I honestly tried and tried and could not improve her story other than making the ball red fucking velvet bc YOU KNOW he would want it to be red fucking velvet not blue! like of course, but i bet it is blue in the fashion show bc blue balls are hilarious aren’t they?
(Also Lestat is the biggest cheater and uses the Mind Gift to knock down the pins his ball doesn’t hit and they all groan bc he is getting all these cheat strikes and the alley has to award him the top slot on the chalkboard)
THIS IS THE MOST LESTAT THING THAT HE HAS DONE SINCE HE ACTUALLY PLAYED LESTAT ONCE UPON A TIME. THIS IS MORE LESTAT THAN ANYTHING THAT LESTAT DID IN THE MOVIE.
Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don’t give a fuck how crazy they are! (From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996)
#from dusk till dawn#dude they do not show a vampire playing with their fangs often enough cinematically#bc that is the first damn thing i would do#EVERY NIGHT#play with or touch fangs#bc they are mega awesome okay#repeatedly bite own lip to scare ppl#YES#this is how I would vampire#yes I would like to vampire plz#how to vampire#not VC#VC adjacent
#SERIOUSLY I DON’T HEAR ABOUT JUST HAVING FANGS ENOUGH #I mean those two idiots in iwtv took every chance to show their fangs with a stretched grin or open mouthed laugh but to actually play with #their fangs like a nervous tick #especially newbie vamps #because just learning how to talk again without biting off your tongue after getting those things #like that would take a couple days at least
YES ALL THAT #AUGH #THIS IS ALL WE GET IN TERMS OF A VAMPIRE PLAYING WITH HIS FANGS IT IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH #but praise him for doing it I bet it was not in the script #ACTING #PROFESSIONAL ACTING
Hello! Sorry to bother you, I’ve been following you for a while and from your blog I can tell you’re very into the Vampire Chronicles. I just finished Interview with the Vampire and I just started The Vampire Lestat and I’m very confused and I thought you could answer my question if you had the time. I’m very confused because it seems like The Vampire Lestat is set after Interview and Lestat has a VERY different personality than he does during Interview. As I’m reading it doesn’t seem like they are the same person. For example in Interview Lestat is very blood thirsty and only cares for himself but in The Vampire Lestat he waits around for a human to kill, but specifically one whose killed other people and shows no remorse about it. This doesn’t sound like Lestat, more like something Louis would do. Did Anne Rice slightly switch up his personality? It seems like he is a lot more softer than in the last book. Thank you for your time!!
I asked permission to make this into a text post because wow, one: it is a common confusion, one that most readers go through, and two: there’s no short answer to it.
For starters, yes, The Vampire Lestat (TVL) takes place after Interview With the Vampire (IWTV), but after the opening of Lestat waking up in the modern world and putting together his band, it jumps back into a flashback that makes up the bulk of the novel–starting with his human life in 16th century France, to his becoming a vampire and onward (I won’t tell you more exact details as spoilers I don’t know how much of it you’ve gotten through yet). By the end of the few hundred page long flashback you’re in present day with his band and the vampires who aren’t too happy about the fact that he’s out there screaming their secrets to the world.
Lestat is much kinder in this one, much more emotional and “softer” as you say, than he is in IWTV because this time he’s the one telling the story. Louis never asked and Lestat never thought to tell the deeper truths and realities of his behavior and Louis chose to believe that he was a villain, because in my opinion, it was the easiest thing for Loius–if he saw Lestat as evil then his hatred of him, his abandonment of him, the hiding of his murder at their daughter’s hands could all e justified. Louis, though claiming he’s not religious, has a highly religious mindset, he’s nearly obsessed with morality thinking that the more he clings to it the more he can also cling to his mortality as well.
Louis told the truth as he saw it, and in his deep melancholia everything he saw was darker than it seemed to be, even without his coping mechanism of coloring everyone around him as dark as he logically could to make himself seem more human by contrast (as the series goes on, Louis becomes fascinating because he is so detached from the vampires, and never uses the powers that vampires gain with age, that he’s just this being of raw power, stronger than most vampires. He becomes by the time of the last book both the most mortal and the least mortal at once out of the coven. He’s terrifying in his complexity, his ruthlessness mirrored in his mercy).
TVL is very much just Lestat going “Hold on! This is NOT what happened, let me tell you MY side of things and you’ll know what REALLY happened,” and if you’ve grown up with siblings or have ever seen an episode of a cartoon/sitcom where the same plot was shown through different points of view but changed the events drastically….that’s what this is. This is Lestat presenting his “I am not an idiot evil drama vamp, I am the endlessly clever just-as-depressed-as-Louis but in different ways Brat Prince.” But he’s also a drama queen.
In fact, he’s such a drama queen (literally, he was an actor once, theatre was his passion) that lying, bending the truth, exaggerating…it all comes second nature to him. I doubt that TVL is the exact truth, I doubt Lestat’s story telling because he–just like Louis, Armand, David, Marius, all of them–are not reliable narrators.
Lestat became my favorite narrator and character in the series by the time that I finished the book, partially because of his flair for the extravagant in his writing. Louis speaks like a slow violin occasionally screaming against the bowstring, firelight, dark red wine, fine black suits and the sound of dust gathering in antique colonial mansions. Lestat speaks like free-flowing drink, a loud symphony orchestra that still has those quiet violins constantly crying away though often overlooked, in the frenzied high of someone addicted to being under the spotlight.
Anne Rice might have decided to change his personality in order to write the second book but her characters are closer to how they’re portrayed in TVL than they are in IWTV (with the exception of Armand–Lestat’s attitude towards Armand is amusing, his claims of hating the little twerp gave me life when reading it the first time).
Thank you so much for asking me, I had a lot of fun answering it, and I hope that I was of some help!
i-want-my-iwtv could probably help as well! the fandom is very kind, active, and open despite its small size and many of them will be more than willing to give their perspective!
ooc; Reblogging because spot on post is spot on. This is how I’ve always described it as well–Louis told his story exactly as he saw it.
None of them are reliable narrators. This is true.
Louis did ask Lestat, often, about Lestat’s maker, their origin as a species, whether vampires were meant to serve Satan, etc. and Lestat had been unable to answer him during IWTV for various reasons that are explained in TVL. The fact that Claudia also asked these questions and was also not given answers was another reason she grew to distrust Lestat, for his refusal to give them even a scrap.
The joke about Lestat calling Louis “Merciful Death!” was because at that time, Louis was so merciful towards humans that he chose animal blood just to avoid taking human life. As Lestat mentions, it’s not living, it’s surviving, to do that, and it certainly contributed to Louis’ gloom and misery during that time period.
Thank you for clearing that up! I remember Louis mentioning the intimacy thing but I totally forgot about Lestat. I just have a vivid memory of Armand and Daniel in bed and I guess my mind tried to fill in the blanks.
Honestly, It’s been so long since I’ve read them that I’m starting to wonder what I actually read and what my friends and I headcanon’ed.
Why thank u dear, such a lovely compliment! I shall have to post more selfies… unless u are referring to my inner beauty of which I have an abundance *u*
I do ship L/L! Absolutely! However did u guess?? sometimes Louis doesn’t ship them but thats fine bc nobody ships L/L as hard as Lestat ships L/L.
I don’t remember when exactly, but I think AR did call Louis a “damaged pilgrim” at one point. There’s that.
If you want to cry over Louis, read Merrick, if you haven’t already. He has a lead role in that one ;] But be prepared because your feels will be squarely hit.
Hit the jump for my thoughts on why we don’t get much Louis action post-IWTV.
(ok because Louis spoke in English, and the French followed MOST of the same patterns in literary history, I’m going to base this mostly with British literature)
Yep! Louis manner of talking was much more flowery. It was lush and decorative without the higher philosophical trappings of the earlier 1800′s. Louis is more along the lines of the Oscar Wilde’s era of the very late 19th century, which is what most people think of today when they think “Victorian writing.” Similar in voice (though not subject) would also be Matthew Arnold (read some of his essays, and tell me that’s not how Louis talks), Wilkie Collins, and Henry James.
The trade mark of the era was the fading out in popularity of language for the sake of language: the British (and to a lesser extent the French) had a love for the intricacy of the language, how it all worked together, and (take a look at Charles Dickens for an Example of this) it would result in using several paragraphs to tell what could be summed up in a couple sentences.
The realists in France and a few in Russia (as the Russians idolized France in the 1800′s) were starting something new by the close of the century: keeping their prose short, sweet and to the point. With no less artistry they found beauty in a minimalistic approach: instead of “Roses of velvet that matched the shade the rubies dripping from the mark of the asp on Cleopatra’s breast,” for example, it was now “soft, bloody roses.”
They still evoke the same image, but not the same tone.
Going back to what this has to do with Louis: he’s not so much involved in human goings on, he’s aware of events and films, but still speaks in the language of the century where he spent the most time communicating with others–also he would not have lost his speech patterns over those decades with Armand because Armand was mostly isolated in his language circles. So we can look at all of that as to why Louis talks the way he does.
I’m sorry if that was incoherent and rambling; I’m cooking and writing at the same time.
^I knew I could count on annabellioncourt for some excellent points ❤
She also added: “Louis does show a HEAVY influence from the French symbolist poets (the school that Charles Baudelaire was from).”
Of course Louis would express himself in the language of the writers he enjoyed. OF COURSE HE WOULD. We all know he’s basically a big ol’ bookworm w/ fangs.
Why thank u dear, such a lovely compliment! I shall have to post more selfies… unless u are referring to my inner beauty of which I have an abundance *u*
I do ship L/L! Absolutely! However did u guess?? sometimes Louis doesn’t ship them but thats fine bc nobody ships L/L as hard as Lestat ships L/L.
I don’t remember when exactly, but I think AR did call Louis a “damaged pilgrim” at one point. There’s that.
If you want to cry over Louis, read Merrick, if you haven’t already. He has a lead role in that one ;] But be prepared because your feels will be squarely hit.
Hit the jump for my thoughts on why we don’t get much Louis action post-IWTV.
My theory re: Louis’ low profile is listed below. Because he had served his purpose with his major job (point 1), AR seemed not to need him as much. She kept him around for the same reason Akasha spares him QOTD, because the star of the show, Lestat, loves him.
1. Louis was AR’s vehicle through which to deal with the grief of the death of her daughter. Louis intended to kill Claudia.
Claudia was 5 yrs old, Michele Rice was 5 yrs old.
Claudia and Michele share a birthday (9/22, indicated in her diary entry in QOTD),
btw, Louis shares a birthday with AR (10/4, although I don’t think it’s in canon).
Louis was, in a way, Claudia’s mother: “You became my mother, and my father, and so I’m yours forever.” says movie!Claudia (which, let’s not forget, AR wrote the screenplay).
But more than all that, Louis was the one that AR wanted to interview, “Why did you kill my daughter? Did God, or the Devil, tell you to do so? What did she do wrong? What did we, as parents, do wrong?” Louis basically answered her that Claudia was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; he had no more contact with God or the Devil than AR does, and he was just a hungry animal in the savage garden, and Claudia was just an innocent victim.
2. Louis’ “voice” is rich and structured; IWTV emulated the (I think?) Victorian-era gothic novels (annabellioncourt might know the proper genre) that AR loved. His whole way of being is a quiet intensity, beauty that roils beneath the surface, and that is hard to write. Lestat’s easier, he’s a rollercoaster of egotistical bastard and cowering crybaby. Plus, when Louis is not the POV, you can have pages of other character’s swooning over him ❤
3. AR focused a number of the VC on other characters, and he’s peripheral to their stories. Louis does have some action and has a small section from his POV in PL, though!
I-want-my-IWTV 