#Louis de Ponte du Lac

[oneshotprincess]

not louis entering his bella swan new moon hallucination era

[moviepolaroids]

Lestat / Interview With The Vampire Sticker Set / T Shirt

The series delves into the complex and emotional journey of vampires Louis and Lestat, exploring themes of immortality, love, and the human condition.

[lilliankillthisman]

The particularly lurid way Louis describes children* is... interesting. Definitely more interesting given that so far this is a quirk of his narration alone; we didn't get it from Lestat or second-hand from Marius. If it were just "Anne Rice likes writing like that" it would be one thing, and I would be perfectly fine with that. But as a Louis de Ponte du Lac specialty, it's... kind of a neat little inclusion

*see this post for the major example, but you can see the same habit in his description of Armand's attendant Denis, in a couple of early scenes with Claudia when she's still quite young, and with the boy in New Orleans whom he spares from death. And there aren't a huge number of kids in the book to describe!

[paseodementiras]

Entrevista con el vampiro

-Ya veo... -dijo el vampiro, pensativo, y lentamente cruzó la habitación hacia la ventana.

-Anne Rice

[random-imagines-blog]

Imagine being Louis’s child, and him comforting you after turning you.

Your father hadn’t been in your life much, not until your mother died. She had told you the truth about him, the truth that he tried to keep hidden from everyone. That he was not your average man, who had average interests. That he ... favored men. You were only six years old when you heard this, so the idea didn’t seem so odd. You hadn’t been conditioned to think that it was disgusting or a sin. It just was what it was.

You met him for the first time at your mama’s funeral. You were supposed to be living with your aunt and uncle afterwards, but your father had swooped in and taken you. You recognized him from old photographs. Your mother’s one and only love, who couldn’t love her back but gave her one night ou of pity, not that you understood what any of that meant. A sweet seven years old, you didn’t ask those sorts of questions, no no.

Your life went on for only a week more. Your father told you to say goodbye to the sunshine, which was a weird ask. You spent the days outside, sitting in the sun, feeling the warmth on your skin. You played with other children in the streets, until they found out which house you went home to and then you were shunned. You didn’t understand why. You couldn’t.

And you couldn’t understand why your father came to you in the middle of the night, and hurt you. You screamed and screamed that night, crying as the pain took you over. You tried to push away from your dad, tried to get him to let go of you, but all he did was give you medicine. It was good tasting medicine, but it didn’t make all of the pain go away.

You didn’t understand why everything felt different when you woke up the next night. You had a nightmare, something horrid, something violent. You hadn’t seen that kind of violence before, but now, it felt as if you had experienced it. Your father biting into your neck. Blood splattering all over your pillow and your sheets. Different victims. Your mother, your aunt, your uncle, your grandmother, you saw them all die and - you had been the one to bite their throats out. You awoke dry, parched, completely in the dark. You were encased in something. A box. You called for your Papa, please, come Papa, I’m scared. And he did come. He took the lid off and cradled you in his arms and he told you that things were going to be different now. You were no longer human.

He tried to put things simply, but it was hard to understand. You cried your little heart out when he said that you wouldn’t be able to play with the other kids again. You sobbed until your eyes were sore when you heard that you weren’t going to be able to eat your favorite cakes. You wailed until your voice gave out when he told you that your whole life was going to be focused on quenching this new thirst. He gave you more of the medicine that helped earlier, from a source you did not see, his mouth into yours.

“But do not worry, my little one,” Louis said, stroking your puffy face as you finally began to grow quiet. “You will always have me as your Papa, until the end of time.”

You finally felt calm enough to sleep, and your Papa tried to put you into a coffin of your own, but you remembered too well when your mother had been put in the ground in one of those. That it meant she was never coming back, so you clung to your Papa until he finally relented, letting you sleep with him that night, curled up in in a box his perfect size, so at least if you were gone forever, you were not alone.

Requested by: Anonymous

[ruindgod]

you didn’t show up . i kept waiting . / louis de pointe du lac @ tristan wyn foulkes

✦           " i'm — i'm sorry, louis, i really am. " such poor words and tristan bites down on the inside of his cheek. tristan has never been good at apologies, never been good with any consequence, really.  & they fell so flat in the space between them. there's a tremble in his hands, a shake in his voice that worsens as his heartbeat skips. vicious thing, that little organ. it always seems to get him into trouble. " i — i — well, i simply forgot. the time got away from me. " & lies are so easy to read on his face. for all of his years, tristan has never been very good at hiding much of anything. ( lies. desires. bodies. ) were it not propriety, even the scars that denoted the strangeness of his decaying body would be visible.

          immediately, he steps closer as though to make up for these poor words, his poor choices, all the mistakes and more that pile up at his feet. a hand out to reach for him but tristan thinks twice of it and lets it drop. all that he does seems to only dig himself deeper and deeper into the mire. " how can i make it up to you? i understand if you no longer wish for my help but — please, let me at least apologize and make it up to you. "

[lafamilledelioncourt]

y'all be giving armand and lestat way too much credit sometimes. like, sure, they're centuries-old vampires with superhuman powers capable of toppling empires if they didn't often share a singular brain cell named louis de ponte du lac.

i'm all for the show's angsty gothic vibe, but I'm sorry y'all as a book reader... that's twit and twat to me. give them a hug and a sippy cup. ain't a mastermind in sight. just some lonely, horny, and disastrous autistic bitches, and we love them just the way they are.

[bitterdeathtoswallow]

Louis was not a fan of racing. At least...in the most simple sense. He was however a fan of Marcus. Part of him knew it was wrong. Marcus was 22. Had been 20 when they had met. Louis had been 30 when he had taken the life he currently had. Marcus was human. Louis was very much a vampire. And it was a damn good thing that this particular race had taken place at night; because otherwise he would not have been able to attend. He would have been forced to watch from his tower in Dubai, biting at his nails as he eagerly watched Marcus's car move through the track.

He threw his arms around the mortal man, offering him a soft squeeze. It would be so easy to brake Marcus if he wasn't careful.

"Oh, you know me. Bit of both. I'm just glad I was able to be here for the first win!"

He patted Marcus on the back, a bright smile on his face, his green eyes dazzling in the lights.

Something about Marcus fascinated him. He had learned ASL by taking classes on line so he could communicate with him...even thought it would be just as easy to read the man's mind.

Marcus didn't know that Louis was a vampire through. Louis wanted to keep it that way.

"What do you want to do do celebrate?"

Open to: Anyone (mun/muse/fc must be 21+) Plot: Mark has just had his maiden victory in Formula 1 at the Hangaroring in Hungary. Your muse wants to celebrate before he's off to Spa in Belgium. // All connections except family are welcome. Muse: Marcus De Vrise, 22, is an F1 driver for McLaren; Career mirrors Oscar Piastri. Note: He is hearing but nonverbal, so he will communicate with ASL, text, writing.

Marcus walked into the crowded room, a small smile on his typically stoic face as everyone cheered for him. This was the dream, the one thing he'd wanted since he started karting after the incident that took his voice. Sure, it would be great to win the World Drivers Championship, but it was a huge deal to even win a single F1 Grand Prix. Taking out his phone, he took a few pictures and but as he went to record a quick video he saw the one person that always made him feel comfortable in a crowd. Their finger curled at him and his smile grew a little wider. With small, polite nods and brief signs of thanks, Mark closed the distance. "You came, but are you here to celebrate or to tell me that it's about damn time? It was a long time coming."

[harleyquinnisbi]

I love you louis de pont du lac cardigan era come back to me

[compromised-emotionally]

Racebending Interview with the Vampire: Power, Companionship and the Search for Freedom

I wrote a paper for a queer studies class that I'm kinda proud of. It's not particularly mindblowing as it was just a 200 level course, and it's kind of dry cause I was trying to stay formal. It's mostly just referencing other writings on race and queer studies and relating them to the show. It's about how the choice to racebend Louis deepens and transforms the thematic explorations of queerness in the original text. I wanted to share it below because I worked hard on it, even if no one reads this lol:

 

Racebending Interview with the Vampire: Power, Companionship and the Search for Freedom

Interview with the Vampire was originally a novel by Anne Rice, published in 1976. The novel told the story of a Louisiana plantation owner turned vampire named Louis de Pont du Lac, the French vampire named Lestat who was Louis’ maker, and the life they shared together. A film adaption was released in 1994 starring Brad Pitt as Louis and Tom Cruise as Lestat, that, like the book, displayed their relationship as deep but never explicitly sexual. It was not until the 2022 AMC television series that Louis and Lestat’s story was allowed to be explicitly romantic and sexual. The series was made further transformatively progressive with the casting of Black-British actor Jacob Anderson as Louis. In Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Munoz stated “A soft multicultural inclusion of race and ethnicity does not, on its own, lead to a progressive identity discourse” (pg10). Rather than just using “color-blind” casting for empty representation, Louis’ character was changed from slave owner to a black Creole man in the early 20th century. The addition of racial elements deepened thematic explorations of the nonnormative. By racebending Louis, AMC’s Interview with a Vampire expands on the original works’ examination of the vampire as a societal “other” and metaphor for homosexuality as well as Louis’ struggle to assimilate to vampire life. It relates the power dynamics between Lestat and Louis as creator/created to racial dynamics and interlocking systems of oppression.  

            Episode 3 “Is My Very Nature That of the Devil” opens with Lestat and Louis sitting in a park, as Lestat pontificates about the history of that park and reads a column about its design in the newspaper. Louis replies asking if the story mentioned how they used to put the severed heads of runaway slaves on the gates, then ponders if there’s a “greater purpose” for vampires on Earth. Lestat does not take Louis seriously, telling Louis that only that he (Lestat) is his creator and he put him on this Earth for pleasure. This interaction is emblematic of their relationship throughout the show. Lestat repeatedly minimizes the importance and legitimacy of Louis’ struggles, both the external oppressions he faces and his internal struggle to adjust to vampiric life. Vampirism acts as a direct parallel to living a queer life in the original text, though that symmetry is more complicated in the series since there is also explicit queerness in the show.  If humanity is the dominant, normative group in this universe, then Lestat’s approach to vampirism can be read as counteridentificatory. Lestat considers himself and Louis to be completely separate from human society, and has none of Louis’ impulses to assimilate with the human community or hold on to any ties to it.  Louis, conversely, still values the things that were important to him before turning: his club, “appearances”, his relationship with his family. He decides in this episode that he no longer wants to kill people, that he will feed off of animals alone. Lestat interprets this as a Louis denying his “true” identity as both a vampire and a queer man, an attempt to assimilate and identify with humans while rejecting Lestat and their shared identity. In some ways this is understandable, as the drinking of blood within this text is explicitly linked to their sex drive. But Lestat is also continuously upset throughout this episode when Louis refers to the black community of New Orleans as “his people”.  Despite the fact that Louis’ resilience and strength as a black man succeeding in a white world was one of the things that first attracted Lestat to Louis, he cannot comprehend why he still feels such kinship with the race he has always been a part of.

            Lestat treated turning Louis into a vampire as if that would supersede or eliminate the other aspects of his identity. The only difference that mattered to Lestat was vampire vs human, paralleling Cohen’s critique of white queer activism that envisions the world in a hetero/queer divide (Cohen, pg 447). When Lestat turned Louis at the end of the first episode, part of his pitch and promise to him was that as a vampire, racial oppressions would no longer hold him back. Lestat’s proposal was that becoming a vampire would give him (Louis) the power to counteridentify from the racist system, as well as freedom from loneliness and companionship in the form of a life with Lestat. Throughout this episode, Louis is grappling with the lie of that promise. Though he has a physical strength and power of a vampire, he must still move through world as black man in the early 20th century and deal with all the indignities that come along with that. He is also lonelier than anticipated, with a partner who will not acknowledge their differences. Audra Lorde said this of difference “…community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist” (pg 112). E. Patrick Johnson expounds further on this in his article on quare studies, explaining that such communities and theories are not progressive ones, and that LGBTQ of color cannot afford to adopt such theories for themselves.

Louis begins working to integrate the different aspects of himself and his new immortal life into a theory of self that feels true to his experience and acceptable, feeling “the tug and pull of having to choose between which parts […] to claim and wear and which parts have served to cloak us from the knowledge of ourselves” (Moraga and Anzaldua, pg 23). Louis reunites with an old lover, a black soldier passing through on his way to deployment. They have sex out in the Bayou and Louis feels some true companionship, but this is followed by a series of emotionally fraught failures that isolate and disempower him further. He is rejected by and frightens his family. He gets news that his nightclub/brothel is being shut down due to segregationist laws. Lestat throughout this is throwing a temper tantrum over Louis’ dalliance with the solder, despite being the one to open the relationship and begin an affair with the singer at Louis’ club (a white woman). Lestat’s reaction here, paired with the way he shows his disdain for Louis’ choices throughout this episode, display how unsettled Lestat is when he is not in control of Louis, when Louis acts as an independent equal rather than adoring student. Louis pushes aside Lestat’s attention grabbing antics in favor of meeting with a group of white businessmen and politicians in an attempt to save his club. He had interacted with this group before regularly, in a manner that could be viewed as dis-identificatory. He had regular poker games with them, laughing at their jokes, sometimes letting them win, while simultaneously influencing their opinions and nudging them towards social policies that would help him “working on, with, and against a cultural form” (Munoz, pg 12). Johnson’s piece on Quare theory points out that disidentification has always been “the process through which people of color could survive a white supremacist society” (pg12). He gave them a performance of “Mr. Du Lac”, a version of himself that made them comfortable enough to for him to influence their opinions and actions toward him and his businesses. But his previous tactics are no longer working; he can hear the thoughts of the white men insulting and demeaning him while they outwardly suggest that Lestat acts as “the face” of his business. It is also an interesting visual note that Lestat is framed throughout this scene alongside the other white men in the room, despite theoretically coming to support Louis. The degrading tone of their thoughts as they offer outward sympathies suggests that Louis’ tactics with them were always more assimilating and conforming than he wished them to be. If his persona and his performance with them never actually gained him any respect, than perhaps this was little more than a minstrel show.

The beginning of the Munoz essay states:

[…] disidentification is not always an adequate strategy of resistance or survival for all minority subjects. At times, resistance needs to be pronounced and direct; on other occasions queers of color and minority subjects need to follow a conformist path if they hope to survive a hostile public sphere. pg 5.

Louis’ initial response to this realization was a type of malicious compliance: hanging a “coloreds only” sign on his establishment, thereby technically following segregationist wishes. This of course only brings further retaliation from the establishment. Louis’ final response to this situation is his first and most direct counter action He declares himself a vampire for the first time aloud, scaring the alderman and letting him feel powerless for the first time. He kills the man, and hangs his body on a fence with a whites only sign (likely the same fence where the heads of runaway slaves were once posted). But Louis does not get to revel in this at all, as it brings immediate retaliation via the burning of the black neighborhood and businesses of New Orleans. Lestat instead is the ecstatic one; he believes this act of violence is a sign that Louis has finally embraced only vampirism, still misunderstanding the reasons and meaning behind Louis’ rage that drove him to murder the alderman. It pushes Louis away from Lestat again, roaming the burning streets of the place he once belonged, lost and unsure of what the correct approach is to finding community, home, and freedom. Louis wavers, unclear and undecided on how to find this meaning (the writing asks the same; his attempts to play friendly brought only mockery and his show of rebellion brought destruction). It is not until he suddenly hears the voice of Claudia, a 14-year-old Creole girl crying out in his mind for help, that he seems to find an answer. He finds her dying in a burning boarding house and brings her to Lestat to be turned into a vampire. The become a family – “Daddy Lou” “Uncle Les” and Claudia.

            There’s so much to examine in this series even when just considering Louis’ relationship with Lestat and the world around him. But it would be an oversight to not spend some time on Claudia, who would become the guiding motivation and emotional core for Louis. Because Lestat is the one who turned both Louis and Claudia, he is unable to read either of their minds. This further eats at Lestat, this companionship which he cannot share, this difference that he cannot stamp out. After accidentally killing a boy she loved, Claudia grows resentful of the immortal life they’ve subjected her to (Episode 104). Her mind grows but she stays perpetually trapped in the mind of a teenager, and she begrudges being made permanently infantilized. She leaves them to travel on her own and try to learn more about vampires than the little information that Lestat offered.  But when she finally meets another vampire and is excited to find kinship, he rapes her. After this, she decides to return home, but only to retrieve Louis, who has been depressed without her. She recognizes the truth that Audra Lorde stated in Sister Outsider:

Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. Pg112

She is unwilling to trust Lestat, who has continuously demonstrated an unwillingness to grow, to empathize, to “recognize those differences and deal effectively with the distortions…” (Lorde, pg 122).  Lestat reacts to the threat of abandonment with a great act of domestic violence, beating Louis and dropping him from the sky, which almost kills him (Episode 105). Louis eventually forgives Lestat for this in the next episode, but Claudia does not. Though all three characters share the nonnormative vampire identity, Lestat chooses to wield his status as their maker as an oppressive tool against them. All three become more feared and hated as the series goes on. Their home is vandalized on multiple occasions, and it’s made clear by the end of the series that they will need to leave town. But despite this shared struggle, Lestat cannot or will not stand in solidarity with Louis and Claudia. “…our future survival is predicated on our ability to relate within equality” (Lorde 122). Louis’ condition for forgiving Lestat was that he was honest and treated both Louis and Claudia as equals. But Lestat values his control over their lives over having them as true companions, even after promising change; he lies and manipulates them both and threatens Claudia with sexual violence (via letting her know he can invite the vampire who raped her to their home).

Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goal. Lorde, pg. 123

            Claudia changes and grows the most over the course of the series, beginning as a child but gaining maturity and intelligence as she experiences the pain and joy the world has to offer.  She desires freedom for the first time in her human or immortal life, and feels that both her and Louis can achieve it if they work to free themselves at last from Lestat as a master. By the end of Episode 106, she has finally convinced Louis of the same.

            Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire was already an intriguing piece of queer media that was progressive for its time and how it used vampirism as a vehicle to explore homosexuality, struggle, and longing. In the behind-the-scenes interview piece, producer Adam O’Byrne expressed the production’s desire to reckon with the media in a new way, as they were a new generation interpreting this art. Johnson stated: “quare studies offers a more utilitarian theory of identity politics, focusing not just on performers and effects, but also on contexts and historical situatedness” (pg13). With this new reckoning and interpretation of this media, the artistic team took a piece of queer media and transformed it into “Quare”. With all the inherent complexities of racial relations examined in this interpretation, the audience is able to explore the dynamics of power, freedom, longing and companionship in a deeper and more complicated way than was offered in the original text.

Bibliography

Ep 103 “Is My Very Nature That of a Devil” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Rolin Jones & Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Keith Powell, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 104 “…the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child’s demanding” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Eleanor Burgess, directed by Keith Powell, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 105 “A vile hunger for your hammering heart” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Colin Albert, directed by Levan Akin, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 106 “Like Angels Put in Hell by God” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Levan Akin, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 8.1 “Interview with the Vampire: Behind the Scenes” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, AMC Studios, 2022.

Lorde, Audra. Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, Year, pgs. 110-123.

Munoz, Jose Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

E. Patrick Johnson (2001) "Quare" studies, or (almost) everything I know about

queer studies I learned from my grandmother, Text and Performance Quarterly, 21:1, 1-25, DOI: 10.1080/10462930128119

Cathy J. Cohen; Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?. GLQ 1 May 1997; 3 (4): 437–465. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3-4-437

Moraga and Anzaldua, Entering the Lives of Others Theory in the Flesh, 23

[motorway-south]

i wish one of the hotd characters had a complicated relationship with memory and the past. unfortunately they all have horse blinders going on forward. no one’s repressing bad memories even freaks like alicent keep thinking abt how wrong they are WHERE is my harrier du bois louis du pont de lac jaime lannister WHERE

[thedoctorworm]

feel free to tell me about your casting and thoughts in the tags, please!

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi! I've been wondering lately what parts make up Louis' full name. Louis de Pont du Lac. Are those two names and two titles, what did he inherit? Theoretically, if he and Lestat had entered into human marriages and taken a double name, what would it look like?🤔 Lestat de Lac-Lioncourt? Louis du Lac-Lioncourt? It's so complicated, but I'm curious to know your opinion)

I believe the “de Pointe du Lac“ refers to the plantation his ancestors owned.

As such, I find it hugely interesting (and important) he calls himself “du Lac“ only in 2x08 btw.

As per marriage double names?!

I… don’t really know. De Lac - Lioncourt would fit, yes?! But I can see them just keep their names as well, they’re beyond the need to change themselves in a way. (At least when they get back together.)

[mspbandj]

ok whatever ill say it Louis De Ponte Du Lac is an annoying little bitch loser, Lestat is an arrogant ass who did nothing wrong, and Claudia is the worst of both of them.

Armand is also there but we dont have to talk about him.

[ravenlaguz]

pov you are louis de ponte du lac and its been five years since you divorced your husband lestat for the 500th time. you look outside.

[devilmayi]

Your Every Desire

The book had intrigued him.

Interview with the Vampire.

The story of Louis de Pont du Lac.

And while Louis' story was interesting, the way it was written called to him. Should someone new write his story? HIs creation? His damnation? His redemption?

Lucifer knew, of course, where the vampire Daniel Molloy could be found. And so, he arrived during the day, growing bored and cleaning the home as he waited for the vampire to awaken.

@immortalmolloy