#LISTEN THE WAYS LESTAT LOVES THEATER ARE PART OF THE REASON I LIKE HIM SO MUCH

[mlmgaze]

[Image ID: the "blood orange" / "she's so pretentious it's fucking red" meme, but the first panel is Armand from the iwtv tv show saying "there was no scripting Lestat. He was a hurricane."

The next panels read: " 'No scripting Lestat,' she's so pretentious. Shut up, it's fucking commedia dell'arte there's no script, that's the point. 'he was a hurricane.' " /.End ID]

[ca-suffit]

I heard that lestat abused nicki too in the book is that true if so do you think they're gonna show it in s3? i hope they do only so the fandom finally shut up about louis lying about the abuse. And it'll be interesting to see the fandom's reaction to lestat after that.

I'm v 👀 waiting to see how Nickistat is gonna be treated in the fandom when it's two white men.

I'll answer this under the cut in case ppl don't want spoilers.

Nickistat is a p dark relationship so I expect them to show everything and I'll be disappointed if they don't. Lestat always has a history of being abusive, in human and vampire terms, but a lot of ppl find a way to excuse it. Or pretend they acknowledge it while still overlooking it bcuz they never rly talk about it in a way that says they *really do* accept it in his character.

I expect the fandom to be a lot softer on both of them bcuz they're both white. Even tho Nicki p aggressively fucking hates Lestat, not only at the end, but during the "good" parts of their relationship too. He wants them to destroy themselves.

Idk how to get into the rest of this without a summary of at least the Nickistat stuff in TVL so...

Gabrielle (Lestat's mom) helps get Nicki and Lestat to Paris so they can both get away from their shitty lives. Lestat becomes successful as an actor and Nicki plays the violin for the performances. Everything is going p well but Nicki starts to break apart as time goes bcuz he didn't actually want them to succeed. He gets annoyed at Lestat's eternal optimism and friction starts to grow between them. This worsens when Lestat is kidnapped by Magnus. Nicki doesn't know what's happened to him at all. Lestat avoids making contact to tell Nicki anything, sending him money and gifts otherwise instead, as he tries to cope with the trauma of it and how to explain anything at all. This is the time period when Gabrielle becomes a vampire too, to save her from dying of an illness. This is the first vampire Lestat ever creates. Then Armand kidnaps Nicki (long story there, but Armand and Lestat get into it over the coven shit by this point too) and reveals everything vampiric to him and it all unravels more and more. Lestat eventually does make Nicki a vampire too but it causes the darkness to grow in him and it scares Lestat a lot, so they end badly. Lestat leaves Paris, and Nicki stays at the theatre (which the vampires now own, thanks to Lestat thru Magnus' money) with Armand. Armand does all kinds of shit with him to try and control him, including cutting his hands off at a point, but Nicki keeps getting worse. Eventually he kills himself by jumping into a fire. Lestat learns about this in a letter he receives in Cairo from one of the actresses along with a package that holds Nicki's violin.

So the abuse part with Lestat comes during one of the last times they ever see each other. Here it is from TVL

"I want the theater," Nicolas said to me. "I want it from you. The deed, the money to reopen it. My assistants here are ready to listen to me." "You may have it, if you wish," I answered. "It is yours if it will take you and your malice and your fractured reason off my hands." I got up off the dressing table and went towards him and I think that he meant to block my path, but something unaccountable happened. When I saw he wouldn't move, my anger rose up and out of me like an invisible fist. And I saw him moved backwards as if the fist had struck him. And he hit the wail with sudden force. I could have been free of the place in an instant. I knew Gabrielle was only waiting to follow me. But I didn't leave. I stopped and looked back at him, and he was still against the wall as if he couldn't move. And he was watching me and the hatred was as pure, as undiluted by remembered love, as it had been all along. But I wanted to understand, I wanted really to know what had happened. And I came towards him again in silence and this time it was I who was menacing, and my hands looked like claws and I could feel his fear. They were all, except for Eleni, full of fear. I stopped when I was very close to him and he looked directly at me, and it was as if he knew exactly what I was asking him. "All a misunderstanding, my love," he said. Acid on the tongue. The blood sweat had broken out again, and his eyes glistened as if they were wet. "It was to hurt others, don't you see, the violin playing, to anger them, to secure for me an island where they could not rule. They would watch my ruin, unable to do anything about it." I didn't answer. I wanted him to go on. "And when we decided to go to Paris, I thought we would starve in Paris, that we would go down and down and down. It was what I wanted, rather than what they wanted, that I, the favored son, should rise for them. I thought we would go down! We were supposed to go down." "Oh, Nicki…" I whispered. "But you didn't go down, Lestat, " he said, his eyebrows rising. "The hunger, the cold-none of it stopped you. You were a triumph!" The rage thickened his voice again. "You didn't drink yourself to death in the gutter. You turned everything upside down! And for every aspect of our proposed damnation you found exuberance, and there was no end to your enthusiasm and the passion coming out of you-and the light, always the light. And in exact proportion to the light coming out of you, there was the darkness in me! Every exuberance piercing me and creating its exact proportion of darkness and despair! And then, the magic, when you got the magic, irony of ironies, you protected me from it! And what did you do with it but use your Satanic powers to simulate the actions of a good man!" I turned around. I saw them scattered in the shadows, and farthest away, the figure of Gabrielle. I saw the light on her hand as she raised it, beckoning for me to come away. Nicki reached up and touched my shoulders. I could feel the hatred coming through his touch. Loathsome to be touched in hate. "Like a mindless beam of sunlight you routed the bats of the old coven!" he whispered. "And for what purpose? What does it mean, the murdering monster who is filled with light!"

I turned and smacked him and sent him hurtling into the dressing room, his right hand smashing the mirror, his head cracking against the far wall. For one moment he lay like something broken against the mass of old clothing, and then his eyes gathered their determination again, and his face softened into a slow smile. He righted himself and slowly, as an indignant mortal might, he smoothed his coat and his rumpled hair. It was like my gestures under les Innocents when my captors had sent me down in the dirt. And he came forward with the same dignity, and the smile was as ugly as any I had ever seen. "I despise you," he said. "But I am done with you. I have the power from you and I know how to use it, which you do not. I am in a realm at last where I choose to triumph! In darkness, we're equal now. And you will give me the theater, that because you owe it to me, and you are a giver of things, aren't you-a giver of gold coins to hungry children-and then I won't ever look upon your light again." He stepped around me and stretched out his arms to the others: "Come, my beauties, come, we have plays to write, business to attend to. You have things to learn from me. I know what mortals really are. We must get down to the serious invention of our dark and splendid art. We will make a coven to rival all covens. We will do what has never been done." The others looked at me, frightened, hesitant. And in this still and tense moment I heard myself take a deep breath. My vision broadened. I saw the wings around us again, the high rafters, the walls of scenery transecting the darkness, and beyond, the little blaze along the foot of the dusty stage. I saw the house veiled in shadow and knew in one limitless recollection all that had happened here. And I saw a nightmare hatch another nightmare, and I saw a story come to an end.