#Louis race is part of his identity

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/snow_droplet/status/1836806686041944275

lots of people see this scene (louis reading madame bovary) as a one more confirmation of louis = housewife = mother. just as the yellow painting depicting mother and child. why do you think he relates to these works so much? and what do you think it says about writers' intent wrt his character?

Mm, I can see the thought process, but having read Madame Bovary a number of years ago, I'm a little surprised at the interpretation of Louis as Emma, who cheats because she finds monogomy boring, provincial life even more so, and dislikes motherhood - three things that I'd associate a lot more with Lestat than I would with Louis given a) Antoinette, and the fact that Louis never cheated on Lestat given he only had sex with Jonah when the relationship was opened up, b) Lestat spent most of his mortal life trying to escape the French countryside when Louis has only ever lived in cities, and c) his Whole Deal with Claudia.

I do think that it's worth noting too that the copy of Madame Bovary Louis' reading is actually Lestat's, not Louis':

It also shows I think a real sense of taking Louis' self-assessment when he's at one of his lowest points of depression across the course of the series, as an actual representation of himself? Claudia calling Louis a housewife was pretty specifically about trying to emasculate him into action, and we're sitting with Louis here where he does feel emasculated. Louis does find purpose through work - he's an ambitious man and a capitalist from the moment we meet him - and him being forced out of the upper echelon of earning capacity due to his race is both, of course, racist, but I think also is something he does find emasculating.

Louis always took his role as provider seriously with the du Lac's, I think both as eldest son and patriarch (and I kinda touched on it in my post about Grace, but the show flirts a little with gothic themes of a perverted family structure there in that Louis is both father and brother to Grace and Paul, and son and husband to Florence), and I think even having the illusion that he was providing for at least Claudia, if not Lestat (who of course is cashed-up from Magnus), was still a crucial part of his identity. It's why it's easy for him to fall into a (again, perverted) version of that role with Armand.

That's even without getting into the Capitalism of it all, haha. I actually forgot this and just caught it again on my (very slow) re-watch, but The Azaelia isn't Louis' only business at the time when it starts getting targeted. He's invested in, at the very least, grocery stores and millineries, which Lestat points out to him when Louis' making his No Whites Allowed sign:

This - - again - - is emasculating. Grocery stores and hat makers are very specifically pink-collar industries, and Louis' been making a fortune not off women's quote-unquote 'interests', he's been making it off women's bodies. And again, one day, I'm going to write my Louis-is-a-misogynyst post, but for now, my point is that it's the insult of this that fuels Louis' (rightful!) anger, not his relation to it.

The painting I do think is a bit different, but that's kind of harder to talk about given visual art is so subjective (and honestly I know less about it / can speak to it less). I do think it's significant though that the artist is a Black man, and someone who's still pretty up and coming. The maternal side there I can see, but I don't think it's as absolute as others, just personally.

[quidfree]

accidentally deleted this ask but for the anon asking what my gripes were with iwtv’s finale / this season:

look i love this show. ive never read the books* and i thoroughly enjoyed the one time i watched the movie mostly bc of tom cruise and kirsten dunst acting circles around bradd pitt. the show to me really elevates the material, it has phenomenal writing, the acting is obviously stellar, i think it does a great job at being that dark gothic romance that is both deeply tragic and fucked up and funny etc etc.

a key element of the adaptation is evidently that they have recontexualised the characters in ways that both add depth and nuance to them. when we meet him louis is a black gay man in a deeply racist and homophobic setting who hardens himself to survive and rise above as much as he can. claudia is a young black woman who has always faced societal violence and neglect because of this. armand’s whole arc as an exploited and fetishised child whose trauma has become his identity is also encased in colonial violence. i’m not from the communities they are so i can’t speak for everyone, but i think for the most part the show is pretty good at having these changes enrich the show and acknowledge what an impact this has on dynamics and the characters. s1 explicitly addresses how lestat handwaves away the racism louis experiences as something he can just overcome because he’s a vampire now, how lestat himself plays into racist imbalances of power in his patriarchal relationship in their home esp wrt claudia, how he goes to capture claudia on the train being portrayed to echo a slave-catcher, etc. s2 has the trial obviously set up like a lynching (claudia says so much herself), with lestat’s testimony framing the two black people he abused as the aggressors and himself as the victim, and even when lestat is genuinely apologetic and remorseful it’s because he’s allowed his tears and victimhood while louis and claudia are not. all this to say there is obviously lot of conscious thought that goes into the way the characters’ races feed into the show and the story and it oftentimes is very effective, as well as aware of audience perceptions of the characters and how the irl audience’s own biases might need addressing.

unfortunately for me there are two aspects of s2 that i feel are kind of outliers in this regard, and not in a way that makes sense/feels intentionally uncomfortable to me. 1) is madeline’s backstory, and 2) is the change of having armand actually have been plotting to murder both louis and claudia at the trial, and lestat have been the one to save louis.

1) to me is just really… weird. i feel like i know why they wrote her that way. it makes madeline a ~morally grey character~ by default so she fits in with the rest of the cast, and there is an element to the very real misogynistic vitriol and violence post-ww2 directed at french women even falsely accused of having slept with the invading nazi occupiers that feels very in line with the things the show likes to examine and point to as examples of plain old human barbarism and othering. but the way they present it in the show, unquestioned, not as a dubious survival tactic or a multi-faceted situation but an actual love story that madeline has no remorse for, is very off-putting to me. madeline is not louis and claudia who ignore the atrocities of the war because those are human affairs and they are no longer human but supernatural monsters. madeline is a normal person whose peers- jewish people, queer people (surely her own community), political dissidents of any kind- have been put down like dogs throughout the occupation, sent to prison camps at best and death camps at worst, and she never even has a line of dialogue addressing conflicting feelings about this? no one ever challenges her on it? the people painting nazi symbols on her shop are consistently framed as villainous? it just feels weird to me that claudia’s “weird white lady” has this saccharine romance with her, a black woman, without the show ever exploring any friction in that dynamic given madeline’s apparently uncomplicated nazi romance. madeline being a femme tondue is a great idea, but the execution leaves to be desired imo.

2) … oh boy. i feel like i’m wading into discourse here bc i’ve seen really confrontational takes on this, esp a lot of “responses to” people who didn’t like this change, where this is presented as those people being dumb babies who are blinded by their liking of armand and don’t Understand The Show. im sure there are those of which this is true (and ppl have explained better than me how antiblackness feeds into everyone jumping into ship wars and defense of louis’ abusive partners in general) but also it feels very reductive of some valid questions people have. people can argue the change is consistent with armand’s characterisation, which, sure, even though i feel like it feels a little flimsy / contradictory for armand to finally Choose The Coven and allow for them to execute louis but then go feed him blood and allow him to revenge-kill all of them immediately afterwards, etc. i don’t mind characters being More Evil on the Evil Vampire show.

my bigger question is why this change was made. bc my sense is that the change is less about armand than it is about lestat, and specifically setting the stage for the loustat reconciliation, and i do not love that. it’s one thing to make it so armand wanted to kill louis too, just for the extra drama of daniel’s reveal and scale of his betrayal, another push for louis to leave. it’s another to make it so lestat was the heroic captive who not only was forced to be there by armand as per but also bravely exerted the limits of his strength to save louis from execution and then nobly didn’t tell him about this. these are both monstrous vampires who have abused and betrayed louis in their own ways (armand has already orchestrated claudia’s death and kept louis in a purportedly protective mind prison for decades! that’s betrayal enough! you could even have armand originally want to kill louis too and then change his mind!), so why at this juncture choose to have lestat save louis in a move that was originally armand’s? just from the way the audience (fandom and casual watchers) is reacting it makes me wonder if the showrunners were just oblivious to how much this worsens people’s takes of armand (the brown man) being the “real villain” and lestat (the white man) being the redeemed self-sacrificing figure. i’m sure people will say this is placing too much weight on race blah blah blah but it was so jarring to me and the change in viewer attitudes so immediate that it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

inb4 the inevitable: i actually really liked the loustat reunion in the finale! i don’t hate loustat! i like all of the dynamics between all of the characters, albeit my favourite louis ship is louis x therapy (an obvious inference from my favourite character being daniel lmao). this is not a change that i hate because i’m a bitter lestat hater. i have no issue with armand doing bad things, episode 5 was my favourite episode! i just think this particular choice was weird, and felt kind of thoughtless in the service of speedrunning a lestat hero role in advance of his season.

i have other less tangential complaints but overall i think this is a great season of television. these are just two points that stood out to me as being handled with less grace than i expect of iwtv.

*i just started reading the first book today on the airplane so. we’ll see how that goes. book loustat is so funny compared to the show. book 1 louis hates his ass 😭

[ca-suffit]

I think an important thing to remember when discussing Lestat as a queer icon (since it's a topic on the blog lately) is the fact that he's a queer horror icon. That man was never going to be a good man lol. It's exactly how Dr. Frank-n-Furter is a queer icon despite also being a villain and problematic. It's important to see people that we could relate to or admire in some aspects also be completely terrible, to avoid conflating someone you like with someone you who is good/should be imitated. Especially in the context of domestic violence and abuse in queer relationships. I wish this nuance was more present in fandom, because I don't like how people either treat Lestat like he's just a regular queer icon (as in, they ignore the part that makes him a horror to deal with), or diminish his queerness.

I'm also looking forward to people claiming Louis as a queer icon, I have hopes that it will become a more widespread topic as the show simmers, because I also think that Lestat being heralded as a queer icon in the show comes from decades and decades of him being considered one outside of it. This is the firts time (to my knowledge) that Louis has been compelling to the general public, so I guess with time he'll gain more weight in that discussion. I know it might sound too optimistic, given how black queer characters are usually treated, but I'd rather feel like we can go somewhere with this than feeling dejected.

I would write so many things about Lestat's and Louis' queerness and how they differ and interact and affect their lives and the narrative if I had the time. I'd also like to read/hear more about how Louis' queerness interacts and overlaps with his identity as a black man, so if you (or anyone) have any recs I'll gladly take them.

I think the discussion and even the portrayal of DV in queer (and interracial) relationships is a *huge* one for ppl to sidestep and has been one of the most disappointing things here tbh. we *haven't* seen that explored much in queer stories and it's so fucking *common* irl. there's a *lot* to explore there in so many directions, but ppl skip over that all the time just bcuz they don't want anyone to be "mean" to lestat. u can like things and still discuss and criticize them. as u said, look at the rocky horror picture show and the impact that's had. a lot of queer existence in general is always being "other" somehow, and that's why horror is such a good genre for it. to strip that away bcuz u just wanna play rupaul's drag race with lestat is....I mean, ppl can do what they want on their own, but this collective bullshit of forcing others to conform to this too and thinking ur "right" for doing it is a majority of the reason this fandom sucks. most ppl don't even hate lestat tbh, it's these fans that are the problem. nobody lets anyone meet the story where it's at.

I def think, regardless of what the show ends up becoming as a whole, that amc louis has made a huge impact as a black, queer character in major media. I hope ppl continue to analyze him and be inspired by this character and keep it all rolling forward. nobody expected this to be as good as it was at portraying louis and we're blessed af to have jacob in the part too.

god, I don't remember all the good posts I've seen about louis anymore. I tried to even look but I think most were out of the tags and long ago too. I remember a rly good one talking about claudia's relationship to louis and how he prbly wasn't allowed to play with grace's dolls as a kid, so claudia was kind of his "permission" to do that. it also gives a slightly different perspective to claudia's "doll-like" existence, since this was not something explored in louis in the books or 1994 film.

I feel like, if u or anyone is unfamiliar with james baldwin, reading his stuff will give some irl perspective to amc louis too in various ways. equal in paris is a good S2 companion. I think rolin jones even said giovanni's room was an inspiration for S2 too.

[murfpersonalblog]

Hello! I have been engaging in your analysis recently and I am satisfied by how thorough and sourced they are. I have been thinking about the possible parallel between Gabrielle and Louis of late and I was wondering if you think anything about it being possibly explored in the show. Gabrielle is masc presenting so I wonder if Louis' feminity will also be explored. There's so much I'm wondering!

Omg thanks so much for asking, and thanks for liking my stuff @timotheeronan! Tuck yourself in for a long AF post, cuz I've been wanting to get things off my chest about Gabrielle for a while (X X).

I FULLY expect S3 to make parallels between Gabrielle & Louis, yes. Their complex power dynamics with Lestat as Mother/Son, Fledgling/Maker are interwoven with their roles as spouses: Gabrielle as the Marquis' literal unhappy housewife AND Les' temporary Blood Spouse; and Louis as Lestat's metaphorical "unhappy housewife" and endgame Blood Spouse; and the ways they BOTH broke away from this to forge their own identities separate/free from him; "I'm companion enough for myself now."

On top of this, there's the CRUCIAL exploration of gender expression Gabrielle goes through. Gabrielle is so iconic, as someone I've seen over the decades labelled as everything from a feminist icon to masc presenting to GNC to nonbinary to trans to etc etc. It HAS to happen, I'd be shocked & appalled if it doesn't. Esp. considering how Les reacts (both positively AND negatively), wrt those aforementioned socio-gendered power dynamics & roles.

Cuz like I've BEEN stressing wrt Les' Matador pjs & Mardi Gras dress (X X); and Louis' power suits & cardigans: clothes are just ONE aspect of a larger societal framework these characters are operating under (x x x x). There's a "visual hierarchy of power" Carol Cutshall describes, where clothes reflect MORE than just gender expression, but also reflect power: agency/autonomy/freedom, or the lack thereof. Gab's masculine presentation goes farther than just her outward appearance on the surface. Deeper, there's what it says about how she felt about her her immediate relationship with Lestat, and her broader treatment & place in her family, and the world at large. Clothes can be a form of resistance; a power move.

So if S3's take on TVL goes the direction I hope/think it will, Lestat's Redemption Tour will be part defensive/reflective, as he deals with his repressed traumas and the many wrongs done to him; but also the many wrongs he's done to others: Louis & Gabrielle (and ofc Claudia & Nicki).

Cuz contrary to what braindead fans/stans lead people to believe, AMC's adaptation is 100% about the cycles of abuse & trauma; and how power imbalances between vampires are merely a reflection of IRL social inequality due to things like class, race, and gender; which vampires just DELUDE themselves into thinking they're above; but meanwhile can't help but perpetuate--cuz they ARE still human.

Whatever this "documentary/tour" manifests as, Les is gonna have to be confronted with the ways that his actions in the past impacted his actions in the present; so that Les realizes he needs to course-correct in the future, to become a better person/monster/vampire "WORTHY of Louis' love" and forgiveness.

But he also has to reconcile with his mother; when Gabrielle finally reappears after ~200 years of deliberate radio silence (x x). She follows him on his tour when he pisses off the vampires of the world & they try to kill him (& Lou) for blabbing about their secrets.

In QotD, Les, Lou & Gabe share close quarters with one another for Les' tour. When he's is kidnapped by Akasha, Lou & Gab team up together as they grieve his absence & wait/hope for Les' return, forming their own bond.

So I'd bet Monopoly dollars that AMC's take on TVL & QotD will be an effing circus full of funhouse mirrors being held up to their faces, as they all see aspects of themselves (reflections of the past repeating itself) in each other. It's gonna bring up uncomfortable truths; but help them all better understand/realize WHY Les is drawn to Gab & Lou and loves them so much, but also where he went wrong with both of them; and where they went wrong with him, too.

And it all boils down to Family vs Freedom.

Les' oppressive nature come from his overwhelming outpouring of love. Lovebombing is his love language; overcompensating for how he felt insecure & inadequate & ashamed. He wants what's best for his loves, but he also thinks he KNOWS what's best for them, too. He hated being poor country-nobility, broke as a joke in that crumbling chateau. He was ashamed. When faced with the horrific reality of his mother dying, his grief's wrapped up in wondering about the things she'd wanted, & fantasizing about the all things he'd wanted for her.

Cuz their relationship, as strained as it was, was marked with "grand and loving gestures" of GIFT-giving.

Les saved both Gab & Lou's life when he Turned them. Lou was suicidal (& no doubt careening towards alcohol poisoning); while Gab was dying of consumption. The Dark Gift is his ultimate show of love for those Les turns, his way of saying: I love you, I want you to live forever, and I wanna live WITH you forever, "be my companion;" we can keep each other company forever. But because vampirism is damned/cursed, the gift comes at the price of him potentially losing them anyway--cuz vampirism gives them power, and ultimately: freedom. (Hence: Les' abandonment issues.)

For Gabrielle, an 18th-century woman trapped in that awful chateau with that awful abusive husband raising awful abusive sons, books were her escape from reality; and her library was her nest/shelter.

We don't get much of Gab's POV/thoughts, but Anne Rice talked at length about how books & stories & writing were her outlet/escape; her Dreamworld when she was lonely/depressed/grieving/etc.

"Sometime in that year when seven-year-old Alice was gone for hours every day, my personal dreamworld was born, the detailed and complex paracosm in which I started to live the major portion of every day with my own secretly imagined characters. I know for certain that the dreamworld was in full swing by the time I was eight, and had been with me “forever.” And several of the characters who peopled that dreamworld then in 1949 are still with me today in a vivid cast of thousands.".... "Now and then I abandon the ancient dreamworld. But I have never since 2005 abandoned the primal dreamworld, the most important one, the one born to me when I was a little girl, the one that existed from the 1940s up through the early 1990s without interruption, and that is with me now every day. I myself am not in this dreamworld. There is no place in it for someone like me. I’ve had fantasies of actually discovering it, or being somehow transported to it, but I play no role in it whatsoever. I watch and listen and inhabit its various characters individually, just as I do characters in my books.... "Before I draw the obvious comparison between this dreamworld and the world of the Vampire Chronicles, I want to make several specific points about the dreamworld...." -- Anne Rice: Alphabettery

Gabrielle H A T E D being jailed/cooped up that chateau as much as Les did--heck, she likely hated it even MORE; cuz unlike her son (a MAN free to go out and hunt & act & preach--if his father let him, ofc), a WOMAN/"tradwife" was to be seen not heard.

Some of the only times she really makes herself heard--exerting her limited agency/autonomy/freedom--is when she's FIGHTING Les' FATHER the Marquis, to DEFEND HER CHILD's agency/autonomy/freedom (the Mama Bear to Lou's Papa Bear with Claudia (x x)).

Cuz ironically, SHE was the breadwinner in the family--it was HER dowry money that financed everything, when the shiftless de Lioncourts went broke generations ago. (And we see the same family dynamic with Louis' family, where Papa DPDL ran the estate into bankruptcy, and Levi Freniere mooched off of Grace--how "tradwives" had to become independent & self-sustaining & break social norms & become the surrogate head of the household when the patriarch let them down; and how that affected Lou's struggle for self-worth when it was left to him to become the (reluctant) man of the family--it's a VERY familiar scene fort Les, and another reason why he felt akin to Louis. But (as usual) Lou FAILS where Gabrielle succeeds--he loses the Azalea, and becomes a cripple after getting dropped 2km from the sky; so Claudia becomes HIS mother, defending him from THEIR p.o.s. patriarch, Lestat; exerting her own limited agency--but pressuring Lou to do the same (the Murder Plot).)

She squirrels her jewels under her pillows, withholding her money so the Marquis & her sons don't BLOW it all; withholds her knowledge/literacy cuz they don't value/respect it; withholds her affections cuz they HAVE blown it. Gab's outnumbered in that medieval castle stuffed to the gills with toxic masculinity; she hates her husband; pumps out sons he raised to disrespect & ignore her; is isolated in the middle-of-nowhere Auvergne; & depressed AF. She resented her life; and comforted herself with books. She loved Les the most, but she kept him at arms length too. Les loved his mother the most, but he resented her, too.

I see so many posts about how "selfish" Gab is, and I'm like this is the same exact nasty AF attitude people have against AMC!Lou. They're DEPRESSED, ffs! The same women online who go on & on about feminism & misogyny & female autonomy/agency & how men don't understand/respect postpartum depression and battered-wife syndrome; and then look at Gabrielle AND Louis like they've got two heads just cuz they don't kiss blorbo Lestat's arse 24/7, like wtF????

YES, depression can express itself as petty spite & meanness/coldness & resentful hostility. Gab never taught Les how to read, cuz the books were her comfort/escape FROM motherhood/reality; just like Lou's books were his comfort/escape FROM vampirism/reality (read: violence/homosexuality/marriage/Lestat). It's an ANNE RICE self-insert about her lifelong "Dreamworld"--ALL of her characters represent parts of herself at different times in her life.

They're UNHAPPY, and only find pleasure in the fantasy of stories--ofc Gab wouldn't want Les intruding on her Me Time by teaching him how to read--esp. when Les could be sent to the church to learn instead--which he was. (Unfortunately, his father only wanted him there long enough to learn the basics, not to commit himself to the church as a priest.)

Art imitates life--fantasy tv shows about vampires included. Les' behavior is PATENTLY familiar, and I fully expect S3 will mirror plenty of celebrity scandals involving IPV--Chris Brown's Apology Tour to the press immediately comes to mind, after he beat the breaks off of Rihanna. There are countless IRL cases where battered/abused/depressed women are negligent to their kids; and those kids grow up to be abusive to their own partners & families:

"Rocky was...high-strung, jittery. Energetic. (His family describes him slightly differently, as quiet and sometimes devious, also on the shy side.) Before he shot himself [and his wife Michelle Monson Mosure, and their 3 kids in 2001]...he’d written a message on his arms. No one was meant to see it, and no one can exactly remember what it said. Something like 'I deserve to go to hell.'" "Rocky was quiet...troubled, rebellious, but he loved the outdoors. Fishing, camping...the outdoor stuff, the quiet, even his real name, Gordon, he shared with his father. The nickname had come from his dad when Rocky was a baby, a tribute to the boxer Rocky Marciano. Gordon and his first wife, Linda, had three kids, of whom Rocky was the eldest.... When they divorced, Linda gave him full custody of all three kids.... [Gordon] had met someone at work pretty quickly after he and Linda separated: Sarah.... Although the kids had always had some trouble with school, after the move Gordon and Sarah discovered the kids were further behind than they’d realized, and though they hired tutors, the kids remained behind. None of them wound up graduating. Gordon claims that Linda planted the kids in front of the television or dragged them around with her wherever she went during the day, shopping or whatever. “Instead of teaching them ABCs and all this, they hadn’t gotten any of that,” Gordon says. When I spoke with Linda she remembered things differently, of course.... Rocky was in trouble after the move almost immediately.... By seventh grade, Sarah and Gordon knew Rocky needed help. They sent him to Pine Hills, the home for troubled boys.... In a family counseling session once, the therapist asked Rocky if he was sad his mother had left, and he said...'Yeah, it was better after she was gone because then we got to hang out with [Dad] more, but not have the big fighting between them.'" -- No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, by Rachel Louise Snyder

-- Letellier & Island: Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence

Lestans keep acting like he's called an abuser out of thin frikkin air; that there are no parallels b/t Loustat's dynamic and IRL cases; and that Les's above censure just cuz he's nicer in the later books. Yeah he gets better--cuz he got REJECTED by Gabrielle/Nicki/Louis, BESTED by Claudia, HUMBLED by Akasha, DUPED by Raglan, TORTURED by Memnoch, and CHALLENGED by Rhoshamandes! Les LITERALLY went to Hell, for crissakes!

(x x)

Les pulled ish on Lou that he would NEVER pull on Gab, specifically BECAUSE she's his MOTHER. Les had a HARD time divorcing that image from his mind, even when he reveled in the power vampirism gave them to be free, and live the lives they'd always dreamed of back at the chateau.

Even when he knew she was The Vampire Gabrielle, and he was her Maker/companion/paramour, he held onto that image of her as his mother--"my mother's boy, my mother's man" (a la the pilot script).

The Vampire Gabrielle fully embraced her new identity; being an apex predator (better than even Les did; she's a BAMF), shedding all human attachments & trivialities (the social constructs of long hair & dresses; morals & mores alike). But that came at the cost of her shedding her her motherly role too. She was finally TRIUMPHANT: POWERFUL & FREE, and she dressed accordingly: as a man, with all of the societal affordances, liberties & freedoms that entailed.

(Gabrielle & Nicki & Louis are even tied together through Paris' Ile Saint Louis, where Nickistat lived & loved; and where Les turned Gabrielle.)

Patriarchal male privilege and vampiric gendered liberation for Gab works similarly but differently/separate but equal than it does for AMC!Louis, not just cuz of his sexuality, but esp. cuz of his race. As usual, Gab triumphs where Lou fails. Although he IS a man, he's a gay BLACK man, which put him even lower on the racist/sexist social hierarchical pyramid than a white woman (Gab included). From slavery times (Gab) to Jim Crow (Lou) down to the Civil Rights Movement, the youngest white girl (called "Miss") had more rights than the oldest Black man (called "boy"). For all Les' promises that he & his fledglings would be "equals in the quiet dark," white male Les was the ONLY one with rights over BOTH of them--as such, they're both on similar levels in Coven Master Lestat's household; even when they tried to exert their own autonomy. (The same holds true for Lou & Claudia, ALSO put on the same level.)

Les was just as conflicted with book!Gab's newfound freedom & choice of victims as he was with AMC!Lou's, for opposite but similar reasons, all boiling down to how HE thought his fledglings should act. On one hand he encouraged embracing vampiric nature, while on the other hand wanting to curb their killing to fit human laws he swore didn't matter anymore, like wtf--am I a lion(court) or a housecat? He was a pisspoor teacher to Gab AND Lou (and yet people wanna point the finger at Gab & Lou for leaving him, or blame megaladon!Armand for taking advantage of Lou' & Claudia's ignorance, like HUH?!?)

[EDITED TO ADD:] Lou & Gab are both oppressed by societal/gendered expectations. For Gabrielle, tradwife domesticity/femininity was her performance, her CAGE/JAIL. The masculine ideal for her was being someone like Wolfkiller Lestat: a macho hunter, slaying dangerous animals in the wilderness, dressed in men's clothes with her hair cropped short; not being called "Mother" anymore or having to raise kids & deal with her psycho husband.

[EDITED TO ADD:] But that macho-masculinity was performance for Lou ("Did I WANT to pull a knife on my brother? NO."). He was a "rougher thing, then," passing as straight, and it made him miserable. He wanted a completely opposite life (the domesticity of being boo'd up at home with his man, always dressed in cardigans, "smothering" his daughter Claudia, and just being a homemaker)--but what is the opposite of masculinity but femininity? What's the opposite of a businessman but a tradwife (the feminine ideal pre-feminism)? How can his pride/life as a Black man tryna be respected in a white world survive without nosey white women like Antoinette & homophobic white cops always asking about his 1 bed upstairs? For Lou, domesticity/"femininity" was FREEDOM--until Les took advantage of Lou's vulnerability and the townhouse became his CAGE/JAIL; and he became just as miserable as Gabrielle was--cycles cycling.

And unlike Gabrielle de Lioncourt, who had the honor of being Les' biological mother/maker/creator (the one who knew everything about him), with the almost sacred idea(l) of her in his head as his childhood champion/savior that allowed him to defer to her and accept her wanting to do & go her own way, even as he clung to the idea(l) of his "Mother" that made him resent her abandoning him (again); Louis had no such privilege.

Les was HIS Maker--"I put you on this earth." "I chose you!" Lou was CREATED to be Les' person: his bespoke companion; groomed & Vegas Married to not know a thing about Les' past/nature that Les didn't want him to know; seduced to love the monster first (not the man). Les expected Lou to be happy; not reject Les/vampirism & read books at home rather than go on sexcapades & killing sprees; ashamed of his true nature full of "self-loathing" he projected at Les.

Even when Lou was too weak & hungry to have sex, he still spent his time reading; and cuz Les can't read his mind, it's the best way to shut out everything and focus on his fantasy rather than his body's needs, let alone Les' emotional needs. He gets so much worse during the Great Depression, when Claudia's gone & he's given up all pretenses that he's anything but the "unhappy housewife;" and Les gives up the pretenses of not resenting Lou for "not honoring the Blood [read: ME] as he should." Hence: Ep5; "crushing what you cannot own;" and Les pissing all over Lou's name & reputation in the Trial; as abusers often blame their victims, or outright lie to make them seem crazy, evil, or abusive.

Thankfully, Les has already come face to face with how effed up the Trial was, and how badly his participation in the Trial/smear campaign hurt Lou's feelings; "Come to Me!? Those were HIS words! F-- you!"

So while I fully expect S3 Les to emphasize his own childhood traumas & abuse, and while I fear Gabrielle will carry the lion's share of censure in Les' POV (and in the fandom) for abandoning him, hopefully Les doesn't do what many abusers do and make it all about him and his man-pain. Hopefully he's candid about how Gab was wronged too (by his p.o.s. dad & brothers, AND he himself); and that his resentments towards Gabrielle bled into his resentments towards Louis. But I ALSO expect Les to still have self-improvement to do--TVL/QotD is NOT where he pivots from being an a-hole to a saint; he does some ATROCIOUS stuff in those books, and in TotBT.

The Prince Lestat trilogy is Les's final redemption arc, his pride humbled & then rewarded--and even then he's still a work-in-progress ("I'm, a lot, I'm not perfect").

Lou (& Claudia) emancipated themselves from Massa Lestat after the Murder Plot (or at least, Lou tries to--Loustat canonical endgame, after all). But they only get back together after a long period of on/off stints, as Les gradually figured out how to be a normal effing person for once; and how to respect Lou's agency/autonomy/freedom.

Likewise, his relationship with Gabrielle also vastly "improves," as she, like Lou in PLAtRoA, finally decides to live with Les at the renovated Chateau de Lioncourt; letting go of the past to build something new.

But he STILL can't help but revert to treating her like his bride/wife, doll, and mother, all in one (until she gets sick of it, ofc, LOL).

At Prince Les' celebratory Winter Solstice fete in BC, Gab dresses to the nines as the belle of the ball to please him, as Queen Mother of his Vampire Court; just as Lou's his Prince Consort/Blood Spouse. Les gets everything he ever wanted, his happily ever after, and AR tries to make you feel he "earned" their forgiveness, but YMMV.

TL;DR:

Regardless of what Gab presents as externally, or the way she WANTS to be treated; the way Lestat TREATS her is consistent with the way HE thinks it is appropriate for her to be treated BY him--same with Louis. Gender/sexuality/race be darned--Les "wins" by virtue of being the white cis male protagonist & hero of TVC. 🙄

So yeah, I expect/hope S3 will show a lot of subtle/nuanced parallels & even explicit intersections b/t Gabrielle & Lou. But I don't expect them to dump it on us all at once, cuz this process of accountability, forgiveness & acceptance is protracted over the entire length of TVC, all the way to the very last book.

Hope my long AF rambling & tangents answered your question even a little bit, omfg. 🤦😅

[knownoshamc]

Someone better in this than me, please ramble about how Armand views his own race. For someone that was violently abducted from his country and stayed in the hands of most likely white men in the brothel and powerful white master Marius and the colonisation of it all... how does he view that part of his identity? Has he internalised everything they told him? Has Louis helped him review the subject?

[yentling]

Two episodes into the vampire show. Notes:

- first ep: Southern gothic tropes reimagined in terms of black wealth which is fascinating esp bc of similarities between Louis’s family and the central characters of The Sound and the Fury. I especially need to think more about the role of Paul as a mentally ill character here.

- Jacob Anderson is acting his entire ass off in this show

- I assumed as much but Eric Bogosian really is doing his best Anthony Bourdain impression here

- second episode: was trying to verbalize this coherently with my gf yesterday but basically there’s this really interesting theme of like ethical consumption here where we have Lestat who is obviously predatory and will eat basically indiscriminately as long as it feels logical to him (and his logic is twisted). This does not feel human to Louis whom we now see enjoying this total gluttony of presumably “ethically sourced” blood but it very clearly is like…entrenched in processes that are probably not very ethical. And we can work this into these tropes of the “vegetarian vampire” and our attitudes toward animal consumption to begin with where like most of us don’t want to kill another human being because that’s too cruel and hunting an animal is too much for most people BUT going to the grocery store for our meat and veg is often time contributing to far more cruelty toward both animals and humans.

- And then conversely to criticize Lestat too like hunting is often times put into the context of sport right like big "game" (so called because of the use of hunting as a sport) hunting was never really about survival right? Like even aside from whether they were using the animal remains or not, the effect is not to survive the beast but to assert domination over these colonized areas and their people. While native people often featured as helpful characters in big game memoirs they were usually also depicted as foolish, cowardly, or even untrustworthy when compared to the hypermasculine white hunter. And I think we really see this in Lestat’s approach toward feeding, and it’s maybe part of why Louis feels uncomfortable not only as someone who still feels connected to humanity, but as a Creole black man.

- Lestat is sooo fascinating in this rendition and I’m still trying to refine my understanding of him because there’s clearly so much he is like right about in terms of race relations in the US but he’s also specifically a white predator, right? Like we can say that Lestat is “in love with Louis’s humanity” which is probably true but there’s an area here where some of this complexity is coming from Louis’s racial identity, which makes him vulnerable in multiple ways. Which isn’t so unusual in real life white “allies” obviously but raises interesting questions in the context of vampirism.

- as usual vampirism here is such a fascinating analogy for capitalism and imperialism. The fact that the first victim we know about (as in we have met the character) in a sex worker. Like intentional or not I think vampires make us question who is bearing the brunt of this widespread exploitation? And you can see this as a direct metaphor for the bourgeoisie sucking the life force out the proletariat or you can move away from that and just think about, like…the reason serial killer victims are usually homeless people, sex workers, and others who are seen as, you know, unwanted by society is because they exist in a sort of underclass maintained and reenforced by capitalist structures.

[alarrytale]

I'm really glad that Billie talked about her queercoding. She did queercode lots and queer fans picked up on it but her straight fans, of course, dismissed queer fans of reading too much into things. The same happens in Shawn's fandom and even in Louis' despite most of Louis' fans thinking he's queer. Queer coding will be pointed out by queer fans and the straight fans throw tantrums over it. They're so vocal and toxic and they're bullies, and so dismissive of queer fans. They're probably teenage girls and they're angry because it threatens their fantasies. Queercoding is directed at queer fans anyway, it's not for the straight fans but I wish straight fans weren't so dismissive and always thinking that they know better. The vast majority of times they turn out to be wrong! When will they learn. More and more people will CO and say that they were pressured to hide their sexuality but straight fans will continue to believe that closeted people don't exist. More people will say that they lied about being straight, and straight people will continue to believe that if someone says they're straight then they are. It's strange but that's heteronormativity lol. A few times I've questioned myself if I'm reading too much into things and picking up on things that aren't there, or if I'm a bad person for pointing out queercoding. But I realize that celebrities want us to pick up on their queercoding or else they wouldn't do it. They know we follow their every move and they're relying on their queer fans to pick up on queercoding. That's essentially what Billie said, she wanted fans to pick up on it. She was disappointed when people didn't. By ignoring queercoding it is letting these straight fans win. They're trying to gaslight us into thinking we're misreading things when it's them. I agree with you that willingly closeted celebrities don't queercode. I've fallen out with people over this because they defend the closet. I try and put myself in the perspective of a closeted celebrity who wants to come out. Of course they're going to queercode, they want their community to recognize them as one of them. They engage in queer culture because they are queer and they want other queer people to know that. They will allude to being queer in many ways, as they're closeted and it's all they can do other than come out, which they may not be able to do yet because of label contracts. Then I put myself in the perspective of a willingly closeted celebrity. They want people to think they're straight and so why would they queercode and engage in queer culture? They will be doing the opposite, they will be doing everything to come across as straight and they won't do anything to draw speculation about their sexuality. They will probably get married to a woman to put an end to speculation about their sexuality. That would do it. Sorry this is so long! I have lots of thoughts on this

Hi, anon!

It's okay lol. I think picking up on queercoding is important and i don't think it's wrong to point it our for the reasons you mentioned. The only thing we need to be careful of is projecting our own wants onto them (we want them to be queer) and creating confirmation bias. There is nothing wrong in believing someone is queer, because there is nothing wrong with being queer.

About the willingly closeted. You don’t see Tom C*uise queercode. You see him fake marry, have a kid he never sees, jump on couches, act in hyper-masculine action movies and attending F1 races. He's doing everything he can to be seen as the ultimate straight male tm. Haven't seen much queercoding from Leo or Brad*ey either.

I think it's harder for the unwillingly closeted who wants to show they're a part of the community because being queer is a significant part of their identity and how they wish to express themselves. They're supressing themselves and holding back. They so badly want to embrace their culture and be a part of the community.

For Harry it's so bad he begged for the role of a closeted gay police officer to be able to live out his real sexuality for all to see on film. Louis is standing on stage night after night singing "i love him, i hate it" while having to repeatedly deny larry. They've both worn shirts in support of other celebrities coming out right after it happened. They so wish it was them. It must be so incredibly hard for them to be closeted.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Benoist and the European New Right

Besides Third Position fascism, the other major ideological influence on the National-Anarchists is the European New Right, especially the thinker Alain de Benoist. National-Anarchists have adopted his ideas about race, political decentralization, and the “right to difference.”

Benoist founded the think-tank GRECE, and has spent his life creating an intellectually respectable edifice for a core of fascist ideas. Like Southgate, Benoist loudly proclaims that he is not a fascist, but scholars such as Roger Griffin disagree. Griffin says that the New Right “could by the end of the 1980s be credited with the not inconsiderable achievement of having carried out a ‘makeover’ of classic fascist discourse so successfully that, at least on the surface it was changed beyond recognition.”[32]

Benoist extended the notion of an alliance of European nations with the Third World against their main enemies: the United States, liberalism, and capitalism. But against the fascists who desired a united Europe under a super-state, Benoist instead calls for radical federalism and the political decentralization of Europe. Roger Griffin describes this vision as:

The pluralistic, multicultural society of liberal democracy was to give way, not to a culturally, coordinated, charismatic, and, in the case of Nazism, racially pure, national community coterminous with the nation-state, but to an alliance of homogeneous ethnic-cultural communities ethnies within the framework of a federalist European “empire.”[33]

Benoist also incorporates many sophisticated left-wing critiques, sometimes sounding like a Frankfurt School Marxist. Today he denounces capitalism, imperialism, liberalism, the consumer society, Christianity, universalism, and egalitarianism; he defends paganism, “organic democracy,” and the Third World. He questions the role of unbridled technology and supports environmentalism and a kind of feminism.[34] He also rejects biological determinism and embraces a notion of race that is cultural.[35] Southgate follows practically all of these positions, which are not necessarily present in Third Position.

Because of these views, the European New Right is very different from the U.S. New Right, whose Christianity and free market views are anathema to the Europeans. The Europeans are closer to the paleoconservative tradition in the United States, and connect with The Rockford Institute, publisher of Chronicles.

Benoist’s main intellectual formulation is the “right to difference,” which upholds the cultural homogeneity and separateness of distinct ethnic-cultural groups. In this sense, he extends the anti-imperialist Left’s idea of “national self-determination” to micro-national European groupings (sometimes called “the Europe of a Hundred Flags”). The “right to difference” has influenced the anti-immigrant policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France, and a number of GRECE members joined this party, even though Benoist himself rejects Le Pen.[36]

Benoist has also influenced U.S. White separatism. Usually based around the demand for a separate White nation in parts of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming, this became a popular idea in White Nationalist circles starting in the early 1980s.[37] This decentralized regional perspective was matched by decentralized organizational schemas which emerged at the same time. Louis Beam advocated “leaderless resistance,” and the “lone wolf” strategy for far-right terrorism,[38] while Christian Identity Pastor Bob Miles started referring himself as a “klanarchist.”

Inverting language, Benoist claims that he is an antiracist. Racism, he argues, is a function of universalistic ideologies like liberalism and Marxism, which purportedly wipe out regional and ethnic identities. He says “Racism is nothing but the denial of difference.”[39] But Taguieff, a keen observer of the European Right, identifies a “phobia of mixing” at the core of this form of racism. It is part of the “softer, new, and euphemistic forms of racism praising difference (heterophilia) and substituting ‘culture’ for ‘race.’”[40]

The influence of these New Right ideas on the National-Anarchists is explicit. In Australia, the National-Anarchist group is for all practical reasons coextensive with “New Right Australia/New Zealand” and at one point they claimed that “New Right is the theory, National-Anarchism the practice.”[41] In Britain, Troy Southgate has been involved in New Right meetings since 2005.[42] But while Benoist claims that he does not hate immigrants, repudiates antisemitism, and endorses feminism, the National-Anarchists show what New Right ideas look like in practice: crude racial separatism, open antisemitism, homophobia, and antifeminism. The “right to difference” becomes separate ethnic villages.

The New Right also has had a limited influence on elements of the Left intelligentsia. In the United States, the influential journal Telos (known for disseminating Western Marxist texts into English) moved rightward in the 1990s as its editor showed sympathy for Europe’s New Right and published Benoist’s works.[43] It continues to publish Benoist, and explores the thought of Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Many Leftists now consider the once venerable journal anathema.[44]

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Day 11!

happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about music and literature during the Harlem Renaissance!

Literature During the Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Langston Hughes, a Black man with short hair. In the photograph, he’s sitting with his arm resting on the back of a chair in front of a table and a bookshelf. He’s smiling widely and wearing a light-colored long-sleeved collared shirt with thin, vertical white stripes. End ID.]

One of the spheres most influenced and prominent during the Harlem Renaissance was that of Black literature. Black writers began to publish works about being Black in America, about Black pride and stories, about forging a racial and cultural identity, and as Black stories began to become more told on stages, they also began to be told more through literature. 

Magazines were a huge part of literature during the Harlem Renaissance- they were opportunities for Black writers to collaborate and reach larger audiences. Some of the most influential magazines of the era include the NAACP-published The Crisis, and Marcus Garvey’s and the UNIA’s N*gro’s World. Publications such as these boldly discussed racial topics and allowed readers to connect with their own racial identities.

The most famous writer of the Harlem Renaissance, indeed one of the most famous and influential American writers ever, is Langston Hughes. Langston was many things- he was a poet, an essayist, a novelist, and an activist. He is most known for his poetry, but all his genres of writing revolved around racial identity. Hughes is known for saying that Black artists rejecting their racial identity stood in the way of them truly creating Black art. 

Langston’s most famous works include The Weary Blues, a poetry collection about Black jazz and blues musicians and Black life in America, famous for incorporating blues and jazz into his writing as well as Black American dialects. He also collaborated with other famous artists like Aaron Douglas and Zora Neale Hurston on the magazine Fire!!, a bold magazine for Black artists focusing on race, sex, intersections, and more. Hughes wrote about and memorialized the Harlem Renaissance in his autobiography The Big Sea.

Zora Neale Hurston was another very famous writer during the Harlem Renaissance. She wasn’t afraid to write in an explicitly Black way- she wrote in Southern Black dialects, about Black pride and autonomy, and didn’t worry about appealing to a white audience, which earned her criticism for being “too black”- a label she wore with pride. She was also known for writing about colorism within Black communities. Zora wrote famous works like “Their Eyes Are Watching God” and “Barracoon”.

The Harlem Renaissance saw the growing popularity of many, many writers. Other famous Harlem Renaissance writers include Countee Cullen, whose poetry chronicled Black lives in America, Claude McKay, whose famous story ‘Home to Harlem’ detailed the life of a Black soldier, James Weldon Johnson, whose famous poem ‘Lift Every Voice And Sing’ has been set to music, and many, many others.

The Harlem Renaissance left a huge legacy on Black literature.

Music During the Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Louis Armstrong, a Black man with short hair. In the photo, he’s wearing a white, button up, collared undershirt beneath a light-colored suit jacket and a black bowtie, and he’s playing a trumpet. End ID.]

If there’s one aspect of the Harlem Renaissance that has had the most lasting impact on the world, it is music. Two of the world’s most popular, well-known, and influential genres, jazz and blues, were developed by Black musicians around and during the Harlem Renaissance. Developed in New Orleans, jazz music became an international music phenomenon.

Jazz was fast-paced, exciting, and had a focus on musical improvisation, allowing musicians to come up with their own music on the spot. Blues, a post-war musical genre that focused on slowly, passionately expressing deep emotions and difficult truths, became a staple of music in the Harlem musical scene and the Black musical scene across the country. 

One of the staples of the Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant night life- this included many night clubs where Black musicians played music- as time went on, these night clubs became extremely popular, attracting huge crowds every night. They were a beautiful celebration of Black music, culture, and unity, and clubs like this are what led to the rising popularity of many Black musicians during the Harlem Renaissance.

Some of the most famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance were Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, among many others! Louis Armstrong is famous for songs like ‘What A Wonderful World’, ‘Hey Dolly’, and ‘La Vie En Rose’. Songs like these are still famous today, as are songs by the likes of Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington.

Jazz and blues music were the beating heart of the Harlem Renaissance, and to this day they are some of the hugest genres in the world, cementing the influence of Black people on the world of music.

Summary-

Literature during the Harlem Renaissance heavily focused on Black identity, pride, experiences, and exploring Black life in America

Famous Harlem Renaissance writers include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, County Cullen, and Claude McKay

Music during the Harlem Renaissance was largely jazz and blues, two Black music styles

Music performances at night clubs sustained the energy and popularity of the Harlem Renaissance

Famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance include Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, and Cab Calloway

tagging @intersexfairy​ @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter​ @neopronouns​ @justlgbtthings​ @genderkoolaid​ @spacelazarwolf​ 

Sources-

https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/h/a/r/Harlem_Renaissance_and_Literature_fb80.html#:~:text=The%20Harlem%20Renaissance%20brought%20along,to%20signify%20their%20cultural%20identity. 

https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/langston-hughes-harlem-renaissance 

https://www.zoranealehurston.com/

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/harlem-renaissance-literature-guide 

https://www.history.com/news/harlem-renaissance-writers

https://www.biography.com/musicians/louis-armstrong

https://www.biography.com/musicians/bessie-smith

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance#louis-armstrong 

[cbrownjc]

that anon is insane and i say this as a black fan. they have attached their racial identity to their hobby and now think if anyone can see past the characters race and enjoy them for who they are, that person is either a racist or a sellout. like sorry armand is brown, sorry he will be revealed as a bigger villain than lestat, sorry that his relationship with louis wont last but thats the story. id find it more offensive and racist if they changed everything about him to be more palatable

Hi Anon.

I mean, to me, it just seems so limiting to take a complex character like Armand and wish for him to be less complex just because he's now played by a POC. Because, in my eyes, that's what this whole "nice guy Armand" thing does and is doing.

If anything, his being now a brown man should add to Armand's character and complexity and explain even more his problematic faults and the things he does, given what his backstory will now be: a brown child who was kidnapped, sold as a slave, sexually exploited, and then bought by white Roman (Marius).

There's a fascinating story that can be told here IMO with Armand's character about the many facets of slavery and colonialism, and how it not only abused but corrupted Armand since childhood, over many long centuries, until he's as we meet him in Paris when Louis and Claudia first meet him.

He's never been just a mustache-twirling villain, even though he is the main antagonist in both IWTV and TVL.

And Rolin Jones has also already said S2 will include things from book 3 and book 6. Which are Queen of the Damned and The Vampire Armand. Meaning we'll not only likely going to see why and what made Armand what he is and had been, but what I'd argue is the first time we see him really, as readers, ever first saw that there was more to him than what we thought, and that was in The Devil's Minion chapter. And then even more so with The Vampire Armand.

We're looking at the possibility of a fully fleshed-out but nuanced antagonistic POC character here, just like I'd argue we've seen with Louis and Claudia too (minus the antagonist part of course).

And wanting to make him some noble good guy just so undercuts all of that IMO. And would just reinforce that trend of white characters who are recast to be POC in adaptations, but then given usually less to do than their book counterparts, if not underutilized completely (see the many comments about Bonnie from The Vampire Diaries).

[kutputli]

Just to clarify, what I meant about unpopular opinion was the thought of Arun being a deadname. I think I've only seen 3 takes like that. And there can be more because I'm not the only person here, I just have the impression it's fortunately an unpopular one. And two of them were clearly racist and demonizing them, I think one even compared Louis to Marius??? But there was one that was just frustration and directed to the writers, so I don't really agree with what they said, but don't know what to think about the OP. But I also think that when it comes to his names, if people are going to look at it that way, then they need to look at *all* those names. Because yes, Armand isn't trans, and he never said "I named myself Armand and that's the name I'm using from now on" or anything of that sort. It's not the same as an openly trans character getting deadnamed or misgendered. Yes, the name might remind him of traumatic experiences, but so do Amadeo and Armand. And none of those names were his actual choice. So why would Arun be the problem? Are people looking at it through the lenses of race/culture or gender? Both? Or are people just saying things? And yes, viewers don't really know if Arun is even his actual first name, but at least it's the closest thing he has to his origins and we know how he has issues with identity because he can't even remember a good part of his childhood/youth. If people want to discuss the name Arun, then we can discuss all of them. Because it's not like Armand is his favorite name, it was just one that he was given to and he accepted. Armand is the one he uses on a daily basis, but Arun is the one he only revealed to one person and we only saw that person using it. I personally I wouldn't call it empowering because he has so much baggage, but I do see it with some relief, also the scenes where they teased him as a Muslim (though representation on that sense can be better because they got some things wrong) because there might be some pieces of his previous life that he still remembers and are just *his*. And even if he reverted later, it means that it a conscious choice that he remembers and that's relieving too. I hope more people can try approaching it that way. /nm

Thanks for clarifying, and yup, agreed!

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (23-29 Jul 2023)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 The Rift (seapigeon) - 53K, modern college no powers AU - there's witchcraft and ghosts and curses and art student steve and science nerd bucky and it was all very good!

😍 Six Kids and a Winnebago series (Oddree13) - 91K, omegaverse Steddie - this series is a thoroughly delightful domestic omegaverse(lite) set post s4 - excellent characterizations, great sense of time/place & really fantastic music references

🥰 Longing and Belonging (enjambament) - 44K, geraskier - governess!Jaskier, lots of great family stuff with Ciri & Yen [reread, a definite fave]

😍 if I'm gonna get back to you someday (napricot) - 46K, post Endgame fixit with "a clusterfuck of Steves" from different multiverses - so many good emotions!

😊 Roommate Wanted (Lihhelsing, tinkerbclla) - 66K, modern Steddie roommates-to-lovers, part epistolary with a dash of identity porn

💖💖 +110K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

the premature awakening of Bucky Barnes [at the hands of stupid, sexy, Post-run Steve] (MaddieWritesStucky (Madeleine_Ward)) - MCU: stucky, 3K - modern no powers stucky, several months on in the relationship between stripper!Bucky & architecht Steve [reread]

Galatea (saltandbyrne) - Inception: Arthur/Eames, 16K - a very good and delightfully melancholic modern myth telling

Shelter Case (Coragyps) - Suits: Mike/Harvey, 7K - futuristic dark dystopian omegaverse [reread]

Let Me Keep You (LeeHan) - MCU: stucky, 4K - Steve's oral fixation PWP  [reread]

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

D20: Adventuring Party - s1, e15-18

D20: A Crown of Candy - s5, e15-17

Good Omens - s2, e1-6

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

What Next: TBD Plus - Why Tech Lays Women Off First

⭐ Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Julia Gets Wise with Jane Fonda

Fire Island: The Tea - Thomás Matos

50 Years of Hip-Hop - 1991: "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" by Geto Boys

50 Years of Hip-Hop - 1993: "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty by Nature

Hot and Bothered - Live from Pemberley: The 2005 Movie (with Helen Zaltzman and Jenny Owen Youngs)

Re: Dracula - July 24: There Will be Some Trouble

Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News - Episode 6: “Hello America, this is Addis Ababa.”

50 MPH - 7 MPH / A Crash Course in Jan De Bont (with Bilge Ebiri)

⭐ Endless Thread - Best of Summer: The Loudest Sound

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Mapping the Gay Guides

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Spaces for Spies

Switched on Pop - Barbie and the plasticity of pop

Shedunnit - Cricket and Crime

Re: Dracula - July 26: Just Starting for Home

Ologies with Alie Ward - Sciuridology (SQUIRRELS) with Karen Munroe

Stuff The British Stole - The Fever Tree Hunt

The Waves Plus - How a Drag Queen Recreated the American Dream

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Knight’s Spider Web Farm

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Amazon Night Hikes

Our Opinions Are Correct - Encore Episode: We're in the wrong timeline, with Connie Willis and R.F. Kuang

99% Invisible #546 - The Country of the Blind

50 Years of Hip-Hop - 1981: "Rapture" by Blondie

⭐ Decoder Ring Plus - A Brief History of Making Out

Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - Zelda: A Beep to the Past

Dear Prudence Plus - My Boyfriend Hid His Hobby From Me—Civil War Reenactments. Help!

⭐ Into It - Country Music’s Race Problem

What Next: TBD Plus - Washington vs. A.I.

Rivals: Music's Greatest Feuds - Robbie Robertson vs. Levon Helm: Broken Band

Re: Dracula - July 28: Four Days in Hell

Re: Dracula - July 29: Another Tragedy

Hit Parade Plus - The Bridge: Don’t Believe Me, Just Watch

⭐ Strong Songs - "Killing Me Softly With His Song," as sung by Lauryn Hill, Roberta Flack, & Lori Lieberman

Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! - WWDTM: Randall Park

Fire Island: The Tea - Bambi Sue: Dredging Up the Past

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Presenting The Who

People Just Wanna Have Fun [Kool & The Gang] {2023}

The Beach Boys Radio • Popular

"One Thing Leads To Another" [The Fixx] Radio

Dream Theater

Presenting Bruno Mars

[kuiperoid]

Optical Illusion: Perceptions of Race and Sexuality with Right-Wing Internet Personality Nick Fuentes, Part 2

[originally posted here]

Part 1

Sugar, Spice, and Nothing That Nice

A rare incident of Fuentes interacting with women as he poses with the female guests on his episode of Fresh&Fit

Fuentes has made many colorful statements on the subject of women and sex. It should not serve as a surprise to know that he has stated that he does not believe in sex outside of a marriage and has blamed many of modern society’s ills on promiscuity, access to pornography, and the growing acceptance of LGBT people. As for his own singleness, he claims to be waiting until he is ready to get married before he starts looking for a wife and identifies as an incel, that is an “involuntary celibate,” but his precise definition of that has changed over time. He does, however, still have plenty of thoughts on his potential future marriage and claim to be attracted to women. There is an often-noted disconnect between the women he claims to feel attracted to and the one he intends to marry. In a May 2023 episode, after a super chatter asked Fuentes if he found tomboys “based or gay.” Fuentes proceeded to go on a monologue about how he not only found tomboys very attractive, but also black and Asian women, followed by an assurance that he would “marry a perfectly normal girl because you have to,” with “normal” her presumably meaning “white” as well as conventionally feminine. Assuming everything he says is in earnest, it is a bit sad, thinking how someone could think that what they find attractive and what they think they should marry for the sake of “optics” are not the same.

A rare female involved in Fuentes’s circle earlier on was the aforementioned Brittany Venti. A Trump supporter and attendee of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally herself, along with former Fuentes associate Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet, Venti was known to toe the line between trolling and sincere social critique. Venti even stated in her appearance in Louis Theroux's Extreme and Online episode of Forbidden America that heavily focused on Fuentes and America First that she was not bothered by the “Jews will not replace us” chant, thinking it was “just trolling.” Her channel largely focuses on critiques of sex-positivity, feminism, sex work, pornography, and progressivism generally. She collaborated with Fuentes a few times, including the interview on her channel where the two discussed their ethnic identities. Fans were quick to notice a seemingly flirtatious rapport between the two. This would come to an end after an incident in which Fuentes alleges that Venti asked him to kiss her, for which he rejected her for being “non-white.” In the aftermath, Venti would accuse Fuentes of being gay on multiple platforms.  In response, Fuentes associate Matt “Beardson” Evans made a stream graphically describing how he planned to anally rape Venti in revenge, laughing all the while. Venti appeared noticeably distraught as she shared this video with Louis Thereoux during her appearance in his series, though she assured him that she saw the humor in the exaggerated description. Out of context, Venti’s accusations could be read as the fury of a woman scorned, but she was not the first and would not be the last to hit Fuentes with such claims, which will be further discussed in the next section. With often claiming to find black women attractive, one would think Venti, a light-skinned, light-eyed biracial woman who read as only one third Sub-Saharan African on her 23andMe results and held right-wing ideologies to the point of attending the same event that Fuentes was pressured out of school for having attended would make an ideal compromise between his stated desires and what he viewed as optical. 

Venti appearing in the “Extreme and Online” episode of Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America, describing the backlash she received from Fuentes’s followers after their falling out

Fuentes has identified himself as being an incel, though there is some dispute about the accuracy of describing himself as such. Formally, an incel, “involuntary celibate,” is someone unable to to excite the attractions of others to the point of leading to sexual activity, with the more modern usage specifying it to mean men who cannot spark the attraction of women specifically, others specifying it further to mean white women or just members of their particular race. Many have stated that they do not feel Fuentes fits into this aesthetically, with even those who criticize his appearance feeling he is not the worst looking person. Speculation aside, with minimal research, it is not difficult to find messageboards where netizens, including some female, admit to finding him attractive. He did receive a super chat once featuring a flirtatious message from someone who claimed to be a female viewer asking him on a date. While some would later speculate that it was a troll, Fuentes addressed the super chat in the moment in earnest, rejecting the offer, saying that, being “trad,” he would be the one to make any advances and a female making the offer was a turn off. Certainly, if the tale about Venti offering him a kiss is true, that offer alone would indicate his not incapable of attracting female attention, though perhaps her ethnicity makes her not count. He admitted in an episode to having once been kissed by a girl while he was in high school, leaving himself at the receiving end of taunts in his chat that he was a “fakecel.” He defended himself as a “born incel,” insisting that he lacked the interest, the involuntary part being that he “didn’t choose to be born.” He would go on to later describe himself as a “neo-incel,” on account that he technically could have a girlfriend if he really wanted to on account of his wealth and appearance, but is choosing not to for the time being. 

Fuentes’s claimed disinterest in sex has often been present in his descriptions. He once notoriously went on a tirade about how sex with women was “gay” and would periodically go on spiels in following episodes about how pursuing sex and “simping” for women was a gateway to homosexuality. In a contemporary succession to Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones insisting he was the only truly heterosexual man in the world, Fuentes would insist that incels were the only truly straight men. One considers the influence of his traditionalist Catholic worldview and distaste for Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation. Luther was famously progressive for his time in his presentation of the desire for sex as a positive that could lead some to marriage and procreation, whereas traditionalist Catholics prior to him described sex as an awful act that one must tolerate for the sake of reproducing. Fuentes has repeatedly said how disgusting he thinks the act of sex in and of itself sounds and has reportedly said that he hopes to impregnate his future wife with his son as soon as possible so he does not have to endure the act too often.

In a surprising twist, Fuentes once posted a text he received from Mississippian right-wing Christian influencer Ella Maulding, describing how his ex-associate Jaden McNeil had allegedly attempted to pressure her into giving him oral sex after a makeout session when they met at a party during the White Boy Summer tour of 2021, allegations that McNeil fiercely denies. Fuentes’s initial presentation of this incident seemed surprisingly sympathetic to this young woman’s discomfort for someone so openly misogynistic and who often claimed that women’s claims of sexual misconduct by men were lies or that they deserved it, even likening McNeil’s alleged actions to those of another former associate in the circle who had been accused of sexual assault. Any illusions that Fuentes had gained an understanding towards women’s struggles were promptly wiped away during that night’s episode of America First in which Fuentes alluded to the incident as an example of some foolish non-incel, “simping for a…five out of ten.” Indeed, McNeil’s crime here according to Fuentes was not allegedly attempting to pressure a girl into a sexual act that she did not want to participate in; it was that he had (allegedly) been interested in sex at all.

The text from Ella Maulding posted by Fuentes to his Telegram with some sympathy, compared to when he would later mock “simps” on his show that night

The latest female to enter the Nick Fuentes Extended Universe is JustPearlyThings. JustPearlyThings is a TikTok and YouTube personality known for her advice to single women. She started off as a run-of-the-mill social media singer who played the acoustic guitar, but she did not take off until she started giving relationship advice to women. The majority of her audience appears to be members of the manosphere, such as the Fresh&Fit podcast on which she has been a guest multiple times, in addition to being accused of stealing material from to more easily appeal to men. She is known for extreme statements on how women should behave in relationships, famously suggesting the repeal of the nineteenth amendment. She advises marrying and becoming a housewife over being a professional. The fact that she herself is an unmarried professional being a fact that does not go unnoticed by her critics on different sides; she cites her tall stature, standing at somewhere between five-foot-ten and six-foot-one depending on the source, as the primary reason. Brittany Venti, for example, despite being a traditionalist anti-feminist herself, has been known to criticize JustPearlyThings for advising that women become “doormats” and take the blame for their husbands and boyfriends cheating on them. JustPearlyThings’s channel took off in far-rights spheres and she, a fellow Chicagoan, and Fuentes noticed each other and became friends. JustPearlyThings even returned to her roots as an acoustic guitar and vocals performer when she performed a song called “Why Can’t We Talk About the Jews,” which she dedicated to Fuentes, for which she received excessive backlash. Given his stated preference for the social company of males, it is definitely surprising that Fuentes would publicly declare a female his friend. JustPearlyThings may herself appear to be an optical female partner for Fuentes, a fellow Internet famous traditionalist who would let her man rule the house and one who is definitely white. However, she falls short - or perhaps, tall - in certain areas: JustPearlyThings is two years older than Fuentes as well as taller than him, with Fuentes standing somewhere between five-foot-five and five-foot-nine depending on the source. Most surprisingly for this circle, she has a stated preference for black men, her most famous ex-boyfriend being TikToker Oneya “angryreactions/Oneya D’Amelio” Johnson. This has caused some more race-based traditionalists to disavow JustPearlyThings, some even including Fuentes in the criticism for his association with her. Fuentes infamously lambasted the female host of an episode of Sosnick that he and JustPearlyThings appeared on, a friend of the latter, claiming he was “more Italian than [her]” on account of her Nigerian boyfriend. Considering much of her fanbase includes traditionalist-minded men of color who like the idea of being with a white woman, JustPearlyThings did publicly apologize to her fans who may have taken issue with Fuentes’s statement.

Fuentes and JustPearlyThings on a show together

It is clear that Fuentes is capable of socially interacting with some women. True, these are women who espouse views similar to his, but that does not make them any less women. That being said, there is an underlying discomfort that remains that has inevitably led to a certain type of speculation to arise.

Catastrophic Speculation

Fuentes holding up a crucifix at a rally to emphasize the movement’s focus on Jesus

As with many ardent traditionalists who decry degeneracy, it was only a matter of time before speculation began to build that Fuentes was compensating for something. The fact that Fuentes was ardent about not having and having never even had a girlfriend as a man in his early twenties raised eyebrows. As previously mentioned, Fuentes often asserts his lack of interest in sports or physical activity, claiming to prefer pursuits of the mind rather than the body. Between this and his characterful manner of speaking, rife with expressive hand gestures, some have read Fuentes as inadequately masculine. It would not take long for some critics to see this girlfriend-lacking, effeminate-by-their-definitions young man as potentially a closeted homosexual. Fuentes, who claims to be strongly opposed to homosexual activity - though he has stated that he has sympathy with “those struggling with same sex attraction” who choose not to act on it - has denied these claims, but that did not stop the speculation, which would only grow with the years.

Far-right commentators who espouse homophobia being accused of homsexuality is nothing new; Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Steven Crowder, and others have all faced such accusations themselves. Those men have all been married to women at some point, which they have used as a cover, but Fuentes himself claims to have never even had a girlfriend. To be truly homosexual, one would think Fuentes would have to actively express attraction to men. On the most literal level, he has never publicly admitted to having had sexual or romantic feelings for or relationships with men. Many of the initial pieces of evidence are merely stereotypes that lead him to being perceived as such. Having characterful gestures and a lack of athletic prowess does not indicate sexual preferences alone. He has described sex and relationships with women as something that distracts men, but that only suggests he is not currently involved with women. Certainly, the existence of asexuality, the way some have interpreted Fuentes, indicates that a lack of attraction to women does not necessarily indicate an attraction to men. Whether or not this has ever happened is up to interpretation. Fuentes definitely describes men in a far more positive light than women on an emotional and intellectual level, but the average misogynistic heterosexual male with a wife would likely do the same. There is a great deal of focus put on his appreciative approach to other men’s bodies. There was a rumor that a former Instagram account of his was following a page dedicated to “aesthetic boys,” featuring lots of fit, shirtless young men, though this is difficult to prove with his accounts all being deleted. He has periodically commented on the “physiques” of men he admires, such as Dr. Jordan Peterson, for the masculinity that they exude. It is important to note that none of these expressions explicitly included any statements of desire, but it was enough for some to infer those interpretations.

Some long-term followers of Fuentes’s antics will bring up his 2018 interview with Lucian Wintrich. Lucian Baxter Wintrich IV (né Einhorn and sans IV) is a prominent openly gay right-wing photographer, socialite, and former White House correspondent. Wintrich was known for being one of the youngest White House correspondents, beginning at the age of twenty-eight in 2017, but his notoriety began before then. In 2016, he created a photo series known as “Twinks4Trump,” featuring slim young men in Make America Great Again hats and in sultry poses, all taken in his very own apartment in the East Village. Later that year, he curated a conservative, pro-Trump art exhibition entitled “Daddy Will Save Us,” featuring art by various contributors and Milo Yiannopoulous himself in a bathtub of pig’s blood. His provocative antics eventually caught Fuentes’s eye and he had him appear on the show. Though many in Fuentes’s chat were less than kind to Wintrich, telling him to “die of AIDS” and such, Fuentes did refer to him as a “good friend.” The two discussed their generational differences, with Wintrich being a millennial and Fuentes being generation Z, and gently debated on the subject of how much immigration should be allowed, comparing their experiences with Fuentes coming from a suburban public school and Wintrich from private school. Some Fuentes critics felt that the discussion was flirtatious in nature and that Fuentes’s constant fidgeting and lip-biting throughout was on account of him being flustered; even Wintrich remarked on it and made a joke about Fuentes being “turned on,” which he simply laughed off. They were quick to notice Fuentes’s gleeful response when Wintrich called him “cute.” Alas, most followers took it as playful riffing and Fuentes did push back on a super chatter who left a sexually charged comment about Wintrich, claiming he did “not condone.” Even from the critics, this incident would not get nearly as much attention as one a bit over a year later.

Fuentes interviewing openly gay right-wing figure Lucian Wintrich in a 2018 episode of America First

When providing proof of Fuentes’s alleged homosexuality, critics are quick to bring up his previous friendship with Internet personality Tor Gustafsson Brookes, who has been known by various Internet pseudonyms over time. Brookes was born in Sweden in 1998, but was then raised in Brisbane, Australia by his single mother. Diagnosed as autistic in childhood, Brookes spent much of his youth online and playing video games with the username Kamikaze. He began streaming in 2019 under the name Lolisocks, as an intentionally inflammatory reference to “loli” pornography in anime, that is portrayals of what are supposed to resemble young, prepubescent girls. This provocative username was indicative of the sort of antics Brookes often displayed, essentially serving as the modern cyber  equivalent of a 1990s shock jock such as Howard Stern or Tom Leykis. Being more contemporary and Internet-based, Brookes’ antics took it to a whole new level. Initially, he was most famous for his all-day streams, in which he would stream his entire day, mostly spent at home, including when he was sleeping. For most of these streams, he was wearing minimal clothing. His wall was noticeably covered in anime artwork, some of it salacious in nature and featuring what appeared to be quite young girls like the lolis alluded to in his username. He would leave sex toys lying around, sometimes using them as props for his shenanigans. A believer in white identitarian politics himself, Brookes found ways to post subtle “redpills” to his audience. Though many streaming platforms have rules against saying anything that could be explicitly deemed racist, he found ways around it, such as streaming his viewing of The Greatest Story Never Told, a six hour Hitler documentary deemed by many to be revisitionist in nature. There were several videos of him stating his views much more explicitly, just as telling black residents of the United States to go back to Africa if they want to avoid being called a certain slur, in which he used the word in question. His more famous streams involved him dressed in anime girl or maid outfits and cat ears in public to get a rise out of people. 

Some of Brookes’s more safe for work Internet antics

At some point in 2019, Fuentes stumbled across one of Brookes’s streams. He was not initially aware of the fact that Brookes shared many of his ideologies, but he was fascinated by his antics. He became clued in over time by some of Brookes’s exploits, such as the streaming of The Greatest Story Never Told. Eventually Fuentes, who has admitted to having few friends and finding initiating social interactions difficult, mustered up the courage to leave a comment on one of Brookes’s streams. Brookes responded indicating that he was familiar with Fuentes and not in a negative way. This led to the two eventually beginning to communicate with each other online and developing a friendship. Fuentes would even successfully convince Brookes that Lolisocks was a deeply un-optical username, which led him to switching to the moniker of CatboyKami that he uses to this day. Fuentes was convinced that this tall, more conventionally attractive young man was exactly what the movement needed.

In December of 2019, Brookes decided to visit the United States. Over the course of his trip, he mainly participated in more inflammatory antics, such as trolling a furry convention and a stop in Portland, as well as visiting his online girlfriend in California. In the middle of this trip, he included a four-day stop in Chicago so that he and Fuentes could finally meet in person. The two claimed to have spent much of their time simply hanging out or “schmoozing,” as Fuentes would say, but the final day of Brookes’s stay in Chicago was actually streamed for his channel. The ten hour stream featured the two of them going out to eat, stopping at a mall so Brookes could get a jacket, playing at an arcade, and generally talking about various topics as they walked around in Chicago on that fine Sunday evening to early Monday morning. The two appeared to get along and agree on most topics, aside from the moments in which Brookes’s atheism and the fact that he felt women should be allowed in the movement, though not to vote or be leaders, came up. Fuentes politely debated Brookes on these topics, but the main focus of their conversations were what to do that night and life in general in their respective, quite different homelands. The viewers in Brookes’s live chat, many of which were Fuentes’s viewers who came over just for this, appeared thoroughly entertained by the antics between the two, leaving super chats throughout the stream.

Segments from the time Fuentes and Brookes spent together

Fuentes would upload the stream of his time spent socializing with Brookes on January 3, 2020. A few weeks later, it made it to the leftist sphere, in particular catching the attention of  progressive political streamer and Fuentes critic Ian “Vaush” Kochinski. Vaush described the ten-hour stream as a “date,” insisting that the two told flirty jokes and “gaze[d] lovingly into each other’s eyes,” taking it all as a sign of attraction. He skimmed Brookes’s social media presence, especially focusing on an image of Brookes drinking water from a large squirting dildo that he sometimes used as a prop. While Vaush was the one to break the news to people across the political aisle, it is noteworthy that he admitted to only skimming the ten hour stream rather than watching the entire thing. He also appeared to not be overly familiar with Brookes’s social media presence. As a result, he did get a few facts wrong. He repeatedly referred to Brookes as a “gay sex worker” when, by all accounts, he was and only ever has been merely a streamer by profession, admittedly one known to engage in strange escapades in little clothing and costumes some may view as suggestive and, whatever his exact sexual orientation may be, he never identified himself as anything else than heterosexual and in a relationship with a woman. He claimed that Fuentes paid to fly Brookes out from Australia to see him specifically when the fact that Brookes had just paid a great deal of money to fly out himself was relevant to multiple conversations between the two, as were the other reasons for Brookes’s visit to the United States. The most specific yet incorrect claim Vaush made was saying that the stream ended in a hotel room and that Fuentes was there with Brookes at the time. Those who viewed the entire ten hours after the report by Vaush were disappointed to find that it in fact ended in the Air BnB where Brookes was staying alone and that Fuentes had dropped him off. Vaush, himself openly pansexual, ended his video challenging Fuentes to a debate on his stream on the subject that he (Fuentes) “is not a degenerate.” After this, word about the incident got out and rumors began to spread. While the falsehoods shared in Vaush’s stream were more likely genuine misunderstandings based on an incomplete viewing rather than intentional lies, it is interesting that the none of the Fuentes critics, including those on the far right and presumably in ideological opposition with Vaush, bothered to watch the stream for themselves and took all of these claims at face value. Many questioned why Fuentes, someone so concerned with optics, would publicly spend time with someone known to cross-dress and who took pictures posing with sex toys. Fuentes did eventually address the matter in an episode of America First, insisting that his friendship with Brookes, who he insisted was “based and redpilled” and “slays femoids,” was purely platonic and that the claims by Vaush were a “psyop.”  This was enough to satisfy most of the groypers, but for some, the damage was done and Fuentes did reportedly experience a hit to his viewership. It did not matter that certain accusations may not have been true; what mattered is what seemed to be true and, by extension, because the truth to these people and as part of the general lore.

Brookes’s social media presence in the following months would not prove less controversial. In response to the rumors about him dating Fuentes, he found them hilarious and made jokes about having been his “first kiss.” As 2020 went on, his exploits became less subtle. With everyone being forced indoors, he took to using the random video chat website Omegle and troll people, including children, in racist costumes or as a police officer while kneeling on a specially made George Floyd doll. He would make multiple posts across his social media platforms, before they got removed, stating that men who say they are not attracted to “lolis” are either lying or gay. He even spent some time with Baked Alaska and attended right wing events in the US. After an incident where he was seen publicly praising Hitler, Fuentes formally disavowed him for his lack of “optics.”  Brookes remained in the US on account of his eventual marriage to his girlfriend, with whom he fathered a child. It was speculated by some to be a green card marriage, as it did not last much longer than a year. Allegations floated around less savory parts of the Internet, claiming that the two split because Brookes was addicted to pills and that he had cheated on his wife with a fifteen-year-old girl. He carried on with his act as a provocateur on Omegle and in public until a 2023 arrest for disturbing the peace when he was found harassing women outside of a synagogue in New York, an incident he was live streaming. 

In addition to accusations of being homosexual, Fuentes has also faced accusations of pedophilia. It is important to note that, for many of Fuentes’s far-right critics, pedophilia and homosexuality are one and the same, so existence of one is treated as proof of the other. Certainly, when discussing the friendship Fuentes had with aforementioned Tor Gustafsson Brookes, the alleged pedophilia of the latter is used as evidence of an apparent attraction to men, despite him never publicly discussing being attracted to any male people of any age, and that, by extension, the two must have been romantically or sexually involved with each other. Fuentes has, like many traditionalist influencers, supported lowering if not entirely doing away with the age of consent so that white citizens can focus on getting married and start making white babies as soon as possible. He has stated a desire for a “sixteen-year-old wife,” being age twenty-four himself at the time that this statement was made. He has specifically stated that he is putting off dating women so that he can start his search when he is in his thirties and can get the youngest wife legally possible with an ideal age gap. Aside from hoping that his future bride would be a virgin the way he himself claims to be, Fuentes has stated that all he wants from her is “a fertile womb and an innocent, childlike spirit.”

All things considered, Fuentes stating that he wants a teenage bride does not automatically mean that he is attracted to teenage girls. If anything, his statements about his feelings about sex and his attractions standing in contrast to an “optical” spouse implies that his ideal bride is someone who he is not attracted to. It would be reasonable to conclude that he considers teenagers to be good spouses for the sake of optics, though whether or not he is genuinely attracted to them is anyone’s guess. Given his previous statements about not wanting to have to deal with sex too much, it is possible that he, like many others, wrongly assumes that teens are more fertile, therefore would be easier to impregnate sooner. Darkly, one considers his other statements about not only not wanting to have to deal with sex too much, but not have to deal with his future spouse beyond their child and perhaps he is very aware that younger mothers are more susceptible to fatalities in childbirth and a young woman who dies after providing him with his son is the most optical way for him to have done the correct thing by getting married and reproducing, but not have to deal with her any further. Perhaps the truth lies in the middle and is in fact the usual reason adults seek teenage partners, not because they explicitly find teenagers more attractive than adults, but because teens are easier to persuade and convince to go along with what they are told. Someone who has been the leader of a movement primarily made up of teenagers would be well aware of just how easy young people are to sway.

Part 3

[ca-suffit]

Is Lestat colorblind? I know that being colorblind is a myth and impossible in this society, but in this fiction can we say that vampirism transcends identities, whether it's gender, sexual or racial identies ? And Lestat only sees the world in two categories Mortals vs Immortals?

the fandom wants ppl to believe this, and so did anne rice, but no lol. he v much tf is *not.*

idk which version ur asking about so I'm gonna include something from the books, movie, and show.

like. on a level, yes, it could be argued that lestat sees things differently bcuz some part of him does. vampirism was forced onto him and gives him identity issues of his own, so a lot of his character is refusing to give in to his or anyone's negative thoughts about it all. he doesn't like to think about anything too long bcuz it might touch into feelings about a trauma, but this is why he ends up hurting a lot of ppl around him all the time. in the books, he's uncomfortable most of the time when his mother isn't presenting v feminine, despite his awareness of her dislike of it. so she dresses that way for him sometimes. in the show, we see how much lestat's refusal to acknowledge race beyond a fetish-y level of it (when it's not something working in his favor anyway, when he's asked to consider black perspectives on it instead) hurts louis and claudia, and he's aware of it too bcuz he's been told about it.

anne rice always talked about her vampires transcending all kinds of things, but the books are still full of racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia....prbly anything u could think of. I don't think she knew this but it's p obvious to everyone else. her vampires were not transcending anything lol. it's not written in a way that's meant to serve any real critical purpose either, it's just there bcuz it's a reflection of how she viewed the world herself (this is not an assumption, read her interviews and compare the texts).

anyway, lestat prbly doesn't have conscious awareness of any of this himself either but the way he talks across his adaptations shows he has awareness beyond "mortal and immortal." he is never speaking about ppl in only these terms most of the time. he gets rly specific and his actions are rly specific in response to that too. he is navigating the world as a white, european man first most of the time, not just "vampire."

examples under the cut

from memnoch the devil

from prince lestat and the realms of atlantis

1 regarding the alien race they encounter

2 lestat's fantasies about one of the women from this group

amc iwtv

I can't post everything bcuz I'd hit the image limit so here's just a few from the first episode. his affair with a white woman in public at louis' business, his inviting only white soldiers back to the house when he's upset about jonah, his violence towards louis and bringing claudia back from the train are all other examples (and there's still a lot more!) of awareness of race and making decisions based on that, whether it's conscious or not.

1

2

3 lestat thinking racism is an american problem

(loosely related but throwing it in bcuz a lot of ppl miss this)

iwtv 1994

most ppl he's seen eating are women of color

[billyherringtonjr]

Seeing people talking about how IWtV famdom treat black characters and white characters differntly that in those fanworks black characters are always more violent and dominant or vicious and white ones are always softer and submissive especially with Louis and Lestat. Idk, it's definitely true(like a lot of other fandoms with interracial couples), but maybe because I'm a cruel person and I' m neither white nor black that I don't have any sympathy towards either race, I don't feel anything other than "that’s so funny" for the whole "Lestat is THE MOTHER and THE BOTTOM of the show you can't convince me otherwise" arguement because I just can't treat this stupidity seriously, it's even funnier to me especially when IWtV is a show that clearly shows:

·Louis got dominated in his whole life by a lot of things especially his relationship with Lestat, to the extent that he got trapped like being in a small box. Hell, it’s even kinda the theme of season 1. ·Louis acted "masculine" yes because that was his disguise to present as a strong bussiness man to survive in that envirement, and he was never comfortable about this armour. When his social identity got peeled out he became that soft and even meek "housewife" in the family. I can't say only that is the true Louis because diguise is a part of yourself too, but the "masculine" Louis is definitely not the whole picture of him either. And based on the show it's safe to say he's soft inside I think. ·The show actually doesn't contain a lot of explicit gay sex scenes, the most explicit one is the "anywhere sounds like nowhere"scene from EP6, a lot of people even have argued it was not a sex scene either, I mean...come on it's a very TYPICAL TV sex scene, what, you expect actual genital images in every show? (there was even a bed——i found that quite funny too.) And in that scene, Lestat tops and he's dominant like he always is.

Don't get me wrong, I know that fanworks are not real, it's free and doesn't have to follow canon, and the whole "the dominant one has to be the top, the submissive one has to be the bottom" thing is quite stupid to begin with, I don't even care if you're a racist or not we are always "discriminating" something because admit it human beings are stupid. I'm talking about those comments like "let me explain how Lestat is canonilly the MOTHER and he should be the BOTTOM" and people anylizing the show content based on this kind of theory. No one tried to "convince you" honey, you can ship a ship however you like, you can treat every white man your soft babygirl and other people around him his dom and should be his protector just don't ignore the show content and try to creat a whole different new one WHEN STATING YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE SHOW, come on we're not blind.

[moonisneveralone]

I gotta say it was EXTREMELY eye opening to see a white queer person who has a very clear outline on what their issues are, explain their perspective. I think they very much said the quite part out loud. It is exactly why black fans and white fans of this show keep disagreeing on things and it's why Lestat get's so much sympathy. Like and almost undying love from white fans and Louis get's none of it.

Now I'm truely glad for white people that they can divorce their race from their queerness. What a beautiful concept that I'll probably never get to taste in my lifetime. But to live in the year 2023 and to have such vocabulary to use for queer movie theory and then forget that intersectionality exists? Wow. Furthermore it shows most people really do not understand what intersectionality is. It means you very mich can't divorce your racial identity from any other marginalization you experience. You'll never be just either.

And white queerness is ignorant towards the very things they themselves can experience. Are you telling me you think there is one way to be queer?

The point of this story is that vampirism was sold as the cure to someone who didn't want to actually break free from social norms, but desperately wished to be allowed to conform. That's the funny thing....by not realizing that what Louis truely wanted was a family and to be loved and accepted by his family, that he wanted pur and simple domestic joy which was thwarted by racism and homophobia, you've become Lestat.

Congratulations Kinnies you're him I guess.

Anyways if you cant develop that basic level empathy for a fictional character who the emotional storyline is tied to.... you're really not gonna like this one.