So I've finished this season of The Vampire Lestat (aka S3 of Interview With the Vampire) and... meh? I admit that I haven't really been into this show since S1, where I did think the choice to make Louis a black man made for some interesting departures from the source material. (That said, while I think many similar criticisms derive from shallow/racist motivations, I actually do think that some of what I found interesting might have been better explored in a story not yoked to the Vampire Chronicles mythos and story scaffolding -- a "new" story, so to speak. That said, I maintain that every adaptation *is* somehow a "new" story and that these kinds of choices and deviant interpretations are valid whether I approve or not.) I recently noted just how much I hate the character Daniel Molloy, which probably does drive a lot of my dislike in this show even though it's easy to forget he even exists because he's entirely absent during the most significant story beats. And I admit to liking actually a fair number of the songs, and I do think they derive strength from the character relationships and motivations playing out in the music, but they're hardly enough to justify the rest of the show.

Anyway, final episode. The whole season has effectively been setup for Akasha's uprising -- a whole bunch of Lestat on tour, flashbacks with Gabrielle and Nicky and Marius and Akasha, patching things up with Louis, too much being interviewed on the tour bus by Daniel Molloy for no great reason except to shove this character down our throats during filler moments -- moving characters into the places and mental states they need to inhabit to play their parts when all hell breaks loose. Ending the season with Akasha would have been the logical -- and, to my mind, more exciting -- conclusion and cliffhanger. Instead, the season ends with filler. Not just any filler, but bullshit filler. Apparently fans like it? Certainly the kinds of fans who watch After Dark -- basically a half-hour talkback that airs after every episode for viewers who want a deeper dive into the episode -- like it. It annoyed me and the After Dark episode annoyed me even more. (more...)

I am cracking up because it took me until now to truly grok that half the reason I'm not at all** digging this Interview With the Vampire Lestat series is that I fucking hate this Daniel Molloy character. Like on some level he barely registers as a character worth caring about, so I'd be inclined to spout off about nearly every other character on the show before I got around to Daniel Molloy because every other character on the show is infinitely more interesting than Daniel Molloy. But also? HE'S IN THE SHOW A WHOLE LOT. LIKE A WHOLE LOT. He's a nothing and he's irritating, and when he's not irritating he's boring, and when he's not boring he's SCUM, and he's like half the show and somehow I'm really supposed to give a shit about his career and his family life and fuck all?? I can't with this character. And it took me that long to truly feel it in my chest.

**That's a lie; I kinda dig some of these songs and I'm eager to see whether they'll actually manage to avoid an Akasha problem with Akasha herself. It is very possible and they just might pull it off.

If you find a dead baby in your food, is it morally permissible to eat it? You're not starving; you just kinda want to eat human flesh in general and especially the flesh of this dead baby. Suppose that you know that nobody will ever come looking for this baby. No evidence will exist to tie you to this dead baby (you are in fact planning to eat this baby whole) and nobody will ever know that you ate the dead baby. In fact, reporting this dead baby may cause insurmountable problems for well-meaning people (like the nice lady who accidentally dropped this dead baby into your food; she'd probably never again be able to work this job that fills her with pride). At the very least, reasonable people might disagree about whether our taboo against eating dead babies should apply when the pros of a specific eating dead baby far outpace the cons.

Wait -- the baby twitched! Oh, wow. This baby is moving a lot. This baby is alive. It will probably die without your help, but you are here to help it... if you choose. You still, however, really want to eat this baby. Nobody will come looking for this baby; nobody will know you ate the baby; nothing's changed except that now the baby is clearly alive and fully capable of surviving if you render aid. Can civilized people disagree about whether it is morally permissible to eat this baby? Of... course they can! Slurp.

Okay, fine, we won't eat the baby. How could anyone ever think that we'd eat the baby?? We're not monsters. Hell -- we'll even RAISE the baby. Ourselves. We *could* take the baby to the hospital, the church, somewhere equipped to care for a baby -- which, yeah, could cause problems for someone, but probably not more problems for the child than being reared in secret by two teenagers -- but nah, we're going to raise it ourselves. Oh, look at this little friend! Look at how beautiful life is! Can you believe we were actually going to eat this baby?

The baby is dead. Power failure in the storage room meant it froze to death. Hospitals aren't equipped to deal with that sort of thing. We are so very sad.

Beastars S3 is really very not good.

Do you ever react so poorly to certain characters that they kinda ruin the shows/films you're watching? (Rhetorical question; I don't expect anyone will ever see this here. XD) I imagine so -- that seems an obvious and common occurrence -- but sometimes it feels like creators go so far out of their way to feature characters I find deeply and viscerally unpleasant that it can't be *that* common a thing at the extremes.

Like I'd been meaning to write about Hazbin Hotel S2 (I might still, someday), which on the whole I didn't particularly enjoy because it had SO MUCH Vox and Vox is a character I don't at all like. (By the end of the season I was also there with Alastor, sigh. I know the show is set in Hell, but Hazbin increasingly feels like a show where the things everyone else loves and wants to see more of are things that turn me off and make me need to stop watching.) And I keep seeing ads for Spartacus: House of Ashur, which is a show I have negative interest in watching. I loved the original Spartacus series -- a line I say fairly routinely is actually paraphrased from that show -- but I despised Ashur. And not in a "great villain, love to hate" kind of way; in a "this character is thoroughly awful and a waste of time and focus" sort of way. Why is *Ashur* the character getting the spinoff? We spend too much time fixated on and bludgeoned by awful people in real life for them to be the stars of the show we watch in our downtime.

I'm reminded that I'd meant to say something about Marvel Zombies and Eyes of Wakanda, two of animated Marvel D+ shows that I watched a little while back. (I mean to say something about pretty much everything I watch -- though I might entertain other distractions and ultimately forget, my impulse after I view most movies/episodes is to sit down and write a 600-1200 or longer post about said program.) Both were definitely watchable. (more...)