#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.

[laughinglistener]

The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat

(The Vampire Chronicles, Book Two) By Anne Rice

Format: Audiobook Narrator: Simon Vance Length: 21 hours & 41 minutes Genres: Fiction, Adult, Fantasy, Horror, Supernatural Take a Peek:  Audible  |  Overdrive  |  Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Goodreads

Story Rating: 4 Stars Performance Rating: 5 Stars Overall Rating: 4 Stars ★★★★

My journey into the Vampire Chronicles continues with round two. Man, so far this series has the ability to overwhelm me and push my thoughts towards the existential like no other book ever has. After my intense love affair with Interview With A Vampire a couple weeks ago, I was hesitantly curious about this sequel. I hated Lestat so much the first time around, I wasn’t sure if I could stand a whole novel told from his perspective. To my surprise (though I shouldn’t have been because Anne Rice is a genius) I really loved it and found this prequel/sequel really fascinating.

via GIPHY

THE REHASH

The story begins a decade-ish after the first one ended, in the 1980s. Our favorite vamp has been “sleeping” underground for quite some time, but is stirred at the new sounds of life happening outside. Upon his wake, the obvious progression of civilization overwhelms Lestat and he is curious about everything around him; clothing, music, religion, pop culture, politics, books, philosophy… You get the idea. He loves this new age where people are free to express themselves and everyone accepts it without batting an eye. The societal rules that once held him back no longer apply and he decides to take advantage this, hunting down a rock band he enjoys and confronting them. Lestat reveals what he is and promises to make the band rich if given the chance. They don’t believe him, of course, but compliment the clever choice of name for his little “act.” This only confuses Lestat and he asks what they’re talking about, only to discover that Louis helped write a book that told their history to the public. He’s completely shocked. Without even trying or knowing, Lestat has become the most famous vampire in history—mostly because he was a big douchebag.

In response, Lestat immediately starts penning his own novel and we dive head first into his origins. It opens with him Hulking out and killing a pack of wolves that had been terrorizing his village. Everyone is extremely grateful that he had the courage to kill them and even bring gifts in gratitude. One of these gift givers is Nicolas de Lenfent, nicknamed Nicki, who was shunned from his wealthy family when he devoted himself to learning the violin. As a secret aspiring actor, Lestat is immediately intrigued by him and his mother Gabrielle encourages her son to make a new friend. After their first dinner, the two are inseparable and even become lovers. Eventually they decide to hit the road to Paris where they will be free to live out their dreams, but Lestat is hesitant because of his mother’s failing health. Gabrielle knows that she’ll probably be dead soon, but she still tells Lestat to go and be happy and live as much as he can for her. With her blessing, the two go to Paris and create a new life performing with a theater troupe. Lestat is finally happy, so obviously that’s when a random old-man vampire comes to his room and steals him away.

Without much preamble or warning, Lestat gets changed into a vampire. And since the poor guy isn’t confused enough, his maker then immediately kills himself by walking into a fire—So. Not. Cool. He’s left with little instruction or help and relies mainly on his instincts as a guide. Despite being warned to stay away from his loved ones, Lestat can’t seem to help himself and uses his new inherited wealth to shower them with gifts. Gabrielle is ecstatic and happy for her son’s forturne while Nicki is….. not. He doesn’t understand why Lestat left and is very bitter, which is torturous for our narrator. In the end, Lestat can’t stay away and eventually visits his theater troupe friends, including Nicki, who welcome him back with open arms until they realize he’s not quite human anymore. At the same time, Lestat’s mother Gabrielle takes a turn for the worse and surprises her son with a visit to see him one last time. Initially he tries to hide his vampy-ness, but can’t stand the thought of watching her die and offers her eternal life, which she very quickly accepts.

To make a very very very long story short, after Lestat turns Gabrielle and eventually Nicki too, they face great adversity that drives wedges between them all. Armand and his band of religious vamp-followers are not happy with how they’re conducting themselves, and eventually split Lestat’s coven apart. He is completely miserable and hopeless, finding brief relief with an ancient vampire named Marius, before he’s forced to leave him too. This horribly bitter state is how he finds Louis, and the rest we already know.

In the epilogue, we finally get to see Louis and Lestat reunited, giving me warm-fuzzies that I didn’t know I wanted until it was already happening. Plus, we get to see Lestat play a stadium show with his now famous rock band and it quickly turns sour when pissed off vampires decide to attack. Until next time…

THE GOOD

*Opens mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.* ……….Well. Hmmm. A lot to ponder this time around.

If I had told myself at the end of Interview With A Vampire that I would ship Louis and Lestat AND hate Armand’s guts by the end of this one, I would have laughed in my own face. No way. But somehow Anne Rice managed to completely turn my own opinion and I can’t help but like Lestat’s character. I’m not entirely sure when the switch got flipped, but I find myself at the end of a transformation I didn’t even know was occurring. In the first novel I wanted to wring his neck. Now whenever he does anything vaguely evil I laugh like I’m watching a mischievous kitten.

“Oh Lestat! He’s so CUTE when he’s trying to dismantle the entire vampire structure!”

During the first novel, I fell so hard for Louis with his big heart and brooding nature that I hated Lestat for him. To me, it seemed completely logical that Louis and Claudia tried to kill Lestat by setting his ass on fire. So you can imagine my surprise when Lestat manages to undermine the ENTIRE first book in a few short sentences, saying Louis has his own perspective on events and conveniently omitted all the good times they had together. Lestat even goes on to explain some of the horrible things he did, somehow making it okay. It was a brilliant move on Rice’s part that left me completely speechless with a burning need to re-read the first novel again.

And this is a little macabre to discuss in a lighthearted book review, but I would feel remiss not mentioning it. I have never had my own fear of death described quite so accurately before. It struck a chord inside of me. Fear of death is something we all share, but it’s a vast, baser kind of terror that’s hard to grasp or put in words and I think Anne Rice captured that fear amazingly. Somehow, after reading this, I feel like I have a better grasp on myself—like I know that part of me a little better. That’s both good and bad. I think everyone would rather remain in blissful ignorance when it comes to death, but it also made me feel not so alone.

THE UGLY

Similarly to Interview With A Vampire, this book felt looooonnnnnnng since Rice shoves hundreds of years into a few chapters, but it’s lenth was a little more tedious this time around than it was before. Despite the whole being-an-immortal-vampire thing, I can see a lot of myself in Louis, which played a big role in winning me over the first time around and put a positive spin on it’s long length. I was just happy to be spending more time with a character I really cared about. Even after Lestat won me over in this second book, I wasn’t invested and held him at a distance. My attention wasn’t completely captured and tended to drop in between major plot points.

Plus, it didn’t feel like I was reading about the same Lestat. The Lestat in this novel felt completely different than the one I experienced before. Maybe that’s because my feelings for him changed so drastically, or maybe this was done on purpose since the first book is in Louis’s perspective. Whatever the reason, it felt like I was reading a story about some other completely different vampire. It wasn’t until his reunion with Louis at the very end that I connected the two Lestat’s together in my mind. This is probably my problem and no fault of Rice’s and I might solve it for myself by re-reading the first novel, but I wish there had been a better way to bridge the gap between the two.

FINAL WORD

Personally, I just don’t think this book is as strong as the first one, but it’s still a good read. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you think—it has everything! I would definitely give this a try if you loved the Interview With A Vampire as much as I did.

The Vampire Lestat was originally published on Laughing Listener