It's funny how some people don't have a problem with crosstagging until the post is about racism. Then all of a sudden it's, "Why are you crosstagging?", "This has nothing to do with my ship." When serious issues like racism are being discussed, crosstagging shouldn't be a problem because the ENTIRE fandom needs to see it. If that's where you draw the line, then that says a lot about you.
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theyâre straight up denying the abuse at this point
Was Louis not sufficiently hurt for them to consider it abuse? Was Louis not pissed off enough by the dismissive use of âfledglingâ by Lestat that he complains about the word sounding like âslaveâ? âDespiteâ the drop he was never âemotionally or psychologically abusedâ. He was never a victim of Lestat.
Tell me again how these are the same people who will use the âthis is a show about monstersâ when itâs hot and convenient, or call Armand a rapist for drinking from Lestat but will always invalidate Louisâ trauma to soften their white fave. These are the same people who LOVE Claudia. According to themselves, of course, but have decided that everything she has ever said is a lie, much like Louis.
Itâs exhausting, really. The worst part is that this comment is upvoted as hell, so itâs not a deranged person.
Iâm not one to claim which fucked up monster is more morally upstanding but you wonât see me denying the facts.
people thinking louis lied or was "just joking" about being molested by his cousin- even though louis also being a csa/incest victim on the same show where claudia, armand and lestat are, and where claudia's rape by bruce was an original addition that isn't found in the source material is not remotely unrealistic- is directly related to the way this episode presents claudia as a malicious manipulator about lestat threatening her on the train btw. the framing in s3ep6 opens the door for mostly-nonblack antiblack and anti-survivor viewers to question and dismiss the black leads' victimhood and frame this as "objective" and "media literate" engagement- plenty of them are already talking down to and mocking viewers who take what louis said seriously.
and ofc people will say to justify the ghost claudia scene "survivors lying about specific things doesn't mean they aren't survivors/what they said about their abuse in general isn't true" or "why won't you let claudia be a monster same as the male characters are" and these are bad faith rationalizations bc the people who claim they love the idea of claudia lying about lestat threatening her are the same people who would be up in arms about the merest suggestion that lestat lied about anything his mortal family in auvergne or gabriella did to him. and wrt the point about survivors lying not invalidating the truth of their experience, yes, this is something that's true about survivors in real life, but that is real life and tvl is a fictional story written by nonblack people- you have to be honest and ask yourself if the writers were remotely interested in claudia's interiority or experiences as a survivor when they wrote her in s3ep6 or if they were only trying to backpedal about one of the worst things lestat has ever done in an effort to make him more palatable and use a black character- a black woman who was lynched, which makes the use of antiblack dialogue for claudia even more ghoulish- as a mouthpiece to spew antiblack vitriol at the sole surviving black lead on the show.
"claudia lied about what lestat said in the train scene bc she was desperate to leave and get louis to leave with her and she needed something to move louis into action" could've been pulled off as a survivor-centric plot choice if it had been foreshadowed properly and if it had been introduced during s1-s2, when claudia was still an active protagonist in the story, her pov was represented in her own voice and there were still black writers on staff. it could've folded into the thematic arc of louis' story wrt pursuing truth and been handled in the context where the focus was claudia's pain, claudia's entrapment and resolve to escape no matter what, and landed on a note that centered the fundamental truth of claudia's experiences as an abuse victim and how she outwitted lestat and freed both herself and louis from him. how this concept is addressed in s3ep6 is not that- to start with, the entire seance and the entire season are within lestat's pov. the idea that we're "finally hearing the real claudia" is false bc everything from what she says to her mannerisms to how she looks as a ghost are filtered through her abusive white father's pov.
how the train scene is mentioned in the seance isn't presented in the context of claudia convincing louis to escape lestat and outmaneuvering lestat- it's in the context of humiliating louis for being gullible and easy to manipulate for *checks notes* believing his daughter when she told him her other father threatened to do worse than rape her. louis is constantly villainized by viewers for the bad ways he reacts to armand and lestat's history of sa and for how claudia had to push louis to leave once lestat's abuse escalated in s1ep5-s1ep7- but when louis reacts to claudia as a good, responsible parent should and believes her when she tells him lestat threatened her, that too is presented as a sign of louis' weakness, stupidity and passivity. (and people are being willfully obtuse about this bc everyone largely agrees "except he just threatened me with it" "nah doesn't sound like him" in s2ep4 was one of louis' worst moments ever.) this decision can't be separated from the nonblack writers also choosing to have claudia volley explicitly antiblack, bioessentialist vitriol at louis and framing her as possessing an internalized antiblackness she never expressed in her own diaries ("bleak, black life" where her white companion was the only good thing about it.) when claudia compared herself and louis to lestat's slaves in s1 (back when the show had black writers) her words about herself and louis being lestat's slaves from the book was adapted as a incisive comment about lestat's oppressive control and white supremacy- lestat and his behavior were the focus of her mockery. but when ghost claudia calls louis a slave bc he has a mark on his ribs in s3, it plays into the white supremacist idea that was reinforced through decades of enslavement in the states where enslavers and their enablers argued black people had inherent, biologically ingrained passive traits and needed the white race's superior guidance to control and protect them.
and regardless of what in-universe reasoning people buy into to explain ghost claudia saying that, the problem is the all-nonblack writers choosing to write that rhetoric for a black woman who was murdered in a lynching (that the show refuses to call a lynching) and the white showrunner gleefully calling arguably the most antiblack scene of the show the best scene they ever wrote for their dead black fem lead (yes s3ep6 is worse than all of s2ep7 or s1ep3 or anything else the white supremacists in nola or the kkkoven did, bc in those scenes the focus was on the evil of the white supremacists while in s3ep6 the antiblackness is metatextual, reflective of the writers' biases and uncritically framed)
claudia could've called louis out for putting hands on her same as lestat had done- she could've pulled on the stories in merrick's mind from her family to call louis out for profiting off the backs of working class black women and then tryna make claudia, one black girl then woman among many, the symbol of his redemption at the expense of her pain. hell they even could've explained claudia's rage mainly being targeted at louis and not as much at lestat by having the seance be louis' idea, giving louis a several-episode arc of interacting with merrick then convincing her to call on claudia's spirit so claudia would be angry at him for wanting to yank her into the world of the living again to assuage his own guilt, instead of nonblack writers thinking the primary way to wound and call out a black lynching survivor is by having a black woman who didn't survive that lynching use antiblack language. it didn't feel incisive or truly cutting or had anything to do with louis' canon flaws unless you already thought the worst of him (as many viewers do) and fanon'ed him as the kind of eternally passive, navel-gazing patsy he was in the source material. louis in the show is not that character, and it exposes the thoughtlessness and antiblackness of the all-nonblack writers that they adapted the merrick scene without considering how louis and claudia's show characters and dynamic would modify the scene. the only change they seem to have made based on louis and claudia's blackness is by throwing in antiblack dialogue. it's such a tarantino (derogatory) move where the white showrunner knows he can't say certain things about black characters as himself irl, so he uses a black character as a mouthpiece in a fictional script to express that racist impulse.
when you take all of this into account, it's completely unsurprising that a large number of viewers who watched this scene and saw nothing wrong with it or even reveled in the antiblackness of it bc they've been feening for louis to be humbled and humiliated and taken down a peg for 4 years now (he's too arrogant and uppity you see) have also decided louis isn't telling the truth about being molested in the same episode, and he was just being provocative or he was just joking bc they can't conceptualize that louis is a victim of csa/incest like the other main characters are- they need to maintain this image they have of louis as "the most privileged black man in america", an inherently sexually predatory eternal pimp, and play into this either/or idea of sexual abusers and victims as discrete categories with no overlap in order to continue rationalizing their lack of empathy for him. (even though the framing of the entire bar scene is unserious and the tone it aims for undercuts the severity of lestat's reaction on the sidewalk and grinds that emotional momentum to a halt too.) and it's so predictable that so many antiblack viewers would be emboldened to deny louis being a survivor after watching s3ep6, saying he was never molested and it didn't happen even when louis says it did, bc this episode in its narrative framing is built on denying a black woman her depth and interiority in service of her abusive white father's arc.
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Just because it came up yesterday too, I always thought that the way the fans completely divorced AMCs Claudia from her Blackness was a very insidious form of misogynoir that I admit, was new for me (within a fan space).
Like, everyone "likes" her! But in that very "girl boss girl power" white feminism way where they erase everything about the source of the power out, in order to subsume it. And it's weird because to me, it showed that, just like how they did with Louis, they did not engage with how Claudia's Blackness was another important part of her story. Despite it being quite spoonfed in season 2, tbh.
Think about it. Claudia is 1) Black, 2) female, 3) queer, and 4) trapped in a child's body, forever. This is like, the torment nexus of Lacking Power and Autonomy In Society đ Going unheard, that resentment against the world for not taking her and her needs and her desires seriously, from inside the home and on. Of having to build a wall of strength and resilience to protect herself, of always Taking Care of Business because her goof ass brother certainly isn't gonna do it! Of having to grasp power her own way, because it will never be considered for her. Yet, somehow still a threat.
To me, AMCs Claudia is a very beautifully written example of a Black Woman that is Angry, who would be treated like an Angry Black Woman. So many of these fans HATE real world Claudia's! Because I've seen her rage and exhaustion, her fire to fight (Akasha's too), in so many of us. And yet we don't get the girl power, girl boss label- until it's time to Need us. Otherwise, you're just a Bully.
And so it was so bizarre witnessing people just... Water that down for her. To not even bother to notice it, outside of "angry at men". Idk. One of those "your favorites would hate you" situations.
the way some people who love tvl aren't content to just enjoy the season on its own terms but seek out and try to shut down any critique of the season shows how insecure and anxious they are about what this season depicts- and the fact that they're worried that the critics specifically of the show's bigotry might be right or might be making valid points, and what they think it might say about them that they enjoy tvl despite (or honestly sometimes because of) the writing's descent into narrative antiblackness, queerphobia and even more overt misogyny than what was in s1-s2. a lot of mostly-nonblack, and within that group mostly-white, viewers have either been completely oblivious to the textually racist choices of s3, unbothered by it, or even straight-up reveling in it- however, these are viewers who for the most part self-identify as "liberal" or "progressive" or "anti-racist", and they attach more value to those labels than they care about the work of actually being progressive and anti-racist. this is why so many white people act like being called a racist is a more grievous offense than actually being racist, and why they think a black person calling out racism (even in "polite" and conciliatory tones that are usually perceived as attacks and aggression anyway) is worse than a white person being racist. and despite a lot of performative claims about how these characters are all monsters and all evil and what they enjoy in fiction has nothing to do with their real politics or morals, these viewers identify extremely closely with the show and it's an integral part of their fannish identity online, to the point that they perceive any criticism of the show as an attack on themselves. there's also a fair amount of moral anxiety involved bc despite the performative gothic genre monster evil edgelord posting, a lot of them tacitly buy into the idea that they're good people with progressive values, this is an inherent quality about them instead of goodness or progressiveness being an active form of work that you do, therefore anything they enjoy and identify with has to be good and progressive.
and that brings us to the critique of tvl's bigotry and where the cognitive dissonance kicks in- these are liberal(tm) and progressive(tm) viewers- they're good(tm) people. and they know a good and liberal and progressive person should notice and care about racism. they've probably retweeted or reblogged some posts about how representation matters or how good jacob anderson is as louis and they might even have blacklivesmatter in their account bio. but the reality is they don't actually recognize, or if they do they don't care about, the racism in tvl- and they love tvl and still identify with it deeply, to the point that any criticism about it stings and makes them feel like they're the ones being criticized, they're the ones being judged for enjoying it. and it's one thing when the parts of the show being criticized are about awkward scripting or bad pacing, but it's another when the critique feels destabilizing to their sense of self as a liberal(tm) progressive(tm) good(tm) person- and it's a lot more comforting in the moment to lash out at the person voicing the criticism about tvl's racism or queerphobia or misogyny or anti-survivor bias and say no, the show isn't bigoted (and therefore i'm not bigoted for uncritically enjoying it), you're the problem and what you're saying is completely untrue and meaningless bc you just hate lestat/you're a bitter armand fan/you're a bitter louis fan/this is all unserious ship and stan wars and there's no depth or legitimacy to what you're saying. even if the critique at no point suggests "you're a bad person for liking this show" or "i'm judging you for liking this show" (bc liking fucked up or flawed or "problematic" media doesn't make you an inherently bad or bigoted person, it's perfectly possible to go "yeah these parts had problems, but this work still resonated with me for xyz reasons") they feel judged, they feel like they're being called a bad person, and only by finding a way to dismiss the critique wholesale can they soothe the moral anxiety they feel.
ian danskin talks about this phenomenon in his series on gamergate (if you don't know about gamergate i really rec reading up on it bc so many reactionary currents online and in fandom can be traced back to it, it's foundational, and this video series is a good intro point to explain it). here's a relevant excerpt about the hate campaigns against anita sarkeesian for announcing her series talking about misogyny in video games-
"itâs all about perception, about what jack (context- "angry jack" is the stand-in figure ian uses for mostly-white-cishet men who participated in the reactionary hate and harassment campaigns of the gamergate movement) wants the world to *feel* like. itâs a world where bigotry of all stripes exists as purely rhetorical abstractions- theyâre all just ideas to him, and he can choose the ideas that make him most comfortable. all jack needs is a reason for anita sarkeesian to be wrong- or better yet, lying. the reason doesnât have to be good, itâs purely utilitarian. it only needs to serve its purpose, to insist the doctorâs a quack and justify getting a second opinion. this is why sarkeesianâs critics canât politely disagree with her- they have to treat her with *contempt*. the whole point is to spare themselves from actually considering her arguments, so her arguments have to be *beneath* considerationâŚmost of sarkeesianâs detractors are not trying to destroy her, although they do want her gone. jack is not a psychopath- since his only understanding of a sexist is shunning, shaming or incarcerating, he reads any critique of his gender politics as an appeal to shun, shame or incarcerate *him*. heâs a guy whoâs terrified of who he is if the world sarkeesian describes is real, of how heâd be treated there, of what it would ask of him, of what his conscience would tell him to do."
and although the iwtvl fandom skews more politically "liberal" and is dominated by women and queerfolk (still white-majority and white-centric though, as most fandoms are) we're seeing a different version of the same phenomenon happening with the response to tvl. we've even seen with the white-majority critics who are so defensive of even a minority of fan criticism being fielded at tvl- of the reception to the season being merely mixed/uneven with the general audience than universally glowing- that they wrote multiple articles berating fans for "watching tvl wrong" and not being patient enough with the show, despite their awareness of s3ep6 and its antiblack dialogue. (some of those white critics have ofc started publicly backpedaling.) and we're still seeing it with the way so many fans with alleged progressive beliefs have committed themselves to not only defending tvl and denying its racism on their own pages, but actively seek out critique that upsets them and makes them feel attacked so they can try to "debunk" it and prove the people sharing those critical thoughts are lying or making things up and there's nothing substantive behind what we say. and ironically, by trying so hard to protect their progressive self-image, they end up playing into the exact type of conservative rhetoric and denial that has fox news pundits talking about how america isn't a racist country and black people are trying to make them falsely believe america is a racist country by continuing to be uppity troublemakers and talking about racism, or how if you talk about white supremacist christian hegemony you're attacking everyone who enjoys christmas or something. we can all pretend the problem doesn't exist if you don't create the problem by giving voice to it. there's no antiblackness here. there's no queerphobia here. i'm a good and progressive person and i would never passively go along with a bigoted status quo- you're lying to take away the things i enjoy and identify with (you're lying to slander me). if no one says the emperor has no clothes, we can all close our eyes and ears to what's plainly there and keep talking about the wonderful stitching on the emperor's shirt.
the seance scene... the more i turn it around in my head the more insulting and disgusting it is. not only it isn't given the weight it needs by making louis and lestat get over it so quickly and bonding over it (!!!!!) but it also destroys the tragedy of louis and claudia's dynamic. saying that claudia preferred lestat to louis and only chose louis to run away with her because he was easier to manipulate completely undermines the love claudia had for him. they had a complex relationship! claudia hated him and loved him so deeply all throughout her life. she loved him so much! she came back to rue royale because she knew he couldn't get out of that abusive relationship by himself. because she wanted to save him. she nurtered and took care of him for months after the drop. she tolerated lestat for him! even after he chose armand over her in paris, she still visited him with madeleine. she screamed his name in the trial after they dragged him away.
louis and claudia's relationship is tragic and doomed. it's not black and white! she hated him for what he did and how he failed her and she loved him deeply! that's her father/brother she couldn't save, who would never choose her first, who would always put someone else before her. that's why it hurts! it's crazy to even think she hates louis and lestat the same amount
retconning this to portray lestat in a better light makes no sense, because it doesn't even make him more likeable. instead of justifying his abuse or revealing that the poc characters were actually lying/manipulating each other they should've made him acknowledge his actions and look at what he did to those he loved in the eye. this is disgusting, cowardly and bad writing
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omg i hate seeing reductive takes that reduce all of the reasonable reasons why people (esp black viewers) are upset with claudiaâs recent portrayal just boiling down to âoh you hate the show where the characters are bad and they do bad thingsâ or âyou just canât handle an evil female characterâ
no one has a problem with either of those things, like in the first claudia kept a journal just to write down the last words of people she killed and kept souvenirs from them and everyone clapped and cheered
people are upset that a black character who was written in those first two season to be pro-black and a complicated, nuanced relationship with louis be reduced to a one-dimensional ďżź caricature
claudia in the first season compared lestat to a white slave owner and said that he treated her and louis like house slaves but that she would set them both free.
why now, does she barely have any words for lestat and the part he played in the trail instead ALL of her ire is directed at louis
she even says that it was lestatâs blood that made and louis ainât no kin to her. thatâs insane to me, claudia would be mad at louis for everything heâs done but she would never say that when she didnât even want Madeline to have lestatâs blood in her
and in the second season one of the reasons claudia initially liked and trusted armand was because he was brown like her and louis
now weâre just completely ignoring the role race plays in this show to have her dig into louis while absconding lestat of all blame
the other take iâve seen is âoh well this happens in the booksâ yes but in the books claudia is 5 year old little white girl and louis was a white plantation owner, he literally owned slaves. like i think weâre a bit past everything having to be exactly like the books get a fucking grip
and i know for a fact if claudia said half of the things she said about louis to lestat and tore into him people would be singing a much different tune
The idea of creating the first Black vampires in a mainstream LGBTQ gothic drama show, knowing how important milestones in media like this are to Black people, infusing those characters with lovable qualities and relatable traumas, and then selling out to white supremacy and letting down all of your Black fans. This is just so sad and mean.
Call to Action - Reporting Anti-Blackness in The Vampire Lestat (2026)
I'm not tagging this as "tvlcritical" because this issue goes beyond audience or critic opinions of AMC's The Vampire Lestat (TVL) also known as Season 3 of Interview with the Vampire. This isnât a difference of character perspective, tone, âimmoral charactersâ, âgothic fictionââthe writing in the "Montreal" episode is blatant hatred for Black people.
What happened?
The episode titled "Montreal" aired on Sunday, July 12, 2026 with Kevin Hanna and Ryan Kattner credited as writers; the rest of the writer's room consists of Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, Jonathan Ceniceroz, Anusree Roy, and Daniel Hart. There are zero Black writers on TVL.
3x06 is violently and proudly anti-Black, full stop. The language written and greenlit by AMC was racist, full stop. The Black actorsâJacob Anderson, Delainey Hayles, and Sarah Affulâare not responsible for the script written by a non-Black writer's room. These actors work in a deeply anti-Black industry and have to navigate the ever-present threat of being fired and/or blacklisted for any "flaw" in their performance and conduct on set/in promotional materials or events.
There is zero excuse or justification for the anti-Black language used in TVL to date. We cannot allow this hatred to be met with silence.
What can I do?
Report this episode to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Hollywood Bureau which specializes in anti-Blackness in television and film. Important details to include is the writers, episode release date, and the racist material in question. All of this information is available under the cut.
Emails to the NAACP should be addressed as "ATTENTION: Report, Hollywood Bureau" and sent to [email protected]
Emails to AMC can be sent to three TVL-specific Public Relations contacts:
The choice is yours, but I will personally be copying the AMC contacts on my email to the NAACP. This is a serious matter and it needs to be treated as such.
Many thanks to @dulacloverboy for pulling contact info together for the NAACP and AMC <3
AMC Networkâs âThe Vampire Lestatâ (2026) episode titled âMontrealâ aired on Sunday, July 12, 2026.
Credited writers are Kevin Hanna and Ryan Kattner. There are zero Black writers on staff for "The Vampire Lestat".
The "Montreal" episode included the following language:
00:44:24 - "'Cause there's a little etching on your ribcage says you're a 'slave'."
00:45:10 - "Get this into your nappy little head."
00:46:08 - "How I ginned up the train for the slave, here."Â Â
00:47:27 - "The one good thing in my bleak, Black life."Â
My email was long, cuz I also described in detail and directly linked them to additional receipts about AMC's racism, including:
the racist AF Trail and the insufficient language minimizing it as a "stoning" when Jacob explicitly called it a "lynching". Because the context of Claudia's death directly plays into just how egregious it is for her ghost to be using antiblack racist slurs against LOUIS, meanwhile her WHITE father who HELPED her get LYNCHED gets off scott free?! Make that make sense!
AMC's pisspoor racist AF marketing sidelining the Bipoc cast (with links to all the wild ish Mark Johnson & Kim Granito & Hannah Moscovitch said to downplay the Bipoc cast's importance and distance themselves from the Bipoc fanbase in order to pander to Heated Rivalry's predominately-white fanbase instead)
Let the NAACP know ALL tea, everybody. Cuz this ish has been going on for A WHILE.
seeing how underwhelming the doomsday lineup in the concept art makes me even more angry seeing how post endgame mcu introduced so many women and poc only for a lot of them to be sidelined and written off in favor of making the movie about the same three white guys (rdj, chris evans, chris hemsworth) and the all white non mcu x-men cast members. Avengers 5 and 6 were supposed to be more diverse only to focus once again on the same three white guys with all the women and poc as side characters
for starters, no recast Kang, Riri, she-hulk and America Chavez are confirmed to not appear, Carol and Monica's main subplot where they reunite was cut, Nick Fury and Rhodey being forgotten and screwed over despite the two of them having been in the mcu since the very beginning (even though the latter was played by a different actor), only for neither of them to be confirmed for doomsday etc
Defending a Black female character from a piece of media I may or may not even consume, no matter what she does, because I know of the racist, misogynistic double standard that her actions would be perceived differently to the audience if she were a white man. Name the character, go:
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I know this has been discussed plenty, but I saw these comments earlier, so it's still a topic, but how exactly did Sam treat Walker like shit?
Sure Bucky was very upfront with his dislike of Walker, and even recently still doesn't like him, but what did Sam do besides decline to work with Walker? What exactly did Sam do or say that equals treating Walker like shit? As I recall, Sam tried multiple times to de-escalate, and we saw Walker escalate situations. In their first sit down talk, we found out that Walker and Lemar hacked Redwing, and that's how they found Sam and Bucky. Despite that, and despite the fact that they had no new information to add, Sam still shared what he knew so far. Walker, at the end of their conversation, hits Sam with that "wingman" bit which folks like to ignore for what it is. Sam even says, "it's always that last line." During the rest of the show, Sam is as cordial as possible even though Walker isn't. He tries to pick a fight with Sam after his role in messing up the talk with Karli. Even after Walker wrongfully killed Nico, Sam tries to reason with him, but Walker escalates that situation too. At no point during that fight were Sam or Bucky trying to kill him, but Walker does attempt to kill Sam. Again, what did Sam do or say that equals treating Walker like shit?
