#you would think that since it's just lestat he doesn't have to be a marriage counselor

[inheroes--wetrust]

look the chance of this happening is like 1% but in my head this is how season 2 is going to end:

dubai is over. what happened to loumand? no idea. is daniel turned? probably but who's to say. after whatever drama goes down, we cut to a few months later.

interview with the vampire has been published. daniel is at a signing, line out the door, etc, etc. we watch him sign books for a few people. a book is placed in front of him, he takes it automatically, flips it open, says, "who should i make it out to?" the camera pans out wide, and we see lestat in modern clothes. lestat smiles and says, "the vampire lestat."

daniel's eyes widen in recognition, and then, doomed acceptance, becuase he knows where the fuck this is going. he says, "oh, motherf---"

cut, end season.

[revengeagainstlifeitself]

Thoughts on the divorce

I would have liked a final explosive divorce fight in Dubai as much as anyone else but I think it actually makes sense that the characters react as minimally as they do.

For Louis, the one thing that this entire relationship has been predicated upon is exposed as a lie. Louis wouldn't be with Armand in present day if he didn't feel the need to continue to punish himself and Lestat for Claudia's death. We see from the fight in '73 that really any love he had for Armand in Paris is gone - at this point it's a marriage of obligation and habit. And the only reason this works as punishment is because he sees Armand as less responsible for Claudia's death than Lestat. In short, Daniel pulls out the one pin left holding the whole thing together. There is nothing else to unravel through an argument. Just rage communicated through violence and the desperate need to get out.

At first, Armand's lack of fight is a little more tricky for me. Especially given that he definitely has the power kill or mindfuck everyone in that penthouse. What Armand wants from his relationship with Louis is stability. Louis has been a safe source of that stability because of the spiteful trap he has created for himself but also because Armand has bound himself to Louis through penance. "I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you" is source of comfort for Armand (see @gallierhouse x and x for more). But I don't think the relationship is particularly fulfilling for him either - thinking about the san fran fight and the look after the chaste kiss in the Dubai bedroom.

Throughout his backstory, Armand is always ready to jump ship and cling to something new when his source of stability is disrupted. He doesn't resist being installed as leader of the Paris coven, he doesn't resist Lestat converting that coven to the theatre. He especially feels his position is threatened when his lies are revealed (that the cult philosophy is based in lies, that Louis and Claudia killed Lestat) and panics when this happens. Fundamentally, Armand doesn't trust the people around him to love him and is constantly "hedging [his] bets to see who emerges from the ash heap." So why would he fight back when Daniel burns down his marriage? Especially, when there is another opportunity of love/ stability standing right in front of him? As several people have pointed out, Armand consistently for the people who fuck up his life (for ex. @wizardpink x). I think that is what we see in that second of hesitation where Armand looks at Daniel before going after Louis.

The reason we don't need a bigger fight is because the loumand marriage has always been a sham. A sham that was torn to bits and stepped on in San Francisco. And since then it's been a soiled bit of cloth that Daniel's been slowly pulling threads out of until now there is nothing left.

[iwtvdramacd18]

i would love to hear your thoughts on this if and when you feel like sharing!! i put out those thoughts after e2 had aired and we've learned so much more about louis since!

OK so first of all this has been in my drafts forever I apologize:

I didn't even notice that was an older post my bad! But that stuff especially about a runs in the family type situation and the very deep intense fear that comes with seeing a family member with severe mental illness and also lacking the ability to fully understand.

I won't get into too many details but I will say that my analysis and reading of Louis' character is very much shaped by the fact that I have been in a lot of mental states/situations like his (its one of the reasons he's such an important character to me). My family has a lot of severe mental illness running through it, including one of my closest relatives who had schizophrenia. And while Paul doesn't have an explicitly stated diagnosis we do know he experiences hallucinations, as did my relative. Now growing up I didn't really understand the extent of the severity of mental illness, even while I had experienced symptoms myself all my life, which was really scary... I lacked a healthy recognition of severe mental illness, as I think it's very obvious in media especially with regards to psychosis it's horribly demonized. Just look at the way people throw around terms like "psychotic". Recognizing similarities between what I was experiencing and what my relative was experiencing not only scared me but also made me feel very shameful.

And that visceral fear of seeing a family member struggle with severe mental illness I think you really hit on the head, I think it does manifest in Louis in not only trying to rationalize/ separate himself from it but also a lot of shame regarding it. I think there is something to say about being the oldest (as I am), realizing you're very mentally ill further down the line, and a fear of having influenced your younger siblings. As far as we know Louis does not experience hallucinations, at least not like Paul, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that he has experienced psychosis (I believe it was yani? who has mentioned the small glimpse we got of the real version of Lestat's "death" with Louis attacking Claudia).

I'd expect that despite Claudia not being biologically Louis' daughter he'd also have those fears pop up again regarding a sort of "infection" of mental illness. One scene that REALLY stands out is his near attempt in episode 6 where he mentions the only reason he didn't carry through was because he didn't want to "ruin" Claudia's departure the way Paul's death "ruined" Grace's marriage night. Which is absolutely heart-rending to me. We know Louis languishes in a lot of shame and guilt and I think his mental illness is a huge one he keeps skirting around.

[prouvaireafterdark]

So a few things- for much of their time together, Louis was not drinking human blood and that affected his libido significantly. And then later his depression probably meant he had no real desire to seek out sex (i mean he doesn't even wanna fuck lestat for a whole decade or more). On top of that, I think the reaction Lestat had to Jonah (who luckily left for war immediately) and Lestat's later violence meant he knew anyone he got involved with was probably in some danger. Plus he's still very early in his vampire years so he probably has human ideas of marriage/love in his mind in 1917 but his response to lestat opening up the relationship was basically okay as long as I get to do it too. It's just in 1917 there simply wouldn't have been a lot of choices since he can't be open about his sexuality and he can't really fraternize outside his race even. Whether his ideas about this change later as he lives more years as a vampire and isn't just resigned to Lestat because there are so few options for black queer men in that time, who knows.

Yeah it's hard to say given the time period and relative lack of prospects, but I always read Louis' "so I can fuck whoever I want?" comment as more of a bitter challenge to Lestat opening up their relationship than like a genuine expression of Louis' desire to see other people. Like, when he sees Jonah again and catches Lestat watching him while touching Antoinette he's like "you know what? fuck it and fuck you" and just decides to go for it, rather than him sitting there thinking to himself "man. I really want to bang other people, but who would go for it? oh, look at that, my childhood sweetheart just walked in, this is perfect" if that makes sense?

[licncourt]

What do you think about Nicki? On the one hand I don’t like how he and Louis are often conflated as ‘twins’ (although that’s largely due to AR) since both are uniquely their own person despite their similarities and Lestat definitely having a type. I also believe Lestat genuinely loved Nicki and even though that relationship was probably never one built to last, I also think Lestat never wanted him to die and felt real remorse over it (the trauma of that relationship clearly spilled into his ‘marriage’ with Louis) and would always love him as his first love. It just makes me sad they couldn’t amicably part or have any sort of closure. Sorry I just get sad over Nicki lol

(Okay this is my second time writing this after the hellsite ate it so it's probably not going to be quite as insanely long, but here you go! Maybe that was Tumblr nerfing me for talking too damn much)

God NICKI. I am always crying in the club over Nicki.

First of all, like you said, I absolutely do not see Nicki and Louis as interchangeable. They are both clearly Lestat's infamous Type (sad, rich, intellectual brunette with a drinking problem), but I think Lestat sums up the difference between them pretty well in TVL and IWTV, which I'll get to later.

To start off, Lestat is clearly drawn to men who are a foil to himself, and he seems to seek out partners who will need him (Nicki touches on this a bit when he talks about how much he needs Lestat's "light", his joy and optimism) and I don't think that's a coincidence. Lestat has a deep need to BE needed, and I think Nicki filled that niche for him. He also has what I would diagnose as I Can Fix Him Syndrome and it's terminal, so again, sad, morbid, angry Nicki was the perfect person for baby Lestat to fall for.

Nicki was absolutely Lestat's first love and I think it was mutual too. There are so many heartbreakingly romantic moments between them, and the chapters of TVL with the two of them as mortals is one of my favorite parts of VC. It's so lovely and bittersweet, the perfect portrait of starry-eyed young love. They were both robbed of their innocence by inside and outside forces, and that's heartbreaking to witness as a reader. They deserved better.

I think what was truly devastating for Lestat was not that it ended, but HOW it ended. We can see their relationship beginning to sour even before Magnus, but it's only after that Lestat (and the reader) really gets why. During the turning, Lestat sees the darkness that Nicki had always described to him and finally understands that the problem is not that Nicki doesn't see his own light, but that he doesn't have it. It's not part of his worldview, he doesn't even have a frame of reference for understanding Lestat. They are fundamentally, essentially, different creatures who, for whatever reason, don't have the common ground necessary to support a relationship.

Nicki is propelled through life by the chip on his shoulder. He wants to get back at his family either by being the best violinist to rub it in their face or to crash and burn to give his father the middle finger. It's his bitterness and anger that moves him forward and it's the lens through which he understands the world. At best, he looks for "good art and bad art" and wants to claw his way up out of spite, whereas Lestat measures his own creation not by quantifiable objectives but by how much happiness it brings, the good it does. That illustrates the larger rift between them pretty well, and I don't think they ever had the ability to truly empathize with or relate to each other. There was love there, but that's not enough.

It's not really Nicki's fault for being the way he is, and I don't think he's a bad person. A lot of his behavior and thought patterns feel like mental illness, though I couldn't say what specifically (@sofipitch any thoughts, psych queen?) and that's simply part of what makes him tragic. Maybe in another time, his story would've ended differently and he could've had a life with Lestat. As it was though, love wasn't sufficent to hold them together through that disconnect, especially after the turning. I feel like becoming a vampire makes these characters more of what they are, the good and the bad. Any possible chance Lestat and Nicki had at making it work as humans was destroyed by Magnus.

As you said, so many of the problems Louis and Lestat face in their relationship stem, at least in part, from Nicki. Lestat's controlling behavior feels like a manifestation of his abandonment issues. His desire for Louis to be dependent on him reads like a response to Nicki's rejection of him once he was no longer needed. Even Lestat's aggressive insistence that Louis stop sulking, enjoy vampire life and stop being miserable seem like a desperate attempt to stop history from repeating itself, especially since we know Lestat was very aware of their similarities.

Where I think Louis and Nicki diverge, and what makes Lestat compatible with Louis in a way he wasn't with Nicki, is that worldview I mentioned. I'll refer to this post I made about Louis as an optimist for more of what I think about him specifically, but for now I'll just say that Louis, despite surface similarities, is actually much more similar to Lestat than Nicki when it comes to their outlook on life. In TVL, Lestat describes Louis as having a softness to him, a kind of love for the human experience and a reverence for the world that Nicki lacked. We can see that in Lestat too right from the beginning and it's a huge part of his character, but it runs deeper than just personality. It informs his actions, his beliefs, how he interacts with the world.

It's the same for Louis. All of his sadness and existential angst aside, it's still those same ideas that drive him, the hope for goodness and for happiness in whatever form it takes. Surface personality traits aside, he and Lestat can very much understand each other on that level once they give it a chance. Louis is different from Nicki in the way that really counts, and that softness, that optimism, that Lestat-like worldview, is why Nicki went into the fire within a year or two and Louis survived two centuries without even going underground. It's also why he can understand Lestat and Lestat can understand him in spite of their other differences.

I'm going to put a pin in discussing Nicki's death because I have a whole meta post planned. I'll say for now that I don't think it's suggested in any explicit way in the narrative that he wanted Nicki dead, but I still have some reasons why I think that's a possible reading. I also totally agree that Lestat loved Nicki and genuinely grieved for him. That was still his first love and the one he thought he'd share his life with, the one who was there for the best and some of the worst times of his life. I think Lestat will always have love for Nicki.

(Not to plug my own shit, but I talk in-depth about literally all of this Nicki stuff as well as Louis and Lestat's personal outlooks on life and philosophy in chapters 8 & 9 respectively of my current fic, so if anyone is interested in that, there you go! 18k of this discussion in prose form.)