l'amour est un monstre

[ they/she | 27 ] IWTV sideblog | loumand enjoyer | I stand with my canceled wife | main @salt-shrine

[entrailer]

characters have to be a little bit awful in ways that you cant defend. its good for the ecosystem. your honor he did do that. He did in fact do that

[winepresswrath]

The rise of AI slop & the endless waves of books that feel written to spec by people who are terrified of their own audiences has given me a new appreciation for Anne Rice. It's not even that she didn't give a fuck; she cared passionately and was famously, publicly hurt by the reception of at least one of her novels, but she never let that distract her from her mission of writing whatever the fuck she wanted. No one could write Anne Rice's books except Anne Rice. They are singularly, entirely hers and while I won't pretend she was a perfect person or it's wrong for readers to be offended or uninterested in spending their one and only life on earth reading something that offends them, I also think her work is valuable and humane and also often hilarious and it's not a crime to have a muse you adore.

[bifauxnenarmand]

so it’s confirmed what they pulled from tva was the armand sewing claudia’s head thing. and they thought armand just sewing anybody’s head would be in character for him. regardless of motives

[funeralspirit]

armand in the book: so yeah, i was trying to do something good, okay? i was high on too much blood and it was ugly. i tell you. it wasn't pretty. it was gruesome and ugly. but i had to try, at least. and i never wanted my poor sensitive louis to know. but here we are. and you know, i never loved claudia. i didn't know how.

armand season three: it's morbin time

[clementine-kesh]

*producer about to make one of the worst seasons of television ever put to screen* surely writing purely in reaction to what the fans are saying on twitter will work out great for us this time

[yaoiblackmold]

If they really really wanted an Armand twist (for the third! time) that badly they could've just gone for "Armand was actually in the right this time" twist. They literally showed the scale of the destruction after the concert and could've totally do a oh no I was actually the bad one all along style reflective narration from Lestat. He was the person who brought the vampire apocalypse upon us, while at the same time down playing it. And Armand was right to ask him to stop making music! Lopping of Lestat's head was actually the correct thing to do to prevent totally destruction and mayhem! Armand told the truth. That could've been the big twist, but no it's actually evil moustache twirling villain Armand again.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Mildly kicking the hornet's nest here, but I do find it inchresting how ALL of IWTV, all you ever heard was how Louis was such a liar about everything he ever said. No amount of the writing showing that while yes, he absolutely has a history of not telling the truth to protect himself, there were other people (mainly Claudia's own diaries) that attested to Lestat being not shit towards the family; that there was still an undercurrent of truth to how race played a pivotal role in Lestat's control of the relationship; none of this ever seemed to land with these viewers.

It was "unreliable narrator" this, "emotional terrorist" that (yes, that is a real thing that went around). The idea that a Black man could not be a perfect victim (nor person) and still be a victim was just, NOT a thing, ever. So much for lovers of "morally grey". There was not a singular ounce of grace, particularly from white female viewers. I was serious when I said they reminded me of the Mistress from 12 Years a Slave 😭

And yet you're telling me that people just bought what Lestat was talking about this season, hook, line, and sinker? There was just this assumption of truth, of innocence, of "well SEE he's just suffering and that made him do bad things!" As if everyone in the story wasn't suffering in some capacity? As if everyone didn't have something to stand guilty for in this show, yet did not have their sins excused?

I mean I didn't see one singular "emotional terrorist" accusation. I didn't see one "well he's unreliable and self piteous so this probably didn't happen!" The way they said about Louis getting violently beat and dropped from the sky by this man. Instead we got Louis' two siblings, who canonically stated their disdain for this man, saying how much they like Lestat. Crazy work. Major of example of writers not disregarding their Black fans, but actively disrespecting them 😭

[holewithoutorgans]

"I planted the fred steins to fuck with your head" He would not fucking say that! Thats not why he did it! I've always preferred the ambiguity of it never being confirmed but whatever. Does no one remember the "you think I want to be hyped up, coddled, lied to" conversation??😭. It was a stupid and misguided attempt to massage Louis's ego a little.

The foundation of post paris loumand is that they both want the relationship to work! They NEED it to work actually. Desperately. They dont think they can survive with out each other.

Armand wanting to intentionally push Louis into a breakdown makes no fucking sense. How does that help his goal of keeping the relationship together?????????? Everytime Louis has an emotional outburst doing the interview, Armand is trying to shut it down. This season just butchers Armand, fuck.

[hinasho]

Season 4 Episode 1 is gonna cold open with Louis in the middle of apologizing to the ghosts of Tom Anderson and Alderman Fenwick

[antidisneyinc]

the decision of the writers of tvl to not clarify lestat's role in the trial, why he was there, how exactly and to what extent he was coerced, to never address it, to never have lestat explain himself to louis, but to treat it as though lestat is obviously innocent and has nothing to explain.........................................................profound

[whooshsoohw]

What bothers me the most about Armand's arc this season is his characterization as a premeditated schemer. It turns him into the cunning, one-note villain the writers and cast kept insisting he wasn't. The concept of him demanding an apology from Louis and genuinely believing Louis owed him one is fine. Although that wasn't their dynamic in the books, the change does bother me because why transplant that dynamic onto Loumand when Lesmand is right there to explore and deepen? Plus, Armand has already done enough to Louis, and the optics of the situation do matter, especially if you're going to have Louis give him a sincere moment of connection and frame it as earned and somewhat heartwarming.

But if you were going to do that, I think a much better approach would've been to have Armand come to Louis with his own apology while expecting one in return, only to become angry and violent on impulse when Louis refused to give it to him. It would've made the point about how dangerous, delusional, unstable, and sadistic he can be without betraying the characterization the show had already established.

Because almost every time Armand has done something violent or harmful, it's been impulsive. San Francisco was driven by emotional weariness, anger, and impulse. His lie about the extent of his participation in the trial, and about saving Louis, was a spur-of-the-moment decision when he saw an opportunity and seized it, not something he'd been planning beforehand. The only thing he planned carefully over a long period of time was the trial, and even then it wasn't his idea in the first place. Someone else came up with it, and he went along with it.

A person who is constantly in survival mode, who stays on sinking boats because they're too afraid that if they jump and swim they'll never find land, only an endless sea that will drown them, just isn't someone who takes initiative as a master planner. They aren't the kind of person who orchestrates something as complex as the entire Regina scheme or constructs an elaborate torture scenario. They'd improvise it instead, just like they did in San Francisco.

Up until this season, the show consistently characterized Armand as someone whose manipulation and violence were primarily reactive, adaptive, opportunistic, and rooted in survival. This season shifts him toward a more proactive, long-term scheming role, and to me that feels like a meaningful change in characterization rather than a natural extension of what came before. I also think it's a less interesting and less psychologically complex version of the character.

[vampire-scripture]

Rice on Adaptation

What movie do you not want to see?

[antigonickpdf]

the thought i keep coming back to with the finale, and this season in general, is a sense of… infestation, i guess is the best way to describe it. because for the first two seasons, iwtv was a work that— even with all its gothic/horror themes— seemed deeply compassionate at its core, and it remained devoted to beauty and love in a way that felt like a reprieve from (even a small rebellion against) the rising fascism of the culture surrounding it. and now it feels like the hatefulness it was pushing back against has infested it somehow, like a swarm of fuckin termites, which has not only ruined this season but also calls into question the structural soundness of what came before it. like, how did we even get here? was this sort of mean-spirited derision always just lying in wait? idk. i don’t want to make a bad season of tv deeper than it is, but it does feel like witnessing another loss in the cultural battle when a careful, compassionate work that ostensibly cared about the marginalised experiences it depicted becomes just another conduit for hatred toward vulnerable groups. what a fucking bummer, man

[crithir]

“you’re just mad that The Vampire Lestat is about the vampire Lestat”

I WISH it was. I wish AMC’s The Vampire Lestat had anything to do with Anne Rice’s character Lestat de Lioncourt as presented in her book The Vampire Lestat. Instead, this blond guy running around calling himself Lestat might as well be Jarda Klapek

“you’re just mad that the show isn’t the one you made up in your head”

At least the one I made up in my head is based on The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

[hinasho]

I feel like this entire season has been giving off the vibe that Louis is the problem and has always been the problem.

I’ve been thinking about this tweet everyday since 3x06. It was posted before ep6 came out but still rings true.

Louis & Claudia portrayed in the worst light imaginable. Some of Lestat’s wrongs absolved or reframed as “less harsh” (no you don’t understand Antoinette cut off her own finger, no you don’t understand the queen’s blood makes it so he can’t “restrain” himself.) Antoinette being given more sympathy #justiceforantoinette. LouClaudia’s relationship, most especially Claudia, framed as the wedge between Loustat ala Adam O’Byrne referring to the seance as them “dealing with the problem” the problem being LouClaudia. Claudia framed as a cackling villain eager for their demise in both the coven’s and this season’s portrayal of her, as tho everything she did was just for evil’s sake.

The framing this season makes it seem like the problem with Loustat was Louclaudia and now that Claudia’s dead, it’s just Louis holding them back. And while Louis isn’t perfect and has had his toxic moments, this framing only makes sense if you viewed S1 Loustat as a “mutually abusive” relationship (which is not real!) or as Louis being the abuser in the relationship. And now that Louis has been humbled, ridiculed, and insulted by literally every main character this season, Loustat can be happy now. Louis just had to get over himself and get over Claudia.

I just have no idea how you can create two seasons of this character falling victim to several abusive relationships, and come out of them with this logic. It’s common knowledge that Louis (not Loustat, Louis as an individual) isn’t popular among the fandom or within the writer’s room, but there’s a difference between not liking him as much vs straight up hating him and their feelings are showing.

And the defense that this season is from Lestat’s POV so that’s why things are so biased doesn’t work because when the story was from Louis’ perspective, even when Loustat were at their all time lowest, Lestat wasn’t nearly as ridiculed or framed as horribly by the narrative.

Idk it’s just so bleak.

[funeralspirit]

the only time the csa survivor can get any compassion is by literally wrenching it out of someone who is actively being tortured. this is beyond tone deafness, it's deliberate cruelty.

[nicoleanell]

Finale so good they're doing an Apple Tree Yard/Conformitygate about it.

[tanalolo]

"thank you for loving him the way he needs to be loved" abt a man who threw him from 2 kilometres in the sky....

[black-market-wd4o]

Paul "leave that white devil" du Lac thanking Lestat "keep fucking me or I'll almost kill you again" de Lioncourt for loving Louis the way he needs oh Rolin is going to to a level of hell they haven't even built yet