無標題

It's sickness. Maybe the source of all your sickness.

rolin truly said this and believed it to be true, and that should be enough for everyone to know what kind of person he is:

they had claudia refer to her life as not only bleak, but specifically bleak and black. a character who was never ashamed of her blackness. they had her say that she hates louis more than her rapist, abuser, and the people that orchestrated her lynching and burned her lover alive. they completely destroyed her character and killed two birds with one stone, butchering who claudia always was/how she saw louis and lestat, and throwing in more insults and hate at louis while mostly ignoring lestat.

and making it so that claudia is suffering endlessly, even in death, felt like another purposeful story choice. not to make claudia's character even more heartbreaking, either. it was pointless no matter how you look at it. this just felt like yet another way to torture a black character, and a black character that has been repeatedly exploited all season for everyone else's feelings. furthermore, summoning claudia had no effect on louis and lestat at all, as they were immediately over it by the next scene.

none of the heavy storybeats can have any emotional impact because both us and the characters are never given time to absorb them. they're just checking boxes with these heavy moments and moving onto the next scene. and all of this is, again, so we can absolve lestat of his wrongdoings and ensure no blame falls on him. his trauma is the only important thing in the show and the only thing worth discussing/unpacking. it's just antiblack, misogynistic writing again and again every week and rehashing it feels pointless but i can't help myself.

aside from the blatant racism and misogynoir, i also get the impression that these writers are just trying to get their quoteable, hashtag-able, gif-worthy scenes each episode. who needs a cohesive plot when you can have lestat say "serving cunt has its consequences" or give the viewers an iconic shot of their favorite ship that feels entirely unearned—one of my examples of this being the fact that devils minion feels like they just put together a bunch of shots that they thought people would love, without actually telling a story with these two characters. everything we learn of their history and relationship is given to us through exposition. and because assad is such a fantastic actor, he's making these scraps into something interesting.

the showrunners are no longer pretending to be subtle with their sloppy writing, poor pacing, and hatred towards louis and claudia. they're just writing the racism right into the script and think that, because a black character says it, they're free from all criticism. and a majority of their nonblack fans are jumping to defend them by saying that claudia's rage is justified and if you claim otherwise (even if you're not saying that) then you can't accept black characters being cruel and/or evil. which isn't true at all.

claudia's rage is entirely justified, her berating the two people that were supposed to love her and put her first but instead used both her life and death for their own gain is not the issue here. she could've been as cruel as she wanted—but having her say a slew of horribly racist things to louis and direct most of her ire towards him as opposed to lestat or the both of them equally was nothing more than these antiblack writers once again degrading louis for their own enjoyment because they hate his character and know they can get away with dragging him through the mud. especially if they hide behind another black character.

even the decapitation at the end felt like a quick moment of shock to the viewer that turned comical immediately after. the abysmal pacing of this show makes it so that loustat being beheaded has no actual weight because we know they're fine and we're given no opportunity to sit with this moment. there are no stakes and there was no real buildup to it. nor to armand and daniel coming up with this plan and suddenly working together the way they are. in fact after the dust settled, id say the scene was borderline cartoonishly evil.

Also in this article he references that Lestat probably crafts the apartment for Louis but he describes none of what that would mean 😪

@likecopperlikesalt I LOVE this point you made; I needed to address it separately.

IWTV Musings: Abuse Victims CAN Still Take Control (Gabrielle/a de Lioncourt & LDPDL)

I get SO irritated when people in this fandom labor under the misconception that a victim MUST be perfectly useless; that they're weak, never fight back, never have any say, never wield control/power, and are total doormats at the utter whim of their partner. NO. Just because someone weaponizes their limited power does NOT mean they're NOT a victim. And I fear that AMC!Gabrielle/a is gonna get reamed by this pearl-clutching fandom when we see precisely how "chaotic / empowering, manipulative" and unhinged she is. Cuz yeah, she does do some effed up stuff, even in the book--as a way to try and gain agency over her life that had spiraled out of her control.

"she wanted to be free and she did not want to serve her husband as a dead vampire."

Before I get into the letter @likecopperlikesalt mentioned, I'll take their last point about FREEDOM first. Cuz it goes back to the whole kerfluffle over Gabrielle's name being changed to Gabriella, and the first hints we got at NYCC25:

Even in the book, it was clear that Gabrielle/a did NOT want to be married or live in Auvergne. But I was taken aback by Ehle saying Gabe didn't even choose to marry the Marquis--this was strictly a transactional arranged marriage; where she was SOLD off to him. 😬

So I REALLY like Rolin's explanation here; it puts things into a much clearer perspective. It goes back to my point about Arun vs Amadeo/Armand & what a slave name entails: when someone's taken against their will from their homeland/native culture, relocated somewhere they can't escape, and given a brand new name that erases their old identity. For all intents & purposes, Gabrielle is Gabriella's slave name--OOF. 😔

"the extent of her withholding info is delaying one letter about his abusive, blind father whom she at least tried to mitigate or soften some of his abuse of Lestat. And witholding info is maybe months, not like hundreds of years. It's not even on the same scale."

I am SOOOO excited for this! People in this braindead fandom keep acting like a problematic person can't also be a victim; like there aren't folks who give their husbands HELL strictly because they're victims of patriarchal abuse. The only way they can exert any agency/power is to make their husband's life miserable--lying, conniving, manipulating, withholding, etc., being a total wench.

Some Lestans think it's a gotcha! to point out that Louis & Gabrielle were the ones running their awful households into the mud--AND?!

book!Gabrielle lied all the time, DUH! Yes, Gabe is the one who let the Chateau de Lioncourt fall to wreck & ruin--because SHE didn't wanna give the Marquis or their sons anymore of her dowry money, knowing they'd just waste what little she had left on gambling & women & other stupidness. They were poor because SHE let them stay poor, and lied about how much money she had. SHE was the one in control: of the purse-strings; and SHE was the one who decided whether Lestat would go to the monastery/circus/Paris/etc; cussing out the Marquis when she had to, to make sure Lestat had as many chances to escape & thrive as possible; when SHE couldn't.

Lestat HATED living in poverty, and he resented Gabe A LOT for withholding--affection, literacy, money, etc. But he also came around to realizing WHY she hoarded all of her money away, and only spent it on her books--and things to help Lestat GTFO Auvergne.

She was PISSED in the PL Trilogy when Lestat renovated the Chateau and asked her to move back to Auvergne with him; the same way she was PISSED when she hid the letter about Lestat's brothers being guillotined, cuz she was like good riddance to bad rubbish; eff them kids! She was FINE letting them all die & leaving the Marquis stranded in the middle of the mobs & letting the castle crumble; lying to Lestat about what happened to his letters for weeks if not months on end.

Cuz she was abused, and miserable, and realized that the only power she held was through withholding, and manipulating/hiding the truth--about her finances, about the Revolution, etc; just to hold on to the little bit she had left. She wanted to keep Lestat close to her, too. And she was mad that he was still stuck holding on to his human family-just like LESTAT got mad at LOUIS, ironically. Because once again, yes, there are ways that spouses DO exert their own control & agency, while still operating under oppressive systems--even ones that LET them run roughshod, but simultaneously undermine them regardless.

Louis vs Lestat

Louis LITERALLY said "He didn't choose me to be his doormat. I knew he enjoyed it when I fought back." Louis deludes himself into thinking he's not a victim and wasn't abused because he DID fight back, and he DOES blamed himself and take accountability for the role he played in the Unholy Family imploding; internalizing every negative thing spewed at him at that disgusting Trail--the same exact garbage the Santiagoites in this rotten fandom had been saying ever since 1x5. They take the "negative" combative & confrontational head-f**k aspects of Louis' personality in bad faith, to BLAME him for everything by insisting how much "worse" he was than Lestat AND Armand; for having the nerve to stand up to them at all--and call HIM "the aggressor" & abuser towards Lestat AND Armand; while ignoring all the ways Lestat perpetuated his own father's patriarchal abuse (with his own sadistic twists); and ignoring how Armand gaslit TF out of Louis; the biggest headf**k on the show (x x x).

Louis gets his lickbacks from Lestat even outside the Ep5 Fight. I've BEEN saying since S1 that Louis has a lot of power in submission, because Louis IS a femme fatale in the Gothic genre; esp. vs Lestat. And whaddaya know, Jacob Anderson proved me right when he said he based his version Louis on the most famous Black maneaters/femme fatales in African American pop culture: Eartha Kitt & Grace Jones--cuz DUH! (x x). Is JA being a gender-essentialist misogynistic homophobe for feminizing Louis? NO! It's because there are BLATANT parallels with Louis and certain women in TVC that dingbats in this media illiterate fandom REFUSE to acknowledge, cuz they HATE giving Louis a SHRED of grace/credit as a gay Black man in Jim Crow who emulated/mimicked heteronormative traditional family values in his relationships, since that was the model during his time period Pre-Feminism & pre-Stonewall, DUH. Louis was determined to assert his masculinity and NOT be emasculated by his husbands, and he hit below the belt every effing chance to give as good/bad as he got. But his husbands trounced him every time he "acted out" and got too uppity, putting him right back in "his place."

But like I've said before, Gabrielle is FAR more successful than Louis is at resisting their crazy husband's influence, and living a more empowered life embracing the Dark Gifts, because despite the ways they're similar, there's very important ways they differ:

Gabrielle was HAPPY back in Italy, and just wanted to go back home. Lestat was HAPPY being in the monastery & in the circus. Louis told Lestat to his face "we were NEVER happy!," cuz Louis' been depressed his ENTIRE life, and has struggled his entire life. Jacob Anderson explained how Louis holds himself back just as much as other people hold him back, because he IS conflicted about his identity, and what he does & doesn't want in life; what he's deathly afraid to sacrifice or give up or let go of; with personal hangups that Gabrielle (let alone Lestat) NEVER felt or possessed.

Louis HATES himself, and he HATES his life, even after he's given the Dark Gift that liberated Gabrielle & Lestat. This is because of the FACT that Louis' NEVER felt "comfortable with who he is" in his own skin, as a Black closeted gay Catholic during Jim Crow--beaten down socio-economically because of his race, or forced to perform gender/sexuality by everyone he ever met, with the exception of PAUL. And even after he's a vampire, he thinks he's a "botched" job cuz he can't bring himself to get over killing humans as quickly as Lestat pushed him to; mocking him for wanting to go vegan or at least scale back & "be more selective" about not killing any ole soul.

IWTVL S3 Ep3 Musings - The Abuse Show