love it when people are acting naive/obtuse, like i just saw popular tweet "why s1 of iwtv is the only one that doesn't have perfect rating on rotten tomatoes, i felt like it was the best one?". like, dude, the answer is anti-black racism. the show was review bombed. look at the comments under the trailer for s1, it's mostly racists hating on jacob. obviously reviews for s2 & s3 are mostly from the fans of the show! how long people can play ignorant and ask these questions, we all know why & we need to call it out instead.
Daniel has been one of my top favourite characters in the show.
But now that the season has ended, I don't feel much trepidation anymore, saying that I don't like vampire!Daniel. (Whew it feels good to finally say it out loud.) I love him but that's only because of the groundwork laid by human Daniel in s1 and s2. I have felt this way since before the season aired from all the footage we'd seen of the season. But I felt I was wrong, unjustified in thinking this way because everyone raved about how cool they found vampire!Daniel. Now that the supposed "coolness" has been his downfall, I kinda feel vindicated. His ridiculous juvenile edginess is sooo corny. He has been completely stripped of his interesting personality.
Of all the things the show has ruined this season, and there has been many such things, his butchering hurts me the most personally. I will never get over how they massacred his character. I loved him so so much. An incredibly intelligent person. A serious, brilliant, respectable, formidable journalist. A dying old man, who held his own against two massively powerful supernatural beings, by the sheer strength of his intelligence and wit.
The writers saw fans enjoying his witty quips and sarcasm and took that one quality and flanderized the fuck out of it. He's primarily just an asshole now. I'm not saying he wasn't a fucking asshole in s1 and s2, because he fully was, but that assholery was one aspect of his character. And it blended organically with other facets of his rich personality. They got rid of all the layers, all the depth of his character and made him into a 70 year old annoying hormonal teenager, who is always pissed at everyone, and is egregiously insensitive and offensive all the time. And who apparently has no mind of his own now, and does everything his companion tells him to do without question.
It hurts so much, man. So so much.
Oh human!Daniel, I'll never move on from you. You'll always be precious to me. You'll always be my favourite.
Armand is absolutely terrifying in it. In the best possible way. Absolutely incredible, genuinely chilling... I had goosebumps every time he was on screen! Eyes one second burning with madness, the next lit up with this completely unhinged amusement, and then, without warning, sink into ancient, bone-deep pain.
The whole thing honestly felt like watching a horror movie where the monster suddenly appears in front of you... except the monster doesn't look like a monster. And somehow, that's so much scarier.
Assad is phenomenal. And sorry everyone in the fandom (and let me put a giant disclaimer here that this is only MY personal opinion), but for me, he's on another level compared to everyone else.
The focus on the train scene is doing such a disservice to the whole narrative and the characters.
On one hand even if it is false it doesnt erase the abuse that Claudia suffered because of Lestat. Choosing to only focus on the one thing that may be a lie to then choose to say that it didnt happen is such a strawman. Like honestly who cares if this was false when he did lots of other horrible stuff to her? (Not even touching on the choice to have a young woman falsely accuse a man of threatening sexual assault, which she didnt even really do, at least it wasnt my takeway from this scene)
On the other why would she even lie? I know that Ghost!Claudia said that she wanted to manipulate Louis to come with her but why would she need to do that? I havent read the books but i have seen that apparently the ghost scene is almost the same in it, but it would make sense for a Claudia that looks 4 years old to need someone with her since yeah she can't do much by herself. But show!Claudia even if she is weaker than most vampires could probably still live by herself i feel like. I guess you could argue that what she went through with Bruce "proved" to her that she couldnt make it alone or at least traumatized her enough to make her think so but idk.
Idk i was looking forward to this season exploring Lestat's guilt and relationship with Claudia which is to me one of the more interesting parts of the show so its kinda disappointing that theyre doing this in such a reductive way.
Delainey's acting in this scene was phenomenal and i really wished the scene was written differently (especially considering the racism which made the whole thing very very gross to me)
About the aftermath yeah at first when Louis and Lestat seemed to have almost no reaction to what happened i thought it was maybe bc of shock, that they were in denial or something. But im kinda scared that it was actually moreso a "oh she's actually a horrible person who hates us, why even bother" i really hope it isnt and i feel like that would be a bit too bad even for what we have had this season but yeah
I dont mind her saying that she hates Louis more, yeah it makes sense since they had a closer bond so she would feel more betrayed and hurt by him (also considering that he wasnt perfect to her when she was alive in a lot of ways) idk the whole framing seemed a bit weird to me, saying that she didnt care about him and painting her as a manipulative mastermind. Yes NOLA Claudia felt trapped and wanted to get free but idk. This is the one point im willing to give graces to the writers on but it feels a bit disrespectful to Claudia's character to me.
Actually i guess that bringing her in a state where she is angry and suffering and thus would be easily able to be doubted/villainize on what she is saying is what feels disrespectful to me. I like the idea of having a Claudia that is mean and angry but if this is all we'll be getting idk
I haven’t seen the ep yet but I’ve stumbled across some spoilers and very mixed reviews. I love your acc tho and your pov is always very interesting and nuanced. So I just have a quick question: was Louis actually seriously referred to as a bucket of Louisiana friend chicken in 304? Or are people making that up because???
I don’t have the full context, but it seems like a very heavy handed microaggression if not just pure racism. I hope I’m just misunderstanding as idk the actual scene. Did that actually happen? What are your thoughts, if you don’t mind sharing them?
Thank you anon I really appreciate that! 🥰
I hate to say it but yes it is true…
This season has a lot of micro aggressions and racist comments for a season that seems uninterested in exploring racism #noticing
If the character in question had been painted as biased and racist by the narrative (Ex s1, Lestat, tom Anderson; Fenwick etc) it would have been interesting to explore… but the show is uninterested in that… which makes me think it wasn’t the writers intentionally making the character racist to explore white supremacy and how white people can perpetuate harm… but something they genuinely think is a funny joke…
The writers room is lacking the diversity from previous seasons and it shows and there are very good parts of s3 I am enjoying BUT the problems are there and I don’t blame anyone who feels so unsettled by it they choose to drop the show.
I'm not surprised that they used Claudia's SA as a prop for Lestat and Louis's storylines, because they did the same thing with Miss Bricktop's SA in the very first episode that they ever made.
the biggest problem i have with loustat this season is that it lacks passion. desperately so. i'm aspec and i don't care much about romance in fiction, but gothic romance in iwtv was excellent, it made me feel something beyond myself. even outside of what we can consider their "good" times in season 1, the passion and yearning and painful co-dependency was ever-present.
louis was sitting there at the trial watching lestat say the most disgusting shit about him and he still couldn’t stop loving him. and we agreed he was insane for that, and we wanted more. louis couldn't stop loving lestat and longing for him even when he thought lestat wanted to kill him. when he was angry at him. when he was scared of him. but in s3 i simply can't feel anything anymore.
i know more great loustat scenes are coming soon but i really just... i think i'll have troubles in believing the sincerity of it after these 4 episodes. one, two, five great scenes won't replace the ever-present yearning in s1&2 and the devastating nature of it.
right now it feels like s1&2 were written by people who were crushing on lestat along with louis, but s3 is written by someone who doesn't really like louis and doesn't understand what lestat likes about him. just like the most of loustat fanfiction actually lmao. it's just... should i care? will they make me care again? because i don't think it's possible right now... they'd need to compensate so much in the next 3 episodes.
