brown eyes so dark they look black are the best actually and I don't give a fuck about sunlight hitting them to make them lighter either I want to be consumed by the inky abyss
a hater hates out of love! i love a movie's concept so i hate its shitty and unimaginative execution. i love a show so i hate its sudden downturn in quality after a change behind the scenes. i love a book so i can see where it has the potential to be better and i hate that it didn't reach it. and at the end of the day i hate what this fandom has become for the same reason: that i love fandom, and i love the source material, both the show and parts of those godawful books, and i find all of these dynamics interesting, compelling, and full of possibility, and i know that fandom has the potential to do fantastic things with that source. so i hate that the fan production is overwhelmingly dull, boring, out of character, infinitely annoying mass-produced slop that could pass for mcu bullshit if you just slapped a different pair of names on it, or virulently racist, misogynistic and rife with abuse apologia, or both.
the most important question in the average life is how to avoid full-time employment. the most effective life extension technology we have is avoiding full-time employment. any time you spend employed is time that you are dead
in response to anonymous re JA as the supporting character going forwards (apologies, sis, but this is gonna run long):
had to do some sleuthing to double-check where those blogs got the quotes from Rolin Jones and yes, from what Jones is saying, Jacob Anderson will be a supporting character going forward. while this isn't surprising, what is disconcerting is the contradictory statements Jones makes about POV, unreliable narrators, memory, and objectivity that further frames seasons 3 as the true start of the show because now it will follow Lestat, and Lestat's POV is the only ordained perspective through which we can view and interact in the world of TVC.
i wish I could find the post that brilliantly discussed why some fans are dismayed by the end of S2 being a naked pivot for S3 and the Lestat show, but those of us who have been watching television, no matter if its an adapted work or original scripts, know that it is exceedingly rare for a show, not marketed as a "black" show, featuring a black lead, to continue to center that black lead (see Sleepy Hollow, New Amsterdam, shit, might even make an argument for Evil). IWTV had the distinction of pulling off a really excellent adaptation by revising Louis from the original book in such a way that bloomed the storytelling potential beyond expectation. but now, with the growing series of interviews by Jones, it seems that that distinction made through revisionist storytelling will turn out to be empty signifying, merely a (very good) sleight of hand at revisionist storytelling. like Anne Rice, who very much liked the idea of transgression to sell culturally determined ideas of the culture back to the culture without ever truly being subversive (except for her feelings about pederasty), Jones continues the tradition of being transgressive within the parameters set by US-centric popular culture, which is dominated by the white imaginary.
we see this white imaginary most clearly in the social response to it: fandom. and this might be why the inclusive interaction that we saw during season 1's broadcast thinned to nearly exclusively white-women led accounts who focused on queerness and Devil's Minion and Lestat shaking his ass and eating paper--AMC and Jones had to focus on their target audience. i accept it, just as i swallowed being gaslit into watching TVD for so long on the off-chance they'd give Bonnie Bennett her due, just as i accept Disney used the image of John Bodega wielding that Skywalker lightsaber to drum up excitement and consternation for The Force Awakens. what bothers me, however, is the carelessness with which Jones speaks, and, knowing that the lines between industry and audience have been blurred to the point of being porous, that his carelessness gives credence to some of the more noxious elements of antiblackness and gender essentialism in IWTV fandom.
every single time Jones comments on objectivity, he also comments on subjectivity, and in this context, the subject position is the suspect position. to go further and say that point of view and memory will no longer be a concern or of interest in season 3 clarifies that Lestat's voice will be the only true rational voice; the camera over his shoulder will now be showing you, the audience, the true story. "setting his story straight" means returning to the race blind (i say this because there exists in TVC the colonial having "a bit of the other" and it is weirdly disengaged from race and yet entangled with darker skin tones being enticing and edible) world of Lestat, the world of Jones wanted to adapt in the first place. but don't worry, this "straightening" will not touch the gay, no, now that the black vampire and brown vampire are estranged and with their respective white partners, gay sensuality will return in full effect!
the question of Louis' unreliability is my personal war. i have been on this hill; my plot has been staked out. Louis is no more unreliable than any monsterfucker in this show. His unreliability wasn't in question when Brad Pitt portrayed him or when he was introduced in 1976. the whole fucking tagline for this show, "memory is a monster," is now positioned as only that for Louis; the monster in this show is Louis. we who have been irritated to downright disgusted by the treatment of Louis by the fandom at large, that for all the "they're all monsters," content warning, Louis still somehow figures as the most monstrous of them all (see the withholding claims, the pimp claims, the either he's the Daddy Dreadful or Mommie Dearest or both at the same time claims, etc.), can now see that they aren't just making this shit up--they've been anticipating and explicitly decoding Jones:
[...] The Vampire Lestat â the book the showrunner reveals âoriginally attracted me to the whole thingâ [...] (Hollywood Reporter, 6.30.24)
The new season will be centered on Lestat, who is resentful of his portrayal in Molloy's book and, determined to set his story straight, becomes a rock star.
"Sam worked really hard for two years as a supporting actor, and I think Jacob is very excited to do the same thing for him, and put Sam front and center," Jones tells EW. "We've just scratched the surface with Sam, who's an incredible actor."
The showrunner knows it was "maddening" for Reid to constantly play other characters' perceptions of Lestat rather than the actual character, but that's finally come to an end. "We gave him one scene that is objective, the scene in New Orleans," Jones says. "In that moment, that's nobody's point of view. The camera's over there watching both of them, so there you go, fans. One scene so far of the real Lestat." (EW, 6.30.24)
âThe big difference moving forward is Lestat will be front and center telling the story, so it should feel like this show has been taken hostage by Lestat,â Jones says. âAesthetically, it is going to feel different. It is not going to feel like two old guys in a room trying to figure out what brought them together. It is going to be over the shoulder of Lestat de Lioncourt, of whom you have probably seen about an 80%-accurate version of who he is â on fire and reckless. So it should be fun and dangerous.â (Variety, 6.30.24)
"Everybodyâs free to judge the rest of it. If all goes right, weâll have six or seven more seasons to work on you coming around to that, or the redemption of that. [In season one,] the audience wants to kill Lestat along with Louis and Claudia. But we had to sit on it for a year and a half. So itâs okay for people to think that we made a supervillain out of Lestat and then to come around to a fuller portrait. In season three, [Lestat is] front and center, and Jacob takes a supporting role. And itâs not all about point of view. We got 80 to 85-percent of Lestat pretty solid. Retribution is easy, right? Itâs being contrite. [Thereâs] the idea that forgiveness should be part of this cycle, too. Thatâs something I think weâre trying to sell."
"So, what am I interested in? Iâll be less interested in point of view and memory as much. The challenge of the books is that thereâs not a lot of forward story. I donât think that you can probably mine the arcs of those for origin story after origin story after origin story. But that doesnât mean you canât take the same material and in very inventive, exciting ways move it forward." (AV Club, 7.1.24)
"The gift of TV is you have this extra time. There are a couple of challenges, though, especially when we split the book into two seasons. Youâre gonna have two problems: Thereâs no plot in the second half of this book, and two of your major characters â Daniel and Lestat â disappear for 200 pages.
Thatâs frustrating to begin with, but itâs an opportunity. Thereâs not a lot of plot, so we structured it around dialogue: How can we creatively get to this point where Armand says this? Itâs just a different way of writing. In other adaptations, you have a lot of action, so you have to figure out, What do they say in between? Itâs just putting on a different thinking cap, but youâre still jackhammering the book to come up with these things. We just got lucky that we get more time to sit with characters." (Vulture, 7.2.24)
what boggles my mind is not being interested in point of view but then saying season 3 is based on TVL, which is written in first-person, and will have Lestat in control of the story. is POV different in screenwriting, playwriting, narratology than in, like, fiction? does it differ from the POV of literary or rhetorical analysis? asking for a friend. also, Daniel and Lestat disappear from IWTV so what does one do? Dreamstat (*comments on Daniel incoming). why do they disappear? because it is not all about that blonde man but the effects of the blonde man on this sad, Catholic plantation owner and what erotic latencies are stirred up in him (aka dickmatizism, by Armand). they could have spent much more time on the eroticism and passion Louis felt comfortable having, let alone expressing, for Armand than absolutely needing to shove Lestat in there.
anyway, to the denouement: Louis. in various interviews Jacob Anderson sounds like he's giving his farewell toast, saying he's glad that this story, for Louis, has resolved in some way. he also talked about this:
âThat period with Paris specifically was seen as a safe space for Black artists,â he says. âLouis talks about being welcomed there and not being a victim of America's particular brand of racism. Especially if you have a gift, if you're exceptional in some way, you have a space here, and that's not lost on Louis.â Anderson says the team had discussions about this ultra-specific slice of representation, and he even lobbied to take it further than whatâs seen on screen and make the subtext even more overt. âI wanted Josephine Baker in the show,â he says. âThere was a point early on when we were talking about what Season 2 would be like, Louis was going to make friends with [famed photographer] Gordon Parks and be kind of like his human companion. There wasnât time, but there's some inspiration from him and James Baldwinâs experiences in Paris.â (BET, 5.13.24)
things like this sours me, because Sartre can pop up, but not Parks? instead of having Louis talk about it, we could have seen it. bet we will see it for Lestat, though. they will stock this man's world with identifications because it will be easy for them, it is the representation they are most comfortable reproducing. there is always time for them. but. but! let's remain positive. let's not be killjoys. remember when Jacob said in the post-s2 finale interview that Daniel's like an annoying little brother now?
"But as for the final mic drop of the season, when Daniel reveals he's been turned into a vampire by Armand, Jones teases there's a lot more to come from that storyline. "One's a maker and one's a fledgling," he says. "We would be very, very poor dramatists if they were never in scenes together again. We just needed to set the stage for a lot of new writing for Louis, and I think that sets him off. There's new writing to be done for that character." (EW, 6.30.24).
so not only will Louis be a supporting character, he'll be a supporting character (a roof shingle) in the stormy romance that is Daniel and Armand. maybe he'll get a second chance at brother's keeper. canna wait.
*i do not care about Daniel. i care that Eric Bogosian cares about being on the show and working with Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman and using this opportunity as a bit of auto fiction/meta fantasy/last hurrah/old men fuck thing.
is that piece of media actually bad, or is it just not following the blueprint you projected onto it? is that work actually not good, or are you just demanding something from it that is absolutely antithetical to its themes, genre, tone, and narrative goal? is that story actually poorly written, or do you just dislike that it is not the specific things you wanted from it that it never set out to be, never was, and never is going to become? is it actually bad, or is it actually well-executed and you just dislike the story it chose to be because it isn't catering to your specific desires and expectations?
Maybe Iâm just in denial but I did not read from the apartment and the tower scenes in 2.08 that Louis only stayed w Armand out of spite for lestat. It was definitely a factor, no question. But there were several factors, including fear of loneliness, fear of letting all his suffering be for nothing, and yes even love for Armand (however reticent and tainted and irreparably damaged).
If there's one crystal clear pattern thay can be observed from all the times a male public figure was accused of abusive behavior is that the accuser never becomes rich&famous from the accusations and the accused almost never has his life ruined in any permanent or irreversible way, and yet these are the two goals every accuser is maliciously assumed to be aiming for despite the glaring examples that it doesn't work
people act as if falsely accusing a powerful public figure of something was a decision that one would make lightly, the type of thing that you can just shrug it off if it doesn't work and say well it was worth the try, instead of something that can ruin the accuser's life instead, from having people harass you on the internet to having your legal name and face forever attached to malicious material calling you a liar, to having your ass sued into oblivion by someone who can afford better attorneys than you without hurting their pockets. why would any minimally smart person with a basic sense of self preservation would try something so stupid? why are people willing to believe it's more likely we live in a world full of reckless people willing to put their reputations on the line for a minimal chance to ruin someone's life "for no reason" than it is that powerful men abuse people because they know they'll get away with it?
my personal argument for open borders is really simple it just boils down to "i believe restricting human movement and barring certain people from certain places on this earth is a human rights violation"
i mean this. everyone should be able to walk freely between mexico and the united states, fuck an ID, fuck a passport, fuck a visa. it's land, continuous, uninterrupted land. the soil on one side of the fense has the same geologic makeup of the soil on the other. we drew this invisible line in the sand, we can wipe it away with our feet together. it is well past time the world organizes en masse for our freedom of movement.
certain people need to realize some of the nihilism towards the S3 announcement is because TV and Movies are notorious for sidelining black and brown characters OFTEN. In fact, IWTV is such an anomaly, because in 2024, how many shows exist where a queer black man is the main character with a fully fleshed out arc? Not a sidekick, not a random love interest. But a Main Character? And how many, if there are any, are prestige shows like IWTV?
It's not that a Lestat focused season is the worst thing in the world, but we've seen over and over again that non-white characters have a short shelf life when tv execs and certain loud fans have their way. Even in the most Louis-focused season 2, some people still kept whining about Lestat's absence in places where he was canonically absent in the books! We all know they brought dreamstat because execs were worried that certain fans would lose interest if he wasn't present for at least a few episodes. But Rolins and the writing team were skilled enough to make it work.
As someone who's been in the trenches since I was a teenager consuming media, I've seen enough black characters get sidelined to last a lifetime. I'm very happy Jacob seems to be billed second in S3 but you can see how people's fears aren't unfounded.
The Boys season 4 is here, and while many people know Tomer Capone is a piece of shit IDF squad leader who posts Israeli propaganda on his public accounts to this day, everyone still seems ignorant to the fact that other cast members, and even the showrunner, publicly support Israel.
These are just a few of Eric Kripke's Tweets and likes on Twitter. There are a lot more, and he tries to play the "middle of the road" approach in a few places, but he is still a Zionist. He still supports Israel's right to exist, he still spread around the beheaded babies myth, and he still claims that attacks on Israel are fueled by antisemitism.
I know that disorganized boycotts without a stated goal aren't necessarily helpful, but leave this show behind. It is incredibly political, and it is designed to influence the way you understand U.S. politics and real-world issues. These fuckers don't deserve your patience, and they definitely don't deserve your money.
âViolent revolution never worksâ âViolence is never the answerâ Yet itâs somehow always okay for the oppressor to enact violence? The oppressor is somehow always able to get away with causing destruction, death, grief, and pain? Itâs acceptable for the oppressor to commit violence, but never when the oppressed fight back?
Hereâs an idea: maybe if oppressors, colonizers, and the like stopped subjecting others to unspeakable levels of violence, no one would have any reason to retaliate.
Yâall would rather mourn the deaths of hypothetical people lost to the revolution rather than the people currently dying under imperialism and genocide. As if revolution is something that spawns out of nowhere, rather than it being the result of an already crumbling system. Revolution doesnât happen with societies and systems that are functioning, that are helping people, and I think thatâs whatâs confusing yâall the most.
Youâre not being personally affected by the system as of right now, so why on earth would we change it?
"To turn away from revolution on the pretext of avoiding sacrifice is in fact tantamount to forcing the people to accept lifelong slavery to capital and to tolerate cruel exploitation and oppression, unbearable maltreatment and humiliation, enormous suffering and victimization for ever. It can be said that the acute pain experienced at a revolutionary turning point is always much easier to endure than the chronic pain caused by the cancer of the old society."
- THE GREAT ANTI-IMPERIALIST REVOLUTIONARY CAUSE OF THE ASIAN, AFRICAN AND LATIN-AMERICAN PEOPLES IS INVINCIBLE, The Treatise Published on the Occasion of the First Anniversary of the Death of Che Guevara in Battle, in the Eighth Issue of Tricontinental, Theoretical Organ of the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, October 8, 1968
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