so i lowkey just lurk on tumblr to see what a fandom is like before watching shows sometimes.
can i ask, since you seem to be one of the few people with critical thinking skills. why are so many people upset with tvl? and why does every single complain feel so plucked out of thin air/reading into a line wrong/jumping to conclusions about intent that wasn’t there?
like sure the writing has some issues but is the show actually racist, transphobic, and homophobic(these ones made me laugh cause what???) or are people just that so lost in ‘staning’ and defending their poor unreliable asshole narrator #1 from the evil unreliable asshole narrator #2? also why do they hate armand so much? sure he’s the “villain” but like…he’s the reason there’s a plot? no?
STAY OUT OF THE FANDOM!! FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!!!
Im not even kidding. I was the same before this is season aired and my first watch of the previous two seasons was incredible. Such a positive experience. People who are fans of Armand are pretty cool generally, I think because it’s harder to pretend he’s not a monster and pretend we aren’t watching the genre we’re watching, but otherwise, it’s such a miserable place. I’ve been in so many fandoms over the years and this is the worst one. Without a doubt. And I’m also really into Star Wars so I don’t say this lightly.
There are a lot of reasons people are upset about TVL that it’ll be hard to list them all, but I’ll do my best.
There’s a refusal to accept the tone change and there’s a chaos that comes with narration of Lestat. There’s also the typical complaints about certain book scenes not making it in. I don’t totally agree with them, though there are a few key scenes I would’ve loved to have seen. I think we got enough backstory but there’s certainly room to revisit some things. Praying they get a bigger budget in season 4 because you could tell they were struggling this season which is a shame.
The characters all feel flanderised. I’d agree with that critique. Even Lestat feels likes flatter version of himself. There was very little reflection from him and very little accountability. We spent so long fixating on the train scene and the narrative didn’t really acknowledge in a meaningful way that Lestat chose to be part of the trial. No coercion on his part. No attempt to warn Louis and Claudia while he was rehearsing. He did it of his own free will, and no one seems to care.
Daniel was particularly strangely written. It felt like he was there for the sake of being there and the writers weren’t sure what to do with him because he’s in not in the book.
Armand’s arc for me is the biggest low point of the season, in the sense that he doesn’t really have one. Then he has this huge chunk of the finale and it’s supposed to be a twist but it came out of nowhere and feels very jarring. He’s a massive part of the book and he was just barely there and they downplayed his importance in Lestat’s life. Maybe season 4 will change that. Also Assad’s performance was phenomenal yet again. He stole the season for me, but Jacob was wonderful too. Oh and Delainey but that’s a different scene.
There’s also complaints in general about how the characters of colour have been treated. Louis feels like he’s used as the punching bag of the season and Armand is excessively violent, which is not who he’s been set up to be. I think there were ways to do what they wanted to, to have Louis hold himself accountable for his wrongdoings and explore Armand’s psyche but the way they did it feels unbalanced. I think there is validity to the racism critiques.
As for the homophobia, I’m of two minds. There’s a lot of very casual affection from the books they’ve not included in the show and they’re being very monogamous with the relationships, so that already makes things very different. But we didn’t see Nicki and Lestat kiss properly, we didn’t see Armand and Lestat kiss despite us being told they slept together 400 times. I think it makes sense we got nothing from DM and Loustat, but Nickistat confuses me the most. I don’t think it feels much less queer though, but I don’t think characters need to kiss for there to be romance. Loustat got some really lovely domestic scenes. The transphobia was one throwaway line and pretty pointless. It didn’t amount to anything so I question the decision to do it at all.
But what I want to know is was this a choice by the writes, to reduce the amount of physical affection, or is it a result of AMC being more involved in the season. Because they were and that might’ve limited things quite a bit. They got more marketing from the network but in my experience, that usually comes at a cost.
Do I think the writers were intentionally hurtful? No, not at all. Whenever I hear them talk, they seem to genuinely love these characters. I think there are a lot of deliberately provocative lines, some of which feel quite forced, and that wasn’t the case in the first two seasons. I also think the writing was less tight and they tried to do too much, and so every other error feels magnified which is unfortunate.
As for people hating Armand, there is this real reluctance amongst the wider fanbase to accept the genre of the show for what it is. It doesn’t want you to hate these characters. It wants you to engage with them and their story. And you’re right. He moves the story along. I get having emotional reactions to his actions but I don’t get the anger. This persistent anger towards him, like he’s a real person actually doing these things. Why are you torturing yourself with a show that makes you upset in a way it’s not supposed to? He’s so fucking fun when you actually engage with him. He’s so interesting. As much as I have my issues with how he’s written this season, he gets the most pure horror scenes this season and they are delightfully fun when you take them for what they are. He acts the most like a classic vampire out of all of them. There are some moments this season where he’s so genuinely scary and it is wonderful.
Despite all of the criticism, I think the first six episodes are fun, the last one less so but it’s still a good time. You can just feel the budgetary constraints. Ultimately they tried something. It didn’t really work for me all the way, but I’m not massively into that book anyway. It’s hard to adapt because it’s very meandering. It’s still enjoyable (same with the book) for what it is. Season 4 will be different. I do hope they take into accounts the feedback on their treatment of the characters of colour because it was quite careless at times, but otherwise, I think it was a decent season of television. They just set the bar so high with the previous two.
