Strangie's stuff

She/Her / INFP / Scorpio /Ace/ Computer Engineer/ Status : SNK is life (read the manga plz) and the Free kids are my babies.

[bloodraven55]

once you recognise the ubiquitous and inevitable fandom life cycle it becomes much easier to free yourself from it and just keep enjoying things in a more healthy way while still thinking critically about them

[lioncourtz]

Why did you take me to the Witches' Place?

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT 03.05 | "New York"

[gorpoblorp]

i really hope the fandom doesn't turn away from iwtv+tvl becuase of some of the more controversal ideas of its writers this show is a bastion of creativity in a landscape of actual idiot brain tv. l'm sorry the best queer horror tv show is not perfect but i still need it so bad.

this show not only gives me hope for the world but also its so good.

[lovstat]

I like how everyone is talking about Armand being victimized à la diss track and correctly being upset about Louis being beheaded, but we have Lestat being:

roofied and taken advantage of three times by Larry, elevator orgy and, Gabriella, nearly beheaded by children of darkness reborn (episode one) almost sold into sex work by lawyer (episode two) crashes and burns, which could have killed him, due to hallucinations of his rapist triggered by Daniel (episode three) flash back to rape. shot in present day. loss of support system. (episode four) we get a fucking break :) sort of… (episode five) revenge porn leaked. beheaded. (episode six) beheaded 2.0 (episode seven)

I don’t think “keeping score” like this is beneficial but to say this season was all about torturing Louis and Armand and was not at all about Lestat feels disingenuous at a certain point. Unless it’s that sexual violence or victims don’t mater to you all, which I’m starting to think is the actual issue here, because even when we get right down to it Lestat’s been subjected to beheading on screen twice- just with different success rates.

[lovstat]

I’m going to reblog this and add some important additions because I think some folks made good points.

With episode three, @e-lizabear and I were discussing that we do see Lestat get raped when he’s having his flashback. I’m curious about where the “onscreen torture is unnecessary” crowd was for this moment, because the conversation I remember happening at the time was that people were angry at Lestat for getting raped because they felt it “cheapened” Claudia’s experience. Which is an insane argument to have. Rape is rape no matter who it happens to, and this happened years and years before.

@endiness pointed out in episode five that Lestat is assaulted twice, actually. Once by Gabriella, although that’s a fade to black. This is what becomes the revenge porn tape. Then again by Akasha when his blood is taken. We see less skin in this episode, and perhaps it was less graphic because the focus was on Lestat self harming by running into the sun multiple times as @itsthenovelteafactor pointed out.

I did also want to address that now that I’ve had time to think on it. Lestat clearly struggling. He’s committing self harm that could kill him, rather flippantly, in the same twenty four hours that he’s being sexually abused. I’ve seen people make comments like “why am I supposed to feel bad for him if he’s hurting himself”.

I don’t think we had any of this discourse when Claudia, in season one, self harmed in the Rue Royale sun roof. I don’t think we saw it when Louis made a suicide attempt in San Francisco either. What I’m realizing is this kind of commentary is reserved for victims of sexual assault. “He was asking for it. Why should I feel bad?” This is the message you’ve all communicated here.

And for those of us who have survived sexual violence, you’ve signaled clearly that we should stay the hell away from you.

[pynkhues]

My guess is, anybody who thinks The Vampire Lestat the book is incomplete right now, we’re halfway there. There’s a lot of stuff that happened off-screen that will probably be revisited. 

https://www.avclub.com/the-vampire-lestat-season-3-finale-interview-rolin-jones

What does The Vampire Lestat have in mind for an encore?

Creator-showrunner Rolin Jones breaks down the themes of "Failures" and his plans for Interview With The Vampire's future.

Yeah! It really sounds like quite a bit of it is still set to be adapted and (re)visited. Looking back on the season as a whole, it's interesting because I do think a lot of it has been structured around this interrogation of Lestat's relationship with Gabi, and establishing it as the ultimate obstacle in Lestat actually facing his past honestly. It comes back, in my interpretation, to these sorts of fundamentals of storytelling where every narrative can be boiled down to three questions - what does your character want, what's standing in their way, stopping them from getting what they want, how will they overcome (or not overcome) that?

Lestat's arc this season is about wanting to express his (subjective) truth, but how can he do that when he perpetually lies to himself about what's been done to him in order to survive? It creates a sort of narrative paradox where I think the writers did have to sit with the question of how they can really explore Lestat's past without addressing why he lies to himself about it and depicts it in the way that he does. I imagine they realised that they kind of couldn't, which is why it became the spine of this season, culminating in that emotional tipping point of Lestat finally realising how his mother and the environment of his childhood created a feeling of truth as something punishable, as something that invites violence, and story / fiction / performance as escape from not just reality, but trauma too. Interestingly - pointedly - we've also seen this season that it is for Gabi too - her books were escape from the Marquis, Sofia is an escape from herself).

I think that realisation being that tipping point does open the story up going forwards and lets the writers look at his past with clearer eyes than they were able to this season. It doesn't mean it will be any less subjective, of course, but the arc of the season really is, to me, about Lestat clawing his way to something like a personal truth, rather than a performance of it, which I think opens doors for s4, it doesn't close them.

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[lincodega]

Hello! I don't know if you're allowed to answer this or not, but this season on TVL there seems to be some continuity errors and events the show is intentionally dancing around. I'm thinking specifically of Armand and Lestat's contentious (and dubiously-consensual) history; whatever led Lestat to participate in the trial; Nicki's death. We see Nicki interred in the crypt last season, but this season Lestat says he burned. Lestat says he remembers Nicki's bare arms, but Nicki's wearing long sleeves in the scene he supposedly dies in. it's implied in the last episode that the death wail Lestat told us he heard from Nicki, he actually heard from his friend burning at the stake. (Not sure if I'm reading that right.) Everything between Lestat and Armand from Lestat's POV is danced around -- if Lestat only wants to hear 'I love you,' why does he reject Armand's 'I love you;' Armand tells us last season Nicki went comatose after Lestat gave him the gift, but this season Lestat skips over that, for example. Armand seems very invested in isolating Lestat this season, but the finale claims it was all for Louis. There's just a lot of pieces not quite lining up. Am I reading this right, or do I have book-goggles on? Are these all intentional?

heya so i can't really answer any of these questions, just because that is above my pay grade, but i would hedge my bets on some of this intentional and some of this is the result of an always slightly chaotic television making process. the time, revisions, edits, changes, day-of improvs, editing, etc, means that sometimes stuff gets lost, dropped, revised, tweaked, redone a hundred times before it gets to screen.

i think that the question of intentionality is interesting, but!! also!! i think it is more interesting how YOU interpret these not-lining-up places. why do you think that we have the two different versions of Nicki? What did Lestat mean when he said he remembered his bare arms? These are questions for you to answer, not me! I think you'll have more interesting ideas anyway.

the narrative exists for you to explore it.

the point of art is interpretation. a large part of the process of creating art is getting out of the way of that -- either by trying to make it clear, or giving viewers the tools, or simply stepping back entirely.

[littlegirlinvisible]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 3.06: Montreal TVLTwT/IWTVTwT Version. +bonus bc op is very tired of seeing terrible takes online:

The Vampire Lestat is now streaming on AMC+. If you have the chance, please support the show by tuning in on the official platforms. Every view counts!

[kakinou]

Lestat desperately tried to understand/justify Gabriella's behavior his entire life, and the entire season, to us, the audience - the interim owners of the Failures tapes. It's different because we are vampires. It's her way of loving me. She was born in the wrong century, dealt a shitty hand in life. She did it because she wanted me to escape Auvergne. Why did you take me to see the witches burn? Even then, at the brink of death by decapitation, Lestat's brain conjures a Gabriella who explains: look at the peasants (cabbages!) we live with, look at what they do, you have to escape my son. And try to escape he did by the way! Twice! Only to be brought back against his will.

The witches place is one more instance in the season when we are told something but we have to look around in the scene for clues to understand what is really happening (similar to Magnus music video). Lestat has all the information (no memory problems with this vampire) but he's presenting us with a version that is more palatable for him. Lestat wants it to have been about tough love. It is not. The setting of the scene is this: four girls at the stake. The first two are SA victims who spoke out. The third one is a friend of Lestat, who used to come and play at their house. The fourth? A twin, a doppelgänger, if you will. Big doppelgänger imagery all season which I have yet to unpack.

The message Gabriella sends could not be clearer: I will isolate you (no more friends) and if you speak about what is happening between us, you will end up like these girls. It even bleeds through in Lestat's recollection of Armand's butcher shop fun adventure: bad things happen to girlies who talk. Gabriella is an abuser, she has been presented with no redeeming qualities the entire season because what she did to her son is horrific, unforgivable, irredeemable.

The road leading Lestat to the realization that his mother was a monster way before she became a vampire will stay with me for a long time.

[mitchiesawyer]

There are many valid criticisms to be had about the writing on TVL. It should be a more diverse writers room. There are absolutely biases in the writing - as their biases in all writing. That should be discussed. That should be addressed.

And to be clear those diverse voices shouldn't just be there to write for Louis. They should be there to contribute to entirety of the plot just like Anusree Roy should absolutely be back as a voice to add authenticity to Armand while also getting to write about stuff that has nothing to do with him as she did this season.

That said: I do think other criticism about the structure, plotting, and pacing is less to do with objectively bad writing vs. what people got compared to what people thought they were going to get compared to what they wanted to get.

It sucks when that happens. It sucks when you have expectations for a show and that's not what you get. It sucks when you think you could do better. It sucks when you have scenes from a book that you really want to see and it's decided by other people that isn't something they want to focus on. It does not inherently make the writing bad.

Most importantly, beyond that, it doesn't make Rolin Jones evil. It doesn't make Hannah Moscovitch evil. It doesn't make Daniel Hart evil. It doesn't make Ryan Kattner evil. It doesn't make Kevin Hanna, Anusree Roy, or Jonathan Ceniceroz evil. It might make them writers you don't enjoy. Cool! I have loads of those. It might mean the show is made by people you don't enjoy - fair. It happens.

But I implore you to temper your language. Some people are going WAY too far in calling for firings, violence, weird parasocial stuff in real life that is volatile and dangerous. Whatever you think that's going to achieve, it's not going to do it. At best, AMC decides it's not worth the hassle and cancels the show. At worst, someone gets really, really hurt.

Do we have to be reminded about what went down at SDCC last go around?

[blueberry-matty]

this! this! this!

so well put and so important to keep in mind!

[hiitspussyhands]

As a Daniel enjoyer, can I just say, the racism is the point. The ableism is the point, the bag on her head as she cried, the student used aggressively, the estranged daughters. This is a boomer monster. Remember how he lectured Lestat's head on having carved out a path for himself? That's boomer talk. You dislike him by design, because he is a bad person and I'd never seen a so thoroughly boomer evil on tv, it's very interesting and timely, you just gotta understand that it's not a blind spot in the writing, it's intentional. Just like it's intentional that Armand torture Louis, and the shockingly evil ugliness of that. The ugliness of incest, of murder, nothing is sanitized.

They're wealthy predators, the discomfort is the point.

[plasticfiends]

shut up this is so cute

[squirrellypoo]

Lestat did not kill Paul.

The exact line in the TVL ep7 is "You are all here tonight because I murdered you, made you, or memorably traumatized you."

Paul fits into the latter category. Also, it was already covered in s01e06 that Lestat had nothing to do with Paul's death PLUS interviews with cast and crew at the time reiterated that Lestat wasn't lying about that PLUS Anne always maintained that Lestat had nothing to do with Paul's death in the books, either.

The Vampire Lestat (2026), s01e07 "The Failures"

[skyrigel]

[endiness]

i want to believe.jpg

[greylittlebird-deactivated20250]

I don’t understand why people who cannot accept any moral grayness or complexity decide to join fandoms for the most emotionally complex stories and then try to shame everyone there who actually is able to understand the material.

[penandinkprincess]

sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "mmmhmmm okay yeah i see we both interpreted that differently based on what the show gave us, but i see how you arrived at your ideas even if they're different from mine," and then sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "brother what show did you even fucking watch"