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!

But from my bare understanding of Akasha's motives, I do think it's hilarious that Anne Rice wrote the worst men on the planet for two whole books, and then wrote a female character whose antagonistic role is "eradicate all men" 🤣 she said "look! She's gonna kill your blorbos! You don't want THAT do you??" 🤣

And also, just forcing a Lestat and Jesse romance? Oh, that pissed me off, after knowing the real story and how they didn't even fucking know each other AND that they didn't give me Lestat ABSOLUTELY DOWN AND DEPRESSED when Akasha was gone! I get mad every time and loving Aaliyah never rectified that for me.

I have this unpopular opinion that Anne Rice stories need to be full of white people. At the very least, they need to be whitish for these stories to feel good. Everyone is horrible and you get to pick your favorite terror. Mine was Akasha and Lestat.

This gets really tricky getting into the show and adding in so many POC. Louis becoming Black was a bit of a self inflicted bullet wound to their heads. You can't treat Black Louis like Book Louis, because his fan base is Black people who will call you to the carpet. You can't treat Black Claudia like Book Claudia. You... need to treat Akasha closer to the book than the movie did, but it is a bad look when you got a writers' room problem when it comes to these characters you turned Black without knowing how the Black fan base would respond to a story full of villains and victims.

I don't think many Black people cared before they cast Black actors, and they thought they could do something colorblind with them and that's just not possible after having intoduced the racism that was created when they made these characters Black.

Back to MY most important thing about Akasha sitting for thousands of years and coming to the "fuck these niggas" conclusion that she does... I didn't like how the movie just made it like she wanted to be running around doing murders juat because she could, when she literally not only felt strong conviction that culling the population of men would help the world, but also she was caring enough that she wanted to protect Lestat's loved ones, along with hers that she still had.

But I think something about those things was that I wished that they had better Black characters, or more Black characters, or Black characters period.

I never wanted Black people in The Vampire Chronicles, and I think some part of young me knew that we didn't belong in that mess, but I loved the mess. It is VERY HARD to try to readjust to Black Louis when original Louis was both despised and loathed personally by me. It was so hard to witness Black Claudia when Claudia's story was already sad to me. And they made it harder and sadder. Like, why did we make her get sexually assaulted? Turning her Black and then raping her was a wild choice and I took a long break. Because that already wasn't my story to be invested in.

Nobody petitioned for that. There was no campaign to have these changes made.

They did that because they knew that the antiblackness of the source material wouldn't fly. Regardless of how one feels about the books, this is a consistent issue with Miz Anne's writing.

What is happening NOW, is the same writers and show runners trying to retract s1 and s2 and say "hey, we know y'all didn't REALLY fuck with these niggas, and we don't either!" and putting antiblackness in this season's writing for just the love of the fucking antiblackness game.

But Blackness and racebending have political currency, particularly among the types who think surface-level appeasement is all they'll ever need to do.

There were always fractures in the work, and you could see that from how the producers talked about the things that happened to Claudia and Louis vs. Lestat in their "after show" reels. And there's overlap with Armand regarding the intersection of rape culture and racial fetishism (how his being trafficked is a punchline for Lestat and Fake Bourdain).

The vapors of the first two seasons truly went to their heads, bc they genuinely thought (1) doing the bare minimum would keep them the acclaim they wanted, and (2) an already critical and on-guard audience wouldn't put their feet to the fire come the third season (because of how s2 ended). The way they refuse to engage with their own choices concerning Louis, Claudia, and Lestat is wild.

Casting Black actors, hiring Black writers is the bare minimum. Doing right by them is the challenge, the requirement. And honestly, by the second season, they more or less proved they were neither interested nor capable.

They're passively aggressively upset about how s3 is being talked about (was being talked about pre-debut), and the contempt (antiblackness) has bled out in the writing. But this is the bed they made for themselves. They've no one to blame but themselves, and they earned all the flak they're getting.

the problem is that the show lacks any kinda objectivity now. s1&2 depicted 4 different povs. s3 depicts everything from lestat's pov (possibly amel's?). louis is saying that he's selfish, and from lestat's pov we're supposed to be mad at him, but there's no material action serious enough to justify this. in fact, some people made fun of lestat's words because it was ridiculous. but at the same time, many viewers are conditioned to believe that lestat is totally right to be mad at louis.

and like i said before, lestat's biased feelings are not the problem either. he's allowed to be mad all he wants, people don't really control their feelings. a rational viewer understands that lestat owes like 100 years of reparations to louis as his abusive fatherhusbandmaker. and considering what he said about keeping truth from louis during the 70 years after the trial... maybe 200 years of reparations, actually.

but what is this position the show takes? in s1 louis is judged both by himself and daniel. we're supposed to see and understand when he wasn't fair to others. but we're completely lost in lestat's pov. and in the perfect world i'd say "okay, this show is written for smart people, we're on the same page" if the majority of the fandom didn't agree with lestat. if casual audience didn't agree with lestat. if the writers didn't say stuff that make me think they agree with lestat.

material reality of s1&2 correlated with full picture presented by different povs. we could see when louis took too much accountability and when he didn't take enough. with lestat's pov it crosses the line where subjectivity does not correlate with material situation at all. it takes me out of the story. it makes me angry at lestat and the writers.

I AM THE ANSWER!!!!

bebop dancer at the savoy ballroom in harlem, new york. 1950.

SHEILA ATIM as Akasha

burlesque dancer, lottie "the body" tatum-graves-claiborne. 1950s.

CHEVALIER (2022)

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021)

THE MUSKETEERS (2014 - 2016)

FRANKENSTEIN (2025)

BRIDGERTON (2020 - )

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (1993)

i'm sorry but uh, why do black characters have to be perfect? compared to most of the characters on the show, including the white characters, she's already an angel, but you object to them making her flawed?

Your complaints read as being upset that a character who says offensive things we're meant to find offensive said an offensive thing, and being upset that other black characters have flaws.

Jacob said that he loved that black characters on this show are allowed to have flaws and be monstrous sometimes. Not everything needs to be "good representation"

black characters do not have to be perfect, in fact i love when they're flawed, it gives them depth and makes them even more interesting to watch and discuss—however, you see no issue in the way both of the black women shown thus far have been written? what do we know about dee aside from her being fed on and fucked by lestat/whoever else he decides he wants that night? what do we know about regina aside from her being a sex worker with mountains of debt and a criminal record that clearly needs money? the black women in this show are just being used as tools to further the story for the men (oftentimes the white men), and that ties back to the previous episode with louis reading claudia's diary to her rapist and her only being raped in the first place because the white show runner believed it'd toughen her up.

louis' character has just been one humiliation after another in regards to people that are supposed to be his friends or at least care about him some small amount (but even that is questionable). he is mocked by lestat, disrespected by daniel and received no apology from armand, and i hear that it doesn't get much better. jacob literally said that he felt like he was playing a different character this season and i don't disagree.

beyond that, having flawed black characters is pointless when half of the viewers engaging with them are either racist, know nothing about antiblack writing/misogynoir, or just have a fundamental misunderstanding of the characters to begin with. and obviously don't care to look into why it's fucked up to have a black character referred to as "a bucket of fried chicken" or be nothing more than a financially unstable sex worker so we can understand why they'd pretend to be someone's dead daughter. why couldn't regina just be fucked up and into that? why is financial desperation tied to these black women?

When Armand said that I was like talk about the pot calling the kettle black!? 🤨 Mr. I Could Not Prevent It, when you LITERALLY could prevent all of it. Mr. "Banishment", Mr. "I care for him more than he cares for himself", Mr. "I protect him from himself, always have," Mr. "I will not harm you. And I never have." 🙄😒

And lord, don't even get me started on what Armand did to Claudia/Larry (AND Alex)! 💀

If Louis' "methodically cruel," then Armand is QUITE LITERALLY the Devil himself.

ROTTEN BOY. 💯

IWTVL S3 Ep2 Musings - Pimping Daniel & Sam: Loustat's Vampiric Nature of Exploitation

I think I get what's going on with Louis hiring Sam as his DJ.

Which is why Lestat's hypocrisy is making my blood boil, because he's got some nerve.

As an artist, music is Lestat's outlet/distraction/opiate, so he exploits Daniel to keep his rock star career successful--the one thing he has left.

As a capitalist, money is Louis' outlet/distraction/opiate, so he exploits Sam to keep his real estate career successful--the one thing he has left.

Oh, so Lestat can cart Daniel around like a dog on a chain making the documentary specifically designed to rewrite Louis/Daniel's book and make Louis look like an even bigger evil liar; knowing full well that his pet lackey Daniel's working for the exact same Talamsacan agency that sent Sam to sabotage/destroy the coven that killed Claudia and tortured--and lynched & almost killed Louis (burying him alive; "eternity in a box"). The SAME agency about to sic Louis on the Fang Gang like an attack DOG and put him in danger--but they're not talking to LESTAT asking him to risk HIS neck, are they?

But how DARE Louis lock The Vampire Sam in perpetual indentured servitude to him, DJing at all the clubs Louis owns around the world?!

Louis is NOT forgiving Sam, let alone befriending Sam. Last time I checked, Sam wasn't butt naked in Louis' hotel room, flirting with his mother & feeding from his social media manager with impunity!? Who did that I wonder, repeat the name~!? 🤨

So how TF is Lestat gonna sit Louis' face talking about being with Armand (based on a SEISMIC LIE BTW) as if Louis was willingly/knowingly with the perpetrator candoodling with his victim Louis--when DANIEL is busy canoodling with Lestat and his whole entourage?! Isn't Lestat a victim of Daniel's book being published?! Yes or no! Quickly!

Oh! So when LESTAT does monstrous things it's: Teeheehee how fun & camp & c*nt vampires are monsters~! But when LOUIS dishes back as good as he receives and does the exact same thing, IRL journalists call Jacob/Louis a "d*ck" to his face?! 🤔