#loustat related

[canonicallysoulmates]

I just realized that both sam x dean, and louis x lestat had a wedding in a church on a rainy night that involved tears and blood. what an interesting parallel that my brain doesn't know how to file.

[mossycakes]

armand is for the lesbians because he met louis and said youre my companion and soulmate and ive never said i love you to anyone else and louis said yeah its casual i mean we have fun together but thats as deep as it goes

[fayevalcntine]

I want you to peel away every sound until you find his heartbeat. Now hold the heartbeat. [insp.]

[prouvaireafterdark]

Hi! As someone just coming into reading the books but who's been with the show since day 1, I'm curious about why people take Lestat's narrative in TVL with 100% sincerity when the premise of the show seems to be interrogating the dissonance that everybody's versions create. Obviously there's some big things that are definitely going to be true, but I'd personally be disappointed if we got a straight adaptation of unfiltered Lestat perspective on events, haha!

I think you're conflating sincerity with some idea of omniscient, objective accuracy, which, as you note, is a useless thing to search for in a show where memory is continually shown to be an unreliable monster.

Lestat's version of events in TVL is sincere, though. He's speaking from the heart and he's trying to give the story of his life, mostly by sharing his truth about what his life before meeting Louis was like, and in part by filling in the gaps Louis leaves us with about what happened at Rue Royale. His recollection may turn out to be as faulty and biased as Louis' or Armand's has been shown to be in the show, but that doesn't make it any less sincere.

And I'm not implying that Louis is lying or anything. I'm talking about him not mentioning or glossing over the happy memories that meant a lot to Lestat and made up, for him, a big part of what it was to share a home with Louis and Claudia for so long. Giving Lestat the space to talk about his love for Louis and Claudia doesn't erase the abuse he inflicted on them in those moments of instability and rage. I don't get why people are so resistant to seeing that. It's not like it makes everything better. If anything, it makes it worse that he loved them so much.

What's important to note, too, is that at no point does Lestat in his retelling excuse himself for anything he did to Louis and Claudia and I doubt very much we would see him do that in future seasons of the show. Lestat even says it himself that he deserved what Claudia did to him. The way things worked out between the three of them is his greatest, deepest regret and it will haunt him for the rest of his immortal life.

Also, not for nothing, what we've gotten this season and last season are the unfiltered perspectives of Louis, Claudia, and Armand. That's not to say they're lying or intentionally obfuscating (okay, well, Armand totally is), but that is what we got---a narrative that was really challenged only by Daniel and not by anyone who was actually there who remembers it differently. I don't see why we shouldn't also get Lestat's unfiltered version, especially considered he is the main protagonist of the Vampire Chronicles series going forward.

For me and many others, it's not about excusing anything. It's all about contextualizing his decisions. Like, Lestat didn't just wake up one day and decide it would be fun to destroy his family. I want him to tell me in his own words (which, as a reminder, he has yet to do at any point in this series so far) what drove him to do the horrible things he did and how he really feels about it. When we do hopefully get that, I expect the fandom to interrogate his accounts as vigorously as they did Louis' and Armand's and Claudia's.

And to answer your question regarding the books specifically, we have Anne herself to blame for that. She wrote IWTV when she was battling some of the most intense grief and despair a person can feel. She had just lost her child. Writing the book was an outlet for that and you can feel it as you read Louis' perspective. When she decided to continue the series, though, she changed her mind about a lot of things---mainly who Lestat was as a character and how she had come to hate the "weakness" in Louis (which was really because she came to hate the "weakness" she saw in herself as she came out on the other side of her grief and identified with him less and Lestat more). There is a very real dissonance between who Lestat is in IWTV and who he is in TVL and beyond. The way she accounted for that in her own writing was that Louis was misconstruing certain events by leaving things out or straight up making things up like their reunion in NOLA at the end of IWTV, which Lestat claims never happened. The reason people take Lestat's words at face value sometimes isn't usually because they hate Louis or think he lied about Lestat's abuse. It's because Anne, as the writer of the story, wanted the reader to doubt Louis' version in favor of Lestat's because she had changed her mind about the direction of the story and the characters she created.

It's also worth noting that, in the actual text of the show, that version of events taken from the book, the content of the original interview, is described by Louis himself as an admitted performance. I think it's a perfectly legitimate reading to consider IWTV (the book) in the context of Louis trying to get Lestat's attention with something he knew would upset him, like Armand suggests was Louis' fantasy, because he wanted or needed to see him again.

This got long and rambley so I'll just leave you with the wise, wise words of Samothy Reid when asked to give one truth and one lie in the show: Everybody lies. Everybody lies.

I don't think that will change if we finally get Lestat's POV so imo people should just relax and enjoy the ride.

[lelio]

So Louis takes up photography and he gives a plethora of reasons as to why he's chosen it as a hobby. But then he's on a date with Armand and he's seeing Lestat there. And so he takes the camera and looks through the lens, just to make sure that Lestat isn't there. Because his mind can betray him but the photos do not, and the photos confirm that there's no one. And that Lestat is just in his head.

So when Louis says 'I walk the night capturing disappointment and regret', he's also in a way talking about himself. Because every time he takes a photo and Lestat isn't there, he's filled with disappointment and regret. He's grieving Lestat and he misses him. He sees him everywhere and it's not real. It's never real even if he wants him to be. And back in the present day he's still grieving Lestat. That's decades worth of grief.

Lestat says that he has a capacity for enduring. But I think that applies to Louis too. All that pain and loss and grief and trauma, and Louis still carries it all. And I think this makes Louis one of the strongest vampire out there because anybody weak would've crumbled from the weight of it all.

[violinsandblood]

thinking about how lestat started following/falling in love with louis after seeing him pull out a knife on on his brother in the first ep, placing the knife against paul's neck. then louis pulls out a knife again but on lestat in the last ep of s1, and uses the knife to cut lestat's neck.

the reason lestat fell for louis is how lestat gets killed by him (although not really killed, just very injured)

[oh-alicent]

do you ever just sit down with the intent to be productive and then suddenly write 2,000 words of loustat fanfic or are you normal

[crazykuroneko]

I know LDPDL was crying watching this scene

[mischievous-thunder]

[weenieriser]

louis de pointe du lac listens to evanescence (even in death is loustat coded)

[canonicallysoulmates]

What are your feelings about Lestat meeting pre s4!Sam who is just a mess seeking revenge and away to save Dean from hell? Before Ruby can seek him out he is already with Lestat drinking his blood and the two just falling into not a relationship but something taking comfort in the knowledge they have found someone who understands being forced to go on without the love of their life in their life.

Love how your brain is working. My babies finding comfort in each other over not being able to be with their soulmate? THE FRIENDSHIP I DIDN'T KNOW I NEEDED!!!!

It would somehow be both a toxic friendship, and so good for the both of them. Because Sam would be getting support from someone who not only understands what it's like to have to live without the love of your life but also from someone who knows what it's like to love so all consumedly like he wouldn't have to hold back about his feelings for Dean or the magnitude of his grief. And in turn Lestat would be getting the same thing but also, seeing Sam not give up and do anything in order to get Dean back, and then eventually succeed in doing so, would inspire Lestat to get his shit together and not lose hope over getting his Louis back.

And he would be so much more helpful in the hunt for Dean, and would encourage Sam to accept and embrace who he is powers and all. (He could totally get Sam to agree to take over hell, and then be the proud bestie at the coronation.)

[justincoded]

not to be unbearable but this is literally a screenshot from queer as folk 1x22 full circle

[flaskmop]

(bit of a long post but please hear me out)

further on the point of loustat’s parenting, something i found frustrating on louis’ side is his complete avoidance of ever disciplining claudia.

he always sat back and allowed- perhaps even forced- lestat to be the bad guy in every situation. claudia kills a human? louis merely stares in sympathy and silence as lestat steps up to tell her off. and, lestat being the man he is, will always take a more aggressive approach (on everything, not just parenting). this meant the methods he used were not at all acceptable, but if not him then who else would do it?

louis loved claudia so much that he never lifted a finger to teach her how to act. he never wanted to be perceived as the “bad guy” or the “mean one” but someone had to. in parenting it must be 50-50, not 60-40 or 90-10, it must be half and half or else it will most likely fail.

of course i do not forgive lestat for how he treated claudia, but louis never at any point told claudia off. this dynamic very much reminds me of my mother and father- as it may do most people. the mother having to take on the role of the “bad guy” because the father doesn’t want to damage his relationship with the child.

louis was a terrible father, but lestat was a terrible mother, which will always be criticised more.

[interviewwiththewerepire]

rewatching ep 7 and I just think this flip is interesting

"This horror that had been Lestat, I stared helplessly at it. The thing lay still."

...

"So what did you do with it?"

"We wrapped him in a carpet. We threw him in a trunk, and left him out in the garbage."

[hyperfixationhellpit]

dear iwtv fandom,

plz write more fic. i like physically need it.

xoxo ur local Consumer

[topochicka]

So here's the thing, cats and kittens: I write fan fic. I've been writing VC fan fic since before the internet was a thing.

I'm not great at posting on this site (I am more an avid reblogger) but if you dig on fan fics, have a look see at mine, why don't you? It's about the week following Louis' transformation, when he's both learning to live as an openly gay man and a vampire.

I appreciate you