new trailer gabriella thoughts (gabrielle whenever i'm talking about book version):
witches' place? something else? if witches' place is she leading him there? if yes then WHY is she leading him there??? did she not do the opposite in tvl?!
what is she doing with the band in the "do you kill people" bit (in reflection around 0:53). momager real? i'm scared.....(<- not in a fun way)
carol papong's (? is that her name?) hair looks more like what i imagined gabrielle with except of course styled differently.....what does it all mean........
genuinely i do NOT see her calling lestat a failure. this is especially because gabrielle emphasises over and over in tvl that he CAN accomplish things. and she ends up essentially being the most encouraging force in his life at that stage (which says it all really.....it was grim out there). also she WANTS him to succeed, partly for his sake i suppose but partly because that means through him as an extension, SHE accomplishes things. (she is also upfront about this, even to the point of sending him to paris where she wonders if she isn't wielding him as an extension of herself even as he goes away.) and she does not seem to be anything worse than indifferent about anything good that happens to him: indeed she comes off as FAR less disparaging than, say, the brother who calls him "impossible" in the cloak gifting scene. MAYBE the extra 12-14 years added onto their dynamic might change things (adaptationally the age changes impacted a LOT imo, and not always cleanly) in terms of dynamic and get her more frustrated. nevertheless i currently remain unconvinced.
("idiot" i'll give though, she's definitely gone for "annoying (said obliquely)" before so it's not Too far-fetched.)
"my maker called for his mama and i came" from gabriella when gabrielle didn't particularly like being called lestat's mother regardless of how their relationship manifested. come ON now.
also the numerous "i came"s are like. idk i just feel like she wouldn't put it that way ALTHOUGH i do see it if it's a nod to some of her fantasies that she discusses with lestat in tvl. that would be fun twisted.
"grow up" i mean. hmm. see the thing with gabrielle is that she rarely verbalises any sentiment. she certainly pushed lestat towards growing up for various reasons and in various ways, but i don't know that she'd say it aloud. or maybe say it aloud like THAT because with the caveat that i'm at the beginning of tva still, i don't think i've seen her scream ONCE. not once. maybe some snarling and hissing and perhaps a bit of snapping but never a proper yell......what are they doing to her...............
that bit with the table and the candles and the typewriter with lestat & gabriella alone. are they filming for the doc. are they. she'd do a lot of things for her son but also she'd NOT do a lot of things for her son. somehow i feel like filming for the documentary falls squarely in the second category.
generally gabriella's styling reflects none of what we see from gabrielle. it's hard to hold on to the hope that the harmony-cobel-esque wig is some in-universe ploy, nor have we at all seen her in anything reflecting how she presents in tvc. one or two occasions could be called "special occasions" to crack out the "looking femmed up for my son" or whatever but NOTHING other than the black dresses and past stuff has me a little worried.
see, overall i think the issue i have is this: gabriella is presented as a mother-figure who would generically speaking make sense to what lestat's like later on in his life but NOT so much as gabrielle tvc in visual aesthetic or demeanour or attitude or interactions or anything at all. and i know this sounds strange to say but there's almost TOO much modern!gabriella in there! yes it's true that gabrielle is possessive of lestat (extension of self, hid the letters before they split up at the end of their ten-ish years, keeps coming back when things are REALLY (like Really) bad for lestat, apparently there at the end in pl though i'm not there yet). but at the same time she's also fiercely independent and neglectful towards lestat somewhat (even when being somewhat possessive) and goes no-contact for long periods of time just because she wants to--and this situation (flopping, some threats) just doesn't seem urgent enough yet for me to see her to justify her presence. it took the concert hall catching fire to bring her out into the open in tvl.
and then the other thing is, well, how vilified and caricaturised she seems! like obviously incest bad emotional enmeshment and abuse bad etc etc but, that said, lestat stresses over and over in tvl (and more broadly in tvc) that to him, gabrielle felt like (for good or for ill) a comparatively (to everyone else) safe person to talk to about anything, even the deepest things, perhaps too many things. he frames it as a real "us vs them" with him and gabrielle on one side and the rest of the family on the other, with gabrielle working "miracles" for him against the elder brothers and the marquis. she's the only one who seems to know him and his life in his home even a little bit. and while it's indisputable that he's presenting all this through a heavily rose tinted lens, downplaying that gabrielle somehow badly clung to him and gave him too little attention simultaneously (to say nothing of the oversharing and the rest of it), i would still EXPECT her to look and feel much more like this mother who could be loved dearly given that in the past, mostly, we're not supposed to be getting any kind of "objectivity" on her but in fact LESTAT'S PERSPECTIVE.
like how do i say this. not only does gabriella not seem like the "real" (inasmuch as we can call any version of a character real when it comes to tvc and perspectives) gabrielle (what we can glean from different descriptions, mostly from lestat and armand), she also doesn't feel like lestat's version of gabrielle whom he's unhealthily devoted to. there's no kind of reasoning at all given as a foundation for that dynamic of resentment combined with closeness/affection/powerful love, and everything we hear about her in 1x01 (which had me really excited to see the show's handling of her!) seems to fall flat in a really bad way. there doesn't seem to be any complexity of character as in who she is, nor do i currently see a great degree of complexity in how she's being presented by lestat vs how she's being perceived louis/daniel/etc vs how she's being perceived by the audience. so to conclude with what i said at the beginning, gabriella feels like a character but not so much like gabrielle.
