For sure, in many ways Lestat is worse than Gabrielle. And other characters have definitely treated him way worse than she has his own Louis tried to kill him at least twice, that’s a QUALITY boyfriend FFS. He certainly rocks the boat more than she does. He intentionally wanted to start a war between society and vampires. He went on vacation killing thousands of innocent men bc his girlfriend (and Matriarch of the Damned) told him to.

[fanart by @devmin-art​]

Is a mother’s lack of support and nurturing equal to such crimes? Is the suffering inflicted on one child equal to the deaths of thousands? One could argue that his crappy childhood made him more susceptible to the later, larger crimes. He wanted the war because he wanted recognition; many ppl learn early on that bad attention is better than no attention. Then, he let Akasha order him around because he thought she loved him. It’s taken him a long time to figure out how to relationship and he still has slipups including, but not limited to: issues w/ consent, possessiveness, respect for others’ physical space.

Lestat’s usually in pursuit of goodness when he is “bad.” He reflects on it, he can see were he went wrong, and usually tells us that the good extracted from the experience made it worth the wrongdoing, whereas with Gabrielle, since we don’t get her POV, and we don’t get much from her in spoken word in terms of her own pursuit of goodness, we have to wonder whether she cares for it at all. AR can’t write her ooc; Gabrielle has extended herself to rescue Lestat on several occasions, but she never seems to go further than that.

But the real issue with Gabrielle is probably that she lacks a dick, and is therefore unshippable.

But I like shipping her with Jesse or Eleni!

-Some spoilers under the cut-

Louis is actually only a bad vampire when he was being a foodie, when Claudia is “born,” he vampires more properly. In QOTD, Akasha says he’s the Most Predatory of All. It sounded like a backhanded compliment, but she was calling him a good vampire.

Armand is hot so he can get away w/ otherwise negative behavior… Plus Armand’s been on a rollercoaster in terms of “cold and distant.” He started out cold and distant (he was going to wall himself up in the caves in TVA for religion) became more so (kidnapped and thrown into the brothel) then more warm (Marius to the rescue!) then loving (Marius’ fledgling and the lead up to that), then cold and distant again (Children of Darkness and Theatre des Vampires eras), loving again (chasing after and getting Daniel Molloy), and now he seems cold and distant to protect himself.