#because he is sad about Lestat’s ‘death’ and this is one connection to Lestat’s human life he has

[zisurru]

Top 5 vc scenes

5. armand’s imprisonment and torture/riccardo’s death (TVA). one of the emotional low points that defines his character

4. gabrielle’s hair grows back (TVL). gabrielle’s horror at her hair isn’t really about the hair - it’s about the fear of being trapped by a rigid gender role, and specifically seeing that prison symbolized in an unchanging body. i also like the bit where lestat, bewildered, says that he’ll cut gabrielle’s hair every night, even if he doesn’t understand why this is important to her. he’s in the dark as to the exact nature of her distress, but is willing to do his best to solve it. i think lestat’s connection with women gets a lot shallower in the later books, so i treasure this moment.

3. louis’s turning (IWTV). iconic for a reason. beautiful imagery in this scene…

2. louis and claudia argue (“because you are a beautiful child”) (IWTV). i like this scene because every source of strife in their relationship is present but mostly unspoken. it’s a tense, sad moment for both of them. claudia brings up sex, which makes louis intensely uncomfortable and draws attention to the elephant in the room: he doesn’t really see her as an adult peer. despite what claudia might want, part of him still sees her as a little girl, and claudia hates him for it.

1. lestat’s death and rebirth at the hands of magnus. one of the most emotionally arresting parts of the series for me. fantastical gothic imagery is used to depict a plethora of harrowing human experiences: stalking, abduction, rape, trauma, isolation & alienation, objectification. thorny combinations of feelings like attachment & pleasure mingled with fear & violation. i love the descriptions of lestat’s emotional state after the fact, and vampirism allows us the brutal imagery of someone vomiting up blood and then getting down on their knees to lick it from the floor.

[transselkie]

Feeling insane about Nicolas de Lenfent again. Most specifically about the fact that this version of Louis and Claudia know about him.

What do they know? How much did Lestat tell Louis? Not just his name, but his nickname. Surely about their shared love of the arts. Did he tell him of “(their) conversation”? That “only the impossible can do the impossible” came from him? Did he tell him he reminds him of him? That he was ever made a vampire? Does Louis know how he died?

When did he tell him? Was it before Claudia? During Claudia? After she ran away? Did he tell Louis about his own attempts to escape from Auvergne to try and connect to him during his days of grief at Claudia’s loss? Did Louis ask questions, and ecstatic to have him say something, anything, desperate to not lose this thread, did he open up?

I’ve been thinking so much of “this silence is cruel, Louis, and you were never cruel.” How much silence, being shut out, is a trigger for Lestat. Gabrielle spent most of his childhood shut out and away. When he and Nicki become friends it’s not just their shared passion for the arts, their shared disdain for life in Auvergne, their family traumas, desire for something more. It’s “our conversation”. It’s having a person there to talk with to begin with. And then it is lost. When Nicki is given the Dark Gift not only can Lestat not hear his thoughts but Nicolas won’t say a word at all. And he can’t stand it.

Does Lestat feel the same way, when Claudia leaves and Louis pulls away? Shuts himself off, reading alone like Gabrielle did. Sits in silence, sinking into depression, losing his mind, like Nicki?

When Lestat goes back for Claudia does he know how close he is to losing him? Is he scared of losing Louis to himself, as he did Nicki?

Lestat warns them time and again of the European vampires. How they are much worse.

But he never names them.

What does Louis know?

Lestat had loved once before. He was a violinist. His name was Nicki. But how much else? Did he tell him that they went to Paris together?

Did he tell him, of their little theater there?