genuinely open to disagreement but delainey’s pained delivery of “bleak… black life” felt like the anti-black insults she was hurling at louis were intentionally loaded with her own grief. especially with her comments that claudias jealous that louis gets to wallow and love and live.
louis gets to be black and desired, cherished and wanted with his whole personhood. louis gets to fuck up, be fucked up, forgive and be forgiven; he gets to be black and a whole person. claudia is disabled into helplessness by her little girl body that seems to keep signalling people to treat her like a boxed doll. its not a coincidence that she gets louis to plot against lestat by telling him he’s a kept thing, telling him he is all the things she experiences. the anger in her voice when she calls louis a slave, it feels situated against the incessant inertia she was always running on because she had no other choice.
in nola, its claudia micromanaging with an eye and ear on everyone. she nurses louis after the drop, she maintains the thread of their plotting. in europe, its claudia learning the languages, claudia keeping up the story, claudia maintaining hypervigillance. she notices the bombs about to blow while louis’ being woeful and hallucinating lestat. louis gets to be lost in lestats eyes; louis gets to dance with humans in romania; louis gets to run around paris ‘out on the streets’ while shrugging off armands warnings. louis gets to be careless, gets to be oblivious, gets to drown in his pain and still be protected and unconditionally loved. what louis couldnt even give her
the blackness claudia navigates her life with is so radically different from louis’ that it makes a lot of sense that she so ardently hates his
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