IWTVL S3 Ep5 Musings - Akasha's Monologue (Pt1 - Hell hath no fury....)
"She has Lestat's blood. If they do anything, it's come back with a vengeance."
-- Delainey Hayles on Claudia's rage (Insider Interview, 2x7)
Like Rolin Jones said in the 3x5 After Dark, most of what Akasha says is a bunch of questions--no objective truths at all; just thoughts & concerns & puzzles & problems. But by the end of her speech, what's so scary is that she's not asking questions anymore; she's proclaiming HER Divine Right of Queens / Mandate of Heaven.
And what's so DEEPLY ironic about this entire monologue/tirade is that Akasha THINKS she's the victim; speaking for the downtrodden girls/women of the world who've been controlled/"arranged" by men (eg: Amel). She thinks she's the one who can lead the righteous revolution as the god(dess) reclaiming women's agency/power, and answer their (read: her) entire list of questions with blood. If you're not asked and you're not answered, SHE will decide. But this crazy heifer was NEVER the victim. 💀 And it's no surprise that Hannah Moscovitch wrote this episode, cuz she LOVES problematizing women's agency as abuse victims at the hands of men--which is why she said GabriellA's her favorite to write in S3. And this show is all about exploring how men can be the victims of abuse, too; at the hands of other men, or even women. 💀
But what I'm most worried about is if AMC will handle this with the sensitivity it deserves, when already I'm seeing flaws in the writing that is primed & ready to either blame Amel for all of these vampires' wrongdoings ("the Devil made me do it~!"), or worse: Blame Women/Eve for the Fall of Man; under the guise of giving women more agency at the expense of STRIPPING men of their own agency, to make everything a woman's fault (I haVe THe BLoOD oF AkAshA iN Me~!; YoU WeRe A TerRriblE mOthEr~!, etc).
We'll have to see if AMC sticks to the book canon, where Akasha was a young girl in an arranged marriage to the foreign king, Enkil. Dragged from her homeland (I assume AMC will change it to Nubia), Akasha was stuck living in Egypt, a strange AF kingdom with religious customs she found totally backwards & barbaric ("in the old ways and in the old laws, this was arranged...into the land where the dead are kept"). We don't know if she ever liked/loved Enkil (highly doubtful); or if their biological son Seth (book!Fareed's Maker) was a child of rape & domestic abuse, the way all of the Lioncourt brothers were. What we DO know is that Akasha wasn't exactly a doormat in that marriage, and in many ways Akasha completely took over. I've talked at length about how Akasha changed Egypt's laws to get rid of Enkil's cannibalism, and created mummification instead. Akasha also convinced Enkil to destroy the cannibalistic land of the redheaded Twins, Mekare & Maharet; smashing their altars & shrines ("where the dead are worshiped").
Akasha told Enkil to kidnap The Twins in order to steal the witches' coveted magic (their familiar, Amel; "Why is Amel in their mouth?"). When that failed, Akasha ordered The Twins to be publicly raped by Khayman ("why is the girl curled...why limp in the straw?"). The Talamascan Jesse Reeves is a descendant of that rape, cuz Maharet got pregnant by Khayman with a daughter, Miriam. In addition, Maharet's eyes were gouged out ("what is it to see...you have not seen") so she could no longer see spirits; and Mekare's tongue was cut out ("and why is her death prolonged?") so she could no longer talk to spirits ("Why does he tell HER [Mekare] what God has said?"). Even as a human, Akasha was a tyrannical, twisted, sadistic, entitled, greedy, selfish, jealous, bitter AF wench who was mad that Amel loved Mekare, but wouldn't obey HER ("Why must MY voice be smooth?"), specifically since she was also a religious fanatic who thought her religion was superior, but for a so-called "goddess" she had NO MAGIC; and HATED that The Twins were a bunch of peasant cannibals who actually had REAL magic that Akasha's "civilized" gods never gave her access to.
Amel took revenge on Akasha, and started haunting her, and when her court finally assassinated the Mad Queen, Amel accidentally fused with her body and turned her into the first vampire ("divine error"; "what does it mean if you are not asked?"). According to Gremt (the ghostly founder of the Talamasca), Amel "was no more" when he fused with her, having gone more or less silent ("and what does it mean if you are not answered?... I am The Voice!"). As the Mother of All Vampires, ALL vampires have the Blood of Akasha/Amel in them. Akasha made Enkil & Khayman; Khayman made Mekare (and a bunch of others to rebel against the Parents); and Mekare made Maharet. Millennia later, Akasha made Rhoshamandes, then Rhosh made Eggs Benedict, then Magnus the Alchemist kidnapped Eggs & stole his blood to turn himself into a vampire, then Magnus made Lestat, etc etc.
Parallels are Parallelling
GabriellA, Akasha, and so many other problematic characters in Anne Rice's problematic universe all exemplify how AR revels in the grey spaces of moral binaries. Hannah Moscovitch explained GabriellA's entire tragic backstory, which Lestat only VERY briefly summarized, but that we never actually got to SEE on-screen (I hate this effing season). Even in the books it's clear that she was married (read: SOLD) off against her will as a child to a total a-hole who dominated & controlled & raped & abused & disrespected her. But regardless of what GabriellA was a as a girl, or even as a human, that wench has been pure EVIL as a vampire. ❌🙅 And I love how swiftly the fandom showed their hypocrisy over swearing that morals are different for vampires than humans, and that we shouldn't judge them or say any of them are good/bad, when 3x3 literally had GabriellA, Magnus & Bruce all being evil AF sexual abusers in the same dang episode. 🤡
As a vampire, GabriellA shed all of her gendered social designations to become a pure monster, "a fever in the night;" the Lamia pushing the Great Conversion hoping to see "mothers throttling their babes, all writhing on the ground, till no light remains, no hope of light, and we, the devils, rule." Both GabriellA and Akasha are radical feminists who want women to take over the world. However, GabriellA is the opposite of Akasha, because she's a speciesist who wants TVL to "Make More!" vampires and take over the world. Conversely, Akasha is a narcissist, who wants as few vampires as possible (because all vampires are linked to her Sacred Core/Amel, and it weakens her/Amel if too many vampires are connected to her). She wants to rule as a goddess over humans.
I'm constantly talking about Nature vs Nurture wrt Amoral vs Immoral vampires (x x x), cuz I strongly disagree that vampires are inherently & irredeemably evil in essence). They're preternaturally human, with human souls, emotions, wants & fears--"all feels amplified." Vampirism merely brings their worst qualities out--their addictive bottomless hunger just manifesting in different ways (addicted to blood as "food, sex, home" (Lestat); or parasitic control (Armand/GabriellA) / codependency (Louis); or voracious knowledge (Claudia/Daniel); etc). Akasha assumed that her evil behavior was justified because of her vampirism (ie: Amel), but Maharet told her to her face that Akasha was evil because she chose to be evil, and refused to learn or grow or change in all her thousands of years.
So it's a gigantic tragedy that the vampires who probably could've benefited the most from learning about Akasha were Claudia & Madeleine--the TRUE victims of this story, since they're DEAD. 💀 And they were killed before they ever really got the chance to LIVE. Meanwhile Akasha wasted millennia doing eff all, when she could've gotten off that slab and LIVED in the world, instead of watching from afar understanding literally NOTHING but hating EVERYTHING.
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