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And he asks Lestat repeatedly 'why did you ask for me?', wondering if it's because Lestat wants Daniel's reputation and expertise in rehabilitating his image. But no. It's a lot simpler than that. Lestat wants to take the last thing Daniel has from him: his pride in his work.

So Lestat sets him up. He plays hard to get, not answering Daniel's questions, getting cranky, giving bits and pieces. And then he finally springs his trap and gives Daniel what he's been working towards – he breaks down and reveals something of himself – but it's all a fake out. Daniel has been taken in by an illusion inside his own head put there by a more powerful vampire who knew just how to push his buttons.

#exaaaaaaactly#I've seen a lot of people wondering why Daniel struggled so much to interview Lestat effectively this season and like—#speaking from a similar profession: you'd be amazed how much the subject's willingness to engage can affect the process#Louis WANTED to talk about his past. Louis WANTED to unpack his memories. Louis WANTED a sounding-board.#likewise with Daniel's past interview subjects. even the evil ones did agree to talk to him—if only for the chance to spin their lies.#Lestat? Wanted a punching bag.#he didn't want to talk about the past or unpack his motives for the whole rock band lark. he wanted someone to bitch at.#(someone other than Louis. he can't bitch at Louis AND give him the silent treatment.)#so Daniel goes in with no real angle to interview someone who doesn't want to talk to him.#not about the past; not about the book; not even about his music.#which is ostensibly the point of the doc. and when we join them they've already been at it for the better part of what? two months?#hence why Daniel starts harping on the stutter thing. Stutters often begin with a childhood trauma.#Daniel knows if he's going to get at how Lestat became Lestat then a core trauma is a good place to start.#and it was. all that reflecting on the stutter led to him accepting that Gabriella was kind of always a monster in the finale.#(and no he didn't already have that epiphany in ep 6—he got close but a revelation like that? often comes in increments.)#(so it makes perfect sense for his anger to only kick in when he feels it on his childhood friend's behalf rather than his own.)

(nine inch nails hurt)

note: i started drawing this before s3 so obviously no s3 events are included (and honestly idgaf)

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.

"You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore," 54" by 54" quilt by Robyn Gragg of Lee's Summit, MO

The artist's description of the piece:

In the language of flowers, many species relate to grief, sorrow, and remembrance. My husband enjoyed surprising me with fresh flowers, but he has gone to Glory and I am lost in my grief.

When you have an abusive parent and a parent who is mostly kind but also passive, it can be easy for outsiders to assume that you're going to love and gravitate towards the passive parent because they're safer. And in a lot of cases, that does happen! But in other cases, it goes like: Parent A hurts me, but they also engage with me. Parent B doesn't hurt me, but they also don't intervene on my behalf. Parent A causes me pain directly, but the fact that they're cruel to me means that I provoke some kind of reaction in them. Parent B doesn't cause me pain, but only because they don't care enough to try. In the scenes after Lestat's return in season one, we see Claudia trying to provoke him over and over, and that's a normal abused child response, too. "I'm going to push until I get a reaction, and that both confirms my belief that this person is not safe and also gives me a feeling of control over the situation." She wants, as she said to Madeleine, to go bang. She wants the relief of the explosion rather than the quiet, stifled suffering.

So it makes absolute sense to me that Claudia says Lestat was her favourite. He hurt her terribly, but he was also proactive in that hurt, and that can feel like love. She identifies with her abuser because she wants to be what he was, wants his strength and his power. She despises Lestat for hurting her, but she also despises Louis for being weak - because if he hadn't been, she would have been okay. If he'd intervened on her behalf, things would have been different. It's a child's mindset, but in this at least, she is still a child. She wasn't able to grow out of this because vampires - like abuse victims - get stuck in their trauma and just stay there, spinning their wheels forever. And that's what happened to her.

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

In Beckett's play you have Krapp, now an old man, who records a taped diary and every year on his birthday, he listens to an old recording. The audience hears the recording of the actor playing Krapp's younger self and sees the actor as his older self in the now reacting to his own words from the past. It's about memory, about memorializing, about regret and art and sex and aging. It's a very stark one-man show, unlike TVL, but the narrative devices and the themes all resonate.