be my favorite show and s3/tvl is unrecognizable to me. It's just a big pile of nothing. The inevitable s4 can't get any better unless the current writers' room is changed and yes, that includes the showrunner

[gaypeople]

people focusing on the writers feeding them with “transfem lestat” while ignoring the vehement antiblackness they're putting the black gay man through kinda perfectly encapsulates the priorities of white queer fandom

[coldeveryseason]

also this is a secondary concern compared to the pervasive and gleeful antiblackness on the show, but lestat's line in s3ep7 that feeds into transfem readings feels like another example of this season going for "tell, don't show" and expecting fanon and fannish interpretation to carry the weight of what they aren't depicting onscreen. the s1ep7 marie antoinette drag scene is one of my fave in the whole show- and i mentioned before s3 aired that after rolin cited rocky horror and hedwig and the angry inch as s3 influences back in 2024, the lack of rockstat drag onstage felt like a glaring omission and was possibly tied to amc's corporate queerphobia given the obvious double standards in how they depict m/m and f/f v m/f intimacy. if the show wanted to make the idea of lestat being genderqueer or some form of transfeminine firmly canon, we could've seen a whole arc play out in s3 especially with gabriella coming back into lestat's life. imagine if drag was a consistent part of rockstat's look and stage performance, and esp around gabriella he insisted it was all for show, meaningless, he was just clowning, and as her control over lestat's music career and lestat himself increased we saw her steering him toward more conventionally cismasc presentation...and then we got hit with the quiet honesty of the line where lestat admits he does wish he was a woman sometimes as a resolution to a season-wide narrative that's primed for further exploration in s4. (this would also be in the hypothetically well-written s3 where lestat faces what he did to louis and claudia more firmly too, instead of 6-7 eps of wheel-spinning and darvo, and safe to say he would not be saying this to the apparition of louis' brother come to comfort him while louis is being tortured). they could've pulled on late 18th century ideas of gender that would've been formative to lestat (male performers performed fem roles then too- show him playing a woman when he was human and having a euphoric experience, show him interested as a child in the markers of femininity and womanhood that gabriella possesses and she rejects etc) being gnc/genderqueer/nonbinary/transfem/gnc (whatever your interpretation of lestat is) in 18th century france and then the early 20th century new orleans and then north america in 2025 are extremely different- your lead is an immortal vampire who's lived through all those eras, explore that.

but instead of doing any of that, instead of engaging with lestat's gender in any kind of arc, the show adds a throwaway line (in a season of throwaway lines) that can be interpreted depending on viewer bias as 1) lestat genuinely expressing some yearning for womanhood and being trans canonically or 2) still-cis lestat just saying he wishes he and louis had a heterosexual relationship to begin with bc it would've made their lives easier- like even though their relationship would've still been illegal if they were a m/f couple, they at least would've had paul and maybe the rest of the de pointe du lacs' acceptance- and plenty of casual viewers are gonna walk away with the 2nd impression. (and speaking of the de pointe du lacs, louis mentioning he was molested is another one of the throwaway lines with paradigm-shifting impact that the show doesn't care to explore in any depth- why bother developing things onscreen when fans will do the work for them and praise the writers as genius for hinting at depth instead of portraying depth onscreen??)

so many choices this season feel like the writers checking off boxes to confirm fan theories bc they seem cynically aware that a lot of people are watching the show less out of care for good storytelling but more to "win" whatever stan or ship war they're personally invested in. they're lines and moments meant to be screenshotted and shared on socmed for the fandom to talk about, pithy quips that can fit into 1-2 screenshots in subtitles and reposted with more pithy quips. the show doesn't care to explore lestat's gender in any deeper form but it does want fans losing their minds over some form of trans lestat being confirmed (with plausible deniability bc amc is the queerphobia network now)- the show doesn't care to explore devil's minion in any deeper form or show how armand and daniel started plotting together but it does want fans losing their minds over past devil's minion being confirmed, etc.

and this is only if you try looking at the arc (and lack thereof) of lestat's relationship to gender in isolation- when you put it back in the wider context of this episode and this season's antiblackness and the nonblack writers' choice to have paul's spirit (even if he isn't meant to be "real" or at least not represent paul's real thoughts) praise and comfort lestat while louis gets graphically tortured by his lynching director in the same episode. (and the white showrunner has already admitted he felt more for armand than louis in that scene and claimed the "apology" louis was coerced into via torture to be some kinda real moment of understanding, rather than louis doing what we saw him do in s2 and try to appease armand when he's helpless and armand holds his life in his hands.) like with the merrick scene in s3ep6, it doesn't matter what in-universe rationale for these choices are, it doesn't matter whether any of this gets revisited or recontextualized with "oh ghost claudia was lying just to hurt louis' "oh paul's spirit wasn't even real" "oh we were totally tryna critique armand's violent antiblackness" bc the problem here comes down to the nonblack writers' decisions and the choices they made in the real world when crafting this story. this show has had a persistent problem since s1 of depicting the onscreen brutalization of black bodies with far more vividness than it does nonblack bodies, and if a nonblack main character is doing the brutalization (lestat, armand) you aren't supposed to hold it against them or expect these choices to have longterm narrative consequences- the camera lingers on claudia and charlie's charred and "melting" faces as they burn but when daciana, nicki, magnus, bruce, antoinette or madeleine are burning, the camera's far quicker to cut away. and this is a deliberate choice- they weren't just pointing the camera at people spontaneously combusting, they had to allocate an effects budget and invest time and energy into showing black bodies burning with graphic detail. they had both delainey and roxane in the vfx makeup chair for their characters' murder scene, but only claudia's death was shown vividly while madeleine burning was a few brief seconds of ash scattering away.

and i simply can't enjoy any form of this "jangling keys in front of the fandom to validate popular interpretations/ships/theories" writing bc it's such a cynical bid from writers who want and expect their viewers to be satisfied with crumbs that we build elaborate headcanons around instead of expecting any form of depthful storytelling or care from them, especially when it comes to their black characters. fans being content with the show just going down a checklist to validate or debunk specific theories and fans not demanding anything more of the writers than perfunctory expository dialogue is exactly what this writing team is counting on.

also theo is right bc if your only reaction to people criticizing the nonblack writers' choices is to be like "neener neener femstat canon" (black folks critiquing the antiblackness and sharing their reactions to the show depicting this level of gratuitous racialized violence toward black bodies have already received comments along those lines) when that has nothing to do with the antiblackness being discussed here, that's ghoulish. like read the room

[kinkydorah]

SHEILA ATIM as Akasha THE VAMPIRE LESTAT

[raibura]

Is season 3 of interview with a vampire good

Yes

No

Results

Voting ended onJul 5

[claudiadpdl]

im gonna hold some of yalls hand with a napkin in between when i say this but......a complete lack of black writers is what's to blame for a lot of what's wrong with this season

[dimorisik]

[gettingmyselfintrouble]

Some people's upset around episode 2 probably seems a bit overdone. And in the general sense, of course it is, this is a show about vampires. But, in the sense of adapting the story, not so much. And I debated myself on waiting for more of the season to play out but, well.

There's a huge thread that weaves pretty much half this book together and that's the relationship between Lestat and Gabrielle. From the first page in 1700s France, until Marius finds Lestat in Egypt, the same story is told twice. The details are different, but the beats are the same. They are mirrors. I made a visual aid.

Gabrielle has admitted to contributing to Lestat's imprisonment in his home due to her selfishness. She could not let him go because of her need of him. He wasn't free until she atoned with the sacrifice of letting him go, and with him the last vestiges of her inheritance and former life.

Lestat's horrors with Magnus serve as amplified metaphors for Gabrielle's with the Marquis. A supernatural speed run of Gothic conventions. Gabrielle's turning then becomes an inverse of Lestat's birth. He is no longer alone in his suffering. But that doesn't complete the cycle. Despite the maker/fledgling "neutralization" of the parent/child dynamic, Lestat still needs a parental figure (read: someone who will teach him) but cannot and will not ask it of Gabrielle now.

He tries to step into the role of lover instead to maintain their companionship, but this ongoing need for a parent persists, expressed through his relentless search for Marius as they travel.

As the visual aid alludes, the reason for the breakdown between them and their separation is the fundamental difference between Gabrielle's fantasy and Lestat's nightmare.

Lestat is traumatized by his fight with the wolves and compares it to the "terrible" dreams he's had where he goes room to room killing the father and brothers. Gabrielle consoles him, saying that violent urge does not have to be the only way to be free.

Gabrielle then offers her own fantasy of freedom. Hers, however, is not a nightmare of giving in to the madness of murder, but of bodily liberation and disregard for her roles as wife and mother.

Vampirism has fulfilled the fantasy for Gabrielle. She is able to fully embrace her rebirth and power as a vampire, shedding her role as wife and mother (mostly).

Vampirism has robbed Lestat of his fantasies. Having his nightmare realized does not finally sever him from his humanity, but causes him to cling tighter, running to the very father that had imprisoned them both. The only other being left that knew him in his former life.

Gabrielle asks him if he can let go of his mortal life and all he was robbed of and embrace living as these new beings, away from their roles among humans. He cannot. Just as much as he can no longer ask her to stay in a facsimile of her mortal life because of his selfish need of her. She isn't truly free until he can let her go.

His following burial and exhumation then act as another rebirth, with Marius balming the parental wound.

So if you make Gabrielle a villain who kills the family, sexually assaults her son, and can't let go of her hold on him, I don't see how you capture all of that.

[endiness]

Yet memory plays its tricks. Maybe I imagined it, his last invitation, and the anguish after. The weeping. I do know that as the months passed he was out there again. I heard him from time to time just walking those old Garden District streets. And I wanted to call to him, to tell him that it was a lie I’d spoken to him, that I did love him. I did. — The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice

[endiness]

the tale of the body thief // prince lestat and the realms of atlantis

[endiness]

"On Monday last I received the word that the peasants and tenant farmers had risen against your father’s house. Your brothers, their wives and children, and all who tried to defend the castle were slain before it was looted." — THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, Anne Rice

[endiness]

— THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, Anne Rice

[desertfangs]

Hot take: The Vampire Chronicles books are good, actually, and fans of the books are allowed to be disappointed that the adaption has chosen to do its own thing instead of including more book stuff.

[rosiefingereddawn]

I feel like glossing over the ways in which Lestat can be cheerful, Lestat can experience wonder is one of the worst parts of this episode. His love for the books in the monastery, his love for theater, they are taken from him by his family. Instead of showing the abuse of being held captive, the strength and stiffling in fully embracing what his mother wants him to be, the hunter, we get this over the top abuse scene bc it's what, easier to fit into a few minutes? I feel like the audience that knows just the show has gotten nothing of Lestat, compared to the beginning of TVL which is such a revelation

[gettingmyselfintrouble]

thinking about my copyright theory and what the scene actually ended up being and feeling like maybe Jacob is genuinely too pure hearted. He was so shook by Louis being petty, meanwhile I was ready for him to be downright devious and loving it. He's a cotton ball boy and I love him so much.