so many creative choices in tvl make sense when you realize the goal of this season wasn't telling lestat's story or adapting tvl the book but using the premise of "adapting tvl" as the justification for a whitecentric rebrand and lowkey reboot of the whole show, as part of amc and rolin's effort to distance themselves from the "black queer show" image and black viewership of s1-s2 in order to pursue the "mainstream" (whiter, straighter) audience they always wanted. this is why most of the major arcs, especially the material given to jacob, delainey and assad, feel like retreads of the arcs they already had in s2, meant to cover plot beats from s1-s2 and overwrite how they were initially depicted in a way that's both more palatable for white viewers. in many ways tvl feels like 7 episodes of a "previously on..." sequence that flits through brief flashbacks and tells, not shows the audience essential information to get them caught up before the real story begins, and that's intentional- tvl isn't meant to be a story that stands on its own as much as a staging point to establish the new trajectory of the show, the new tone and narrative priorities, and invite the audience amc wants onboard and jettison the melanated s1-s2 audience amc thinks it no longer needs before the real story rolin wants to tell begins in s4.
the narrative seems not only spiteful and uncompassionate to its own established characters and audience but almost apologetic for having demanded that viewers hold empathy for black leads during s1-s2, for asking them to center black characters as protagonists and care about their interiority- the brutalization and humiliation of jacob and delainey's characters isn't just the nonblack writers engaging in a gratuitous fantasy of torturing black bodies and "humbling" black characters who've reached too far above their station, but also a way to restore the status quo that asserts the "proper" role of blackness is to be a site of inherent pain and mortification. racist viewers who rejected the show when jacob was cast in 2021 or at any point during s1-s2 bc the idea of getting invested in messy black leads put them off can now comfortably tune back in, assured that the show will never ask them to care about a black person more than a white person or think a black person's material suffering could matter more than a nonblack person's feelings and reputation ever again. the cruelty is the point, in many ways.
it's valid to criticize tvl for claiming to be an adaptation of the tvl book and failing at that on every level, from tone to sincerity to the fact that like. 80% of the book just wasn't adapted, but once you see through the marketing claims and realize the real purpose of this season was just amc's effort to do a soft reboot and relaunch their vampire show as a cynical whitecentric dramedy without drawing the ire of straight-up canceling iwtv, you realize so many of their choices aren't just writerly incompetence but a deliberate creative and network whitelash on multiple levels of production.
i am terminally A Sucker for characters who have a towering and generally earned ego about their own ability and absolutely no self-worth about themselves as a person at all. intoxicating combo.
After rewatching the scene of "Armand apologizing to Lestat" (lmao) in ep4, I got a sudden thought: Armand says to Lestat that after everything that happened in s2 and up until the Dubai interview, Armand was walking on eggshells with Louis, thinking that Lestat would appear and destroy what Armand had created.
Is it weird of me to assume that a tiny part of Armand (or maybe a not so tiny part) felt relief after Daniel revealed the truth?
The makers of Kinktober 2025 are back again with a brand new list! The graphics are once again created by latte-cucumber. Check out our AO3 collection, or keep reading for more information.
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Kinktober is a kinky October prompt challenge that’s been running in one form or another since 2016. There are three prompts for each day in October, and the challenge is to use one (or more!) of the prompts to create something for that day. If you don’t want to use any of the three daily prompts, you can swap them out for the bonus prompts at the bottom of the prompt list.
If you have any questions, check our FAQs. Unfortunately, due to personal commitments, we won't be opening our askbox for questions this year. We've made it as rules-light as possible, though, so if your question is "Can I do this?", the answer is almost certainly yes!
A writer's relationship with their own work goes: this is genius, this is garbage, this is genius, this is garbage, i should never have been born, okay actually this line is good
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