the light side of the moon

"i'm a showgirl in the shower" - ep4 "a puking princess on your bathroom floor" - ep1 "a crumpled crooner past his power" - likely refers to ep6, both because of ''crooner'' (a specific type of singer usually associated with sentimental songs) and ''crumpled'' - when louis was holding him on a street.

i'm very interested in these two verses:

"i've been wastin' time sittin' here for hours countin' down my fucked up crimes" - this seems to refer either to the dinner table hallucination from ep7, which we haven't seen yet outside of the teaser... or maybe to the ''failures'' records?

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.

Did none of the other Du Lacs know about this? Was he told not to tell anyone? Or, worse, did his parents know and he was still told not to tell anyone to uphold the illusion of an upstanding family? Does this have any bearing on why he used to be so reserved and tight lipped about his vulnerabilities? Does this add another layer as to why he used to recoil from his own sexuality, beyond the political landscape and his religious upbringing?

Does this play a role in his desperation to be seen as a good son and good brother and overall good family man, after being a victim of incest? And getting paid for it? What effect did this have on the way he views profit and exploitation? On the way he views himself? On the way he bases so much of his identity & self worth on his ties to other people?

Screaming from the rooftops that Louis was paid to be sexually abused by a family member! Was this a single event? Did this happen several times? How old was he??

I'm going to start this by saying if you're NOT BLACK and you come on here trying to tell me what other Black people are saying, or tell me about the books - A)you're getting blocked B) I know what you are - so stay in a white baby's place, which is not my comments.

See. the one thing that has remained true about all three seasons, is that Memory IS A Monster. Just not in the way these showrunners and writers are thinking.

The importance of having Black people in the writers room is not just the handling of dialog, but in the assistance of knowing details and the effect it may, or may not have on an audience. Now we know Rolin Jones wasn't eeeeeeeever going to allow them to call the trial a LYNCHING, because whiteness has to defend itself, but there are other things that stand out to me as a Black viewer.

The show has 3x better ratings than expected, constructive criticism isn't going to get it canceled

You don't seem to understand how progress works. Are you familiar with the overton window? Bc you don't get the gay black vampire show in the first place by keeping your mouth shut and being grateful for whatever slop Hollywood decides is good enough for you. Ppl had to keep speaking up and being exceptionally annoying to get where we are and they will actually keep taking more and more away from you if you do keep your mouth shut. When the director of Silence of the Lambs heard the feedback about transphobia, he said that militants are important to continuing progress in society and media. If that guy can take the criticism and be cool, so can Rolin Jones. And stop leaving it to the ppl who are directly affected by racist writing to do all the work.

This show has become less explicitly queer now that it has been made/come out during the second Trump term (James Dolan, friends with Trump is a ceo of Amc and was at the Lestat premier) the marketing has downplayed the diverse characters, the nonwhite characters have far less screentime (even Armand who has much more of a prescence in books 2 and 3). This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern in history when goverments become more fascist and conservative. If you're genuinely curious to learn more, the "You Must Remember This" podcast has a series about the red list in old Hollywood where basically any progressive hollywood creative was blacklisted especially if they were anti nazi "too soon" before the US decided to do anything about WWII (bc facsism was kind of our thing you see). And understanding the Hayes code, how it was implemeneted and fluctuated to suppresse any remotely peogresive ideas is important to understand. Margaret Killjoy also has a few episodes on her "Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff" podcast about the progressive gay film making happening in Germany just before fascism took hold. Don't comply ahead of time. It does you no favors.

"You're risking the jobs of the actors of color by complaining"

Black writers and a director already lost their jobs. Do they not matter also? We can get into the pedantic arguments about whether the writing was racist or not, idrgaf. At the end of the day, getting rid of your black writers is a racist action in and of itself. Did they leave of their own volition? Maybe (and I'd be curious to know why ALL left if that's the case) but why not hire new black writers? At least one? You still have black main characters even if the new protagonist is white. Did AMC make them do it? Maybe so in which case it's worth yelling at AMC about it. And even if they did, I've seen showrunners quit over less so maybe Rolin sees caring about diverse stories as a 2020 fad that he's over now 🤷‍♀️

The poc characters have far less screentime already. Perhaps voicing our desire for them to have more screentime might I don't know...achieve something. Or you can just sit bk, be grateful for what they give you as they keep stripping away anything of value. Up to you I guess. I'm going to keep being annoying.

Also this argument is so deeply disingenuous. You should be supporting black creatives sure but maybe put that energy towards supporting black creatives who actually have creative control of their work. Directors, writers, producers, editors. Also, no one has been complaining about the poc actors. Every complaint i see has been couched in "obviously Jacob/Delainey/Assad are amazing but..."

"Shouldn't you care about what black ppl are going through in the real world instead?"

You're never going to believe this but a lot of us can do 2 things at once. In fact, most of the ppl I see criticize the racism of the show care about real world shit. Scroll down our blogs and you'll find current events, history, mutual aid fundraisers, commentary on what's happening in the world. It's almost as though caring about racism in reality might translate to caring about representation in media. It's almost as tho caring about racism in the real world might have attracted us to the initial themes of the show in the first place.

"You guys just don't like complicated characters or understand gothic horror/you didn't read the books"

Most of the criticism I've read are from knowledgeable books fans. Gothic horror fans. Ppl who liked the nuance/morally grey aspect of the characters. Even ppl who shipped Loustat at the end of season 1. They have a lot of suggestions on small changes that could be done to that seance scene to fix it. (While still keeping Claudia's anger and character intact) perhaps you could read their input (I share a lot of what I see on my blog) instead of being disingenuous about what their actual criticism is.

"Only white ppl are complaining about this. Black ppl don't care amd they like the show"

So that's a lie 🤷‍♀️ the ppl I learned from about the nuanced ins and outs of this are black. Scroll on down this blog. Click on their blogs. Check em out. Learn something. I get that you got excited about the couple of black ppl you found to agree with you but, can't believe i have to say this, black folks are not a monolith?

"The show characters were always racist"

The show always dealt with themes of racism. Daniel said racist microaggressions. Lestat was racist. Yes. Correct. I haven't seen anyone argue that that was not the case. What i have seen them argue is that the show (without black writers to advise) has Daniel and Lestat say racist things for more shock value/humor with no pushback, in the exact same ways when culturally they would be different. It's almost as tho the writers are just making racist jokes they find funny. I recommend you check out Rolin's first tv show, Weeds, to see the same pattern. The show started as a critique of white wealthy sheltered suburbanites who were framed as being shitty for saying racist things. There were nonwhite characters who were not (at least not fully :/) stereotypes to show that the viewpoints were false. Then over the seasons, the racist white characters are just funny little blorbos who constantly make racist jokes unchecked with no poc of that group around to check them...sound familiar? No one is contradicting Lestat's narrative. Daniel has not been able to push bk on him the way he did on Louis. And Louis was not around Daniel to push bk on the kentucky fried chicken comment and Claudia is not around to push bk on Lestat's racism bc when she is around she's the one saying racist shit to Louis and says almost nothing negative to Lestat. At a certain point you're not making commentary, you're just reveling in saying racist things. And the ppl i see arguing against this are the same ppl i see repeating the kentucky fried chicken comment as their own joke. So i have a hard time taking them seriously when they claim that the writers aren't racist, they are just writing dialogue for a racist gothic horror character. Are the writers writing your dialogue too?

SAM: It's really crazy. It's really wild.

AUTUMN: I can't wait to watch it cause I've got to say six really broke me. It really broke me down. So, I'm ready to see it.

SAM: I mean, I think seven is like... I can't tell you. I can't speak.

AUTUMN: Don't! I don't want any spoilers, but do you have any words of warning?

SAM: I'd say it is a combination of the most horror we've ever done and the most... otherworldly. Yeah, I mean I think it would kind of hopefully give context to why the season is the way it is. Um and it will give some sort of structure into why– It gives some kind of– The season has always been building to this one specific episode. This was Rolin's initial idea of how to convey this impossible-to-adapt book and the core theme that he wanted to pull out of it and how he wanted to convey it... at least in terms with Lestat. And then– and outside of that, it's just pure horror. And I'd say, yeah, Assad is doing like some of the best work I've ever seen. He's just amazing. He's incredible in that episode. He's absolutely incredible.

AUTUMN: I can't wait.

SAM: That's all I can say.