#p ;; read between the lines { louis&lestat }

[pynkhues]

your fic ideas for the kinktober are so delicious. can you elaborate a bit on the Week 2 fic? 👀 also Week 3, because i'm intrigued with "Lestat gets Real Weird About It" line.

(x)

Sure, haha.

Mmm, so both are just kind of areas I've been thinking about in terms of character generally right now, not even just in terms of fic, so sorry if this also sounds a bit meta-y, haha.

I've been thinking a lot lately about Louis having multiple forms of investment, and we tend to focus a lot on the art for obvious reasons, but we know he's in real estate too and he tells Daniel in 2.05 that he likes predicting what overlooked product will flourish in time. I'm kind of interested in the way investment has changed over the last fifty years in the context of the show, and how Louis' approach to it all might have evolved, which in many ways has been bolstered too by watching Industry and getting a bit of a sense of that high-end, high-value, high-stakes investment banking and where Louis might fit in that sort of context in 2024.

The thing that really stands out to me is that there's this detachment and clinicalness to that sort of investment / capitalism that feels really different to the Louis who both genuinely connected to art and obviously got off on the hunt for it and commodifying it, which in turn made me think about the Louis of '73 who was, again, more clinical perhaps professionally, but then like - - indulging his more carnal and passionate needs through drugs and boys in San Francisco.

This fic was kind of inspired by having read an article recently that cruising is on the rise again internationally, and I kind of love that we know that Louis did cruise across the decades given the implications of the Bayou as a cruising site in New Orleans, the parks in Paris, and of course, those San Francisco bars, especially because it really seems to be a distinction between him and Lestat. In the show, we've seen Lestat's really way more of a relationship hopper, even in his adultery, between Louis, Nicki, Armand and Antoinette, whereas Louis hits-and-quits, at least with his own adultery (although y'know, he tried to hit-and-quit both Lestat and Armand too lol).

So yeah, the fic's basically contextualising Louis in this sort of finance world, and him and Lestat being half-together, half-not-together and kind of orchestrating a role play in a local cruising park that gets just. Wildly out of hand, lmao, because they're both insane, but also because Louis' feeling maybe a little bored with modern investment and Lestat's' feeling creatively constrained when working on his album. Drugs may have been imbibed, and they might get a little bit (a lot) feral, haha. Witnesses will be eaten!

As for the week 3 fic:

I'm still really percolating on this one, so it's not quite as developed, but I've been thinking about how different Armand and Louis' relationship is to Lestat and Louis' in general, particularly with the BDSM-element, and wondering what the response would be to that? I really loved Marbleflan's The Things We Did and Didn't Do which captured a discomfort Lestat might have with it in the period where they have to get to know each other again, and Louis' need for it as a means of controlling not anyone else, but himself.

I also - - mmm. I've been thinking a LOT recently too about the fact that the Lestat prior to Paris is pretty naive and cut-off from schools of thought which I think would include different types of sexuality? When he arrives in Paris in the late 1700s, it would actually be right around the time Marquis De Sade was starting to publish, and given his writing literally gave birth to the BDSM movement, it's kind of interesting to think what impact that may have had on Lestat. He wouldn't have read any of it, of course, he's illiterate in that part of his life, but it's interesting to think of the conversations that were happening when he was still a young and naive mortal man.

The fact that Lestat's traumatised in that period by Magnus assaulting him and turning him, and then by Nicki's kidnapping then suicide, that he then sleeps through the French Revolution only to be woken up presumably sometime in the early 1900s by Marius before heading to America where he meets Louis, then is seemingly in his hovel from the late 1940s to, well, now, means that Lestat's lost huge chapters of time where social understandings of sex and sexuality and, well, sex toys have really changed. Louis was fucking his way through all of this, both Armand and other men, and it just kind of makes me curious as to what that actually means when they're back together.

I'm still figuring it out, I just think it's an interesting area to explore that Lestat might have some baggage around all of that (and that that baggage might be in regards to a lot of different things).

[hapireads]

Interview With The Vampire Book Review

I'll preface this review with an acknowledgement that, oftentimes, subtext goes right over my head. I read like a fiend, yet I've always struggled with trying to piece together things that are not explicitly stated.

That being said, I struggled with various aspects of this novel. With the first major aspect being the dynamic between Louis and Lestat. As I watched the AMC+ show adaptation in entirety prior to reading this, I had a certain expectation of the romance between the two and was left dumbfounded when I finished the novel. From the very beginning, to the very end, Louis expresses next to nothing but disdain for Lestat. I was endlessly confused by this as the media representations of IWTV over the years have always been centred on Loustat and the fact that it was canon in the novels, while in reality the first novel had no interest in the two as a couple.

However, upon a brief glance back at certain points in the novel the queer romance between Louis and Lestat are subtly expressed in Louis' conversations with the 'boy' interviewer. For example, when Louis goes on about how his and Lestat's hearts were beating in unison like drums (p. 22) and asking if the interviewer 'understood' what he meant. This subtext went right over my head the first time. I will be reading the following books in the Vampire Chronicles to discover whether the relationship actually becomes a relationship.

Moving on, although I deeply enjoyed the novel, I have a serious issue with Louis' characterisation as a plantation owner. While many have argued that the position was a context appropriate role for Louis, I simply do not understand why it was relevant to the plot. Time and time again there are violently racist descriptions of the slaves on Louis' plantations, and while I know these may not be Anne Rice's own ideas about African Americans, I found myself horrified by what I was reading. This was only intensified when Lestat and Louis continuously murdered Black people to satiate their appetites, slave or 'free', Black people were undoubtedly targeted in this novel. I don't think there is a problem with including period-specific representations of racism in novels, but I think the inclusion must have some sort of substance and relevance to the overall novel, and I simply could not understand what the vile inclusions of racism in IWTV contributed.

Along these lines, I was also disgusted (!!!) by the strange, paedophilic relationship between Claudia and Louis. I know that with vampires all mortal notions are altered due to their immortality, but I will NEVER get on board with pedophilia. Some people have said that it's different because all sexual/romantic advances were put forth by Claudia and not Louis, but I still don't understand why Anne felt the need to include it. Claudia refers to Louis as her 'lover', Louis refers to her as his 'bride' and, on multiple occasions, uses incredibly sexual/erotic language to describe her looks (keep in mind she is physically a 5 year old!) [p. 94]. Don't even get me started on when Claudia asked Louis what having sex was like. I get it, she's not mentally a child, but why the FUCK introduce various sexual themes through a 5 year old body?

Despite these particular things I was uncomfortable with, I found the novel to be interesting, particularly Lestat and Armand. Although Lestat is no where near as nuanced as he is in the show adaptation, he still exhibits a certain level of drama in this novel and I was all for it. I also particularly loved it when he finally began to express his feelings for Louis toward the end of the novel when Louis visits him in his weakening state. For the first time, Lestat thoroughly lets his guard down and cries for Louis, letting him know just how much he needs him. I ate it up!

I also really enjoyed Armand, despite his murderous and manipulative tendencies. I actually found myself being charmed by him in the same way Louis was, he has incredible powers of seduction honestly. I particularly loved it when he said "I want you. I want you more than anything in the world", (p. 254) to Louis. Like, shit, maybe I do understand why Louis was so quick to tell Armand he loved him. Lestat better get the fuck up and catch up.

Overall, I would give the novel 8.5/10. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of The Vampire Lestat and jump into Lestat's perspective on how things happened!

[odysseusnostos]

read between the lines ; l&l

@philtatoshetairos || continued from x & x 

The loud sound of the door closing made him jump and he ran to it, determined to lock it, and never allow Lestat to come back. He was going nowhere, this was his own house, damn it! He could burn it down if he so wished, and with him inside! No one comes in or goes out. The vampire would have to be the one to sleep out in the sun, who would care? No mortal would notice! None of the vampires existed, for all the world knew. 

Louis rushed headed to Lestat’s room and kicked the doors open, took his coffin with some difficulty and threw it out, across the parlor, the bottom splitting in two and the lid flying against the wall. There, his sinful body would turn into a crisp under the sun and it’d be quieter, yes, that was what he needed, some peace and silence without the vampire screeching into his ear. Absolute silence for all eternity. 

But it only lasted a moment, and then he could hear the murmur of some passers-by, and through the window he could see some heads popping out the balconies across the street. He kicked the coffin and noticed scattered around him what once was a ceramic vase. He crumbled there. A broken vampire among broken things. 

Was absolute silence what he truly desired? All he could hear were the muffled whispers of the people outside. That would be the only thing accompanying him through eternity, endless whispers of suspicion behind his back, endless black nights of solitude and hunger without a single understanding soul. Paul crossed his mind briefly, as he did sometimes, and Louis couldn’t help but to wonder if this was what he had felt when his own brother turned his back on him, laughing and diminishing what he thought was true. 

And Louis had done it again. He pushed Lestat out. Louis really doubted the outcome would be the same, but it would have the same effect on him. He’d be left alone.  

His hands went to cover his mouth to contain a scream of terror, but no sound ever came out. It only felt as if wound had suddenly grown in his throat and leaving him unable to speak. His fingers then clung to his chest. He had finally tired Lestat. So many times he had wanted to leave him, and now that there was a chance, he was paralyzed. It all felt unreal, as if it had been some kind of illusion, but the pain he felt in his fingertips and in his heart were undeniably authentic. 

Louis had to find him. He had to find Lestat. No, he said he’d come back. He unlocked the door and went back to sit on his chair, eyeing the mess he’d left. What a fool. There was not much he could do now, and so he took a book and read. 

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I've been trying to read the whole vc series, but school and work just keep preventing me from getting really far! Is it ok to ask you to write a little summary for each book so I can catch up with the fandom until I have the time to read them all thoroughly?

Yeah, I understand, time is limited :P 

I don’t know that summarizing VC will allow you to “catch up” with the fandom, you really only need to read the first 3 books and the Vampire Armand to get most of the jokes on tumblr, bc most of the jokes seem to center around:

Louis being a pyromaniac,

Lestat being an obnoxious but somehow lovable glittery murder machine,

Lestat and Louis being awesome and shitty murder dads,

Claudia being an ungrateful spoiled brat,

Armand being a little brat, or a slut, or an evul coven master, or all of the above,

Daniel Molloy just wanting to vampire plz!!!11!,

Marius being a pedo, or too bossy, or both,

Gabrielle is a bad mom and an ice queen,

Nicolas is spelled NICOLAS and he is NOT DEAD!,

Secondary characters not getting enough love from anyone!!

There are often spoilers in summaries tho, do you really want to be spoiled? I LOVE being spoiled.

We have these unreliable narrators, there is a lot of disagreement as to what canon really is, and some fans choose to ignore parts of (or entire books) in the series. We bring our own experiences to the reading, and we choose what to connect with, so I think we can agree on some things about each book, but you will probably get a different summary from any given reader. Even AR has told us to disregard the hybrid Mayfair/VC books (Blood Canticle, possibly Merrick and Blackwood Farm) when moving onto the more recent VC additions (PL and PLROA). So, for example, I have a friend who has only read the first 3 books. She doesn’t even know what happens after that bc she prefers to think it ended after QOTD. So any new vampires made after QOTD do not exist to her. #Your headcanon may vary.

Anyway, you want summaries.

http://vampirechronicles.wikia.com has a pretty good write-up for each of the books (they don’t have PL and PLROA currently, maybe they will eventually). It contains spoilers.

@vraik​ has thorough VC analysis in their series called The Consulting Analyst over on vraikaiser.com. Spoilers there, too.

@hyperbeeb‘s capsule reviews are pretty gr9 [X]:

Lestat’s Adventures with a Progressive Family

Lestat’s Bisexual Adventures in 18th Century France

Lestat’s Adventures with the Queen of the Vampires

Lestat’s Adventures as a Human

Lestat’s Adventures with Satan

Lestat’s Adventures in a Coma

Lestat’s Adventures with Polyamory 

Lestat’s Adventures in the Deep South

Lestat’s Adventures with Not Being There At All

Lestat’s Adventures with Witches and Other Weird Shit

Lestat’s adventures with Being the Vampire Head of State

Lestat’s Adventures with Literal Fucking Aliens

(Note, Pandora and Vittorio are technically stand-alone “New Tales of the Vampires” books, but Pandora would be No. 6 of the 13 book series).

You can check my #VC Synopsis tag, which has more capsule humorous summaries.

Gonna try to do a little summary for each VC under the cut as a personal challenge. 

Spoilers ahead! I’ll try to do this with as few spoilers as possible, as factually as possible.

1. Interview with the Vampire - Louis tells the story of his life and unlife to Daniel Molloy. Louis starts at the point in his mortal life just before he meets Lestat, and how his life up until that meeting influenced the unlife that followed after he became a vampire. Lestat’s reasons for choosing Louis are unclear to Louis, but he wants Louis to choose to be a vampire. Louis is under so much duress (failing health, still in emotional distress over his guilt re: a close family member’s death) that the choice is not 100% legit, Lestat can’t wait for a more opportune time and proceeds to turn Louis anyway. 

The whole story could be seen as Anne Rice’s exploration of the role of religion and the reasons why terrible things happen to innocent people, the concept of punishment. 

For me, it was also eye-opening bc I was 11 when I read it and it introduced the possibility of love between a same-sex couple, even if that was in more of a read-between-the-lines way. 

It also has a child vampire and I hadn’t seen any media even attempt to tell a story with a child vampire before. Few media that attempt it seem to have captured the beauty and tragedy of such a creature as in this story, and she reappears in a few of the other VC. Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series.

^ok that was too long, I’m going for shorter.

2. The Vampire Lestat - Lestat seeks to “correct the record” that Louis laid out in IWTV by giving us his own backstory, starting at his mortal youth and how that influenced the unlife that followed when he became a vampire, against his will (hence the “I’m going to give you the choice I never had,” line from movie!IWTV). There is more exploration in the role of religion and reasons why bad things happen to basically innocent people, and whether you really can make the best of a shitty situation or just give up. More about punishment. A very unique take on the origin of the vampires as a species is revealed. And the reasons why Lestat behaved the way he did (basically all secretive) in IWTV. Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series, who are we to believe? Lestat or Louis? And the author’s retconning which is perceived as “making excuses later in canon for behavior that’s already happened.” Some readers really despise this. Personally, I like having the options and trusting one version of events, or none of them.

3. The Queen of the Damned - Lestat’s modern-era rock career wakes the Queen of the Vampires and she has this awesome Radical Feminist idea for world peace. She’s already gotten started on it! She upgrades Lestat physically so that he can help her accomplish her goals, but he’s not really on board. They meet with the vampires she has allowed to survive her purge and it doesn’t go very well. Also in this book, we have different narrators, more about the vampire origin story, and the Armand/Daniel ship is sailing at its best here.

4. The Tale of the Body Thief - Having suffered so much through the past 3 books, Lestat is a suicidal hamburger-brained moron and makes some very bad choices. Despite everyone advising him NOT to, Lestat makes a terrible trade with a body thief and learns quickly that he had idealized being human. He does some horrendous stuff, and wants off the Being Human ride. He has one friend who helps him set things back to the way they should be, and then he betrays that friend in a spectacularly cruel way. More importantly, Lestat also gets a wonderful cuddly doggo. 

5. Memnoch the Devil - Lestat Goes to Heaven and Hell, meets Jesus Christ, meets God, meets Satan (who prefers to go by “Memnoch”) it’s all a huge interview process to decide if Lestat might work for God or Satan and it’s basically fanfic of the Bible. Some people hated it for those reasons. I found it really intriguing, bc it presents a reason why God created the earth, and why there’s suffering, why God allows suffering to go on, and where religion comes from. Like Lestat, Memnoch says he’s not the antagonist, but really the good guy in all this. When Dorothy gets back to Kansas Lestat returns to earth, there is disagreement about whether he went on a real trip or he was just fooled by a really talented spirit. Lestat is so confused that he throws a huge tantrum and then gets solitary confinement, then slips into a coma.

6. The Vampire Armand - Armand gets his spotlight and gets to really tell his story, do we believe everything he tells us? Lots of good Italy times stuff. Armand visits Lestat in his coma-state, and talks about that, too. 

7. Merrick - Merrick is a Mayfair witch in NOLA who bewitches Louis in pursuit of his request for closure with Claudia, and hilarity ensues. Louis gets the most screentime he’s had since IWTV, but the whole book is told from a 3rd wheel’s POV, it would have been so much better from Louis’ or Merrick’s POV. Major fatal thing happens but fortunately Lestat wakes up from his coma in time to save the day.

8. Blood and Gold - Marius tells his story, as does the vampire Thorne tell his own story. Marius talks about his artistic influences and his experience with the early Talamasca and Santino and the Children of Satan. We see Daniel (now living with Marius) under a kind of spell, which Marius says is temporary. 

9. Blackwood Farm - Lestat goes to the Deep South and hears the story of vampire Quinn (his story defies summary) and, with Merrick’s help, saves the day.

10. Blood Canticle - More vampire and Mayfair mixing. And Taltos. It’s a very big WTF book. But it has some very funny scenes and lines in it. It ends with Lestat promising the Dark Gift to someone. 

11. Prince Lestat - Vampire scientists. A clone. Someone gets kidnapped. Ultimate Vampire Coven Gathering. Lestat is cranky, saves the day anyway. Ghosts apparently can linger on earth after death and make bodies for themselves. Characters from past books reappear. New characters are introduced. Louis writes a chapter about how OK fine, he does love Lestat. FINE.

12. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis - I haven’t finished this but basically… the REAL vampire origin story, and it involves bird-like aliens, who were sent to earth bc the aliens feed on the suffering of mortals. The bird-like aliens didnt want to create Atlantis. in fact they were pissed because this one creature of theirs, Amel, made Atlantis with the Luracastria (i dunno i think thats how it’s spelled) and their viewing tech couldn’t see through the material. Amel made Atlantis to spite the bird-like aliens omg i cant believe im typing this. Louis and Lestat finally have some legit canon cuddletimes.

- Pandora - the story of the vampire Pandora, and why Marius is bad at relationships. Lots of good Roman times stuff.

- Vittorio - is not a VC vampire, and wants nothing to do with that dysfunctional pile of fanged crazies. @monstersinthecosmos and @vittoriathevampire could give you a better summary of that one, since I didn’t absorb it too well :P