#lestat is both pissed and heartbroken

[manyimaginativemuses]

Lestat slowly sank to his knees in front of James, his heart aching as what he feared was proved correct. He reached out and grabbed James by the chin, forcing him to meet his eyes.

“James what have you done?” His words were cold, calculating, and deadly serious, “Don’t bother lying, we both know you’re a terrible liar and I can fucking smell him on you.” Lestat snarled, his gorgeous blue leather coat pooling around him and the eyeliner he wore making his eyes pop even more. It allowed James to see just how much pain Lestat felt upon figuring out what he’d done.

“Is he ok?” Stacee asked as he approached from behind before he was practically bitch slapped in the face by Lucifer’s scent, “WOAH WOAH WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL?!” Stacee exclaimed, nearly drooling, “James where the fuck did you find blood like that and can I have some?!”

“It’s devil’s blood, you idiot. Lucifer Morningstar himself. Knowing you, Stacee, you’d probably drink yourself to death from him.” Lestat commented, staring James down as he tried to figure out why he had relapsed.

Luckily for Lestat, James had come back during the last song, so he could talk to him as soon as they finished up. He and Stacee wished the crowd goodnight when the song was over, the hoard beneath them cheering even louder as they left. The curtain closed and Lestat’s expression fell immediately, storming over to where James had sunk to the ground.

“Lestat? What’s going on man?” Stacee called after him as he saw him drop everything and leave.

“Mon Cher?” Lestat asked, standing in front of James’s curled up form on the floor, “James what happened?” He asked seriously, smelling a sickeningly sweet, all too familiar stench on his husband.

[lestatisprince]

i don't have much knowledge of the books and i know the show is different but i am chewing at my walls with wanting a better idea of the general arc with louis and lestat. i know the idea is they are endgame with reunions and separations along the way but what is the direct aftermath of lestat's swamp time? like it feels silly to ask but is he like pissed when he comes back in the books? is louis distraught having [] him? are they a little bit healthier with themselves and each other/lestat ~better behaved~? what's the growth, i guess? i'm just so curious!! i suppose i should read the books...

I need to preface this by saying it's been years since I've read some of them, and I purposely didn't reread before the show aired. I wanted my brain to let me enjoy the changes without anxiety. I have been going over key passages though. All that's to say I forget most of the nuance from the over all arc.

Also confession time. It actually took their chemistry in the show for them to become my number one ship. Reading the books I could never get past the tragedy of Nicky. And then David came around and their deep talks got me. (I don't ship them anymore after what Lestat did to him though.) When we meet both of them in the show I'm sure this will be very apparent on my blog.

Anyway sorry! I know you don't have much book knowledge so that all means very little to you.

To your question:

Lestat only gets one word of dialogue after the swamp, Louis. "Louis! He called to me. Louis! he roared against the door." He says in his later books that he was proud of them, but here... I think he's probably closer to heartbroken. He's also in a lot of physical pain, and definitely enraged.

And for everyone saying the fight in 5 was ooc I'll leave this passage here:

(note this is page 157 out of 342)

Louis the unreliable narrator is on full display here.

But what I really want to focus on is how Louis snaps. Antoine is visible on the balcony and he sees red. He gets Lestat levels of violent, kicking and biting at his fingers before setting him on fire.

There is an evening of wrongs in this scene. A score settled.

I can't wait to see what the show does with it.

As for arc it's all about growth and change. Lestat goes quite literally through hell in the later books. His attempt to draw Louis to him by becoming a rock star ends up getting him abducted by the queen of the vampires. And with her he does things that haunt him.

And without going into spoilers for the last 2 books he matures in a way that means he can no longer be as reckless and impulsive as he once was. He becomes what Louis always wanted.

Which makes this line here so perfect.

[jimkirkpining]

Louis & his mum & brother & sister are a well to do bourgeois family that are wealthy but New Money, so Mama dPdL is gagging to marry her kids off to people with titles

Then this new mysterious family turn up - the Marquis de Lioncourt & his three sons. Two of the sons are married already but the youngest is very much single - and handsome, and charming! Everyone's mums are just salivating at the opportunity to snap up this CATCH for their girls, including mama dPdL

So she sends Marie to every ball the Lioncourts are reputed to be at, and obviously she needs a chaperone, so Louis is forced to go too. He does his best to sneak away from the ladies hounding him and winds up hiding on a balcony... with a very handsome man, who is also hiding out. They have a fun conversation that literally anyone besides Louis would see is flirting, then the man gets pulled back inside - and Louis discovers that was the mysterious Lestat

After that Louis keeps bumping into Lestat everywhere (how on earth does Lestat keep finding him???? Definitely not because Louis is a creature of habit with a strict routine that Lestat is able to find out by asking like, one person lmao) and they talk and commiserate over being pushed into marriages they don't want. They become close friends and mama dPdL is DELIGHTED that Lestat keeps coming over for dinner, and praises Louis for finding his sister a good hubby. Louis is... upset. And. Not sure why.

Okay so Paul was totally there the whole time too, aggressively pursuing the church so Mama dPdL lets him off marriage duty. Louis and his sister are lowkey pissed about this but w/e. Then... something happens and Paul dies in a tragic accident (carriage crash?) that could be considered, only in the vaguest way, Louis' fault (I loooove the theory that Louis did actually manslaughter Paul but just like repressed the memory, but it doesn't fit in Austen)

Lestat NATURALLY comes right over to console the family. Possibly consoles Louis more than any of the others. Possibly they kiss, possibly they make out, MAYBE THEY EVEN FUCK. Louis freaks out right after and tries to send a heartbroken Lestat away, Lestat explodes and threatens to out Louis publically so he can't hide anymore. BIG ARGUMENT. LESTAT STORMS OUT RAGING AND CRYING.

Louis writes him a letter conveying his deepest apologies for accidentally suggesting he is interested in anything more than Chaste Friendship, which. Obviously Lestat doesn't grace that bullshit with a response lmao

Lots of cold shoulder in public and it's EXCRUCIATING. Mama dPdL tears Louis a new one for ruining his sister's prospects with whatever this fight is about, and blames Louis for his brother's death. Word goes around that Lestat is on the verge of being engaged to Babette Freniere with ten thousand pounds a year, and Louis is INCONSOLABLE but keeps it all inside.

And then... the shit hits the metaphorical fan. Within just a few days, word gets out that the Marquisse de Lioncourt did not, in fact, die. She's alive and well and actually SERVING IN THE ARMY. AND HAS A WIFE. The engagement rumours are immediately gone. The Lioncourts are social pariahs, and immediately leave the city. Louis is barely holding it together.

That afternoon, Marie goes out for a walk, needing to escape the tension. A terrible storm starts, but after an hour, she's still not back. Louis frantically searches the gardens but can't find her. And then... Lestat staggers over the hill, carrying her. She fell and sprained her ankle in a field nearby! No time to explain why he's there, Marie's got a fever and needs the doctor immediately! She's rushed off inside and Louis anxiously waits by her bedside for hours as the doctor sees to her.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, he walks out of her room and finds Lestat fast asleep on a couch, still in his wet clothes. Louis wakes him up tenderly and takes him to his room to get some dry clothes........... obviously they bone and it's VERY SAD and after they just sit there in silence, neither wanting to really talk about it but knowing they should. Lestat explains he found Marie when he was coming to visit - he's leaving for the country to join his family, he knew Louis wouldn't want to see him with the Gay Panic and the argument and the scandal but he couldn't BEAR leaving without saying goodbye.

Louis clears his throat and is like...... permayhaps you could stay until Marie is better... I mean, you got soaked through too, you could get ill yourself! You shouldn't travel in this condition.......

Lestat is like crying like BABE... I can't do this if you're gonna freak out and send me away again! You're all I've got now.

And Louis' HEART IS BREAKING and he's like... please... I just need time... how about you come back in a week, under the pretence of checking on Marie? It'll give me time to think and it means I can focus on helping my family. And Lestat is like okay... BUT YOU MUST WRITE TO ME EVERY DAY. They part full of hope.

So Lestat leaves and Louis spends the week looking after Marie, who does slowly recover. They write every day and Lestat tells him all about his family - how awful his father and brothers are, how he's secretly managed to make contact with Gabrielle and is making plans to see her. Louis does a lot of thinking, and essentially is angsting over what choosing Lestat means for his family, and if they'll support him.

Then Marie wakes up, and they have a tearful reunion. She asks after Lestat, and Louis explains he's gone home and will be leaving the city in a few days, after he's come back to check on her. And Marie is like... Lou you are an idiot if you think he's coming back for MY sake OBVIOUSLY HE LOVES YOU ASK HIM TO STAY

Louis is like BUT and Marie is like IT'S FINE everyone will think you're a terribly good friend for looking after him and Mama... will either get over it or she'll die like WHATEVER it's more important that you're happy!!! ASK HIM TO STAY DUMBASS.

So Lestat comes back to visit. Has a very sweet polite conversation with Marie who for some reason seems very antsy and excited and can't stop grinning??? What's that about??? And then Louis coughs and politely asks him to go for a walk in the gardens and

It's basically a proposal. He tells Lestat he's thought long and hard about it and he wants to finally pursue what he wants, rather than running from what he doesn't want. Then he asks Lestat for the honour of staying with him. Forever.

THEY BOTH CRY AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER THE END

[cosmicjoke]

That's a really good point, and completely spot on, I think. The fact they literally just took away the actual act and motivation behind it from being something Armand did to Lestat, and changed it to Lestat doing it to Louis is, frankly, a massive insult to the characters and, as you said, who they are, what drives and motivates them, or how their experiences inform their actions and feelings. It really does look from the preview too like Louis is going to be the one to push Lestat from the tower, and if that's the case, it'll just prove what you say, that they think it's some clever way to parallel and "punish" Lestat for doing what he did. It would completely go against Louis' character, though (which, at this point, doesn't mean much, since Louis doesn't even remotely resemble the Louis from the books), but again, Louis' reconciliation with Lestat is predicated on him realizing that he and Claudia have wronged Lestat. He realizes he and Claudia are in the position they're in in the first place, at the mercy of the Theater of the Vampires, because they didn't listen to Lestat and left him for dead so that he could no longer protect them. He wouldn't seek revenge on Lestat, because he knows, deep down, that what happens isn't Lestat's fault. But then, having Louis being the one to actually accept and participate in Claudia's plan to kill Lestat was also so fundamentally against his character, it wasn't even funny. It is funny, though, how Armand never gets punished in the books for doing what he does to Lestat. Armand never has revenge taken against him for crushing Lestat for refusing to return his affections. But I guess we're just supposed to cheer Louis on here for sticking it to his evil, white oppressor, or something. And if Armand is the one to push Lestat from the tower, then that's equally as bad, because it's, again, being set up as revenge for Lestat doing to Louis what Armand did to Lestat in the books. It's like they've just taken all of Armand's villainous actions and given them to Lestat, and I don't know why, other than they just don't like Lestat. That's a problem for an adaptation of a series in which Lestat is the main character.

Before episode 7, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of them revising this particular issue. I was hoping they would show that the drop didn't actually happen, or that Armand had planted the memory of what he'd done to Lestat in Louis' head. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

It really is just a totally butchery of everything. Like you said, Anne Rice never intended for us to cheer Armand on on Louis' or Claudia's behalf. Armand was always the bad guy in this situation. I remember the first time I read that scene in "The Vampire Lestat", when Armand pushes Lestat off the tower, and I also remember the first time I read the trial scene in "IWTV", and both scenes left me heartbroken for Lestat.

They've completely taken that away from him here. I've seen so many people say they want to see Lestat killed, or they want Louis to kill him now. This show has managed to destroy all feeling of sympathy for Lestat. How is it going to course correct for season 3, if indeed they're adapting "TVL"? I've even seen people questioning whether the revisit of the fight between Lestat and Louis is really what happened, because it's Lestat telling it, and Lestat now can't be trusted at all.

Ugh, it just really pisses me off.

I think Anne Rice must be rolling over in her grave.

You know, I'll keep maintaining that it was just such a massive, really unfixable mistake for them to have Lestat do what he did to Louis in season 1, not just with beating Louis to within an inch of his life, but also the drop, because, again, the reason Louis forgives Lestat and comes back to him at the end of "The Vampire Lestat" is because he realizes all of Lestat's manipulations and refusals to share information with him, his hiding of his true power and reluctance to tell him about where he came from or who his maker was, etc, etc... was all Lestat's fumbling, ineffective and desperate attempt to protect him and Claudia, both from Marius' threats and also the coven in Paris, and of course, also Lestat's fear of being alone. Yes, Lestat's treatment of Louis and Claudia was a form of abuse, really more in the realm of negligence than anything else, but it was done largely out of fear and desperation, not with any sort of malice or intent to harm.

And that's the problem, and that's why I'll never accept this idea that it's "in character" for Lestat to behave the way he did in the fifth episode of the first season, even with the revisions they showed us in episode 7 of season 2.

Lestat admits at the trial that he did it to hurt Louis, because he couldn't make Louis love him, so he decided to break him instead.

This takes what had been unintentional abuse on Lestat's part, and turns it into intentional, malicious abuse and plain cruelty. It fundamentally changes who Lestat is and what the issues between him and Louis are, and what's at the core of Lestat's actions toward Louis and Claudia.

They shouldn't have done it. Because even now, after this latest episode, you still have plenty of people talking about what an abusive piece of shit Lestat is, how what he did was unjustifiable, and how Louis' actions against him were justifiable, as a result.

Louis' entire reconciliation with Lestat is rooted in Louis realizing that Lestat never deserved to die. In realizing that he and Claudia had, in fact, wronged Lestat by attempting to take his life. He realizes this because he realizes Lestat's own wrongs against them had never been committed with malicious intent. He realizes Lestat had been misguided, but not cruel.

But Lestat's abuses and wrongs against Louis and Claudia in the show, as admitted by Lestat himself, were done with malicious intent, with the precise purpose of hurting Louis, specifically. It was done specifically with vengeance in mind, and again, that fundamentally changes everything about their relationship, and drastically undercuts both the believability and desirability of their later reconciliation and rekindled romance.

A large part of the audience for this show just isn't going to want to see Lestat and Louis end up together, because through this one, massive change to Lestat's character, they've completely altered the very nature of that character and of his relationship with Louis.

It kind of sucks, because Sam Reid is so good as Lestat, and his acting during that entire scene where he confesses he wanted to hurt Louis was fantastic. But it just completely butchers Lestat's character and makes his and Louis' romance almost a non-starter.