#jim: 😒 always great to see you sam

[pinazee]

I got the sense that the Kirk brothers used to be competitive but Jim flew out of Sams league very quickly that he cant be bothered while Sam still thinks he’s in the game

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Ep7 Musings - Sam Reid's Autumn Brown Interview & White Privilege

(Omg I don't watch Autumn Brown, so I had no idea Sam said all this until the transcript excerpts were posted here. 🤦Usually I love what Sam has to say, but this ain't it, chief.)

The problem with this whole take of Sam's is that Lestat is NOT the one on Trial--LOUIS is. The implications of spinning Come To Me makes Louis look MORE guilty, so that LOU'S DEATH IS JUSTIFIED & DESERVED. IDK if Sam is being deliberately obtuse here (seeing the situation with rose colored blinders to just look at Loustat's tragic love; Lestat's romanticism & hurt feelings cuz that's his character & his focus); or if he's deliberately skirting around a much more important & sensitive issue that, as a white man, he may or may not be aware that he's unequipped to handle--esp. since we know AMC put the lid on interviewers talking with the actors about RACE; and esp. since Jacob speaks very candidly about Louis' blackness when he's asked stupid questions.

Cuz the optics of a white person lying that a black man on trial had raped/molested/SA'd them are way too effing obvious--at least for Bipoc audiences--for Sam to boil it down to "a horrifically mean trick for Lestat to come out and say;" and then gloss it over with Lestat stupidly WANTING Louis to AGREE with the lie that makes him look like a sexual predator; and come away with "it’s very shocking for Lestat in that moment to be smacked in the face with ‘I didn’t want you. I always hated you."

Sure, EVERYONE understands & is in agreement about Loustat's "mutual yearning." But their mutual yearning has no bearings whatsoever on the proceedings happening on that stage. Lestat & Louis certainly AREN'T being mutually sentenced for vampiric crimes, and on pain on DEATH. This Trial is not about proving Louis' romantic/unrequited UST, it's about proving that he's guilty of breaking the Great Laws & proving that Lestat's life/wellbeing was in mortal danger from Louis--not just during Mardi Gras, but the entire time!

Lestat LITERALLY said "Louis ACCOSTED me."

The "pleasure house's" location (at the FairPlay) strengthens the implications of being "accosted" with being sexually harassed--esp. since Les & Santiago first start off with Louis' history as a "troubled, disreputable, cold, violent" pimp. Les said that everywhere he went, he was "being HUNTED" by Louis--like prey to a predator.

So if getting mad at Lou for being angry & hurt is all Lest takes away from Lou's reaction against having Come to Me weaponized to make Lou look like a rapist--then by god Les truly had no business being in an interracial relationship & raising a Black child. 😒

Les is so seated in his white privilege (and too busy screwing his white wench Antoinette down in Algiers) that he somehow missed the entire 1921 Tulsa Massacre, and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre, and the 1931-32 Scottsboro Boys case; to not read a effing newspaper or hear about all these Black men being lynched for raping white girls (who LIED on them) during Jim Crow!

Like, we talk about Tulsa & Rosewood wrt the Storyville race riot in 1x3, but I've yet to see anybody talk about how both of those massacres were started cuz white folk wanted to lynch innocent Black men accused of raping white people who lied on them & gaslit the whole country into believing them just cuz white = honest/innocent/good and black = liar/guilty/evil.

How DARE a Black man on Trial by a bloodthirsty predominately white lynch mob be furious that he's being lied on by a charismatic AF white man brought in to testify AGAINST him--

--who's explicitly presented as "THE VICTIM;" the first & ONLY witness whose words were to be trusted (Claudia's diary/words were only used to CONDEMN them, entirely removed from their context as a CHILD who felt unwanted & unloved by the father she was constantly trying to GET AWAY FROM, but who forcibly brought her BACK)--while Lou's context is stripped from him as the spouse who only killed Les for the sake of his DAUGHTER'S freedom. Lou never wanted to leave Les & NOLA; and he freaked TF out after he slit Les' throat & chokeslammed Claudia for tryna burn him--Claudia's diaries even exonerate Lou, PISSED at him for NOT wanting Les dead & for being "dead weight" thirsting after Les the whole time they were in Romania, 5 years later! All Lou wanted was to COME TO LES. Lou swam the nasty AF Mississippi River cuz LES WROTE A EFFING SONG NAMED COME TO ME that Lou STILL has the recording of IN HIS VOICE.

For a closeted gay Black man desperate to keep up appearances & be respected in society, Louis sacrificed EVERYTHING to be with Lestat--his loyalty to Paul (ie: God: x x) and his self respect/dignity/reputation most crucially, only to have that sacrifice (ie: love) ripped to shreds & sullied during the Trial--LESTAT BETRAYED LOUIS, not the other way around, WTF. Esp. cuz YES, Louis DID want Les to come to him the whole time. Even at the TRIAL, Jacob said all Louis was happy to see Les again.

Until Les opened his effing mouth & started spewing BS!

Lou LOVES Les, and trusted & confided in him as a gay closeted man tryna AVOID Les (esp. after being spooked by his gay crisis spooked him when they slept together)--only to be SPAT ON when Les tells all of Paris that he's nothing but a pervert who accosted/hunted/lusted after a man/vampire who made it seem that 1) LES didn't want LOU, and 2) that Les's safety/wellbeing was in danger--when HE'S the gay VAMPIRE wearing Oscar Wilde's chrysanthemum to dinner & baiting/luring Louis to HIS house with Lily waiting on the balcony in her effing underwear!

Remember: Lestat did this whole Come to Me spiel for the audience BEFORE his whole Gay Pride speech. The soldier yelled the F-slur after Les finished their Church Vows; and the whole crowd LAUGHED. This was NOT an audience who thought POSITIVELY about two guys being in a relationship--

--"the love that DARE NOT speak its name," even in gay mecca 1940s Paris (at the time the age of consent was 15 for straight couples but 21 for gay ones), where guys had to meet under the cover of night; hidden in the shadows even while in a public park/in plain sight--just like the vampires themselves.

The audience DGAF about Lestat's romanticism & Loustat's tragic gothic romance. They care about sexual deviancy--despite charismatic AF Santiago having said the very first night that the whole premise of the Theatre was to flip social mores upside-down--the bloodthirsty audience still wasn't effing buying gay sex! 💀

So not only is Les petitioning to a group of homophobes to see him as a victim, but he's are also throwing Louis, as a Black man, under the bus to a predominately white crowd as the villain--

--and yet people get mad at Louis for badmouthing Les in 1973 SanFran, and (LESS-SO) in Dubai??? When NEITHER time was Les being sentenced to death--but the vampires are still tryna kill LOUIS, even though it's DANIEL'S book and HE'S the vampire on national TV!

Again: LOUIS gets punished while these white men walk scott free. Louis gets dropped from the effing stratosphere with ALL his bones broken but his pain is dismissed as "a hard fall, nothing more;" while Louis put Les in the dump with a bunch of rats so Les could heal & NOT be burned alive, saving Les' effing life when Claudia would've GRILLED his arse, and yet Louis' found guilty!?

And again: Louis was actively being gaslit on stage, his brain LITERALLY being scrambled under the Mind Gift of the coven, while Claudia's literally over his right shoulder saying one thing, while Lestat's the devil on the left saying the total opposite. He's conscious, but he's barely more cognizant than Madeleine! But HE'S the liar?!

And again: Lestat's pain & hurt feelings gets centered, when it's LOUIS' ankles that are slashed to the bone so he can't walk or escape the lynchers ready to stone him & his daughter(s); HIS mind fogged whenever he tries to speak up & defend himself--with no one to help him but the very same dude lying his arse off to assassinate Louis' character and twist their story to excuse why he cheated (acting like he never said he wanted "VARIETY" way back in 1x3) & why Louis deserves to have lynchers in the crowd yelling "Shame on you!" as if there weren't TWO parties in this MUTUAL yearning.

I can't.

But again: Imma throw Sam a bone, cuz we know AMC's been weird about interviewers sidestepping actual substantial convos about race--and AFAIK Sam's never really said anything about Louis' blackness & how Lestat responds/dismisses it anyway, so. 🙄😒 Maybe it's for the best that Sam stays in his white lane--but it's still racially tone deaf AF that Loustat's race & contemporaneous IRL events that directly match the show aren't even up for frikkin discussion.