anya jenkins' defense attorney

fix your hearts or die

[wynsummers]

hi! my name is emma I'm 22 and I use he/they pronouns

my interests include buffy the vampire slayer, interview with the vampire, twin peaks, monster / ever after high, many many musicians, dan and phil, buffy the vampire slayer, the umbrella academy, and whatever else bounces around in my brain.

a brief dni:

the usual criteria, zionists, anyone under 17, proshippers (especially you, wincesties, stay away 🔫🔫), john barrowman fans, brendon urie fans, anyone who mentions season 6 episode 19 of btvs as anything other than a colossal writing mistake (please for the love of glory don't put That scene on my feed)

I think that's everything?

thanks for reading!

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[mad-scientist-enthusiast]

This, too, is Devil's Minion 🙂‍↕️

[souryam]

that one line in TVL abt nicki helping lestat to prepare for his roles

[ratcarney]

lestat calling nicki his “bipolar boyfriend” breaks my heart because what do you MEAN nicki died before he had a name for what he was feeling and why he was feeling it, let alone any treatment for it?? what do you MEAN lestat learned the term as it came about in the 20th century and recognized it in the memories of his dead first love????????? what do you MEANNNN

[and-fishing-equipment]

lestat de lioncourt is too silly he really said "after it took me over a century to get over my dead boyfriend, the most depressed man in all of france, i am ready to try again with my new boyfriend: the most depressed man in all of america"

[gracerings]

iwtv continues to be so smart in its portrayal of memories and trauma, the way lestat’s memories of his family are so obnoxiously loud, everyone’s screaming all the time for no reason and everyone’s acting like caricatures, like an actual assault on the senses, as if lestat’s mind is filled with unbearable noise every time he thinks about them. lestat’s memories coming at him all fragmented and loud and violent, attacking him and beating him into submission as he desperately tries to escape them is such an interesting contrast to how louis would carefully weave a thread of his past pretending the glaring holes in it weren’t there

[dxxtruction]

1:48 AM

[1shroom1]

TVL's Issues w/ Bias and how it's somehow worse than Anne Rice's(??)

Lestat's season has, shockingly, been all about Lestat. But that doesn't mean the show needs to suffer because of it. Side characters still deserve quality writing, previous seasons still need to be addressed; All in all, this season being from Lestat's perspective does not mean Lestat must exist in a vacuum where everything gets drawn towards him and almost nothing exists outside of that. But it kind of feels that way! And, somehow, I believe the book series written by the number one Lestat glazer herself suffers less from this issue than the show does. WAYYY more under the cut!

In regards to Lestat's actions:

I've always praised the show in the past for being able to sift through Anne’s biases and show us something a little more objective/balanced on the screen. Writing literature is a much more intimate process that creating television, and sometimes this shows itself more blatantly with certain authors, such as Anne. TVC follows her through her life and her shifting perspectives using her characters as a vehicle to do so. And while that’s beautiful in its own right, it can hinder the more technical or ‘objective’ side of story telling, which we see through Lestat. Lestat was her favorite, Lestat was her ideal self, and that’s shown true by how every character immediately falls in love with him and- often times- absolves him from his mistakes.

S1&2’s choice to worsen the severity of Lestat’s actions, to me, felt like a way to separate itself from Anne’s inherently biased story telling. They made it feel as if his decisions had true weight, that no matter what they could not be forgotten and/or absolved (As Claudia says: “We leave the damage, so we never forget the damage”). But then S3 comes around and it seems like that was all just for show because virtually nothing Lestat did in the previous seasons have been accounted for within 6/7 episodes. Louis takes him back without discussing whether or not Lestat voluntarily participated in his and their daughter’s lynching, Lestat takes a passive role in Claudia’s seance despite having turned her and abused her, Akasha’s Blood is implied to be intrinsically tied to Lestat dragging Louis by the throat and dropping him from 1000ft (when Louis points out “it’s not the blood, it’s what you do with it” it’s turned into a joke and they start cracking up), all the while Louis apologizes for every little thing and Lestat’s entire character arc this season revolves around being victimized.

This complete lack of acknowledgement or admission towards Lestat’s wrong doings is so prominent that even Anne herself paid more attention to them in the books! (In reference to Claudia’s turning: “And it was out of this desperation to keep him [Louis]… that I committed the most selfish and impulsive act of my entire life among the undead.”) Even later on in the series- namely TotBT- when Lestat’s actions are particularly vile, he makes no effort to explain them away. Take, for example, his rape of David Talbot, which he acknowledges for what it is: a monstrous violation. This is such a stark contrast from the constant victimization and dumbing down that Lestat suffers from this season that it’s honestly astonishing that Anne Rice herself seemed to acknowledge Lestat’s behavior for what it was more than the show runners. Which, honestly, there’s just no excuse for. Not only do you consciously choose to make Lestat worse than he is in the source material but you lack the deeply personal relationship Anne had with him! There is no reason to be shoved this far up his ass this season (It being Lestat’s POV is no excuse because, with only one episode left, his POV should have been broken down by now)!!

In regards to other characters:

As per mentioned, it's no secret that Lestat was Anne's favorite character. Not only did this show through his characterization, but also the treatment of characters around him. Louis was famously sidelined after iwtv (which is far more complex than just Anne's favoritism of Lestat, but it still feels important to note) and the PL trilogy seems to have the whole vampire world revolving around Lestat. It feels like every vampire has an intense love for him, no matter what. I'd be damned to find more than 2 character's in TVC that is a detractor of his.

Well, TVL doesn't mimic this aspect of bias towards Lestat, but it does implement something that is arguably worse: making the characters nothing but narrative devices to him. I think the treatment of Nicolas this season is one of the examples for this. His character is nonexistent outside of the realm of Lestat. He's the "bipolar boyfriend", the "first love", he's there to serve as a sad flashback and a blockage for Lestat to get past so the plot can advance, NOT to serve as his own character. This is extraordinarily different from the life he is given with the books. His character is not only viewed from a deeply empathetic lens (Lestat describes this very vivid scene when taking Nicki's blood: "I saw a bird soaring out of a cave above the open sea. And there was something terrifying about the bird and the endless waves over which it flew... it was falling gradually and inexorably over nothing save this one tiny creature cawing in the wind above a great wasteland that was the world.), but is nearly always brought up by Lestat in every book he narrates in the series. Within the narrative Nicki isn't just a pawn to be moved forward but a person that existed and is remembered NOT out of some haunting guilt that needs to be reckoned with, but simply because he was there and he was loved.

I also feel like Gabrielle is worth noting when comparing Anne's own biases versus the show runners. Anne had this to say about Gabi's character:

Yet Gabrielle is still given dignity and respect in the books. We watch as she breaks free from her rather violent oppression under the patriarchy and finds who she's always wanted to be within vampirism. As soon as she's liberated she starts presenting as a man, she wanders the woods and goes out on her own to explore. It doesn't erase the lasting trauma she inflicted on Lestat due to her neglect and abandonment, but it does make her a 3 dimensional character that you can feel for. So tell me why the show runners threw all this away to make her a sexual abuser and manipulator who controls Lestat throughout the entire season? Even Anne, who didn't like her, gave her more care than that!

In conclusion:

Season 3 suffers from a quite apparent bias towards it's front man and it seems like it's done too much damage to be fully recovered from in episode 7. I truly believe the writers are hiding under the crux of "It's Lestat's perspective!" in order to write what they want, what fills their agenda, without thinking of the integrity of their work and the standards they set the two previous seasons. The character writing leading up to TVL has been astonishingly brilliant. They're all complex, they're all troublesome, and they're all monsters. But season 3 tells us some are more monstrous than others, some deserve to be humbled more than others, and some are worth less than others. This mindset is extremely different from the complex world Anne Rice had crafted within TVC, in which vampirism is treated as a unifying monstrosity that makes it impossible to hold one character above any of the others.

I'm still holding out hope for episode 7 to re-contextualize at least some of these issues, but I would be hard pressed if it suddenly excused the 6 episodes before it that seem to shamelessly foster them without much proof that they are features rather than bugs.

[glitter-hound]

its the fact that armand does absolutely nothing to stop him that gets me

If you see the vampire armand getting pushed against a wall by daniel molloy DO NOT help him. He is exactly where he wants to be.

[vampiresbabey]

He is SO babygirl coded despite being an evil little freak and I love that for him

[aphrostiel]

appreciation art for TAS spock <3

[nyxemisa]

[claudiadpdl]

the writers tried so fucking hard to make us hate louis this season but all it did was reaffirm my love for him—louis dpdl is the vampire ever and nothing will ever change that. not antiblack writing, not character assassination, not smear campaigns, nothing. jacob has made him into a such a loveable, multifaceted, imperfectly perfect, iconic character that is so easy for so many people to resonate and empathize with, and that can't be taken away no matter how much they try. it's impossible to decenter louis. there would be no story without him.

[mychemicalraymance]

CORPSE POSE

[merely-trying-to-survive]

Dan: Before and After learning they have a show on 9/11

[cordspaghetti]

doubles

[rocktheholygrail]

The Vampire Lestat (2026)

[jadedresearcher]

ngl this is the funniest procedural thing ive made in a while i saw https://genders.wtf/gauntlet/ and realized that the only way it could be better is if it went forever

kinda curious to see what ppl get