ID: screencaps of James Baldwin saying, 'What's gonna happen, sooner or later, all the wretched of the earth… in one way or another… next Tuesday or next Wednesday… will destroy the cobblestones on which London and Rome and Paris are built. The world will change because it has to change. The party is over.'
even iwtv viewers who hate lestat's guts and hate his romance with louis can generally agree that "louis never loved lestat bc lestat himself said so" is a ridiculous take that flattens the nuances of louis' character, so i don't understand why "louis always picked men over claudia bc claudia herself said so" is taken at face value by pretty much everyone who watches the show, from hardcore fans to casual viewers. like i actually know why, it's misogynoir. but it's still kinda fascinating how a fandom of predominantly nonblack viewers have managed to convince themselves that constantly gloating about how a black woman couldn't possibly be more loved and valued by her black father than she initially thought- often framing the very idea that a black woman could be more loved than nonblack men as a ridiculous farce- as a "defense" of claudia's character that honors her pov somehow. and ofc this desire to "honor claudia's pov" is completely selective, bc the same fans who claim claudia speaks the objective truth when she demeans louis or says he picked lestat/armand over her are the same fans who are first in line to dismiss claudia when she writes something about lestat or armand that they dislike. when claudia writes something negative about the nonblack men who abused and ultimately killed her, she's obviously lying or a hysterical teenager or ill-informed. when claudia calls louis a fickle deadbeat dad or underestimates her own worth or calls herself a shingle that flew off her parents' roof, her pov is clearly infallible and it's offensive to suggest that she didn't know the full truth or that she didn't have all the facts. the black woman is only an unreliable narrator when she makes her murderers her look bad- when she's denigrating her black father or denigrating herself, then and only then can she be completely trusted
IWTV Musings - The DPDL Plantation: IRL Parallels?
I promised @littlestsnicket I'd expand on my DPDL Plantation meta, to think about IRL Black plantation owners, and if Rolin Jones possibly channeled specific examples to create the black!DPDLs.
This post has ZERO corroboration from the show itself, or anything AMC's ever said; it's just me thinking out loud about where things went right/wrong for IRL cases, and why most of them failed. Ofc antiblack racism's the obvious reason-- However: "race" worked hella weird, esp. for America's unique "third Race:" the lightskinned biracial/mixed-race Black Creoles of color/Free People of Color (FPoCs) (esp. in NOLA/Louisiana). They were often "white"/white-adjacent enough to use their white ancestry to their advantage, given opportunities normal Black folk didn't; "still clinging to his Creole heritage like a life raft" like the Alderman said about Louis. (If their white parent DGAF about them, "white" mixed kids of Black slaves were n*****s too, treated just as badly as any full-blooded Black slave. But if their white parent did GAF about them, they'd be Creole, or even better: white-passing--e.g: Amanda Dickson's story in A House Divided (2000).)
Cuz like Louis said, his privilege let him easily spot the racist white folk from out of of town ("...Caucasian clientele...helped me separate the locals from those visiting from other Southern states,"), let alone European foreigners, who were visibly confused how a Black man could even be allowed in all-white spaces ("how'd you manage to get yourself through the front door?"). Ignorant AF white folk like Lestat did NOT understand how race worked across America, assuming segregation/racism/colorism was the same for elite Creoles (Louis) as it'd be for regular Black folk (Jonah & Levi). NO! It's the lightskinned "Complexion for the Protection for the Collection!" Mixed-race FPoCs were often barely even considered "Black"--even by themselves--esp. when it was their white family & peers who LET them live as a favored/privileged third race to begin with. And another huge misunderstanding white/non-Black folk have is that just cuz SOME African Americans owned plantations, racism must've not been all that ubiquitous or even all that bad, if Black folk were able to be emancipated and earn enough money to buy land & enslave their own people; so it's not white folk's fault Black people were slaves~! NO, STFU. 🤦
Most Black-owned plantations in America were in Louisiana; and darn near all of them were either: A1) elite Creoles/mulattoes/FPoCs/etc who either inherited their white fathers' plantation OR A2) were rich FPoCs who bought their own land & slaves; OR B) were the Black concubines/"wives" of white masters who freed their favorite bedwench & allowed her to leave his plantation and live on her own property; to pass her land to their mixed kids
Black plantation owners were RARE. Their proximity to whiteness allowed them to circumnavigate the socioeconomic blockades that prevented most Black folk from the same success. Many Black plantations failed before the Civil War even started; their post-War generational wealth almost non-existent.
Plantation owners were slaveowners, but not all slaveowners were plantation owners. HUGE class difference: planters owned dozens/hundreds/thousands of acres of farm/agricultural land, with dozens & even hundreds of slaves each. But even a broke AF bum could own just one (1) slave--a worker, family member, lover, etc--and still be a slaveowner. NOT the same, though they're all too often conflated, esp. in scholarship on slaveowners (which made my research on plantations 10x harder 🤦).
Obvs AMC's DPDLs' situation was 1-A1; Louis said the DPDL Plantation was his great-great-grandfather's (a white man). The estate got passed down from generation to generation, even as the bloodline got Blacker & Blacker--starting with his great-grandfather. But it's still worth thinking about other ways how plantations could wind up in Black/Creole/FPoC's hands in the racist AF Deep South, which was RARE AF.
Mills, Gary B., and Elizabeth Shown Mills. The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of color. LSU Press, 2013.
Oakes, James. The Ruling Race. Knopf, 2013.
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My first question was chronological. There's obvs a distinction b/t the Black GGF!DPDL ancestor in 1x1, and the founder GGGF!DPDL in 1x6 (who MUST be white, since the DPDLs are lightskinned Creoles).
Gen 1 (Great-Great-Grandfather) White DPDL + Black* Woman
Gen 2 (Great-Grandfather) Biracial DPDL + Black** Woman
Gen 3 (Grandfather) Mixed-Race DPDL + Black*** Woman
Gen 4 (Father) Papa DPDL + Florence DPDL
Gen 5 Louis DPDL (b. 1877) → Grace DPDL
(*IDK if these Black ancestresses were Creole or fully African/Haitian/etc--but I reckon that by Gen 3 DPDLs were marrying elite Creole women like Florence; cuz FPoCs tried to lighten the race to be as white as possible. 😒 Miscegenation laws were stricter for Black men, so it's unlikely that any of the Black!DPDLs had white wives. Grace obliterated the DPDL legacy all kinds of ways by marrying darkskinned Levi Freniere! 🤣)
The timeline's VERY speculative. Even Anne Rice's book!DPDL Estate doesn't have a solid date for when it was built; all we know is book!Louis came to America from France as a youth, and his dad built their indigo plantation after they came to Louisiana c.1770s - 1780s. Indigo was THE cash crop b4 sugar replaced it--America's first sugar plantation was the Boré Plantation in NOLA (1781-1820), originally planting indigo before Boré switched in 1795 (it failed during the Civil War, and the land was sold to the city and became Audubon Park & Audubon Zoo & Tulane University (x x)).
Boré's brother-in-law Mr. Destrehan also converted his indigo plantation to sugar in the 1790s-1803, and Destrehan Plantation became the biggest & oldest sugar plantation in NOLA still standing (fun fact: it's used for the interiors of 1994 IWTV!). By the 1820s, sugar took over as THE cash crop--it was hard AF though (John Burnside's Houmas Plantation only became the richest sugar plantation in the 1850s--12k acres & 700 slaves). So if GGGF!DPDL started with a sugar plantation, it CAN'T have been before 1795. (I'd hope GGGF!DPDL started in indigo, a la the books, and THEN converted to sugar.) But there's 0 deets--thanks, Rolin. 😒
Next is racial mixing & ethnic roots. We know Louis' GGF was an FPoC, allowed to inherit the DPDL Plantation cuz "his standing" as an elite Creole was different from Black slaves. But who knows which DPDL ancestors were born into slavery or not--if at all. GGF!DPDL could've been born into slavery, and then freed specifically so he could inherit & keep the DPDL legacy going. This would mean his Black mother was also a slave, cuz slave status was hereditary. But if GGF!DPDL was born free, then his mother was either a freed slave, or she was always free--which would mean she was a placée.
It's also unknown where those Black ancestresses came from--esp. GGGF!DPDL's lover. However, according to the OG Pilot script, AMC!Louis knew Haitian Creole, which he spoke with Oncle Vervain Mayfair. Did Rolin want Haitian roots for the DPDLs? Or did he just use Haitian cuz they're Black in NOLA so ofc they're Haitian? (Nvm Senegalese & Black Canadian Francophones ig 🙄😒). (My headcanon's that a DPDL ancestress was a Haitian Mayfair witch. Cuz Paul was clearly psychic; and Louis accepted Lestat's "European voodoo" way too easily.) The world may never know; esp. cuz Vervain's parts were all cut. 😔
Clearly, the DPDLs weren't high-yellow enough to pass as white, marry white women & breed the blackness outta their line. Even in Gen 2, the ONLY thing that separated Louis' GGF from the Black slaves on their land was his standing as Massa's son ("Capital accrued from plantations of sugar and the blood of men who looked like my great-grandfather, but did not have his standing"). GGF!DPDL looked (too) Black (to pass), but was still acknowledged/legitimatized by his white father. So GGGF!DPDL either:
had 0 white heirs/relatives who could inherit, sheesh!
or he did, but they all died, so GGF was the only one left
or he did, but DGAF about his triflin white relatives, and insisted that his mixed Black son inherit instead
A major reason the DPDLs failed was cuz there was no one else who could financially help out--Louis was IT. Either the DPDLs kept having only one (1) son reach adulthood, or all their other relatives died without viable progeny. 👀
So with all of this in mind, let's (finally) look at some IRL cases.
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1A) The Power of Kinship/Social Bonds
LOUIS: "I look in the mirror, I know what I am: the big man in the Big House, stuffing cotton in my ears so I can't hear their cries!"
-- IWTV 1x1
Almost all Black plantation owners were mixed/biracial. They only managed to attain the privileges & wealth required to own a plantation cuz of their proximity to whiteness (lightskinned & free status distinguishing them from darkskinned Black slaves); and esp. strong familial/social connections with the elites.
LOUISIANA
THE richest Black sugar planter in America was Antoine Dubuclet Jr. (1810-1887), from Iberville Parish. ADJr was born a FPoC to Rosie Belly & ADSr (both FPoCs). ADSr's mom was a FPoC placée to Joseph Antoine DuBuclet DHauterive (1744-1828), French White. ADJr's neighbor & business partner was FPoC Pierre George Deslondes (1829-1885). PGD was the son of Haitian FPoC George Deslondes (d. 1854) & (H)Eloise Belly. I realized (H)Eloise Belly must be a relative of Rosie Belly, ADJr's mother. So Dubuclet & Deslondes were cousins; a whole extended family of rich plantation-owning FPoCs. ADJr famously got NOLA outta debt post-Civil War (x x).
Menn, Joseph K. "The Large Slaveholders of the Deep South, 1860." Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1964.
The Belly matriarch was like the frikkin Queen Victoria of Louisiana for FPoC plantation families. It all starts with Pierre Belly (1738-1814), a French white officer, who settled in America after a bunch of wars. In 1774, the gov't gave him a 4000-acre plantation in colonial Louisiana. In 1779, 41yo Pierre purchased 30 Jamaican slaves, inc. 11yo Marie "Rose" Belly (1768-1828). Pierre & Rose were "married" in the plaçage way, and he "freed" her so their kids could be born FPoCs. In 1785, 17yo Rose gave birth to their 1st of six (6) daughters--their youngest was born in 1808, when this mofo was SEVENTY (70!) JFC. 🤢🤮 Pierre's will left 1/2 of his fortune to his French white family; and the other 1/2 (plantations inc) went to Rose & their biracial daughters, who all married rich FPoCs in the area. Rose created strong ties with white plantation owners by lending them money, in exchange for them helping her get legal acknowledgement as Pierre's widow & legitimatizing her kids as freeborn, not slaves, so they could keep their land rights.
Welch, Kimberly M. Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
With rich dowries from their white father, the Belly Daughters all married well, starting a literal effing dynasty of rich Creole FPoCs in Louisiana. Oldest to youngest:
Ros(al)ie Belly + Antoine Dubuclet Sr. (FPoC son of white planter Joseph Antoine DuBuclet DHauterive & his placée Marie Felecite Gray) → their son ADJr
Marie Marguerite Antoinette Belly + Pierre Luc Ricard (brother of Cyprian)
Marie Genevieve Belly + Cyprian Ricard (FPoC son of white planter Antoine Ricard de Rieutord & his placée Marianne) → their many sons (the Creole Ricards had a huge plantation, ~150 slaves)
Marie Francoise Manette Belly + Zacharie Honore (son of FPoC Jean Baptiste Honore Destrehan & Félicité Gravier) → their 2 daughters married more Ricards jfc
(H)Eloise Marguerite Belly + George Deslondes (Haitian FPoC) → their son PGD teams up with ADJr as sugar plantation magnates
Valerie Octavine Belly + Paulin Verret (FPoC, descended from French white Verrets)
"Of the 6 Louisiana free blacks who owned more than 50 slaves in 1860, 4 were descendants or married to a descendant of Pierre and Rose [Belly]."
Welch, Kimberly M. Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
This exemplifies the advantageous familial/marriage bonds amongst FPoCs. Louisiana's most important Black plantation owners were related by blood/marriage to the Bellys, with massive social capital. It seems AMC's DPDLs just didn't have the same connections at all. 😔
CAROLINAS
1A2) A prominent Carolinan Black plantation owner was William "April" Ellison (April 1790 - Dec 1861). Born into slavery, Ellison was allowed by his white Anglo-Irish father to take a paid apprenticeship as a little boy to a white cotton gin maker. Ellison made enough to buy his freedom & land to grow cotton, running his own gin workshop (he also did blacksmithing & carpentry). The shops alone made him rich (industrialization & diversification was key for successful plantation owners). "A dual career in agriculture and manufacturing gave Ellison flexibility," and he was finally able to buy his Black family's freedom. He'd've never been able to do ANY of this without the help of his white father who allowed his education, and his white mentor who taught him the cotton business (and looked after his enslaved family; agreeing to let Ellison nominally "sell" him his kids, turning a blind eye so they could live like "free" people, while on paper still being "slaves owned" by a white man). This hypocritically exploitative Black man freed himself & family, but still enslaved fellow Black people; ("I profit off the miseries of other men, and I do it easy!").
Johnson, Michael P., and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. WW Norton & Company, 1984.
But there's the tightrope Creoles faced in respectability politics vs white folk, who "respected" Ellison as a proslavery "white"-ish coon; but lowkey resented him getting too uppity/"arrogant" asserting his legal rights vs REAL white men tryna rip him off. ("...Flying too close to the sun. And that's what I am, Louis: the sun!"). Black plantation owners knew they had to put up a hard & tough front to not be seen as weak, cracking down on anyone who tried to deny/gainsay their tenuous authority/power in a racist white world, ("I was admittedly a rougher thing then." "You couldn't look weak on Liberty. You never knew who was watching.")
Johnson, Michael P., and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. WW Norton & Company, 1984.
The Civil War ruined Ellison's legacy. He died in 1861, right b4 the War; leaving everything to his free sons. They couldn't maintain the plantation after slavery became illegal & no one profited off free labor anymore. So they went broke; sold off their acreage, and abandoned the gin shop. HOWEVER. The smart move his sons made was to diversify their business, and open a general store instead. 👀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellison
Crusto, Mitchell F. "Blackness as property: Sex, race, status, and wealth." Stan. JCR & CL 1, 2005.
Johnson, Michael P., and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. WW Norton & Company, 1984.
Opening the general store was a racial socioeconomic class/status marker for Ellison's bougie AF mixed-race sons, who didn't wanna be lumped with the Black sharecroppers & struggling farmers. 😬 They'd rather eke out a living running a general store as budding capitalists, than retain their plantation as fallen planters who might be mistaken as former slaves.
Johnson, Michael P., and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. WW Norton & Company, 1984.
The Ellison Brothers established themselves as honest & reliable businessmen, their one-stop-shop catering solely to white clients. They never got mega-rich off their general store, but they were worth $8000 by 1878 ($250k with inflation)--comfortable AF, but nowhere near their father William Ellison's wealth, who'd made 10x more as a plantation owner & cotton gin mechanic.
And a huge reason they were successful is cuz white folks were used to them--the same ones who did business with them when they owned the plantation & cotton gin also shopped at the general store.
Johnson, Michael P., and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. WW Norton & Company, 1984.
The Ellisons' story, though based on Carolina cotton, is kinda similar to LDPDL's transition from sugar plantation owner to business owner. The biggest differences ofc is that William Ellison actually started out as a shop owner who bought his freedom & his own plantation--he never inherited his white father's, a la the DPDLs.
1B) Interracial Relationships
PAUL: "Profiting from the damnation of souls."
FLORENCE: "Let's not fuss on the particulars."
-- IWTV 1x1
LOUISIANA
The most famous Black female-owned plantation was Melrose, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. It was founded by Marie Thérèse "Coincoin" Métoyer (1742 – 1816), a mixed-race Creole born into slavery. Her slavemistress was friends with Claude T.P. Métoyer, a rich French merchant, who was infatuated with Coincoin. In c. 1765 he arranged to borrow Coincoin and have her live with him on his plantation as his placée (interracial marriage esp. with slaves was illegal). In 1778, Metoyer flexed his white privilege & managed to buy her freedom after they were almost dragged to court; everyone knew they had a plaçage "marriage." Now free, she stayed with Metoyer for another decade, til his arse got legally married to a white woman in 1788. 🙄😒 Coincoin gave him 10 kids. 💀 Metoyer paid Coincoin alimony financial compensation, inc. child support an annuity for their 4 freeborn youngest kids, and gave her Melrose, 68 acres right next door to his own plantation. 👀🍆
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Demythicizing History: Marie Thérèse Coincoin, Tourism, and the National Historical Landmarks Program." Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 53, no. 4 (2012): 402-437.
Sometimes Black folk were GIVEN the money/plantations by their white partners/parents/etc, who allowed them to flourish within the confines of the USA's slavery institution, letting "Black" folk live with/like white folk--esp. in the Cane River/Isle Brevelle region of Natchitoches Parish, considered the cradle of Louisiana's Creole culture; which the Metoyers helped establish.
Mills, Gary B., and Elizabeth Shown Mills. The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color. LSU Press, 2013.
Wilson, Jon Lamar. "Historic American Buildings Survey: Coincoin-Prudhomme House." National Park Service, 2001.
Coincoin made hella smart business moves, making Melrose a dual tobacco plantation & cattle ranch, one of the largest & most successful Black-owned operations in the US. Coincoin died a rich woman in 1816, and passed Melrose down to her freeborn Creole sons. They held it for 4 generations. Louis Metoyer started construction on the Big House in the 1830s, and his son JBLM finished it in 1833--worth $100k+ ($2.6mill+ today sheesh!). JBLM left the estate to his widow & son, which is when all the Issues™ started. His widow & teen son weren't money savvy at all, and when the Depression of 1837 hit, their money tanked. 💀 The Metoyers fell into debt they couldn't pay, and Mrs. Metoyer auctioned Melrose off to a rando white family, getting only $8k ($230k).
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Demythicizing History: Marie Thérèse Coincoin, Tourism, and the National Historical Landmarks Program." Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 53, no. 4 (2012): 402-437.
Like the DPDLS ("the Crash cleaned us out"), the Metoyers made increasingly bad financial decisions, and once the stock market/banks/etc fell, their generational wealth evaporated. Melrose Plantation was lost long before the Civil War, and not even the white family that bought it from them could keep it going, even after converting it to a cotton plantation. 🤷 It's now a museum.
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My final Louisiana case study is Andrew Durnford (1800 - 1859). He was a FPoC son of Thomas Durnford (an English merchant in NOLA) in Plaquemines Parish, close to NOLA. Thomas left Andrew's FPoC mother $1k in his will ($32k today).
Crusto, Mitchell F. "Blackness as property: Sex, race, status, and wealth." Stan. JCR & CL 1, 2005.
Kranz, Rachel. African-American business leaders and entrepreneurs. Infobase Publishing, 2004.
Andrew was raised as an elite Creole, given every advantage early in life, educated & extremely well-connected. His father was close friends with one of the most complex figures in NOLA history, John McDonogh. An uber-rich white philanthropist & slaveowner & abolitionist & confirmed bachelor who built/funded a bunch of public schools (WTF kinda oxymorons is this?! 😅), JMD took Andrew Durnford under his wing from a young age, and when Thomas died, JMD sold Andrew his land at a much lower interest rate, working together making sugar & molasses. In 1828, Andrew started an small 8.5 acre sugar plantation, St. Rosalie, that by 1850 had swelled to 2,600+ acres.
There's no hard evidence, but it's been rumored that JMD was 🌈 HELLA GAY 🌈 (x x), and that he was so close to Andrew Durnford cuz they was banging. 👀 ("It was a grand and loving gesture on Lestat's part.") JMD reserved rooms in his mansion for Andrew to stay in 👀 ("you and your white Daddy doing just fine in the Quarter"), and Andrew named his firstborn son Thomas McDonogh Durnford after JMD (omg they hyphenated) 👀 (Claudia de WHOMST?) and JMD even paid for TMDDJr to go to college 👀; I can't make this up y'all. 😅 WTF kinda interracial "very close friends" buy/own slaves together & co-own property in 1828!? 👀 Lord, take the fujoshi glasses away from me, I CAN'T! 😭🌈
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-black-sugar-planter-in-the-old-south/
Crusto, Mitchell F. "Blackness as property: Sex, race, status, and wealth." Stan. JCR & CL 1, 2005.
Kranz, Rachel. African-American business leaders and entrepreneurs. Infobase Publishing, 2004.
Whitten, David O. Andrew Durnford: A Black Sugar Planter in the Antebellum South. Transaction Publishers, 1981.
Alas, Andrew Durnford fumbled good sugar ventures. Andrew was also close friends with Creole sugar refiner/inventor Norbert Rillieux, but (unwisely) didn't wanna risk investing in Norbert's experiments or letting him borrow St. Rosaline's slaves for his sugar factory. 😬 So Norbert left America for Paris as a Black expat in the 1850s; and Andrew's plantation couldn't make enough money to stay out of debt--he hadn't even paid JMD back yet by the time he died in 1859. After the Civil War tanked the plantation economy, Andrew's kids auctioned off St. Rosalie in 1874, with no generational wealth. Their bloodline ended entirely with his great-granddaughter Sarah, who worked in the 1950s as a NOLA school teacher in one of JMD's schools, LOL. 🤦
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-black-sugar-planter-in-the-old-south/
Kranz, Rachel. African-American business leaders and entrepreneurs. Infobase Publishing, 2004.
DEEP SOUTH
Though Louisiana was THE capital of Black plantations, the other Southern states had a similar "pattern of interracial intimacy," where white slaveowners gave their Black lovers land that got passed down to their mixed kids.
Joyner, Charles. The South Carolina Historical Magazine 87, no. 4 (1986): 251–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27567980.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina, a hilarious case is the racist AF Pendarvis family. Joseph Pendarvis (1699-1735) was a rich AF white rice plantation owner, who had 7 biracial kids with his African slave Parthen(i)a (c.1702-1734). He left everything to their kids. The Black Pendarvises were so numerous & affluent & well-known, that the white side of the family refused to be affiliated with them, and fearing that they'd be confused for white-passing Black!Pendarvises, the white side of the family changed their effing names to Bedon, their white matriarch's maiden name instead! 😂🤣 And this was the case for other racist families too, who didn't wanna be affiliated with their Black relatives (*cough* Thomas Jefferson's brats *cough*).
TL;DR: Who knows WTF was up with the DPDL Plantation, but they're not unique, just tragic
So this brings me back to my theory about AMC's white GGGF!DPDL: IF he had any affluent white relatives, they either all died and his was the only line left; OR they hated his n****r-loving guts & changed their names & refused to have anything to do with the Black Creole DPDLs--sink or swim! 😜 Which would help explain why Papa DPDL & Louis had no influential white people to turn to for help when they lost the plantation; just slimy Tom Anderson. 🤮 And there were obvs no affluent Black DPDLs to help out, either.
Like, the whole point was that so much of the high status Black Creole plantation owners held was thru social cache, thanks to their white kinship bonds & access to white power: The powerful white "friends" like Andrew Durnford's Mr. Moneybags John McDonogh; the infatuation of Claude Métoyer (freeing & bankrolling Coincoin & her kids) & that old fart pedo Pierre Belly starting an entire frikkin dynasty with Marie Rose Belly; William Ellison & his sons being surrounded by rich white folks who sponsored their education & funded their businesses, even after they lost their plantation; etc. AMC's DPDLs were seemingly too isolated; completely on their own; with too many deaths, not enough advantageous marriages, and no one in their corner to help them out.
Ironically, Mr. Moneybags Lestat was the best thing that happened to them. 😭🤦
nonsense, really. very like the fairy tale where the princess gives her selfless love to the prince who is enchanted and he is himself again and the monster no more. (the vampire lestat, 1985)
Im gonna start posting about how I perceive Louis du Pointe du Lac and it's specifically just for people who think like me and not for people who don't.
Gay, southern, violently depressed, catholic, divorced twice, potentially schizophrenic, has complex feelings about his identity, terrible taste in men… I fear no protagonist has done it quite like him.
IWTV Musings: Unreliable Narrators - Louis (Pt3: Anne Rice)
Pt1 | Pt2
"Louis, as he admits in Paris, in IWTV, did hate Lestat for all the wrong reasons."
"Louis is a passive person who is not honest about the appeal that Lestat has for him; he describes him in adoring terms while not admitting that adoration."
"Lestat gives meaning to Louis's life and Claudia's but Louis doesn't want to admit it. He doesn't ever want to admit that he remained with Lestat because Lestat was strong and gave life structure, and made life exciting."
"He only admits it between the lines so to speak."
"He comes back to Lestat in the end because he cannot stay away."
"Does Louis make up things? Perhaps?"
"Perhaps not."
"When I wrote Interview I was Louis. When I wrote TVL, I had become Lestat. I knew things about that earlier persona then that I hadn't know before."
TL;DR: "Perhaps? Perhaps not."
Like I've been saying since day one: Louis denies/lies about how he FEELS. And he lies UP A STORM in 1973.
But omitting soft/domestic moments & loving feelings is NOT the same thing as outright fabricating events that did/didn't happen. So this fandom just ticks me off something fierce when they act like amnesia & mental illness = a lying liar who lies; and that S1 & S2 were one big ole fabrication cuz Louis' head is swiss cheese and Armand's replaced every single memory he and Claudia ever had; and that LESTAT of all people is the only reliable narrator in this story, as if he's above lying & manipulation & gaslighting & biased partiality & exaggeration & withholding, LOL. When even the Word of God Anne Rice herself said that Lestat DID withhold things that caused Louis & Claudia to mistrust Lestat and think he was "the father of lies" (aka The Devil). And that Louis hated himself most of all, cuz at the end of the day he STILL loved Lestat, warts and all.
And just cuz we never see Louis outright say "I love you" doesn't mean he does NOT love Lestat--even in 1973 he said Daniel was ASTUTE for picking that up about him, even in the middle of his venting & tirades.
For a fandom that claims to be oh so media literate, a lot of y'all can't read between the lines for shi!te. 🙄😒
saying that the train scene wasn't actually as it appeared on the screen, that claudia was an overly emotional child writing and exaggerating in her diary.....louis is unreliable, claudia is unreliable, only lestat is to be believed. this is gothic, they're monsters, they're going to do horrific things, louis was a serial killer the likes of dahmer in san fran, and claudia was wrong for her killing spree in new orleans, but lestat knew louis wouldn't die when he dropped him, lestat didn't actually do what he did on the train to claudia because even he's not that horrific. like. these people cannot be hearing themselves. they cannot be serious.
seriously, am I supposed to believe anything in the first two seasons was real?? or just the stuff that makes lestat look good? is that real? are we going to retcon the first two seasons fully, show how louis lied, how claudia lied, how the truth will finally show now that lestat is narrating? louis is the sole villain for the claudia turning scene even though he's quite literally fully manic and lestat knew the vampiric laws, lestat knew the risks, lestat turned her anyway. it's different though, lestat thought louis would leave him so he was emotional !!! much like how louis had lost everything - his people, his town, his business, his humanity, lestat was cheating on him with antoinette, claudia called him an angel !! but his emotions don't matter there !! only lestat !!
it's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the insane stan culture from people genuinely looking at this show. there is room to talk about all the characters being problematic or whatever the fuck but it's truly mindboggling to see the double standard constant and loud. and I mean constant and loud. just the most lazy excuses for analysis when it's really 'this is my favorite character and i won't think about anything beyond that' yeah we can tell
