madevampselle

[madevampselle]

[madevampselle]

if you can and want to, go to college when you’re 30. move out at 40. learn to drive at 50. life is short but it is also so long. it’s not too late to do new things.

[madevampselle]

well this fucking sucks

[madevampselle]

Interview with the vampire and the crisis of media literacy

Don’t feel obligated to read this. However if you do this is a long rant/ essay about the current state of media discourse surrounding Interview with the Vampire and creative media in general. I touch on topics including: race as a narrative lens, vampirism and morality, Gothic literature and historical context, media literacy and the mischaracterisation of complex characters. It’s been weighing on my mind a little as I’ve seen and heard some opinions pushed as facts throughout not only this fandom but in the current sphere of fandom culture as whole, bordering on the lines of censorship and subversion, and diminishing free speech. As a black and queer individual navigating media as both a fan and a critic, I think it would be interesting to share my opinion also.

This post isn’t here to defend villains or diminish harm. It’s here to explore complexity in media, especially when race, morality and genre intersect. Read it as an invitation to think, not an argument to fight 🙁

In regards to referencing the historical origins of creative mediums to its current state, a lot of people disregard this lens entirely due to the harmful ideologies which tends to be tied to it. For example reducing Anne Rice as problematic therefore discrediting the origins or intention for Interview with the vampire altogether. Responding with the viewpoint of “all history is bad” to valid references for why things work now doesn’t work because history isn’t the villain, ignorance is. History is racist, It’s also bloody, colonised, genocidal, imperial, queer, divine and most importantly: necessary. To act like all historical context is inherently suspect because bad things happen is just so lazy. Gothic fiction exists because of fear, repression, trauma, decay, shame, and the things society refuses to look at directly. The horrors of the past are the point. It’s supposed to be messy. It’s supposed to be morally bankrupt. That’s what makes it Gothic. Take classics like Frankenstein, Dracula, Carmilla.

If you can’t sit with how race, gender, violence, and morality all intertwine through history and fiction then potentially you’re not ready for this genre. 

Good Monster, Bad Monster.

The moment people start acting like vampires are meant to reflect a clean or admirable version of humanity, we’ve lost the plot entirely. They are monsters. That’s what makes them so beautiful, so seductive. So tragic. They are walking contradictions. So why are we applying human morality to individuals that are not even human? The bottom line is - they kill most people to survive, not very moral is it? Louis, Lestat, Claudia, Armand - they are not human. Their identities as vampires matter just as much, if not more than their identities as people. Because that is the entire point, that is the whole theme.

Blackness as a Bloodline, Not a footnote.

Louis being black in the TV show is a purposeful choice that adds depth and tension, but it is not the heart of the story. It is one layer in a big, bloody trifle of grief, guilt, obsession, addiction, religion and love as violence. Reducing Louis and Lestat's characters to racist and innocent victim reads harmful in itself. Because it’s not reading Louis as a person. It’s reducing him as a symbol. Essentialising him through a lens of protectiveness that actively erases his complexity. But why can’t Louis be “bad” in his own right too? Why can’t he too be manipulative? Black characters can be complex, they can be wrong, and that’s what makes them powerful. Louis is also an immortal, centuries-old vampire who makes bad decisions (morally repugnant ones) and clings to his victim hood like a rosary. It’s not racist, wrong or mischaracterisation to acknowledge that Louis is a manipulative, codependent, unreliable narrator. It’s just called reading comprehension. Saying any of these things does not discredit Louis' character, it understands it. 

Purity Party Poopers.

You are allowed to dislike characters by all means. Why else would an author build so much nuance around a character? But it becomes a problem when you take one aspect of a character and weaponise it to police how others are allowed to engage with them. This kind of ‘moral purity’ ruins what literature is supposed to be about: interpretation, nuance, and freedom of thought. So no, liking or disliking them isn’t rubric for how you live your life. It’s just personal preference. 

But the moment you start telling people that liking a character means they’re racist or that analysing a character through a certain lens is “mischaracterisation,” you’ve stopped talking about art, and you’ve started policing people. You’re not defending marginalised people. You’re just uncomfortable with media that doesn’t hand you clear-cut morality on a plate.

If literature only existed to affirm your worldview, it wouldn’t be literature. It’d be propaganda. 

[madevampselle]

https://nerdist.com/article/armand-is-in-interview-with-the-vampire-season-3-confirms-rolin-jones/

The fact that Rolin wants Armand apologists to multiply doesn‘t sound to me like they are going to revisit the events of season 2 to put Lestat in a better (mord book-accurate) light compared to Armand. And it also makes me wonder if Lestat once again will be the one walking away with a tarnished image with regard to his time with Armand in Paris… It perfectly alignes with Rolin‘s statement that they writers left season 2 with sympathy for Armand. Considering all new information I really begin to doubt that Rolin and Hannah are willing to give Lestat some grace and will keep making him the villain even of his own story.

Have your expectations also changed regarding season 3?

No.

And… can we not do this? The show is no likeability or shipping contest.

Armand will be the “villain“ in s3 because that is how the books are structured - Lestat was in IWTV, and Anne fully intended Armand to be up until the Devil‘s Minion chapter.

And, given the way the show adheres to the structure of the book despite it all? I expect that to stay the same.

Of course ™️ Rolin wants “Armand Apologists“ to multiply… they‘re fans. Of course™️ he thinks people will be happy with what’s to come.

And you know what? I think they will be! More Armand!! And… those people calling themselves that either know very well what Armand did (and will do) - or not at all.

And Rolin‘s job is to provide entertainment for both.

Lestat is the (anti) hero of the Chronicles, the show os built on Loustat and DM…. end of story.

And we have soooo many statements from last weekend and that Lestat will set the story straight… why are we talking about this again?!

[madevampselle]

One possible (and unkind) reading of the Lestat accusation re Armand, is not that he killed Claudia and hurt Louis, because he also participated in the trial that killed Claudia and hurt Louis, so the accusation is that Armand afterwards lied about his part in it and went off with Louis whereas Lestat accepted his blame.

Honestly the writers equating Lestat with Armand is such a huge misstep but I think that's what they're doing 😬😬

because he also participated in the trial

What part of Armand was the mastermind who directed the entire thing do you not understand?

What part of this do you not understand?

It's over a year later and you still think Lestat was just lah-dee-dah participating in it for shits and giggles? Knowing damn well everything Armand did and that Lestat loved Louis and Claudia and that the portrait you saw of him in S1 and S2 wasn't accurate?

Knowing something was not right with Lestat during the trial ^^ and his introduction was literal smoke and mirrors? Knowing Armand wasn't sitting helplessly in his play pen being guarded?

Knowing there's no way Lestat was just chilling in Magnus' tower while Louis was starving to death in the vaults?

Go rewatch the show, Anon. It's went entirely over your head.

[madevampselle]

Hope lestat talks about Louis's green eyes in S3, he always did in the books❤️❤️ He adored them

I hope, after S3, there is not a doubt in anyone's mind that Louis is the LOVE of Lestat's life.

[madevampselle]

[madevampselle]

Another reason to ignore negative comments (especially on AO3)

So at work I’ve been forced to learn about “AI Agentic Workflows”. But being an AO3 author, I couldn’t help but think of how this technology affects authors on AO3 (and honestly on other social media platforms too).

What I learned was this: Agentic AI workflow software makes it extremely easy to automate, and bulk-post, HIGHLY-STORY-SPECIFIC negative comments to AO3 fics.

If you’re not familiar with what an AI Agentic Workflow is, I highly recommend informing yourself. You’ll be hearing it a LOT very soon. Basically, it’s a linked linked chain of AI prompts on one/many software platforms. Each “agent” completes a task. Then it hands off the completed task to the next AI Agent in the chain, which builds on it. Then that result is handed off to another agent, etc etc, even potentially to a final agent which analyzes what worked well and what didn’t, and changes what the other agents do.

There are a ton of repercussions here.

But let’s stay focused on AO3.

With AI Agentic workflow software, a person/group who wants to silence the voice of a community can easily scrape a tag, analyze stories by the thousands, then post thousands of highly customized, story specific negative comments, all without a human being ever seeing your words.

They could even set up AI agents watching to see if you delete your story, or delete your profile, which would be a marker of success. That success marker could be shared back to the other AI agents, and the whole workflow could be changed via automation to use that more effective approach.

I’m sure the OTF is working on ways of stopping this. I’m sure most social media companies are too.

But as usual the tools to create havoc are ahead of the ones to prevent havoc.

Anyway.

TL;DR: If you get a highly-story-specific negative AO3 comment — it does NOT MEAN it was written by a HUMAN! You were probably just story 20,031 in a scraped database of 50,000 stories, all of which were being targeted because they belong to a group/topic/tag that some shitty group or agency wanted to silence because of their horrible political or social.

Don’t let them silence you. They never looked at your words to begin with.

[madevampselle]

So, Interview with the Vampire's HusbandThe Vampire Lestat is Season 3 of WHAT?

[madevampselle]

Guillermo Del Toro on AI "art"

SDCC 2025: Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art

[madevampselle]

the vampire chronicles are a crazy series of books and i don’t blame anyone for not reading or liking them but it is really funny when show fans are like “these books are so unethical that engaging with them in anyway is unethical” like um. how do you think they came up with the show

[madevampselle]

In a room full of people, I would be looking for the door.

[madevampselle]

Free Photoshop! :)

Did you guys know about Photopea?

It's online, in-browser photo editor that is basically a completely free Photoshop :) no installation, no hassle.. The UI and menus/tools/filters are identical to Photoshop.

[madevampselle]

Don't forget to tune in!*

12:15PM PST

Check your time here.

*Yeah, I know we won't. 😂

[madevampselle]

DREAM OF THE ENDLESS

[madevampselle]

what doesn't kill you makes you weird at intimacy