Live Forever

I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.

It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"

I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.

But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON

Unfollow me if you are anti-miscegenation. Full stop.

I don't care if you're doing it "leftistly" and "progressively" you're fucking weird. It's never a fucking "woke win" to rally against interracial relationships. Ever. Even if it's between races you don't like together.

Race isn't actually real. It's made up shit to justify murder of those who are not the "one true" race, which in most cases mean people who aren't white. The system that forces it is real, but the actual concept is not real, and pretending it is real is playing by the rules that people are fundamentally different based on traits that don't actually matter to how a person functions. There are many cases people had to fight tooth and fucking nail to have the basic right to have relationships with people that are not labelled as their race.

It is not fucking progressive to demonize interracial relationships. It's not fucking progressive to demonize mixed people. It's not fucking progressive to make up slurs like fucking "swirlers" for people who commit the "crime" of loving outside of their assigned race. No one is saying anyone HAS to date outside their race in the same manner no one is saying anyone has to date trans people. What is being asked of you is to not be a fucking weirdo about people who DO.

The fact I have to even try and cover this possibility because of how badly "leftists" are horseshoeing to the right is asinine.

So many people seem to be loudly subscribing to this tribalistic "us vs them" version of identity politics that has them projecting a whole lot of their own issues onto media. There's an awareness of how political TV shows are despite the fact that media literacy is at an all time low. So many people are assigning moral value onto media works and so many people have been conditioned into thinking that portrayal somehow equals endorsement.

And because portrayal equals endorsement to certain types of people, portrayal always ends up getting the short end of the stick, whether or not its endorsement. You know, censorship, moralism, fascist thinking and all that stuff.

So yeah, I expected the backlash because this is the bullshit one always has to deal with if you like your shows with a bit of complexity to them.

But it pisses me off that the Claudia seance is being cheapened into another political soundbite about how "the writers just wanted an excuse to be racist."

Do I think people are allowed to be hurt by portrayals of racism in a show? Of course I do. I've been hurt by it since I was old enough to understand what race was. I'll probably be hurt by it until the day I die. It's valid to be upset by something and never want to watch it again. There are plenty of shows I haven't finished because they were too triggering for me.

Do I think that being upset by something gives me the right to assign values onto writers I know nothing about for simply doing their jobs and telling a story? No, the fuck I don't.

Writing about racism doesn't make you racist any more than writing about murder makes you killer. And the fact that lately, so many people can't grasp that is scary to me.

You tell a story about race, you tell a story about racism. Because racism is alive and well. And even if we manage to create a post-racism society, racism will have been alive and well. They're a package deal.

I want people to be able to tell stories about race. I want every kind of depiction about race there is. The good, the bad and the messy. We've been invisible for too long.

And if you think thoughtful media portrayals of racism are just a writer's excuse to be racist and not a portrayal of issues and inequalities that can and have played out in the real world because of the systems of oppression that underpin them, you're clearly unable to separate a fictional story from your own personal baggage and I have nothing to say to you.

These terrible takes about Claudia are extra irritating to me as someone from an African country, who grew up on multiracial and multicultural shows and studied post-apartheid and postcolonial literature at university, media that had racism as a recurring theme, because the narratives, like IWTV and TVL, were about racist structures and the people who lived in them.

It's so fucking painful to realize that the majority of these would be lumped under "generic racist propaganda" on this stupid US-centric website because for some reason people think that a piece of media having racism in it makes it politically incorrect propaganda, unfit to be enjoyed, studied or consumed. Without realizing what an oppressive, imperialistic, white standard that is.

"I'm a good person who only consumes media that is 100% non-racist, non-sexist and politically correct."

Congratulations. I can't go a week without experiencing some form of oppression, from other marginalized people even, because internalized marginalization is a thing and my parents and grandparents grew up in systems where racism was valued. In fact, racism is valued to this day in certain places, but I'm overjoyed to hear that I'd get punished by Western audiences if I were to write about it. I'd be nothing without your erasure.

The scene where Claudia finally gave Louis a piece of her mind could've been a wonderful opportunity for the fandom to talk about how racism is a structural context that marginalized people cannot separate themselves from or how traumatized people can and do weaponize each others' internalized racism against each other.

It could've been a wonderful opportunity to discuss how Claudia was misrepresented because of Louis' guilt and love for her or how female characters, black women in particular, are rarely allowed to show their ugly sides in media, especially when the narrative is told through a male lens. A male lens that's been well established as someone who puts himself and the people he loves on pedestals and continues to view her through rose-colored glasses to this day.

It could've been a wonderful opportunity to talk about the myth of the perfect victim or how her being trapped in a young girl's body means people have "no idea of her strength."

It could've been a wonderful opportunity to discuss how much of that scene was Claudia finally being honest and letting out all that pent up resentment she never got to share with Louis while losing him was at stake (but now she has nothing to lose) or how much was cruel lies motivated by the pain of being ripped from her resting place, seeing Louis and Lestat there together (Louis choosing Lestat over her AGAIN) while she's stuck having to exist without Madeleine.

Some people did speak about that which is awesome. Thank you for existing.

But mostly, it became all about "My morals have been violated" (fine, don't watch it then) and "what Claudia said was inexcusable, how dare she" (you're policing a traumatized black female character, EXCUSE YOU) and "the writers are such racist and sexist meanies for no longer portraying Claudia as Louis' most special manic pixie throw pillow" (??? make it make sense ???). It mostly boiled down to the fact that Claudia was cruel to Louis out of anger.

"This isn't Claudia."

There's literally an episode titled "The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding". Describing Claudia. From Louis' perspective. The person who has an admittedly rosy view of her.

She's ruthless. She's bloodthirsty. She's cruel.

She's every bit as ruthless as Lestat, whose blood flows through her veins. She's every bit as bloodthirsty as the coven that took her out. That's why they had to team up in order to do it. And she's every bit as cruel as Louis, who we've seen do this type of thing to multiple characters at multiple times. Lestat taught her how to hunt, but if there's one thing Claudia would have learned from Louis, it would be being cruel to people out of anger.

Racism is one of Louis' core wounds and triggers. We see it throughout season 1. Lestat uses the racially neutral term "fledgling" to address him, and he assigns racial meaning onto it, after which Lestat never uses the term again. Claudia uses "slaves" as a buzzword to manipulate him. Daniel uses racial terminology to get him to open up in the interviews. His favorite human meal is Jim Crow racists. Every time he acts on impulse, it's triggered by someone else's racism or perceived racism. It's a core wound so it's the best way to be cruel to Louis. Claudia is a predator and she went straight for the jugular.

Did you expect her not to?

Claudia was summoned to once again assuage the guilt of the two people who were complicit in both her deaths. She was immediately confronted with the image of the two of them together again after decades of searching for and not finding her companion, Madeleine.

Before she died she literally called them out for the self-absorbed bastards that they were, the fact that they constantly used her as a pawn in their drama and the fact that her being made a vampire was never about her, but about them.

She died because Louis refused to listen to her warnings about Armand. And then Louis still stayed with Armand for years after that, the very years she was stuck in purgatory without Madeleine, showed her private diaries to everyone, because her words were published in a fucking international bestseller, read out her most vulnerable thoughts about getting assaulted to her abuser to fuel his own sanctimonious hero complex and then paid a sex worker to act like her.

Of course, she's harder on Louis and easier on Lestat. Louis was supposed to be better than this. As unfair as it is, she always held him to a higher standard. Lestat was always the scumbag she detested (and father she loved in secret) and she never let him forget that. Louis was the father she was open about loving (and scumbag she detested in secret, because she could not afford to push him away when he always had one foot out the door anyways). Louis was the person she had the most faith in and trusted not to fail and betray her. And then he went and did all that. Lestat was just acting like Lestat, but Louis broke her heart.

She is allowed to be pissed and to say whatever the fuck she wants to in order to get that message across. She is allowed to say things that she knows will hurt them, Louis in particular, whether or not those things are true. She's allowed to be in enough anguish to lash out about it where it'll hurt most. Because they'll always have each other anyways.

I’d also like to add that a lot of white people have this idealized notion that Black people cannot be anti-black (or say anti-black things!). We can and yes, some of us are. Society has historically told Black people think of their skin color as less than and these beliefs completely inform their interactions and relationships with one another. Black people will constantly say racially motivated things to bring one another down, even in the 21st century. Claudia, decidedly, was from a time in history when segregation was still very much a thing! Slurs were commonplace. Older black women, who were born around that time use language like that that Claudia was using.

Claudia has always been very conscious of the way she speaks and the actions she makes. She’s also been shown using racially motivated language to criticize another character (Lestat) previously in the show. This isn’t a new way for her to act.

Claudia is not this sweet perfect little vampiress who only acts out when directly provoked. She is, in this scene, a black woman who died at 46, dealt with racism, abuse, and misogyny(noir) her whole life. Some that came from her two fathers I might add! She spent her whole life resentful towards these two (but primarily Louis) for turning her at a young age. She’s spent 70 YEARS alone in hell, festering in all these angers. Watching these two make her death about them. She’s going to be mean, and yeah, maybe she exaggerates this meanness to hurt Louis. Going back to what you said, OP, she knows being talked down to about his race hurts Louis.

LEGOLAS & ARAGORN

discovered embroidery brush and, true to character, went overboard with it. a little practice in my illustration style, enjoy a trashy novel cover, either BL or buddy-cop depending on your interpretation, featuring the most annoying duo to ever exist. i know the elves of imladris wanted to lock them in a room and throw away the key, i know it!

However his blood? Absolutely fucked. To a level that is almost comical. Let’s remember that ancient vampires are not supposed to make fledglings because their blood is too strong and it’ll fuck the fledgling up.

Marius explicitly says in The Vampire Lestat that he should never have made Armand. It is his biggest regret (that’s your biggest regret with Armand, you piece of shit?) that he turned him when he did. Though he doesn’t mention his powerful blood when he does, but it is absolutely a factor in Armand’s often erratic behaviour.

He says this:

“I never should have taken Armand in his youth, and his centuries of folly and suffering are a penance to me even now. You did him a mercy driving him into the Paris of this century, but I fear for him it is too late.

He is also the one to explain to Lestat about the potency of blood. It decreases with every fledgling you make. Marius had only ever turned Pandora before Armand, and when he did he was I want to say roughly 1500 years old.

So if Armand turned Daniel when he was 500 years old anyway, it would be bad for Daniel. Very bad. Armand has never made a fledgling, meaning his power has never been diluted and he’s had 500 years for that power to grow. But Armand himself was already dealing with three times that thanks to fucking Marius. Even without the relentless trauma or his arrested development, Armand literally never so stood a chance at being normal.

And then he passed it down to Daniel. So Daniel is absolutely fucked basically. He also spent the first three years of his transformation alone which definitely didn’t help.