ash (he/him)

and ofc people will say to justify the ghost claudia scene "survivors lying about specific things doesn't mean they aren't survivors/what they said about their abuse in general isn't true" or "why won't you let claudia be a monster same as the male characters are" and these are bad faith rationalizations bc the people who claim they love the idea of claudia lying about lestat threatening her are the same people who would be up in arms about the merest suggestion that lestat lied about anything his mortal family in auvergne or gabriella did to him. and wrt the point about survivors lying not invalidating the truth of their experience, yes, this is something that's true about survivors in real life, but that is real life and tvl is a fictional story written by nonblack people- you have to be honest and ask yourself if the writers were remotely interested in claudia's interiority or experiences as a survivor when they wrote her in s3ep6 or if they were only trying to backpedal about one of the worst things lestat has ever done in an effort to make him more palatable and use a black character- a black woman who was lynched, which makes the use of antiblack dialogue for claudia even more ghoulish- as a mouthpiece to spew antiblack vitriol at the sole surviving black lead on the show.

"claudia lied about what lestat said in the train scene bc she was desperate to leave and get louis to leave with her and she needed something to move louis into action" could've been pulled off as a survivor-centric plot choice if it had been foreshadowed properly and if it had been introduced during s1-s2, when claudia was still an active protagonist in the story, her pov was represented in her own voice and there were still black writers on staff. it could've folded into the thematic arc of louis' story wrt pursuing truth and been handled in the context where the focus was claudia's pain, claudia's entrapment and resolve to escape no matter what, and landed on a note that centered the fundamental truth of claudia's experiences as an abuse victim and how she outwitted lestat and freed both herself and louis from him. how this concept is addressed in s3ep6 is not that- to start with, the entire seance and the entire season are within lestat's pov. the idea that we're "finally hearing the real claudia" is false bc everything from what she says to her mannerisms to how she looks as a ghost are filtered through her abusive white father's pov.

how the train scene is mentioned in the seance isn't presented in the context of claudia convincing louis to escape lestat and outmaneuvering lestat- it's in the context of humiliating louis for being gullible and easy to manipulate for *checks notes* believing his daughter when she told him her other father threatened to do worse than rape her. louis is constantly villainized by viewers for the bad ways he reacts to armand and lestat's history of sa and for how claudia had to push louis to leave once lestat's abuse escalated in s1ep5-s1ep7- but when louis reacts to claudia as a good, responsible parent should and believes her when she tells him lestat threatened her, that too is presented as a sign of louis' weakness, stupidity and passivity. (and people are being willfully obtuse about this bc everyone largely agrees "except he just threatened me with it" "nah doesn't sound like him" in s2ep4 was one of louis' worst moments ever.) this decision can't be separated from the nonblack writers also choosing to have claudia volley explicitly antiblack, bioessentialist vitriol at louis and framing her as possessing an internalized antiblackness she never expressed in her own diaries ("bleak, black life" where her white companion was the only good thing about it.) when claudia compared herself and louis to lestat's slaves in s1 (back when the show had black writers) her words about herself and louis being lestat's slaves from the book was adapted as a incisive comment about lestat's oppressive control and white supremacy- lestat and his behavior were the focus of her mockery. but when ghost claudia calls louis a slave bc he has a mark on his ribs in s3, it plays into the white supremacist idea that was reinforced through decades of enslavement in the states where enslavers and their enablers argued black people had inherent, biologically ingrained passive traits and needed the white race's superior guidance to control and protect them.

and regardless of what in-universe reasoning people buy into to explain ghost claudia saying that, the problem is the all-nonblack writers choosing to write that rhetoric for a black woman who was murdered in a lynching (that the show refuses to call a lynching) and the white showrunner gleefully calling arguably the most antiblack scene of the show the best scene they ever wrote for their dead black fem lead (yes s3ep6 is worse than all of s2ep7 or s1ep3 or anything else the white supremacists in nola or the kkkoven did, bc in those scenes the focus was on the evil of the white supremacists while in s3ep6 the antiblackness is metatextual, reflective of the writers' biases and uncritically framed)

claudia could've called louis out for putting hands on her same as lestat had done- she could've pulled on the stories in merrick's mind from her family to call louis out for profiting off the backs of working class black women and then tryna make claudia, one black girl then woman among many, the symbol of his redemption at the expense of her pain. hell they even could've explained claudia's rage mainly being targeted at louis and not as much at lestat by having the seance be louis' idea, giving louis a several-episode arc of interacting with merrick then convincing her to call on claudia's spirit so claudia would be angry at him for wanting to yank her into the world of the living again to assuage his own guilt, instead of nonblack writers thinking the primary way to wound and call out a black lynching survivor is by having a black woman who didn't survive that lynching use antiblack language. it didn't feel incisive or truly cutting or had anything to do with louis' canon flaws unless you already thought the worst of him (as many viewers do) and fanon'ed him as the kind of eternally passive, navel-gazing patsy he was in the source material. louis in the show is not that character, and it exposes the thoughtlessness and antiblackness of the all-nonblack writers that they adapted the merrick scene without considering how louis and claudia's show characters and dynamic would modify the scene. the only change they seem to have made based on louis and claudia's blackness is by throwing in antiblack dialogue. it's such a tarantino (derogatory) move where the white showrunner knows he can't say certain things about black characters as himself irl, so he uses a black character as a mouthpiece in a fictional script to express that racist impulse.

and that brings us to the critique of tvl's bigotry and where the cognitive dissonance kicks in- these are liberal(tm) and progressive(tm) viewers- they're good(tm) people. and they know a good and liberal and progressive person should notice and care about racism. they've probably retweeted or reblogged some posts about how representation matters or how good jacob anderson is as louis and they might even have blacklivesmatter in their account bio. but the reality is they don't actually recognize, or if they do they don't care about, the racism in tvl- and they love tvl and still identify with it deeply, to the point that any criticism about it stings and makes them feel like they're the ones being criticized, they're the ones being judged for enjoying it. and it's one thing when the parts of the show being criticized are about awkward scripting or bad pacing, but it's another when the critique feels destabilizing to their sense of self as a liberal(tm) progressive(tm) good(tm) person- and it's a lot more comforting in the moment to lash out at the person voicing the criticism about tvl's racism or queerphobia or misogyny or anti-survivor bias and say no, the show isn't bigoted (and therefore i'm not bigoted for uncritically enjoying it), you're the problem and what you're saying is completely untrue and meaningless bc you just hate lestat/you're a bitter armand fan/you're a bitter louis fan/this is all unserious ship and stan wars and there's no depth or legitimacy to what you're saying. even if the critique at no point suggests "you're a bad person for liking this show" or "i'm judging you for liking this show" (bc liking fucked up or flawed or "problematic" media doesn't make you an inherently bad or bigoted person, it's perfectly possible to go "yeah these parts had problems, but this work still resonated with me for xyz reasons") they feel judged, they feel like they're being called a bad person, and only by finding a way to dismiss the critique wholesale can they soothe the moral anxiety they feel.

ian danskin talks about this phenomenon in his series on gamergate (if you don't know about gamergate i really rec reading up on it bc so many reactionary currents online and in fandom can be traced back to it, it's foundational, and this video series is a good intro point to explain it). here's a relevant excerpt about the hate campaigns against anita sarkeesian for announcing her series talking about misogyny in video games-

"it’s all about perception, about what jack (context- "angry jack" is the stand-in figure ian uses for mostly-white-cishet men who participated in the reactionary hate and harassment campaigns of the gamergate movement) wants the world to *feel* like. it’s a world where bigotry of all stripes exists as purely rhetorical abstractions- they’re all just ideas to him, and he can choose the ideas that make him most comfortable. all jack needs is a reason for anita sarkeesian to be wrong- or better yet, lying. the reason doesn’t have to be good, it’s purely utilitarian. it only needs to serve its purpose, to insist the doctor’s a quack and justify getting a second opinion. this is why sarkeesian’s critics can’t politely disagree with her- they have to treat her with *contempt*. the whole point is to spare themselves from actually considering her arguments, so her arguments have to be *beneath* consideration…most of sarkeesian’s detractors are not trying to destroy her, although they do want her gone. jack is not a psychopath- since his only understanding of a sexist is shunning, shaming or incarcerating, he reads any critique of his gender politics as an appeal to shun, shame or incarcerate *him*. he’s a guy who’s terrified of who he is if the world sarkeesian describes is real, of how he’d be treated there, of what it would ask of him, of what his conscience would tell him to do."