★ is ealaín dubh í ★

22 | 🇮🇪 | following wherever my autism leads me

[glitteringpoet1685]

No but genuinely what's the fucking point if we're not meant to view the seance scene as retconning any of the past 2 seasons. Yeah sure I accept that Claudia would probably be mad af and want to hurt Louis but what's the fucking point if I'm not meant to take anything at face value, that being dead sucks? Yeah no shit. If this scene isn't meant to be telling us anything factual about Claudia then why are we even including a scene from several books in the future when we've barely adapted the book we're meant to be on. If every scene in this season only works if you have to work backwards from its conclusion into some sort of "well technically it makes sense if you think about it—" then it doesn't actually work. It's exceptionally clear in the loumand fight that they're throwing anything out that they think will hurt the other, it's cheap jabs, it's feelings, it's "she didn't love you", not "I purposely fabricated parts of my diary". Like okay cool I guess this scene exists for no reason other than to be racist now.

[drolta]

Delainey Hayles as Claudia in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire

[yusiyomogi]

i mean, without doubt there's a possibility that ghost!claudia wasn't a real claudia. the post-episode and after dark treat it as real etc, but it could be just a tactic to avoid spoilers for season 4, for all we know. merrick reveal was treated as ambiguous in the books, it said that the vision of claudia could be an evil spirit praying on louis' fears. and also it's known that merrick manipulated louis, that she was a talamasca agent at some point and used magic on louis to make him feel affection for her in the book so he would turn her into a vampire (...possibly adapted as regina's storyline this season?). i still would have a couple of problems with this:

1) a complete non-reaction louis had to this reveal. i mean, it could be lestat's unreliable narration of course. it's possible that louis had much harder time processing it and was hurting and lestat simply didn't tell us about it because he wanted to focus on romantic energy between them. there's also a possibility that show version of louis somehow figured out that it's not the real claudia and treated this as a performance, but lestat haven't realized and misread the situation. but if this was it, if louis believed that this was the real claudia and somehow decided to move on from his grief because she was mean to him (??? which is not how it worked in s1&2), i'm afraid the writers just don't know how to write louis anymore.

2) the fact that antiblack language was used to create fandom discourse by the non-black writers' room. like, even if it was revealed in the very next episode that ghost!claudia was not real, her antiblack insults would still be used to fuel a week-long discourse online. aimed to shock and hurt black people who watched the show (and the show famously had a pretty big black fanbase) and make racists louder for a while as part of the "meta" writing. and i don't think it's gonna be just a week-long discourse unfortunately.

[deadbeatmaker]

actually I can just pretend something doesn’t count if I thought it was bad writing and I have long experience with this since I used to read comic books

[the-heavenly-option]

sure, let's have a black woman be basically a caricature, call her black father a nappy-headed slave, claim she never cared for him even though the past two seasons make it very clear that's not true, say she hates him more than her rapist and the people who murdered her, claim she intentionally and maliciously lied about being threatened with rape, say she prefers her white father (who horrifically abused her for 30 years btw) over him, and then have said fathers not show a single intense emotion over it afterwards. you know, since we can have characters just do ANYTHING now.

[dmtruther]

I think Delainey turned shit into gold in this episode, but nothing excuses the way the writers have so badly fucked up the emotional resonance of her calling up.

This is where I think we have to be honest that these writers have painted themselves into a corner many times, but now the failures are undeniable. By making Louis attempt on a rooftop in S2 by the mere suggestion by Armand that Claudia didn’t love him, they robbed this scene of any potential for Louis to feel it intensely. They actually had him shrug it off like she meant nothing - when we saw him last season torn up over reading her diary pages.

The writers have effectively negated plot lines from previous seasons AND made Louis look incomprehensible AND robbed us of the potential impact of Claudia haunting Jesse and Lestat like she did in QotD and TotBT. And for what?

They also kind of sacrificed Armand’s rooftop suicide attempt in order to have Louis do it in S2. So, they’ve sacrificed all of Benji and Sybelle’s amazing scenes of rescuing Armand from the rooftop.

I have a million thoughts but they all kind of boil down to: every character is getting screwed out of their best storylines but especially the characters of color, and the writing is just horrifically racist. Claudia can yell at Louis (and she should!) but she did not need to say the racist stuff.

[veryveryvomit]

What's most frustrating to me is that they have retroactively turned this fandom into a hostile space for anyone who cares about the first 2 seasons. Any thoughtful analysis of Louis and claudia's relationship going forward or the abuse they suffered at the hands of lestat, armand, will now immediately be shot down by racist fans saying "well ghost!claudia said this". I don't see myself interacting with this show at all in the future. Rest in peace to my good friends Louis and Claudia.

[the-heavenly-option]

sorry to my non-iwtv moots who are getting hate posts for a show they don't watch on their dash. if you watched the episode I had to watch you'd understand, though

[veryveryvomit]

For the record I've never seen a single interpretation of the train scene which had lestat threatening to rape Claudia. Using rape as a threat maybe but its not at all implied that it would come from him. That being said the way sexual abuse this season is treated as some sort of "special" abuse only committed by the worst of the worst is so reductive. We're told that yes, lestat would beat, emotionally abuse, and kill claudia, but would never rape her. Sexual violence here is committed by degenerates hiding in the shadows and cartoonishly evil mothers. It's the same rhetoric that leads people to accuse victims of lying because they dont believe their friend/family member would do anything that bad.

[sunbleachedphlies]

@tankhall the most beautiful

shot from the crowd in Birmingham ♡

[dykecinema]

Tvl writers/showrunners it's not too late to say this season is all a bad dream

[dogboydanielmolloy]

"armand will get a huge chunk of episode 7" what, like 10 minutes?

[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 minor characters like Dee or Lemuel who weren't necessarily 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 is 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

[onwolves]

this is how tvl meta sounds like to me now

[dykecinema]

Okay saying one more thing and then I'm done I guess but it's absolutely insane to me how much Lestat has been like coddled for lack of a better word this season. Literally so much of the writing this season is up his ass and is sooo focused on making HIM the victim(which don't get me wrong he is a victim in some senses) to the point where it's bastardizing characters and retconning plot points all in service to him. Gabrielle completely butchered and turned into some hypersexual cartoonish villain because we need to know at every turn this is a horrible evil woman that abuses poor baby Lestat. Barely any time developed on her own abuse she suffered. We can't see any exploration of her gender. No nuance - even though Lestat is an abuser that was given plenty of nuance. Louis constantly apologizing to Lestat - his abuser- because yeah Lestat can abuse Louis and it's fine but god forbid Louis does one thing wrong by Lestat. Armand apologizing to Lestat while also be turned on by his naked form because remember this is the Lestat show we have to be focused all on Lestat being a rock sex god that has done no wrong. Oh Armand was abused too? Well it doesn't matter because he did wrong by Lestat. And when they summon Claudia's ghost most of her ire is directed towards Louis not the man that yknow abused her and Louis for years. And she says she liked Lestat more than Louis despite all evidence in the previous seasons to the contrary because this is the Lestat show he has to be the number one specialist boy.

And you can't even use "this is Lestat's pov" as a defense really because the pov storytelling has been completely messy this season switching back and forth between Daniel's doc and The Failures records and sometimes it seems like none of these are being used.

We do get a little push back from Daniel but it now seems moot bc Daniel has also been turned into a cartoonishly evil villain (legit what are his motivations for turning on lestat and louis like that)

Obviously this all sucks from a racism and misogyny viewpoint, but it also sucks from a storytelling viewpoint. Like what is the fun of sucking out the nuance of everyone all in favor of one character. There was soooo much potential to delve into the cycle of abuse - and we do get a little bit of that I will give them that- but not nearly as much as I'd hoped.

Okay sorry I needed to get that off my chest. I don't want to be a negative Nancy but it gets to a point...

[geestdrift]

it's genuinely baffling to me that some critics and screeners claimed this season gets better later on because it has literally gotten worse with each episode. it's almost insulting. i feel like i'm watching a car crash happen in slow motion

[name-of-the-radio]

letting the tale seduce you was for iwtv seasons 1 and 2, i am reporting the tale for sexual harassment

[letpeoplecritiquethings]

The Vampire Lestat