#claudia asks

It’s hard to know for sure at this stage, but my reading of what she said in that scene is that her spirit is disrupted / called forth to them (willingly or unwillingly) every time one of them talks about her or says her name, so I think the scope of what she knows is actually pretty limited. I think it’s why a lot of her fury and vitriol was aimed at Louis too - he hasn’t really stopped talking about her for the last seventy years (because he genuinely loves her!), but I think that goes to what Jacob was saying after s2 and more recently that Louis’ really always felt like she belonged to him. She’s still the gothic heroine, trapped in the house with the monsters, just where Lestat made her feel that way most when she was alive (and she killed him for it), Louis’ made her feel that way most in her death, a wound that probably started to fester on that stage when she found out Louis had misrepresented, however accidentally or unintentionally, the events of her turning, which is why that came up again here.

Answering in good faith, anon, but abuse isn't about disregard or selfishness or even necessarily cruelty. Abuse is, as per the UN's definition, 'a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.' Lestat's withholding of information around the broader vampiric society, and the way he cherry picked what information he gave Louis and Claudia in New Orleans about vampiric powers was fundamentally abusive, no matter the complexity of his motivations, because it was ultimately about maintaining control of the household and keeping them together.

It doesn't matter if he did that out of feelings of insecurity or loneliness or worry or order or love or entitlement. In that withholding of information, he took away Louis and Claudia's ability to make informed choices about their lives, which Claudia paid the ultimate price for with her life. It's why that release of control both in letting Louis and Claudia kill him, but also in letting Louis go in Paris, are vital parts of Lestat breaking the cycle and a tangible demonstration of growth.

It's also, pointedly, a cycle Louis hasn't broken himself yet with Claudia, as his hold on her diaries and use of them are an embodiment of his own pattern of abusive behaviour towards her.

And Louis' name in Lestat's phone being a reference to Tis Pity She's a Whore which is about incestuous relationship between brother and sister....

Totally, anon, that level of exploitation runs really rampantly through that sequence and this arc more broadly. Kind of interestingly though, I don't necessarily think the pornification of Claudia and Madeline's relationship there was purely about exploitation (although it was there), but also really deeply rooted in fantasy and Louis having to reconcile with exactly what her age at both her deaths deprived her of. It felt really tied to the conversation all the way back in 1.05 to me in that sense, where Claudia grapples with this reality of her romantic and sexual future:

Madeleine was, in many ways, a part of Louis' own grappling with that, and his decision to make her for Claudia was as much an acknowledgement of what he'd done to her as it was an attempt to absolve himself of that. He knew, even then, that he couldn't love her enough or in the ways that she wanted, and while he resented giving her a companion (I do always tend to see Madeleine's turning as symbolically a father giving his daughter away), it's also important that Claudia and Louis made her together. The act in itself was an incestuous one - Claudia had been daughter, sister, now, there, she and Louis were also mother and father, making a daughter in Madeleine to whom Louis would feel no bond.

The deliberate juxtaposition in this episode with 2.06, the last time outside of the trial Louis sees them, is the exploitation and sexualisation of their memory, but I think it's also Louis trying to repeat the cycle and make a third with Regina again, collapsing his role as father and husband as they are during Madeleine's turning (especially interesting then that Louis and Regina roleplay as siblings then instead). A part of that though is, I think, Louis trying to imagine an adult life for Claudia that she never truly got the chance to live.

In some ways, this scene feels more in-conversation with the Bruce sequence to me than it does with the scenes of Regina in the last episode, because it's inherently about empty fantasy first, exploitation second. Regina's not Claudia, this woman isn't Madeleine, yes, they're both being paid to be there, but seemingly knowingly, willingly, which means Louis' sitting with regret and an ending he's trying to re-write. He can't deal with Bruce now and have it mean anything because Claudia is dead, he can't make believe Claudia an autonomous, adult life, because Claudia is dead, and he can't have a stranger roleplay a romance with her either, because not only is Claudia dead, but so is Madeleine, his first and only fledgling. The past isn't reconciled through recreation, nor is it truly remembered.

He's antagonistic at mentions and towards Armand, he made a performance referencing Claudia (which is to me the most icky out of everything to he honest), he wrote a song for her, he constantly makes digs at Sam and clearly doesn't want to deal with him.

Meanwhile Louis is paying a woman to roleplay as his daughter and let her write in her diaries!!!!! Which is insane to me. And of course let's not forget reading her recounting of her rape to rapist himself. And of course, the book's existence.

Man, I don't know, maybe I misjudging situation, but so far Louis is way more exploiting one. I wonder, if it will affect how seance will go? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she has plenty of stuff to say to Lestat.

But If she's a GHOST (I'm theorising here) she's probably knows what happened after trial? Maybe she knows Lestat wasn't there willingly???? If he wasn't there willingly lol I mean Sam talked about all this hints about it. Perhaps, Claudia's rage won't be so focused on Lestat?

Listen, I have no idea how ghosts work, if Claudia sees everything what happens or not. But it's interesting to think about.

Mm, I definitely hear your points, but I actually don't know if how they're handling their feelings around Claudia's death are entirely comparable? They're different characters, with different relationships to her, different backgrounds, different experiences of the trial, Paris and everything that went down there, and, frankly, characters with deeply different understandings of story, performance and how quickly both can spiral out of control.

I do think a big part of the complexity with what Louis' doing and how he's handling everything comes from the fact that he's had her diaries for over seventy years and has read them to a point he knows them inside and out. They had an enmeshed relationship before she died, but the possession of her voice does I think give him a sense of ownership of her story, her character, her. That, I think, is really seen in his naivety of sharing those diaries with Daniel and assuming her memory would remain preserved and that she wouldn't be touched by the world beyond the apartment in Dubai.

Interestingly, that ties deeply to Louis' experience of art. He understands it as something owned and kept in private galleries or personal libraries, and even the work that he's moved by is a profoundly personal experience to him. The release of the book and the sudden exposure of her to the world is something he instigated but it isn't something he was prepared for, and the way he's subsequently grappled with her memory and his own grief is something - I think - that he's tried to draw walls around. Public revelations have become private shows, what he's doing with Bruce, what he's doing with Regina, are for him, personal commissions his vampiric power and his wealth / class power afford him, and importantly ones he completely controls, unlike the situation with Daniel. Still, they're steeped in his sense of ownership of her diaries - Regina has one of them! Or at least, is making notes in one identical to one of Claudia's on the boat.

His grief is about him, but then, so is Lestat's.

It's kind of an interesting thing, because Lestat doesn't have the mixed blessing of having had Claudia's diary for 70-odd years, his relationship with her is punctuated not by enmeshment, but by distance and othering, and in some ways, that's further embodied by the fact that he didn't know about the book before its release and was met with the sight of a girl in the costume of his daughter on Halloween. Lestat experiences the whip of the tail of the creature Louis let out, and as a result, he's able to make different choices.

Would Lestat have talked more about Claudia, sung more about her, used her memory more in his own work if it wasn't for Louis' interview becoming something out of their familial control? I don't know! It pretty clearly did shape how Lestat shared Nicki's story with Daniel, so that's a factor to consider, but Lestat also has a very different understanding of how art exists and who it's for and how narratives can be exploited. Lestat's worked as an artist, he was raped and murdered for his art, he understands audience and he understands how quickly a story can be taken from you and twisted in the hands of others. He understands art as public in all the ways Louis has historically understood it as private.

Lestat also though doesn't have that same sense of ownership over her because they weren't enmeshed, weren't as close or entangled, but also he didn't save her, and never had the chance to reconcile with her the way he did with Louis. The separation there is important, and also weights Lestat's inability to talk about her or really face the memory of her at all prior to these last two episodes, and the fact that he first would outside of the moment with Gabi through styling himself after her to bitingly mock Armand is selfish and exploitative too. It's a personal jab, but one he knows is being publicly recorded given the phones in the crowd and the trajectory of the band, and how that could snowball is something that prioritises his anger over Claudia's memory.

The song Lestat writes for her in this episode is a beautiful one, but in writing about her at all I think the show does pose an interesting question about whether or not it's possible to create artwork about someone dead without in some way exploiting their memory. It's not a question I think really has an answer, but it's one being asked especially as that song is placed alongside an oeuvre made of equal parts honesty and malintent, whether they're personally provocative like Big Boss or have bigger machinations at play with the 'make more' song ahead of the Great Conversion.

There is, of course, a purity of intent at least with something like Stained Glass Eyes, authenticity in expression, but I think you could make the case that boiling down what Louis' doing, on a character level, with Regina right now to its most base form is a pure intent and authentic expression too. He wants to see his daughter again, just where Lestat can explore that feeling through music, Louis currently only knows how to open his wallet and ask a stranger to play make believe with him.

In a lot of ways though that, to me, feels like it's a product of how Louis' grief has compounded in a way that Lestat's hasn't. Lestat's avoided the feeling, Louis' worn it, but Louis' is also more deeply perverted by the fact that he and Claudia were enmeshed, and, as I said above, his possession of her diaries for near a century has warped into a feeling of ownership of her more broadly. That part of it isn't necessarily about exploitation, I don't think, but more about the very specific way he was abusive of her which is different to the way Lestat himself was abusive of, well, both of them.

It's a really, really beautiful song, anons, and it felt like another really effective turning point in the music. I've loved how much the show has played around with this sort of rhythm where Lestat's journey to artistic and emotional authenticity isn't a straight line, that he's always one step forwards, two steps back, that it's Your Biggest Fan before The Loneliness, that it's Plastic Fiends and Big Boss before it's Hit the Lights, that it's Big Bad Wolf before it's Stained Glass Eyes. That the truth of him is below these layers of posturing and showmanship, minimisation and manicness and playfulness, and that honesty and vulnerability isn't the destination, but rather the thing that's always there, beneath everything else. It really comes through both in the writing and Sam's performance, especially in his vocals, and I just - - love it so much.

And I love that idea too that the stained glass eyes is a meeting point between Louis' church window eyes and Lestat's blue sky/summer day eyes! That somehow in her face is Lestat's light pouring out of Louis' features! She's their daughter!! Which feels especially true with Lestat singing her making as her birth and not her turning - she really was never anything else to him but their daughter, and in a season that's emphasised how much those familial roles can fall apart of be perverted, it feels somehow all the more poignant.

Adore this show's focus on details and environmental storytelling

I love it so much too, anon! The titles work on their own, and I haven't seen Glorifying the American Girl, so will put that one aside, but I've seen all of The Gold Diggers films! I've seen what I can of both the original 1923 silent film, and the 1929 remake, which is what that poster is for (both films are unfortunately partially lost, so there's only about half you can still watch [and you can watch them both in their partial assemblies on YouTube]), and I've seen the 1933 remake too which I love - it's an early Joan Blondell film! Queen! - and the subsequent sequels and spinoffs, Gold Diggers of 1935 and Gold Diggers of 1937.

One of the things that I really love about them is that while they're ultimately musical variety romantic comedies (a tragically underserved genre these days, haha), they really understand and are, at their core, about the lack of financial autonomy and social freedom women have in the 20s and 30s, and how performance was a way to get both (even though they all end up married - it was the 20s/30s, haha), which I think speaks to both Claudia and Regina.

Regina's performance now is for financial autonomy, of course, just as Claudia's time performing with Theatres des Vampires was her trying to find and achieve a social freedom, as well as a creative one, which is pretty central to those films too.

What's especially interesting to me in the choice of that poster though is that they went specifically for the 1929 film's poster, which was not only the remake of the original silent film, but actually the second all-talking, all-colour feature ever made.

I was really expecting Regina to look like someone else / be played by a different actress too, anon (or at least, I was until the last After Dark episode where Delainey spoiled it, haha), so the fact that Regina really is a doppelganger rather than a projection just totally wrecked me. It feels like such a stark juxtaposition to the ways Lestat and Louis have been handling their grief, because Louis' been chasing the memory of her for decades, but Lestat's pushed her away because he hasn't allowed himself the right to remember her (he was never her - -).

For those two realities of their grief to collide like that, for Louis to have to remember that there's no way to relive or re-do, and for Lestat to have to face the fact that his memories of her are just beneath the surface, was just perfect to me, and really beautifully and devastatingly done. For her to open that door musically too jut -- yeah.

Claudia song is so ;( same I cried. Their confrontation (not really) juxtaposed with his encounter with Regina in such a stark contrast, Claudia just had so many different things in her eyes unsaid when she was looking at Lestat through the glass.

Louis was really in a dark way even still - tbh I thought 'I own the night' denoted his reconciliation but maybe it only meant vampirism - Lestat seems to be the one who's really dealing with his personal issue/muses in a healthier way???? Louis you didn't like you in the book but you're still so selfish????????? Sooooo ready for these two to talk to each other D:

They did such a good job with his loneliness as the Keeper! There were so many fun layers to it, and I love the way you could really feel time passing through the objects Lestat brought back and the sounds outside and his running commentary of the world. It felt like a really nice way to capture Lestat's sense of curiosity and whimsy with the world, even though it was a job he was tasked with! The dinner party just ate me up too! I was wildly endeared by him having his brother's at the table (and am kind of fascinated by how his father and Augustin seem to have been flattened into the Marquis title for Lestat).

And god, everything with Claudia and Regina this episode just destroyed me. The artifice of the fake Madeleine, the boat and the HAND TOUCH (GOD), Lestat's visible pain at the diner, the flicker to Delainey!Claudia at the incinerator(!!!!!!!!!!!!), then everything about the song. I really, really loved it.