#iwtv character study

[itwasanangryinch]

L'odeur de la mort

He remembered the smell of death.

Not the antiseptic, clinical smell of a modern death. A body sterilized and removed of fluids. Removed of its humanity and everything that had made a person alive.

Not even the less-modern, but honest smell of a natural death. The sweetened, heady fragrance of putrefaction taking over a body as it took over the air.

As it hung in the humidified climate.

Clinging to anything it touched.

Digging into soft fabrics the longer the body was kept for viewing.

No, Louis remembered the smell of death from his youth. Before they moved into the final de Pointe du Lac family home half an hour from the Quarter, when they buried his grandfather and his father took the mantel as head of the family.

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At first, the de Pointe du Lacs decked out in their best existing black finery as an urgent correspondence was sent to a favored tailor and its twin to their favored dressmaker. The children's current clothes all fit smaller versions of them; the whole family many seasons out of style. Grace would have been… six…? to Louis' nine. It hadn't even been a quarter century since they parted, but recent proceedings made it harder than usual to focus on the particulars.

New clothes in the latest style were delivered before the death notice hit the papers. Favored servants also received updated, but less stylish additions to their wardrobes. Regardless of what went on in their personal lives, when the house was in mourning, the whole household was in mourning.

Unfavored servants though. It was unfavored servants who created the Creole smell of death.

Despite the custom for open casket viewings in an ill-suited climate, it wasn't the smell of a less-than-fresh corpse that created the smell of death in New Orleans. Instead it was the smell of the fresh dye that in the city permeated the air for blocks and for miles from the not-quite-plantation house at the edge of town. It was gag inducing and its permanence ensured their servants would be clad only in black until they could afford to replace the clothes.

Officially, they would only have to wear black as long as the lady of the house dictated, but in practice? In practice, they were worn for years after, re-dyed with each death. Re-colored with each loss. The dye as much a literal reflection of mourning as it was metaphor rubbing from the fabric and into their skin. A literal marking of the family loss imprinting semi-indelible on everything it brushed upon.

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It was that smell more than anything that Louis found himself missing those first nights at sea. The crisp, salt air seemed an affront to the unnatural death that they had witnessed in New Orleans. That they had caused in New Orleans. That they had fled in New Orleans.

His mourning clothes weren't to be black. Dingy greys, muted browns, muddy greens, earthy purples. All colors he and Claudia cloaked themselves in to hide amongst the mortals on the warfront. But not black.

Lestat had died, but in his stead there was to be no full page, black-ringed notice in the evening paper. No open house allowing loved ones and spectators one last glimpse at the carefully prepared body of the illusive, flamboyant former investor of the French Quarter. No black wreath adorning their front door marking their house as having an untraditionally sombre Lent.

All their carefully packed and coordinated accoutrements had been abandoned almost as soon as they debarked. Traded in to play-act as wartorn locals. As much a lie as the photograph of Grace they used to pretend to be a family looking for their missing member. But they knew where their missing family member lie.

Lestat was dead. What did petty trinkets matter?

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A respected family like the de Pointe du Lacs had their mausoleum well established. Long since built in anticipation of generations not only yet interred, but yet birthed. An anticipation of generations of death reunited for family members yet to come.

The last interment Louis had witnessed had been that of his father. The singular death that catapulted him from second, but capable son to patriarch and provider. His mother's man in society, his sister's caretaker until Letty proved himself worthy — if he ever proved himself worthy. Paul's alleged savior, bringing him home from hospital and back to the parish church where his delusions were indulged and not beaten. Where his standing as a stalwart local noble carried an air of deference as opposed to being seen as just another crazy negro.

Florence's mourning period for her husband was longer than it had been for the previous patriarch. She had liked her father-in-law well enough, a curt respect and show of deference to where their young family had tithed from. But where Grandfather du Lac had found himself with a lack of a wife to prolong his life much beyond what it took for the Second Line to play their last, Florence had a place in society to maintain. She loved her late husband, of course, but her mourning was as much performance and societal duty as it was grief. She counted down the days till she could reintroduce a small splash of color to her wardrobe.

And yet, when the time came to enter half mourning, she found herself reluctant to add any colors to her wardrobe. And Louis wondered if it were as much about the loss of a husband as it was finding him to be a lack of a worthy replacement.

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Claudia found Louis' rituals to be tedious. It had been hard enough to convince him to kill Lestat. To keep Louis engaged with the plan once he had given himself over to illusion and allowed himself to love Lestat without reservation. Able to tell himself that this was the illusion and not the distance he had kept between them for so many years beforehand.

She almost killed Louis herself when he suggested a final update to her much ignored doll collection. What did she care of the human custom for black dressed widow dolls? What use would she have had for a mourning trinket meant to signal the death of a loved one? Lestat wasn't her loved one so much as her captor.

"You're supposed to be a child," Louis chided as they bedded down in a makeshift shelter.

"A teenager, not a fuckin' baby," she reminded him, her sleep already soured before she made the nightly commitment to coffin.

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Before they left Rue Royal for the final time, Louis went around the house and covered the remaining mirrors. "Closin' up the house," he deflected.

"Makin' sure he won't get trapped," came the surly reply. "He was a goddamned bastard. At least if he's trapped, we know where he is."

But Lestat doesn't deserve that, Louis thought to himself. Numb in his blood soaked clothes as he draped cloth over each mirror in the residence.

The horror that had been Lestat. The husband that had been Lestat.

What was death without the trappings of mourning? Without the rituals of loss? Without the overt signals to the neighborhood that a beloved family member had shuffled off this mortal plan and to the next?

What was life without Lestat?

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Final notes: All of the cultural mourning information is based on the historical information and research of the Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses in New Orleans. Their Fall tour of the Gallier House is based on Creole practices circa 1860-1865 complete with historic ads for some of the items mentioned like the widow dolls.

While this information would be 50-80 years out of date for the show's timeline, Florence was definitely old school in the way she comported herself and Louis "clings to his Creole heritage" so it wouldn't be out of step for the characters to have an old fashioned way of doing things, especially as it would gain them respect in an increasingly hostile society.

Gallier House, of course, being notable to the narrative as the exterior model and address of 1132 Rue Royal and the basis for the interior layout as well.

[erebus0dora]

so i clicked through IWTV to find a very specific reference yesterday (i needed the blinking mechanics, it differs from person to person, and YES I KNOW I SOUND WEIRD, but that's still research for ART) and i noticed an interesting detail about Daniel as portrayed by Eric Bogosian. you're unlucky enough for me to write about that.

his Daniel is always moving. almost any given second.

it's not just blinking, it's always, um..... the full body flow. head. shoulders. arms and hands. everything is in motion, slightly changing angles, alive, breathing. almost restless.

when he is still, he is unblinking. focused like a laser beam. still, collected, unwavering. asking the difficult questions. almost like Armand is when he goes in defensive mode.

(when that old man becomes still and unblinking, RUN)

it's like two or three moments in total when he's still AND blinking. and those are always him being soft and vulnerable. that's subtle, but that's... incredibly vivid storytelling. he doesn't even need to say anything, the movements speak for him.

anyway, i think i can get too close to breaking down again if i read more of the newsfeed, so i suppose imma just make more art instead

[arcanasland]

The Vampire is Bored | Louis du Lac

“picking LINT off the SOFA???'" Emmy award immediately.

[spnkcr]

ruminating on the masculinity, femininity, and lack of identity that suffocates louis throughout the narrative

when we first meet him, he's a patriarch, slotted into his father's spot, as he's the only able-minded, able-sexed sibling. the mould's fit. but he's not the noble father and farmer; he rules those shacks on the bad street, the ones that shake their foundation. father of harlots, a lustering blade to paul's breast, a nuptial gift to grace. always a pace from his mother's touch.

he drinks the dregs and dallies with whores and lauds god, expected. mr. de pointe du lac, the bottle talks, why so stressed? louis, lily says, are you alright? coping that doesn't soothe, but it consolidates him, de pointe du lac ii, man of the house.

lestat hurricanes and challenges, pinning these notions to light.

louis' attraction and ego war. he doesn't need this, the vulnerability of burning, that guilty reek of aftershave from embracing men. he used to fear getting taken for a crime not his own. after lestat, he fears that, when they finally wanna take the dock fever's temperature, he'll have to point him out from a lineup.

because he could do it, yet he'd lie for him. his friend.

he lies to his family, painting a dull opera, better food. he lies to himself, an oar drowning in his sea of vodka. to god, who lets the devil sleuth in his heart. be all the beautiful things you are, lestat whispers.

suddenly, his queer strangeness is half of another, and he's privy to his peers' biases. he can't hide from the world. there's one bed in their room. he was born something unsightly. but when he didn't have a place before, embers falling as it burns, he made one.

doomed, redemptive, blazing claudia.

his livelihood, family, and patriarchal seat die. he's forced to wear another hat, perpetually doting lover, and it becomes him, obtuse to lestat's abuse, negligent to claudia, coffined every night. cuffed by love, all he has. the wind takes his other oar --

and he perjures himself for the devil.

[the-quiet-youve-been-longing-for]

Thinking about Daniel and his ex wives. The way he briefly talked about it, it sounds like it was a slow drifting away from each other, with some degree of regret on his part (the way he cried when Louis taunted him, the fact that Louis "low blows" du Lac went for "if she thinks of you now?", which means that's his fear. That they have forgotten him)

He cared for them, for Alice especially, she's the one that pops up in his mind more than once, he wanted to surprise her with the ring, he liked her in the purple dress, small human feelings now embittered by age and pain. He most likely threw himself into his work when the pangs of addictions reared their ugly head, into the lifeline Louis gave him because there are stories that need to be told, and he is a bright young reporter with a point of view. It overshadowed his relationships until it was too late to salvage anything.

And at a certain point, addiction came back in the shape of the thrills journalism would give him. Go away on foreign lands to interview dangerous people. Get threatened, hurt, risk his life in uncovering uncomfortable truths. Because above all, he hates the lie, in all shapes.

"She always dyed it back to brown. I liked it when she left it alone."

[shineforthee]

Thinking a lot about Armand as a complex character, and Armand as someone capable of great harm to others. And then about how this knowledge is sometimes translated into how he is expected to be characterized in fandom or fanon, for lack of a better term.

Thinking also about tenderness, softness, gentleness. And how it can be easy to take a character who is violent or cruel or immoral and say that they should be written as hardened, as not yearning for any kind of softness.

As if there is not a violent sort of tenderness. As if there is not brutal love, unyielding love, a devotion strong enough that it is capable of harm.

In TVA there's this passage, while Armand is sick, where he envisions being in a glass city and is addressed by a priest. There's plenty to unpack there but we get the sense this is some threshold between life and death. And he is told this:

"Your love for others and their love for you, [and] the increase of love in life itself around you, is what matters."

I can't stop thinking about that. About how that creates a thesis, a guiding principle of sorts, for a character who goes on to do terrible horrible things. It reads like a part of a hero's journey. It reads like a beautiful, wonderful thing. He does abhorrent things for that love, because it's what matters, right? All that matters, maybe.

When we remove the layers from a character - when we decide that because they are vicious they have no desire for tenderness - we flatten the things that can make them so genuinely fascinating.

I don't have a whole lot of interest in writing or reading an Armand that is cruel for the sake of being cruel, mustache twirling torturer, boiled down to a list of what awful things he can do for shock value. It's far more interesting to me to see what that darker devotion looks like. What it looks like to believe, for 500 years, that love is all that matters and that you will never truly get enough of it. I want to feel as though it almost makes sense, what he's doing. Not by pardoning him and blaming others, but by getting a sense of just what it would take for a character who is genuinely capable of love and tenderness to weaponize that.

[slavictear]

y'all need to watch this masterpiece

[moondustinfj]

MBTI AND ENNEAGRAM ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE CHARACTERS

Part 1

Louis de Pointe du Lac

Mbti

Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving

Infps are highly idealistic, sensitive and driven by their values

Especially because their leading function Fi (introverted feeling) allows them to be in tune with their emotions. Very much so that they are driven by their inner compass. They have a clear sense of right and wrong and it's not likely or easy for them to change their mind about something, especially moral issues

Armand: I would have made this woman a vampire. But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it

Louis: I loathe what I did!

Armand: Then loathe me, not yourself

Louis: No, you don't understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this happened. I resisted you with all my power even when I didn't know it was your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeline was created!

Armand: But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn't be tears in your eyes right now. There wouldn't be rage in your voice

Infps are very emphatatic and sensitive. They want to make the world a better place and they try hard to help others

"But why, with this passion and this sense of justice, do you wish to call yourself the child of Satan!" - Armand

Louis: I'm incapable of your detachment. I know what it is, and I do not possess it and I doubt that I ever will. I accept this

Armand: I understand. I saw you in the theatre, your suffering, your sympathy with that girl. I saw your sympathy for Dennis when I offered him to you; you die when you kill

They are introspective and they desire to find their meaning in life

"It's a terrible feeling, not knowing, not understanding, not being in control of your own destiny" - Louis

"I would have to know from what... from what it comes. Whether it came from other vampires...or elsewhere" - Louis

They focus on the big picture and are very intuitive

"No need to tell him what to observe, or what to remember. He always knew such things. Years ago, when I'd done the dark magic on him, I hadn't had to tell him anything; he had savored the smallest aspects of it all on his own. Then later he said I'd failed to guide him. Didn't he know how unnecessary that had always been?" -Lestat

With their strive for authenticity and their sensitivity, they look for ways to express themselves through art and stories

Enneagram

Basic fear: that they have no meaning or significance

Basic desire: to have their own identity and purpose, their meaning

Type fours are sensitive, self aware and reserved. They are also prone to be moody and self conscious. They can suffer from self pity and melancholy

Type fours see themselves as fundamentally different from other people. More than any other type, they are acutely aware of their weaknesses and defiances. They see themselves as uniquely disadvantaged or flawed

And because they see themselves as so different, they feel like nobody can see their true selves and therefore no one can love them for who they really are

"For the first time in my life, I was seen"

They might romanticize pain and bittersweet feelings

"I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn"

Type fours often feel like there is something missing in them that others possess. This thing can't be properly identified but they feel like there is a hole in them that can not be filled

"If I ever thought we have souls, mine is gone forever"

So they feel like with this thing missing, everyone but them can fully understand who they are and their meaning

Type fours struggle to let go of their feelings from the past. They nurse their old wounds and hold onto their feelings about people who hurt them

4w5 (four wing five): The Bohemian

This subtype is combined with type five. So they're more reserved than the usual type four. But they're also more observant and speculative

"Louis, the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure and simple"

Overall, infps and type fours are generally sensitive, creative, melancholic, empathatic, understanding, authentic, emotionally expressive and introspective people

"Louis, whose green eyes are soulful, the very mirror of patient misery, soft voiced, very human, weak; having lived only two hundred years, unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom mortals fall in love" -Armand

" And it occured to me. If Louis does end his life, if he does bring his supernatural journey to conclusion, how will I ever answer for it to Lestat or Armand? It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and enslaved Armand" - David

"The first thing I'd ever noticed about him-well, after his green eyes that is- was his black hair. No, all that's a lie. It was his expression; the passion and the innocence and the delicacy of conscience. I just loved it!" - Lestat

"If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. But such can rarely be done. No, I've had to wait and watch for you. And now I'll fight for you. Do you see how ruthless I am in love?" - Armand

"Louis, my handsome Louis, in his dark wool and old fashioned high-collared linen, gazing down on us with a look of thinly veiled amusement, but with a secret in his hypnotic green eyes" - Lestat

[yearnerspermit]

Ngl I could write a dissertation on Louis and his relationship to performance/theater. Like that through-line is the core of his story and basically the entire show and there’s so many different facets to it

[pickingbelovedoffthesofa]

The whataboutism in this fandom is actually crazy. The internet is big. Not every opinion can fit in one post. Some of y’all just want to get mad at something. “Oh you chose to talk about this one specific detail and the context surrounding it?!?! It must mean you’re too stupid to understand the actual important parts of the plot going on around it.”

Uh… Go touch grass.

[renegade-skywalker]

In Her, I Had Eternity

Summary:

Louis’ blood revives me just as Christ was revived in that tomb centuries ago, awoken in the dark. But unlike Christ, I am not alone, and beside me are my Father and my Holy Ghost, one for the act to-be and one for the act ongoing. Louis’ blood is like water, satiating in its utter purity, but Claudia’s blood tastes like milk and honey, syrupy and sanguine and just like the very kind of wine I like. We will be happy here, in the world we’ve yet created, though it already exists in my mind - bright like the spun sugar of her eyes and the dark lace of her hair, glittering in sunlight.

Rating: M Word Count: 5,160

The first time I tasted wine, it was by my mother’s bedside, mistaking it for water.

She’d been in bed for days, sipping here and there and calling it her medicine as if it were a pet name, uttering the word - médecine - more intimately than she’d ever uttered my own name - Madeleine. 

Perhaps this was only my name because she had misspoke upon my birth.

But now she was drinking, days after a pregnancy that didn’t take. 

I did not flinch when she asked me to change her blood-soaked sheets. And I did not flinch when I tasted the wine, either. But I flinch when I reach for her only for my mother to shove me away, forever the daughter she did not want and so desperately wishes to replace.

It was only a moment past but I yearn for another taste of the wine - the feel of it almost thick, like syrup, the taste of it not as sweet as jam though the layers of flavor coating my tongue seem familiar, yet in a way that nothing I tasted after would ever satisfy. 

But it would be years before I got another proper taste. And even when I did, it wasn’t enough.

It was never enough. 

---

In that, I understood my mother and her constant craving.

I left my mother’s bedside and abandoned her cup, just as she’d abandoned me in pursuit of another daughter, perhaps one she’d look more kindly on.

Perhaps one day she would get her wish. And perhaps one day I would no longer be alone.

I never wondered how babies were made. I always knew. With screaming and blood. Sometimes death. 

The little death in the making of one. And blood in the birthing. But screaming, always screaming. My father screamed louder in the making, my mother during the birthing. It was no mystery as to why.

For a time, I was not sure if babies were meant to be anything but, having never seen one live out the night. 

A strange thing, to see a birthed baby already cold, still as stone. By the time I was six I’d buried two of them, forgetting their faces by the time the coffins were laid, the ground covering their miniature graves as if the dirt had never been disturbed. The earth swallowed them whole as if forgetting the entire thing - their miniature existences made even more miniscule. 

But I forgot none of it. 

A miniature house of memory and curiosity in and of myself, never knowing what to do with either. And my mother wouldn’t hear any of it. Médecine, only. Never once Madeleine.

Yet, I do not remember feeling quite like a person until she was born. 

She being my little sister. Ma petite sœur, mon petit moi. The one who survived.

Unlike the others, she looked the most like me from the beginning. Pale skin, a shock of red curls. I liked that quite a lot, especially so young. It endeared me to her to know I was not alone. In life as well as looks.

My little sister - the youngest, the only one left.

Little because that is all she is and ever will be. In life as well as in my memory. 

The only one left not so much anymore. 

There is me, always. Only me.

---

I did not feel love, either, until she first uttered my name - Madeleine - as if it were meant for her to speak into existence more than it was for me to bear. 

That’s how life felt with her, though. Borrowed. My name was not my own until she spoke it. And I was only ever who she said I was. For as long as she was around, anyway.

Unlike most things, she made me smile. Other children called her simple , stupid, quel imbécile . But it was the uncomplicated way she said things, how she looked at the world, that truly drew me to her, that made me yearn for the rest of existence to follow in her stead. 

The others didn’t see it that way.

There’s something wrong with their blood , I’d heard the neighbor say once. The first time, I eavesdropped their accidental gossip the morning of that second paltry funeral, my unborn sister’s nameless corpse not yet buried in the ground. 

I heard them say the same thing again (the blood, bad blood, always blood ) when they looked at her - ma petite sœur, mon petit moi.

But she had already reached the ripe old age of three, by then, far older than the other babies I could hardly call siblings, their bodies now seeds sown in the ground destined to grow into nothing. 

Our neighbors eyed my sister just as they eyed me, their gazes flashing to my red hair and then my eyes before looking away, as if the exchange had never happened. As if I hadn’t seen, couldn’t see.

But I’d seen everything.

And I remembered.

If there was something wrong with our blood, that curse already coursed my veins as well as my sister’s. But she didn’t know that, and she’d never have to.

Because she was not the first sister I’d had, only the first one to survive. Though not for long.

She may have been the first one to grow old enough to ever love me, but she’d not grown old enough to realize she’d never had a choice. 

She loved me the way any child loves, out of necessity, given in exchange for the care my mother refused her while instead nursing the bottle instead of a baby. My sister loved me not in spite of what I was, but because she simply did not know any better.

For me that was enough. 

At least for a while.

---

I always preferred red wine. Perhaps it was always because of that first stolen sip.

But my tasting was not made official until I drank at the altar of a dark church on a gloomy Sunday at the behest of our priest, finally old enough for communion. I approached the dias, beaming with pride, not for the opportunity to share in the sacrament but to drink Christ’s blood and to tell my sister of it later - how it tasted, how it made my limbs tingle, my face warm.

It also felt oddly sacrilege despite being sanctioned by the church, by Christ himself. To sip from his bosom like the anti-mother, bearing blood instead of milk to feed his flock of children. But I was curious, as all children are though perhaps more than most.

But this answer was offered unlike my many stolen answers, the priest’s hand pious and white beneath his somber face as he held the silver chalice before my bright eyes, the wine glinting red with the lifeblood of a dead god made eternal. It was presented like a gift. One I was not sure I deserved but took anyway and with relish. It was freeing to pluck that goblet from the old man’s hands, testing the weight of the ardent cup as it sat cooly in my small embrace before drinking deeply.

I expected it to taste different, somehow. I had stolen sips of wine from mother’s neglected glass on her bedside, always unnoticed, a thief forever uncaught, but I had never tasted the blood of the son of God.

Though watered down, I wondered how Christ felt to wander the earth with wine-filled veins, the contents of this cup his very lifeblood. Did he feel euphoric, on the edge of bliss despite never crossing its threshold? I felt that same euphoric rush after every stolen sip of my past, the pleasure warming me for an instant but no longer than that. Was it the same for him? Was Christ immune to it all? Above it? Just as he hung above me now, his pained visage a constant reminder at the head of the chapel? He was a man once, but now only an effigy of a dying man with glass eyes dripping wax tears. There is a parallel in that thought somewhere, a metaphor. 

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Firsts can only happen once. And I don’t recall feeling any different following my first communion. 

Mortal as always, languid and bored.

What only mattered then was that it was sanctioned, that I was allowed. And could brag about it afterward.

I was not allowed many things, even later. As a girl but especially as a woman.

And not much changed after that. Communion with Christ meant that my life proceeded much as it had been. He died for me only the once. But I would die twice, lo and behold. I did not think it would happen again.

---

You’re so smart , she’d tell me.

And I’d smile.

You’re so kind to me , she’d say. 

And I’d blush.

What I did not say in return was how my mind traced the veins beneath the pale of her skin, wondering when that blood might stop, imagining when it would inevitably run cold and she, too, would be buried beneath the earth and taken away from me forever. 

It was a practical thought. A curious one but a self-preserving one just the same. If I imagined the possibility, then should it happen I will not be surprised. It was only a matter of time.

I still blame myself for the way she died - the how of it, the truth of it.

Had I not imagined it so many times in my mind, as if running its course would prevent her fate from following the others, it had instead done only the opposite: made it true, made it real.

When we put her to rest, I wish I’d instead studied the way the sun shone in her hair, how it would veil her rosy head with a gilded halo as if she were a saint come to sacrifice herself for the rest of us sinners.

In her absence, I realize I never truly did deserve her.

I never had. 

I wonder if I will go to Hell for this and realize that I do not care.

And I am alone again. 

---

I think of her still when I draft dresses for young girls, whenever I spot a pattern for someone her size. I still remember her measurements, my thumbs the grave of a thousand pinpricks spent mending her clothes that had once been mine. 

Now they are no one’s. And the clothes I make are made for strangers.

It is better this way.

Until I think I see her out of the corner of my eye. A flash, a shadow, the edge of a memory made real for an instant before gone again. 

My shop is empty without him here but I prefer it like this, this lonely world my own. Though I wonder if ghosts are real and he is haunting me now, his sins leaching into me just as his seed had.

But I bled again this morning, further proof that his seeds did not take root in the garden of my womb even if he has been gone for months and months. I run my hand across my abdomen as I look out the shop window, squinting against the glass and wondering if I do see someone standing there or if I simply need sleep.

The hour is late, yes, but I am certain there is a ghost at my door.

Only I do not think to run.

---

I see her in my dreams. 

I realize that now.

Sunfire eyes, bathed in light and haloed in its glory.

For so long my slumbers were deep and dark, empty nothingness. But I preferred this to the nightmares, visions of my sister’s still-sewn lips yearning to scream with a mouth she no longer has. Had. No, has. She exists in my memory still, and I like to keep her alive that way. 

And I see her again in the girl that appears in the shop window, acting presumptuous. 

She is my sister and yet she is not. She is me and I am her. 

I see myself reflected in the bright ochre of her eyes and wonder how much of myself is in there, as if she knows me more than I know myself, still scrying my own image in the mirror of her gaze.

Can she see my darker thoughts laid bare? My sins yet unpunished?

I am and I am not, scrambling to know my own self as if I am a stranger to it. And perhaps I am.

Her name is Claudia. 

And who am I, again?

The ache at the core of me feels less empty at the thought of her, though I do not know why.

---

He looked so desperate, loving me. Looking at me, but never through me, my mind a steel trap he could not get out of if he tried but instead stupidly danced around. Not out of any inherent cleverness, but dumb luck.

I am no one to him and yet I am everything. The stars and the sun and the dirt beneath his bloodied boot.

There’s a desperation to her attention, too, but one that is endearing. Claudia I repeat in my mind. Clau - di - a.   A want that goes beyond craving, threading dangerously close to an insatiable need and I like the feral way she looks at me, the sharp glint in her eye. 

She’s hungry. She feels real. 

And when she looks at me, she sees me, and she does not back away. If anything, she inches closer and I want her to draw even nearer, desiring to see if our shadows match.

She sees me. Really sees me.

As no one else ever had.

She sees not just my face but the sinew and the bone, the very parts we so often forget ensconce our skeletons yet adorn our dinner plates, innards displayed in all their ugly truths. She sees it all and does not flinch. In fact, I feel it in her too.

The beast beneath the beating heart. Forever hungry, though for what, I do not know. Only that I am starving.

And I want so desperately to be seen. 

By anyone, maybe, but especially her. 

Especially her.

---

She’s as delicate as a bird when she wants to be but sharper than a cat’s claws, and my body aches when I watch her dance and mime about the stage, all eyes on her. I want to see her insides, what makes her heart race.

When her eyes meet mine, the world shrinks within the shared orbit of our gaze. And I want to live here forever.

There is an invitation there, not just for company but to bear witness. As if only some of this is for show but there is something left for me, something small and secret yet all-encompassing. I glimpse it, only, but yearn to see her again, alone, wondering if I am wrong for wanting this before realizing that I do not care.

There is nothing the world can do to hurt me any more than it already has. 

Though the thought of never seeing her again sends a pang through my chest that rings heavier than the thought of my dead sister. 

Guilt never finds me, but Claudia does with a smile and a bashful turn of her head that makes me dizzy, and I’m gone again in the dark. 

---

Her skin is warm though it should be cold. 

And her eyes are preternaturally bright, side-slit like a cat’s in a way that makes me melt in her presence. 

It is as if she were made for me, specifically carved out of the same marble I was drawn from, our hollow parts fitting against each other to the point that everything before dims in the brightness of her ever shining light.

I had a dream about her once, when I was young. 

I remember the other girls were talking about the boys in our class and discussing whether they found any of them handsome, wondering whether I felt the same. I found the boys’ faces indifferent. His face was handsome, I think, but not in a way that mattered other than perhaps a textbook. 

But that year I dreamed of a girl, a woman to me then, who shone like the sun during the eclipse - another image from my textbook - her skin dark, but the glow about her blinding, glittering with errant sunlight that sparkled like dew in the face of an oncoming dawn.

It was a vision only, then, a thing to become a memory. But a memory made real the moment she spun for me, smiling, within the depths of my shop, a spry sarcasm hot on her tongue as she danced around me, in body and in words.

I did not yet know her name then, or had I? I cannot remember now. For I felt like we’d always known each other, preordained to meet since time immemorial, her name poised on my tongue like an arrow pulled deep in a bowstring, held taut and ready to spring.

I always felt as if I were not living life and instead merely waiting for it to start.

Perhaps it was for this. Perhaps I was waiting for her.

In Claudia’s eyes, I see what she sees and the vision fits, the last piece clicks into place and I realize this is where I was always meant to be - held in her gaze and safe in her cold embrace.

Life is strange that way. And unusually cruel. 

Especially cruel.

---

In my final hour, I am offered Chardonnay. It was the only wine we could find, pilfered from a neighbor out late, their window left open. 

It’s painfully fruity and bright, not something that suits the mood though it still calms the nerves. I’d even scoured the shop for the whiskey the soldier had loved to sip on, despondent to find not even a finger of amber liquid left and only the ghost of his lips on the rim of the bottle before all that was left of him was gone forever - and good riddance.

But his face is the one I think of first. As the blood drains, as my body turns cold. I imagine something similar happened to him out on the field. I can only hope as much. But his face was sweet, his eyes dark and handsome. He was, afterall, just a boy. But what am I? 

I remember my sister, too, lies buried in the earth somewhere. And as lonely as she is, I am lonely up here, too. And I do not yet want to feed the worms as she does. Not that it’s her fault, not that she ever had a choice.

But I have a choice. Not that I always did. Never did, not before this. So I take it. 

I was offered Chardonnay like an afterthought, a pity. But I am presented with Louis’ wrist as if it is a lifeline, a boon blessed upon me for some long forgotten absolution from a life I no longer remember, a gift undeserving. But it does not matter and I do not care. 

Because I want it - I crave it.

It carves its hollow out from my bones, making me a bright-eyed bird yearning to sing as soon as the blood touches my lips, much like the wine that morning all those years ago, only this time my limbs don’t merely tingle - they tremble - and my face is not warm but turning cold as marble, my features sharper, ever the monster I always had been - was always meant to be. 

Now, the outside matched the inside.

Now, I am dead like the rest of my sisters. Those named and unnamed. Only I will live on, on behalf of all of us.

Louis’ blood revives me just as Christ was revived in that tomb centuries ago, awoken in the dark. But unlike Christ, I am not alone, and beside me are my Father and my Holy Ghost, one for the act to-be and one for the act ongoing. Louis’ blood is like water, satiating in its utter purity, but Claudia’s blood tastes like milk and honey, syrupy and sanguine and just like the very kind of wine I like.

She cradles my head like my mother never did in my childhood, crooning me towards the softness of the light above her head, not towards death but towards our lives yet unlived together, my memories spilling out into the world as I let each of them go like tears in rain. Each of them fall into the palm of her hand, as if for safe keeping. And I trust her more than anything.

Her voice is a lullaby, the comfort that no prayer ever afforded me, the soft edges of her face calming my every nerve as I drift onward and into oblivion, her hand a buoy anchoring me to the now as well as the forever we are about to share. I am laid to rest beneath her feeding mouth and born again from the ambrosia of her wrist into eternity to roam the world by her side.

This communion sees me changed, my mind utterly altered. I am unburdened in her presence and all the lighter for it.

We will be happy here, in the world we’ve yet created, though it already exists in my mind - bright like the spun sugar of her eyes and the dark lace of her hair, glittering in sunlight.

Wine tastes like nothing to me now other than a memory. All I crave is blood, and the closeness of her near me, by my side always.

Never alone again. 

---

My life is small compared to hers etched in hardened stone, her memories all strife and heartache, laced with fire more than once and salted by the dark depths of a bayou I have never visited but whose words are familiar enough to my mother tongue to feel intimate, as if I’d been there in a dream. 

Like the dreams she haunted before her coming. Like the dreams my sister once inhabited but is now absent from, thankfully, if only because now she can truly rest and only because I let her. I will inherit unrest for the both of us and live out the life neither of us were destined to have. 

I soften Claudia’s edges just as she softened mine, combed back my hair with the soft touch of her hands as life ebbed away from me to make way for the death that matches in us both now. 

She melts beneath my questing fingers, all smiles and canines, and I realize that neither food nor drink ever felt near as satiating as this, basking in each other’s company with no need for the warmth of the sun for Claudia is resplendent with the strength of a thousand stars.

Claudia does not remember if she’d tasted wine or the lips of a boy before being born again nor does she believe she was ever loved by her father. I know I wasn’t, so we have that in common as well. Neither of us speak of our mothers.

I wonder if Christ ever kissed anyone, their awkward affair now forgotten having never been committed to a bible verse and lost forever. Claudia is shaped like my sister, made dead before her years, yet looks like a woman and talks like a man I’ve never met though it feels like I know him from somewhere, like an actor from a moving picture or a character in a novel. And I like the way her breath feels on my neck. But I don’t care about this man nor the ghost he’s left behind. Even Christ’s face looks like a stranger despite never having once felt like my friend in the life I had before but especially not after. 

All I care about is Claudia and the way her fingers curl against wrists, both others and my own. The way she does her hair, biting her bottom lip, and the way she bats her lashes as she applies rouge to the ridge of her cheekbone, bringing life back to her undead face. The way our arms wrap around each other in sleep, twining from dawn til dusk.

I realize now how numb I was, as if I was the corpse before and the living thing after. Now I feel deeply, truly, Claudia filling in every absent space between my bones as if we are each a hand clasped in the lap of a love I never thought possible.

I feel like I’ve seen her before. Other than in that dream all those years ago, but instead at the back of my mind, always, like something long forgotten though suddenly remembered, the years in between falling away. 

The future stretches forward, and in death I am more awake than I ever was in life.

---

I forget there was life before her. 

Before her voice, before her cutting remarks, before the cold warmth of her embrace. 

I love the way she utters my name, finessing every syllable in her plethora of accents, making it sound new each time she says it.

Madeleine, Ma-de-leine, Maddie, Mads, mon cher.

The world is endlessly vibrant with her in it, and I hardly miss the morning with her by my side. 

Night feels like eternal twilight and I wonder if this is how the other parishioners felt upon sipping from Christ’s cup - a part of something larger, the world sparkling more with meaning than it had before. 

I wonder why I was born at all, but then again, had I not been I would never have been unmade.

I would be buried six feet underground with three other sisters, one with a name and two without, an even set of pairs the lot of us four.

But let them be an uneven three. I’d rather they died so I may yet survive. 

Someone should, right?

You’re so clever, I tell Claudia, night after night. 

Sometimes with words, sometimes with kisses, each indulgent pass of my lips a sentence I desperately want her to decipher.

Either way, she smiles.

You're too kind to me, she’d say, the smirk painting her perfect lips. 

And I blush, echoes of my past repeating back to me as I tell her: No one has been kind to you enough, so I will be on their behalf.

Because it is true and I can see the hurt behind her eyes at the recognition of it, the agony of the realization followed swiftly by the ecstasy of the aftermath, and I want us to exist here for all time, finally getting the things we deserve thrice-over and tenfold, forever and ever.

She deserves the world and I want to give it to her, because she saw the endless ache within me and gave it the very thing it so craved before I even knew what it was. 

It is only polite to return the favor, but I want to do and be more than that. I pray at the altar of her every evening and offer myself to her every dawn, each kiss an oblation, every embrace a promise. And not one I intend to ever break.

---

I did not choose a lot of things. Most things. 

My name, my hair, the shape of my face. 

But I have inherited them and shaped them to suit me. Would I choose them again if given the chance? Perhaps, if I knew the outcome of my ingenuity…

But Claudia?

I would choose her again, and again, and again. 

Her eyes are ember coals that burn hot with a fire I never knew in life, inspiring a similar heat within me that emanates eternally. My body arches towards hers, yearning to hear her words, watching as her lips speak, for they utter the absolute gospel of our quiet being and absolve us of our every sin. For we were never sinners, no. Merely mortal women given the wrong tools, outdated blueprints. We were never meant to live this long.

Yet we have eternity in each other.

She waltzed into my shop like a true American, brash and assuming, eyes wild and nostrils aflare. The utmost opposite of anything I ever wanted to shadow my door. I held only disdain for her the moment I sensed her, but the moment I saw her? Well… that is another matter entirely. 

Especially when you consider how fickle memory is. 

Especially mine.

---

I like the way her memories mesh with my own whenever we touch, and the way my mind feels inhabited by something other than the ghost of a life ever-reaching into the endless past when she is near. 

As if the past is more than a misremembered misdemeanor. More than a nightmare on repeat, meant to replay mistakes ad nauseum only. Together we rewrite ourselves as we always envisioned, as we were always meant to be. 

As life should have allowed us both but failed, fate now taken up in our own bloodstained hands.

With her, I feel present. With her I feel raw. There is nothing behind my eyes other than errant want and idle hunger, a languid ease of existence I never knew possible before Claudia, her feline smile enough to soothe my every worry and soften life’s every edge.

She is she, and I am I. 

As we always were and were forever meant to be.

And beneath the desire and the clawing ache, there is love. Unending and undeniable love. 

I felt it then, that first night glimpsed beneath cutting words, messy and unabashed, and I feel it now in the heat of our demise. Hand in hand, descending into the hell we deserve but only by design. 

We never stood a chance - before or after our joining. Monsters made and monsters slain in blood and body both.

But at least we had each other - no. At least we have each other .

Now, always, and never.

In this death we will truly have eternity, her ashes in mine and mine indistinguishable from hers, intermingling forever until we become one with the universe again but with my hand in hers always. In this we will have everlasting life despite only glimpsing heaven in each other's arms for too short a time.

I feel fire at my back, licking at the nape of my neck and lancing through my limbs, but I cling to Claudia for she is still the sun in my own personal universe, and Hell would only be tolerable with her by my side. A lonely life was worth the ache if only to be with her just the once.

We are the only ones left at the end of the world, but at least for a brief glimmer of a moment it was ours. And ours alone.

In her, I had eternity, and it will always be enough.

[septembermonologues]

i appreciate the "i need to study louis like a bug" people but i simply do not need to be one. we're just two girls with melancholy guilt and grief built into our bones. book!louis dragging his coffin into the mausoleum paul was buried in to sleep in every night and show!louis being put under decades long suicide watch and turning a whole room into a tomb is a level of freak (depression fueled masochism) i can match. he's like a brother in manic depression to me <3

[mostardently]

Interview with the vampire for me is on the level of breaking bad, succession, Hannibal right now for how far it has made me go insane with its writing and acting and cinematography and foreshadowing and parallels and production and costume EVERYTHING. and I love it more cos I went in with zero expectations I'm not fond of vampire shit gives me an ick but these actors and their insane acting made it look so hot I've been bewitched.

I love when a show stays with you or you keep discovering more about it, after you finish it. I love when it's complex, that it doesn't literally feed you the answers but makes you wonder, makes you tear the layers of the story or character, makes you their lover,hater and understander, makes you form your own opinions, makes your body shiver, makes you lose your breathe, is vague in an artistic way, makes you want to gnaw on your bones, makes you want to scream cos you can't process to understand how many efforts and thought process went through even one line/dialogue by everyone -actors ,writers, directors.

I love consuming media pls give me more of this shit!!!!!!!!

[nightcolorz]

cw: problematic gender stuff

Love how all the men in tvc have the most backwards complexes about their gender and masculinity that make my head spin. I think this is a product of whatever complex Anne Rice had going on about gender in her life but it pays off at least for my own enjoyment, lol. Keep in mind that these characters have very outdated, problematic, stereotypical, etc ideas about gender bcus old vampires are old. Lestat thinks he’s the pinnacle of masculinity and the ultimate manly man who’s 6’0 with a massive dick but literally no one in his life sees him that way. He’s generally perceived as foppish and a pretty boy and if he found this out he’d have an explosive identity crisis/meltdown that’d be everyone’s problem. (is this a plot line in blood canticle? Potentially, but I haven’t read it lmao). Lestat is also desperate to not be seen as a victim and victim hood and femininity are equated in his mind (old). Louis portrays himself (and wishes to be perceived) as a principled Catholic man but internally sees himself as subservient, weak and shameful, and “feminine minded” (see: https://www.tumblr.com/armandaniels/717587975606779904/louis-de-pointe-du-lac-the-first-man-to-be?source=share). Neither of these self assessments are accurate or healthy. He also believes that his perceived feminine way of being is inherently wrong bcus he is a Man but also it is True and Unchangeable so he is therefore incurably flawed. Internalized misogyny but ur a cis man and it’s also hand in hand with ur internalized homophobia basically. Just a lot of internalizations going on here overall. Armand’s a whole new beast. Armand’s ideas about his gender are so complicated I don’t know if I can accurately summarize them in a few sentences. It’s more tied to how he’s perceived and treated as someone who looks youthful, and feminine/androgynous bcus of his eternal age and how that perception plays into his own self image as a man, contrasted with Louis and Lestat where it mostly stems from problematic old fashioned gender norms and expectations clashing with their lives as queer vampires. That coupled with his life of being objectified and dehumanized, not even mentioning his relationship with religion and sex and how that applies to gender, and it’s just a lot. And the thing about all this is that I don’t know if any kind of modern gender language/tools/self reflection that I (and probably u let’s be real here) are familiar with as queer ppl would be helpful or even apply to them were they to use or explore them. This is bcus they’re all so disconnected from humanity and gender roles as ppl from centuries ago living lifetime after lifetime where gender roles and ideas of gender are consistently changing that I don’t think our new fancy gender terms would even compute in their brains. In conclusion I wish I could hook these freaks up with a vampire friendly therapist who could sort their shit out, but for better or for worse they are fake and beyond help either way.

[portmantaur]

in the midst of all my Claudia Feelings i forgot how utterly struck I was that fuckin santiago of all people did not seem to anticipate Lestat being an uncontainable ham while on stage? not only do you seem to have forgotten the origins of your lil improv troupe but babygirl even a modicum of self-awareness could have helped you prepare.