cool

Thank you SO VERY MUCH for your time as a reader and as an artist!

This is remarkable. I am really just so moved by this!

and ofc people will say to justify the ghost claudia scene "survivors lying about specific things doesn't mean they aren't survivors/what they said about their abuse in general isn't true" or "why won't you let claudia be a monster same as the male characters are" and these are bad faith rationalizations bc the people who claim they love the idea of claudia lying about lestat threatening her are the same people who would be up in arms about the merest suggestion that lestat lied about anything his mortal family in auvergne or gabriella did to him. and wrt the point about survivors lying not invalidating the truth of their experience, yes, this is something that's true about survivors in real life, but that is real life and tvl is a fictional story written by nonblack people- you have to be honest and ask yourself if the writers were remotely interested in claudia's interiority or experiences as a survivor when they wrote her in s3ep6 or if they were only trying to backpedal about one of the worst things lestat has ever done in an effort to make him more palatable and use a black character- a black woman who was lynched, which makes the use of antiblack dialogue for claudia even more ghoulish- as a mouthpiece to spew antiblack vitriol at the sole surviving black lead on the show.

"claudia lied about what lestat said in the train scene bc she was desperate to leave and get louis to leave with her and she needed something to move louis into action" could've been pulled off as a survivor-centric plot choice if it had been foreshadowed properly and if it had been introduced during s1-s2, when claudia was still an active protagonist in the story, her pov was represented in her own voice and there were still black writers on staff. it could've folded into the thematic arc of louis' story wrt pursuing truth and been handled in the context where the focus was claudia's pain, claudia's entrapment and resolve to escape no matter what, and landed on a note that centered the fundamental truth of claudia's experiences as an abuse victim and how she outwitted lestat and freed both herself and louis from him. how this concept is addressed in s3ep6 is not that- to start with, the entire seance and the entire season are within lestat's pov. the idea that we're "finally hearing the real claudia" is false bc everything from what she says to her mannerisms to how she looks as a ghost are filtered through her abusive white father's pov.

how the train scene is mentioned in the seance isn't presented in the context of claudia convincing louis to escape lestat and outmaneuvering lestat- it's in the context of humiliating louis for being gullible and easy to manipulate for *checks notes* believing his daughter when she told him her other father threatened to do worse than rape her. louis is constantly villainized by viewers for the bad ways he reacts to armand and lestat's history of sa and for how claudia had to push louis to leave once lestat's abuse escalated in s1ep5-s1ep7- but when louis reacts to claudia as a good, responsible parent should and believes her when she tells him lestat threatened her, that too is presented as a sign of louis' weakness, stupidity and passivity. (and people are being willfully obtuse about this bc everyone largely agrees "except he just threatened me with it" "nah doesn't sound like him" in s2ep4 was one of louis' worst moments ever.) this decision can't be separated from the nonblack writers also choosing to have claudia volley explicitly antiblack, bioessentialist vitriol at louis and framing her as possessing an internalized antiblackness she never expressed in her own diaries ("bleak, black life" where her white companion was the only good thing about it.) when claudia compared herself and louis to lestat's slaves in s1 (back when the show had black writers) her words about herself and louis being lestat's slaves from the book was adapted as a incisive comment about lestat's oppressive control and white supremacy- lestat and his behavior were the focus of her mockery. but when ghost claudia calls louis a slave bc he has a mark on his ribs in s3, it plays into the white supremacist idea that was reinforced through decades of enslavement in the states where enslavers and their enablers argued black people had inherent, biologically ingrained passive traits and needed the white race's superior guidance to control and protect them.

and regardless of what in-universe reasoning people buy into to explain ghost claudia saying that, the problem is the all-nonblack writers choosing to write that rhetoric for a black woman who was murdered in a lynching (that the show refuses to call a lynching) and the white showrunner gleefully calling arguably the most antiblack scene of the show the best scene they ever wrote for their dead black fem lead (yes s3ep6 is worse than all of s2ep7 or s1ep3 or anything else the white supremacists in nola or the kkkoven did, bc in those scenes the focus was on the evil of the white supremacists while in s3ep6 the antiblackness is metatextual, reflective of the writers' biases and uncritically framed)

claudia could've called louis out for putting hands on her same as lestat had done- she could've pulled on the stories in merrick's mind from her family to call louis out for profiting off the backs of working class black women and then tryna make claudia, one black girl then woman among many, the symbol of his redemption at the expense of her pain. hell they even could've explained claudia's rage mainly being targeted at louis and not as much at lestat by having the seance be louis' idea, giving louis a several-episode arc of interacting with merrick then convincing her to call on claudia's spirit so claudia would be angry at him for wanting to yank her into the world of the living again to assuage his own guilt, instead of nonblack writers thinking the primary way to wound and call out a black lynching survivor is by having a black woman who didn't survive that lynching use antiblack language. it didn't feel incisive or truly cutting or had anything to do with louis' canon flaws unless you already thought the worst of him (as many viewers do) and fanon'ed him as the kind of eternally passive, navel-gazing patsy he was in the source material. louis in the show is not that character, and it exposes the thoughtlessness and antiblackness of the all-nonblack writers that they adapted the merrick scene without considering how louis and claudia's show characters and dynamic would modify the scene. the only change they seem to have made based on louis and claudia's blackness is by throwing in antiblack dialogue. it's such a tarantino (derogatory) move where the white showrunner knows he can't say certain things about black characters as himself irl, so he uses a black character as a mouthpiece in a fictional script to express that racist impulse.

-> Phonics For Adults <-

I kinda feel that way about the Nola references - apparently in season 1 the background of Louis accepting Lestat’s powers was because he knew witches and a scene where he visited one was cut. So this new thing where he is skeptical of witches is a retcon. Then we have Merrick hate him and him being a victim of familial incest - more distancing from his own home. while Lestat has a book club in Nola and is friends with Merrick.

They also cut Louis interacting with Black artists in Paris and now he has no creative interests.

I also think it's telling that they're playing the "EVEN BLACK PEOPLE LIKE LESTAT BETTER" game, completely ignorant of the fact that Black viewers are more experienced in having to connect with white characters, in addition to it just being a middle finger to being drawn to the story because of the deliberate Blackness that was a part of s1&2.

The whole damn writers room is mad and I feel like time was wasted on them trying to attempt some getback (always the petty slights with you, Rolin Jones).

No?

Well you should!

Hell clock is a beautiful game with amazing art, very stylized. Banger music. Really great Portuguese voice acting. A cool story. Fun gameplay loop. And you should check it out right now

I kinda don't wanna say anything about this game cuz I want you to experience it but it's just a fun game where you descend dungeons, fight enemies, loot better gear, battle bosses, die (or the time runs out on your clock), come back stronger. Do it all over again.

For me, it's a complicated moment.

I've said in a couple of posts that I find it upsetting (and telling) that the show only slows down enough to give us connection between Lestat and Louis again for the sake of shock value with the revenge porn / Claudia ghost aspects of the episode.

And to me, it demonstrates a HUGE problem with how Rolin Jones is doing this show... he doesn't want to commit to the duality of the gothic subgenre of vampirism, where seduction and abuse, disgust and desire, life and death co-exist (I spoke about Eggers' Nosferatu in comparison to TVL recently for more on that) but he also doesn't want to commit to making things 1:1 vampiric abuse = real world abuse. He wants to create violation and violence and per incident decide what he wants you to think about a character. Which is why the addition of Lestat dropping Louis like he did, and the reveal that Louis does antagonize and push Lestat, has had absolutely no revisitation or pay off this season. He doesn't care about the trial at all.

If I look at the moment for what it is, Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson have wonderful chemistry. They're both excellent performers who clearly trust each other and can be vulnerable with each other both in character and as actors. Denial and disgust fighting each other, getting defensive, lashing out, these are natural trauma responses. If they were two men doing a scene in front of me as some kind of audition or showcase, you know, great job. But unfortunately, it has this season of TVL behind it.

More under the cut, don't want to risk incest discourse escaping where tumblr does or doesn't truncate now bc this is a very sensitive topic.