I took so much footage at the Season 2 Premiere event last night! And then after it was over, Princess and I recorded an hour of discussion about our thoughts and feelings on Episode 1. Once I get back home, I'll edit it all into a non-spoiler video to share with you ASAP. I'll probably also edit a spoiler version to release after the episode airs as well, maybe exclusively for my Patreon patrons. I still have to rewatch all the footage to remind myself just how much everyone gave away 😅

It was a very crowded event and I got overstimulated very quickly (in a ND way), so I didn't get the chance to talk to everyone I wanted to. Sadly Eric didn't attend the party after the screening, so I didn't get to ask him my question about if he's read QOTD and what he thinks about Daniel in it (and his relationship with Armand 👀). I also didn't get the chance to get through the crowds surrounding Jacob and Delaney. I did get to ask Sam my question for him, though! And talked to Luke briefly. Assad was gracious enough to talk with me about Armand for several minutes (he did actually give me an answer to my question in this clip after he took a sec to think about it 😆) and he so kindly told me how much he liked watching my videos and all my analysis about the story and characters!

The big thing, though, is I got the chance to have an extended conversation with Rolin Jones, who also told me how much he appreciates my videos and all I have to say about the show (including my criticisms 😅). I can't wait to share all of it with you! Look out for that coming soon!

As always, I post my videos privately on Patreon first before making them public, so if you want to see it right away, you can join up here: https://www.patreon.com/mavenoftheeventide

Did you like the season? I know that you famously dislike the first one and I'm curious to know if seeing the second changed your opinion in any way.

Some people think I disliked season 1 because I had criticisms of it, but as I said in my videos, I also enjoyed it! There were certain parts and choices that frustrated me which I thought could have been done better, and I thought the way the showrunners promoted it was very misleading, but that doesn't mean I disliked it overall! I still watched it multiple times, made hours of content about it, and have spent the last couple years talking about it constantly with my friends.

To answer your question though--Overall, I liked season 2 better than season 1, but there were parts in season 1 that I still like better than anything I've seen so far in season 2. My favorite parts of season 1 were true gold!

But overall, season 2 is better written and more consistent. It does stick to the book a LOT more than season 1 did, which many people will appreciate, and helped the story stay on track and focused, but I personally wish it had also added more new original characters and scenes and moments like season 1 did. Those new entirely original ideas were the most interesting parts to me of season 1. I'm a bit disappointed with some of the changes made to the character's choices and personalities in season 2 (you know how much I love the characters in the books! Especially Lestat and Armand), but as always, the actors did absolutely amazing jobs with what they were given. Seeing Louis and Armand's relationship in modern day (one thing season 2 does have that wasn't in the books!) was especially fun.

Biggest complaint? Not enough Lestat 😉 Using the "hauntings" as a visual version how he's always on Louis's mind in the book was great, but I was hoping we'd get a lot more flashbacks to things that happened with him in the past from both Armand and Louis's perspectives. Ah well, that's what season 3 will be for! 🤞

The AMC IWTV season 2 review embargo is lifted! I’ll be making a video about every episode that I’ll release the day after the episode airs (post-mortem and recap coverage is still embargoed until then). Keeping in mind that reviews cannot include “plot or storyline details that will spoil the viewing experience for fans,” which aspects of season 2 would you like to hear about from me in a text review here? Talking about what the fans most want to know is my priority. Reply here, or send me an ask!

Hey not much to say but seeing a bunch of asks being answered I’d thought I’d send this. I’ve been watching your content since about the 5th grade and i just want to thank you for the years of wonderful videos. Really helped foster my obsession with vampires lol

Awww thank you!! 🥰 It's been my absolute pleasure! 🧛

Norman Lindsay — Purity's Don Juan 

It's not presented as a good solution. I read it as presenting as despair, but honestly both our reads are projecting and assuming. There is no way to know how the commenter meant it. But they didn't say "I hope this happens" or "I think it will happen," so we can't assume that the lying is what they want or approve of.

The beginning part of the season doesn't support the "Louis lied" theory, and neither does all that the showrunners said about their vision of the show in the promotional material and behind the scenes. However the last episode handles the way Daniel forces Louis to admit the truth about Lestat's death in a very ambiguous way. Many people couldn't tell if Louis was meant to be lying deliberately to Daniel in his first version of the scene, or if he was really deluded into misremembering Claudia saying she couldn't burn Lestat. I say it must be the second thing, because that's the only thing that makes sense with the rest of what the show set up if you were paying close attention. But SO MANY fans think it might be the first thing. If the show had made it clearer with better writing in episode 7, that misunderstanding wouldn't have become so widespread.

@elisaintime If you genuinely care about taking criticism why don't you respond to comments about how you and other book fans view Lestat?

That's actually a very blatant example of how you enable racism but I have yet to see you address that.

Why do you feel Lestat is worse in the show when he's done plenty of terrible things in both show and books?

Why are you validating people who would rather believe Louis lied, and in fact would prefer it if it meant they could maintain the image they have of Lestat?

If you, yourself don't believe it then why even entertain a belief that you acknowledge is racist?

Emil Melmoth

Manuel Orazi, "The Masque of the Red Death" (1893)

Yees! Let's talk about Lestat! I can talk about him all night!

I addressed the terrible fan theory about Louis being a liar in this post. I have never agreed with that theory--First because it doesn't make any sense with what the show has given us, we never see Louis lie deliberately, only misremember and then get corrected immediately. As we see in that new trailer, it’s super important to him to get every detail exactly right. He is not here to lie to us. The whole point of him doing a second interview is to be honest this time, to show us the real Lestat (supposedly the one readers came to know from later books…but this seriously makes me wonder if the writers even read those books) instead of Louis’s biased version of him from the first interview.

Second, because even in the books, he also doesn't lie about stuff that happened during his first life with Lestat. When Lestat calls him a liar in his own book, its for Louis lying about his FEELINGS, about how much he loved and cared for Lestat, not about any of the events that happened. The show did give us a bit of this self-lying in ep 7, when Daniel has to force Louis to admit to himself that he spared Lestat out of love. And the show also establishes it as what happened in their first interview in 73--Louis "lied" then to Daniel about his relationship with Lestat, only focused on negative things. In their second interview, he talks about Lestat more lovingly, but the actual events of the story remain the same. The events weren't lies. And from what we hear when Daniel plays the tapes, you hear Louis ranting, speaking from hurt and focusing on the negative instead of the positive. This isn't lying, this is just how he feels at the moment. But the events of the story remain the same between the two interviews. Likewise in the book, Louis didn't make up any events or conversations that he tells Daniel (except, of course, for the very last scene with Lestat when they reunite in Nola in 1973). The entire story about his life with Lestat and Claudia happened the way Louis told Daniel it did, and Lestat doesn't refute any of those conversations or events. All Lestat corrects in the book is his own motivations for WHY he acted that way with Louis and said and did those things, the secrets he was keeping, as well as tell us some bits of happy loving times between them which Louis neglected to tell Daniel.

Third, because it would be SUPER SHITTY of the show to make us watch all that horrible abuse and torture porn, only to then go psych! It never happened! We made you watch all that for nothing! And also our black main character is a total liar and the white abuser is totally innocent. That second commenter up above in your screencap is being a dick, yes, victim blaming, saying Louis brought his abuse on himself. But he's not saying Louis is lying about the abuse. Just being a horrible victim blamer. Even though he's not implying Louis is a liar like you say, I'm still going to delete that comment, cause ew. Thanks for finding it for me. That was a comment I missed when I was deleting things because the YT comment moderation panel DOESN'T EVER SHOW YOU REPLIES TO OLDER COMMENTS I HATE IT IT'S HORRIBLE. It only shows you new comments. If someone replies today to a comment that someone posted a year ago (or even 4 days ago), I would never know it was there unless I went back to the video and scrolled through the entire comments section and expanded the replies on all of them to see if any new replies have shown up--and I do this! Especially in the first weeks after a video is released. But it becomes impossible to keep up with on older videos. It's such a broken system.

The third commenter says the only way to disprove Lestat's been changed into a much worse villain is if Claudia turns out to be a liar, but they don't say that they think it will happen or that they want it to. They're absolutely right that this would be the only way to disprove it. And since I don't think the show would be so awful as to do that to us, make its black characters liars like that, I believe that every single thing Louis and Claudia told us about Lestat really did happen and will not be disproven.

This is why I said the show made Lestat out to be much worse than he is in the books. When I say "Lestat would never" I mean the original character as written, not show Lestat. Clearly show Lestat WOULD and DID. And I am personally disappointed the show made these choices with his character. Lestat is a monster who does evil monstrous things, but because Anne Rice's vampires have a reputation with the mainstream for being "frilly" and "pansy" and "gay" because they dare to have feelings and talk for hundreds of pages about those feelings, a lot of people who don't study her work closely, don't take her vampires seriously, especially not their monstrousness. This was something that frustrated Anne often with the public perception of her vampires. And it seems like the showrunners fell into the same position. Like they were afraid audiences would think Lestat was some weak sissy watered down vampire if they didn't make his monstrousness more macho, more physically violent. Like they were afraid by committing to making the gayness front and center in their version, they would need to overcompensate with his toxic masculinity to get audiences to really see him as any kind of badass awesome vampire character. It utterly shallows and cheapens the nuances of his existential quandary of being a monster.

Lestat in the book LOVED Claudia, all the way up to the end. Saw her as his protégée, the vampire companion he wished Louis could be, his minime, a tiny version of himself, and we know how much Lestat loves himself. He adored her until she started to turn against him, and even then, he was mean to her out of hurt pride and insecurity, not hatred. It's hard to keep loving someone who hates you first. But the show flipped it, made Claudia's descent to darkness the result of Lestat hating her first. Show Lestat seems to only tolerate her in the beginning, is jealous of her attachment to Louis instead of grateful for it, and then so quickly goes straight to outright shallowly hating her and everything about her. I would have liked to see him continually loving her just as much as Louis does in the show, while still going through all their struggles with each other and making all the prideful mistakes he makes. Claudia's murder of him (and Louis letting it happen) felt like a BETRAYAL to Lestat in the book. There's no way show Lestat was shocked or betrayed feeling by Claudia's murder plot--he saw it coming a mile away because he already knew he'd earned it. For book Lestat, it was a shocking come-to-Jesus moment, a wakeup call that made him reevaluate everything he thought he knew about their family.

Lestat in the book would never hurt or let anyone hurt Louis (they have a conversation about this in book 4, and Louis doesn't disagree). He would never punch him in the face over and over again, drag him by the jaw through the yard then drop him from a mile in the sky to shatter every bone in his body. Whenever they fought in the book, Lestat held back all his strength and just let Louis wail on him until Louis tired himself out. He could have snapped Louis in half with one hand, but he never does it or even wants to try. Heck, he probably even liked letting Louis get his anger out on him because it was one of the rare occasions he actually got to feel his touch 😭

He abused Louis mentally/emotionally by manipulating him into staying with him. This is sinister and villainous and frightening, but it's like the show didn't think it was COOL enough so instead they made him this macho punchy ass kicker, this shallow cliché wifebeater stereotype, because they didn't trust their audience to be able to see the horror in the abuse remaining gentle and psychological. Toxic masculine bullshit that I don't need to see more of on TV. We have plenty of cheap gory physical violence in vampire media already. Anne Rice's vampires are different and people LOVE them for that, the differences are what made her version of vampires so groundbreaking and popular. And if a new vampire show is going to be made for TV, why would you choose to make it about Anne Rice's vampires if you weren't even going to go with that difference? It's the entire point of using her property!

Lestat in the books is redeemable. Louis didn't understand the depth of Lestat's soul and feeling, saw him as this shallow idiot. But even while he still thinks Lestat is dead, before he fully learns how intelligent and philosophical Lestat really was all along, as well as the secrets Lestat was forced to keep, while he's traveling through Europe, Louis realizes that he was unfair in his estimation of Lestat. That he judged him too harshly and that Lestat wasn't any more of a monster than he and Claudia are themselves. Louis forgives Lestat and feels guilty for letting Claudia kill him, and his love and respect for Lestat only continue to grow throughout the series as they both learn extremely hard lessons about their flaws and toxic behavior and the way they wronged each other, and then can move forward with their relationship in a much healthier way in the modern era.

This will be impossible for show Lestat to do. Whether they realize it or not, they made him absolutely irredeemable and painted themselves into a corner if they really think they can ever get audiences to accept him as the hero he is in the books. I don't know HOW they possibly think his character can recover from this. Maybe they have some huge plan, but it BETTER NOT be turning out that Louis or Claudia were lying. That would be horrible writing and we would riot.

Maybe they'll have him wake up in modern times and be like "wow I was such a horrible abusive asshole back then. I'm so sorry Louis. I'm not that guy anymore. I meditate and do yoga now, and have completely resolved all my anger management issues" and then they can fall in love for real this time. But there is NO way Lestat can be like "actually I wasn't that bad back then" with these choices the show made.

I love Louis and Lestat's toxic messed up love story. It's definitely my crack. It is SO complex and nuanced and emotional, and they're both so sad and hurt on the inside and flailing and failing. In the book, Lestat genuinely loves Louis SO MUCH. The show made it deluded narcissistic obsession, not real love, made it so shallow instead because it felt this need to make sure they were presenting exciting action-packed TV, and had this mission to shock the audiences with things they'd never expect even if they knew the books well. Felt they had to one-up Anne Rice in every way. They wanted to have a Red Wedding moment in their show, so came up with the worst most shocking and unexpected thing for world-beloved fan-favorite character, Lestat to do.

I'm a person who loves the villains most in stories. I'm a monsterfucker, and I'm here for the dark side. Lestat is one of my absolute favorite monsters in the history of literature. So charming and lovable despite all his evil. And that he IS loved--by Louis, which matters most to him, and by so many others--makes it just so delicious. But the show just made him gross. He's not the fun villain that Tom Cruise made him out to be, nor the tortured monster-with-a-heart Stuart Townsend played. And I feel so bad for Sam, because I know how much he loves book Lestat for all his nuances. To hear how multiple times he went to Rolin and was like "I don't think Lestat would do this" and was told to just roll with it, and that he could excuse it in his head by imagining that because Anne's books had inconsistencies that maybe they were wrong and THIS is the real Lestat now, it's just...so sad. His hopes were so high to play the complex, redeemable character from the book, and he's forced to instead be this paranoid hateful narcissist.

In the books, Lestat is vain and egotistical, but he's not narcissistic. He is absolutely fascinated by other people, wants to hear all their life stories and learn everything about them. It's what he loves about drinking the blood, that glimpse into his victim's souls to learn who they really were as people. He falls in love so quickly with nearly everyone he meets just because they're so beautiful to him with all the parts inside that make up who they are. It's the life itself that is beautiful. And it's his lonely curse that the only way he can enjoy or be part of it is by taking it. He's super angsty about this, and this despair drives so much of his story.

Meanwhile, Lestat in the show sees humans as just meat, inferior beings that disgust him. All of his fascination and love for humanity is gone. Lestat's love for humanity is what made him different from all the other vampires, from the covens and the storybook monsters. It's what made him so attractive to Armand and Marius and Louis. And he loved Louis because Louis was the only vampire who loved humans as much or even more than he did.

Lestat in the show is just a dick who loves nothing, only wants to control it.

But here's the thing--I'm not so sure the show actually sees him that way. I'm afraid they don't even realize just how awful they made him.

Many people have talked about how Lestat's seduction of Louis in episode 1 is manipulation and abuse tactics, how he isolated him from his family and friends, how he used his insecurities against him, love bombing, and so forth. This is right there, plain for everyone to see, abuser 101. But when Rolin Jones and others were talking about that scene, they were describing it as so genuinely romantic, as it being about Louis finally feeling true connection with someone who understands and values him. They legitimately thought Lestat's speech in the church was good, sweet romance! And if this is what RJ sees as romantic, doesn't realize the problems with it at all, that just makes me 😬😬😬 and kinda worry for anyone he's ever dated.

So if the writers and showrunners still see Lestat's love for Louis as genuine good real love, I'm guessing they will still try to redeem him, and probably get them back together to lead toward their canon happy endgame. And I just have NO idea how they will make that happen in a way that will be satisfying or believable to audiences. The only way to make Louis and Lestat work in this show will be to have Lestat admit to all he did wrong, feel absolutely horrible about it, become a changed man, and then actually go through the process of falling in love with Louis for real this time.

Maybe it will happen! But I won't hold my breath 😩

@elisaintime If you genuinely care about taking criticism why don't you respond to comments about how you and other book fans view Lestat?

That's actually a very blatant example of how you enable racism but I have yet to see you address that.

Why do you feel Lestat is worse in the show when he's done plenty of terrible things in both show and books?

Why are you validating people who would rather believe Louis lied, and in fact would prefer it if it meant they could maintain the image they have of Lestat?

If you, yourself don't believe it then why even entertain a belief that you acknowledge is racist?

Hi, I love your vampire reviews! Since you’re an expert in Anne Rice, have you heard anything about the supposed memorial celebration that was supposed to happen in New Orleans? I’ve been checking the Facebook page occasionally & signed up for the e-mail updates. But it feels like it was announced like 2 years ago & there’s been no further info? I completely understand Christopher isn’t obligated to throw a party for the fans. I know her family’s been organizing her substantial collection and grieving privately. But I do wish I had an idea of what they’re planning.

Really, I love NOLA street parties, & would be thrilled just to meet up with fellow fans!

Nope, there is no new news regarding that, unfortunately. I really hope it still ends up happening! During the weekend of the 2022 vampire ball, a second line memorial parade was held, and I walked in it with all my friends who'd come for the ball along with hundreds of other fans. They asked us to dress in Victorian mourning style and there was a band, and we marched through the Garden District waving lace handkerchiefs. We stopped to have a moment of silence by her 1st street house, and the parade ended at the bookshop where she liked to do all her signings. Christopher wasn't there for that, and it was all organized by the fan club (same people who host the ball).

If you like NOLA parties though, and want to meet up with fellow fans, I highly recommend trying to get tickets for this year's Anne Rice Vampire Lestat Fan Club Vampire Ball (not to be confused with other vampire balls happening that same weekend). It happens Halloween weekend. It looks like tickets are going to be much more limited this year than they were in the past few years, so keep your eye on the ARVLFC social media so you can snag tickets before they're all sold out! I've been going every year since they came back after Covid, and it's always amazing!

I’ve commented under KittyKochan yt channel about the screening..and she wants to go and they’ve opened up more seats. KittyKochan on YouTube. She’s a black gothic creator. Look her up 🥰

Ooo!! Thanks so much for the rec! That's amazing that they've opened up more seats!!

Here's a direct link to her channel. Everyone go check her out!!

The post-episode 3 shift

FRESH POST!

So we were talking about how AMC's Interview with the Vampire Season 1 handles their choice of making Louis a black man in the early 1900s. This is a really cool change the show made in its AU version of IWTV, and it brought in a whole lot of subjects to explore that didn't exist in the books, making the TV show a very different work of art. But all the initial ideas for this show came from a cishet white man, and while he down the line had assistance from poc collaborators, I still think the show had areas where it could have done better with regards to some of the story beats, character arcs, and plot progression. The other thread got unwieldy with multiple reblog trees, but it's here for reference: https://www.tumblr.com/elisaintime/748738811357462528/woah-i-must-have-missed-something-why-are-people You can see everyone else's discussion in the notes.

I love discussions like this! Please talk to me about vampire chronicles! I live for it! I'm posting this now because I am disappointed that a few people seem to not be understanding several things I said. Maybe I said it unclearly, or maybe they're projecting and jumping to conclusions.

Kind of like how this poster does:

I deleted/banned every single comment on my videos that talked negatively about the show making Louis and Claudia black or deriding it for trying to be woke (and there were a bunch!). I delete block and ban all forms of hate speech. My channel is absolutely not a safe space for racists or bigots of any kind.

As you can see in the screencap, there is nothing in these comments that is about the race changes. These comments are talking about other changes the show made from the books and don't touch on race at all. The poster who screencapped them is jumping to the conclusion that these commenters liking the books better than the show automatically makes them racist, and that these are racist comments. And this screencap is specifically what I was referencing at the beginning of the other thread. Several people have said this now, that my YT comments section makes a safe space for racists. But these are not racist comments, and there is no evidence that the commenters are racist. This is projection and assumption. If you DO ever notice a racist comment on any of my videos, that I somehow missed, please bring it to my attention so that I can immediately delete and ban the user from ever commenting on my channel again.

But back to the show itself and my critique of it. I'm always here for talking about vampire-related writing! Let's go!

I still stand by what I said in my videos about the few issues I had with the show's scripts. If you watched my videos or follow all I've said about the show here on tumblr or elsewhere, you'll know how excited about this show I've been from the very beginning, how obsessively into it I am, following every aspect of production and behind the scenes news. You may even be in one of the multiple discord servers with me where we talk about the show constantly. There was much I really enjoyed about season 1, which I was outspoken about in my videos, and people keep seeming to forget. My videos had a greater percentage of positivity in them than negativity. But yes, I did have critiques as well, just like I do with every single piece of vampire media I discuss on my channel--it's the entire point of my channel!--and those mostly had to do with inconsistency in the writing.

What I've said is that the DRIVING FORCE of the plot wasn’t about Louis's struggles with chafing against society as a black man after episode 3, not that there was no more racism. I said he was obviously still immersed in systemic racism all around him, which the show showed us with visual details in the background, despite no one talking about them. This is fine, we don't need it spelled out for us. TV is a visual medium, and that's what the images are there for. But my discussion is about his character MOTIVATIONS on a writing level. His want vs need. His goal vs obstacle. If you're unversed on the techniques of story writing and plot structure, I recommend Blake Snyder's book Save the Cat as a crash course. In ep 1-3, for Louis, it was about being respected as a man equal to others among his society, the citizens of New Orleans, his colleagues and business rivals. Fighting for social opportunities that were limited to him because he is black. That story ends with episode 3 and a new story begins. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I just said I NOTICED it.

After it all burns down, Louis stops focusing on society respecting him as a human being (which was ironic to begin with, because he’s not human anymore) and his driving plot becomes about making and keeping a family and such. Obviously race is still an element of that in a mixed marriage, but it’s not about his business or social standing anymore, these parts of his life that were SO IMPORTANT to him in the first three episodes. In the books, vampires stop caring about that kind of stuff the second they are made, but the show changed it to take Louis a few years to get there instead of it happening instantly.

Obviously racism doesn't magically disappear or stop mattering once he accepts his vampire nature (which Lestat kind of promises him it will), but it does shift to being a background element for what we see on screen. He is not focused on it anymore, when it used to be the primary driving force of his plot. We hardly even get to see Louis interact with (racist) society again til the finale (and I made this observation on episode 5, which the end-of-episode credits told us was written by a white person). For example, the police that come to their door are bigoted to him and Lestat because they’re gay, but meanwhile, they act completely colorblind. At this point, Louis’s character motivations are about fear of them being caught for murder, and his emotions regarding how Claudia is struggling with her eternal child body and lashing out--about keeping his family together. Not about his racial struggles as a businessman and citizen in outward society.

Yes, we all know there were non-white people in the writer’s room (thank god! Can you imagine?? If there weren’t any, we’d all have been raging from the very beginning! Did you read RJ’s episode 1 script draft before it got revised with the input of black/queer/female editors? OOF), but the choice to completely shift Louis’s driving character motivations away from his impassioned societal race struggle to something different after 3 episodes was part of the original season outline made by white people before any poc were brought on to the team. 

And again, I didn’t say it was a bad thing, it was just something I NOTICED, and the way the show executed it felt very abrupt and clunky. Did I want the cops to not be colorblind and get in some racial digs and microaggressions while they were at Louis’s house? Ew no. But I did NOTICE that they didn’t do that, and how it was so different from the way Louis was spoken to by white people in the first 3 episodes. Did the white writer of this episode perhaps feel uncomfortable going there?

The season told two different stories for Louis, with an abrupt turn in the arc after episode 3. It didn’t feel like an arc at all, but a sharp angle. Starting with Claudia, Louis’s primary drives and character motivations completely change. He no longer wants to be an important businessman respected in society, he becomes “the housewife,” and never once seems to miss his desperately-fought-for social status at all. This comes back to what I said about the show being weakened by trying to shove in too much book stuff. Ep1-3 were all these cool new original ideas from the show with Louis having entirely new character motivations based on the show's changes to his background. They were naturally driven by what him being black in 1910 now meant. But after that story was done, it abruptly shifts back to more of how he in in the books, and trying to suddenly pull him back to his book personality/motivations/goals after giving us this whole new organically-evolved self in 1-3 was notable. I noticed it.

All in all, I think it probably would have worked much better on a writing level if it was treated as two separate mini seasons instead of presenting itself as an attempt at one coherent whole.  

🔹 Saying that it's okay to write or read about dark and taboo topics but only when they're portrayed in a certain way is still censorship.

🔹 Wanting to ban or forbid media that you believe portrays a negative topic in a positive light, by glorifying, romanticizing, or fetishizing it is still censorship.

🔹 There is no objective metric to decide if a story is portraying a negative topic the 'right' way.

🔹 Just because a piece of fiction doesn't explicitly condemn or portray an evil action in a bad light in the text doesn't mean the author thinks its good or is trying to persuade the audience that it is good.

🔹 Survivors of trauma will not always write fiction about their trauma in a way that seems 'right' or 'normal' to you.

🔹 Banning fiction because it portrays dark, taboo topics in a way you consider gross or disgusting is still censorship.

Grim Reaper Drawings Set on Behance

💀🖤

Woah, I must have missed something, why are people jumping down your throat?

From what I can gather at this point, it seems like they feel like anyone who likes Anne Rice herself and the books better than the show=automatically racist. Even if they ALSO enjoy the show and support the race change of the characters and all the racial conversation the show incorporated into its adaptation.

Personally, I think it does a disservice to the fandom to assume that the only reason one could like the books over the show is because of racist reasons. Anne's books speak to so many people in so many ways, especially those who have ever felt like outcasts or apart from mainstream society, and many fans have extremely personal connections to the books for a huge variety of reasons.

Like I said in my videos, I was excited and intrigued to see this AU version of the story (I love AUs!) but my complaints with the writing of the episodes mostly came back to when the show was trying to stick TOO MUCH to the books.... Because the show was really making its own thing with its own versions of the characters and all these new ideas, but then suddenly it would shove in a scene/dialogue straight out of the books which would contradict or make no sense with everything else the show had already worked to set up with the new direction it was taking itself.

Critiquing sloppy/weak writing does not mean I or any other fan who feels the same is doing it for racist reasons. Much of my criticism was about how the scripts changed Lestat's character to make him so much worse than he was in the books (which would be fine, it's their story, whatever--except the show runners told us over and over again that the whole reason Louis was doing a second interview was so that this time we could see the real version of Lestat and how Louis felt about him instead of the mean, insulting version he gave in the first interview). There was a lot promised by the showrunners about what their adaptation would be like that was not delivered ("closer to the books than the 1994 movie," "true to the spirit of Anne Rice" etc). The entire reason I made my videos was to evaluate how well the show measured up to those promises.

Worse than making Lestat so irredeemable, the way the first season ended in a way that made so many fans believe that Louis might have been lying about everything didn't sit well with me at all--it's a harmful stereotype to make the black man a liar, especially when it comes to abuse. I know the "the DV didn't actually happen and black Louis was lying or mind controlled by his evil non-white boyfriend" became a running fan theory, but I personally don't believe it one bit. But I can see why so many fans do--again, sloppy/weak writing on the show's part.

Like I said in my video, the only thing Louis actually lied about in ep7 (and he was lying to himself, not deliberately lying to Daniel) was the depth of his love for Lestat at the end. And that's entirely canon for Louis to deceive himself about--admitting how much he truly loves Lestat always came hard for him. I personally don't think it's going to turn out that anything Louis told us in season 1 was a lie. I think the show would have revealed that at the end of the season, not waited another season (or two or three) to reveal that. And the theme of season 2's promotional material has all been about memory, not honesty. I don't think Louis could mistakenly remember getting dropped from a mile in the sky and the months/years of recovery afterward, so I personally think all those memories were real.

The first three episodes of season 1 made Louis's struggle with race its primary focus, and the series description began with how Louis was chafing at society as a black man. But then from episode 4 on, the focus of the show shifted entirely. Obviously racism still existed in Louis's world, but the show pushed it all entirely to the background with little things, like segregation on the bus, and we saw the characters quietly taking in stride, not making any plot out of it. Suddenly all of Louis's character-driving moments weren't about that anymore and we were in a whole new story, when his battle against racism had been the entire theme of the first three episodes. This was something I noticed and pointed out in my videos--I didn't say it was a bad thing (after all, seeing people be racist to Louis on screen, while "realistic," isn't exactly fun for anyone, and we'd already seen plenty), but I did think the sudden dramatic shift in story focus weakened the show's themes and throughline.

Again this comes down to writing, and the premise/script was written by white people. I think they could have done much better with much more non-white involvement on the writing level. I think the show could have been stronger with some more care taken to create consistency and smoother transitions between episodes (like when they take Claudia out to feed in episode 4, suddenly all the race riots are gone, when everything was on fire 2 hours ago). It's common for shows to have each episode written by a different person, even though they all collaborate in a writer's room, but to me it felt like the show lacked efficient script supervision to make sure all the scripts flowed into each other without any contradictions or inconsistency.

When I talked about these things in my videos, when I said I would have liked the show to do better with the way it missed the mark sometimes in handling racial aspects (even though other parts I commended as being great), and the way I critiqued the inconsistencies and contradictions, some people took that to mean I hated the show entirely. The point of my videos was to see how well the show measured up to Rolin Jones's promises that it was so faithful and respectful to the spirit of the books and that all he wanted to do was honor Anne's work. I know the books back and forth, enjoy having a ND hyperfixation that gives me near-encyclopedic knowledge of the texts and Anne as an author. So people ask me questions about them all the time, especially in comparison to the adaptations. Who better to make videos evaluating how well the show measured up to RJ's promises and claims of faithfulness? But some people took me comparing the show to the books to mean I thought it was a bad thing that they weren't the same, and I hated the show entirely for not being the same as Anne wrote it, and therefore that meant I (and anyone else who loves the books) was racist 🤷