#but yes louis going insane when he's bored is kind of the thread of the cruising fic

[pynkhues]

“I guess there’s a kind of a plot about the fact that Louis blows up parts of life when he’s bored”

Could you elaborate a bit on the idea 👀 (as Louis’ characterization, not as a spoiler!)

(x)

Jacob's actually talked about it a few times in interviews (and in classic me form, I can't find where now, haha), but Louis as a character needs friction. He needs conflict, he needs a challenge, he needs passion, and I think it's a really vital part of the texture of him.

Louis' a character who, in his human life, was both oppressed and repressed, and I think that actually sort of dovetails inside of him. On the one hand, I think it's absolutely soaked him in shame about his own identity and leaves him restricting himself in order to find something he feels might be good and true and holy in himself, but on the other hand, I think it's given him a drive and a hunger to not just prove himself, but win. He doesn't just want to survive the circumstances he finds himself in, he wants to thrive in them. We see that over and over again, from The Azaelia, to the way he flaunts his new wealth and family (in that order) in front of his sister after feeling she's rejected him, to the way if he can't be good at photography, he doesn't want to do it at all, to leveraging power through Armand over the Coven.

Louis doesn't so much want to control situations in the way Armand does, Louis wants to be challenged by them and he wants to beat them. It's why when he does win, when he has all the things that he wants, he gets bored. (And also, perhaps, leaves all the guilt and shame to swallow him up) Hell, it's why he invites Daniel over for the interview two times over - the first to bait drama and conflict back into his life by trying to goad Lestat out of hiding, and the second by being the drama and conflict himself by lobbing a journalist-shaped grenade into his own marriage.

Louis' an intelligent, passionate character, and I think that manifests in his ambition, but also his choice of partner. He chooses people who are different from him, I think, because he wants the conflict, which is why Armand moulding his personality around Louis' was never going to work. And if Louis can't find the conflcit in a person, he's going to make the conflict! Which he does! Over and over! He will be the drama he wants to see in the world if he has to be, haha, he just usually relies on Lestat to bring it to him instead.