and the aggressive desire to find a perfect victim within a story that has none.
Joining this discussion to say that I have noticed that some people want the Lestat of TVL to be the only Lestat that exists in the show. He's essentially a perfect victim in TVL (maybe a couple of questionable moments, but basically perfect, since I think his violence against Armand is justified and it's at least very understandable against Nicki). And that doesn't mean he's not an amazing and complex character as well, I LOVE him in TVL, but he doesn't have terrible flaws like in book-IWTV. Rolin had to make the events of IWTV make sense with TVL, and he can't just paper over the gap between the two books with "well, that's not how I remember everything, but c'est la vie" as Anne/Lestat does in TVL, because the seasons have to work together.
In the show, we can't only have the unbelievably sympathetic and endearing version of Lestat we get in TVL because the story of IWTV just couldn't happen with that Lestat, and I think the anger that V and some others feel toward the show comes from not wanting to accept that.
Thinking about it, there's an element of projection, if that's the right word, with her and some people on here: accusing the show of being less complex than the books when the truth is, they wish the show were less complex than it actually is. They want the perfect victim version of Lestat, or at least the 100% sympathetic TVL version, and they don't really want a show that makes Louis and his point of view an equal part of the show, or that gives Lestat actual flaws that aren't simply endearing (though they do make Lestat deeply endearing on the show already, as much as they make him horrifying and tragic and funny and fascinating and a bunch of other things).
Really, I think a lot of those people would have preferred that Rolin just started with TVL and didn't adapt IWTV at all. Because there's no way to make the version of Lestat they have in their heads work with an IWTV adaptation.
Thanks for your level-headedness and for always having such intelligent, nuanced analysis. I joined tumblr after watching season 2 and found V's blog and yours and a bunch of others, and I felt like you were actually dealing with the show, which involved analysis of the books but isn't stuck on the books. Other tumblrs seem so focused on "is this exactly like the books" as the main criteria for judging the show that it blinds them, or they willfully blind themselves, to what the show is actually doing. I see takes that seem so divorced from reality, as in everything you discussed there about the drop and their claims about it, that it's almost funny. But if those bad faith takes contributed to people in the fandom having too un-nuanced an attitude toward the show and the characters, and not wanting to accept that characters can be victim and perpetrator, then that isn't funny.
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Agreed on all counts, anons (and thank you for your kind words!)
