#the vampire chronicles spoilers

[okaytosave]

So as we await for the rockstar era, anyone else wondering if music will be in French and English? Like a blend of both?

[three--rings]

So for obvious reasons I have been thinking about IWTV a lot recently, and thinking about the books a lot. I was OBSESSED with The Vampire Chronicles when I was in middle school, into early high school.

But something that I think may not really be clear to people reading them now, or to people who only know the show, is that there's a reason the books got away with being so incredibly queer and being Bestsellers in the 70s, 80s and 90s: there was no sex.

If you're unaware, in the books, Anne Rice's vampires cannot have sex. They are impotent, sex in the human way is just not a drive they have anymore. Instead physical connection is all about sharing blood. (For the record I think the show is right to have changed this. It's not worried about censorship on that front and having sex as part of the relationships makes them way easier to communicate to the audience.)

So while the books are very homoerotic, homoromantic, and at times quite suggestive, they never have on page sexual activity, they never label relationships with explicit romantic terms like lover or husband, characters never declare their sexuality. (In early books at least.)

What this meant is that The Vampire Chronicles existed in this Plausible Deniability space where anyone who had read them realized they were gay, but they weren't LABELED AS SUCH and therefore mainstream audiences didn't know that was part of it.

So me and my friends could be 11 or 12 carrying these books around our Catholic school and didn't get anything said about it. One of my English teachers had read the first one, and we talked about it, and her only complaint was that it wasn't philosophical enough for her. But she was cool.

So, I KNEW Louis and Lestat were in love. I knew Lestat had male and female lovers. And it affected me PROFOUNDLY because it was the first depiction of queerness as anything but a joke I ever encountered.

But it wasn't "gay fiction." If it was the target of right wing criticism it was about being satanic, not queer.

I was thinking of the 4th book in the series, which I read when it was first released, in 1992. In it, (spoilers) Lestat becomes human again. And he turns to his human openly gay friend David and says "omg I'm human. Let's HAVE SEX!"

Reading that and the fucking THIRD EYE that opened for me is BURNED into my memory. I remember how scandalous that was, because it was ON THE PAGE. Here was a book with men talking about having sex with each other. And I was reading it! And it was just casual and nonchalant. (Unfortunately they don't actually do it, to my young disappointment.) Despite all the queerness that i'd experienced (and recognized) already in the series, THAT was shocking.

You can't know what that was LIKE to a kid in 1992, before the internet was anything more than bulletin boards, before fanfiction online was really a thing. And these weren't niche novels, things only people in liberal literary circles read. They were massive, massive bestsellers.

IDK, you know. I have given Anne Rice a LOT of shit in my time, and she's deserved a lot of it. But she also performed some miracles of representation that affected a lot of people. IDK if I even have a point. Just. I was remembering what it felt like. To encounter a gay character in fiction for the first time, talk about gay sex for the first time.

I don't think it's an accident that me and my friend who shared this obsession both ended up being bi. We passed the books back and forth and pointed out the really juicy sections and other people were never quite as into these books as we were even when we made them read them.

[queenoftheimps]

Continuing to reread The Vampire Lestat

Armand: Lestat, listen Armand: I know we didn't start off on a good foot Armand: What with me stalking you Armand: Sending my cult after you Armand: Killing your stable boy Armand: Kidnapping your boyfriend Armand: Torturing your boyfriend Armand: Nearly killing your boyfriend Armand: And also just generally calling you an abomination Armand: BUT Armand: You did things to me, too! Armand: Like forcing me to kill half of my cult Lestat: I did not do that even a little bit Armand: That's not the point Armand: The point is Armand: You and I have both done equally terrible things to each other Armand: And that means there is only one solution Armand: We should date Lestat: Lestat: Lestat: Lestat: putting aside everything else Lestat: i am admittedly a little flattered Lestat: but like Lestat: how Lestat: how would that even work Armand: well, first you would kill your mom and your boyfriend Lestat: okay WOW

[vampire-dove]

Thinking so heavily about the parallels of Louis walking into the sun and Lestat having to find out through Armand and Lestat having to find out through Armand that Nicki had walked into flames.

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

Interview With The Vampire (2022)

In Throes of Increasing Wonder (1x01) / After the Phantoms of Your Former Self (1x02)

[thequeenofsastiel]

Warning for spoilers from The Vampire Chronicles novels below.

I'm very much enjoying the fact that in this version of Interview With The Vampire, not only is Louis describing the version of events that took place closer to the way Lestat would, but that Daniel is calling him on it. I really liked when Daniel played back Louis' words from their 1973 interview(especially that the words were taken verbatim from the novel), and how uncomfortable it clearly made Louis.

This also makes me wonder how much of the other novels have happened at this point. Because Louis very much falls back in love with Lestat after hearing his life story and the events of Queen of the Damned. So if those events have taken place(obviously in a somewhat different fashion), Louis' attitude would make perfect sense.

Despite the couple of things that bother me about this show(Louis being able to read minds and Lestat not using his powers to kill evil doers), I like it a lot, and can't wait to find out where they go from here.

[cloudofbutterflies]

my favorite vampire chronicles scenes

Should be obvious, but major spoilers for the books ahead.

1. Daniel’s turning. I’m not even going to try to describe it. I love them to death, and I love this scene a little farther than that. It’s so GOOD.

2. Loustat reunion scene. It’s so soft and sweet and they are still ridiculously in love. It’s so human it hurts. It’s tender, it’s soft, it’s two people who have been in love for hundreds of years and are only beginning to find the words to express it. 

3. Lestat crying at the Witch’s Place while Nikki plays the violin. Lestat, we can all see your fundamental empathy and wish for things to be better, and we love it for you, even if you were fucked over enough you will always struggle to express it in ways we can see as good.

4. Louis burning the theatre in Interview. Go my little pyromaniac go<3

5. Blender.

6. The end of blood communion. I loved seeing all my little rights violations happy, I will admit it.

7. Tale of the body thief loustat. Your honor, they are stupid<3

8. Louis chapter at end of Prince Lestat. It was so good to see him again, and see him so happy. I love the little cynic sm.

[imethirdperson]

In this current age I can only think of one way for lestat to rise to international fame out of nowhere singing rock and that can only mean one thing: season 2 eurovision arc

[theundeadelf]

me, trying to explain the inevitable iwtv polycule to my family who don't watch the show and haven't read the books:

"So you have Louis and Lestat who are a couple, with Louis' boyfriend Armand and Armand's boyfriend Daniel, and Lestat and Armand were kind of involved too or at the very least have a complicated history.*** Lestat has a dead ex called Nicolas and there's also Antoine/Antoinette but nobody likes them-"

God help us if/when Akasha David and Rowan appear on IWTV as well 😂😂😂

***involving hand chopping and being pushed off a roof???

[lestatthevamp]

[souryam]

(iwtv s2 finale spoiler)

lestat and his fuckass piece of driftwood. i hate him (im nothing without him)

[queenoftheimps]

Finishing up the Vampire Lestat reread

Marius: Listen, Lestat, you need some guidance on vampire stuff Marius: First of all, don't make kids into vampires Marius: Even if your boyfriend is leaving you and you want to babytrap him Lestat: OK got it Marius: Also, don't make vampires from people if you don't love them already Marius: Even if, again, your boyfriend is leaving and you would like to use a small child to trap him Lestat: Of course Marius: Thirdly, don't tell anyone about the legend of Those Who Must Be Kept Marius: Even if your ex-boyfriend has released a bestselling book where he calls you boring and you want to outdo him Lestat: Naturally Marius: And last of all, do not ever visit Those Who Must Be Kept without me accompanying you Marius: Even if you want to play a sick violin solo Lestat: I am definitely not going to do that the exact second you leave this room

[stevenrogered]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 2x01, "What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned"

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

Louis and his love for Lestat across the books

I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a manycolored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water. "What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or Peter? Dress well, to begin with. And have a luxurious head of pampered yellow hair. — Interview With The Vampire

It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I'd envision his face - not as it had been the last night in the fire, but on other nights, that last evening he spent with us at home, his hand playing idly with the keys of the spinet, his head tilted to one side. A sickness rose in me more wretched than anguish when I saw what my dreams were doing. I wanted him alive! — Interview With The Vampire

Lestat, in fact, had aroused in me feelings which I hadn't wished to confide in anyone, feelings I'd wished to forget, despite Claudia's death. Hatred had not been one of them. — Interview With The Vampire

And why should I bother to tell of the times he came to me in wretched anxiety, begging me never to leave him, of the times we walked together and talked together, acted Shakespeare together for Claudia's amusement, or went arm in arm to hunt the riverfront taverns or to waltz with the dark-skinned beauties of the celebrated quadroon balls? Read between the lines. — The Vampire Lestat

"Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves?" "Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?" His eyes darkened and he looked away from me. "I'm not mocking you, Louis," I said. "You've come back to me, Lestat," he said evenly, looking at me again. "When I heard the first whispers of you at Dracula's Daughter, I felt something that I thought was gone forever. — The Vampire Lestat

Louis, the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure and simple. The two had found each other only last night, and theirs had been an extraordinary reunion. Louis would go where Lestat led him. Louis would perish if Lestat perished. But their fears and hopes for this night were heartbreakingly human. — The Queen of the Damned

Stupidly I stared at him. How perfect he seemed to me as he stood there waiting with such kindness and such patience. And then, like a fool, I came out with it. “Do you love me now?” I asked. He smiled; oh, it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten simultaneously when he smiled. “Yes,” he said. — The Queen of the Damned

"I love you," he said softly. I was amazed."You're always looking for a way to triumph," he continued. "You never give in. But there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we're in, you and I. All we can be is thankful that it isn't actually hell." — The Tale of the Body Thief

Sometimes you frighten me so badly I hurl sticks and stones at you. It's foolish. I'm glad to see you, though I dread admitting it. I shiver at the thought that you might have really brought an end to yourself in the desert! I can't bear the thought of existence now without you! You infuriate me! Why don't you laugh at me? You've done it before. — The Tale of the Body Thief

"Have you suffered in my absence?" I asked, looking back at the altar. Very soberly he answered, "It was pure hell." I didn't reply. "Each risk you take hurts me," he said. "But that is my concern and my fault." "Why do you love me?" I asked. "You know, you've always known. I wish I could be you. I wish I could know the joy you know all the time." "And the pain, you want that as well?” "Your pain?" He smiled. "Certainly. I'll take your brand of pain anytime, as they say." — The Tale of the Body Thief

“Come home with me,” he said. Such a human voice. So kind. “There’s time to come here and reflect. Wouldn’t you rather be home, in the Quarter, amongst our things? If anything in the world could have truly comforted me, he would have been the thing—with just the beguiling tilt of his narrow head or the way that he kept looking at me, protecting me obviously with a confidential calm from what he must have feared for me, and for him, and perhaps for all of us. — Memnoch the Devil

“I’ll be down there, in our rooms,” he said, “waiting for you. They can’t keep you here much longer.” — Memnoch the Devil

I don't live like our friend Louis, wandering from dusty corner to dusty corner, and then back to his flat in the Rue Royale when he's convinced himself once more and for the thousandth time that no one can harm Lestat. — The Vampire Armand

And that perhaps was the real change in him, the change that he welcomed—that he could see himself as part now of all this great and glistening world. He was not part of some mindless force that sought to destroy it. No, he was part of it. He was part of this, this night with its sweet mild rain, and this whispering garden with its fragrant flowers and its trees, and the breezes that moved their branches. And he was part of the roar of the city rising around him, and part of the sharp shining music that came from within the house. He was part of the grass beneath his feet, and the tiny relentless hordes of winged things that sought to devour the human waiting there helplessly for a proper grave. He thought of Lestat again, confident, smiling, wearing the mantle of power as easily as he had always worn his finery, old and new. He said under his breath:“Beloved maker, beloved Prince, I will be with you soon.” — Prince Lestat

He leaned close to me, and he put his hand on my arm. “ ‘Wither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people’; and because I have no other god and never will, you shall be my god.” — Prince Lestat and The Realms of Atlantis

“I love you with my whole soul, and I will always love you,” he confided to me. “You are my life. I have hated you for that and love you now so much that you’ve been my instructor in loving. And believe me when I say you will survive this, and that you must for all of us. You will survive because you always have and you always will.” — Blood Communion

[thequeenofsastiel]

So I've given it some thought, and I've decided that the only way the show can get away with making Lestat this dark is if they make Louis darker too. Like instead of just watching in paralyzed horror while Claudia tries to murder Lestat, he has to actively participate, make it super brutal, and enjoy it. Then and only then can I feel comfortable shipping the tv version of them. Because I'm here for dark and fucked up romance. It's like why Hannigram worked. Will just got darker and darker and darker. Was it healthy or good? No. But it was captivating.

So that's what the show needs to do for me to be okay with it. Make Louis a worse person too.

[imchoccy]

How I look at a man I met once decades ago and tortured out of jealousy: