#And also some conflation of gender and sex due to similar in the source material

[iwtvfanevents]

A Challenge Every Sunset is run by a group of like-minded AMC IWTV fans, to foster creativity and positive engagement in this burgeoning fandom through events, prompts and challenges.

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Participation guidelines

The show brings to the table sensitive subject matters such as racism, addiction, domestic abuse and sexual violence. While any work of art may be critiqued, we find that the show’s handling of these “delicate” and “dark” topics is overall careful and nuanced, and we believe similar care and thought should be given by fans. 

As a general rule, we ask you to keep in mind how your work responds to harmful stereotypes or bigoted tropes, and to be mindful, take due care and conduct your research when tackling sensitive subject matters.

We take a look at all fanworks submitted as part of our events before we share them, and those dealing more explicitly with sexual violence, incest, and pedophilia will likely take some more time to be reviewed, and will only be accepted into collections and/or shared on our accounts if there’s agreement among moderators.

If a given work is not accepted, we won’t contact the creator, but we welcome creators to reach out to us for information. On a case-by-case basis, we might specify the reason for rejection and, if the creator is interested, we might be able to provide more details, resources or feedback. 

More specifically, when creating any fanwork —but particularly your submissions to this account’s events— we urge you to keep the following points in mind:

When writing about the Rue Royale era, Creole characters and New Orleans during Jim Crow, make sure to fact-check so as not to fall into ahistorical portrayals. Similarly, consider the material realities of structural homophobia and the heteropatriarchal family in the show’s historical settings. More broadly, keep in mind that white supremacy and patriarchy fundamentally affect every aspect of life, including how we interpret other’s art and the art we put out into the world in turn. And, in general, take care to do research when dealing with specific and potentially unfamiliar contexts —be it the experience of people of color in Europe during and after World War II, the lives of South Asian workers in Dubai, the unfolding of the AIDS crisis, or the practices of Islam, consider whether your work is making a statement that should be grounded in reality. 

When writing about Louis, Claudia and other Black characters, keep in mind common stereotypes regarding Black people, such as the “Mandingo” stereotype or the “Sapphire,” “Jezebel,” and “Mammy” stereotypes. When writing about Lestat and Louis’ relationship, avoid making Louis a receptacle for Lestat’s emotions, and generally avoid having Black characters only function in the narrative to perform emotional labor for their white or non-Black partner. And, as this is a show heavily concerned with queerness, we urge you to also take into account common (and inaccurate) ideas that Black people are more homophobic or more ignorant about gender and sexuality. Also consider how you portray Black characters’ anger or aggression, particularly in comparison to white characters. In relation to Louis, consider how the stereotype of the pimp is weaponized against Black men in the United States, and be mindful of conflating sex work and human trafficking, or of extrapolating from stereotypes of “pimps” as hypermasculine and violent that this must be Louis’ character.

In general, we encourage you to keep revisiting the source material to make sure your characterization is grounded and true to canon. 

In art, be mindful of exaggerating Black characters’ bulk, size, and features in comparison to non-Black characters, and likewise for characters of color in general in comparison to white characters. If in doubt, look up heights and picture references to avoid exaggerated and harmful depictions. Also consider how you color art, being mindful not to whitewash Black characters and characters of color, or darken their skin tone in relation to the actors portraying them.

We consider it essential not to lose sight of how moving through the world as a Black girl conditions Claudia's experiences. Though she grows past her physical age, the widespread adultification of Black children is still something to keep in mind when interpreting her character: Black girls, especially darker skinned girls, are consistently seen as less innocent, more mature, less vulnerable to pain or hurt, angrier, and more calculating in their actions than their white peers. 

Remember that Armand is played by a South Asian actor —be wary of conflating being muslim with being Arab, and keep common anti-Asian, islamophobic and orientalist stereotypes in mind. Because Armand’s backstory hasn’t been revealed yet, and it seems safe to assume his forced conversion will remain a plot point, you may take different approaches regarding Armand’s faith. That said, we are likely to reject scenarios in which Armand originally comes from a christian background. 

The text of the show deals with abuse and sexual violence. It presents common misconceptions about abuse, particularly domestic abuse, and problematizes them. When writing about the relationships in the show, and particularly the canon plot, we urge you to consider how words specific to abuse are used —terms such as “gaslighting”, “love-bombing”, or “mutual abuse”— as well as common victim blaming rhetoric and abuse apologia (they didn’t mean it, they feel terrible about it, they were forced by circumstances); and to keep in mind established frameworks to think about abuse such as DARVO, and the harmful and widespread ideas about fake accusations of abuse. 

In general, we discourage any canon-compliant (or canon-adjacent) scenarios in which Lestat “didn’t actually” or “didn’t really” abuse Louis and Claudia, “it wasn’t as bad”; it was “more equal” than we’ve seen, etc. or in which Louis and/or Claudia were the real victimizer/villain. This type of content, as well as fanworks and meta which minimize or excuse Armand and the coven's abuse of Claudia and Louis, or which minimize, excuse or outright deny Armand's abuse of Louis, present it as mutual, or frame Louis as the abusive partner in the relation, are likely to be outright rejected.

When adding tags and warnings

We think that tags and warnings are essential to ensure that the fandom experience remains enjoyable and safe for all of us. If you want the fanworks you create for an event to be shared on our accounts, make sure that you are tagging or describing your work accurately —we consider that vague tags such as “dark content” or “Dead Dove Do Not Eat” on their own are not sufficient enough to warn readers of the subject matter. 

If we believe that a particular submission could be potentially triggering, we might choose to share it with added warnings of our own, be it in a reblog or tags.

Immortal children and the “Underage” warning

In the case of fics in which Claudia is chronologically an adult, we strongly recommend not using the “Underage” warning for her relationships. We consider it’s important not to dilute the weight of the warning, and encourage you to reserve it for fics in which the underage character in question is chronologically, and not just physically a child. This doesn’t preclude that you might want to add additional tags or notes with more detailed content warnings if your fic features a character who’s physically a child in a relationship with someone who’s physically an adult, but we encourage you to keep the standardized AO3 tag for “actual” children.

Other considerations

Some specific subjects and tropes that are likely to be outright rejected include:

Prison AUs

Slavery AUs

Whitewashing of any character

Raceplay and racist fetishization

Explicit child sexual abuse

Parodies of other fanworks that are identified as such will be rejected. If you believe an accepted submission is a parody of another work, please reach out so we can look into it.

Rules of engagement

Participation in a fan event isn't a need, and running this account isn't a public service. As moderators, we reserve the right not to engage with any message, comment, post or account; at our sole discretion and with no obligation to provide explanations regarding our decision to do so. 

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we are completely closed off to conversation. 

If your submission to our collections was rejected, if we haven’t shared your post, or if you have any question about this account, please feel free to contact us —just keep in mind that we might decline to answer. Requests to keep our correspondence private will be respected, as long as we aren’t sent hate speech or harassment.

What does reserving the right not to engage mean?

Fanworks or posts whose content we do not feel comfortable endorsing will not be shared on our accounts or added to the AO3 collections that are created for this account's events. 

Messages or comments which we find to be hostile or in bad faith will be reported and/or blocked. 

Accounts that we do not feel comfortable interacting with may be blocked as well. 

Still, we would like to clarify that it’s not always possible for us to thoroughly review a “rec list” with many fanworks, and we don’t necessarily endorse every item included in such a post when we share it. Likewise, some of the content from our earlier events might have been accepted/shared while we were still figuring out our criteria for moderation, and might skirt the line of what we’d consider acceptable right now. If we become aware of such a case, we might remove the entry after the fact. 

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