#i feel like killing lestat confirmed all his fears about his being evil and like that catholic idea of just one sin taints you forever

[libelulalil4]

Lestat first sees Louis when holds a knife to the throat of his own brother. I wonder if later when Louis slits his throat he remembers that

[cosmicjoke]

Continuing on in my re-read of “The Vampire Lestat”, and it struck me, again, how all of Lestat’s experiences and interactions throughout the ten years before he meets Louis ends up impacting how he behaves with Louis.  The end of Marius’ story, as he tells it to Lestat, finally concluding with these quotes:

“Harken to me when I say:  There has never been a just place for evil in the Western world.  There has never been an easy accommodation of death.”

“What can I say finally that will not confirm your worst fears?  I have lived over eighteen hundred years, and I tell you life does not need us.  I have never had a true purpose.  We have no place.”

Lestat sought Marius specifically in the hopes of finding some way for him to move and exist and live among humanity still.  Marius had seemed to him, from Armand’s story, like an enlightened being among their kind, someone who could show him how to again find meaning in his existence, to do and be good, despite what he now was.  And as the situation with Gabrielle continued to deteriorate, as they grew further and further apart, Lestat more and more hinged his hopes on finding Marius and discovering some great secret that would help him to better exist as and accept being a vampire.

But then Marius drops that bomb on him, essentially shattering his hopes of there being some way for him to still be part of the mortal world, to still be the good man he always dreamed of being.  After all, if Marius, a vampire who’s been alive for nearly 2000 years at this point, has found no purpose and no real way to feel like he belongs to the human world, then what hope does Lestat have, who’s been a vampire for only ten years?

Now think about Lestat bringing this new found crushed hope into the situation with Louis, when it had been the only real thing sustaining Lestat up to then, the only thing he’d really had to cling to in hope.  And then think about Louis’ persistent questioning and agonizing over their seemingly evil nature, his constant pestering of Lestat for answers as to what they are, why they exist, where they come from.  Lestat knows where they come from, he’s heard the story of Akasha and Enkil, though he isn’t able or allowed to tell Louis of it.  But even if he could, why would he want to?  Given how learning of these things from Marius only lead to him realizing there is no special meaning or purpose to their existence, that they’re just these supposedly evil creatures with no place or reason for being in the world, and given Louis’ agonizing over that very question, his misery in being what he is, his depression over it and seeming inability to accept it or embrace it for fear of its meaninglessness, Lestat must have felt sure that revealing the answers Louis sought would only plunge him deeper into depression.  And again Lestat’s had about the worst experience a person can have, watching a person he loved sink into irretrievable grief and depression.  Lestat had to have thought that telling Louis what he knew at that point would only risk Louis trying to kill himself for real, or falling into a state of catatonic despair, the same as Nicki had. 

Compounding it would be Lestat’s own misery at having to accept the knowledge he’s learned from Marius, his own dashed hopes in the apparent futility of finding any purpose or place in the world.  Each time Louis questioned Lestat on these things, showed his own grief and misery over their nature and the horror of it, had to serve as a reminder of Lestat’s own misery and grief.  A constant reminder that he couldn’t get away from, no matter how much he tried to escape it by leaning into his vampiric nature.  His impatience and frustration with Louis, and seeming insensitivity to his struggles, makes way more sense within the context of all this.  Lestat had to have figured, well, if there’s no reason for our existence, and no way for me to live among humanity and still find a way to do good, I might as well embrace fully the evil nature of what I am and just go with it.  That is, after all, one of Lestat’s defining traits.  A great strength and ability to endure, an ability to adapt, even if he suffers through it.  But, again, with Louis’ depression and sadness over it all, it wouldn’t allow Lestat to ignore his own similar feelings, and unfortunately, that manifested in the form of anger and aggression and impatience aimed at Louis, and then later Claudia. 

[thenightling]

In reply to a post that I’m now blocked from replying...

It’s funny how people block you as soon as you call them out on being wrong rather than admit their mistake. 

Yesterday someone tried to tell me that Rumplestiltskin tried to kill Henry in Season 2 (Look through my blog and you’ll find it.)

Today someone else replied to that post which I can no longer reply to. Here’s what the reply said.

“People seem to forget Rumple was willing to watch the whole town, including Henry’s family, kill each other and burn to the ground to break free of the dagger. Well, either they forget or handwave it away because “Zelena fucked him up ‘cause of the dagger”.If this was any other character, no one would be saying this stuff. But because it’s Rumple, suddenly every shitty thing he’s done has a convenient excuse and no one should hold it against him. It’s annoying.”

I’m going to reply to this with the same “respect” it shows those of us with differing opinions.

Once there was a terrible film called Queen of the damned.  Many Anne Rice fans were disappointed because it didn’t even vaguely follow the novel it shared it’s title with and there was even some obvious homophobia behind it’s production since a bisexual’s same-sex lover was changed to a gypsy girl among other things but there were people dismissive of the complaints insisting “You just don’t like it because Lestat has brown hair!”

THAT is precisely what this feels like.  Rather than actually explore opinions different from their own they dismiss it with faulty and poor assumptions.

In regard to Rumplestiltskin It’s not making “excuses” when it IS in canon that the character was literally enslaved for an entire year because of the dagger, kept in a small cage (which we already knew was something he hated / feared) and rendered helpless as his son died.  It’s amazing how many people ignore season three and shrug it off as invalid because it’s a character they dislike.

I do not condone what happened in season four.  In fact I think most of the writing in season four to be terrible and the start of the show’s ultimate decline but I DO NOT pretend the feelings of all fans who pity Rumplestiltskin are only based on favoritism and “Villain sympathizing.”  

If ANY character is tortured for an entire year and kept in a cage, and even shaved with the only weapon that can hurt them, as an intimidation tactic, AFTER having been raised from the dead, yeah, I’d feel sorry for that character and it would be unrealistic for that character to  come out of that without some psychological issues, be it Rumplestiltskin or Hook, or some random newly introduced character. 

Rumplestiltskin got raised from the Dead for God’s sake!  I joined the fandom just after Season three and just in time to see Rumplestiltskin haters who insisted he hadn’t REALLY been raised from the dead, he was just in the dark vault.  And I got replies like that every time I tried to mention he had been raised from the dead.  Well, now that it’s been thoroughly spelt out and confirmed within the show that yes he was dead-dead where are those same people who insisted he didn’t really die and attacked those of us that said he did and made us doubt ourselves?!  

My point is that most characters on TV shows and movies who get raised from the dead never fully return to who they used to be.  Some go insane from the experience, some go evil, some become timid or withdrawn and some spend months or years of canon coming to terms with what happened to them. 

Let’s look at how resurrections are treated in another fantasy TV series that has cult status and lasted seven seasons.  Buffy The vampire Slayer.

When Angel was revived after his Season 2 death in Buffy The Vampire Slayer he came back crazed and animalistic because he was in a Hell dimension and for him every day was like a century. 

When Buffy died at the end of Season five of Buffy The Vampire Slayer she spent an entire season coping with it and hiding from her friends what the afterlife had truly been like until it came pouring out of her in song during the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Musical Once more with Feeling.  (Season 6).

“There was no pain.   No fear.   No doubt ‘Til they pulled me out Of Heaven... I think I was in Heaven.   So that’s my refrain.   I live in Hell Because I’ve been expelled... From Heaven.   So Please give me something to sing about!” 

So why is it a “Phony excuse” when Rumplestiltskin gets raised from the dead just in time to watch his son die and then spent a year in a small cage?  Is it because his madness didn’t manifest as animalistic growling and snarling and eating someone (Angel)?  Or because he didn’t sing about in an Emmy nominated musical episode (Buffy)?

Also he was literally dying and desperate in Season four.   Remember, his heart was giving out?  It was a lame contrivance of writing after thoroughly establishing his immortality and ignoring that creatures older than him and hearts blacker than him (like Churnabog) didn’t die of a heartattack once in Storybrooke but it was there.

So no, our reactions and “excuses” are not solely because it’s Rumplestiltskin.  It’s because we have compassion, sympathy and soul enough to imagine how terrible those things were and could be for literally any character, not “Just because it’s Rumplestiltksin.”

Don’t be rude and dismissive of the opinions of others. Try to actually understand why their views are different from yours before waving a hand and dismissing them with an assumption of why they feel what they do instead of actually asking or trying to understand it.

This has been a rebuttal to a post I can no longer reply to.  Feel free to pass it along to the right parties.