#well I did say I wanted to see 21st century Lestat and we got him..

[thenightflower]

Lestat after hearing all the complaints about the cheesy romantic music earlier in the season.

[gwydionmisha]

Interview with the Vampire: We Need to talk about the design of the so Called Rock Garden (Contains Spoilers through the Finale)

Something that my brain has been pick, pick, picking at since first season of Interview with the Vampire is that Rock garden in Dubai. I've been watching season two as it came out, but also rewatching it with a friend who otherwise hasn't access. Last week we stopped watching while they were making the deal to sell that artwork to discuss the decoration of the Dubai apartment because they had been pick, pick, picking at the interior design in general this whole time too. I'm not Japanese, so grain of salt here.

So a lot of people have discussed the way the bedroom looks like a prison with the bars and lighting, but it runs so much deeper and darker than that. We got talking about Louis' taste in art and design, much the way my friend and I hot into Louis and Lestat and fashion choices first season.

Okay, look at the whole apartment. Sure it's just generally in that soft brutalist minimalist design the rich are all into right now, and Armand who may or not be lying says they had an interior decorator, but that apartment set is not designed like some generic designer furnished it. It is designed like someone or someones told them what they needed, but also what they liked. You can see Louis in Paris' mid 20th century eye in things like the Bacon and the sort of furniture you see in the dining room and that sort of living room area. He was doing the American in Paris after the war bohemian thing and there was a movement connected to university culture and beatnik culture in America and American ex-pats from the 40's through… some point in early sixties with a particular type of interest in East Asian culture and certain types of African art. That's going be important in a moment. You can see little touches in all that 21st Century rich person soft brutalism and think it's all guided by the taste of the occupants, who want to look very up to date, but whose tastes and interests were formed in another time. It's really obvious in the bedroom, but it's everywhere subtly once you start looking for it. (Props to the set dressers who were on point).

Let's stop and think about Armand, for a moment. Armand who doesn't know who he is, both in the literal chunks of past are missing and in the psychological sense of he's spent five hundred years trying to mold himself to whatever he thinks other people want or need him to be, hiding his own desires and motivations from himself. He knows he wants/needs someone or something to mold him and he will literally do anything to get that, including burning down the last thing in such a way that he can tell himself he didn't really do it. Circumstances or someone else did it or made him do it. He is utterly ruthless in that pursuit. What he wears, how he presents himself is designed to appeal to the taste and expectations of who/what he's molding himself to. The Amedeo outfit for Marius. The dingy barely dressed outfit of his Satanist coven Gremlin era. The far more respectable outfit he wears the night in the balcony when he declares love for Lestat. The Post war European hipster outfit he wears while seducing Louis, dressing in hopes of being appealing in the way Paris' Bohemian side is to Louis who is dressed like an American college student abroad to study at the Sorbonne. The season two Dubai outfits, perfectly chosen to look modern and elegant but not too formal. Louis always dressed Lestat in modern fashions and Louis modern Louis dresses in a similar, but slightly less formal style…. Armand is dressed for louis. (Props to the costume designers who were on point. I love how in first season you can absolutely tell if Louis or Lestat picked Lestat's outfit in a scene, something we had a lot of fun with. We had a roaring time with season 2 choices as well).

So which things in the apartment are Louis and which are super subtle Armand touches?

Which brings us to the rock garden. Maybe the designer did suggest it as because the need for nature as Armand suggests in season one, but that's not what it's doing, is it? Nor is it functioning as the kind of meditation space they are trying to appropriate. Look at the real meditation gardens. Outside. Lots of live growing things. Boulders suggesting islands and/or mountains. Raked soft sand to suggest water or wind. The whole design is intended to aid meditation, right?

Now look at the travesty in the Dubai apartment. It's a prison cell. A beautifully made, super expensive prison cell, but the stark white brutalist walls and hard angles. Light from above like light through a grate into a prisoner's cell in a ninetieth century novel about the olden days. One sad tree instead of a whole surrounding garden. It's a cell or a prison yard, it's not a meditation space.

Books are kept high up with no ladders where only vampires can access them and Armand cut pages away supposedly for Louis' own good, though not really. Literally and symbolically both it's the opposite of a public library with easily accessible knowledge anyone can have. Armand entirely controls and drip drips whatever narrative he wants to share

Now lets get back to the sand in the meditation area, shall we? Is it soft white sand? No. It's rocks. Small rocks. That can't be comfortable right? So before I even saw the finale, I was saying: I can see a caring partner of a depressed person who can't go outside in the day making an indoor meditation garden to help them, but this isn't that garden. This is a stark and depressing prison cell designed to look like caring but actually sabotaging healing. I can't imagine digging my toes into gravel to meditate (Characters periodically do that: burrow there feet into the pale white gravel), it's distracting.

Then the Finale dropped and I'm sure of it. That is literally the type of gravel they buried Louis in. O.o Louis still has the same gravel inside his feet and ankles, his skin having grown over them during the most traumatic period of his life. he was mourning Claudia and starving and being driven mad by the most extreme form of solitary confinement I can think of. Every step must still be a torment to him, like the little mermaid's sensation of walking on knives. Every step Louis takes reminds him of the loss of his daughter/sister. Talk about penance. O.o So knowing this, either Armand or Louis had the designer fill the false meditation room with a torture device and got the designer to trick it out like a cell.

Seriously, I can't work out which is more fucked up: Armand doing it to keep Louis sick and fragile and too depressed to leave or Louis doing it to himself as a form of self harm. Either way it's seriously fucked up.

Can someone get these three Vampires (Louis, Lestat, and Armand) a real psychiatrist and not just a reasonably self aware journalist who has made a wreck of his life? Let's through in some professional help for Daniel too while we are at it.

Seriously, I am this close to going absolutely feral over this show the way I did for Black Sails and for the same fucking reason.

[the-rockstar-lestat]

Daddy we are waiting to hear your side of the Valentine's story!!!! Louis wrote his story! Now you!!

What happened on Valentine's day? Looking to hear my side of the story? See if they match up?

Well for once they do. Mostly.

It's actually all your faults, my sweet and adoring fans. This accursed Louis Song was breaking my brain. It just wouldn't WRITE!

(What do you say to the love of your life that you frequently want to strangle?)

And I was getting more and more frustrated, with the constant chorus of " "If you can't buy him something MAKE him something." But I couldn't make him something.i couldn't tell him how I feel. I couldn't say what I wanted to say. And I certainly couldn't rhyme it! And I got closer to Valentines, my humble little offering of a song seemed less and less impressive, less and less appropriate. So I bought us some tickets to the Opera. Box seats of course. Louis loves Opera. Make it a music themed Valentine's day! And of course I threw in a bouquet of roses. It's the little things that count.

But i get Louis flowers all the time, you see, it cheers him up, so I added a few extra bouqets. To make it festive. And in my research I came across edible arrangements. I browsed their web site for a solid six hours, spellbound. Bouqets! You can eat! (Not me, but you get the idea.) It was at once an incredible bit of 21st century ingenuity, and a strange reminder of a time when a pineapple could be your table centerpiece. I ordered six.

I don't remember how the suit and the emerald cufflinks showed up, probably insurance on my part that Louis HAD a decent suit for the Opera . And the emeralds were a bit of sentimentality on my part. They always remind me of his eyes.

At some point I realized I had too many flowers being delivered to the house, and started having them sent to the Opera to decorate the box. I thought it a nice touch.

So! You now see how hard I have worked! How much time, not to mention money, I have spent , trying to create this perfect day for my beloved, that he will surely enjoy , and he'll finally know and understand how much I really love him.

Laugh away. I never really learn anything.

So the day comes and I wake Louis up and he is his usual quiet self. We snuggled in bed for a while and I told him I had a surprise planned and his face fell. He just "wasn't feeling right" today. He must have seen my similar crestfallen look because he amended it to "but I'm sure I'll cheer up and we'll have a wonderful time" and went to go get dressed. It was about that time that the first flower delivery arrived. Louis looked approprietly confused and surprised at the first one, and gifted me with the sweetest smile known to man. I then told him we had tickets for the Opera , and he seemed a touch nervous again, but smiled at me. This was going to be perfect.

Then the second delivery arrived.

About twelve doorbells later I did notice something was off about Louis. But if we could just get to the Opera he'd enjoy the music and we'd be happy. He loved his new suit, even if he tripped over one of my larger flower arrangements to get it. And although he SAID the edible arrangements were ridiculous for creatures who can't eat, I know he must have enjoyed them.

In the Uber to the Met Opera he mentioned something about spoons and it all being too much. Nonsense, I said, nothing was ever too much for him. Didn't he know that? Didn't he know how much I loved him?

So we get to the box and he sees how lovely it looks and what does he do? Smile? Gasp? Thank me? Say anything appreciative at all? No. He put his head in his hand and turned around as if to leave.

"Where are you going?" I said , by now a little peeved at him.

"Lestat, everyone is staring"

"Of course they are, it looks phenomenal. Everyone is jealous."

"That not the point, Lestat, you know I don't like being stared at!"

"Well they'll stop when the Opera starts, now sit with me."

And he did . And I noticed him shaking and drumming his fingers and doing those breathing excersizes he does. Why couldn't he just RELAX and enjoy the Opera and have a good time? Doesn't he like all I've done? I'm not asking for graititude, certainly not that from Louis, but a little happiness, appreciation.

At this point I'm getting irritated myself. But nothing is going to stop ME from enjoying myself, and I was swept away during the first act, as I always am, oblivious to all cares and problems. It was when intermission came and Louis stormed out that I finally lost my temper.

"What's wrong now?!" I demanded of him.

"I need some air." He said, wiping his brow with his handkerchief.

"You always need something! What's wrong with you today?"

"This is all too much, Lestat, and it's making me incredibly anxious. "

"How is it making you anxious? You like Opera, you like flowers, you like me, I thought!"

"I do, but ..."

"Then why can't you have a good time! I thought we were having a good time! Why must you ruin everything?"

And that's when he snapped .

"You're having a good time! I'm miserable, and you don't seem to notice or care! Once again you've made all this about you! Did you stop to think for a second about what I would want, or like, or if i as enjoying it?"

It was at this point, friends and fans, that it hit me like a ton of bricks. Louis was right. I had gotten so caught up in my own frustration, that I had taken what should have been a way of showing Louis I cared about his wants, needs, desires, and turned it into proving to myself that I was worthy of his love. And all because I couldn't, as I never can, put my feelings into words.

So did I tell him that? Apologize? Ask forgiveness? Take him home and spend the rest of the night in bed? Read the last sentence again, gentle reader, because what I said was:

" Ungrateful little brat! You're plainly not enjoying it, or you would have said something! Thank you, perhaps?"

"It all comes down to gratitude with you, doesn't it? "

And on and on we went, somehow winding up in front of the fountain I'm Lincoln center. We argued well past intermission, and missed the beginning of the second act. And at some point Louis said it.

"I'm going home."

"You can't go home! We have tickets!'

"I don't care about the tickets, Lestat, I'm going home, and I don't think you should come with me."

My world exploded.

"What?" I said, trying not to let Louis realize my world had exploded.

"Go back to the court. Or to New Orleans. I don't care. I just don't think we should be around each other for a while."

"Are you breaking up with me?" I asked, my heart in my throat.

"No--yes. I thought you were mature enough to handle a relationship but you're really not. Not yet. "

And he walked off into the night.

And I sat by the fountain until I could almost see the sun. I dug myself a tiny hole in Central Park, right by the lake. The next evening I took to the sky and went back to France, and knocked on the door of my own château, where I was received with joy, the true Prince, returned to reign. Only Armand asked "Where's Louis?" And only Armand knew that whatever had happened it was my fault.

So there you have it, darlings, Valentine's Day , or lack thereof. Do I think we're broken up forever? No. Of course not. The word forever is meaningless to us. And from Louis' latest posts, he does miss me already. I'm trying to give him his space and time. And figure out how to apologise.

Mark my words, I will fix this