#it is VERY sincere and completely at odds with vampire biology and lestat's *personal* damage/flavor is that he can't stay downbeat about i

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

hello hi "the neurobiology of monsters" is the most beautiful and succinct and accurate phrasing possible and I want you to know that I think about these tags CONSTANTLY and the phrase has entered my personal lexicon. yes. and "trapped" is the perfect accompanying word.

There's just something about how Lestat starts off his vampirism so morally uncomplicated, so easy to root for, comically good natured. what a good boy! what an upstanding young man! he's only killing cutthroats and murderers! he's dressing Like That so that highwaymen try to kill him first! he's sending money home to ma!! and the family! IMMEDIATELY! he doesn't even like his family and they don't love him! he pays off his old boss's debts! he pays his boyfriend's nicer rent! buys him violin lessons! does all this at a distance because he doesn't want it to be emotionally awful for them. he's constantly contemplating the nature of goodness and what that might mean!

and then he has one (1) kinda shitty day night and he's killing and eating a mother and child on the sacred grounds of Notre Dame. not because he has to. he does not. not because he isn't in control of his actions. he is. not for the sadistic pleasure of it--there is none--and not to be evil for the sake of evil. a poor woman checks on him, sees his bloody clothes and tries to drag him to safety and get him medical care, because she thinks he's hurt and she wants to help, and Lestat kills her. not out of evil or malice or sadism, but because he chooses to, because he's fully swapped out good vs. evil for aesthetic judgements, because the nature of vampirism itself changes him so fundamentally.

and that's horror. even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, to steal from another monster genre. there is a fundamental loss there, a change against his will that's nothing to do with superpowers, a change so wide and deep that even as he is aware of it, he isn't really alarmed. he just reasons his way through it. and the audience cheers for him, of course. but nothing he does is justified. and that's the horror of it, too, that a monster could be so likable and yet so fundamentally alien.