ash (he/him)

Like, everyone "likes" her! But in that very "girl boss girl power" white feminism way where they erase everything about the source of the power out, in order to subsume it. And it's weird because to me, it showed that, just like how they did with Louis, they did not engage with how Claudia's Blackness was another important part of her story. Despite it being quite spoonfed in season 2, tbh.

Think about it. Claudia is 1) Black, 2) female, 3) queer, and 4) trapped in a child's body, forever. This is like, the torment nexus of Lacking Power and Autonomy In Society 😭 Going unheard, that resentment against the world for not taking her and her needs and her desires seriously, from inside the home and on. Of having to build a wall of strength and resilience to protect herself, of always Taking Care of Business because her goof ass brother certainly isn't gonna do it! Of having to grasp power her own way, because it will never be considered for her. Yet, somehow still a threat.

To me, AMCs Claudia is a very beautifully written example of a Black Woman that is Angry, who would be treated like an Angry Black Woman. So many of these fans HATE real world Claudia's! Because I've seen her rage and exhaustion, her fire to fight (Akasha's too), in so many of us. And yet we don't get the girl power, girl boss label- until it's time to Need us. Otherwise, you're just a Bully.

It's complicated because on the one hand I can absolutely see Lestat's version of Daniel being a kind of dialed up version of reality, making him extra rude, extra loud mouthed, and also tacking on him being loudly racist and homophobic too. But if that was the case I think they should have made that more overt in Lestat and Daniel's dynamic, even if it was just a throwaway line from Lestat implying that Daniel is probably a racist or something, just something to lay a trail of breadcrumbs to that. It's annoying because I don't want this show to have to hold my hand and explain it's intentions, but they've kind of dug their own grave with this one.

The problem I have is that the show has kind of lost any grace I might have been willing to give it by being so loud and insistent about this season being something entirely new and trying to separate it from the previous two seasons. If this was Interview With The Vampire Season 3, I might have been a lot more willing to let my trust in the writers from their racial storytelling and sensitivity carry forward into this season, but instead they've axed their Black creatives and hailed this as a separate project, something that can be watched without the first two seasons (I do not agree AT ALL that that is the case either), something that an audience who didn't enjoy the first two seasons can love. And I just have to question who exactly this new audience that they're trying to reach is, because unfortunately the more the season goes on the more it looks like they're trying to bring back a white audience who were alienated by a show which centered around a Black man and his racial identity.

We've got:

- Amicable but distant Louis and Lestat at the start, shifting into a Lestat feeling let down by Louis.

- Lestat's DARVO mindset regarding his treatment of Louis (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender).

- A recurring hallucination of Claudia that needles Lestat into begrudging self-reflection and partial accountability.

- (Doylist racism that the writers(s) are oblivious to 🫠)

Which I think is all leading to:

- Lestat realising that he has not broken the cycles of his abusive behaviour, despite his regrets, because it gets him the people he wants, and he knows that he will ultimately be forgiven enough to keep them in his life (hopefully a more Louis-focused execution in the show).

Which is all very chewy, BUT.

I was so pissed and disillusioned at times reading TOTBT that I nearly put the series down. Louis was only in a few scenes, but after each one I thought "What was the point of book one? Why does the author expect me to ignore everything bad Lestat did and coddle his hurt feelings?" (And I don't even like book-Louis! Show-Louis is such an incredible character and so different to the book version)

The TOTBT ending low-key blew my mind and retroactively changed how I felt about the entire book, but AGAIN, I nearly didn't get to the ending.

And it's worse with the show, both from a weekly-release perspective and also because the abuse that Lestat inflicted on Louis and Claudia was much more pronounced and racially charged in the show, so it continuing to go unaddressed (or seemingly forgiven) is understandably upsetting and even infuriating to many fans.

No mic-drop ending can fix trust with the show if they prolong this past a viewer's breaking point...which I've seen happen with multiple people I follow.

Combine that with the earned (!) lack of trust engendered by aforementioned Doylist racism, and we have...a messy situation.

The same people who spent years insisting that Louis should not be sanitized because it would erase his complexity, arguing that he is a monster just like the rest of them, are now asking people to see Lestat's actions through the lens of his trauma. Suddenly, Lestat's suffering becomes essential context. His anger is understandable. His cruelty is a product of abuse. His actions are examined with empathy. Meanwhile, that same grace is rarely extended to Louis. That's double standard.

Louis was never afforded the benefit of the doubt by large portions of the fandom. If he described abuse, he was lying. If he remembered events differently, he was an unreliable narrator, Armand must have manipulated him. Every flaw, every mistake, every harmful action became proof of how monstrous he was. Yet when it comes to Lestat, his worst actions are endlessly contextualized, justified, minimized, or explained away through trauma. To be clear, I have no problem with people criticizing Louis. I've criticized Louis myself especially during season one (which put me on many block lists). My issue is the lack of consistency. If we're going to hold Louis accountable, then we should keep that same energy for Lestat. For example, Louis being a pimp in 1910 has become one of the defining traits of his character in fandom discussions. It is constantly brought up as evidence of his exploitation of women. Fair enough. But Lestat was emptying coffers to buy women in that same time period. He killed Miss Lily. Yet people rarely frame him as someone who exploits women. They never call him a john. Instead, the discussion quickly shifts back to how abused and tragic he is. Similarly, some fans write essays about how others have exploited Lestat's body while refusing to acknowledge the ways he has exploited others.