renaissance woman

Interview with the Vampire 1x01 - "In Throes of Increasing Wonder…" (2022) // Sinners (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

I cannot understand watching a show about violent, immortal beings who kill humans (most of whom enjoy the act) and getting upset when they say or do offensive things that make sense in the context of the show

on claudia's rant:

Madeleine comes up in that episode basically anytime Louis tries to "own" part of her memory that he shouldn't have his hands on. She was Claudia's love and companion. Madeleine made the dress Claudia died in, she said she looked "splendid" in it. It wasn't Louis's to keep, even in memorium, because it wasn't "his". He took her dress, assigned grief and honor to it as a physical piece of his own emotions. Not the truth of what it was: a labor of love that had nothing to do with him. Madeleine seeing Claudia for who she is and loving her enough to make splendid yellow dresses, wander the world, leave humanity behind just for the possibility of their love overcoming whatever struggles and setbacks Claudia had as a vampire. Madeleine who saw her as the fierce vampire ADULT that she was, and not her forever-child.

Louis (and Lestat, though it seems to be for Louis's sake) wanted to see her so they could say goodbye and hopefully give Claudia peace. But she doesn't need that from him and doesn't want it from them, especially not Louis. What Claudia wants isn't an apology, or even for them to suffer, because they're not that important. She wasn't calling Louis, she didn't come back in the form of Regina. Neither of them matter once she vents on them like that. She wants her own Companion, her own coven. Madeleine is who makes her complete, not Louis or Lestat.

I want to believe that either Claudia's spirit is out there after breaking out of the circle, trying to find ways to contact Madeleine or get to her.

Or that maybe she did get some rest after this. Maybe they finally listened to what SHE wanted, burned the diary and the dress, stopped saying her name. It would be fitting if their grief, THEIR need for closure, was what was keeping her in purgatory (if that's in fact where she is). And finally being quiet and letting her go might be the first time that Louis has actually done as she's asked without being a TOTAL bitch about it.

It's basically the same as the scene in the book but compounded by aspects of Claudia's character from Interview with the Vampire and other books in the series. Claudia is evil and she embraces that—is that a new thing that you guys didn't realize?

She kills innocent people and takes sadistic pleasure in it. She dismembers her victims and keeps their rotting bodies in her room for her own enjoyment 😭. She has no shame and no desire to live up to human morality. Of course she prefers Lestat over Louis because she actually understands and respects Lestat—at least he knows he's evil, at least he embraces being a monster, at least he doesn't try to pretend to be good and human like Louis does.

She's also been wandering in purgatory and torment watching this man who took everything from her do the same fucking shit he's always done while parading the dollified memory of her around so he can use her like an object of his own pain—all while fucking the man who orchestrated her murder and wishing he was fucking the man who abused her and reading out her secret diary she never intended him or anyone to read for the world and FOR HER RAPIST??

Not for her. Not for her at all. All for his pain and his desires and her as a throw pillow for when he won't look at her kindly 💀. Literally paying girls like they're whores to dress up like her. Lestat knows he did Claudia wrong and he never pretended he didn't.

"But Claudia says she lied about what Lestat said on the train and that's bad" — okay?? Why?? 😭😭

She lied about Lestat saying one particularly vile and cruel thing to her to get Louis to side with her against him. IDK, she also slit Lestat's throat? 😭 It's not like she lied about how he treated her and the abuse he put her through. She told Louis a story she knew would get him upset. Why's that bad.

These are all dishonest and unreliable narrators. But Claudia can't be dishonest or biased or motivated in complicated ways cuz she's the pure one that doesn't lie? Like I don't get it.

It's the same as the scene in Merrick. Claudia calls Louis Lestat's slave in Interview with the Vampire(the book). I remember reading Merrick and thinking AMC IWTV would have a field day with this. And like. They did.

I guess everyone can be fucked up and have dark and complicated morals except for Claudia who's unambiguously good. So true.

Here’s some excerpts from the scene adapted from Merrick. In the book Claudia tells Louis she wants him to kill himself and she’s going to enjoy watching him do it, so really they held back