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!

PBS recently did a mini documentary on their activism and connecting to the instrument's history and culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVv4CBuJZc

There's more on the Black Banjo Reclamation Project here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EANT04mAd44

1) a complete non-reaction louis had to this reveal. i mean, it could be lestat's unreliable narration of course. it's possible that louis had much harder time processing it and was hurting and lestat simply didn't tell us about it because he wanted to focus on romantic energy between them. there's also a possibility that show version of louis somehow figured out that it's not the real claudia and treated this as a performance, but lestat haven't realized and misread the situation. but if this was it, if louis believed that this was the real claudia and somehow decided to move on from his grief because she was mean to him (??? which is not how it worked in s1&2), i'm afraid the writers just don't know how to write louis anymore.

omg i was TRYING to wait until post-finale to vent all my feelings but aaahhhhh twist my arm

Honestly ever since ppl started vaguely teasing "anti-blackness in ep6" ive had a tightness in my chest. I was so nervous for weeks and weeks and really built it up in my head as this big horrible thing, so when I finally sat down and watched it...it kind of underwhelmed me at first? My immediate reaction was one of confusion...because nothing about the character we saw in ep6 resembled Claudia. At all. I was so bewildered it took me sitting with it a while to even feel upset about it.

Which could also be attributed to how ineffective the writing is this season, bc none of it moves me. The jokes don't make me laugh, the 'romantic' parts don't make me feel tender, the tragic parts don't make me feel sad...even the most vile/over the top cruelty barely makes me feel anything. I didn't even feel bad for Louis in this scene!!!! Bc none of it felt real (and also bc he barely seems to feel anything about it himself. they aren't even invested enough in their own flogging of Louis to show him suffering over it...Louis tried to kill himself when he heard Claudia's voice in 205...Louis and Claudia parted on far less hostile terms with a heartfelt goodbye in 106 and Louis wanted to kill himself then. Louis would be ashes rn if this shit was serious!!!) This is a show that used to be a GOTHIC HORROR MELODRAMA ROMANCE all genres that LIVE on heightened emotion!!!!! And this season is a cynical dry passionless husk......they've really bled all these characters of their human essence and rendered each and every one of them a cardboard cutout of themselves. It's the most insane waste of potential I've ever seen.

The thing about this episode, is that it convinced me that isn't an accident.

With all the constant in-text mocking of iwtv ("missing the psychodrama of Dubai?", Lestat laughing at Louis's turning speech, mocking Louis's romanticizing of Dreamstat, the constant calling Louis a liar and ripping apart the book full of his words without meaningfully calling out any specific part of his account...Lestat is not pissed off at Louis bc he made up a ticket pocket, like to this day we do not know what exactly in this book is the big lie he's mad about. and he's spent the whole season being mad.....meaning the point here is not to dispute or provide a contrasting POV, but only to ridicule and illegitimize) and the marketing push to court a new audience, it seems like their final push to distinguish tvl from the thorny, nuanced, deeply emotional, queer niche critical darling that it once was is to make this season of television a hit piece on its first two seasons. Every single choice seems like it was purposefully made in order to spite the original series and everyone who ever loved it for what it was (with a special personal vendetta against the person who was heart and soul of that series, Louis/Jacob).

Its only natural that this season's climax is to attempt to retroactively destroy the emotional core of s1-2, which is Louclaudia.

Louis's story is a story of grief. The common jabs people like to throw at Louis about him being whiny or passive or brooding or a sad sack or whatever - that's because his whole character is built around the concept of grief. Louis is the embodiment of a mother's grief over losing her child, the grief Anne Rice was consumed with when writing IWTV. He is grief personified.

(From The Vampire Companion)

The IWTV novel does not exist without Anne Rice's incredible love for and grief over losing her daughter, and Louis's story does not exist without his incredible love and grief over Claudia.

At first I thought they were honoring Louis's characterization by having his storyline continue to focus on his grief. I had my doubts about the Regina plotline (bc what else do they have to say now about Louis other than 'he grieves'? what does this plot add? isn't it just a retread of his journey in s1-2? if he immediately regresses, what was the significance of "I own the night"?), but the core of it is still Louis's love for Claudia, and Louis's grief wouldn't fade away overnight just because he grew as a person. I was actually pleased that in The Lestat Season, Louis was allowed to spend his time, not thinking about Lestat, but still focused on Claudia, even as Lestat spends all his time bitching Louis out (which is also kind of a 105 retread now that I think about it).

But what episode 6 revealed to me, was that the new addition they had for Louis's story was to undermine his grief. Louis was wrong to grieve, he was selfish to grieve. The person Louis exists to grieve not only hates him, but hates him for grieving her. In the hands of the writers of s3, Louis's love for Claudia is forged as a weapon against him, and his pain at her loss is an indictment of his character.

S3's Claudia is angry with him for grieving her. The first thing out of her mouth is "couldn't keep me on the wall". Claudia, who knew all too well (and according to s3, actively weaponized) Louis's incredible depth of love for her, is upset that the person who loved her so intensely mourns her....why? It doesn't make any sense for her to feel this way...of course Louis mourns her, and always will. Would she rather have vanished from the world without a trace, having left no one behind who loved her enough to care she existed? Would she rather have burned in a house fire when she was 14, died alone and unwanted as an unnamed casualty, the way Lestat said was her destiny?

It's not only nonsensical, it doesn't feel like the character. Claudia, who was so desperate to be loved and seen, to belong, to be "put first" by someone.....begrudges Louis for doing just that? Miss "picked another one over me/never about me" would rather Louis never say her name again??

I really can't even see this being as representative of Claudia in any way. So much of what they have her say in this scene goes directly against her character, and, despite all its overwrought viciousness, she doesn't even take Louis or Lestat to task for some of what we know she saw as their greatest offenses!!!!!!!!

Things Ghost Claudia Mentions:

-Louis grieving her. She, in essence, tells him NOT to grieve her, implies it insults her to grieve her, "burn her diaries, burn this dress". Like I said, this is not something Claudia would fucking say lmao even if she was speaking from a place of deep anger, she would not want to be erased, even if the dress on the wall is just a symbol to remind Louis that he fucked up, and that she suffered as a result, she would want to keep a record of the damage.

-Louis being 'back with Lestat' (which he isn't, really, romantically speaking. like they are at most back in a talking stage. so its pretty unclear what the scope of her knowledge is bc she knows about stuff like Lestat's "song on the radio" but not their most recent interactions? idk)

-She says she only didn't kill Louis so she could keep him around to do her bidding until she found someone better. I believe there is a book quote where Claudia says something along these lines and thats what they're pulling from (I couldn't find it though..), but in the books Claudia actually needs a companion to survive. She is in the body of a five year old and is emphasized as being very physically vulnerable; regardless of whether bookClaudia loved/hated Louis, there is a practical element to her choice to keep him around.

But in the show, Claudia is not physically 5 but 14 and a prodigious hunter who goes on killing sprees alone. She has no physical need for Louis that would justify this idea of her keeping him around despite "hating" him. Her need for companionship in the show is solely reduced to her emotional needs (and if she hated Louis, he would not fulfill that). You just can't take any of this shit seriously if you watched the first two seasons...Claudia was always returning to Louis, she was ensnared by the coven because she returned to Louis. Louis was dead weight in Eastern Europe, an active hindrance, hallucinating, depressed, why not leave him? He isn't any help to her in that period, which was years of them not getting along; she was the one that spoke the languages, she was the one keeping him fed, she pulls the revenant off of him. She doesn't need Louis to survive there, she wants him. She returns to him time again because she wants him. Meaning disintegrates without him...

(Obvs Lestat is included in her statement about missing them, but we only see her follow Louis...I really thought we would get at least one flashback of Claudia bonding with Lestat or even just missing him like this esp if they're gonna try to sell us on him being "her favorite" but no.....there wasn't even an attempt so i have no choice but to call bs)

-Louis "read the diary pages seven decades too late". I already discussed how Claudia was averse to anyone reading her diaries in this other post so i won't go over that again, but it is another inept writing choice that even when they want to vilify Louis here, they can't do it right. Claudia saying something like "it took too long" for Louis to read the pages eliminates the entire moral dilemma of Louis reading and presenting the pages without her consent...shouldn't Claudia be more upset because he violated her privacy in the first place? Nope...apparently he should have done it sooner...? Not to mention that Claudia took years to open up to Louis about Bruce, so this idea that she was waiting around on him to do something about it doesn't add up...if anything s1 Claudia seemed to scoff at the idea of him being able to avenge her with her "knight in vengeful black" comment. also no mention of Louis killing the coven in her name....which he did do immediately lol....like...

(also the fact they have Claudia chastise LOUIS for crying like the sa happened to him when they literally overlaid her words with Lestat's trauma crashout and textually made her sa about Lestat.................LMAO!! unserious)

-She says she fabricated the train scene (or at least exaggerated it) to get Louis to cooperate with killing Lestat. Obvs there is a whole heinous layer where the train scene was evoking the imagery of runaway slave captures and these white writers decided to have a black character lie about this specific kind of racialised trauma which is fucked beyond compare. BUT ALSO!!!!!!!!! IT JUST DOESNT MAKE SENSE WITH THE PLOT!!!!!!!!!!! Claudia DECIDES TO KILL LESTAT AT THE END OF 106 BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LET HER LEAVE.......why would she return with Lestat if she didn't feel sufficiently threatened? and why would she decide to kill Lestat if he did not force her to stay against her will??

I've seen it floated that this was all Claudia's master plan to get Louis to go with her (even though she hated him sooooo much.........right....) as though she had her whole tearful goodbye and then magically changed her mind moments later and decided to do her big one and concoct a scheme to eliminate Lestat and ensure Louis would be 'on her side' and leave with her. Maybe that's even what the 306 scene is supposed to lead us to believe...only there is no scene of Claudia telling Louis what happened on the train, or ever using that event to convince Louis to turn on Lestat. All their telepathic conversations we hear about Louis trying to dissuade her from killing Lestat, and its never once a point Claudia uses to her favor. Ever. We get "we have no more use for him. He causes us misery with no horizon. I can kill him. You will enjoy it" etc. This idea of "oh daddy Lou he was ever so mean to me do you know what he said he'd do!" is a brand new invention for this scene alone.

Also.................

Uhhhhhh........no Claudia.....it pretty famously did not???????????

"Worked good, didn't it?" 😏 LMAO! They made her stupid??

Also they still can't decide what Claudia was threatened with. We get "I won't defile your pocket, I'll turn your bones to dust" in 106, "Did I threaten Claudia with rape on a train?" in 301 and "He'd do worse than rape me" in 306.....so.......which is it..........

-The blood thing feels too obvious to even be worth pointing out?? But they've invented this weird blood supremacy thing for Claudia to devalue Louis and value her maker more (even though they do have the same blood bc they both have Lestat's blood....that's why they're like....siblings....). When Claudia hated the idea of Lestat's blood THROUGH LOUIS being used to create Madeleine (supposedly the only character Claudia gaf about...but she forgot the whole lead up to her turning which was her begging Armand to do it for this very reason....mkay)

-And then ok the whole slave thing. Yes Claudia used the word "slave" in s1. But the context is everything when it comes to black characters using this kind of loaded language. Claudia uses "slave" in s1 specifically to refer to their lack of agency as long as Lestat is around. Claudia uses that very loaded language privately to Louis telepathically in order to emphasize the dire nature of their (shared!) situation! And obvs that phrase has a special resonance for them as black ppl living under the thumb of a white tyrant, and references the racialized nature of Lestat's control and abuse of them! She's saying "he treats us like his slaves! this way of life is not acceptable! we have to act!" Claudia was never using that word as an insult against Louis!!!! She used slave ONLY EVER TO DESCRIBE THEM BOTH!!!

Funny how the context of that word from its first use in a season that had black writers has been completely warped into blatant white supremacist ideology in a season without black writers...a phrase exchanged privately to discuss the oppression shared by black characters in order to encourage rebellion in s1, has become an excuse for a racist tirade from one black character to another in front of a white character in s3...

Also making Claudia spout this anti-black nonsense shows they never paid attention to her character bc she was the one most explicitly calling out Lestat's tyrannical whiteness; besides "he's made us slaves" she makes a lot of comments in 107 that align Lestat with violent white supremacy (calling Bach, which Lestat likes, the music of the master race, "Massa's had so much pain in his life" explicitly calling out that she and Louis should not give a fuck about the pain of their oppressor, "well-dressed tyrants, where have I heard that before" when Lestat compliments Nazi tailoring basically calling Lestat one of them). Like as much as Louis would go back and forth with Lestat about racism, Louis doesn't rly ever call Lestat out as espousing white supremacist thinking as harshly as Claudia does.

(Tbh they kinda fucked up this aspect of her character in s2 with her...y'know...dating a Nazi sympathizer and never giving Madeleine anything more than a raised eyebrow about it, but she was never fucking antiblack...and she at least has that "Armand's skin is darker than yours" comment to show race (and the race of Louis's partners) is a thought in her mind...the more i reflect, the more i acknowledge issues with s2 Claudia but my word i never would have foreseen this....)

This slave stuff combined with Claudia misusing nappy (bc that among black ppl means unkempt hair, and Louis's hair was extremely kempt in the scene - but ofc if ur nonblack and racist nappy just means any black hair so), "bleak black life" sounding like some bullshit from The Help, Claudia speaking to Lestat and referring to Louis as "your black queen" which is not a phrase any one of the three of them would ever use LOL, and even just Claudia's repeated use of "bitch" which is also not a word we have heard Claudia use - it's one of the most aggressively straightforward black stereotypes ive seen in modern media. They took a complex, beautiful black character who was treated with so much love and care for 2 seasons and made her an Angry Black Woman.jpeg. I know they wanted to work in a "MHMMMMM" or "OH HELLLLL NAW" sooo bad. Like Claudia's whole vernacular is different!!! She did not talk like that!! It's like every racist fanfic in this fandom ever!!

Things Ghost Claudia DOES NOT MENTION:

-ANY of the abuse suffered by her or Louis!!!!! In Claudia's last moments on Earth she was fighting through the pain of her slit ankles to cuss out Lestat for dropping Louis like an egg. She offered herself to be punished in Louis's place in 105, and then spent painstaking months nursing him back to health after he was dropped. One of the biggest rifts in her relationship with Louis was when Louis would not leave Lestat despite his abuse of them. Not a single mention of this from the ghost. Even if they wanted to focus on battering Louis in this scene, they didn't even have her bring up Louis choking her in 107, physically stopping her from burning Lestat's body! None of the physical violence that tore apart that household even gets a passing reference.

-Louis ruining Claudia's plan to kill Lestat. Louis's big misstep with Claudia was, in her mind, "choosing Lestat over her". Louis felt unable to leave Lestat in 106. Louis slit his throat, but wouldn't burn him, so they couldn't move on post-NOLA, and lived in fear of his return. She was calling him "dead weight" in Eastern Europe. He carried Lestat, "slowed them down". This was the principle grudge against Louis Claudia carried with her after s1, and it also is not mentioned.

-HER MAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The biggest fucking thing about this character in the books and show is that she forced into a child body for eternity without her consent!!!!!!!!!! It's the original sin of the unholy family, the first wedge to ever be driven between them, a point of contention between Louis and Lestat, Louis and Armand, Claudia and Louis, Claudia and Lestat, THE COVEN who kills her; it's the choice Lestat is haunted by in Body Thief! "Should she have been made or was she a mistake?" "Can she endure, or is she doomed by the circumstances of her birth?" "I WAS STILL BREATHING, WHY DIDNT YOU TAKE ME TO A HOSPITAL! I COULD HAVE LIVED A NORMAL LIFE SWEEPING FLOORS NURSING BABIES!!! WHO AM I GONNA LOVE, WHO WOULD WANT ME!!!!!" Even as late as the trial, Claudia is upset hearing about the extent of Louis's involvement in her turning. SHES IN ETERNAL VAMPIRE HELL BECAUSE SHE WAS MADE!!!!! BY THESE TWO MEN!!!!!!!!!!!! if there was ANYTHING the real Claudia would have screamed at them about it would be this!!!!!! AND HER GHOST DOESNT BREATHE A WORD ABOUT IT!!!!!!! It's so fucking egregious, you have to wonder if any of these writers watched the show

-The Regina stuff????????? If Claudia knows about Lestat's music career, surely she would have witnessed what Louis's been doing too, right? That's not something she would have some shit to say about?? If its the roast of Louis like how is that not her opener. "Yes its really me and not that broke bitch you paid to be my stand in". The Regina plotline truly had no bearing on anything ig

-Charlie???? This show hates black ppl now so I guess they couldn't have Claudia mourn a black boy (only her white gf they fetishized in the previous ep). but they literally showed a flashback to Lestat forcing Claudia to watch Charlie burn THIS SEASON (reshot with Delainey) and drew a parallel to Lestat watching Nicki burn. so....why make that parallel and not have that incident be important to Claudia? its almost like they dgaf

Literally everything about this scene does both Claudia and Louis a disservice. Make no mistake, it may seem like Louis is the target here, but BOTH their characters are being mutilated by this season. This person that we see in this scene is in no way Claudia. s1-2 are contingent upon having empathy for these black characters and being invested in the incredible, complicated, heart-wrenching, deeply loving bond they share. The story is built around Louis's grief over Claudia and therefore Louclaudia is the emotional backbone of the original iwtv series. Tvl has shown itself to be deeply committed to undermining, ridiculing, and eviscerating the notion of the Louclaudia bond and their respective integrity as characters.

It sincerely feels like this writers room has a vendetta against the original series and Louis as its protag by extension, and their hate for Louis so great they can't fathom anyone loving him. and Claudia loved Louis deeply despite all the pain and turmoil of their relationship, and they don't know how to write that, so they're dismantling that bond any way they can. It's disgusting and horrific but also kinda fucking boring.....this show was SO revolutionary bc it was a gothic genre show that took black ppl's experiences and pain seriously and centered them instead of sidelining them and handled them with an empathy that is so rarely afforded to us....and its been mangled into this ghoulish hateful conservative slop.

and they want to do a story with a black female villain next season????? fucking lol........like you just have to laugh.......

The thing you have to know is that if in the first two seasons you have a show which used the Gothic genre to tell a story of abuse and racism- where there were two black characters who were driven to murder the white patriarch of the house to flee from this abuse, and then comes s3 where basically everything from the previous seasons gets retconned or remains unaddressed or are made into punchlines, then there's something insidious that's going on. If anti blackness is the ha-ha joke, then I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear atp.

I will give you an example: the Salamander character wears a "Hip Hop sucks" shirt in the previous episode and then the actor ( i think) makes a jokey post about how so and so is trying to get him canceled. So these people who are involved in the project know the weight there is to these words-> what it sounds like to have used a costume which dismisses an entire genre of black music, and what did they do with the shirt? what was the intention behind using it? Did this lead anywhere? Was it to have a conversation about a white rock band ( rock and roll, a genre which grew out of African american music ) being hypocrites, who in one breathe both takes advantage of and dismisses Black art/music? I don't know because there was nothing. In a season so obsessed with telling instead of showing mind you.

A TV show doesn't have to have a meta commentary about everything sure, but the thing is in the previous seasons as we followed Louis and Claudia, their blackness in itself was a very present thing in the show because as the story unfolded we saw how the world reacts to them as both humans and as vampires. Using the Gothic to explore violence etc; so how is it that when this season rolls in, and as showrunner you tell the viewers not to worry, the previous lead black character is still a co-lead in the show and then proceed the entire show having this character being mocked and insulted- "Louisiana fried chicken"/ "cancerous jackal"/"big bad wolf"/ "whore Thomas Pitty" with no pushback from the narrative itself? On top of that it is LDPDL who is doing the apologizing in every episode. Lestat has the blood of Akasha in him, so his anger gets the best of him it is said and sure there was Louis saying "no that's not it, it is what you do with the blood..." But this is also the episode where you have Ghost!Claudia hurling slurs at Louis. Throughout the season everyone is taking a dunk at Louis and now you have a all white writer's room making Ghost!Claudia hurl slurs at Louis and saying she actually likes the white man better than you ( this white man being the co-lyncher with Armand). Louclaudia was the heart of the show in the previous seasons; whatever frustration despair and even hate Claudia may have had for Louis, it was always true that the undercurrent of it were love. This is the girl who said to her Papa Lou "his love is a small box he keeps you in, don't let him"/ she pleaded with him that there are other vampires who will be worthy of his love. She pleaded with uncle Les to hurt her instead of Louis and now her ghost is saying Louis is not even her blood? Lestat is her maker??? The black child saying the white patriarch is her own blood, more so than LDPDL? As if during her turning, Madeline wasn't trying to give courage to Claudia by saying don't worry about the blood, its the blood that made you it can't be bad, because that's how torn Claudia was.