#lestat also would like to fuck the whole town he got that from his momma but that's another post

[monstersinthecosmos]

Gosh I have so many thoughts about Gabrielle's struggles in relationship to Lestat but also her relationship to Claudia, both in terms of the sort of epigenetic sense since she never actually MET Claudia !!!

Like I was thinking when I read this: Can you be rebellious by nature, or does the existence of rebellion rely on there being an obstacle to rebel against?

She and Lestat both deal with this to a huge extent, even though she becomes TRAPPED by her situation. She still manages to break the expectations in some ways to be a terrible mother by like, ignoring her children and reading all the time LOL. Lestat, as a man, has more privilege and perhaps more options to break away and still needs her help to do it for real.

But I feel like we discuss Lestat as a brat & rule breaker when it comes to his behavior sometimes because he just cannot do the right thing LOL. And while I don't think people are BORN that way (ie: unable to be "rebellious" without something to rebel against) I feel like his mortal life trained him to have that framework of the world. There's no real logical connection when you look at some of this other decisions like "Don't turn children" or "Don't go in the shrine and play music without me" or "Don't trade bodies with this weirdo" or "Don't hang out with the devil" etc; these don't match the types of struggles he dealt with as a mortal but it's the attitude he carries into the world that he must do the opposite of what people tell him, even if it's objectively stupid lol.

And wondering if it's something he learned from his mother, either genetically or from witnessing how miserable she was for her mortal life, it's like his instincts scream to him REBEL REBEL REBEL REBEL

(put a pin in the idea that maybe Lestat learned how to trap women into roles from his dad LMAO except that like all cis men in society do that to women oops =P)

So it's really interesting to see this in Claudia, as well, especially when you look at the Rue Royale era and see that Lestat and Claudia clash because they're more like each other, and I think you see that in a lot of families. And if we look at it through this lens of genetic traits & traumas or the HC that the Blood can pass on your Maker's trauma, it makes sense that Claudia might lean more towards being a Lestat type. And her being a child just really ramps up the horror & cruelty of what's been done to her and how it relates to her struggles, especially framing it in the way Gabrielle felt trapped by her gender.

I'm thinking a lot of this part in TVL:

"And then I imagine going into the village and up into the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there--crude men, big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after another, and feeling some magnificent triumph in it, some absolute release without a thought of what happens to your father or your brothers, whether they are alive or dead. In that moment I am purely myself. I belong to no one."

The fact that she imagines fucking the whole town as self empowering AND the way she mentions that she wouldn't worry about her husband & sons tells me it's not just the desire for sexual pleasure or liberation but just to smash the gender role entirely. To be able to fuck whomstever without being tied down to her family and expected to care for them.

Since VC vampires don't have sex, this topic gets blunted for Claudia, but she still resents Lestat for not allowing her the human life and human experience. They both represent the same concept from Anne, I think, but Gabrielle is liberated by becoming a vampire and Claudia is trapped in it forever. Even though they're two sides of a spectrum they both never got to experience sexuality the way they wanted to and got trapped into family roles that they didn't want.

There's the same coldness in them, too, I think, even coming from those two different places. Claudia is cold because she doesn't have any memories of being human, but Gabrielle's was perhaps full of memories of a life she didn't want to be living. (This is a FREE REAL ESTATE area I think LOL idk what all else Gabrielle got into but she was clearly an unhappy and cold woman by the time Lestat showed up in her life.)

It's really interesting too if you look at the entire body of VC adaptions so far and the way people have toyed with it and weaved them together, like the movie giving Claudia the hair cutting moment. For Gabrielle her hair represented her gender expression and being trapped as a woman/wife/mother and for Claudia it still represents that she's a little kid that can never change. I can't say how deliberate this was on the film's part or if they realized how deep & meaningful that is to me LMAO but even if it's a happy accident it gives me a lot to think about.

I'm really curious to see how the show handles this concept but we're so close at this point I don't want to speculate about it since we'll be able to just watch it soon and go from there, but I'm dying to know how it compares to Claudia wanting babies on the show, from what we've seen, and whether it's different from women enjoying sexuality without being trapped into motherhood. 👀

if I was smarter I’d write a whole thing about generational trauma in the Lioncourt family and how it was passed down from Gabrielle –> Lestat –> Claudia and how Lestat and Claudia both became Oedipal figures in their journeys to become their own people

and it’s interesting to ask like when it comes to nature vs nurture and how much generational trauma is genetic vs how much is from learned behavior and like even if Claudia isn’t Lestat’s daughter the TRADITIONAL WAY she is still his daughter by BLOOD so I wonder like, what that does.

also imagine just like how much of your Maker’s trauma you might inherit if it’s imprinted into the Blood in any way.