#ending the season with Daniel finding Armand like season 2 ended with Louis reuniting with Lestat?

[lemonandpie]

Maybe the worst part of constantly fearing cancellation is that you can't invest in a good slow burn anymore. Armand not appearing in the present day at all in season 3 while Daniel tries to hunt him down would be the most delicious build up. But instead all I can think about is that horror of them doing that only to not get renewed for a season 4

[avelera]

I saw the IWTV finale early thanks to a kind soul sharing it with me!

A few (spoiler-y) thoughts:

Really interesting how they reimagined and framed the ending of this take on IWTV with Louis and Lestat mourning Claudia together. It feels like Justice For Claudia in many ways, it feels like a fitting homage to the origins of Claudia's character (the dead of Anne Rice's daughter from leukemia as a child), and in general was just a really interesting way to sort of give this closure the book never did and also use it to realistically allow them both to push forward past their toxic and abuse past into a somewhat plausible healed future.

It was also a decent reminder, to me, that these are vampires. These characters live forever. I would not condone Louis/Lestat in real life because life is too short to keep going back to an abusive ex. But these guys are vampires. Do not do as they do. But genuinely 70 years, a human lifetime, is realistically long enough to say, "Hey, we're new people now, we've learned and suffered a lot, we lost our daughter and it was fucked up. Maybe all we have is each other." And make peace with each other on that front.

BUT NOW I'M WONDERING HOW WE GET ROCKSTAR LESTAT - ok because Louis kind of got Lestat's book motivation for becoming a rockstar? The "Fuck you, come find me," to all the other vampires. Lestat I believe only speculates that as Louis' motivation, but they made it canon (or I could be wrong).

But that was Lestat's motivation for HIS book, making Louis and the others come find him. Since that's been solved with Louis coming to find him (lovely little homage to the IWTV movie with him playing the harpsichord) now I'm wondering if Louis is the one who encourages Lestat to become a rockstar and write down his book.

Thing is, it's not totally contradicted by the book. (SPOILERS) TVL does end with a beat where Louis and Lestat reunite and Louis is kind of his groupie for a bit. Moving that up so Louis is part of Lestat's rise is actually a really lovely touch, it gives them a bit more time together before shit goes down, and I could totally see this version of Louis as Lestat's agent since he's shown to have that business acumen.

Now that Daniel is a vampire (OMG OMG OMG MORE ON THAT IN A SECOND) the risk is no longer so bad for him to come interview Lestat and I'm sure he's salivating to do so and Louis would definitely invite Vampire Daniel to do the interview for Lestat's book, since there's no fear for his safety (or at least, not as much) anymore. And Daniel would jump at the chance. It would be a fabulous framing device, Rockstar Lestat with his agent, Louis, inviting Daniel to interview Lestat for his next book AND it means we get Daniel's snark throughout Lestat's story.

OK SO DANIEL BEING A VAMPIRE. Definitely leaves the door open for past AND present Devil's Minion WITH THE ADDED BONUS of Daniel not going insane after he's turned (likely owed to not being turned while still a drug addled young man so, hey, if there was past Devil's Minion where Armand said no, kudos to him for reading the situation correctly that vampirism would drive young Daniel insane but not Old Man Daniel).

I was SLIGHTLY, SLIGHTLY bummed to see Daniel as a vampire without getting to see the whole Daniel/Armand situation but only slightly. There wasn't enough room in the season, it would have been a distraction, and IMO we can now save it properly for its place in either TVL or QOTD, which I bet are going to be Seasons 3-4 or as many as 3-6 if we stick to 2 seasons per book.

A take on Devil's Minion where past and present Devil's Minion are intertwined would be AMAZING and I've got my fingers crossed that's how they do it. Maybe interweave a bit of Vampire Armand.

I don't think/know if we're going to get a full Vampire Armand season BUT I do believe the show is going to pivot its POV lens to say, hey, everyone's got a point of view, everyone's got a reason. At some point, we're going to get more of Armand's POV and why he did what he did because I imagine his version will be different from Louis', just as Lestat's is, that's the whole basis of the show. And in there maybe we'll get some past Daniel/Armand.

Ok this already got away from me but ANYWAY, those are my thoughts for now.

[sparvverius]

Hi Kes :) I am wondering if you have any thoughts on IwtV/TVC classpects 🤔💭

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sorry it took me a bit to respond i had to enter classpecting mode.

to start out, space and time are the most fundamental aspects of the narrative, and given that iwtv/tvc is so heavily focused on narrative and its own narrative framing device i think having space and time players is essential.

daniel i think is a space player--he provides the literal "space" for the interview, and in the show, he could be considered through his journalistic work an accomplished artist himself, he's a much more effective interviewer and is less of an empty vessel for the story and more of someone who helps to write it himself and find the truth. for this reason he could also be a light player i think. he is definitely a passive player, so i would lean toward page or sylph? in the show i would say certainly page, and the season 2 finale is evidence of how powerful a full-fledged page can be!

claudia i feel fairly confident in saying is a time player. maybe thief of time--she is literally living on stolen time--but she also had time in one sense, the natural progression of aging, stolen from her. she is also an essential part of the narrative and i think that her death was in some sense its genesis. even more so in the book, which is imo so clearly written about the horror of the loss of a young child who will now never get to grow up. it doesn't hurt that she's driven and a fighter and musically gifted.

i like the idea that the space and time players never get to meet each other also!

louis was kind of harder for me. i think he must be a destroyer class blood aspect, and he certainly is not an active class, so i think he has to be a bard of blood. he ghosts breath in the sense that he has this sense of constant alienation from the world, but the core of him is extremely family-oriented. he tries to escape from this feeling of alienation through lestat, claudia, armand, whoever, and is continually frustrated by his inability to truly connect with anyone after paul's death. and yet he continually blows up his chances for connection despite their sincerity--in the book he plays an unintentional role in paul's death, in the show his relationship with his family disintegrates after he chooses to become a vampire/be with lestat (DID YOU EAT THAT BABY LOUIS??!?!?), he kills/aids in the death of lestat, he fails to save claudia and chooses armand over her, he can't ever connect with armand again. in the first book this ends for him in total solitude and despair, just trying to be listened to for a little while, and in the show he seems to have gone back to embracing the freedom of his opposite aspect while also having a new bond with daniel and briefly reuniting with lestat. (there is also a joke here somewhere about blood and his reluctance to embrace his vampire nature.)

armand is, i feel, a total void player. my read on him as a character is that he has completely hollowed himself out and no longer has any sense of self beyond whatever convenient lie he is telling in the moment or whatever is being imposed on him from the outside. i would say perhaps heir of void--it's something he can use and weaponize (maybe tied to how he can and does excise memories, definitely tied to how he tries to look like the guy who holds the key to all the mysteries) even though it has taken him over completely. like louis, incredibly and sometimes (frequently) maliciously passive. depressing ass classpect but at least it is not the end of his story!

lestat was actually the hardest for me and i expect that my opinions will change while i read tvl and qotd and whatever else.. he might be a light player in a vriskaesque sense, he might be a heart player in the sense of struggling with the concept of the self especially the emotional self, he seems maybe like a prince but i would have a hard time connecting that with an aspect cause i don't really see him ghosting void or mind... i really am not sure. i will think about it more.

i would love to hear your thoughts on any of these!!! or anyone elses!!

[uozlulu]

Fic. IwtV (AMC). The Connection We Share. PG.

Character(s)/Relationship(s) Lestat, Louis; Loustat, very tiny brief mention of Armand/Daniel at the beginning of the fic Genre Romance/Vampire Rating PG Word Count 1,130 Disclaimer As this is fanfiction, I do not hold copyright to the source material(s) nor do I claim that I do. This is for free entertainment purposes only. Summary Louis and Lestat reunite in modern Dubai. For the I Can’t Wait for Season 2 event week 4: Theme/Theories. Warning(s) spoiler for Interview with the Vampire, spoiler for The Vampire Armand, brief mention of a suicide attempt Notes When I saw IwtV Daily’s tweet, I immediately started brainstorming. I decided to do one fic per prompt and make them a series. I’m not sure I’d say I want all the little details to happen in the show, but the bigger things I want to happen were my inspirations for each fic.

The fourth week’s theme was Theme and Theory. There are so many theories, so it was a little hard to pick. I figure we’re definitely going to at least get a tease for the transition to TVL at the end of the series. I also nodded to a theory that some plot points could be shuffled around and so the present day is probably set post-TVA somewhere but that doesn’t necessarily mean that portions of TQotD or TotBT might have happened yet. I also threw in some smaller theories here and there that fit the story. In terms of theme, it seems like repeatedly the vampires seek each other out, and Louis and Lestat especially always find a way back to each other, etc… I’m not sure I 100% buy that Louis and Lestat haven’t seen each other in several decades in the show canon, but I decided to go with that here because it made for an easier fic to write and fit with the shuffled around plot points theory.

Anyway, I decided to post this early because I can totally wait for season 2 if that means everyone gets treated more fairly and I stopped participating in linking to these things on Twitter during week 3.

AO3 link

or read below

The Connection We Share

Louis’ final narration ended as all good stories did with a neat bow. Daniel untied it and after several probing questions, the final interview session finally officially ended. Goodbyes could wait until tomorrow since Daniel’s flight would not leave for several hours. Armand and Daniel disappeared to Daniel’s room with an invitation for Louis to join them. Louis declined and lingered in the room where the interview ended. It was the darkest hour of the night. The dim light inside the penthouse illuminated the tree and the rock garden so everything sparkled like stardust to a vampire’s gaze. The sun drew ever closer to the eastern horizon, a steady warning that not even immortals were wholly immortal. Yet, Louis found himself walking through the penthouse and out onto one of the balconies near his bedroom.

The night was hotter than any night in New Orleans. Dogs barked in the distance. Stars twinkled at the far reaches of the light pollution. Dubai spread out towards the horizon and the breeze blew Louis’ hair away from his face. Lights turned off across the city only for other lights to turn on. The streets were never empty even with pandemic restrictions still in place. Somewhere far away one of Lestat’s songs played so faint and distant that seemed more like a whisper of the mind.

The first time Louis hear the song was one of his visits to Night Island during the height of Armand and Daniel’s time there. The song played across the world from restaurants, shops, cars, radios, stereos, and boom boxes for the rest of the year. Mortals hummed and sang it to themselves while doing chores and walking their dogs even to this day. The song was a heavy metal ballad about a long-dead lover and a conspiring universe. The chorus was strangely romantic and a little cheesy, a true product of its time. Many mortals called it “the necrophilia song” jokingly. Louis leaned on the balcony railing and found himself humming along to it as it faded in the distance and a different song took its place.

After a short while, the song suddenly began again, this time acapella from a nearby street. The voice was unmistakable and drew steadily closer as a figure appeared in the street below. The figure approached the tower and disappeared from Louis’ view, but the song continued to draw nearer along with little noises as if feet alighted to various balcony railings. The song ended two balconies below Louis and then Lestat landed on Louis’ balcony railing with the Cloud Gift before dropping down to stand in the opposite corner of the balcony. Lestat’s hair shone in the ambient light like a high-end shampoo commercial and his skin was flush with blood. His bright leather pants were tight and he forewent the first half of the buttons on his shirt. He seemed corporeal like the vision of Lestat that Louis saw in Paris decades ago, but this Lestat looked as Lestat should look.

All sound around them seemed to fade. The cord connecting them stretched over a century and contracted to the mere feet between them. Their gazes never faltered from one another. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

“Louis…” Lestat seemed to breathe. “I almost thought I might find a ghost.”

Louis stopped leaning on the railing and licked his lips. “That’s funny coming from another ghost.”

The breeze caressed Lestat’s hair. “Just before he flung himself into the sunlight, Armand sent me a vision of you to my mind. Your clothes and hair were so modern. I could not believe it. I thought it was a taunt or when I told him all that Memnoch showed me, I drove him mad.”

Louis’ eyebrows drew together. He glanced through the balcony door into the penthouse but it could not reveal why Armand never spoke of Lestat when they reunited after Armand stepped into the sunlight twenty years ago. Louis’ gaze returned to Lestat.

“Recently I saw a curious letterhead and heard a rumor of an interview between a vampire and a mortal in Dubai.” Lestat never once looked away. “So, I lurked nearby. I listened to your fanciful tales and to Claudia’s altered diaries. It was fantastic fiction worthy of the authors you admire, but for what?” Lestat paused. “Why do you call out to me? Did you want me to stop your tale? Did you want me to contradict it? Do you want me to keep you from making this desert your grave?”

“Can a ghost stop me?” Louis asked.

“I am as much a ghost as you are.” Lestat traversed the distance between them. “In the streets of Paris, in that blood-stained theater, in that moonlit courtyard, you looked through me just as you look through me now.” His left hand cradled Louis’ jaw much as it had in the church over a century before. His thumb ran along the faint stubble under Louis’ lips, following the same path he touched back then. “I watched your ‘ghost’ turn the Théâtre des Vampires to ash. It filled me with joy. Such a fitting funeral for our Claudia, for that life. Knowing that it was you, as you were, as you are, fills me with joy again.”

Louis reached up and removed Lestat’s hand from his face, finding it corporeal and as warm as any vampire’s hand could ever become. Noise seemed to return to the world. The sun drew ever closer to the horizon. Louis kept a tight grasp of Lestat’s hand. “I killed you.”

“It was a glorious, theatrical murder. Your eyes glowed with vengeance, with anger, with love.” Lestat smiled. “It was one of the most alluring things you’ve done.”

The pressure from the impending sunrise felt almost suffocating. Louis changed how he held Lestat’s hand, letting their fingers entwine. Lestat remained before him as glorious as Louis expected him to be and definitely not a ghost. Louis licked his lips and said, “This place is a coffin for anyone who wishes to step inside.”

“Are you inviting me in as a lover?” Lestat moved closer, leaving little space between them.

“Are you going to stay out here and let the sun roast you instead?” Louis asked, moving so there was no longer space between them.

They kissed. One kiss became two, and they reluctantly parted in the middle of a third. Louis kept hold of Lestat’s hand and led him from the balcony into the deep recesses of the penthouse where Louis’ bedroom lay enclosed by three interior walls fashioned in the shape of the three exterior walls of the tower. The room was lavish and comfortable covered in modern art and bookshelves. The sun pierced the horizon as the bedroom door closed behind them.

The End