#like he literally just plays with him on a snowy roof while lestat's half out of his mind in fear

[pynkhues]

Speaking of Sam's tiny ankle agenda, this is ridiculously specific but as a horror media enthusiast, I must say I hope they fully lean into the horror aspect in the Magnus scenes in s3 and have him properly haunt Lestat before capturing and turning him. I'm talking about Magnus blinking in/out of the frame like a ghost, dragging Lestat by his tiny ankle at night like the Demon toying with Regan in the Exorcist, mind-controlling other people to make Lestat feel even more paranoid and crazy. Dread and paranoia is honestly my fav part of horror and TVL gives sooo much potential. Plus I just think Sam would be having so much fun lol

It was actually one of the things that really struck me in re-reading that part of TVL in writing Ungodly Hour, but Magnus literally does stalk him for months. The book's pretty clear that Lestat gets on stage the first time in the summer, first sees Magnus sometime at the end of the summer, and then keeps seeing him in flashes and glimpses until Magnus abducts him and at that point it's snowing. And man, there's even horror before the turning sequence, because the abduction scene where Lestat's taken from his bed with Nicki + the snowy rooftop scene that immediately follows are genuinely scenes of pretty abject horror even before we get to Magnus' tower at all.

I kind of touched on it in my Byronic Hero post, but there's a real difference between genre conventions of terror and horror in gothic literature and they're often gendered with terror being considered female gothic and horror male gothic. What's interesting (and I genuinely think is pretty masterful in Anne's writing) is the way she shifts between the rising terror towards the end of the Lelio Rising part of the book and The Legacy of Magnus part until it shifts very suddenly and dynamically into full-blown horror. It's honestly a pretty brilliant use of genre conventions, and a real showcase of Anne's talent of a writer.

It's so obviously something Rolin's been drawn to, or at least compelled by, given how often he's brought it up in press for the first two seasons, and so I'm really curious as to how he envisions it. Given what he's said already, I can't really see them not going all in, and even putting the turning sequence aside, I think there's so much room for what you're talking about. Like, his face appearing like a disembodied mask in the audience at Lestat's shows is terrifying, and even the stuff afterwards of Magnus having chosen and laid out an outfit for Lestat after he's assaulted Lestat and then burned himself alive in front of him is like, the best, most insidious sort of gothic terror dressed up as something borderline romantic, which to me, just amplifies the horror of it all.

I don't think they're going to do a 1:1 adaptation of the book at all either (especially given they've already changed a few things around, particularly the timeline), and I'm really curious as to what that actually means.