(mentions of episode five from the Interview With The Vampire show, so warning for mentions of domestic violence and general violence)

I recently noticed two parallels between the show and random moments in Anne Rice books. Mind you, I’m not thinking it’s intentional right now but it did make me go Uh.

The first one is not from the Chronicles actually but from the book The Witching Hour. It’s the only explicit mention of domestic gay violence in Rice books I can remember, happening between Julien Mayfair and one of his male lovers (who was a black man):

For context, Suzette was Julien’s wife.

Mind you, this paragraph is sort of a footnote - both because Victor doesn’t appear a lot, and because Julien is so fucked up (dude makes Marius look almost normal) that the narrative doesn’t linger on it, but it did caught my attention as an example of domestic gay violence that made me think of episode five on the spot as soon as I read this part.

The other one is from Prince Lestat and The Realms of Atlantis; I had forgot until recently that there’s a bit where Lestat grabs the character Kapetria and flies around with her without her permission, for her absolute horror.

The context for this is that Kapetria was forcing his hand in doing something that could potentially get Lestat permanently killed, and she was not being very nice about it. So the whole grabbing her and taking her places is a dick move to show off his power, but even then he’s aware of her fear and how terrified she is despite not being human.

And despite being a dick move to scare her, he also is not actually being cruel to her, despite how hostile things are between them and she being virtually a stranger to him, not someone he actively loves.

I don’t think these two scenes inspired the scenes we saw on show (unless the writers are playing random patchwork with Rice’s books and being real bad about it), but I always do like noticing little parallels that make me go Uh.

This article has going me hmmmm and not in good ways lmao. I can’t put a read more on mobile, but discussion about ep. 5 below, mentions for domestic violence and rape

When the episode first came out, I remember saying that I thought it was a possible extrapolation of Lestat’s character that was not impossible to exist in the books and it seem it was exactly this the writer’s thoughts. I still retain that it’s an extrapolation that they shouldn’t have done because it’s one of the few lines Lestat never crossed - even in book 4, when he thinks he could hurt Louis in a fit of rage, he leaves the city until he calms down enough because he knows it’s something he would regret.

But the justification of Oh Lestat would totally do it since he raped that random woman in the books and, really? It’s a horrible scene in the books and written in a way that shows that he doesn’t understand that consent withdrawl means rape and it’s awful but even in the book he feels bad for what he did (ofc not that this justifies anything) with a strange woman and like… this is a strange woman, not his partner, the man he knows for years and it’s supposed to love. We never even seen Lestat feeling awful for beating Louis, not even once.

All in all, not a very fair comparition between these events, methinks

This passage mentioning Julien beating up his male lover after a fight reminded me of the polemic and much loathed ending ot episode five from IWTV…

Have watched episode five of IWTV - if you don’t want spoilers, skip this post.

I went into this expecting to absolutely hate it but honestly I actually did like most of the episode. The deterioration of their relationships - both as a family unit and Lestat and Louis as a couple - was well portrayed, methinks. I liked the beginning, Claudia going full serial killer colecting trophies, and I liked seeing Claudia away from the for a while, and seeing how lost and depressed Louis was without Claudia in their lives.

But the thing with Claudia and Killer like ohh boy I think this was the one thing that made me more mad? Like this is the cameo from a QotD character that the showrunners mentioned, a small one-time character in that book raping Claudia? And even if it was offscreen it seemed to utterly unnecessary and cruel to me. I hate rape storylines most of the time, even more so if they’re adding something that does not exist in the original books like this. There was not even any reason to make Killer’s violence on Claudia be sexual, so the whole thing left me with such a bitter taste.

And the whole beat down with Lestat and Louis… yeah that was very tough to watch. Earlier today I mentioned I don’t think this is such an extrapolation of Lestat’s character in the book - he can be very cruel, capable of great violence and Anne even made him a rapist in book four - and I kept thinking about that one part of The Tale of the Body Thief where he is seething at Louis, the angriest he gets at him in the books.

And the part ehere he knew that if he saw Louis in that moment of pure anger, he would do something he would regret.

And then he goes and stays away for a week, letting his anger get colder and trying to get his temper to calm down so he wouldn’t actually hurt Louis when he saw him again.

So the thing is that he Lestat never does this especifically kind of violence in the books (domestic violence). It’s one of the few lines he never did cross, Anne never went there with him so yeah, even if I think it was not a strech of who Lestat is capable of being, it’s an extrapolation I wish they hadn’t done.

It’s sad that it didn’t feel out of the place in the episode, but it was very upsetting to see they going there in the show and considering that Lestat is The protagonist of the books it seems a very weird and bold choice to make the main protagonist a domestic abuser, especially this early on.

I’m still waiting for the last two episodes to make a full judgment but, this far it’s really hard to understand how they’re going to spin this in any way.