Lestat's Sizequeen

[bugslibraryy]

The thing about the bathroom scene is Shane is like fucking drunk at the thought of getting what he had that first time with Ilya.

Like yes he’s mad he’s so fucking pissed and upset and grumpy and fed up at Ilya’s behaviour at the ghosting at teasing him as they presented the award but he’s also so fucking starving. So fucking needy. Desperate at the thought that Ilya can give him this pleasure he had for the first time in his life. That Ilya holds on his palms this shiny golden thing that makes Shane collapse to his knees, that makes his stomach ache, that makes his body warp and go molten and makes him want to bed. Ilya showed him this pleasure so dizzy good and hot and brilliant and fire bright- and Shane, Shane wants it again he fucking needs it again it makes his head spin with need with want the thought that he could have it again. The mind blank the pleasure the thrill the need the way his body felt so real so alive felt so perfect so needed. The way heat pushed into him- the way he felt used and cared for and good and aching.

He wants it again so badly it makes him feel insane. He turns the memory over and over in his head every fucking night- if it was a physical thing it would be worn and tattered at the corners, a worry stone gone smooth from his thumb pressing over it over and over. He grips himself in his hand and tries to put his fingers inside to make up some kind of memory of the pleasure of being on the sun on being made of honey but it’s never just enough. And then then Ilya is there and Shane fucking hates him and shane fucking needs him he’s the only one that can give Shane what he needs. And he wants to be angry he does but all he can do is beg. Is go soft eyed and wet mouthed and hungry hungry when the heatweightsmellpromise of Ilya is there in that bathroom, filling the space till his shoulders hit the walls and Shane is already going fuzzy and he just neeeds he needs he needs it again, please, even if he has to be beg, even if he can’t stay angry- he can be good he just needs, please Ilya, please you showed me this perfect thing and took it away and I just want to touch my fingers to the edges of the treasure one more time just one last time would be enough please.

[pulsingvoid]

there are obviously a lot more violent and egregious examples of antiblack racism at hand but louis going from being someone thats passionately trying to better his craft constantly reading and mingling with artists and yearning for the sun because his photography is too dim since he can only do it at night and manifesting his dead lover to have someone to talk to about art because everyone else diminishes it (out of racism and envy!) and that yearning to create art and to connect through art leading him to molloy and the idea of telling his story to a human that can maybe turn it into art since vampirism keeps incapacitating him to suddenly being this dispassionate businessman thats not interested in art at all with art and all artistic expression in tvl only being reserved for white people just for everything about this season to look and sound completely tasteless... the tvl writers were so jealous so full of envy of the young black and queer talent in their midst while iwtv was being produced (several likely-queer female writers and producers who worked on iwtv suddenly gone from tvl alongside the single remaining black writer) it makes them look so fucking stupid and cartoonishly evil and they produced an ugly revolting insincere unwatchable joke of a season of television as a result. almost as if being a self centered egotistical racist cog in the amc machine makes you a fucking chump. it makes everyone who understands art want to point at you and laugh. live with that and die with that [spits at their feet]

[jmsvhl]

"be patient, it's a two-part story, obviously you need to see tvl season 2 to understand that tvl season 1 is actually amazing" considering how well it worked for me this season when y'all told me to wait for the finale, my tvl season 2 predictions:

It's going to be revealed that Lestat was raped by Armand. He was also raped by his father, his brothers and their wifes (that's why he killed them all), the priests in the monastery (that's why he killed the priests in iwtv s1), the actors in a traveling wagon (that's why his sense of wonder was abandoned there), his dog (that's why he sent it to be torn apart by the wolves), the wolves (that's why he doesn't want to talk about it), Antoinette Brown (Lestat would never cheat on Louis), Claudia (that's what really happened on that train) and Larry (that's why Lestat's so mean to him). AND he will be raped by Akasha in every episode of the season (you don't get it, he's the most victim to ever victim!!)

At some point we'll see ghosts of Grace and Florence. They're going to tell Louis they've always liked Lestat more than him.

Daniel suddenly remembers he's a CSA victim too (you don't get it, every main character of the show needs to be a CSA victim)

Armand's not pure evil enough, so in this season he's going to torture kittens and burn down orphanages for fun.

DM fans are in for a treat!! Daniel and Armand are going to share 5 minutes of screentime (it's going to be half of Armand's screentime and 5/7 of Daniel's). Daniel will call himself a nepo fledgling and Armand's going to talk to him about their tag on ao3.

Louis's going to have a heartbreaking arc of coming to terms with him being the abusive one in his relationships with Lestat and Armand. The only phrases he will use this season are "I'm sorry" and "I love Lestat." Because, obviously, nothing about him matters except for this.

Loustat will suddenly remember about Claudia's death again and decide to honour her by burying her yellow dress. Then they'll get so sad about her they'll fuck on her grave.

Akasha is going to be the most horrible and irredeemable villain of this show: she's going to support women's rights. Upon hearing this, Lestat will faint, Louis will weep, and Armand will choke on a newborn he was eating for breakfast and say that even he's not that evil.

Lestat will be the one to defeat this evil black feminist. Mekare and Maharet are killed off screen because they are not fan favorites. Lestat stans will tell everyone that Akasha being an evil feminist queen is actually book accurate and say it's not racist or misogynistic because "it's in the books and they're doing the books", and everybody knows Lestat stans are always right

This season will be based on the books "The Vampire Lestat", "Queen of the Damned", "Tale of the Body Thief", "Memnoch the Devil", "The Vampire Armand", "Pandora", "Blood and Gold", "Merrick", "Blackwood Farm", "Blood Canticle" and "Prince Lestat". No, it's not too much, the season will have perfect pacing, and you don't need to know the books by heart to understand what's going on, trust.

This season is also from Lestat's POV, so no gay sex or kisses at all, he's protecting his intimacy with Louis and for some reason he also decides to protect the intimacy between Armand and Daniel. We will get to see him eating Akasha and Dora out though.

The season will get 150% on Rotten Tomatoes and Rolin will say it's their best work yet.

[xxsunnyphoenixx]

Unanswered questions I still have after the tvl finale:

Why was specifically Nicki haunting Lestat so much? No reason?

What happened to Baby Jenks? Was she brought into the coven as a 14 year old and groomed by Bruce before being turned or did they erase her backstory so she could have sex with Lestat? Does she want revenge on Louis?

Why was Dee in Lestat's headspace as a waiter?

Why did Armand kill Larry?

Why did Armand put together the cult? Does he actually care about the great conversion?

Is Armand's cult a mixed human & vampire cult? (He mentions hundreds of human followers but the cult member in the saw trap is a vampire) If so, for what purpose?

Why does Alex want to play the concert? Is he working for the Talamasca? If so, how and why did he betray Armand?

Did Armand use the mind gift on Alex after AA? To what extent? Is Alex being puppeted by Armand at certain points? To what extent?

If the conductor of the train was in the room of people Lestat killed/traumatized, doesn't that mean the train scene DID happen? How much of it are we supposed to believe actually happened?

Why is Paul in the room of people Lestat killed/traumatized? Did Lestat kill Paul?

Why did Daniel have Lestat's head in a bowling bag at the bowling alley? Why was Lestat not tortured in any way by dm after the beheading?

Are Daniel & Armand companions now? How exactly is Daniel able to walk in the sun?

Is Alex a daywalker, since he showed up at the bowling alley during the day? How does THAT work?

Why did Gabriella, who hates roles such as "mother" and "wife", choose to make a fledgling? Additionally, why would she want to run away with Lestat after the concert?

What was the meaning of the repeated 8 motif?

Why would the Talamasca, a largely human organization, want the Great Conversion to happen?

Why would Lestat go to heaven, while Claudia is apparently trapped in hell?

Was the ghost actually Claudia or was it a lie like it is in Merrick?

Does Marius tell Lestat the backstory of Akasha like he does in the book?

[kiirbystar]

i think my biggest issue with daniel molloy this season was the stark difference between the way IWTV portrayed him and the way TVL portrayed him.

what made daniel so interesting in season 1-2 of IWTV was his personality, straight up. he was witty, even if it could get him killed, he was incredibly intelligent, pressuring, and he still had that constant curiosity that kept the story moving along.

we were told he had a hunger for life in his youth that followed him even as he stopped fearing death as it grew closer. his strong sense of perseverance was what made it make sense for him to be in the story in the first place, what made it make sense for him to be holding together the pieces of a gothic romance. we could see how his methods of journalism were harsh, but effective, and he did actually feel like a person who someone like armand would find "fascinating" or someone like louis could find important enough to reach out to again.

TVL daniel is, to put it simply, an idiot.

there are some things i can give him props for, such as him maintaining some of his wit and fearless nature, but other than that, he doesn't even feel like daniel anymore.

the fandom has already been able to deduct one of the main issues the writers have, which is their problem with showing and telling, or lack-there-of. unfortunately, when it comes to daniel's intellect, curiosity, mystery, and empathy, the writers decided to do neither of the two and skip straight to lobotomy.

to start, his intellect was straight up not present this season. his questions felt less like a seasoned interviewer and journalist getting information he feels he has a right to access, and instead felt like he was desperately trying to get a word out every three seconds. daniel's dialog was rushed and empty, in IWTV if daniel had said any line of dialog at all, you'd feel like you were connecting pieces of a puzzle, like you could tell it was leading to a big reveal.

daniel this season had zero mystery to him. im sure we all know at this point that the writers said daniel was supposed to be a "moody teenage fledgling" this season. and yeah, that's fine. that's what he is, hes a new fledgling whos maker left him right off the bat. but daniel is also a full grown man with the life experience of one. in s1x1, after being called "boy" by louis he quite literally says "i'm not you're fucking boy, im an old man with all the triggers that come with it." this cannot be the same man that decided his whole personality this season should be built on being angry at lestat.

theres many arguments that could be made against this, and I accept them all, especially when they're about his nature as a character and how it would make sense for him to act the way he does this season. im alright with him turning to drugs and sex and party life after his turning, that makes sense. what doesn't make sense is that THATS the most life we see out of him this season.

what made him fascinating was his humanity and perspectives on the world. he was interested in politics, he was alive during the AIDS crisis as a man who slept with men for drugs or a place to stay, he wrote books and articles and news covers and let his need for information take him everywhere. compare that to TVL, where daniel now has a brand new perspective on the world, literally and figuratively. he can see new colors, hear new sounds, feel new textures, and most importantly, meet an entirely new side of the world he only had a taste of previously. and he has eternity to do it all. daniel this season should've been fucking thriving. daniel should've been doing interviews left and right, dealing with the newfound trauma of being murdered and left to deal with being born again by his maker, watch him maintain his love for living even through death.

instead we got him smoking a hookah, asking "did you have a stutter?" over and over again, talking to louis like last season never happened and louis just being chill with the fact the only mortal he ever told his full story to is acting like skipper from barbie life in the dreamhouse, and we didnt even see any of the things he claimed happened to him, happen. never saw him go through his transformational trauma, never saw him get turned at all, literally nothing.

TVL daniel makes his conversations with armand almost laughable, because armand will be spouting poetry at him about their past and his love for all of daniel and daniel is just like "lmao do you think lestat had a stutter?" this is not a character i could ever picture anyone, let alone an ancient vampire, finding fascinating. he no longer feels like he has a part in a dramatic gothic romance.

TLDR; they butchered my favorite character who I still support but despise.

[brawlingdiscontent]

Lestat is the daughter of the witches you couldn't burn.

To elaborate: the show is deliberately trying to align Lestat with a particular and reductive construct of white femme innocence/fragility, not out of a sincere interest in exploring a trans story line, but to enhance a sense of his victimization and avoid any in-narrative discussions of accountability. (More below the cut)

When is the first time we see a 'femme' Lestat reference? Well there's the iconic Marie Antoinette look in 1.7, but textually it's 2.8: 'I am she and she is me.' The context? The reunion with Louis, post-trial after the revelation that he saved Louis. I remember expecting something complex and charged that factored in some kind of reckoning with Lestat's significant role in Claudia's death. But nope, not possible: he baby. A little woobified baby girl - how can you possibly ask/confront her about her role in her daughter/sister's lynching? You must simply comfort her and kiss her hair.*

*To be clear I'm not objecting to these actions of comfort in and of themselves, but their larger context and function as part of a narrative strategy that seeks to avoid Lestat or any of the other characters having to reckon with his culpability or accountability. I think this is similar to some discussion that was going around in earlier seasons about fans' feminization of Lestat in fandom discourse as a way to avoid addressing the patriarchal violence he wields over Louis and Claudia

We then next see a kind of 'femme'stat in the strange aligning of Lestat and the witches who are unjustly burned in 3.7 (an alignment echoed explicitly in the "Butterscotch Bitch" lyrics), which began in 3.3 when he first recalls the burning. What is strange is that the show seems to be suggesting that Lestat and the witches are in some way the same, but with no concrete connections to support this. The two of whom Gabi explains the reasons for their persecution are clear victims of patriarchal violence in a distinctly gendered way (and the other two are nine, Lestat's age). Gabriella (or just dream Gabriella?) says that the message in making him watch was for Lestat to get out of Auvergne-- -- she doesn't suggest that Lestat might be similarly targeted, nor that he needs to learn to not wield his power like that.

So what's going on? It's significant that the 'witches' all appear to be white women/girls. They are all young, even though historically the vast majority of victims of witch trials were older women. This matters because the image that they are latching onto is an idealized, deeply loaded image of 'innocence' that is inextricable from young white women/girls. This is what they are trying to attach to Lestat. (Including through the mirror of one of them being his playmate - and why it's only one even though that seems weird because they were twins...).

This carries through to 'Butterscotch Bitch' where we see feminized language deployed in a 'poor little woobie girl' way ("a puking princess on your bathroom flower") and with "Burn every witch / But you'll never catch the butterscotch bitch" a direct connection between Lestat and the witches. Like there actually is a clear connection between Lestat and some of the witches as victims of sexual abuse but they shy away from making this directly (though the women are shown as being punished for it in a way that's only possible because of their perceived gender/social positioning). Instead, by foregrounding a thematic of persecution, the closest connection between the Lestat and the witch burning in this context seems to be...his songs/album being poorly critically received?? (Unpleasant echoes of 'it's a witch hunt' from a certain asshole in chief for any of you?)

In this discussion, it's absolutely vital to acknowledge how this 'white-femme-adjacenting' of Lestat in s3 (3.7 in particular) coincides with the equal and opposite move they're doing to Louis, buying into images of 'beastly' and thus 'guilty' Black masculinity, specifically through the bizarrely insistent and racially coded refrain of Louis as 'pimp'. The goal here is also opposite: to remove Louis' innocence, part of the writers' drive to 'equalize' Louis and Lestat so that they don't actually have to account for Lestat's abuse within the narrative in order to smush Loustat together like barbie dolls.

This 'removal-of-innocence-via-association-with-"monstrous"-Black masculinity' is especially important when you consider the 'feminized' position that Louis has occupied in his relationship with Lestat, including as victim of patriarchal-coded abuse/violence ('ignore that, he's a PIMP', they're saying).

I want to be clear in this time of extreme queer- and transphobia: fuck terfs and this blog fully supports trans (broadly) and transfemme (specifically) characters/readings and acknowledges the horrific violence that trans women in particular (especially Black trans women) face. The intent here isn't to invalidate anyone's transfemme Lestat headcanons but to point out how the show's framing of Lestat's alignment with femininity has been constructed in deeply insidious ways that are inextricable from whiteness and serve to perpetuate white supremacy/anti-Blackness.

*Also before anyone comes at me re: accountability - I am not saying that we, as viewers outside of the narrative, need to be holding the fictional character of Lestat accountable. There are plenty of fictional characters who do heinous shit and are never held accountable either within or by the narrative, and that's perfectly fine and often makes for great fiction. The issue is that the way the writers have constructed their own narrative is demanding that the character take some accountability, and the writers are rejecting this (would it be so bad to explore this? No, I think it would make Lestat more interesting and actually more likeable). This is particularly noticeable when Louis is being narratively blamed and made to account for anyone and everyone's shit that has nothing to do with him.

[pulsingvoid]

this is the most intense example of behind the scenes sabotage ive seen like i saw it with killing eve where each season's writers/showrunners were more racist and homophobic than the last, i saw it with american gods and sleepy hollow where the showrunners grew increasingly conservative and treated the black protagonists more and more poorly til that treatment destroyed the whole show, i saw it with ofmd too in that the second season got such a ridiculous budget cut and shitty schedule that it basically ensured it would suck and might as well never have gotten made... the iwtv -> tvl phenomenon is like a culmination of all of these things at once because it is both about being black and about being queer. with the very very very rare exception of shows that remain safe because there is unprecedented financial and creative stability behind the scenes, queer and/or black-led shows that are at the mercy of a network instead of creators who genuinely care and identify with the story all end up falling apart like this. the more daring the premise the worse the fallout

[holewithoutorgans]

Anyone could tell Rolin and these writers were jealous as fuck of what POC had. Louis' aura as the series lead far outshone whatever Lestat did. Louis and Armand fight was iconic, these writers couldn't make any other fight scene this season match it. Claudia was a compelling female character and Rolin acted as if she wouldn't bring "feminine energy" or whatever the fuck like Gabrielle did. They made sure to poach from Armand's backstory to give to Lestat, steal from Loumand's book scenes to give to a pairing with one white person.

These white hacks were jealous and resentful that Louis, Claudia and Armand were so loved by fans, especially fans of color. That's why the POC were character assassinated like this, written to be prop up Rolin and Hannah's favored white characters. TVL versions of these characters are not the same ones we followed for two seasons, they were created out of spite.

Leaving this here. I dont even have anything to add lmao. 100% spot on.

[warmrainonawinterday]

To paraphrase well-worn criticism of TVL: "Lestat is the writers' favorite woobified blorbo and all other characters are essentially shafted now for his benefit."

I fully agree, and YET they are still fucking that one up! Because s3!Lestat has never been less complex or likable or interesting to follow! In a season supposedly all about him, he is actively stripped of agency and an actually detailed backstory, both of which were central to the source material. He is given trauma that is fully made up for the show (and in parts just cannibalized from other characters' stories, mostly prominently Armand) as if that inherently balances out the lack of care given to the flashbacks, because trauma=character depth shortcut that you as the audience just cannot argue against, I guess. Flaws and admitting (or denying) fault? That's for suckers, too - clearly, it's an external force as nebulous as Akasha's blood that is truly to blame!

And then there is the cringe memeification of his base speech patterns. Louis is defined by his reflective, lyrical monologues. Lestat, meanwhile, is "serving cunt".

The writers have royally screwed over all other characters in the service of absolutely fucking nothing of value.

[warmrainonawinterday]

Is now a good time to say that I think the show writers never should have written the season 1 Drop or the season 2 Trial as original plotlines in the first place because by now it's become obvious that they clearly have no plan on how to handle the fallout properly regarding the characters involved

[hollowwaveremnant]

It has been absolutely criminal how under-utilized Assad has been this season so far. Just, criminal. Why have an actor of his calibre on the show then?

[lordcastaway]

so when lestat woke up to a creepy older man (who he's never seen/never even tried to seek out) singing about how blue his eyes were and found himself locked in that weird man's dungeon with corpses his response was 'damn, not sure if i really want to be here lol but whatevs, what are the job benefits? do i get free ice cream or smth?' cause all that, of course, wouldn't have triggered him and reminded him about the worst event of his life? cause we just don't include any meaningful parellels to this super-important event? no armand/magnus parallel, no marius/magnus parallel, no jarda trigger? cause lestat, i guess, resolved all his trauma in all timelines by singing that one song? cause, ultimately, in the lestat season, the wolf-killing is not that important, lelio is not that important, the turning is not that important, lestat romanticising his maker in the aftermath only to be abandonned is not that important, armand's role in lestat's life is not that important, nicki is barely important, he just kind of shouts angrily in the background as a muse? and yet they extended lestat's time with both magnus and akasha only for that to have no impact and barely be shown? the only thing they want unpack seems to be the incest but it's unwatchable because gabriella is a cartoon character. and then they spend the rest of the season on a boring band, racism, misogyny, queerphobia and being weird about armand

[cosmic-day]

"i sure hope the promo doesn't reflect the season but at some point we have to at least consider that it does" that's where I'm at too unfortunately, I've been telling myself for ages that promo is just promo and the season itself is going to have a lot more going on, but I'm beginning to accept that maybe it's actually exactly what they're telling us it's going to be because why else would they promote it that way :/

Yeah. I know a lot of people are arguing that promo is not the show. And that's certainly true. Promo can be poor or fail to represent the show properly, or be misleading, intentionally or otherwise. At the same time, at this point we have to at least acknowledge the possibility that we're not seeing much Armand because there's not much to see.

Also, and I feel strongly about this, even if the show turns out to be wall to wall Armand and we were worrying about nothing, the neglect of Assad as an actor still matters. The promo is to advertise the show primarily, of course. But it also raises the profile of the actors. Getting to be on the cover of EW, or being submitted for awards, or networking at the upfronts, all those things raise an actor's profile and visibility. It also tells us a lot about how much the actor is valued internally by AMC. It still matters.

Thanks for the ask, anon. Let's all be miserable together. (Also, to anyone trying to avoid negativity, I'm trying to tag appropriately, but if you need to block/unfollow for your own sanity, completely understand. )

[thecactifindahome]

So here's the thing. Imagine there's this Italian restaurant you really like, the food is good and there's a fun little water feature or something. A little after you start going there, you start hearing rumors that the owner is going to change directions, and eventually they put up a sign out front saying they'll be closed briefly while they overhaul operations to go in a more chicken-centric direction.

Okay, you think, I really liked their Italian, but maybe their chicken will be pretty good. They'll definitely keep their existing chicken dishes, and I like those.

The day of the grand reopening arrives, and you find that your favorite Italian place is now a topless bar that serves hot wings. The hot wings taste like ass and they're blasting club music so that you can't really talk or anything. You are pretty disappointed, and say so.

"What are you even complaining about?" A fellow patron says. "They were always going to become a chicken wing titty bar, you can't complain just because you wanted them to keep doing Italian food. They don't owe you anything and this was always going to happen."

"That's a weird and stupid thing to say, but whatever," you reply. "These are still really bad wings and I don't like them."

"Actually, they're great wings, you're just tasting them wrong," says your interlocutor. "Anyway, you're an idiot if you stop coming here just because the food tastes bad. If you keep coming, it'll start tasting good, also they're probably going to bring back the Italian food. You have to trust they're going to stop being a shitty hot wings strip club, but also it's awesome that it's a hot wings strip club now. You probably didn't even really like the Italian food if you don't love these garbage wings."

[no-resolution]

Now that I've sat with the episode for a few hours I think I've pinpointed why I'm struggling with the new season of IWTV more thus far than the last couple.

A lot of the show is told through the POV of the characters and they textually are unreliable narrators. The first two seasons were told in a dual narrative, in which the 2022 interview is the objective present day and the flashbacks were Louis' flawed POV. So, we were grounded in knowing that at least something in the show was objective truth. It also benefitted from the interview format, in which Louis' lies and misrememberings were occasionally called out by Daniel, who also had access to things like Claudia's diaries or private conversations with Armand for additional information and perspective. It results in a story that gets to benefit from the narrative intrigue of having an unreliable narrator while also grounding the show in some amount of objective truth.

The newest season, however, is told on three timelines. Everything we see except for the auction scene from the beginning of s3e1 is in the past, and the past is told from Lestat's POV. The 2025 band tour timeline isn't objective truth; it's told by Lestat and colored by his perspective. That limits what can happen in the 2025 timeline because it's Lestat's POV and therefore he should be in basically every single scene otherwise they have to come up with an excuse for why Lestat knows what happened. And of course the flashbacks to the further past are also Lestat's POV. We've only had one scene in that third person objective POV in two episodes. And it's all the more difficult considering that Lestat's recollection of the events thus far seems to be unchallenged by anyone else, so it's hard to say how unreliable a narrator he is. He doesn't have an interviewer to fact check him or call him on his bullshit. That may be forthcoming, but it's something that I think these first two episodes would have benefitted from having.

Basically, I think the POV is messier, and not just because Lestat's narration is less linear than Louis' was. The lack of challenge to Lestat's narrative makes it feel like the show itself "agrees" more with Lestat's perspective than with Louis', when I think their perspectives should be equally dubious, if not Lestat being less trustworthy because he's such a wild card. The POV problem also kind of feels like an excuse the show can use for poor writing and continuity.

[no-resolution]

This new season of IWTV gives me the impression that the only character that the writers like is Lestat. The season seems to be going out of its way to shit on pretty much everyone else and make them as unlikeable and/or ridiculous as possible. Louis is repeatedly made fun of for being pretentious and is given this strange storyline where he's exploiting a young girl, Armand is a ridiculous and inept manipulator, and Gabriella is one of the most unpleasant characters I've ever encountered in media. And while this is annoying on it's own, the messy POV of this season only makes this worse. Because 99.9% of the season thus far is in Lestat's POV. The 2025 timeline is his recollection, not the objective, 3rd-person "present day" (like the Dubai scenes in s1-s2). I can chalk the negative portrayal of the other characters up to writer bias or whatever, but in-universe, it certainly gives the opinion that the only person Lestat seems to like or even have any respect for is himself, which doesn't make me like him at all.

But honestly I don't think this is a Lestat POV thing. I'm pretty sure that "The Failures" framing of the season that pushes the 2025 timeline into the past was added late in production and that we were originally supposed to take that timeline as objective truth and that the writers' racism and sexism are causing them to only take the white male characters (because Daniel is the only other character that seems to be given balance in his portrayal) seriously.

[no-resolution]

This new season of IWTV gives me the impression that the only character that the writers like is Lestat. The season seems to be going out of its way to shit on pretty much everyone else and make them as unlikeable and/or ridiculous as possible. Louis is repeatedly made fun of for being pretentious and is given this strange storyline where he's exploiting a young girl, Armand is a ridiculous and inept manipulator, and Gabriella is one of the most unpleasant characters I've ever encountered in media. And while this is annoying on it's own, the messy POV of this season only makes this worse. Because 99.9% of the season thus far is in Lestat's POV. The 2025 timeline is his recollection, not the objective, 3rd-person "present day" (like the Dubai scenes in s1-s2). I can chalk the negative portrayal of the other characters up to writer bias or whatever, but in-universe, it certainly gives the opinion that the only person Lestat seems to like or even have any respect for is himself, which doesn't make me like him at all.

But honestly I don't think this is a Lestat POV thing. I'm pretty sure that "The Failures" framing of the season that pushes the 2025 timeline into the past was added late in production and that we were originally supposed to take that timeline as objective truth and that the writers' racism and sexism are causing them to only take the white male characters (because Daniel is the only other character that seems to be given balance in his portrayal) seriously.