𝑳𝒖𝒌𝒆

• 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑎 • 22𝑦 • 𝑆ℎ𝑒/ℎ𝑒𝑟 • 🇧🇷 • 𝑀𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚 •

[ambiicarus]

A number of this fandom are more in love with the aesthetic of IWTV and the idea of saying you’re into gothic gay vampires than you actually enjoy the substantive reality of gothic gay vampires.

Something something… the aestheticazition of everything

[beep-boop-bopbeep]

Something that hasn't been explicitly stated in the show but was a pretty big deal in the book: Lestat has a fixation on cleanliness- especially as a mortal. It was why he wanted to be a priest despite never being religious, because the quality of living at the monastery filled him with hope about people’s capacity for goodness. It was also part of why killing the wolves was such a herculean task, because not only did he lose his dogs and his horse and endanger his life, it required him to immerse himself in gore and violence. But he did it for the sake of his family and his village.

Once Magnus turned him into a vampire, he felt he had to let go of his preference for cleanliness because being a vampire is inherently unhygienic. (probably part of the reason why he was so pushy towards Louis to just embrace it, that the misery is inevitable but that he can't deny what he is. Also, him being furious at Claudia for collecting body parts, and him being so insistent about using the incinerator instead of burying them.)

I think this disgust is especially reflected in season 3- drinking blood, crying blood, pissing blood, vomiting blood, killing people, hiding bodies, sleeping underground, etc. It feels like shock value until we take into account the context of Lestat fucking hating filth, and by extension resenting what he is and wanting to vent that to the viewer. Part of why he is so enamored by modern day is due to advancements in public sanitation and medicine; he never imagined a world where humanity was able to achieve such a thing, in the book waking up from his depressive slumber is like waking into a dream. He loves this fresh modern world and yet he can never fully be part of it, because he will always be something grimier, something gory.

Don't get me wrong, there are certain things he likes about being a vampire, but feeling filthy is not one of them. (Part of the reason he throws up when Louis calls him disgusting and sick? Maybe. 🤔)

[cherub-esque]

complaints about the pacing of tvl as if it’s poor writing confuse me because this is a completely different narrative from louis’ right? louis had decades to think about how he was going to tell his story, he had armand to plan with, it was calculated and designed to be seductive and tidy. he needs the audience to come away from the story understanding him. and then it was organized and written by a professional journalist. the pacing is going to be even and smooth.

lestat is not methodical. he is impulsive and only barely grasping onto reality. his emotions drive him in the most chaotic ways. the way he’s going to tell his story is going to be much more akin to how regular people tell stories where you bounce around. you get too deep into the present story before realizing you need to back up and explain some things for it all to make sense. you leave some things out because you forget you’re the only person who knows that context. you justify things you’re not ready to admit are awful yet. he did not have decades to plan out his narrative. he woke the queen, the world is ending, he figures people should know how this even happened and on a whim he sits down to record his experience of the events sitting alone in his home. he’s recalling losing his fucking shit, and maybe his brain wasn’t entirely focused on storing those memories very well. and maybe he wants to embellish because he’s lestat. he loves the drama. and he doesn’t have anyone there to guide him through it and ask questions so it makes more sense.

yeah, the pacing is going to be different and off intentionally. it’s meant to reflect the change in narrative.

i do understand just not liking it, it’s not the kind of thing you enjoy, etc. but it IS purposeful.

[hiitspussyhands]

Should vampires be bigoted? Was the daughter they got killed insensitive to her father's trauma? Why don't these ancient monsters have my exact same progressive 21st century values? Must be bad writing. Was the abusive noblewoman relatable? Were everyone's pronouns respected? Was all that incest and torture really necessary? Are the murderers my friends?

[jadziacore]

TOS fem!Spock vision board

[jelliedlimes]

I should do this to her sometime

[jelliedlimes]

Some quick fanart for this concept

[fay989]

Any TVL cast member being interviewed: yeah so when I first read the script I wanted to murder Rolin with my bare hands :) haha yeah he butchered my character so badly that I threw my laptop across the room :) aha and then I yelled at him for two hours which only resulted in minor tweaks to the script :) yeah I was so shocked and confused :) and he comes up with scenes that don’t make any sense in-universe. :) and I worry for the future of this tv show :) but it’s alright as long as you think about how [5 min in depth analysis of details that the cast member has come up themselves to justify the season despite these justifications not being evident in the actual show at all] aha :)

[prisonhannibal]

[massiveharmonytiger]

This needs to be said.

So many people seem to be loudly subscribing to this tribalistic "us vs them" version of identity politics that has them projecting a whole lot of their own issues onto media. There's an awareness of how political TV shows are despite the fact that media literacy is at an all time low. So many people are assigning moral value onto media works and so many people have been conditioned into thinking that portrayal somehow equals endorsement.

And because portrayal equals endorsement to certain types of people, portrayal always ends up getting the short end of the stick, whether or not its endorsement. You know, censorship, moralism, fascist thinking and all that stuff.

So yeah, I expected the backlash because this is the bullshit one always has to deal with if you like your shows with a bit of complexity to them.

But it pisses me off that the Claudia seance is being cheapened into another political soundbite about how "the writers just wanted an excuse to be racist."

Do I think people are allowed to be hurt by portrayals of racism in a show? Of course I do. I've been hurt by it since I was old enough to understand what race was. I'll probably be hurt by it until the day I die. It's valid to be upset by something and never want to watch it again. There are plenty of shows I haven't finished because they were too triggering for me.

Do I think that being upset by something gives me the right to assign values onto writers I know nothing about for simply doing their jobs and telling a story? No, the fuck I don't.

Writing about racism doesn't make you racist any more than writing about murder makes you killer. And the fact that lately, so many people can't grasp that is scary to me.

You tell a story about race, you tell a story about racism. Because racism is alive and well. And even if we manage to create a post-racism society, racism will have been alive and well. They're a package deal.

I want people to be able to tell stories about race. I want every kind of depiction about race there is. The good, the bad and the messy. We've been invisible for too long.

And if you think thoughtful media portrayals of racism are just a writer's excuse to be racist and not a portrayal of issues and inequalities that can and have played out in the real world because of the systems of oppression that underpin them, you're clearly unable to separate a fictional story from your own personal baggage and I have nothing to say to you.

These terrible takes about Claudia are extra irritating to me as someone from an African country, who grew up on multiracial and multicultural shows and studied post-apartheid and postcolonial literature at university, media that had racism as a recurring theme, because the narratives, like IWTV and TVL, were about racist structures and the people who lived in them.

It's so fucking painful to realize that the majority of these would be lumped under "generic racist propaganda" on this stupid US-centric website because for some reason people think that a piece of media having racism in it makes it politically incorrect propaganda, unfit to be enjoyed, studied or consumed. Without realizing what an oppressive, imperialistic, white standard that is.

"I'm a good person who only consumes media that is 100% non-racist, non-sexist and politically correct."

Congratulations. I can't go a week without experiencing some form of oppression, from other marginalized people even, because internalized marginalization is a thing and my parents and grandparents grew up in systems where racism was valued. In fact, racism is valued to this day in certain places, but I'm overjoyed to hear that I'd get punished by Western audiences if I were to write about it. I'd be nothing without your erasure.

The scene where Claudia finally gave Louis a piece of her mind could've been a wonderful opportunity for the fandom to talk about how racism is a structural context that marginalized people cannot separate themselves from or how traumatized people can and do weaponize each others' internalized racism against each other.

It could've been a wonderful opportunity to discuss how Claudia was misrepresented because of Louis' guilt and love for her or how female characters, black women in particular, are rarely allowed to show their ugly sides in media, especially when the narrative is told through a male lens. A male lens that's been well established as someone who puts himself and the people he loves on pedestals and continues to view her through rose-colored glasses to this day.

It could've been a wonderful opportunity to talk about the myth of the perfect victim or how her being trapped in a young girl's body means people have "no idea of her strength."

It could've been a wonderful opportunity to discuss how much of that scene was Claudia finally being honest and letting out all that pent up resentment she never got to share with Louis while losing him was at stake (but now she has nothing to lose) or how much was cruel lies motivated by the pain of being ripped from her resting place, seeing Louis and Lestat there together (Louis choosing Lestat over her AGAIN) while she's stuck having to exist without Madeleine.

Some people did speak about that which is awesome. Thank you for existing.

But mostly, it became all about "My morals have been violated" (fine, don't watch it then) and "what Claudia said was inexcusable, how dare she" (you're policing a traumatized black female character, EXCUSE YOU) and "the writers are such racist and sexist meanies for no longer portraying Claudia as Louis' most special manic pixie throw pillow" (??? make it make sense ???). It mostly boiled down to the fact that Claudia was cruel to Louis out of anger.

"This isn't Claudia."

There's literally an episode titled "The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding". Describing Claudia. From Louis' perspective. The person who has an admittedly rosy view of her.

She's ruthless. She's bloodthirsty. She's cruel.

She's every bit as ruthless as Lestat, whose blood flows through her veins. She's every bit as bloodthirsty as the coven that took her out. That's why they had to team up in order to do it. And she's every bit as cruel as Louis, who we've seen do this type of thing to multiple characters at multiple times. Lestat taught her how to hunt, but if there's one thing Claudia would have learned from Louis, it would be being cruel to people out of anger.

Racism is one of Louis' core wounds and triggers. We see it throughout season 1. Lestat uses the racially neutral term "fledgling" to address him, and he assigns racial meaning onto it, after which Lestat never uses the term again. Claudia uses "slaves" as a buzzword to manipulate him. Daniel uses racial terminology to get him to open up in the interviews. His favorite human meal is Jim Crow racists. Every time he acts on impulse, it's triggered by someone else's racism or perceived racism. It's a core wound so it's the best way to be cruel to Louis. Claudia is a predator and she went straight for the jugular.

Did you expect her not to?

Claudia was summoned to once again assuage the guilt of the two people who were complicit in both her deaths. She was immediately confronted with the image of the two of them together again after decades of searching for and not finding her companion, Madeleine.

Before she died she literally called them out for the self-absorbed bastards that they were, the fact that they constantly used her as a pawn in their drama and the fact that her being made a vampire was never about her, but about them.

She died because Louis refused to listen to her warnings about Armand. And then Louis still stayed with Armand for years after that, the very years she was stuck in purgatory without Madeleine, showed her private diaries to everyone, because her words were published in a fucking international bestseller, read out her most vulnerable thoughts about getting assaulted to her abuser to fuel his own sanctimonious hero complex and then paid a sex worker to act like her.

Of course, she's harder on Louis and easier on Lestat. Louis was supposed to be better than this. As unfair as it is, she always held him to a higher standard. Lestat was always the scumbag she detested (and father she loved in secret) and she never let him forget that. Louis was the father she was open about loving (and scumbag she detested in secret, because she could not afford to push him away when he always had one foot out the door anyways). Louis was the person she had the most faith in and trusted not to fail and betray her. And then he went and did all that. Lestat was just acting like Lestat, but Louis broke her heart.

She is allowed to be pissed and to say whatever the fuck she wants to in order to get that message across. She is allowed to say things that she knows will hurt them, Louis in particular, whether or not those things are true. She's allowed to be in enough anguish to lash out about it where it'll hurt most. Because they'll always have each other anyways.

If your compassion for Claudia stops when she's no longer fitting your standards of behavior, then you're the one discriminating and you're the one with the damn problem. Black women (and men for that matter) should be able to show their ugly sides in media, just like white men without everybody freaking out whenever it happens. Characters should be allowed to be human beings, not paragons of virtue.

[fruitgravies]

the failure(s); the many loves of the vampire lestat

prints • insta • twt

[lukeskyandante]

I'm having mixed feelings about this season. As a fan of the books, I was very excited to meet some of the new characters and see his story before Louis (which is more than two thirds of the book) and see his side of some events of the previous seasons. As a fan of the show, I loved the change of pace, the way they chose to tell this story. And I mostly made peace with the fact that this season is not exactly about Lestat's story. Instead, it's a prequel to Queen Of The Damned. And one he'll of a prequel!

Gabriella is a sore spot. I understand the route they are going with her, but I wish the writing for her was better. She's one dimensional at best, and the charm of her iceness from the books was replaced with a bad accent, cartoonish traits and a awful wig. I wish she had been treated with the same care the other characters have been treated. But I don't know. Lestat was also something in the likes of a unidimentional devil in the first season. Maybe we'll see more of her in future.

I love how they are showing Lestat's trauma and vulnerability, how different he is from the psycho charming creature of the first season and is actually a dork. I love the band, the bus and the shows. I love the music, and his narration. So yeah, I am having so much fun. At the same time, I am mourning Lestat's story. 18th century Paris, the conversations with Nicky, their simple lifes working at Renauld. Gabrielle looking like a young man with her pants and short hair. The gremlin Armand, the beautiful and compelling Armand on the ballroom. How charming and collected Marius seemed in Lestat's eyes, despite how terrible we know he is. A bit of Louis and Claudia through his eyes. How he cried holding Claudia's little yellow dress. It's bittersweet. I hope we return to at least some of those things in future seasons.

[dalekofchaos]

[lukeskyandante]

Exactly!!! This is so refreshing to read. People are so invested in their own personal views of the characters that they keep doing an infinite mental juggling to warp things to meet their agenda. Everything in that scene was presented by the show in previous seasons, but apparently, media literacy is really dead. Or some people people are just willfully blind. Or both. And is not even a matter of opinion, it's in the text! In the books, in the show, in the script, in the acting.

This woman called Louis a dead weight, saw him repeatedly pick another man over her, saw him tell Armand to imagine him "without the burden of her". Minutes before her death she discovered that he was the one to insist on transforming her, manipulating Lestat using his love and fear of loneliness against him. Both of them where terrible to her, and she hates them both. But she and Lestat are the same, they are evil of the same evil. She understands him. Louis was the negligent parent, the one who was expected to act on her behalf, but instead repeatedly turned his back to her in favor of Lestat, and then Armand. And on top of everything exposed her diaries to the whole world to see and then proceeded to read some more for the man who raped her. It's understandable that she hates him so much. Bad writing would be if she excused him.

[reputayswift]

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT + nail biting

[regaliasonata]

“Didn’t like the episode so I’m gonna call the NAACP to get it cancelled” so you wanna get the queer show off the air while also putting actors of color out of a job, after people have constantly ignored Assad, Jacob, and Delainey’s input and enjoyment while being on the show, plus Jacob Anderson saying in the past how he was close to quitting acting before even getting the role, and now with people questioning his blackness over enjoying the last episode?

But apparently you care about these actors and their characters, yeah okay.

[lukeskyandante]

I'm genuinely starting to hate this fucking fandom

[slayermoon92]

You didn't "love Claudia's character", you loved the sanitized and infantilized version of her that Louis sold to you, hook line and sucker.

I, however, love the REAL Claudia. The girl who joyfully killed with Lestat at Lovers Lane. The serial killer who kept her victims body parts and threw them in the river. The girl who wasn't afraid to call Lestat "Massa" or to call herself and Louis his slaves to get her point across. The girl who gasped in awe and clapped "bravo!" after watching a poor defenseless woman get killed on stage to an unknowing audience, the grown woman trapped in a little girl's body who joyfully murdered an entire mansion of people with the theatre des vampires. Claudia, who is manipulative, driven, cunning, vicious, monstrous, and will say and do whatever she needs to get what she wants. The Claudia who fell in love with a woman who sympathized with monsters just like her and was prepared to leave Louis the second she found someone worthy of her. (In fact, if Madeline hadn't insisted that they visit Louis, they would probably still be alive or at the very least lived a bit longer)

I love Claudia for who she actually is, not the version that Louis the capitalist vampire tried to sell us.

We. Are not. The same.

[professional-rat-eater]

I fucking love that Claudia literally made up the train story. There wasn’t any part of truth in it. I didn’t think they’d go there because of how much they’ve softened all of these characters, but they really committed.

And guess what? It didn’t change a thing about how Louis and Lestat treated her. She’s still a victim. Still a bandaid for a shitty marriage. Still a roof shingle that flew off of their house. They still doomed her to an eternity of misery.

I do think Lestat saw her the most clearly though. He saw how monstrous she could be and loved her all the more for it, not in spite of it. Stained Glass Eyes, while self-indulgent, is more about how he thinks she might react to him rather than purely his own grief. He was complicit in killing her, after all. It doesn’t mean he can’t love her. Love between vampires can be countless things.

I know people post this quote a lot, but it’s a really good one.

“And I cannot say even now that I regret Claudia... Claudia was my dark child, my love, evil of my evil. Claudia broke my heart."

[notkatniss]

I want to know who on the writing team had a premonition that drake would drop 50 songs

[notkatniss]

this is frying me

[lukeskyandante]

[skyrigel]