(bi)tch

This is my main blog! Stephanie, 32, she/her TME nonbinary, white. TERFs DNI.

I would prefer people under 20 do not follow me.

This is where I post about film and television I enjoy or fandom in general. MDZS, IWTV, Pluribus, Severance, and House MD seem to be the main stays.

I may reblog from these sideblogs:

@colorisbyshe - this is my main, personal blog with updates on my life and thoughts, my taste in music, and will be filled with "miscellaneous" posting.

@finitefantasy - this is my anime, donghua, and video game blog. Dragon Age, Dunmeshi, Naruto (read: Sasunaru), Final Fantasy, No. 6, and... idk random shit.

Other places to find me: twitter, bluesky, and last.fm; mutuals may ask for texting, insta, PSN, letterboxed, goodreads, etc. Hell... mutuals you can ask for my address idc

I think you're right and not enough people have this in mind. The rape apologia, the romanticised pederasty, the racism, the colourism, and the Orientalism are baked in the text. IA with your tags, btw. Some of the things people hate about this season come straight from the books.

(From what I've gathered from what I have read and also just having seen conversations about TVC for years)

I recommend either reading the books yourself or just not paying attention even to those who proclaim themselves book experts. TVC, like many long-lived fandoms, is also a fandom with a lot of fanon-that-everyone-thinks-it's-canon-because-everyone-forgot-it's-actually-fanon, so be weary of "this is what happens in the books" statements even when people quote actual passages, because sometimes people will truncate passages to support whatever they're saying. Sometimes it's not even done with malicious discourse in mind. I just finished my re-read of the OG books and I'm starting with the Prince Lestat trilogy, and there are many things I'd misremembered.

(Lestat has other lovers, and he is kinda deemed B if not C Tier character in later books.)

Louis was Anne, basically. And Lestat was Anne but also her husband. Louis was her pain after she lost her daughter. Understandably, she didn't want to write him anymore for a while, and she started writing David (nonce who hunts endangered animals lmao) as a replacement love interest, but the fandom on Facebook was loud and clear about it, and we wanted Loustat back. Louis becomes relevant again in the PL trilogy. So... it's complicated. The show is only adapting the first three or four books, anyway, with bits and pieces from the others, and Louis is important in those.

(Choosing to turn him into a black man, making him the main character knowing it's going to have to be the Lestat Show after his main story is told, and then also making Claudia a black girl knowing how her story goes... it's... hard to rework)

The thing is, what is the solution here? Keep everyone white? I reject that, tbh. I'd rather have imperfect representation open to improvement than a cast full of white twinks. I wouldn't have even watched the show if it had been 99% white like the books. I was expecting race swaps and I'm glad we got them.

(Akasha is upset about misogyny but also she IS kind of just... unrepentant in her evil in her backstory.)

Akasha is a great opportunity to comment on imperialism, tbh. But I don't trust this writing room atm. I just hope they don't turn her into a girlboss. Akasha does not have a point. I'm sorry but as someone whose country was used as background for her slaughter in the book, Akasha is quite literally an imperialist, colonialist monster. Akasha targets brown and Black men. She has women raped for disobeying her. Her plan doesn't take trans or intersex people into consideration. It is very important that the twins, her victims, are the ones who defeat her.

(I'll probably still be watching but IMO a lot of casting choices will probably make or break S4 for me before it even comes out)

Oh, I'll be watching. I didn't like S2 (withholding my full thoughts on S3 until I see the finale), but the show hasn't done anything that truly pisses me off. I am enjoying the ride and I am genuinely hoping it improves. I don't want it to get cancelled or anything. I want to keep Jacob employed. And if Daniel dies in the next episode I need to watch that lmao byeee bitch

What casting choices do you mean? The twins, I assume? I would love to see Palestinian Mekare and Maharet. It would be a powerful statement to have Palestinian actresses (or just the one actress playing twins) as the twins.

Yeah, I want to be clear, I am NOT calling for any of the characters to be white or saying the show would be better if everyone were white. My point is the show made very deliberate casting choices in turning Louis into a black man, Claudia into a black teen, Akasha into a black woman, etc and THEREFORE it needs to be all the more intentional with how it handles the themes.

It would never be perfect because ultimately at the heart of the story (or at least the story so far) is a romanticized abusive interracial relationship taking place in the immediate wake of chattel slavery in the US feeding directly into another abusive relationship (Loumand) which splinters off into ANOTHER romanticized abusive relationship (devil's minion) so... it was always going to be messy with... not great messaging about abuse.

But you're right, the imperfection of say S1/S2 was worth it and better than an all white retelling.

So, if it's gonna ride the line of "imperfect, quite problematic, but worth it all the while," they need to make it actually worth it with writers who can handle the nuance and messiness which is not what we have in S3, which, in part is bizarre because a lot of the people are writers from S1/3, but again, it makes sense because the writers room is now complete devoid of black people.

I'm agreeing with your original sentiment--the show cannot continue as is and needs a meaningful pivot if it wants to salvage the worst bits to come out in this season or make sense of the, uh, bold shifts that have happened.

Like Akasha shouldn't be girlbossified but having a black woman represent a imperialist monster... needs someone with more capacity to handle tough themes than we've had in this season which has tossed delicate topics into a fucking rocket launcher and sent them off like nukes.

But, yes, I was alluding to the casting of the twins. From what I know, I like your idea of their casting, but all the same I am nervous about it. It'll really make or break the show if they're cast as like white Israelis or some shit like that. That would reach "don't even give s4 a chance" territory for me and i would like to think the casting wouldn't come to that but this season has made me wary (and weary) in a way I wasn't coming out of S2 which I did like more than you but will fully admit did have more cracks than season one which had cracks to begin with.

S1-2 is a contained story I love, flaws and all, so I'm willing to cut off S4 entirely and forget S3 to make it work, IF S4 fucks up in ways that are VERY easy to fuck up befre the season even comes out.

They are not. That's the problem. The iwtv S1 writers left the show after S1. The writing's been on the wall since S2. I feel crazy bc I've been saying the cracks started to show after the S1 writers left, but everyone apparently thinks S2 is perfect or on the same level as S1 when imo it is not. The same flaws I see in S3 existed in S2 already. With this writing team, we're not getting anything like S1 again. S4 better have new writers, please some new blood. They also need Black writers on staff asap. They only have one poc iirc and she is not Black.

Well, yes, and no.

A lot of the writers who are writing in S3 ARE writers from S1 and S2 and have credits in all three seasons. And some of the writers from this season are the writers of some of the most beloved episodes of S2.

But, you are correct, both of the black men who were writing S1 did not work on S2, S2 had just one black writer for one episode (2x04 iirc), and this season does not have any black writers. Unless I'm missing something, this show has never had any black women as writers, which, I think has shown across all three seasons as I think even in S1, the writing around black women was... not comparable to how everyone else was written. I'm saying this as someone where Claudia was (and is!) my fave character on the show and one of my top five outside the show. (Rewatching S1 and seeing it start with people laughing off the rape of Bricktop was... well it sure was something.)

Season 4 does need a RADICAL change in writers makeup, black writers and especially black women need to be hired, because the writing this season has gone beyond insensitivity.

I do see S3's writing as salvageable if recontextualized (in the books apparently ghost Claudia isn't entirely what she seems BUT ALSO I will say... and this is a LOT coming from me... Anne Rice outwrote the scene we got like she did it better like I do not fuck with AR but ??? she did it better by a MILE) but imo I think a lot of what is happening now is hard to fix because tbh... the ultimate challenge this show was given is the source material

From what I've gathered from what I have read and also just having seen conversations about TVC for years: Louis was always pretentious, unable to see things from a more objective perspective, fairly unlikeable, and was a white plantation owner who eventually kinda... disappears from the books. Not wholly but like he stops being hte main character, Lestat has other lovers, and he is kinda deemed B if not C Tier character in later books.

Choosing to turn him into a black man, making him the main character knowing it's going to have to be the Lestat Show after his main story is told, and then also making Claudia a black girl knowing how her story goes... it's... hard to rework even with the bset of writers but they didn't even try to retain the best of writers.

And the tightrope that is the source material is going to get tighter--Akasha is upset about misogyny but also she IS kind of just... unrepentant in her evil in her backstory. Which takes place in Uruk (West Asia)... which just... there's no clean way to adapt or adjust that.

Sooooooooo they really do need to clean up the writers room to do their best with this because the current standards are NOT going to salvage what they carelessly rushing through in this season.

Because I get the thesis of the books/show--that none of these people are good, are meant to be good, and about the complications of loving a truly heinous person because you yourself are so tainted no one else could have you and you don't even WANT anyone else. You are so awful you want to love someone else awful. Concepts like abuse and oppression get blurred when everyone is an extremely powerful, wealthy supernatural being.

But like... you can't change the source material to throw in actual themes, deal with racism, give the abuse/oppression an actual social context, (all of these wre GOOD adaptive choices to be clear) and then just... stop while still casting guided by the same credo of diversity... because it turns into this

You're correct: white people and non-black POC cannot handle what's happening now and ESPECIALLY not what is coming next in QotD

and Lestat's depiction of her (HE'S her favorite, he was genuinely awful to her but didn't know how to not be awful because look at the trauma/family he was working with, he carries guilt for her but can't refuses to focus on any negative feelings like that, and his guilt is in part because he saw himself in her as they were very similar)

but the season has been so sooooooo SOOOOOOO disinterested in actually... depicting memory as a changeling, as a monster, as something unreliable that it just falls flat

the same way claudia hurling racist, loaded language at louis technically makes sense, she is choosing the crudest, most hurtful language she can think of. louis (and oBVIOUSLY lestat's) abuse of her was racialized as well (it was misogynoir and i think on some level invoking the word slave COULD interestingly chafe against what she sort of became, as she was a black child plucked out of her life to effectively be owned by them, which COULD be an interesting play against book louis), so flinging back racist language at him could make sense. and, of course, the "this is filtered through lestat's retelling and as a racist, he'd take no issue with this"

but the show doesn't... do anything with it or really have any response or thematic tie in to make it be anything other than... racist loaded language. it’s just racist and there. this season doesn't do much with race at all when it actually should be heavily interrogated (soooo louis pisses off everyone by exposing vampirism and gets hunted down, lestat does it via song and... he's a white messiah... the context is different but ??? no play with that at all??)

there's no real connective tissue. daniel is there but he isnt' connecting the dots, it's a bunch of failure tapes, with no questioning it. beyond the drugged out pacing of episode 1, the framing of this season hasn't FELT like lestat, so you can't even point out the claudia or racism of it all and be like "this is a byproduct of lestat's narration" because lestat's narration feels so much less present, even when he's singing in a very lestat way. lestat's voice doesn't fit the way things are depicted. claudia's rage FEELS like an objective retelling, not something to paint lestat in a better light, even when it DOES do that.

i could buy claudia preferring lestat. i could buy louis misreading claudia and her resenting him even before the trial and her hurt over you and him, him and you. i could buy her hurling the most hateful words she could think of...

but her not punishing lestat? not hurling shit at him? no. even if she preferred him, she'd still hurl shit at him. with a racial tilt to it as well--why call louis' a slave if not to also denigrate lestat as as slavemaster, something she's done before? doing that would be insulting their relationship together, skewering the imbalance, and highlighting something the show should be grappling with, especially as their social capital has shifted but... no??

on many levels, the scene has some really great moments but imo the foundational work is just not there, a lot of it is unearned, and the tonal shift of their reaction makes it feel less heavy than it should

like i said before, loustat IMMEDIATELY using it to booster their relationship is 110% in character writing, but tonally it should've been handled much differently. at least transition more slowly into the moon eyes

so, ultimately, i feel like i enjoyed the impact of the scene, and the highs of it, but it's kind of baffling from many angles because it goes unquestioned in so many ways

and what's extra baffling is the writers for this are the same writers from s1, s2 and it's like ? i get why louis' perspective maybe wasn't peppered with a million easter eggs for this ?? but surely something a bit more could've been put in

And it shakes him to his core because he would see it as a betrayal to his love and has zero concept of how you can move on without loving your lost love any less

And like thematically it’s kinda shit because he’ll never truly learn the lesson that you can have more than one love… MXY actually being WWX would just affirm all of his hang ups in the end

But like I do just the angst of him coming to terms with it and getting frustrated with himself for seeing so much of WWX in another man

Just for WWX to be like :D I feel really bad for keeping this from you but SURPRISE ITS ME

Cause ngl I also love the angst of WWX keeping his identity a secret and never having an outright confirmation that Wangji didn’t resent him in his first life towards the end and being like well it’s too been so long how do I even bring it up