I hope this isn’t weird but, I stumbled upon these TikTok’s and they reminded me of some your iwtv metas.
@louis-of-nola omg it's not weird at all; thank you for liking my IWTV metas, and for sending me links to these REALLY good analyses of Black & LGBTQ+ people in white media! ❤️ TBH I'm never on apps like TikTok, Twitter or Instagram, so NGL I was bracing myself for rage bait when I clicked the links, only to be pleasantly surprised by these two videos by Mouseabolition on film theory--I sincerely appreciate it!
The first link especially got to me:
Cuz in Mouseabolition's critique of the White Gaze--particularly the White (Female) Gaze--she mentioned one of my favorite horror movies, Get Out.
"A lot of black people I know are able to very deeply care about and empathize with pieces of media that are attempting to speak to our experiences, even when it's done poorly. And we're not necessarily trying to say: 'That's a good thing and that was done well.' But it's the same reason why Chris from Get Out--THE template for black horror--why Chris from Get Out felt like such a new, refreshing horror protagonist. A huge part of what makes Get Out work, and what differentiates Chris from the average horror movie protagonist--outside of just like the surface level analysis of he's a black man--is that Jordan Peele (who is also a black man) was able to write a black character with the realistic higher level of consciousness and alertness towards danger, that all black people have to move with.
And that higher level of consciousness is a huge part of why most black people I know can't take white people's horror movies seriously anyway. It's because white people walk around throwing themselves into situations that are destined to create horrific scenarios; and when you are somebody who has to walk around going: 'I can't do that, I'm gonna die!' it's really hard to feel shocked and horrified and surprised when somebody does something that you know damn well is gonna end up with them dead!
Black people--particularly like black women and queer folks--don't really have the privilege of walking around with the illusion that we are more or better represented than we are. And so you learn to look at things more critically, and that gets stereotyped as nagging or a bad thing! But it's not, because thinking about things critically, genuinely all the way through, is frequently what leads the black people I know to finding those kernels of good in stories, where most people are just like: 'No, I just think that's silly, it's just dumb.'" (4:10 - 6:02)
I've made four IWTV metas comparing the horrific experiences of Chris in Get Out and Louis in IWTV, cuz I noticed that the core themes of Black men in white spaces wrt vulnerability, exploitation, gaslighting & manipulation resonated between both horror shows in a way that directly reflects IRL experiences.
This is particularly the case when Black people are involved in toxic interracial relationships that end in horrific tragedy for the Black partner. The horror comes into even sharper focus when it's the Black victim who ends up blamed/lied on by their white abuser/murderer that tried to play the innocent victim, weaponizing White Tears to justify/get away with literal crimes--which I've also provided links to before, cuz this BS really happens to us (x).
It's especially effed up when you're dealing with victims of abuse who suffer from mental illness, and are blamed/attacked by the authorities/masses. IRL we see Bipoc mentally ill folk who call the white cops for help and are the ones who get killed (x x); yet the IWTV fandom is overrun with racists who REFUSE to put 2 + 2 together to save their biased AF souls. I felt so vindicated in 2x5 - 2x8 when AMC explicitly showed that Louis & Claudia were telling the truth about the Drop Scene in 1x5, and that Armand had lied the whole time, effing with Louis AND Daniel's memories; after so many racist AF white Lestans & Armstans said the Lou & Claudia were spiteful liars who just wanted poor uwu blorbo Lestat & Armand to look bad cuz they're not Black, like WHAT!? We saw a literal Black LYNCHING happen on screen, where Black!Louis was buried alive & Black!Claudia was burned alive by a bottle-blonde white man in front of a predominately white audience in a "play"/snuff film co-written & directed by 3 non-Black people (Armand, Sam & Lestat); meanwhile the fans INSIST that this show's NOT about race. 🤡 BUFFOONERY!
By race-swapping Louis & Claudia & heightening the abuse they suffered in the books to make their treatment WORSE, AMC was literally talking to the predominately white gaze of the audience that SALIVATES over fetishizing Black people on one hand but still perpetrates injustices against Black people on the other hand; and the racist IWTV fandom proves them right every effing day!
And I also LOVE what MouseAbolition's Tik Tok said about the careful & highly conscious ways that Black people (esp. Black queer people) have to move in society, BECAUSE they're more vulnerable to persecution & penalties & punishment than white people.
Black gay men are marginalized by white AND black people alike; there are Black fans who are also against seeing Louis as a female-coded character. Because this is a white world, the white gaze affects ALL of us, and the panopticon of censure & censorship forces us to police each other and mistreat our own sometimes even worse than white people will--look at emotionally abusive/negligent mothers like Florence who has a particular image to uphold amongst the conservative Catholic Black elite during Jim Crow (vs. white Gabrielle who CAN support her white son's eccentricities); and homophobic women like Grace (who herself is married to a man who's NOT "the man of the house," Levi coddled by Florence & financially supported by Grace's inheritance & Louis' money). But at the end of the day the problem still lies with white (wo)men who weaponize Othering by means of race/gender/sexuality/etc in order to isolate marginalized peoples from systems of support, so that they might be more easily exploited & abused--which I've constantly argued wrt to Loustat.
It grates on my effing nerves when white fans (esp. Lestans) hypocritically talk about gender, culturally appropriating Black queer terminology like "Mother"--which originated in Black gay drag, pageantry & ballroom culture, a la Drag Mothers as exemplified in Paris is Burning, and shows like Ru Paul's Drag Race & Pose--in order to prop up Lestat's femininity and dismiss Louis', all because Louis (as a Black man they've hypermasculinized) doesn't conform to their cis white paradigmatic bias of what femininity & motherhood looks like--which is informed by the white patriarchy to control the social hierarchies of both women AND men, straight & gay alike!
I've adamantly critiqued white female fans' surface-level discrimination against Louis as a female-coded character just because Louis doesn't crossdress--as if Lestat's Mardi Gras dress is the only indexical determiner of gender; esp. for closeted & conservative Black gay men who historically CANNOT safely & freely move in public spaces the way out white liberal LGBTQ+ men can.
Cis white women lusting after Lestat & screaming Yaaas Mother~!, or circling the wagons around Armand cuz they want AMC to move on to Devil's Minion (which not even AR GAF about, lol), just loooove to jump on Louis for being a pimp, for not being feminine enough, for fighting back in 1x5. Black men are hypsersexualized to the point that straight AND gay Black men are perceived as universal dangers to white/non-Black purity, and were lynched by the mob in DROVES whenever if it was even suggested that they stepped out of line; "Louis can sometimes act out."
So yeah, people act like I'm crazy cuz I call this ish out, when the facts are staring them right in the effing face. But I've already been explicitly told by white Lestans that they're deliberately ignoring the red flags cuz it's not fun to turn their brains on & look at their precious blorbos critically and that they'll casually dismiss negative portrayals of Lestat on the show as "poor writing"--
--then the same stans spin their effing tops when they actually pick up a effing book and read for themselves that we're telling the truth when we say AR's darling Lestat's a LEGIT abusive rapist p.o.s.--
--and that Hannah Moscovich was legit for pointing out that it's not character assassination when Lestat's abusive oppressive toxic behavior is effing CANONICAL.
So I'm a new viewer and just finished season two! What I wanted to talk about is how people are referring to what armand did to Louis as a lynching which I agree with but I often seen push back from those same people when someone says that Lestat also participated in the lynching? I don't understand is that not what he did by lying at the "trial"
some people have convinced themselves that lestat was being mind controlled at the trial despite zero indication on the show that was the case. hell its not even what happened in the book lol. he was simply much weaker in the book after the murder attempt and was bribed with healing blood. in the show, he is clearly completely fine. he's at the rehearsals looking like nothing ever happened. he's strong enough to mind control ~100 humans, which is more than what he did in 1x03. you can't give him credit for the part where he saved louis and then say he can't be blamed for everything else. he either has agency or he doesn't lmao
been wanting to do a pic for the memory prompt from the st louis event by @iwtvfanevents since the start. sadly my more conceptual ones haven't been clicking with me, so i come bearing a simple portrait.
A response to the prompt 'Allow me my Odyssey' for the St. Louis 2024 event by @iwtvfanevents; this is the pilot episode of the Trek/Vampterview fusion series that @weather-mood and I have been working on.
This series is meant to hold up regardless of your knowledge of any Trek properties. Each work in the series will be a stand-alone adventure, each telling its own self-contained story while also building towards the larger arc. We hope you enjoy this first one!
Through the Looking Glass by gaypiratedivorce & weathermood
The craziest thing is that I know exactly what’s wrong with Armand and could write a thesis on it but I have NO idea what’s wrong with Louis he’s a psychological mystery to me
i know everyone and their mother is always gnashing at the leash to call louis a liar and an abuser and drop the entire depp-heard playbook on him but be fucking for real for a minute.
it's not "louis's" version of the physical fight, it's very clear throughout the whole scene that it's claudia's point of view that we are watching, and the whole debate during the hiatus was precisely prompted by the fact that we did not see most of the fight, only claudia's impression that louis was beat up to a pulp afterwards. still, you cannot seriously think that "louis is about to kill lestat," even in lestat's version of the fight.
lestat who in that same scene is described as having "godlike strength", lestat who the next episode says he has to be "willing" to be killed, do you really think louis was "about to kill" that guy?
louis is saying he wants to kill lestat for having attacked claudia, but both the claudia pov scene and lestat's own recollection make it dead clear that louis never had any possibility to do it, and that the moment that lestat decides to stop playing defense and actually unleash his strength on louis (because he realizes louis is going to leave him) the fight is done. did you miss lestat's entire statement somehow??? maybe you did, so let me reproduce it for you!!!
"A wolf congratulated for not killing her pups. (...) He wasn't fine. I let go of him. It wasn't a… misunderstanding, it wasn't an accident. I let go of him. I watched him… clutch the air. I saw him… swinging wild as he fell through the clouds. (...) I did it to hurt him. And it did hurt him. And afterwards he was a broken thing. I know, I saw, because I am the one who broke him! I couldn't… persuade… him to return my affections. I couldn't force him to love me and so… I broke him."
i frankly don't know what show you could be watching to come to the conclusion that louis ever had any chance of standing up against lestat in that fight but i would at least appreciate it if you did not put this bothsideism that basically amounts to abuse apologia in louis's character tag.
Go ahead right now and point to where I called Louis an abuser, I’ll wait. I definitely wasn’t trying play both sides NOR apologize for Lestat’s abuse and I’d appreciate it if you could take any criticism against Louis without jumping to conclusions or merely skimming the post.
That post was specifically exploring Louis’ unreliable narration and if you don’t see that he is an unreliable narrator than you should rewatch the show. He lies. That’s the entire POINT of the show actually
I can explore the truth hidden beneath one person’s perspective without it being abuse apology. I want to understand Louis l on a deeper level because he’s so complex and I want to understand him since he is the most different to me.
And I won’t apologize or back down from the fact that I want to explore the gray area of ALL the characters. Or is louis off limits for some reason?
that you said the differences were "between louis and lestat's physical fight", clearly suggesting that it's louis's retelling of the fight that makes you think that "lestat was just pounding the hell out of him".
that you said "louis is about to kill lestat" in lestat's version of the fight.
which are blatantly false and, again, stupid takeaways from both scenes.
at no point did i contest that louis is an unreliable narrator! but, if "That post was specifically exploring Louis’ unreliable narration" then at least you need to actually deal with louis's narration and the aspects of it that are unreliable.
since the first version of the fight is not from louis, is from claudia, claudia's recollection that "lestat was just pounding the hell out of him" as you put it, is irrelevant to the question of whether louis is an unreliable narrator, because we don't see the fight from louis's point of view.
and, since the point of view only shifts to louis once lestat takes him up to the sky, and both louis and lestat agree that lestat dropped him from the fucking clouds, again, the point of whether louis is an unreliable narrator is moot, because, lol, both versions agree!
and, since louis did not give a version of the fight in the first season, and never actually argued with lestat's version that he said he was going to kill him, again, the point is irrelevant to the question of louis's unreliability as a narrator, because at no point does louis tell a different version.
and if you do not intend to play into bothsideism you should not falsely claim that louis was "about to kill lestat" in that fight, because, whatever your intention, the result does in fact suggest that louis has the upper hand and that the fight is even-matched despite the fact that we see, very clearly, that this is not true!
you are perfectly free to criticize louis on account of the things he actually does and says in canon. your post does not do that. what it does is repeat the same victim-blaming abuse-apologist rhetoric that every other fan has been spewing since s1, that claudia and louis lied about the fight in s1, which is not true because, again, (1) claudia's pov is limited by the fact that she was away from the fight, hence why most of the fight is not displayed in s1, and (2) louis never gives his version of the fight, which, again, is why most of it was not displayed, and he doesn't contest lestat's version of it either, so where exactly did he lie?
and of course, the "about to kill lestat" plays right into another common line from the fandom, that lestat's violence was justified because louis attacked him and he was in genuine danger (mind you, the same bullshit that santiago spews at the trial).
if you are concerned with louis's unreliability you can talk all day about his rewriting of the night of mardi gras, which serves only to obscure that he turned on claudia over lestat, or how 80 years later he's still incapable of calling lestat's abuse abuse.
maybe then you will be able to understand that louis's unreliability concerns specifically his disempowerment in his relationships, his sense of guilt over claudia, and his failure of claudia, who he still views as his child. he is lying to hide the fact that he was abused and the fact that he chose his abuser over claudia, because it is shameful to him both that he was abused and that he loved and continues to love his abuser, and that he loved him enough to choose him over and over, even over claudia, despite the abuse.
but of course you will hardly "understand" louis's character if you're pulling events out of your ass.
purple dress lou (pose referenced from that one nina simone pic) for the gender prompt for @iwtvfanevents's st. louis event! i don't think estrogen would save her but she should give it a shot anyway 💜
for @iwtvfanevents' st. louis event, prompted by the quotes about louis being seen, about cataloging his choices after claudia's death ('the suit changes nothing') and the 'odyssey' of memory. this was mostly inspired by thoughts about the many versions of louis we see and how he tries to articulate all these facets of his identity, all these decisions, all of his history through the interview; about the need to tell this story to somebody, to be seen. the interview as self-portrait.
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