textually engaging with the fact that armand is a lyncher and the violence he does to louis is often directly pulled from the violence done to black people under enslavement and segregation would mean the nonblack writers would have to textually engage with blackness as a central theme and question their own impulses like why the show disproportionately and voyeuristically depicts the brutalization of black bodies- textually engaging with the fact that gabriella has been raping her own son for over 200 years would mean the misogynistic writers would have to engage with the subject of sexual abuse and assault beyond "louis the pimp" and question their own impulses like why so many of gabriella's scenes with lestat are played for taboo titillation or "comic relief". it's a lot easier to sidestep all of that and go "oh these relationships were fucked up and doomed bc there's no real love there".

https://www.instagram.com/staydancingdave/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/azellwill/

https://www.instagram.com/benphilippe/?hl=en

That moment when you sleep with both your partners and don't know who landed the shot.

Malachi is hard to draw...my design for him may change who knows.

We all agreee Malachi has horrific abandonment issues right?? right???

Your perspectives matter. Your representation matters. You are not bothersome for demanding equal treatment in fandom. It is not your responsibility to make fandom more welcoming and inclusive to you. It is not your sole responsibility to create all of the Black-centered content. You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.

Black people in fandom, you are wanted. You are needed. You are loved and appreciated. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

The very Anne Rice in spirit, sensual, melancholic, and florid dialogue was dropped in favor of Stan Twitter short hand written for Gen X, shoved into Lestat's mouth. Lestat's love and reverence for art and counter culture born of it is exchanged for a band that is awful, that doesn't like Lestat and who Lestat doesn't like, and the show wastes our time with one dimensional band drama surely designed for to follow while still on your phone. The music is background noise instead of storytelling. Being queer is being hypersexual, covered in glitter, and a sign of unhappiness.

And the show relies on deliberately inflammatory and/or lazy writing, having POC in its cast that it doesn't protect, and the combination of those things translating into online bickering that doesn't have the time to actually analyze the show. And when it does, there's a large contigent of "but it can't be [x], the show has [y] people on it," or "let people enjoy things" or parrots parroting talking points spoon fed to us BY Rolin Jones and AMC in "press" that is entirely controlled, pre-approved, in house, OR paid for at outside publications desperate for the right kind of clickbait and exclusives handed to them by AMC.

Interview with the Vampire was born in the haze of COVID (when we were still acknowledging it - it's still here), when there was still some dignity and expression left in art. It was AMC saying, we have the rights, let's use them. It wasn't competing with anything, it wasn't supposed to be for people on their phones or people brainrotted by AI content and an even more inflammatory online anti-social social landscape.

And that era is dead.

But it wasn't inevitable. AMC chose this. AMC saw the love we had for this show, the grassroots fan base and fan arts that grew from it, and it decided to spit on it. It decided fandom couldn't be trusted to govern itself and is trying desperately to replace us with its sanctioned After Dark illusion of conversation and courting the kinds of people gross enough to be addicted to AI first social media. Rolin Jones is the showrunning equivalent of a streamer dropping slurs so he can get more comments and then pretend to be unfairly maligned by those comments.

I guess I just want you to know that this IS a betrayal and you get to feel hurt. I want you to know that real writers and critics still exist and we're fans, too. We're just silenced right now. I want you to know that the work those actors did and the love you had for it mattered. It was beyond good enough. But unfortunately we live in hell, and no one had the integrity to stand by us, or by Anne Rice's work.

Maybe this sounds overdramatic or maudlin, but my whole life has been about this. Storytelling. And so much of that love for gothic storytelling, most of it tbh, was born in Anne Rice's books, was fostered and nurtured and sometimes challenged by Lestat, Louis, Armand, and Claudia. It matters as long as we say it matters. So please write your fix it fics (fwiw, Anne came around a lot via FB posts in the end, & I think she'd be delighted with the love we have for her babies), air your grievances, name your hurt, and share the ache of this loss in the fandom space YOU made. YOU made this.