This Episode Is Gonna Be On My Mind

This episode is gonna be on my mind 🥲

Do you want to bite my head off?

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

hugs 🦁

i'm obsessed with them

You know, I'll keep maintaining that it was just such a massive, really unfixable mistake for them to have Lestat do what he did to Louis in season 1, not just with beating Louis to within an inch of his life, but also the drop, because, again, the reason Louis forgives Lestat and comes back to him at the end of "The Vampire Lestat" is because he realizes all of Lestat's manipulations and refusals to share information with him, his hiding of his true power and reluctance to tell him about where he came from or who his maker was, etc, etc... was all Lestat's fumbling, ineffective and desperate attempt to protect him and Claudia, both from Marius' threats and also the coven in Paris, and of course, also Lestat's fear of being alone. Yes, Lestat's treatment of Louis and Claudia was a form of abuse, really more in the realm of negligence than anything else, but it was done largely out of fear and desperation, not with any sort of malice or intent to harm.

And that's the problem, and that's why I'll never accept this idea that it's "in character" for Lestat to behave the way he did in the fifth episode of the first season, even with the revisions they showed us in episode 7 of season 2.

Lestat admits at the trial that he did it to hurt Louis, because he couldn't make Louis love him, so he decided to break him instead.

This takes what had been unintentional abuse on Lestat's part, and turns it into intentional, malicious abuse and plain cruelty. It fundamentally changes who Lestat is and what the issues between him and Louis are, and what's at the core of Lestat's actions toward Louis and Claudia.

They shouldn't have done it. Because even now, after this latest episode, you still have plenty of people talking about what an abusive piece of shit Lestat is, how what he did was unjustifiable, and how Louis' actions against him were justifiable, as a result.

Louis' entire reconciliation with Lestat is rooted in Louis realizing that Lestat never deserved to die. In realizing that he and Claudia had, in fact, wronged Lestat by attempting to take his life. He realizes this because he realizes Lestat's own wrongs against them had never been committed with malicious intent. He realizes Lestat had been misguided, but not cruel.

But Lestat's abuses and wrongs against Louis and Claudia in the show, as admitted by Lestat himself, were done with malicious intent, with the precise purpose of hurting Louis, specifically. It was done specifically with vengeance in mind, and again, that fundamentally changes everything about their relationship, and drastically undercuts both the believability and desirability of their later reconciliation and rekindled romance.

A large part of the audience for this show just isn't going to want to see Lestat and Louis end up together, because through this one, massive change to Lestat's character, they've completely altered the very nature of that character and of his relationship with Louis.

It kind of sucks, because Sam Reid is so good as Lestat, and his acting during that entire scene where he confesses he wanted to hurt Louis was fantastic. But it just completely butchers Lestat's character and makes his and Louis' romance almost a non-starter.