Murf's Personals

Interview with the Vampire HEA backlash in the Heated Rivalry Fandom (Pt2)

It’s no shocker that IWTV is hella niche, even in the LGBTQ+ community. As a gory gothic horror vampire show, ofc there’s folks who just refuse to watch it on principle. I’m not talking to them–RUN, here there be monsters. 💀 (Although I DO wonder how many of the same folks tuned in for Hannibal, but i digress…. 🙄😒) And ofc there’s the racist book purists who vowed to never watch the show cuz AMC raceswapped Louis & and made him Black. 🤢 Heavens forbid vampires have interracial relationships. 🤮

Likewise, ofc there’s people in the LGBTQ+ community who never saw Moonlight. As a Black film full of dark-skinned melanated Black gay men in the ‘hood, no duh predominately white queer folks ain’t checking in. 🙄 I was shocked the first time I heard Hudson Williams even mention using Moonlight as his inspo for Shane, like what’s going on in Canada?! And he talked about ML over & over again, too–that made me like Hudson 10x more NGL. ✊😅

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But in this viral tweet that pmo & made me fire off this series of responses/rants, certain HR fans showed their whole arses about what they think about queer media like IWTV & Moonlight, etc. They didn’t mention race thank god (at least not in THIS thread 😬), but what they DID say to compare IWTV to HR wasn’t surprising either.

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domestic violence, violence, toxic, gothic story with gore, dragged out, “I don’t see them having a happy ending”

I’ve already addressed the IWTV side of the HEA discourse. IWTV’s own fandom is full of misinformation & fearmongering, cuz most of the fandom hasn’t read the TVC source material. 🤦‍♂️ The dragged out nature of these long AF hiatuses between seasons allow the BS to spread, where everyone thinks Louis & Lestat will never get back together & this isn’t The Loustat Show cuz Lestat takes other lovers & monogamy isn’t real to vampires, etc. So when uneducated folk start going: Oh, IWTV isn’t as good/popular as HR cuz it’s not HEA~!, the IWTV show-onlies have nothing to say & get gotcha’d. 😒

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The more interesting bit relates to toxicity & domestic violence. Plenty of the HR fans’ critiques & insults about Queer Struggle & Queer Trauma were how no one’s interested in shows with pain & violence & depression toxic couples & tragedy & blahblah. Again: HUDSON WILLIAMS repeatedly said his characterization of Shane was partially inspired by Moonlight’s main character CHIRON, ffs.

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(Calm down, guys, it’s probably just a coincidence that Rachel Reid named the Centaurs’ therapy dog Chiron from Greek mythology.)

On the surface, ofc it looks like Canadian Golden Boy of Hockey Shane with his nice parents & nice upper middle class upbringing has nothing in common with Chiron, a drug dealer from the hood, other than being closeted gay Bipocs. And by extension, it might seem like Shane has even less in common with bloodthirsty vampires prowling the night killing people.

Moonlight is a story about how toxic masculinity can negatively affect fatherless sons in desperate need of support & shelter & community; who find outlets for all of their fear & loneliness & anger in all the wrong places. They do the best with what they have, even if that forces them to totally redefine themselves on the outside to overcompensate for what society told them they lack on the inside.

And there’s SO many times I’ve thought about Moonlight not just wrt Louis DPDL’s overcompensation as a gay Black man who becomes a rough & tough pimp in NOLA, but ALSO Lestat’s upbringing in Auvergne, and WHY he felt kinship & connection with Louis, cuz he SEES himself IN Louis.

There is SO much overlap with Heated Rivalry, Moonlight, & IWTV, both on the surface level and if we did a little deeper.

SURFACE

• Adapted from books (IWTV → ML → HR)
• Repressed shy closeted man (Louis/Nicki → Chiron → Shane) falls in love with a far more outgoing & radical/brave man who wants to live/laugh/love out of the closet (Lestat → Kevin → Ilya)
• Christianity & religious themes aren’t as in your face in Moonlight (not unless we dismantle the Black experience with religion & sexuality in America, but I think that’s going deeper than necessary for Chiron), and book!Shane was raised an atheist (“You don’t believe in God, but you believe if you put right skate on before left you will play a terrible game.”). Lestat swears he’s atheist but he’s still grappling with his lost Catholic faith; and ofc Louis’ a lapsed Catholic who thinks he can buy his way into redemption by torturing & starving himself.
• Each couple struggles to be honest about their feelings, with a lot of angst-ridden counterproductive denialism & avoidance & self-sabotage
• Each couple spends more time APART and NOT together than they do WITH each other (Loustat for at least 77+yrs → Keviron for 10yrs → Hollanov for 10yrs)
• IWTV & HR frontload nudity & sex scenes cuz SEX SELLS. With ML its far more subtle, and the least explicit–it’s just one (1) handjob as teens–but a lot of the times a queer story isn’t some uber-passionate sexcapade. Sometimes all it takes is ONE soft touch, esp. in touch-starved environments where the only physical contact IS violent, and the only kindness is from found/foster families when your own ain’t ish.

DEEPER

This took me forever, so I decided to do a venn diagram instead.

I see the closest similarities with ALL these characters dealing with:

• $$$ (financial independence from their family)
• issues with their equally distant yet overbearing mothers
• absentee/hands-off fathers
• touch-starved loneliness & emotional codependence on their sole friend who’s also their male gay crush who give them affectionate nicknames (Jonah/Lestat “Saint Louis” | Kevin “Black” | Ilya “random AF Russian words” | Nicki/Louis “Wolfkiller/Les”)
• bullying by their peers (white racists | classmates | hockey players | brothers) who give them names/titles that are more like burdens (“exceptional/discrete Negro/N-word” | “Little” | “Wolfkiller” | “Golden Boy”)
• being provoked to violence till they finally snap (Racists | Classmate bully | Rink fight | 8 wolves/Rhosh)
• overcompensation for their insecurities through acting tough & macho catering to society’s toxic masculinity

This was only about SHANE, but I could’ve easily thrown Ilya into the venn diagram to turn this into the frikkin Olympic rings of LGBTQ+ angst. Esp. cuz there’s SO MUCH chatter about the more “toxic” sides of Hollanov sometimes resembling Loustat, with the more emotionally distant/cold/withholding Shane/Louis and the more manipulative/pushy/callous Ilya/Lestat; which could ofc be extended to include Shane/Louis/Chiron vs Ilya/Lestat/Kevin. 👀

The BIGGEST difference with HR & the others is that unlike Kevin & Lestat, Ilya never put his hands on Shane in violence–despite the one (1) scene in TLG where Ilya’s having a mental breakdown & punches the wall next to Shane’s head during an argument, that people try to overblow as if Ilya’s abusive.

So MISS ME with the bullcrap talk about how Heated Rivalry has nothing in common with Queer Struggle & Queer Trauma, just cuz it’s fluffy & HEA. 🙄 Cuz first off, IWTV is HEA, too–it’s only its 2nd of who knows how many seasons; but it’s based on books where Loustat DOES get an HEA married & living together in a Disney castle, which anyone who actually read the effing books would know. And with Moonlight, for all the angst & heavy topics about poverty, drugs & crime; the ending is left openly ambiguous, but with Chiron & Kevin sharing an affectionate embrace that could mean anything.

I REALLY don’t know where all this nonsense is coming from on either side of the conversation for/against Queer Joy or Queer Struggle. 😒

• Pt1: “Vapid Slop”!?
• Pt2: Hudson Williams’s queer media recommendations
• Pt3: Fellow Travelers HEA backlash

Hudson Williams’s queer media recommendations

In this viral tweet about “vapid slop,” both antis AND fans of Heated Rivalry were insulting each others’ queer media preferences. I was highly irritated by the HR fandom’s attitude against tragic/sad Queer Struggle or Queer Trauma media. It’s ironic how HR’s fanbase bashing on gay trauma & telling everyone NOT to recommend Queer Struggle to HR fans are the same ones not talking about how Hudson Williams was the one who literally credited Brokeback Mountain & Moonlight as foundational queer media, cuz that’s how he headcanons his portrayal of SHANE (x x x)! 🤡🤣

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I know it might shock TF outta folks who love to pretend that they don’t see color, but Shane Hollander is a gay biracial PoC Japanese man living in a homophobic & racist predominately white world. And there are SEVERAL ways that his story intersects far bleaker ones SH*TE LIVES told by white & Bipoc people alike–why BM & ML resonated with Hudson when he used those Queer Trauma shows as the blueprint for his own characterization of Shane, duh. Moonlight’s actor said the same thing IRL that was repeated by Louis on IWTV:

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CREDIT: Gif by Fayevalentine

The difference is that Shane internalizes most of what he’s thinking & feeling at any given point, and because his lines are scripted (and thus VENTRILOQUIZED) by WHITE writers (Rachel & Tierney) who DON’T prioritize Bipoc nuance the way the black writers on ML & IWTV did, ofc it seems like Shane’s unaffected (and thus unbothered) by the “depressing stereotypes” everyone’s apparently sick & tired of hearing about anyway Omg let me just enjoy my gay guys in peace without having to actually think about IRL gay struggles. 😩 Meanwhile they’re effing ignoring what little he DOES say!

CREDIT: Gifs by gngerale

Cuz just like it’s not safe for people in certain fields/professions/spaces to be loud & bold and say everything that’s on their mind for fear of repercussions; it’s even MORE dangerous for GAY men, duh!

So it’s effing ridiculous for Heated Rivalry fans to act like queer media MUST ONLY vibe with HR’s Queer Joy to be accepted as valid queer media, or as the only reason queer media can be popular & enjoyable & influential for people even INSIDE the HR fandom.

Again, these tweets were specifically pitting HR against FT & IWTV, so that’s what I’ll focus on. 🤷‍♂️ But let’s not forget that Brokeback Mountain and Fellow Travelers have plenty of crossover, the same way Moonlight & Interview with the Vampire have a lot of crossover.

HR, FT, & IWTV: Mixing bananas, apples, & blood oranges? 🤔

I’m a fujo who loves ALL THREE shows, but for different reasons. They’re ALL under the Drama category, but under different subgenres: Queer Sports Drama (HR), Queer Historical Fiction Drama (FT), and Queer Gothic Horror Drama (IWTV). ALL THREE have (surface-level) similarities:

• Adapted from books–we KNOW how each of these stories ends
• Repressed shy closeted man (Shane, Hawk, Louis) falls in love with a far more outgoing & radical/brave man who wants to live/laugh/love out of the closet (Ilya, Tim, Lestat)
• Catholicism or Orthodox Christianity plays a heavy part in external homophobia (Ilya vs his father/Russia/NHL), or struggles to overcome internalized homophobia (Tim & Louis as lapsed Catholics)
• Each couple struggles to be honest about their feelings, with a lot of angst-ridden counterproductive denialism & avoidance & self-sabotage
• Each couple and spends more time APART and NOT together than they do WITH each other (Hollanov for 10yrs, Hawkippy for 30yrs, Loustat for at least 77+yrs)
• Each show frontloads nudity & sex scenes in the first episode(s), cuz SEX SELLS. (The only reason I even heard about FT & HR was cuz everyone was freaking out cuz of the explicit smut. And the only way I got my friends to watch IWTV was cuz of the smut.)
• Episode 5 man, wtf? 💔😭😩

The main difference is that the whole point of HR is that Rachel Reid & Jacob Tierney QUICKLY establish that HEA is the goal, so HR won’t take itself too seriously, even if the characters go thru pain & trauma–which they DO! Even in HR’s sequel, The Long Game, Ilya’s suicidal & depressed & mentally traumatized several times–he even has a near death experience ffs. But it’s all mollified by the fact that Hollanov is HEA.

The big critiques levied against FT & IWTV are that they’re depressing & toxic & full of death, so “no one” wants to watch them.

The more generalized critiques ran the gamut:

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EXTREMELY hard in difficult topics, require “strength” to watch, death, absolutely heartbreaking and utterly sad (FT), multilayered & nuanced (IWTV), die from aids (FT), abuse each other (IWTV), hackneyed gay tragedy, depressing stereotypes, depressing AF, cry and be depressed for a whole year, had enough trauma/death/grief/bitter endings, fetishizes gay men’s pain, everything f*ked up enough, died or married other people, “traffic in queer trauma.”

And ofc a lot of this pro-Queer Joy anti-Queer Trauma unfortunately comes from HR’s director Jacob Tierney’s own statement in GQ:

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IMO this was taken wildly out of context by the fandom as carte blanche to bash any show that DOES explore or “traffic” queer trauma, pain & struggle. Esp. cuz again, this the exact same GQ interview where Hudson said he based Shane off of Queer Trauma shows: Brokeback Mountain & especially Moonlight! 🤦‍♂️

The HR fandom’s thrown the baby out with the bathwater to act like sad shows are suddenly anathema, we’ve “had ENOUGH!,” and that shows that DO take these REAL LIFE topics more seriously are “hackneyed stereotypical fetishization.” 😧 BRUH?! 🤦‍♂️

HR, FT, & IWTV are ALL love stories; they’re ALL queer romance. And guess what? FT is the only one that does NOT “end happily”–but wtf does that even MEAN?

• Pt1: “Vapid Slop”!?
• Pt3: Fellow Travelers HEA backlash
• Pt4: Interview with the Vampire HEA backlash (Pt2)

niizhogaabo:

yiddishfisting:

people just can’t help themselves just like when Black people try to talk about how “say her name” is a specific phrase for Black women who are murdered whenever it starts getting used for non-Black women and get told They’re the ones who are disrespectful and offensive

this and seeing “rest in power” attached to nonblack names, especially white names? does nobody understand that the history of rest in power is rooted in black activist history, used for victims of violence and systemic brutality.

(via mohellis)

boobachu:

creatingblackcharacters:

perpetual-oratorio:

I’m sorry but it needs to be said. “Say her name” is only used for Black women. Can we please not do this

SAY HER NAME | AAPF

Learn about the #SayHerName Campaign which uplifts the Black women, girls, and femmes lost to police violence.

AAPF

“After the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014, thousands gathered to protest anti-Black police brutality that December. We joined the march under a banner with the names of Black women killed by police. While Garner’s and Brown’s deaths justifiably sparked a wave of nationwide protest over lethal police killings, the public silence around Black women demonstrated that the killings of Michelle Cusseaux had yet to be memorialized in widespread activation and denunciation. So, we began chanting “Say! Her! Name!” and the #SayHerName campaign was born to cut through this disturbing reality and resist the invisibility of Black women, girls, and femmes by telling their stories of police violence.

The following year, the #SayHerName Mothers Network — a community of mothers and family members of Black women, girls and femmes killed by police violence—was created and brought together to attend the first ever #SayHerName vigil in Union Square. The Mothers Network emerged from the campaign as a recognition of the isolation and “loss of the loss” experienced by the family members. There was an urgent need to redefine a communal care ethic to support family members in the aftermath of police violence, as well as public failure to acknowledge the police killings of their daughters and siblings.

Over the course of ten years, this campaign has grown to provide an analytical framework to understand the ways in which Black women, girls, and femmes lives are not only taken by state-sanctioned violence, but then further erased by public silence.”

Ah so it’s like “Rest in Power” or “woke” where the original intentions are shucked out for use by white people.

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Hudson Williams: Asian & Bipoc Vampires in Media

I love this Quinn interview clip even more now, after seeing Hudson’s most recent role as the 1922!Nosferatu in the Lights On, Love Lucille music video. He gets to just have fun as a classic Hollywood monster vampire; creepy & cool & dare I say sexy. No cultural baggage or nuance required–I vhant to sahk ur blahd~! 🧛

Cuz I totally get it: wanting to be offered roles that “any other non-person of color” would be offered–read: roles any WHITE person would get.

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You don’t WANT to be pigeonholed or typecast into The Minority role, your characters always defined & restricted by your IRL race: Oh, an Asian can’t play this role; a Black person can’t play this role; a Hispanic can’t play this role, etc. Like why TF not?! Esp. when the role/project DOESN’T take itself too seriously anyway, and there IS room for anyone of any background to come in and shake things up in new & exciting ways. How many Asian vampires do we ever see in Western Euro-American pop culture anyway? (x x x x x) 🤔

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Or rather: how many Asians get offered roles as major vampires in pop culture; WITHOUT it boiling down to the actors’ race? 👀

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CREDIT: Gif by regularhumanbartender

(Count Rapula’s not playing into Asian stereotypes, but he’s definitely culturally appropriating BLACK ones–which I guess says something about the wave of Kpop/Jpop appropriation of hip hop, too.)

As a light-skinned Asian, and as a Wasian with a white biological father in particular, I’m sure Hudson recognizes the privileged position he’s in, that dark-skinned monoracial Asians & Bipocs often struggle so much with.

Like, anyone can look at Hudson and tell that he’s East Asian–he can’t white-pass in everyday clothes & roles; even if he can (& does!) take colorblind roles–just a dude doing a bit. (He’s even played a dog–although I would argue that that role had A LOT of nuance that can easily accommodate discussions about race & power dynamics). But sometimes, depending on the lighting, or at the right angle…you kinda have to double-take just to make sure. 👀 And that proximity to whiteness works in Hudson’s favor, in a way that would NEVER work for other half-white biracial Bipocs with more distinctly non-white features (ie: Jacob Anderson on IWTV).

And in his Nosferatu makeup, you can’t really tell what race he is; he’s more racially ambiguous; with minimal prosthetics required to either exaggerate or obfuscate Hudson’s ethnic/exotic features (“ethnic/exotic” ofc used as a response/contrast to the “default” white race).

But then again, Nosferatu & his Dracula predecessor are STEEPED in Victorian England’s xenophobic & racist demonization of the ethnic Other–Eastern European foreigners “invading” Anglo-Saxon territory as minorities in and of themselves.

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So The Vampire™ has roots in racist typecasting, where I’d argue that it actually makes sense to cast an Asian or any other Bipoc in the role of Nosferatu–just like I said about Frankenstein’s Creature. It’s why I love Nandor the Relentless on What We Do in the Shadows, and AMC’s Louis de Pointe du Lac on Interview with the Vampire, cuz they cut right to the chase & say the quiet part about racial discrimination in Gothic Horror out loud; because they can NEVER white-pass, despite both of them being vampires, too.

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CREDIT: Gif by what-we-gif-in-the-shadows

TL;DR: It’s always about race, fam

So yeah, while I get wanting to make sure you don’t get typecast because of your race, we also gotta acknowledge the elephant in the room, how wrt this predominately white racist industry, Bipocs will ALWAYS be seen by our race first, and our talent second. 🤷‍♂️

I’m just glad for Hudson, that he’s seeing so much success in his breakout role on Heated Rivalry. I wish him all the best in Hollyweird. ❤️

murfpersonalblog:

Jacob Anderson on Racism & IWTV (Big Issue)

There has been 30 years of societal and cultural change since Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise played Louis and Lestat. What does this version do that they couldn’t or didn’t?

There’s something really interesting about vampirism and how it relates to race and sexuality and Otherness. Vampires are outsiders. They exist in the shadows. But there’s something so deeply human and meditative and thoughtful and tortured about them. And not to pin those things on to any particular sexuality or race, but that’s how you’re made to feel in society when you’re othered. You feel you feel like you’re in the shadows. So I think it would be a missed opportunity to not explore that – especially in New Orleans, which is such a big part of the books. It’s a 60% Black population. So to not have Louis be a Black or Creole man feels odd.

And how does that inform the storytelling?

Something I really responded to is the idea that you can’t buy yourself out of the perception or labels that society puts on you. No amount of power can enact that change. It’s a big thing for Louis. He thinks getting this vampiric power is going to give him power in a human context. But it doesn’t. He still comes up against the same stuff. Because there’s no amount of power that can buy you out of racism. I thought that was a really cool thing to frame around vampire mythology.

Louis is a reluctant vampire – in that he is reluctant to kill humans. But he does kill a racist white man…

He kills a couple. In the books Louis is constantly battling with this idea of his own sense of mortality and his humanity. All the adjustments to the story for this adaptation only enrich that idea. What is there to save about humanity? What is there to care about? Louis could be a powerful vampire, but he still wants to be accepted. He wants to be included. Because he’s never been allowed to feel human.

Interview with the Vampire's Jacob Anderson on Game of Thrones and living forever

Jacob Anderson on his transformation from Game of Thrones' stoic soldier Grey Worm to sexy vampire Louis in Interview with the Vampire.

Big Issue

But it’s not about race, y'all! This isn’t the Race Show! It’s not that deep!

Don’t believe Armand’s lies! “That side” of the fandom fell for a tale that’s been told! Louis’ brain is swiss cheese and he was brainwashed to think that his race mattered! It’s NEVER been about race at all! Louis and Claudia are liars!

Even Jacob Anderson is lying to you when he repeatedly talks about what vampirism means to a Black man living in white society, and all the iconic Black people in history who inspired his creation of Louis as a color conscious NOT color blind Black character (x x x x x x x x x x).

But don’t listen to him; what does HE know? What does ROLIN JONES know about anything (x x)? Our lord and savior Sam Reid NEVER talks about race (thank god!); not Lestat’s whiteness, Louis’ Blackness, or Armand’s Brownness! Disregard!

Just listen to the plethora of white women who suddenly became authorities on racial inequality after 1x1 aired in 2022.

Just listen to non-American non-Black people who became experts on African American history after they saw a tv show mention Jim Crow for the first time in their entire life.

Block all the (Black) fans who talk candidly & critically about race and white privilege, because “those people” don’t know anything about Gothic media!

Just take my word since I’m a superfan and the cast/crew/etc follows me on Instagram/Twitter/etc and social media clout obviously means you’re smart since Trump & Elon have millions of followers too.

TL;DR: Stop saying Lestat is “the big white abuser!” Stop calling Lestat Vampire Hitler & the White Devil! Stop calling Daniel a modern-day colonizer! Stop making everything about race! Stop telling me my white privilege matters! I can’t hear you from my ivory tower! 😭😩

I just wanna put these other quotes by Jacob Anderson here (x x), to keep all the receipts together when white people start running their mouths about ish they DEKWTF they’re talking about.

“Can you really escape racism by being a monster?”

Louis killed the Alderman, but the damage had already been done: the Ordinance had already been signed into effect before they ever touched Azalea. Louis slaughtered the entire Theatre des Vampires, but the damage had already been done: Claudia was dead and their public lynching had already been scripted months in advance.

These folks’ minds are already made up. They don’t GAF about you or your struggles or reasons or feelings or the injustices one to you that you’re retaliating against. Crashing out and becoming a monster is not an ESCAPE, it’s an OUTLET. And it ain’t a healthy one, even if it yields temporarily satisfying results–the adrenaline’s gonna burn out eventually.

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In S3, Louis’ gonna Own The Night, and more than likely end up going off of his animal diet to behave like a regular vampire would–esp. since he’ll need to keep his strength up as rogue vampires try to assassinate him since the book’s been published. The rogue vamps don’t respect Louis AT ALL. And they’re not just white folk. Just like the microcosmic TdV, they’re from all over the world–the entire world descending upon him on a macroscosmic scale now. 💀 The entire world’s been taught to HATE Black people, esp Black men.

“He can get into a poker game [with fellow businessmen], he can buy a club, but it’s not going to change how bigoted people perceive him.”

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I think people are under the impression that just because Louis’ richer than ever in S3, and has all these businesses and avenues of revenue, that he’s actually BETTER OFF in some way than he was b4.

My question is: how many of the vampires KNOW that THEE infamous Louis DPDL is the one who owns the clubs & hotels & venues they’re all flocking to? 🤔 Does Louis have to stay incognito and under the radar, BECAUSE his name is so conspicuous?

Can Louis FLEX his status without immediately painting a target on his back?

Can he ever ENJOY being “the big man in the big house”? 👀 (How does that contrast with book!Louis in Loustat’s Chateau Era?)

THAT is what I wanna know in S3. How much of Louis’ life is just one constant cycle, the carousel coming round again? People keep saying this isn’t The Race Show, but Louis’ clearly being put in the exact same situations back in S1. The parallels are paralleling. 🤷‍♂️

mssmarvell:

i wish more people were capable of understanding that a character’s race actually does impact things you can say about them and that’s a normal thing to take into consideration to avoid perpetuating racist stereotypes. and that if you jump on here headcanoning a black character as psychopathic and engaging in criminal behaviour when they have never canonically done so then maybe you ought to look inwardly instead of doubling down and insisting you basically forgot that the only black character of said family was black. now you look racist and stupid

(via shslivalice)

IWTV Musings - Black Characters in Fandoms: Loustat falls out of Ao3’s Top 100 ships 😔

I’ve been tracking Loustat’s position with the ONLY live action Black gay male character to crack the Top 100 ships with the most fics on Ao3 (x x x). Loustat peaked in Summer 2025 reaching #69, after only managing to finally reach #90 back in 2024–their first time in the Top 100 EVER–but unfortunately they soon declined, and by the end of the year they’d been ousted from the Top 100 entirely.

So as of the end of 2025, only ONE (1) Black person is in any of Ao3’s Top 100 ships: Ekko from Arcane/League of Legends, and he’s in a hetero pairing.

Louis de Pointe du Lac (a Black gay man), and Dorcas Meadowes (a Black lesbian woman) both lost their spots in 2025.

Hopefully, a resurgence in interest in the IWTV/TVL fandom will occur once Season 3 finally airs later this year, so that Loustat can return to the Top 100 for 2026.