#i'm just kind of curious as to the scope of his world prior to his immortality

[pynkhues]

https://www.tumblr.com/pynkhues/769329551222472704/im-a-canon-vers-loustat-believer-but-sometimes

This is a great point you make. In Paris Louis really is in a similar position to Lestat when he came to New Orleans. Louis is grieving Lestat, Lestat grieving Nicki. Both are protecting secrets about their pasts and looking for a way to keep living. I would even say that both are putting forth a bit of a performance with their new partners, though for different reasons. To some extent I even think Claudia has some parallels to Lestat in that way too. In trying to leave and escape her restrictive family life she ends up finding a companion that she gets to choose for herself. The cyclical themes are so fascinating

Thank you, and yeah, it's a really interesting parallel to think about. This feels a bit of a tangent, so please bear with me, haha, but I remember going to a lit event many years ago that had selected readings based around the theme of home, and in the introductory speech, the curator had said that they'd expected a lot of variation from the submissions to the theme, and there was in a lot of ways, and yet a central throughline appeared that home is a place you leave. It's something I've thought about so much over the years, especially as I live in a different state from the one I grew up in now, and it was one I thought about a bit while watching s2.

It's really interesting to look at in that context of the unholy family because as you said, there is this drive to escape home for both Lestat and Claudia (and Gabrielle) that Louis just doesn't really have. I think you feel that in what they do to escape these places that they're from, but I think the show also underscores that really in what a homecoming means for the three of them.

Claudia experiences her home in Rue Royale as a place of powerlessness and volatilty that can lead to violence, and returning to it steps her straight back into that ten-fold, just as Lestat experiences his home in France as a place of abuse, loss, and violations of his agency and autonomy, which he experiences again, ten-fold, at the trial in Paris, and for Louis, New Orleans has always been, despite everything else, the place where he had a family who he loved, and so of course he goes back and finds the only family he has left - his husband and the ghost of his daughter - there waiting for him.

It's tragic in a lot of ways, because I think there's this sense thematically in the show that the place you're from can change, but it probably won't change for you, no matter how many years you're gone, or the circumstances in which you return to it. Home is a place you leave, and how it held you when it had you will always be the arms you find yourself in when you're back in reaching distance, for better or for worse.