i love when my mutuals r like….obsessed with things and talk about them a lot and are super passionate it makes me so happy and if yall ever feel like ur being annoying i promise you’re not it’s the best thing and it makes my heart warm
god i can never stop thinking about certain sculptures used in modern art and how they can be used to elicit the beautiful and terrible feeling of true and genuine horror in ways that a lot of horror movies can never do
like when you ask people “what is horror?” they’ll tend to give examples of monsters, of killers, of dark places, of sharp teeth and too many legs and lots and lots of blood. which is true, that can be used as horror! but i’d like to call that “the horror of being eaten/hurt/killed” or more succinctly “the horror of vulnerability”. it’s a horror that something, whether it’s a killer or a monster or some phenomenon, has the ability to cause us harm. we see large amounts of teeth and we think “that thing is going to tear us to pieces with those teeth” or we see spilled blood and we think “someone has been hurt, there’s a chance we can be hurt too by whatever spilled this blood”.
but what certain modern sculptures can do is elicit a very physical visceral reaction of a completely different kind of horror.
it’s “the horror that something is a thing that SHOULD not exist, and you are absolutely powerless to understand what it is, but it is existing in your space, right now, it is real and you cannot make it unreal no matter what you do”
or perhaps, in a shorter fashion, it’s “the horror of wrongness”
like one of the sculptures that made me feel this way is this sculpture here, named “Monekana” located in the American Art Museum in Washington D.C:
“okay,” you say, with a shrug. “it’s a horse made of wood? what’s so scary about that?”. but this is the lie of the photograph! a photograph of a sculpture rarely grasps the experience of standing next to a sculpture. you have to picture yourself walking into this room, practically devoid of people, and coming face to face with this sculpture that is very large and very real.
and your brain screams that “THIS IS WRONG. MAKE IT GO AWAY. THIS IS WRONG”, like at any moment you expect it to move, to twist its head, to follow you with eyes that aren’t simply there. it looks like a horse but it is no horse. you could almost argue that maybe it isn’t even an art piece at all, but it wandered in from god knows what kind of world and it’s blending in with everything else. maybe it’s fooling you. maybe it isn’t.
anyways, i’m not trying to say that this sculpture in particular is SUPPOSED to be scary, it may make other people feel nothing at all (or even positive feelings!), but what i’m trying to say is that feeling i had that day, when i saw this thing, when i felt this fearful instinct to stay away and not stare, it’s THAT feeling that i feel so many writers and makers of horror don’t completely understand. you don’t need teeth. you don’t need blood. you don’t need to make Spooky Scary Skeletons or chainsaw-wielding villains. all you need is to create something wrong in its existence, something to make parts of us fear the fact that we can’t entirely rationalize what we’re seeing.
The experience of sculpture absolutely gets lost in images. I’ve walked into museums and been like WOW THE FUCK even when I knew it was coming.
I love this subject, though. I love “implication horror.” You see something, and the realization of what it means, which often comes a few moments later, is where the real horror lies—not in how splattery or gratuitously shocking it is. The wrongness of a thing in fiction, when done well, is the best. I was watching Melancholia the other day, and what a terrifying example of wrongness horror.
Anyway this is such a great post thanks for putting the whole idea into words so well. ❤
You are free to disagree with me, but arguing is not – my consulting rates are $125/hour, 2 hour minimum, cash only, payment due up front. See my assistant for an appointment.
The fact that Anne Rice sued people for writing fanfics is so hilarious to me when i think about how much Lestat would love fanfics.
He’d be so delighted to find out he had fans sitting in their bedrooms writing about him.
He’d walk into the living room with a lapto grinning any time his favorites updated, and Louis would try to leave right away. Louis would beg him to stop while he read them out loud.
I’m so glad that you thought of me when you read it! There are far worse things to be associated with omg. And yes: I still wonder if Louis is genuinely deep and depressed, and the pretentious tone comes from honest misery–or if he’s putting on some kind of Byronic mask, unable to actually feel for others any more than the average vampire does, and that this flowery writing is his attempt to reconcile with him self “Yes I CAN feel, I do still maintain that aspect of my humanity.”
And Lestat comes across as the villain because Louis wants him to, when you read the section of The Vampire Lestat that focuses on his time with Louis, you start to wonder how much Louis exaggerated to make himself feel like the long wandering philosopher, and that Lestat was little more than a rich European fleeing his troubles. Lestat, despite being just as melancholic and miserable is affected by things much differently, and unlike Louis, who at the end tries to stay detached from the world, Lestat compensates for his pain by falling in love with everything he sees in the world, throwing himself to the mercy of it in a half-death wish and half-euphoric madness.
They’re both such fascinating characters for the way that they handle pain and their own evilness (there’s a running debate under the surface with all of the vampires “are we inherently wicked becuase of what we are, or are we merely something enhanced, no more wicked than before, but everything we do seems louder?”). The cast of the novels are all so flawed but so heartfelt (often despite themselves).
As far as anti-heroes go, these two drama queens are up on my favorites list with the Phantom and Rochester, (though while Rochester’s failing was merely hiding and running away from his issues, pretending that they weren’t there, I’d say he’s lower on the ‘Byronic anti-hero’ level and more simply a Percy Shelley).
Finally, don’t apologize, I love talking about these books so much. Or at least the first three. I’m ride or die with Anne Rice at this point, but I try to take everything after Queen of the Damned with a grain of salt….or a few cups of salt. A lot of salt….
#Eloquent eloquence #Annabellioncourt #on point as always
They’re both such fascinating characters for the way that they handle pain and their own evilness… The cast of the novels are all so flawed but so heartfelt (often despite themselves).
^For me, this is what elevates VC from many other vampire/supernatural/any other series. If I liked them as vampires there’s plenty of other vampire media out there to get into, but these characters are who they are first, and vampires secondarily.
I would add that ppl are allowed to have those kinds of feelings when they’re 13, it’s around that time that we’re grasping the harsh reality of the real world. Disappointments about one’s expectations not meeting reality… it’s a trying time.
Whether growing pains are as valid as Louis’ issues (the whole “killing people is wrong but feels right now” is a big one), that’s up to individual reader’s judgment, but I think @annabellioncourt put it very well, that Louis is trying to maintain some dignity with the way he tells his story, which may come across as pretentious by our modern standards. The other thing to remember is that that book was written in the 70′s, and the writing style may seem dated for that reason, as well.
Remember that Louis reads A LOT, and he likes this older literature, so some of the language of the writers he loves seeps into his own language and the way he frames his memories. I think that’s partly why we see/hear so little of Louis in later canon, capturing his voice is a challenge.
I didn’t know that post was being reblogged and it makes me happy that it is but in the tags I found someone defending Louis’s narrative as truthful and I’m actually really curious about that point of view! Pretty much anyone with whom I discuss the vampire chronicles agree that Lestat is the more reliable narrator like literally no one I have spoken to says they believe Louis’s narrative over Lestat’s and I’d love for someone with that stance to get in my ask box and like, try to convince me to believe Louis over Lestat. That could be super fun!!
ooc; I feel like Louis was very particular about what he talked about and how he spoke of it when he gave his interview. Louis is a very cautious individual who, in canon, is repeatedly stated as valuing his privacy, so for him to give the interview in the first place suggests that he had reasons for doing so. I’ve always surmised one factor was that he wanted Lestat to be angry and come find him. He didn’t really know Lestat’s circumstances re: Lestat going to ground, so for all he was aware, Lestat could have been out there somewhere, conscious and aware.
I think one of the more interesting inconsistencies is the timing of Louis’ encounter with Lestat at the end of Interview with the Vampire. Louis states that it was “just last spring” that he and Armand had encountered Lestat in New Orleans, acting crazy. Lestat verifies in The Vampire Lestat that Louis & Armand did come to New Orleans (although his account of the story is definitely different from Louis’), but he states that their visit occurred in the 1920s, shortly before he went to ground. I think with the timing, Lestat’s definitely more believable due to the whole fact that he did go to ground for YEARS, which then leads me to believe Louis’ whole story regarding their reunion is fictitious (although, at the same time, Lestat WAS kind of losing it, so). I think it was an intentional lie on Louis’ part, probably to put a bullseye on Lestat’s location just to be that douchebag. And suggesting the encounter was more recent would make it seem like Lestat was still there. Of course, Daniel ended up running into Armand instead of Lestat. 😉
I think a lot of how Louis speaks of the past with Lestat was due to him feeling pretty fucking bitter at the time, and honestly, I think he probably didn’t fully understand a lot of Lestat’s motives back then. Louis is good at telling the truth, but not the complete story, and both he and Lestat are great at viewing things exclusively from their own points of view. They’re both very opinionated. Of course, Lestat’s also very good at exaggerating.
To make a long story short–it’s always been my belief that when Louis lies, he lies intentionally. I think Louis and Lestat’s narratives together make the actual true story.
Oh! I absolutely think Louis’s lies are totally intentional! I think he’s dishonest in his narrative, not delusional! That exact inconsistency, Louis’s description of speaking to Lestat in the ruined house, is where I started side-eyeing Louis and second-guessing everything he tells us throughout his narrative. He didn’t just mark Lestat’s location, he made up what was apparently a totally fictitious Vampire trying to get Lestat’s attention just to make the encounter that much more…what? Dramatic? I guess?
“…and honestly, I think he probably didn’t fully understand a lot of Lestat’s motives back then.”
The lack of communication between them is like, THE issue in their relationship honestly. And the major problem is that the thing Louis wants most of all, answers about Vampires and their origin, is the one thing Lestat is literally forbidden to provide. Poor Louis was just wanted some rhyme and reason to his immortal life, the same way Lestat did when he left all of those messages for Marius over the years. They’re very similar in their need for knowledge, imo.
“I think Louis and Lestat’s narratives together make the actual true story.” I like this conclusion a lot! It’s just unfortunate we don’t actually get to hear them both tell two sides of the same story but for a very brief bit, because of course Anne Rice wouldn’t write and publish all of the Claudia years again told form Lestat’s pov. But! I wish we could read that, you know? In Louis’s narrative we get a brief background of his life before Lestat, and then most of the story revolves around his life with and after Lestat. Whereas Lestat’s story is almost completely without Louis until the very end, and their interactions are largely summarized. Like I said, it wouldn’t make sense in the real world to recap everything in Louis’s story form Lestat’s point of view. But I think if we were able to hear ALL of Interview with the Vampire from Lestat’s point of view, we’d end up with the absolute truth by picking through and putting together both narratives. It’d be a wonderful read!!!
Thanks for the response!!!! (:
“Louis is a very cautious individual who, in canon, is repeatedly stated as valuing his privacy, so for him to give the interview in the first place suggests that he had reasons for doing so. I’ve always surmised one factor was that he wanted Lestat to be angry and come find him.”
“I think Louis and Lestat’s narratives together make the actual true story.”
The lack of communication between them is like, THE issue in their relationship honestly
^Yep! Very much agree. AND WE CAN BLAME MARIUS FOR THIS, who forbade Lestat from telling the secrets ;A; This may have been retconned, but one good reason Marius gives for not telling the vampire origin story, etc., is that Lestat’s fledgling(s) might not be able to handle the truth:
[Lestat:] “Yes, ” I said. “But the legends, our origins … What about those
children that I make? Can’t I tell them- "
[Marius:] "No. As I told you, tell part and you will end up telling all. Besides,
if these fledglings are children of the Christian god, if they are
poisoned as Nicolas was with the Christian notion of Original Sin and
guilt, they will only be maddened and disappointed by these old tales.
It will all be a horror to them that they cannot accept. Accidents,
pagan gods they don’t believe in, customs they cannot understand.
One has to be ready for this knowledge, meager as it may be. Rather
listen hard to their questions and tell them what you must to make
them contented. And if you find you cannot lie to them, don’t tell
them anything at all. Try to make them strong as godless men today
are strong. But mark my words, the old legends never. Those are
mine and mine alone to tell. "
I-want-my-IWTV 
