Me complaining about the racism and anti-blackness again + Armand character assassination + mischaracterization of everyone + state of the show as a whole again. Sorry it's been really frustrating
I've been feeling like such a hater lol but I really can't help it. I try to look at the positives of this season but the problems are so big for me that I can't even bring myself to say anything good about it. I wish my problems were only with the lack of connections to the book (which is already a big enough problem for an adaptation of a book, and at least the other 2 seasons followed the general beats of the book even if even then I raised an eyebrow at certain choices), but the racism is just so so jarring. This narrative that Louis needs to apologize to everyone, that he's selfish and cruel and needs to be humbled, after two whole seasons of him being abused and confronting his mistakes, being honest about them, and finally getting graphically tortured and branded (when in the previous episodes he is compared to a slave, of course) when we are never even allowed to see Lestat's severed head beyond the cutting scene. And honestly? It's making me look back and wonder if there was any point to that horrible scene in 1x5 or if it really was just supposed to be shocking and graphic, or if everything that went down at the trial was just meant to be that either (especially when it's never properly addressed again). We never get to see the white characters bodies be brutalized in this way, and Lestat's faults are never constantly brought up in this way. Episode 7 goes so much into "Louis the pimp", but we don't keep hearing "Lestat the domestic abuser" at every turn. The mentions of his violence are graceful ("grotesque love") and his faults are pointed out but end in a positive note for his overall character.
Even with the handling of Armand's abuse vs. Lestat's abuse (both as abusers and as victims) shit's different, because Lestat gets to be a person who made mistakes but is just in so much suffering and torture but deep down has a big heart, meanwhile Armand becomes cartoonishly evil and his trauma is constantly mocked, except for when he tortures Louis into saying anything touching enough for him to let him go.
And well, to touch on Armand, it feels really, really good (/sarcasm) to see your favorite character, who is brown by the way, and has never had anything to do with that in the books, get constantly associated with NAZISM of all things, when book characters who do express thoughts and ideas that could be more closely associated with white-supremacy (and who are white in the show) are just not.
Small but related tangent, but I feel like the race change made to Armand doesn't even get touched upon too much since we barely speak of his past, barely get into any of his experiences having been brown during nazi-occupied France, they avoid talking about religion with him altogether when that's a huge part of his book counterpart. We hear Nicki call him a slur first thing he sees him in season one, but this - or anything surrounding it, since I'm assuming this is nothing unusual for the place and time period he's in at that moment or even from where he comes from - is also never brought up again or discussed.
So anyway, they make him brown, barely mention anything about that at all, associate him with nazism 3 times and then use him to violate and torture the black main character of the previous season, who has already been constantly put down and humiliated the whole season and who he has previously already lynched and abused. Armand has become a charicature mix of his character in the previous two seasons and his book counterpart, a cliff-hanger machine, mustache-twirling cartoon villain, and worst of all, a device the writers used to further humiliate and torture Louis, who they clearly have contempt for. And considering the fact that he branded him, and that Lestat says Armand did "much more damage than Akasha ever did", and that he's running a cult again for some fucking reason, and that he's been, again, associated with nazis multiple times, I'm really scared of what the fuck they have planned for him.
This last episode of the After Dark show, which I haven't watched but seen many screenshots of, is also terribly upsetting. Rolin and Hannah implying that Louis "must have done something too for Lestat and Armand to abuse him this way" is just incredibly fucking disgusting. No words. It's sounding like the idiots saying that "Louis also abused Lestat for not having sex with him while depressed, so this makes the beating the shit out of him and dropping him from the skies not that bad" back in S1.
I'll probably not be watching season 4. Unless the writers' room changes significantly, or that I see any proof that things have gotten better. But even if it does, nothing will undo what the fuck this season was. Even if they end up going with some stupid bullshit like "it was all a dream" or "Lestat lied about/made up a lot of stuff" (doubt it, since he's not Louis), it will still not make it good or better.
And Daniel isn't acting like himself either, reduced to stupid bitchy comic relief, Gabriella has been made into a misogynistic charicature that has nothing to do with the books, Marius is also nothing like the books, Lestat I'm not even going to say anything to not extend this but also not good... I think the only character I have no complaints about is Magnus, and you know shit's bad when I'm consoling myself with MAGNUS, a character I never gave a single fuck about ever in my life.
*correcting that I think Hannah actually said that "Louis used Armand" or something like that, which is still stupid as fuck and also isn't something that was ever shown (unless you count those fics written by that subset DM monogamists who despise Louis as cannon material, but then we'd be getting more than like a minute of DM screen time so I don't think so lol).
