um yeah, I think she just hates black people y'all

I know that hard R tickling the tip of her tongue rn

like can't even deny it atp

Actually, I'll be the Bitter Black Betty and say it out loud: this isn't just Israel's cruelty. There were still people with an enslaved Black woman that saw her life as worth so little that when it came down to it, they were willing to take an active role in her death- not just passively abandoning her to the bombs, but locking her in the house. Hawa's death is not on the Zionist entity alone. Antiblackness in the midst of something so horrible should let you know just how bad it gets.

Finding out that Frances Dana Barker Gage, a white woman, rewrote Sojourner Truth’s famous speech to be more stereotypically “Southern slave” (complete with slurs and misspellings like dat, dere, dey) when Sojourner Truth was actually from New York and spoke only Dutch until she was almost ten and wouldn’t have actually sounded that way linguistically and decidedly did not use the phrase “Ain’t I A Woman?” at all is…whew. And on top of everything, she embellished details about Sojourner Truth’s life (like the number of children she had/how many of them were sold into slavery), wrote that ST said that she could take beatings like a man, and the reception of the speech in the room (she claims ST was called a n*gg*r, earlier accounts say the room was welcoming).

Lmaooo peak white feminist antics.

You can read the most accurate transcript here, alongside the racist edited one.

I was already disgusted just reading about this but looking at the side-by-side comparison of the real speech and the rewrite really brought it home.

See the two versions of her first line below:

Yeah I remember a few years ago when I found this out through Feminista Jones and was mad but not that surprised because white woman so….

This sent me down a bit of a research rabbit hole and I found a cool thing where afro Dutch women read Sojourner’s speech aloud in their contemporary Dutch dialects in hope of offering a more truthful rendition of her authentic Dutch voice.

DH is a beautiful woman that did her damn thing when it comes to playing claudia, but the hairstyle in this pic (and couple others in the show) has kinda rubbed me the wrong way ://. obviously no disrespect to DH since all my negative comments are directed at the people behind the scenes. bc this didn’t happen in s1 when BB and her looser curl pattern played claudia and that fact alone makes me feel justified in my anger.

bc why does one of the main characters of this show have a hairpiece that barely even blends into her natural hair?? the production team prides themselves on how much time and effort goes into the set designs, costume designs, prop designs, etc. (rightfully so, amazing work) but can’t even provide one of the main characters with a decent fucking hairpiece????

like it must’ve been awkward enough rushing through the recast and filming process but the fact that they couldn’t even get her a hairstylist skilled enough in textured hair to style hers to fit the claudia look they were going for is fucking ridiculous. and i get that they had BBs claudia in mind for s2 at first but when she left they should have made changes that better fit DH. and the fact that BB made comments about hair being important for claudia in s1, only for them to not give DH the same care and attention just feels antiblack to me.

this show is truly so lovely and it really sucks that big details about these black characters are being decided by a room filled with mostly white people. then rewatching the after episode thingies with everyone talking about how much detail they put into this and how much research went into that, only for claudias hair to be a detail they couldn’t concern themselves with now that she’s not played by a biracial woman with loose curls is :/ ughh.

i don’t think I’ll ever get over it and i will forever mourn the various hairstyles we could’ve seen paris claudia in had they cared enough to hire a black hairstylist. bc ive seen DHs insta and that woman stays looking gorgeous with her hair styled to perfection so im positive the styling crew of this show could’ve done so much more with claudias hair. and if they couldn’t then they should’ve hired somebody who could.

sighhhhhhhhh ok im done now. but if the same problem persists in s3, I’ll fucking scream

Announcing a new IWTV December Fandom Event: Du Lac Days

Hi I'm Julian, and I love the Interview with the Vampire show. But parts of the fandom have been proving downright hostile to Black fans, who should be able to enjoy IWTV in peace while being kept safe from nonblack fans' racism.

Yesterday (Oct. 30th) four cosplayers, among them inkyblogs and amarawombat on twitter, posted pictures of a fucking haunted planation tour they took in Louisiana; not only that, they posed a funko pop of white Louis at a different planation and staged photoshoots with it, as though a place where generations of enslaved Black families lived and died in terror were a fun little theme park. This caused a great deal of pain, and exacerbated the pain Black fans already feel watching show!Louis' tag remain relatively smaller with less content, despite his being the show's titular vampire and the main reason it's gaining wider recognition.

I felt compelled to repair things in whatever small way I could. So I reached out to my mutuals with an idea I want to try: starting December, we introduce Du Lac Days.

Tailgate Together

Toups Family Meal

The Family Justice Center

GNO Caring Collective

Hope Charities

Unity NOLA

New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation

Feel free to add on

Please reblog if you're interested, and add any ideas for what you'd like to see done with this concept. Fandom should be a joyful escape for everyone, and Black fans of a Black-led show especially deserve that joy.

And thanks to @gayboymolloy @dreadfuldevotee @doublycharming-tetraquark for deeply appreiated input!

It’s one big blocklist btw

Oh so now they deleted their blog. How about an apology?

I'm actually blocked so I'm not allowed to air them out on that post so if someone wants to copy what I'm about to say and paste on there be my quest

I can see that I'm blocked and that's not all that surprising because you know this post is bullshit

I waited to talk about this because to be honest that's what a whole bunch of y'all in the notes SHOULD have done.

this post is nothing but a crafted string of words to make sure that you dog pile a black prson. a black person with rightful concerns.

lets take it from the jump. from the posts that this person has been sitting a year now? Yahya is specifically talking abut two bloggers who have been weirdos (self proclaimed) who have acted strangely towards not only BLACK PEOPLE but CHILDREN.

IM BEGGING YALL TO REREAD YAHYAS post and then REREAD THIS POST HERE

The person said in this post that they find incest sorry "fauxcest" and cnc to be harmless kinks and no one.....nary a person went "hmmm let's think about this" no one started questioning this shit AT ALL especially you heifers in the notes to this post.

THE OG POSTER APPARENTLY WRITES INCEST FICS AND NO ONE HAD THE CRITICAL THOUGHT TO QUESTION THAT THEY THEMSELVES MIGHT BE A WEIRDO?

Explain that to me and quickly.

they are comparing people in the community calling out weirdos to the likes of terfs so that no one wants to question the kinks or the posts that they find harmless and it is so incredibly blatant and yet that post has over 1,000 notes.

and it all circles back to EXACTLY what Yahya said it would which is racism and anti blackness .

and THEN THE OG poster tried to tie it all in a cute little bow by talking about transmisogynoir so that THEY do not get hit with a racist label. and every single person in the in the notes in the likes in the reblog section fell for it.

Yahya is owed some apologies and I wanna see them starting now

like I'm actually so disappointed and also so incredibly disgusted that that post is sitting at 1,000 notes and NO ONE went "woahhhh this is odd" no one is saying that............its like the reading comprehension has gone out the window

Yahya has faced utter disdain and vitriol SPECIFICALLY from white bloggers for talking. about. racism. and. anti blackness. FOR YEARS. AND SO MANY OF US HAVE SEEN IT. have witnessed it. and I'm not about to let some loser who thinks incest and CNC is chill to try and run a hate campaign on them. its just not happening.

The poster writes that said in the call out post they find cnc as a kink to be harmless and then tried to top it all off with talking about transmisogynoir at the end to be like “I’m a good white that’s inclusive just in case ppl try to call me racist”

When the call out post was actually racist. It always circles back to the racism and the anti blackness

i mean. Sometimes you simply have to laugh.

making a call out post about fluoresensitive like okay so you're just antiblack. like you're just racist, straight up. because there's no other reason this is happening, you just haaaaaate a black person for not accepting your bullshit.

Armand is not less antiblack than Lestat they’re both nonblack dipshits with various microaggressive tendencies. dont use the struggle of the black identity to fuel your petty and meaningless shipping fights. none of that actually matters and ill be damned if black oppression is utilized in such a trivial way

I am pleading once again for white liberals to read The New Jim Crow and see how racist policing and law enforcement is 1) bipartisan and 2) the key to how people of color (Black people specifically) are systemically, violently, and purposely kept in check in this country. Begging y'all to see that someone doesn't have to say a slur to be antiblack in the entirety of their belief system, that the status quo you live under is maintained by the suffering (both current and potential) of millions

The New Jim Crow (PDF)

Potato do not be playing with y'all lmao, get this free education!

at last…another’s heartbeat

the silhouettes of their bond visible still at the last glow of the sun

they experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir

standing there in silence holding hands

no rush to go back inside

there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…

– amidst sounds of buzzing

chirps

crickets

the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind

fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon

how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own –

finally love.

^ this is a poem by Marcellus Williams, a innocent black man who is facing execution for a crime he didn’t commit tomorrow. if you have time, please sign this petition to convince the governor of missouri to stop the execution.

the execution is still scheduled for today.

their voicemail is full, but you can fax the missouri governor for free without a fax machine. please click the link or go to faxzero to send it.

Just tried this, and it turns out you can send it from outside the USA too!

a message you can use if you need one:

theyre still gonna execute him arent they. i fucking hate america

That's the bit. It's like... I feel I should try harder, I sent the email and the fax and signed the petition but like... They don't listen to us. That's the damn problem. They get in power and don't listen. They know they don't have to.

Two fucking hours. There's a protest on Lafayette in DC rn and they're still not gonna listen. I'm so scared for him ND sorry for his family.

Seriously, why do fandoms think it's okay to attack black people for not agreeing with you? Why do you feel so emboldened to be nasty to real people over their opinions on fictional characters. This is not even the first time this has happened, you do this every other week. Go outside and touch grass and leave black bloggers alone!

Sorry I am not done talking about it. Every time there is any new "discourse" in this fandom, it's always black bloggers that get the brunt of it. Why is that? They are not even the only ones talking about those specific things. Why do you feel soo emboldened to attack them for it? Like, can this site ever stop being antiblack?

And God forbid if they want to talk about racism on this site and in the fandom. You will either talk down to them or accuse them of the wildest shit! These are real people you are attacking, can anyone on this site act with any degree of compassion?

in response to anonymous re JA as the supporting character going forwards (apologies, sis, but this is gonna run long):

had to do some sleuthing to double-check where those blogs got the quotes from Rolin Jones and yes, from what Jones is saying, Jacob Anderson will be a supporting character going forward. while this isn't surprising, what is disconcerting is the contradictory statements Jones makes about POV, unreliable narrators, memory, and objectivity that further frames seasons 3 as the true start of the show because now it will follow Lestat, and Lestat's POV is the only ordained perspective through which we can view and interact in the world of TVC.

While I'm On Claudia...

THIS storyline she's in right now? ...is yet another example of the show gleaning more depth than the original incarnations of the characters because of race.

Her role as Lulu is popular for the most part because of its minstrelsy elements, which were big in that day. Her large eyes, her dance routine, the exaggerated smile, her laying an egg like a cartoon bird and not a human, her schadenfreude and "death" as comedy... She is playing a live-staged minstrel cartoon character, many of whom in that era were modeled on exploitative caricatures of Blackness.... Including the original Mickey Mouse. Which makes her plight that much more tragic, beyond being frozen in girlhood. It's not even a true girlhood, but one mocked and marked by her color. It's brilliant, but I think it went over the heads of a lot of viewers.

I have to politely disagree here. While minstrely aspects remained into the 1940s (amos and andy for one) they werent nearly as popular as they were in the 10s.

Also 1940s france? Josephine Baker had revolutionized it and just finished being a spy (not yet known to france). While racism continued in france esp outside of paris, being black in 1940s france was way better than america.

You missed the trope for the trees. While it was ending u could easily argue into 1940s baby acts were very popular esp in lower venues (ex in america itd be vaudeville which was on its last legs). Baby didnt mean ‘baby’ it meant a young star (and in a creepy manner the racist fanny brice who was a bitch to josephine was both about to premiere her baby snooks on tv. Brice was in her 50s and managed by taking out her dentures for the radio show. Yes funny girl fanny brice.)

Famous babies before this point was Shirley Temple and Baby Peggy, Judy Garland had even been called one early on.

You even see this in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. To be upfront: im unaware of any baby performers on the chitlin circuit. But im thinking in this regard it was basically the old fashioned meaning: Claudia can be Shirley Temple. Or Judy Garland who played Dorothy at i think 18 and had her tits compressed and forced to dress like a child. Dorothy even was blue, like claudia).

This shit kinda modified in the 50s with child stars more like the mousekteers and sandra dee. Then comes patty duke and that takes u into the modern era.

So Claudia is basically an outdated vampires idea of a baby act

Race i do not believe had much to do with it. It was a way to make her comfortable while feeding the coven til they inevitably do away with her as a law violation (see the speech about how u make victims corporate).

@danepopfrippery

You are completely free to disagree with facts, but using white performers when the context of Black performers, associated products, and paraphernalia is *everything* in this subject gives away your lack of knowledge on this subject. Josephine Baker didn't revolutionize minstrelsy. She was a performer before she was a spy and in fact, her fame as a performer is what helped her spy, since she carried Nazi secrets in her music sheets. Josephine Baker did incorporate minstrelsy in her act. And she gained fame not because the French were especially evolved on race, but because she wisely took advantage of their limited gaze. The Banana dance made her famous because the French were fascinated by what they saw as an exotic other from the "wilds" and her dancing. In other words they fetishized her blackness. She catered to that (initially) and gained fame exaggerating her eyes and making funny faces.

Note the style of the vintage poster advertising her, the French were not immune:

She even had branded make-up sold in her skintone, popularly sold to the French so they could achieve her fashionable tanned skin. I know this because I saw it in person at the National Gallery's Josephine Baker exhibit. Minstrelsy was performed by Black artists because it was a norm and the only genre space where most could regularly perform. It started *before* the 1910s during enslavement with white people mocking the people they enslaved. It became an economic survival point for talented Black performers on the Chitlin' Circuit, in the Edwardian era through the early 20th century. They also performed these caricatures, at times using blackface (burnt cork) over their own skin color. Elements of it lasted from the 1910s on through the 1950s and later depending on the country. Some countries today still use minstrel tropes in their characters, products, and advertising. I mentioned Mickey Mouse specifically for a reason. Early cartooning modeled many of their characters on caricatures of Blackness, including Mickey.

This is important since the coven uses animation and animation tropes in the show written for Lulu which does change how the minstrelsy appears. This is something I was referencing specifically which you do not mention.

Claudia's pain is the punchline, her ignorance is the punchline. Her being a bird along with the implied caging of the window bars... ...The blue that completely surrounds her eyes making them appear wider, like the cartoon pictured in the above relevant book cover.... which also hints at the style of make-up application specifically used in blackface. The dingey shadows in her blue dress and framing of her face with her hands with an exaggerated smile are also hints along with the cartoon, these are all specially minstrel-coded dehumanizing antics when performed by Black people.

The context of her color matters, when she lays an egg on stage and is trying to free herself but is ignorant of the fact that she can't fly. It's subtler in this show yes than reality, because one has to be mindful of today's gaze. But it's still pretty obvious. It brought to mind the bigger extremes of the dumb servant negress tropes of Sunshine from 1940's Fantasia:

....and the hypersexualized "magic" in Coal Black and de' Sebben Dwarfs from 1943: Again, please understand, that these things have very different meanings depending on the performer's race. That's why your white performers do not matter here, (one of whom performed in blackface herself). I lived in DC just 6 miles away from The Library of Congress. I developed a hyper-fixation on early Black Hollywood and basically deep-dived into the subject because of it. I saw and got to handle many of the materials myself. This ad is for a little black girl performer imitating the world-famous Lil' Baby Esther. And while I won't show the photo here, I will link the original Lil' Esther the arms of Ernst Rolf in blackface in Sweden.

This is a "Topsy" doll. They were made up through the 1950's. I include it because it's another possible reference point.

It matters that all of my examples reference Black women and girls and none of yours do.

All this to say, you are wrong and you overstepped.

I can’t find the original post I’m sorry but Claudia’s character Baby Lou is not a minstrel character. She’s certainly vaudeville inspired but that doesn’t make her a minstrel. Little black girls were not portrayed as affluent, whimsical, cute, and well dressed in minstrel shows. Baby Lou is a refined child who is the victim of senseless violence and meets a tragic end. By contrast, the minstrel stereotype for black children was the pickanny, this is the description just off Wikipedia

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a lot to say about French fetishism of blackness, or the way black girlhood complicates this performance of innocence and imprisonment or violence, it’s just not minstrelsy. Claudia’s blackness is very important to properly understanding her performance but she isn’t performing a racial stereotype, which is what minstrelsy was

Like minstrel performers were all white people in black face. Claudia is actually a black woman. The audience delights in her exoticism and suffering but I don’t think transplanting the American product of minstrelsy onto Frances specific relationship and obsession with blackness is useful here, and I think it obscures what the performance is actually saying about black girlhood. Baby Lou could easily be played by a little white girl, Claudia introduces questions of blackness into the mix, the complete opposite of what a minstrel show does, which is have white people inhabit black stereotypes. The contrast between what Claudia is doing and what minstrels did is actually way more fruitful ground for discussion

While I'm On Claudia...

THIS storyline she's in right now? ...is yet another example of the show gleaning more depth than the original incarnations of the characters because of race.

Her role as Lulu is popular for the most part because of its minstrelsy elements, which were big in that day. Her large eyes, her dance routine, the exaggerated smile, her laying an egg like a cartoon bird and not a human, her schadenfreude and "death" as comedy... She is playing a live-staged minstrel cartoon character, many of whom in that era were modeled on exploitative caricatures of Blackness.... Including the original Mickey Mouse. Which makes her plight that much more tragic, beyond being frozen in girlhood. It's not even a true girlhood, but one mocked and marked by her color. It's brilliant, but I think it went over the heads of a lot of viewers.