keep imagining Ursula watching a new hope in a bay area movie theater and w her entire chest believing it was a stoner comedy. Thank you Stan Robinson for that anecdote that I will repeat until the end of my life
I listened in silence. St Emerence of Csabadul, the madwoman of mercy, who asks no questions but rescues all alike, since whoever is being pursued must be saved, the Grossmans and those hunting the Grossmans; on one side of her banner a drying rack, on the other Mr Brodarics' helmet. This old woman is not just oblivious to her country, she's oblivious to everything. Her spirit shines bright, but through a cloud of steam. Such a thirst for life, but so diffused over everything; such immense talent, achieving nothing. "Tell me," I once asked her. "You only rescued people? You never handed anyone in?" She glared at me, with hatred in her eyes. What did I take her for? She hadn't even informed on the barber, though he had cheated her, robbed her of everything. Even his dreams were lies. When he left her and made off with his loot, she said nothing. If he needed it, let him have it. But from that day on, if a man got close to her, he reminded her of the barber, and she wasn't going to lose everything she'd put together again, especially not the money. She made a plan for the future, and there were no barbers, or Kennedys, or flying dogs in it. There was no place for anyone but herself, and the dead she would gather in.
When the real crackdown came, it was a miracle that she wasn't locked up. There was something monstrous, deformed, in the contempt she heaped on everything. Those propagandists must have lived through the most agonising moments of their lives when Emerence acquainted them with her political philosophy. In her view Horthy, Hitler, Rákosi and Charles IV were all exactly the same. The fact was that whoever happened to be in power gave the orders, and anyone giving orders, whoever it was, whenever, and whatever the order, did it in the name of some incomprehensible gobbledegook. Whoever was on top, however promising, and whether he was on top in her own interests or not, they were all the same, all oppressors. In Emerence's world there were two kinds of people, those who swept and those who didn't, and everything flowed from that. It made no difference under which slogans or flags they staged national holidays. There was no force that could overcome Emerence. The propagandist, shocked to the depths of his heart, gave her a wide berth thereafter.
[…]
In the end it was the Lieutenant Colonel who provided an explanation: Emerence probably hated power no matter whose hands it was in. If the man existed who could solve the problems of the five continents, she would have taken against him too, because he was successful. In her mind everyone came down to a common denomination—God, the town clerk, the party worker, the king, the executioner, the leader of the UN. But if she experienced a sense of fellow feeling with anyone, her compassion was all-embracing, and this didn't extend only to the deserving. It was for everyone. Absolutely everyone. Even the guilty.
"You will. You'll put Viola down. You'll have him injected, when the time comes. Try to understand. When the sands run out for someone, don't stop them going. You can't give them anything to replace life. Do you think I didn't love Polett? That it meant nothing to me when she'd had enough and wanted out? It's just that, as well as love, you also have to know how to kill. It won't do you any harm to remember that. Ask your God—since you're on such good terms with him—what Polett told him when they finally met."
my final thoughts on tvl (mostly under a read more as this is a very long post):
from the moment the first episode of the vampire lestat dropped, it was evident that this show was going to be nothing more than a shoddy, poorly paced mess that cared more about humiliating louis—alongside its other black and brown characters—than telling any sort of cohesive or lovingly crafted story. the amc team set out to undo the two previous seasons of impactful writing, and punish those of us who resonated with interview with the vampire and the characters it presented to us viewers.
rolin, hannah & co. rewrote some of their powerhouse characters (louis, claudia and assad) around uplifting a white man and excusing him of the things that he's done, but even in that they failed. because this season did not make lestat more likeable; it barely fleshed out any of his past, but made it a point to show us him kissing his mother every episode, and even that was oftentimes played for no more than shock value or laughs. there was no character development on lestat's part, even when other characters' writing was sacrificed to exonerate him.
there is genuinely no winning with this fandom or show as a black viewer. when the first season came out everyone went on and on about Book Accuracy™ and how the changes made were an affront to the legacy of anne rice's story. and as a result it was review-bombed by racists for how unabashedly black it was. then season two came out and everyone took the opportunity to say that louis was lying about what happened and that he was on an equal playing field regarding lestat and armand. and critics couldn't be bothered to praise jacob, delainey and assad for their incredible performances, instead turning the spotlight on sam, despite lestat being one of the more minor characters until ep 7. and things only got worse once iwtv ended
s3/tvl started promo and already the shift was obvious. rolin talked shit from day one "it's the lestat show", "it's no longer two old men sitting in a room", "the season ended with hugs and kisses", "if you hate this season you hate lestat and daniel" etc. sam had to correct rolin twice over the things he was saying regarding other cast members. promotion for this season when above and beyond, every poster was a lestat solo and people argued that that was due to this being lestat's season. ignoring the fact that lestat was still a prominent character on many of the s2 posters. they did countless tv spots and photoshoots and a live concert and a fashion collab, and basically did everything in their power to promote this now white-led season as much as they could.
they baited people with loustat and lestat flashbacks and incredible writing, claiming that this was their best season yet, and there's been either none or very little of those things. the pacing is awful, louis been reduced to a caricature and punching bag, and not a single character feels fully flushed out or written with genuine passion. yet the book purists aren't kicking up nearly as much of a fuss. lestat being a rockstar was not as big of a plot point as it's been during this season, and they're focusing so much on that (and his relationship with gabriella) that the writing is suffering tremendously.
but then again, i can't even say that because a lot of the choices feel very sinister and intentional: all the women we've seen thus far being sexual props (dee basically just being toted around as a groupie to fuck lestat and whoever else, gabriella being a poorly constructed "femme-fatale" and fucking lestat and whoever else every episode, regina having an only fans, tc having unresolved desires about motherhood(?), christine fucking lestat/being mocked for that and also having a sex dungeon or something? the faux-madeleine kiss). what happened to our well-written and interesting characters? can women not be engaging to viewers unless they're sexual in some way, shape or form?
and louis....they've completely butchered his character to a degree that, as ive said a hundred times before, feels incredibly racist and deliberate. anyone that tries to say that the writers didn't purposefully set out to humiliate louis' character and subject him to as much antiblack racism as possible are purposefully ignoring the evidence in favor of supporting the garbage that was shoveled at us this season. what narrative explanation is there for:
louis apologizing to lestat for a book he didn't want written
louis being called a "nappy headed slave"
louis being told that he can't escape the slave mentality etched into his being
louis being told by claudia that she hates him more than her abusers, rapists, and lynchers
louis sympathizing with a man who mocked his suicide attempt
louis making a comment on being sexually assaulted as a child and never having it explored
louis specifically having his head cut off and put on display
louis being tortured by armand (the man who organized his lynching) and apologizing to armand
louis having armand carve a branding (the first letter of armand's name) into his chest following his (louis') being called a slave in the prior episode
louis' torture being broadcasted live as some sort of fucked up red-room bullshit
louis not seeing the ghost/hallucination of his brother, but that being reserved for lestat. and that ghost then apologizing to lestat on louis' behalf and thanking lestat for "loving him the way he needs to be loved".
nothing that the writers had louis experience this season did anything for his character, he was used for torture porn and to lick the wounds of his white (ex)-partner, who he still refers to as the love of his life. louis is denied the right to be a victim and expected to understand that everything he went through was ultimately a result of his own sins and flaws. why was louis not someone that armand apologized to when he wrote his letters? because those apologies were reserved for white men that he did not hurt nearly as much as louis?
why did armand torture louis but leave lestat alone? why did the writers have armand torture a black woman as a way to hurt louis, but lestat was spared from this horrific abuse? why did louis have to apologize to armand for not loving him or whatever the fuck, while lestat was, as i said, not faced with this name vitriol? i don't even care about "ship wars" at this point, but why did armand tell louis that he never really loved him? and to expand on that point; why did claudia also tell louis that lestat was the one that she actually liked? why, again and again, is louis being shown as unlovable, undesirable, and the true evil villain that has plagued everyone's past.
there is a specific sick joy taken by the writers in subjecting louis (and regina and claudia) to as much antiblackness and suffering and cruelty as possible. louis is a victim as much (and even more, at times) than any one of the other main characters this season, and yet that is constantly cast aside so they can continue to push this rhetoric that louis is The Awful, Manipulative Pimp.
nevermind the fact that lestat murdered prostitutes and kept dee around to do no more than fuck and drink from her. nevermind the fact that armand kidnapped people to be tortured and eaten for his shitty plays. nevermind the fact that lestat and armand directly contributed to the almost-lynching of louis and the lynching of his daughter and her lover. "they're all monsters, they're going to behave this way" except for when its louis, then he needs to be repeatedly punished?
and with regards to the trial: why is that never fully addressed again? lestat can be disproportionately mad at louis for a book daniel wrote and published (without his permission), but louis can't be upset at lestat for taking part in the murder of their daughter? they couldn't even be bothered to write lestat telling louis that he was under armand's control. would that have not been another way to absolve this white man of his crimes, as they're so eager to do? but because they have it said two times that lestat went there of his own volition, we're just supposed to gloss over the fact that this man knowingly planned to murder his lover, and succeeded in murdering his daughter? but louis is the one that apologizes and begs for forgiveness??
this is a quick aside, but they also completely ruined armand's character. they took such a complex, interesting and fantastic character and stripped him of all his parts. now he's just the undesirable south-asian man (which is horribly racist in and of itself) that deluded himself into thinking he and lestat had a relationship, and apologizes genuinely to his white lovers but hates the black man he lied to and brainwashed for 77 years. the writers use armand as another character (like claudia) to spew their personal hatred for louis, and believe that they will be above reproach because armand is not a white man.
armand is a survivor of csa and that is their excuse for how he brutally tortures louis and drags an apology out of him, but when does he subject gabriella to this? she abused lestat for decades and decades as both a mortal and a vampire. but since that wasn't done to armand he doesn't care? but oh wait...that argument falls apart when you realize that louis didn't sexually abuse armand either. he is being punished for something he did (not to armand) over a century ago, and if that's the case, lestat and armand and gabriella should be drawn and quartered for their crimes. but, no, nothing anyone else does matters, this season is solely about humiliating louis as much as possible. lestat and daniel actually made fun of armand's trauma this season, but it's louis that deserves to be tortured....right, right...
i really don't even care about loustat at this point, but we were told that we were going to see louis "through lestat's eyes" and that it was going to be beautiful and this was allegedly the coolest louis has ever looked. but all we've gotten is lestat being horribly cruel to louis and calling him crazy, mocking his suicide attempt, and acting put-upon when louis goes to him for help. the closest we came to genuine loustat was at the very beginning of the season. and then when the book dropped they used that as an excuse to have lestat disparage louis in one way or another every time he's mentioned or they share a scene.
every single relationship louis made in the iwtv s1 & s2 is butchered or straight-up retconned. daniel wanted to reconcile with louis but all of a sudden doesn't care about that and is willing to help armand enact his laughably villainish plan? armand was chasing after louis and begging him to understand the end of the previous season but now he's torturing louis and forcing him to apologize for...what exactly? claudia berates him and the complex feelings she had for louis are watered down to vitriolic rage and antiblack language reserved solely for only one of her parents? lestat was tearful and remorseful during the iwtv s2 finale but is now mocking louis' suicide attempt and calling him a cancerous jackal?
the finale was all of their grievances with louis and hatred for the explicit blackness of the first two (but especially first) seasons rearing its nasty, ugly head. they succeeded in destroying beloved characters and giving the racist fans that hated louis exactly what they wanted. they backed out of and changed almost every writing choice they made during iwtv s1 and s2, and even if their end goal for this show was to drive louis and lestat back together, they did that in the most manufactured and racist way possible.
there was no story told this season, we learned almost nothing new by the end of it. akasha didn't even awaken and the rockstar angle was pointless and used as nothing more than to artificially pad the runtime and make up plot points that went literally nowhere. tvl felt like the writers fucked up version of a 'fix it' fanfiction, because there was nothing that needed to be fixed in iwtv to begin with.
in conclusion, this show did not need to be made. begging jacob to come back just for his character to be treated this way was very, very callous and disrespectful to the phenomenal acting that jacob does. to say im disappointed and heartbroken for jacob, delainey and assad would be an understatement—they have been forced to defend and explain awful choices made for their characters this season despite not having been the ones to write them. and people will continue to use them as scapegoats for this season to pretend that "they were on board" with the racism and antiblackness, as if black and brown actors aren't repeatedly blacklisted for speaking out against bigoted writing choices. my heart bleeds for whatever jacob and assad will be subjected to at sdcc.
tldr; this season would have been written completely differently had louis, claudia and armand been white as they were in the books. rolin, hannah and the others writers for this season sought to create an antiblack, racist, misogynistic, misogynoir-laden mess in a failed attempt to rewrite their white lead's cruelties and victimize him at the expense of every non-white character in the show. and they delight in watching a large portion of their viewership happily consume this slop and defend every single one of their writing choices while their black and brown cast are put on the spot to defend this shit. it is obvious, and to defend or excuse it is doing no more than showing that you support what they've done and don't care about how harmful it is.
and, finally: if you're going to come into my comments or ask box to defend the blatant racism this season, please do not waste your breath. im at the point now where i will be blocking you instead of explaining my thoughts for the hundred millionth time. and beyond that, i have no desire to go back and forth with racist, media illiterate people on the internet.
This was genuinely a good episode, maybe not everything answered and attoned for in great detail but this was never the purpose of the show ever. It had a beautiful emotional focal point, and louis wasn’t brutalized for shock sake. He needed to say his piece and grow from it too. He will never forget being a pimp and hating it, that’s literally what made him a good character. I understand not liking this season but I suggest some of you to callm down with treating everything happens at louis as a punishment (for? Jacob?? For other black people?) It really didn’t feel like it, and I’m a big louis fan. It wouldn’t have the same emotional weight and it would be out of character for louis to just pour his heart out to armand in a regular convo. He doesn’t care about him that way anymore, in his fucked up way armand freed him from his silent atonement as well. Louis get to speak about his guilt but he also didnt do it without a fight. (Again guilt doesn’t means armand was an angel in that relationship. He literally doesn’t act like one. He is awful and isn’t even trying to hide it anymore.) I never understood why you guys wanted apology from armand, does his other apologies felt sincere? No, at least this actually was an emotional moment between them. It was horror show but horror won’t feel real without deep sadness. Idk, reading all this stuff before watching the episode as a person who is really sensitive when it comes to louis, I think some of you guys are too deep in fandom to look at the show as it is. (And the character as it is) At some point you are just mad at the fandom for making a hostile place to discuss a show once you liked. I really think if some of you weren’t this deep in fandom grievances you would have better time watching the show. Or leave if it bored you at some point. This isn’t against critique but what I’ve been reading here feel more like a stubborn resentment toward everything, if you look for clues everywhere that a person you are parasocialy attached to is being wronged you will find more and more. It’s a futile attempt remove a one character you loved from the shows context and claim that it you only know and love for real. He doesn’t exist outside all this. This is the same shit that happens at every type of fandom. At the end of the day it’s certainly not healthy for you? You are looking at things to be mad about while connecting everything. It paints an insecure frantic picture, there is no way this much involvement in fandom won’t affect your analysis
I have posted so many insightful and valuable posts regarding the antiblackness depicted in this show. Read the post I pinned to my page regarding the (non-comprehensive) white supremacist rhetoric that this show has depicted. Look up resources regarding antiblackness in media. Follow @creatingblackcharacters. Please do that instead of telling me we are all wrong just because you can find a way to justify what they are depicting to yourself. Understand that this work exists outside of your desire for entertainment.
i hope you don't mind my adding to your reply here but i'm always fascinated by people who condescendingly (bc anon's ask is condescending) frame themselves as calling out bias or unhealthy fandom engagement when the way they present their argument completely exposes their own distorted pov and lack of good faith engagement with the person they claim to be critiquing. anon tone-polices (telling predominantly black fans to "callm (sic) down" and dismissing discussions of racism as "too deep into fandom grievances" "you are looking for things to be mad about" calling it "futile" to separate affection for individual black characters from the racist turn of the show itself- all of these comments are microaggressive) asserts their own interpretation without narratively backing their argument ("it had a beautiful emotional focal point" "it really didnt feel like it") not realizing that the same systemic antiblack biases we're critiquing in the nonblack writers room likely have a hand in anon not seeing the scene of louis' torture as not a big deal or a point for louis' growth. and the point about louis' growth is victim-blaming him by framing this brutal act of racialized violence as if it was something that was good for him and was freeing for him ("in his own fucked up way armand freed him from his silent atonement as well" "louis got to speak about his guilt"- oh louis got to did he. how generous of armand to give him that opportunity) when the violence we see onscreen and the visual language of the scene is tapped into the specific violent acts inflicted on enslaved black people, and the point is louis' confinement and helplessness rather than his freedom (he literally can't move, his head is on a spike).
all this paints a picture of anon as not really engaging with tiredopinions' posts at all and not understanding the particular critique of this scene and the general critique of antiblackness as a problem on this show, in the entertainment industry, in fandom spaces and, well, society in general. it's a systemic problem that pervades every space. and the specific issues with this scene are-
louis' exploitation of mainly working class black women in nola is different from armand beint trafficked as a south asian boy and later exploited by marius over 300 years before louis was born- remember armand is also an enactor of exploitative violence against black women, wrt claudia and regina- so making armand the character louis confronts this part of himself with doesn't make narrative sense. if the show wanted to depict louis having a real harrowing confrontation about this where pain turns to liberation and catharsis, the opportunity with claudia's ghost was right there where instead of volleying ooc antiblack vitriol at louis claudia could've taken him to task for tryna make her the objectified symbol of his redemption when saving one black girl from the fire doesn't make up for the exploitation of dozens of other mostly-black women.
armand didn't "need" to apologize or atone for what he did to louis, esp since considering his smugness about what a hit baby lulu was in s2 and how he only seemed to feel remorse about getting caught, not what he did to louis, framing him as being sincerely apologetic only 3 years later could've come off premature and rushed. we know none of these characters are going to therapy, they don't need to have respectful heart-to-hearts at group sharing sessions where they take turns holding the feelings stick and come out the other end as better people. the problem is the dissonance of the show doubling down on armand's violent antiblackness in an even more intimate and visceral way than his hands-off director role in the trial and tryna make the same scene where he's torturing louis a moment of real connection and understanding between them where armand is supposed to be viewed sympathetically (the showrunner has admitted as much, that he feels more for armand here than he does louis and it's meant to be armand being truly understood) by the audience and by the black man he tried lynched once already, abused for decades and is now racially tormenting again. you can have "deep sadness" in the horror for what louis is going through again, but the very expectations that viewers should hold sympathy for the lynching director in the middle of doing another lynching to the sole surviving victim of the 1st lynching, that an all-nonblack writers team wrote this scene of explicit racialized torture of a black man with that intent, shows the antiblackness that pervades that writers room.
and it's true that this isn't healthy for us or any other black fan who cares about racism- it's not healthy to be black and move through life experiencing antiblackness every day and be faced with it again in allegedly "escapist" fandom spaces and allegedly "escapist" genre media, and then to have other fans respond to discussions of racism as a pervasive material reality by trying to gaslight us, berate us, harass us and use all manner of tactics to get the uppity black fans talking about racism too much (translation- at all) to shut up and let them have their "escapist" fantasy where blackness doesn't matter and violence against black people doesn't matter and the only black people they acknowledge are people who already agree with them and affirm their worldview. "at some point you are just mad at the fandom for making a hostile space to discuss the show you once liked"- why would this be a bad thing if mostly black fans are mad at fandom for being hostile to discussions of race?? why use "just" in this sentence as if being upset at fandom trying to shut down discussions of antiblackness isn't reason enough to make critical posts??
"this isn't against critique"- but it plainly is, or else anon wouldn't have sent an ask framing tiredopinions' engagement and critique of the show as irrational "stubborn resentment" and making something out of nothing. and anon seems completely oblivious to the fact that they're contributing to this hostile and racist fandom environment by sending messages like this to bloggers who are criticizing the flaws of a show in their own space and commiserating with like-minded fans about their critiques and frustrations.
the other problem with lestat's hateful backlash to louis in tvl and the lack of any kind of proper contrition arc for what he's done to louis and claudia is that even if the show does have him regretting what he's done and apologizing to louis again in s4 or later, after s3 it's just gonna feel like another phase in the cycle of abuse- "lestat the vulnerable becomes lestat the irritable becomes lestat the controlling". lestat was seemingly contrite in s2ep7 when he apologized to louis for dropping him, lestat was seemingly torn up in s2ep8 when he expressed heartbreak at louis hurting himself, but all of those moments are rendered meaningless (or at least only reflecting a kind of fleeting self-pity more than any real change or confrontation with his actions) since we've seen in tvl that lestat is perfectly willing to embark on a planned, multi-month darvo tour where he insults louis repeatedly and makes fun of his suicide attempt in his lyrics (bye any ounce of sincerity in the reunion scene) and bitterly nitpicks minutiae like his hair length while refusing to accept what he's done to his family...and then he and louis are on good terms again without any substantial change or growth on lestat's part. and no "he didn't really mean it, he was just lashing out bc he felt hurt and thought louis didn't love him" doesn't rationalize a multi-month darvo tour when "he felt slighted and was acting emotionally" is the crux of so many abusers' behavior. even if lestat was acting impulsively, that's not an excuse, but writing music, organizing a tour and performing those songs where he mocks his own abuse victim for speaking out requires a kind of planning and intent that makes it clear he wasn't being impulsive. it's a calculated move when you're doing it for that long and that consistently. if there had been some real emotional payoff in s3ep7 i could've said the execution was off but i could respect their commitment to exploring the psychology of an abuser in denial, but there's no payoff- it's clear they thought lestat's behavior on tour was just lestat being bitter and zany and cunty and didn't intend or expect the audience to see any weight behind it.
and with these same anti-survivor writers at the helm, even if they did attempt to show lestat apologizing to louis in s4 or beyond, the audience will have no reason to believe or trust that this apology is more sincere or reflects a more permanent change than the apology in s1ep6 or s2ep7 or his tears for claudia in s2ep8 given all of that fell by the wayside as soon as lestat felt "wronged". (and no, he wasn't wronged by louis when it came to the book, as louis isn't responsible for something that was published against his consent and it's not wrong for abuse survivors to talk about their experiences in a biography. the idea that the book is something louis had to apologize for or that the book justifies lestat mocking his own victims publicly, for months- they can't "oh lestat is a creature of impulse" their way outta that one- in itself exposes a kind of anti-survivor thinking, and we have no reason to believe this team of writers, with their unserious attempts at "comic relief" about incestuous abuse, complete disregard for louis and claudia as victims and voyeuristic, gratuitous framing of racialized black suffering think otherwise.)
claudia (back when there were some black writers with input on her writing and back when she could express herself in her own voice- not the way they depicted her in s3 as a mouthpiece for ooc antiblackness filtered exclusively though her white father's pov and written by nonblack writers) was 100% right and remains validated 80 years after her murder. the unintentional message of s3 is that louis and lestat haven't changed and lestat will always be a mercurial abuser who swings between hurting louis and performative self-serving apologies that lead to no real change, and louis will always take him back despite his cruelty. except even in s1-s2 when lestat was fully a narrative antagonist i believed he loved louis, that we were seeing the nuanced portrait of how love and abuse can exist within the same relationships and love doesn't "cancel out" abuse, but now lestat's love feels like an informed attribute that they have to bring a hallucination of paul onscreen to tell us about since it sure as hell isn't demonstrated in lestat's behavior for the vast majority of s3- the way lestat acts in the front half of the season, followed by complete lack of contrition for either what he did in nola/paris or what he did on tour, makes their reunion feel unearned, rushed and insincere. and beyond the antiblackness and anti-survivor rhetoric, the writers have just gotten lazy- loustat is scripted this season as if the writers thought could take for granted that the entire audience is already invested in them, that everyone already wants them back together, and they don't need to put in the work to get viewers onboard with their relationship and get people invested again. and to be fair, this isn't a problem unique to loustat this season- all romantic relationships in tvl get the "tell, not show" treatment and all their important development beats take place offscreen, which makes me think the s1-s2 writers they fired were pulling the weight of most of the romance writing (just like the black writers they fired were clearly pulling the weight of louis and claudia being framed with any compassion whatsoever).
the only thing remotely compelling thing left about loustat's romance is sam and jacob's chemistry, and it's telling that all moments of genuine intimacy and desire between them this season were unscripted and added by the actors (the comforting hug on the sidewalk, louis savoring lestat's blood in the beer etc). the problem isn't that loustat is a bad or "toxic" romance, the problem is that loustat is a badly-written and unearned romance. and as of the end of tvl the actors are its only saving grace.
also we should absolutely question the show's choice to remove gabrielle, magnus and marius' overt antiblackness from the tvl book when the writers got armand out here acting like he's auditioning for kkk grand wizard. clearly the show isn't shying away from depicting antiblack violence considering the treatment of black characters in the past two episodes, so the refusal to depict gabriella, marius and magnus as the white supremacists they were in the source material, is a blatant tell- the writers are protective of their white characters, even the antagonists, and don't want them to seem "too" evil (which tracks for white and nonblack liberals acting like being called racist is worse than being racist.) and this clearly isn't a concern they have when it comes to the characters of color- armand has for 2 seasons now enacted forms of explicit violence inflicted on enslaved black people- louis and claudia's cut ankle tendons, the entire public humiliation of the trial, claudia's burning, louis' head on a spike, coercing him into a performance of self-debasement and contrition and branding his body- and claudia calls her black father a slave in a bioessentialist, derogatory context and expresses a level of internalized antiblackness she was never even hinted at feeling when she was alive. in both scenes, the narrative is much harsher on louis than on lestat and the nonblack writers go into extreme detail in their antiblack dialogue and racialized, borderline pornographic depiction of louis' torture. but gabriella is portrayed shallowly complimenting louis' beauty when realistically she would be calling him slurs when talking about him to lestat, magnus' "master race" aspirations and fixation on white supremacist beauty standards for how he chose his victim pool and "heir" aren't addressed, and marius' racial politics ("rotten boy", the whitewashed portrait of armand- we know he's racist, the show just hasn't acknowledged it and intentionally excluded the parts of tvl where he expresses that racism when talking to lestat) remain an elephant in the room. and ofc the way the writers are tryna be like "see lestat isn't racist, black people love him" in-universe through characters like merrick and paul (lol. lmao even) and tryna overwrite or dance around every textual example of lestat's antiblackness is so transparent in its clumsiness.
The writers really had Armand displace his sublimated rage at Marius onto Louis without the narrative teeth or conviction to back it up. AND made it as antiBlack as possible to top it off. Like ok we get it. you hate rape victims you hate survivors of child sexual abuse you hate Armand you hate Louis you hate Blackness you think slavery is a joke like we get it. We get it. Marius existing in this season only in relation to Lestat is actually hilarious. The only person Armand should be decapitating and branding and torturing is Marius but that would have been too “trite” and empathetic of survivors for these dumb fuck writers, wouldn’t it. Check out our deep and totally interesting and proportionate punishment of a Black character essentially entirely innocent of wrongdoing towards Armand instead. And then Louis has to soothe Armand’s abused soul in perhaps the weakest and most superficial examination of sexual abuse I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry you were raped when you were 12! Cry about it now, that’ll meaningfully address it for the first time in your 516 years! You think the reason Armand is like this is because no one ever told them they were sorry for him before? You think all he needs to heal is for someone to “love him right”? We even already had this exchange essentially in s2 (“am I my history I have endured?” + Louis deciding to try to love Armand even though he knew he didn’t genuinely feel for him like that because he did feel real sympathy and pity and compassion for him), but it WASNT ENOUGH. Explicitly. Textually, on the screen, as they presented the story in season 2. The writers are the ones who clearly didn’t want to see or acknowledge Armand at 12, abused and trafficked, not Louis, and they put their weak and disingenuous “apology” for their anti-survivor rape apologia rhetoric that drove this entire season into Louis’s mouth when he has perpetuated NONE of that. Scapegoating Louis for their own failure to approach trauma and abuse with empathy, compassion, and sensitivity. Making Louis the narrative fall guy of the story THEY weren’t willing to tell. Making Blackness in their narrative suffer and grovel for their (white) sins. Weaponizing Armand’s victimization to bludgeon and brutalize Louis. It’s grotesque. I dearly hope the Black writers of previous seasons know they outwrote s3’s writers by every possible metric imaginable and that this is self-evident to anyone with a shred of empathy.
amandla
areudirty
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
2087
prguitarman
