#he and louis treat claudia in ep 5 and 6 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

licncourt · 1 year

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When you have the time, please write your opinions on episode 6! I really love to read your thoughts

Yikes, okay. I'm just going to do a bulleted list of likes and dislikes because there was a lot going on here. Thank you so much for caring about my ranting!!

Thank you also to @zisurru and vivienne1996 for talking to me about this episode for like three hours straight after it aired and helping me consolidate all these thoughts with their insight

Things I liked

Claudia! I always enjoy her being a stone cold bitch. She's so ruthless and so intelligent that you almost forget how vulnerable she is. Bailey Bass knocked it out of the park and I was cheering her on from start to finish this ep.

Despite how some fans seem to be interpreting it, I was glad Lestat wasn't really framed as being justified in his actions. I do think the severity of his attack was downplayed (more on that later), but it wasn't fully excused like I was afraid it would be

Louis swimming the Mississippi to kick Lestat's ass

Lestat's chess tantrum. That felt like the level of shittiness I would expect from him based on the book

Things I would've liked in another context

Claudia and Lestat's chess rivalry

The mentions of Nicki and Magnus (even if it feels too early imo). Any TVL content is fun in theory

The family conversation on the bench

The Loustat sex scene (I can't believe we only got one sex scene in a non-icky scenario)

Coffin cuddles

Sam Reid singing

The fight -> sex pipeline

Lestat and the dog

Things I hated

BATTERED WIFE LOUIS. He was written as such a passive victim in this episode and it made me sick tbh. Yeah, he's mad for a while and rejects Lestat's attempts to apologize, but he DOES let Lestat back into his life and tolerates a ridiculous amount of awful bullshit. Lestat seems worse than ever, begging to get back in the family and then immediately treating Claudia poorly, emotionally abusing Louis, and continuing his affair. Louis quietly puts up with all of it, even making constant excuses for the behavior and keeping himself sexually available. It's really nauseating and so OOC for Louis that it's almost as awful a character assassination as Lestat just got in ep 5. Book Louis never felt like a sure thing for Lestat. He was always pushing back and using his strengths and advantages to go toe-to-toe with Lestat. He was never subservient or brought to heel like some terrified but overly-loyal dog. AMC Louis allowing Claudia to be abused like she is in the show is even more incomprehensible to me.

The racial aspect of this whole situation gets its own bullet point because ICK. At least Claudia called it out.

Claudia taking the caregiver role. Something that defines Louis' character in IWTV is how intensely he clings to the role of father to give his life purpose, even to the point of infantilizing Claudia until he drives her even more mad. Just like I can't imagine book Louis tolerating Lestat's treatment of his and Claudia, I can't imagine him being so okay with losing the dynamic of the only identity that keeps him going.

Lestat's priorities! Just like ep 5, another core tenet of Lestat's characterization has been done away with here. The motivating desire behind Lestat's controlling behavior and cruel self-preservation is his desperate love for Louis and Claudia and his fear of losing them. Louis and Claudia making him an important part of an established family unit was all Lestat wanted in the book, but AMC Lestat has one foot out the door all of ep 6 even after how hard he tried to get them back and how he reacted to their attempt to leave. The Antoinette affair is especially baffling because Lestat is never mentioned to have taken any lovers in IWTV until the final months of the family, a desperate attempt to get Louis' attention and a potential rebound as he felt his family slipping away. If anything, Lestat is TOO committed in IWTV, definitely not a reluctant and philandering husband or unwilling father.

Lestat's hatred of Claudia!! The lynchpin of their tragedy is that Lestat DOES love Claudia. That's his daughter, his pride and joy, his protégé, his baby girl. He loves her as much as Louis does but his generational trauma and the circumstances of her creation/existence drive the wedge further and further between them until something breaks. When Claudia tricks him into aiding in his own murder by pretending to want to fix their relationship, Lestat doesn't even hesitate to trust her. Even after she tries to kill him, book Lestat says he never regretted her, that having the chance to be her father and to love her was worth it. I don't see even a shred of that in AMC Lestat. Getting rid of that love between Lestat and Claudia takes so much away from the upcoming tragedy.

The train scene. Again, a very important aspect of Lestat that makes him redeemable later is his total unwillingness to ever threaten Claudia with harm. The fact that he not only threatened to kill her but also mocked her rape was horrid and totally bizarre. I don't know how they could ever even begin to redeem him at this point.

The oversimplification of Claudia's arc and morality. Making Lestat so black and white evil like they have in the past two episodes takes so much away from her complexity and from the depth of the story for the audience. What makes the climax of this part of the book (coming in ep 7) so compelling is that you aren't sure if Claudia was right, if Lestat deserves it, what fairness even is. In this case, she's just completely justified and killing the man who threatened her life and almost killed her father and who continues to abuse them. Again, the tragedy of IWTV comes from the pseudo-nuclear family the three of them create and the way it breaks down in the most extreme of ways, the trauma of the father and of the eldest/only daughter destroying each other while the mother is torn to pieces by a love for them both. It's a domestic horror rooted in love gone wrong.

**Bonus** The fan insistence that book Lestat was never faced with the prospect of Louis leaving and if he had been, the reaction would've been the same as in the show. That's patently untrue and it happened twice actually. The first time, his reaction was to make another attempt at winning Louis over to accepting vampirism, and when that failed, to go for the babytrap. The second time, he went on an angry spiel about how he had Secret Vampire Knowledge and so Louis and Claudia had to stay with him.

#answered #vc #vctv #amc iwtv spoilers #interview with the vampire #amc hot takes

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sofipitch · 1 year

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I wanted to ask your opinion about Claudia's development in the show and her dynamics with Lestat and Louis respectively. I have mixed feelings, but I'd like to know what you think.

Okay yeah so I waited until the finale to answer this one and I also have mixed feelings. Nothing is anything wrong with the character more I just disagree with the situations they force her into but overall I really loved Claudia and Baily Bass did an amazing job.

I loved her in Ep 4, I didn't like her calling Lestat "Uncle" but I was willing to overlook this as simply a way they are showing the period homophobia. No notes

Ep 5 I love her being a little murder machine. Lestat wanted her to be heartless and vicious, fine, she is the monster he made her. However this episode is when we see that Lestat does not see her as a daughter which is a change I HATE. The backstory they gave her is she went from one abusive household to another, and Louis and Lestat, who are supposed to be her chance at happiness, also turn out abusive and Lestat doesn't love her. There is also a racial aspect to Lestat, a white father, not loving his black daughter that just....

Then Claudia runs away from home. I knew this spoiler ahead of time and it didn't make sense, she was supposed to be dependent on loustat bc she was a child, that was part of the horror. But I was willing to suspend my disbelief and see what they did. I was talking to @babytrappinglouis and she had a good idea that just a young black girl alone in the Jim Crow south could have been what caused her to struggle alone. They could have emphasized that in a lot of ways Claudia had been protected by her wealth and having a white man in her family, but once those protections go away the white ppl treat her like shit. And this is something you DO see with Louis in the show. But that isn't what they did. They had her sexually assulted to "toughen her up" and have her "learn her lesson". Horrible.

I think Louis was right in keeping her diary entries private, her diary was not written with the intention of showing the world. In a lot of ways showing it to Daniel is already a violation of her privacy.

Then she goes home and experiences horrific abuse. And I REALLY object to Louis being a part of that, telling Claudia to try and get along with Lestat. I don't think Louis would have ever let Lestat touch a hair on her head or said that. I also just don't like Claudia being "Louis's sister" and having to care for him. She is in a caretaker role Ep 6 and 7. She has experienced some horrible abuse yet she has to take care of the men. This to me plays a lot into stereotypes of expecting black women to be super strong and always caring for others before herself. And like Lestat, who had basically experienced the same shit as Claudia, abusive dad, sexual assult, gets to be horrible. None of this would be bad on paper if it were a commentary on how black women and girls are expected to be strong in face of adversity, but it's hard to give the show the benefit of the doubt. The show is very "big flashing neon arrow" about it's themes. It's not subtle. I hope that they do address this later, either through Daniel or Claudia herself, saying she should have to be the one carrying Louis, she is supposed to be his daughter, and even if she is his sister, the care needs to be reciprocal then, right? All I'm asking is to call it out and I'll be less pissy.

I genuinely think they changed a lot of things to make Claudia's trauma worse bc they were afraid that audiences wouldn't sympathize with Claudia killing Lestat. And the thing that makes me :/ about that is this is an adaptation where they changed the race of Claudia from white to black, so what does it say that they made the black girl got through SO much worse shit to seem sympathetic? It makes me think of how black people say this all the time, that white ppl don't believe them until they see the traumaporn, they have to watch the video of George Floyd dying to believe/care.

And I don't doubt that the fandom would have acted that way if Lestat hadn't been so horrible, they probably would object to her killing Lestat if it had been for less.

It may be that they use what happened to Claudia and Louis as a contrast to Lestat's and point out how much more sympathetic society is why white ppl and men. They might use it to point out how Lestat is allowed to act out and externalize his issues more. And if they do that I'll eat my words. But I will still always at the point of Claudia's story just being nonstop pain and a lot of what we saw being pretty graphic.

Oh and I almost forgot, I ADORED her in ep 7 and I loved Louis trying to silence her, tearing out the pages of her diary, the false memory, but the real Claudia will not be silenced.

#a lot of my issues are literally isolated to those two fucking episodes #also not everyone is going to agree with me it's fine but i am still hitting post while flinching #i will probably get an anon or comment calling me a stupid snowflake #vc #asks

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licncourt · 1 year

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I swear it's not for starting discourse or anything of the sort. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on the show now that the first season has ended (and we have a more global view of the first season) regarding the plot, the reveals at the end, the characterisation of our fang family, the themes etc. I find your book metas very interesting and what you shared so far has been well structured and refreshing.

thoughts on the finale?

Oof, apologies for the wait, but I think I've gathered myself sufficiently. Thank you so much for reading my rambling!! It's so flattering to know that people care about what I have to say! I'll throw out everything I can think of now, but I'll rb with more if I think of anything else later.

I also want to preface this by saying it really seems like we're missing a lot of context and plot developments from s2 that will affect everything we saw in s1 quite a bit, but I'm just going to take this season at face value for now.

I thought the costuming, SFX, and cinematography was wonderful in the finale. It made me sad that my enjoyment of the show has been so ruined because it was stunning and really scratched the period drama itch I'd been missing with the era change. Claudia in particular looked gorgeous and the gore was really fun and well executed.

Overall, I'm very disappointed in Lestat and Claudia's relationship portrayal/arc. Like I've mentioned before, the tragic impact of Claudia's attack on Lestat is so lessened if they never had the bond of father and daughter in the first place. It rings so hollow when we never saw Lestat LOVE Claudia, adore her and want her with his whole soul before slowly succumbing to his own trauma and perpetuating the cycle of abuse. Book Lestat WANTS to fix things with his daughter, he trusts her without hesitation and that's what makes it so brutal when she quite literally stabs him in the back, but at the same time you feel her pain and her rage. We lose that in the show. They're just enemies, plain and simple. There's no agony of betrayal and broken family without love there first and it does both Lestat and Claudia, originally very complex characters, a disservice. Family, the good and the bad, is at the heart of IWTV and without Lestat and Claudia, that's largely lost.

The pacing of the episode was a bit strange to me. I felt like too much time was spent on the party planning aspect rather than the dissolution of the family dynamic and crescendo of tension. I get that they wanted a longer episode for the finale, but I don't think it justified that extra fifteen-ish minutes.

I think the fucky memory thing was better utilized in ep 7 than it has been up to this point, and given what we know of Armand's mind gift from the books, I think it would make a lot of sense that he had something to do with that. That would be my preference in general because otherwise I feel like we're delving into victim blaming territory with the implications of this take on an unreliable narrator. I thought the implementation of the whole concept was clunky, but this was the best moment it had.

The sort of tableaux of Louis slitting Lestat's throat and then the flashback of crying over his body was also fantastic, so striking and emotional. Again, Sam and Jacob are such good actors with great chemistry, so it's really a shame about the everything.

All my thoughts on ep 5 (and 6) stand. Nothing from the last episode changed my opinions on how that played out and I can't think of anything that would. I won't harp on my issues with the characterization that stem from these episodes, but they definitely carried over into the finale.

I liked the Armand reveal! I think it was fun how they dropped hints and Easter eggs for book fans all season in regards to his identity. Enrichment for the vampirefuckers. Assad definitely captures the Weird Little Guy energy but also the incredibly sinister overtones we expect from Armand. My only concern is that Armand will be treated the same way as Lestat and turned into a one-dimensional monster that they can never properly redeem. If they go the route of making him a new diabolical abuser for Louis who we're supposed to forgive, I'll chew glass.

NO SWAMPSTAT??? Honestly very disappointed. As funny as putting that bitch in the trash is, it doesn't hit the same as Lestat getting gnawed on by an alligator. Lord knows AMC Lestat deserves the death roll.

This is completely inconsequential, but I have to mention how forced that namedrop of Those Who Must Be Kept was. That was so clumsy and stupid that it made me laugh out loud in what was supposed to be a very tense moment.

The handling of the racial aspect of Louis' character was so good in the first four episodes and even in parts of the finale that it made eps 5 and 6 that much harder to swallow. I'm honestly baffled at how horrible and insensitive that was out of nowhere before everything went back to normal. I'm sad that was ruined before it could have its full impact. Louis and Jacob Anderson deserved better.

Daniel had a lot of great moments, but I feel like his dialogue was too obviously viewer insert and on the nose a lot of times. I also found myself soured to him after his comments about Claudia in ep 5. Still, he has good chemistry with Armand from what we saw and I'd like to see more of them together going forward.

#i don't have a ton of armand thoughts yet because there's so much left to shake out but i'm sure i will when that happens #answered #vc #vctv #interview with the vampire #iwtv

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sofipitch · 1 year

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Im really sad that besides the lack of implicit romance. The 1994 version got a lot of loustat and the family dynamic better. Like Lestat still tripping all over his family issues, but I see him trying with Claudia and Louis. And I can imagine, despite Pitt’s lackluster performance (that did sell at least Louis’s depression and detachment) that maybe with reflection there was once something softer there. I don’t know how the show could recover from this. The grey power and morality is so thrown

So I think you meant "explicit" and not "implicit"? That through me for a loop because I was like "you want to go back to queerbait...?"

No but I agree, the IDEAL IWTV in my head is Jacob Anderson as Louis and Tom Cruise as Lestat. TC's Lestat seems genuinely more nuanced in his cruelty and genuinely loves his family BOTH Louis and Claudia.

Brad Pitt as Louis fails not only because he gave like absolutely nothing in most scenes but bc a lot of the complexity surrounding Louis is taken away. Paul's death is more interesting than a rando dead wife and child. BP is a slave owner but that is just like never addressed as "hey this guy is not a good person". JA's Louis running the brothel you see more of that, not only in the confession scene but the fact that POST confession scene that guy keeps running his brothel despite KNOWING that it is wrong. Also in ep 3 when he is facing racist laws preventing his business, there is the idea that he could shut down the Azalea and make some other business. He even says he owns grocery stores and such. Yes it would be loss but maybe he could build a bar, a music club, or even a theater and potentially still employ all the same women. He has a chance to rebrand, yet he digs his heels in, on one hand because of the racism behind what is stopping him, but also the money, based on their convo when Louis makes the "colored only" sign. That is a good an complicated Louis, I can chew on the complexity of that guy for hours. And to me is more accurate to book Louis's grey morality by having him acknowledge his business yet coming up with false ways it's "not that bad" like how in the book Louis is very hands off with his plantation, so he doesn't treat his slaves poorly himself BUT these are ppl potentially being treated badly by the foreman.

JA's Louis also has more signs that is desire to "not kill humans" is false, it takes him years to come to this point and in ep 6 when Lestat asks him to Louis acquieses. In the book it's more complicated, he thinks he is doing it out of morality but modern interviewee Louis admits its simply because Louis wanted to savor working his way up the scala natura of blood. BP's Louis gives 0 reason for his reluctance OR his change from not drinking human blood to doing so. The only scene in the movie where BP's Louis is interesting in this regard is the prostitute scene, where it would have been kinder to kill her quickly than drag it out like Lestat was doing. But why he changed after making Claudia is unclear. In the book it at least gives the explanation that the night with the prostitue's death and Claudia convinced Louis to give up. But in the movie Louis just seems boring due to his pigeonholing of "the moral one" compared to Lestat. JA's Louis is clearly more complex than just "sympathetic good guy" (talking about eps 1-4 I think the mistake of eps 5-6 in regards to Louis is that by making him the victim he is now once again more 2D and anything "bad" he does later can still be scene as a result of his abuse) and there is of course how JA can actually act in comparison to BP. Brad Pitt sure is coasting on that white mediocrity when you compare him to Jacob Anderson.

So yeah best version: 1994 movie family dynamics, explicit queerness,Tom Cruise Lestat, Jacob Anderson Louis. I can't put Kirsten and Bailey (two bad bitches) against each other tho that's unfair

#vc #asks

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