What Is Going On

he/him | lesbian | swe/eng/中文 | writer/artist | chuuya philosopher & defender | transchuu

[clinicalinsamity]

Drift into slumber / In your dreams, you will run and play.

Flat colors incase u wanna see chuuya up close

[nashvillethotchicken]

Most of this brutalization just did not exist in the og tvc books and they decided in the show where they racebent louis and claudia to be black to have all the gratuitous violence put onto them, to the point of louis getting lynched twice in two seasons, meanwhile literally no white characters got that same treatment at all, even violent thing that happens to a white character except for the pilot episode with the priests happens off screen. We dont even see Bruce the RAPIST get torn up and branded the way louis gets torn up,branded, and put on a pike like the runaway slaves he talked about in s1e3, right after hes called a slave 3 times in 1 episode like wow. Its either black characters like Regina and Louis and Claudia get straight up tortured or theyre completely written off or only used to make a white character look better like Lemuel, Dee and somehow Paul and Louis. And its the fact that producers like Rolin Jones and Hannah Moscovitch thought this was a good use of their black characters like above all it just feels contemptuous and extremely racist. I need that whole writers room giving apologies at sdcc

[ldrloversblog]

“Armand is cartoonishly evil because that’s how Lestat sees him.”

Not my Lestat. Not the original Lestat. Lestat literally thinks that the sun shines out of Armand’s ass more than anyone else and that he is the 8th wonder of the world. That’s his sleeping beauty, his beautiful devil, his Botticelli angel.

[ohwolfling]

Lovingly, y'all have to get better at and more comfortable with talking about sex work and sex workers if you're going to continue critiquing TVL on that note. Because some of y'all are tip toeing in a way that doesn't acknowledge that the show failed to even show this Louis they're claiming in s3, and also its a little dehumanizing to sex workers, when s1 went out of its way to show us them as living, breathing, real people DOING A JOB. SEX WORK IS LABOR.

Because my issue is that we saw Louis take the racial slur/heat from a John who rightfully got pummeled when he assaulted a sex worker. She's framed as CORRECT for fighting back and stopping that assault btw. We saw Louis and Miss Lily have a very clear understanding, though unspoken, that Louis was gay as the day is long. I believe the first sex worker we see is disabled, not as a bit or joke, and Louis addresses her by name immediately. It's Daniel implying harm and ill intent on Louis' part in those early scenes. But later in IWTV, we hear the way wealthy white men talk about their brothels and it's not at all warm or familiar...

I didn't see Louis coercing them or selling them against their will. And yes, there is always some level of ethical issue in sex work, especially as it's criminalized and relies on authorities turning a blind eye which also means they can manipulate sex workers and their whole house all the want. But from what the show itself gave us, Louis is practical and protective of the sex workers under his care. His only violence is making an example of Paul because he HAS TO. I think the show could've explored how Louis can compartmentalize anyone in his life into a calculated business asset, a means to an end, and I do think it's possible that his guilt with the pastor was genuine. But the SHOW chose not to do that.

Season 1 and 2 also establish that Daniel did sex work to fuel his addictions and perhaps an affinity for self harm. But it's then Daniel who refers to Armand as a rentboy. Armand, I *think* is the only person who says sex worker, but even then, it's unclear if Louis' using terms like "girls" or "hookers" when recalling the time period is supposed to be a derogatory habit or just part of the recollection, as that is what they'd be called.

I don't think Louis is a saint. I don't NEED or WANT Louis to be a Saint and if they'd fucking bothered actually adapting Lestat, that makes it all the more beautiful that to Lestat he IS sainted, not to mention the parallels or Lestat leaving a monastery and falling in love with/running away to Paris to be with Nicki versus Louis' desperate and self flagellating confession being interrupted by Lestat telling him he could have a life bigger than this religion and the limits of his race (which obv the show could've explored that not being 100% true as being gay & a biracial couple does still limit them despite their vampiric power). But if the show thought they were showing me a nightmare cold and cruel pimp, a master exploitation who dehumanized anyone at any time, they're outta their fucking minds.

Louis' father ran a sugar plantation and/or mill into ruin. Louis took the money he could selling it off to white business men who most definitely didn't want to help lift up a Black man. And we see how those men try to rip him off at the poker game (which also pisses Lestat off, so it's wiiiiiild the leaps and bounds they took from thoughtless French man to like... idk, Iggy Klan or Third Reich Bowie). Louis' call to being a pimp wasn't about owning women. It was the only avenue he had left to keep his family living the way they did. A white person falling from upper to kindle class is one thing. An entire Black family falling from the upper class in the Jim Crow south? There isn't a middle; There's only rock bottom. Did exploitation and violation lead the women who worked in his brothel there? Probably. But that's not unique to sex work. That's an issue of capitalism, of labor, and the additional challenges of being an unkept woman. I'm not gonna assume their Black boss who smoothes it over when they fight back is the worst thing that ever happened to them. And that's what the show has asked us to do all season.

And if the show wanted to get into how Louis' lashing out at those white businessmen likely harmed those women, it could've done that! But it didn't!

[ghastlyvampire]

Aside from the more serious complaints I've had with this season and I've already complained endlessly about (the misogyny, racism - esp antiblackness -, etc), I have one other complaint that annoys me terribly:

They are dead set on monogamy. And it's hurting the characters' relationships.

I always kind of imagined that this would happen to a certain point, but this season really amplified it by 100%. I can tell they want loustat and devil's minion to be The Couples™, so they want no possible ambiguity that they could love anyone else.

Nickistat is okay, because Nicolas is dead. But lesmand? Oh, well, they MAYBE fucked around a little in the past, but really Armand is just unilaterally obsessed with Lestat, and Lestat only really dislikes him, and takes joy in mocking and humiliating him. Doesn't give a single fuck about him - "apathy", as they called it in the After Dark episode after E6. Loumand? You thought their relationship just deteriorated over time? No, turns out they NEVER loved each other! Yeah, Armand only was with him because it was the only thing left for him - being with a man he took "aesthetic pleasure" in torturing back then and, apparently, in the present as well, and willing to just let die both times -, and Louis was only with Armand as a cope that he couldn't be with Lestat, and really everything that he did with Armand was really about Lestat. A way to get back at him.

It's like they want to burn every bridge between characters that in the book cannon do love each other deeply, because they want to be sure we can only picture The Couples™ together and nothing else (and I'm going to refrain from speaking in detail about how shit DM's development has been this season, with most of it happening off-screen and all, and I'll also not mention how we barely got any physical affection or even a kiss - bare minimum - between any of these couples for a whole season, but it is all pretty funny). There can't be even an INKLING of possibility that maybe there was love between anyone else, or, god forbid, still is.

I didn't expect them to follow the book route, really, with everyone sort of loving each other very deeply and going back and forth between each other, because at the end of the day this is TV and I know that many people would flip at this approach. Not palatable, I guess. But taking such profound and nuanced relationships and flattening them completely for the sake of keeping the main ships intact is really annoying.

(The way they went about lesmand in particular is very upsetting to me, because the love-hate thing they have going on in so important for the both of them in the books, and it's so clear, so it's really sad to see what they made them into the show - a past fling at best, vaguely referred to as "ex" in one scene.)

(But also, there could be something to be said about how they make sure that these relationships between characters of color and white characters work, so for that they felt had to destroy the only relationship that was had between two characters of color in a way that doesn't even happen in the books. Yes, they were miserable together post-trial, but Armand just gave Louis space and left when he realized it was beyond saving. I guess he did try to hide that he left Claudia to die, even if if Louis secretly knew, so I can see where they got the manipulation from. But the gratuitous violence that was inflicted on Louis? That was 100% the show. There is a main character Armand tortures in the books, and that's Lestat, and with the humiliation he put him through in the show it would make some sense, but oh well. Interesting choice, to not say something else...)

I also feel like the books' general love could also say something about how vampires exist outside of the norms of society in so many ways, but I don't think the show is going for that. Still, maybe they could have embraced it as part of the queerness. Or they could have at least given these relationships the care they deserved to feel like there's something keeping these characters coming back to each other that isn't just circumstance. But maybe they will only be around each other because of circumstance, who knows.

I just really don't like this because the relationships are so lovely to me in the books. The show has made them so shallow in comparison, I feel like.

[gaypeople]

people focusing on the writers feeding them with “transfem lestat” while ignoring the vehement antiblackness they're putting the black gay man through kinda perfectly encapsulates the priorities of white queer fandom

[tanalolo]

"thank you for loving him the way he needs to be loved" abt a man who threw him from 2 kilometres in the sky....

[s1lentpine]

Soukoku as the Hyuluka comic

[certifiedlurker]

So the IWTV IP was always going to devolve into white supremacy because that's what Rolin Jones meant when he said he can't wait to adapt TVL. They took two years to meticulously craft the butchering of black characters both literally and figuratively on our screens. Your local white showrunner in an all white writer's room, writing the scenes where the black vampire gets his head cut off, and then branded by the brown vampire, all the while your white, blonde haired, blue eyed vampire who was given the gift for vampirism to preserve his Aryan features gets to be just a tortured soul- the narrative also works overtime to retcon all of the abuse he inflicted. The KKK members of this fandom must be so happy, peering from under there white hoods lol. The innocence and fragility of whiteness has been preserved and the value of white tears has been reaffirmed. Gothic horror not in so much that questions the established patterns of power structures in society, but in the way a TV series will eat its own tail to preserve and cater to white supremacy. Bravo! I hope you all cough blood.

[inyourbackpocketisbutterflies]

all this explicit body horror only being reserved for black bodies in this show on top of the racially charged language and the bastardization of the black characters idk anymore man

[some-other-thoughts]

It feels like Rolin is writing fanfic for this season but forgot to tag it, so I'm helping him out

The Vampire Lestat | Alternate Universe - No Logic | Anti-Louis de Pointe du Lac | Anti-Armand | Justice for Lestat | No beta we die like Claudia | Author is high while writing this | Author regrets NOTHING | Character Assassination as Plot Device | One true love because monogamy is the best | Mention of racial slurs | Offensive language towards a CSA victim | But author SWEARS it was with good intentions

[jeunesseoubliee]

I see people arguing that the slave remarks in Episode 6 of The Vampire Lestat were a callback to the slave remarks in Episode 6 of Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire. If that's true, then it is the perfect example of why black writers were needed in the room. And I mean black writers specifically, not just "people of color." The contrast between how the two episodes handled the subject shows that.

Before I get into that comparison, I want to make something clear. I didn't like the introduction of a slave-master narrative into the unholy family dynamic. The racial implications made me uncomfortable. However, discomfort and offense are not the same thing. While I found it unsettling, I did not find it racist or anti-Black, and that's the key distinction.

In Episode 6 of Season 1, there are two instances where Claudia uses the word "slave". The first time, she is referring to both herself and Louis. She is essentially saying that they are under Lestat's control, trapped in Rue Royale, prisoners of Lestat, his slaves. In that context, "slave" is being used to describe their lack of freedom and autonomy. The second time, she refers not only to herself and Louis, but also to Lestat. She draws a parallel between their situation and Lestat's situation with Magnus. Just as Claudia and Louis are trapped under Lestat's control, Lestat was once under Magnus's control. He was Magnus's slave, and he ultimately killed him rather than continue living that way (we know that's not what happened but that's what Claudia believed). In both instances, the word "slave" is tied to a circumstance, not an identity. It is being used to describe a power dynamic: control, imprisonment, coercion, and domination. You could replace the word "slave" with "prisoner" and the point would remain intact. More importantly, the narrative makes a deliberate effort not to tie slavery to Louis and Claudia's race. Applying the same language to Lestat is what makes that distinction clear. The point is not, "Louis and Claudia are slaves because they are black." The point is, "Louis and Claudia are slaves because they are trapped under Lestat's control," just as Lestat was trapped under Magnus's. Now, viewers can absolutely be uncomfortable with the racial implications of using that metaphor in the first place. I certainly was. But I don't think anyone can honestly argue that the use of the word slave in this scenario was racist.

The writers managed to create discomfort, arguably one of their goals without resorting to anti-Black rhetoric. That's exactly the kind of nuance the black creatives involved in season 1 brought to the story.

Now compare that to Episode 6 of The Vampire Lestat. Claudia calls Louis a slave and then goes further, suggesting that slavery is part of who he is. She implies it is in his DNA as demonstrated by her saying that "slave" is etched into his ribs. Add the "nappy-headed" remark on top of it, and the conversation is no longer about a power dynamic. It becomes an attack on Louis's identity as a black person.

That is the fundamental difference. In Season 1, slavery was used as a metaphor for control. In The Vampire Lestat, slavery is framed as something intrinsic to Louis himself. The word is no longer describing his circumstances; it is describing who he supposedly is. The narrative shifts from "you are being treated like a slave" to "being a slave is part of your nature."

Those are not remotely the same thing. You cannot write a scene in which a Black character tells another Black character that slavery is essentially woven into his DNA, pair it with a racialized insult like "nappy-headed," and then act surprised when viewers, particularly black viewers find it offensive. So if those remarks were intended to be a callback to Season 1 Episode 6, then the callback was an utter failure.

What made the Season 1 dialogue worked was that it treated slavery as a condition imposed on people. What makes the Vampire Lestat dialogue offensive is that it treats slavery as something inherent to Louis. One is about oppression; the other flirts with the idea that oppression is an innate trait. That is not a minor difference. It is the entire issue. And if you genuinely cannot see the difference between using slavery as a metaphor for imprisonment and using slavery as a marker of a black character's identity, then I really don't know what to tell you.

The contrast between the two episodes is precisely why having black writers in the room matter. Season 1 showed that you can explore themes of domination, control, and power between black and white characters, while navigating the racial implications with nuance. The Vampire Lestat Episode 6 shows what happens when that nuance is absent.

[claudiadpdl]

im honestly still not over this like a room full of nonblack people wrote claudia calling louis nappy-headed and telling him that etched in his ribs was the proof that he's a slave. something so horrifically anti-black because of its implications that louis being a slave is genetic and interwoven with his dna. that's literally a white supremacist talking point. they had claudia, a black person with a white lover, mock louis for being a black person with a white lover, and say that lestat was her actual blood relative after rejecting his blood in s2, acknowledging that it wasn't good enough for madeleine.

rolin truly said this and believed it to be true, and that should be enough for everyone to know what kind of person he is:

they had claudia refer to her life as not only bleak, but specifically bleak and black. a character who was never ashamed of her blackness. they had her say that she hates louis more than her rapist, abuser, and the people that orchestrated her lynching and burned her lover alive. they completely destroyed her character and killed two birds with one stone, butchering who claudia always was/how she saw louis and lestat, and throwing in more insults and hate at louis while mostly ignoring lestat.

and making it so that claudia is suffering endlessly, even in death, felt like another purposeful story choice. not to make claudia's character even more heartbreaking, either. it was pointless no matter how you look at it. this just felt like yet another way to torture a black character, and a black character that has been repeatedly exploited all season for everyone else's feelings. furthermore, summoning claudia had no effect on louis and lestat at all, as they were immediately over it by the next scene.

none of the heavy storybeats can have any emotional impact because both us and the characters are never given time to absorb them. they're just checking boxes with these heavy moments and moving onto the next scene. and all of this is, again, so we can absolve lestat of his wrongdoings and ensure no blame falls on him. his trauma is the only important thing in the show and the only thing worth discussing/unpacking. it's just antiblack, misogynistic writing again and again every week and rehashing it feels pointless but i can't help myself.

aside from the blatant racism and misogynoir, i also get the impression that these writers are just trying to get their quoteable, hashtag-able, gif-worthy scenes each episode. who needs a cohesive plot when you can have lestat say "serving cunt has its consequences" or give the viewers an iconic shot of their favorite ship that feels entirely unearned—one of my examples of this being the fact that devils minion feels like they just put together a bunch of shots that they thought people would love, without actually telling a story with these two characters. everything we learn of their history and relationship is given to us through exposition. and because assad is such a fantastic actor, he's making these scraps into something interesting.

the showrunners are no longer pretending to be subtle with their sloppy writing, poor pacing, and hatred towards louis and claudia. they're just writing the racism right into the script and think that, because a black character says it, they're free from all criticism. and a majority of their nonblack fans are jumping to defend them by saying that claudia's rage is justified and if you claim otherwise (even if you're not saying that) then you can't accept black characters being cruel and/or evil. which isn't true at all.

claudia's rage is entirely justified, her berating the two people that were supposed to love her and put her first but instead used both her life and death for their own gain is not the issue here. she could've been as cruel as she wanted—but having her say a slew of horribly racist things to louis and direct most of her ire towards him as opposed to lestat or the both of them equally was nothing more than these antiblack writers once again degrading louis for their own enjoyment because they hate his character and know they can get away with dragging him through the mud. especially if they hide behind another black character.

even the decapitation at the end felt like a quick moment of shock to the viewer that turned comical immediately after. the abysmal pacing of this show makes it so that loustat being beheaded has no actual weight because we know they're fine and we're given no opportunity to sit with this moment. there are no stakes and there was no real buildup to it. nor to armand and daniel coming up with this plan and suddenly working together the way they are. in fact after the dust settled, id say the scene was borderline cartoonishly evil.

these writers will never face the backlash that they deserve for this joke of a season. not only does this show not deserve to be renewed, but i sincerely hope that jacob, delainey and assad are (aside from being able to talk about it privately in some way) one day able to publicly talk about the racist/misogynistic bullshit that they had to endure this season all in the name of propping up a white character and furthering a bullshit narrative.

[kookiedeadbutterflies]

For anyone who thinks Rolin still isn’t in on it, you are naive and you are blind.

It’s seriously time to write a collective letter to the production team.

[lilacs-in-the-wind]

The showrunners chose to make Louis and Claudia black and experience life in the Jim crow era. They chose to do the full race swap in season 1, not just making the characters but also the story black. They chose to racialize the violence that both Louis and Claudia face throughout the first season. No one was forcing their hands and they got praised for the stuff they did in the first two seasons, for bringing in the added nuance of systemic racism. So why should I as an audience member of colour give them any grace when they choose to write dialogues containing numerous racialized and gendered micro aggressions not just towards Louis or Claudia but also towards minor characters like Dee or Lemuel who weren't supposed to exist as they are (black) in the show?? Why is Daniel (a white man) who is supposed to be a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist who was lecturing Louis on his own story about the racism he faced referring to him as a "bucket of Louisiana fried chicken"?? Why is Armand textually belittled for being a CSA victim while Lestat is endlessly provided with grace and understanding in the text of the show for his victimhood?? Who thought it was alright to adapt a scene from the books involving white characters talking about parental betrayal and insert racially charged dialogues (that too old school racist shit not even the n word) when it was unnecessary to preserve the nuance of the scene?? Why is this show denying the racialized nature of domestic violence that they chose to portray in S1 ??? (Lestat getting mildly annoyed that Louis didn't enjoy going to the operas in nola when he had to act as Lestat's servant to be allowed in tf??) Why is Gabriella like that??

I cannot help but look at this season of the show as a sign of the times tbh. IWTV aired during a very liberal era of entertainment and now that fascism and white supremacy are on the rise everywhere white entertainers have become comfortable enough to fall back into old habits. Never thought this show in particular would have this problem when I watched the first season but it is what it is I guess

[kuni-kuun]

[PART 1?] Kunikida, Dazai, First Meeting

[Adapted from Dazai's Entrance Exam]

[infinitelyweary]

Girl….what did you think of THAT Claudia scene?

omg i was TRYING to wait until post-finale to vent all my feelings but aaahhhhh twist my arm

Honestly ever since ppl started vaguely teasing "anti-blackness in ep6" ive had a tightness in my chest. I was so nervous for weeks and weeks and really built it up in my head as this big horrible thing, so when I finally sat down and watched it...it kind of underwhelmed me at first? My immediate reaction was one of confusion...because nothing about the character we saw in ep6 resembled Claudia. At all. I was so bewildered it took me sitting with it a while to even feel upset about it.

Which could also be attributed to how ineffective the writing is this season, bc none of it moves me. The jokes don't make me laugh, the 'romantic' parts don't make me feel tender, the tragic parts don't make me feel sad...even the most vile/over the top cruelty barely makes me feel anything. I didn't even feel bad for Louis in this scene!!!! Bc none of it felt real (and also bc he barely seems to feel anything about it himself. they aren't even invested enough in their own flogging of Louis to show him suffering over it...Louis tried to kill himself when he heard Claudia's voice in 205...Louis and Claudia parted on far less hostile terms with a heartfelt goodbye in 106 and Louis wanted to kill himself then. Louis would be ashes rn if this shit was serious!!!) This is a show that used to be a GOTHIC HORROR MELODRAMA ROMANCE all genres that LIVE on heightened emotion!!!!! And this season is a cynical dry passionless husk......they've really bled all these characters of their human essence and rendered each and every one of them a cardboard cutout of themselves. It's the most insane waste of potential I've ever seen.

The thing about this episode, is that it convinced me that isn't an accident.

With all the constant in-text mocking of iwtv ("missing the psychodrama of Dubai?", Lestat laughing at Louis's turning speech, mocking Louis's romanticizing of Dreamstat, the constant calling Louis a liar and ripping apart the book full of his words without meaningfully calling out any specific part of his account...Lestat is not pissed off at Louis bc he made up a ticket pocket, like to this day we do not know what exactly in this book is the big lie he's mad about. and he's spent the whole season being mad.....meaning the point here is not to dispute or provide a contrasting POV, but only to ridicule and illegitimize) and the marketing push to court a new audience, it seems like their final push to distinguish tvl from the thorny, nuanced, deeply emotional, queer niche critical darling that it once was is to make this season of television a hit piece on its first two seasons. Every single choice seems like it was purposefully made in order to spite the original series and everyone who ever loved it for what it was (with a special personal vendetta against the person who was heart and soul of that series, Louis/Jacob).

Its only natural that this season's climax is to attempt to retroactively destroy the emotional core of s1-2, which is Louclaudia.

Louis's story is a story of grief. The common jabs people like to throw at Louis about him being whiny or passive or brooding or a sad sack or whatever - that's because his whole character is built around the concept of grief. Louis is the embodiment of a mother's grief over losing her child, the grief Anne Rice was consumed with when writing IWTV. He is grief personified.

(From The Vampire Companion)

The IWTV novel does not exist without Anne Rice's incredible love for and grief over losing her daughter, and Louis's story does not exist without his incredible love and grief over Claudia.

At first I thought they were honoring Louis's characterization by having his storyline continue to focus on his grief. I had my doubts about the Regina plotline (bc what else do they have to say now about Louis other than 'he grieves'? what does this plot add? isn't it just a retread of his journey in s1-2? if he immediately regresses, what was the significance of "I own the night"?), but the core of it is still Louis's love for Claudia, and Louis's grief wouldn't fade away overnight just because he grew as a person. I was actually pleased that in The Lestat Season, Louis was allowed to spend his time, not thinking about Lestat, but still focused on Claudia, even as Lestat spends all his time bitching Louis out (which is also kind of a 105 retread now that I think about it).

But what episode 6 revealed to me, was that the new addition they had for Louis's story was to undermine his grief. Louis was wrong to grieve, he was selfish to grieve. The person Louis exists to grieve not only hates him, but hates him for grieving her. In the hands of the writers of s3, Louis's love for Claudia is forged as a weapon against him, and his pain at her loss is an indictment of his character.

S3's Claudia is angry with him for grieving her. The first thing out of her mouth is "couldn't keep me on the wall". Claudia, who knew all too well (and according to s3, actively weaponized) Louis's incredible depth of love for her, is upset that the person who loved her so intensely mourns her....why? It doesn't make any sense for her to feel this way...of course Louis mourns her, and always will. Would she rather have vanished from the world without a trace, having left no one behind who loved her enough to care she existed? Would she rather have burned in a house fire when she was 14, died alone and unwanted as an unnamed casualty, the way Lestat said was her destiny?

It's not only nonsensical, it doesn't feel like the character. Claudia, who was so desperate to be loved and seen, to belong, to be "put first" by someone.....begrudges Louis for doing just that? Miss "picked another one over me/never about me" would rather Louis never say her name again??

I really can't even see this being as representative of Claudia in any way. So much of what they have her say in this scene goes directly against her character, and, despite all its overwrought viciousness, she doesn't even take Louis or Lestat to task for some of what we know she saw as their greatest offenses!!!!!!!!

Things Ghost Claudia Mentions:

-Louis grieving her. She, in essence, tells him NOT to grieve her, implies it insults her to grieve her, "burn her diaries, burn this dress". Like I said, this is not something Claudia would fucking say lmao even if she was speaking from a place of deep anger, she would not want to be erased, even if the dress on the wall is just a symbol to remind Louis that he fucked up, and that she suffered as a result, she would want to keep a record of the damage.

-Louis being 'back with Lestat' (which he isn't, really, romantically speaking. like they are at most back in a talking stage. so its pretty unclear what the scope of her knowledge is bc she knows about stuff like Lestat's "song on the radio" but not their most recent interactions? idk)

-She says she only didn't kill Louis so she could keep him around to do her bidding until she found someone better. I believe there is a book quote where Claudia says something along these lines and thats what they're pulling from (I couldn't find it though..), but in the books Claudia actually needs a companion to survive. She is in the body of a five year old and is emphasized as being very physically vulnerable; regardless of whether bookClaudia loved/hated Louis, there is a practical element to her choice to keep him around.

But in the show, Claudia is not physically 5 but 14 and a prodigious hunter who goes on killing sprees alone. She has no physical need for Louis that would justify this idea of her keeping him around despite "hating" him. Her need for companionship in the show is solely reduced to her emotional needs (and if she hated Louis, he would not fulfill that). You just can't take any of this shit seriously if you watched the first two seasons...Claudia was always returning to Louis, she was ensnared by the coven because she returned to Louis. Louis was dead weight in Eastern Europe, an active hindrance, hallucinating, depressed, why not leave him? He isn't any help to her in that period, which was years of them not getting along; she was the one that spoke the languages, she was the one keeping him fed, she pulls the revenant off of him. She doesn't need Louis to survive there, she wants him. She returns to him time again because she wants him. Meaning disintegrates without him...

(Obvs Lestat is included in her statement about missing them, but we only see her follow Louis...I really thought we would get at least one flashback of Claudia bonding with Lestat or even just missing him like this esp if they're gonna try to sell us on him being "her favorite" but no.....there wasn't even an attempt so i have no choice but to call bs)

-Louis "read the diary pages seven decades too late". I already discussed how Claudia was averse to anyone reading her diaries in this other post so i won't go over that again, but it is another inept writing choice that even when they want to vilify Louis here, they can't do it right. Claudia saying something like "it took too long" for Louis to read the pages eliminates the entire moral dilemma of Louis reading and presenting the pages without her consent...shouldn't Claudia be more upset because he violated her privacy in the first place? Nope...apparently he should have done it sooner...? Not to mention that Claudia took years to open up to Louis about Bruce, so this idea that she was waiting around on him to do something about it doesn't add up...if anything s1 Claudia seemed to scoff at the idea of him being able to avenge her with her "knight in vengeful black" comment. also no mention of Louis killing the coven in her name....which he did do immediately lol....like...

(also the fact they have Claudia chastise LOUIS for crying like the sa happened to him when they literally overlaid her words with Lestat's trauma crashout and textually made her sa about Lestat.................LMAO!! unserious)

-She says she fabricated the train scene (or at least exaggerated it) to get Louis to cooperate with killing Lestat. Obvs there is a whole heinous layer where the train scene was evoking the imagery of runaway slave captures and these white writers decided to have a black character lie about this specific kind of racialised trauma which is fucked beyond compare. BUT ALSO!!!!!!!!! IT JUST DOESNT MAKE SENSE WITH THE PLOT!!!!!!!!!!! Claudia DECIDES TO KILL LESTAT AT THE END OF 106 BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LET HER LEAVE.......why would she return with Lestat if she didn't feel sufficiently threatened? and why would she decide to kill Lestat if he did not force her to stay against her will??

I've seen it floated that this was all Claudia's master plan to get Louis to go with her (even though she hated him sooooo much.........right....) as though she had her whole tearful goodbye and then magically changed her mind moments later and decided to do her big one and concoct a scheme to eliminate Lestat and ensure Louis would be 'on her side' and leave with her. Maybe that's even what the 306 scene is supposed to lead us to believe...only there is no scene of Claudia telling Louis what happened on the train, or ever using that event to convince Louis to turn on Lestat. All their telepathic conversations we hear about Louis trying to dissuade her from killing Lestat, and its never once a point Claudia uses to her favor. Ever. We get "we have no more use for him. He causes us misery with no horizon. I can kill him. You will enjoy it" etc. This idea of "oh daddy Lou he was ever so mean to me do you know what he said he'd do!" is a brand new invention for this scene alone.

Also.................

Uhhhhhh........no Claudia.....it pretty famously did not???????????

"Worked good, didn't it?" 😏 LMAO! They made her stupid??

Also they still can't decide what Claudia was threatened with. We get "I won't defile your pocket, I'll turn your bones to dust" in 106, "Did I threaten Claudia with rape on a train?" in 301 and "He'd do worse than rape me" in 306.....so.......which is it..........

-The blood thing feels too obvious to even be worth pointing out?? But they've invented this weird blood supremacy thing for Claudia to devalue Louis and value her maker more (even though they do have the same blood bc they both have Lestat's blood....that's why they're like....siblings....). When Claudia hated the idea of Lestat's blood THROUGH LOUIS being used to create Madeleine (supposedly the only character Claudia gaf about...but she forgot the whole lead up to her turning which was her begging Armand to do it for this very reason....mkay)

-And then ok the whole slave thing. Yes Claudia used the word "slave" in s1. But the context is everything when it comes to black characters using this kind of loaded language. Claudia uses "slave" in s1 specifically to refer to their lack of agency as long as Lestat is around. Claudia uses that very loaded language privately to Louis telepathically in order to emphasize the dire nature of their (shared!) situation! And obvs that phrase has a special resonance for them as black ppl living under the thumb of a white tyrant, and references the racialized nature of Lestat's control and abuse of them! She's saying "he treats us like his slaves! this way of life is not acceptable! we have to act!" Claudia was never using that word as an insult against Louis!!!! She used slave ONLY EVER TO DESCRIBE THEM BOTH!!!

Funny how the context of that word from its first use in a season that had black writers has been completely warped into blatant white supremacist ideology in a season without black writers...a phrase exchanged privately to discuss the oppression shared by black characters in order to encourage rebellion in s1, has become an excuse for a racist tirade from one black character to another in front of a white character in s3...

Also making Claudia spout this anti-black nonsense shows they never paid attention to her character bc she was the one most explicitly calling out Lestat's tyrannical whiteness; besides "he's made us slaves" she makes a lot of comments in 107 that align Lestat with violent white supremacy (calling Bach, which Lestat likes, the music of the master race, "Massa's had so much pain in his life" explicitly calling out that she and Louis should not give a fuck about the pain of their oppressor, "well-dressed tyrants, where have I heard that before" when Lestat compliments Nazi tailoring basically calling Lestat one of them). Like as much as Louis would go back and forth with Lestat about racism, Louis doesn't rly ever call Lestat out as espousing white supremacist thinking as harshly as Claudia does.

(Tbh they kinda fucked up this aspect of her character in s2 with her...y'know...dating a Nazi sympathizer and never giving Madeleine anything more than a raised eyebrow about it, but she was never fucking antiblack...and she at least has that "Armand's skin is darker than yours" comment to show race (and the race of Louis's partners) is a thought in her mind...the more i reflect, the more i acknowledge issues with s2 Claudia but my word i never would have foreseen this....)

This slave stuff combined with Claudia misusing nappy (bc that among black ppl means unkempt hair, and Louis's hair was extremely kempt in the scene - but ofc if ur nonblack and racist nappy just means any black hair so), "bleak black life" sounding like some bullshit from The Help, Claudia speaking to Lestat and referring to Louis as "your black queen" which is not a phrase any one of the three of them would ever use LOL, and even just Claudia's repeated use of "bitch" which is also not a word we have heard Claudia use - it's one of the most aggressively straightforward black stereotypes ive seen in modern media. They took a complex, beautiful black character who was treated with so much love and care for 2 seasons and made her an Angry Black Woman.jpeg. I know they wanted to work in a "MHMMMMM" or "OH HELLLLL NAW" sooo bad. Like Claudia's whole vernacular is different!!! She did not talk like that!! It's like every racist fanfic in this fandom ever!!

Things Ghost Claudia DOES NOT MENTION:

-ANY of the abuse suffered by her or Louis!!!!! In Claudia's last moments on Earth she was fighting through the pain of her slit ankles to cuss out Lestat for dropping Louis like an egg. She offered herself to be punished in Louis's place in 105, and then spent painstaking months nursing him back to health after he was dropped. One of the biggest rifts in her relationship with Louis was when Louis would not leave Lestat despite his abuse of them. Not a single mention of this from the ghost. Even if they wanted to focus on battering Louis in this scene, they didn't even have her bring up Louis choking her in 107, physically stopping her from burning Lestat's body! None of the physical violence that tore apart that household even gets a passing reference.

-Louis ruining Claudia's plan to kill Lestat. Louis's big misstep with Claudia was, in her mind, "choosing Lestat over her". Louis felt unable to leave Lestat in 106. Louis slit his throat, but wouldn't burn him, so they couldn't move on post-NOLA, and lived in fear of his return. She was calling him "dead weight" in Eastern Europe. He carried Lestat, "slowed them down". This was the principle grudge against Louis Claudia carried with her after s1, and it also is not mentioned.

-HER MAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The biggest fucking thing about this character in the books and show is that she forced into a child body for eternity without her consent!!!!!!!!!! It's the original sin of the unholy family, the first wedge to ever be driven between them, a point of contention between Louis and Lestat, Louis and Armand, Claudia and Louis, Claudia and Lestat, THE COVEN who kills her; it's the choice Lestat is haunted by in Body Thief! "Should she have been made or was she a mistake?" "Can she endure, or is she doomed by the circumstances of her birth?" "I WAS STILL BREATHING, WHY DIDNT YOU TAKE ME TO A HOSPITAL! I COULD HAVE LIVED A NORMAL LIFE SWEEPING FLOORS NURSING BABIES!!! WHO AM I GONNA LOVE, WHO WOULD WANT ME!!!!!" Even as late as the trial, Claudia is upset hearing about the extent of Louis's involvement in her turning. SHES IN ETERNAL VAMPIRE HELL BECAUSE SHE WAS MADE!!!!! BY THESE TWO MEN!!!!!!!!!!!! if there was ANYTHING the real Claudia would have screamed at them about it would be this!!!!!! AND HER GHOST DOESNT BREATHE A WORD ABOUT IT!!!!!!! It's so fucking egregious, you have to wonder if any of these writers watched the show

-The Regina stuff????????? If Claudia knows about Lestat's music career, surely she would have witnessed what Louis's been doing too, right? That's not something she would have some shit to say about?? If its the roast of Louis like how is that not her opener. "Yes its really me and not that broke bitch you paid to be my stand in". The Regina plotline truly had no bearing on anything ig

-Charlie???? This show hates black ppl now so I guess they couldn't have Claudia mourn a black boy (only her white gf they fetishized in the previous ep). but they literally showed a flashback to Lestat forcing Claudia to watch Charlie burn THIS SEASON (reshot with Delainey) and drew a parallel to Lestat watching Nicki burn. so....why make that parallel and not have that incident be important to Claudia? its almost like they dgaf

Literally everything about this scene does both Claudia and Louis a disservice. Make no mistake, it may seem like Louis is the target here, but BOTH their characters are being mutilated by this season. This person that we see in this scene is in no way Claudia. s1-2 are contingent upon having empathy for these black characters and being invested in the incredible, complicated, heart-wrenching, deeply loving bond they share. The story is built around Louis's grief over Claudia and therefore Louclaudia is the emotional backbone of the original iwtv series. Tvl has shown itself to be deeply committed to undermining, ridiculing, and eviscerating the notion of the Louclaudia bond and their respective integrity as characters.

It sincerely feels like this writers room has a vendetta against the original series and Louis as its protag by extension, and their hate for Louis so great they can't fathom anyone loving him. and Claudia loved Louis deeply despite all the pain and turmoil of their relationship, and they don't know how to write that, so they're dismantling that bond any way they can. It's disgusting and horrific but also kinda fucking boring.....this show was SO revolutionary bc it was a gothic genre show that took black ppl's experiences and pain seriously and centered them instead of sidelining them and handled them with an empathy that is so rarely afforded to us....and its been mangled into this ghoulish hateful conservative slop.

and they want to do a story with a black female villain next season????? fucking lol........like you just have to laugh.......

(even if they do the Merrick thing of it actually wasn't her ghost all along like. we still had to sit through that. it wouldn't actually change anything. the show gave airtime to these ideas. it might even be worse bc then its just using Claudia as a hammer to wack Louis over the head with while diminishing her place in the narrative even more. its a lose-lose)

[batartshikns]

here's femzai in the fit ‼️‼️