Interview With The Vampire tattoo sleeve by this amazing artist
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I am going to give you the choice I never had.
Interview With The Vampire (1994) dir. Neil Jordan
How do I make a character’s death really sad? (For a VC fic.) (-Memnoch, The Devil.)
I think there are many ways to make a character’s death really sad, and bc we can all have different feelings about a given character, any individual reader will be very sad about the death, when another reader might be totally indifferent (or even glad!). I’ve only written fanfic myself, and I know what makes me sad when I read/write character death, that’s about as informed as I am on the topic, DISCLAIMER: I’m not a professional writer and this is not professional advice.
💀 Some things that come to mind re: making a character’s death really sad: 💀
- How they die,
- How preventable their death was,
- How other characters feel their loss and/or the loss of their potential,
- And how much that character meant to the reader/audience, did they like the character?
I don’t know what specifically you’re doing in the Memnoch timeline… I won’t use any examples of deaths from that book in case of spoilers (Idk sometimes I’m more respectful about spoiling ppl than other times *shrugs*)
In IWTV, it was a very sad death when Claudia died. It’s portrayed differently in the book(s) and the movie, but I’m just going to address it re: the points above generally and drawing from both.
1. She died by sunlight exposure and it seemed extremely painful.
Louis would not have seen it, so he can’t describe the moment of her death in the book, but it’s shown in the movie. Leading up to the death, the tension builds and builds, all these moments where Louis, Claudia and Madeleine are hoping for Armand (or some other deux ex machina) to swoop in and save them all. It doesn’t happen. Probably one of the last shreds of hope they had was when the troupe pull Louis and Claudia apart, from that point on, he can no longer protect her ;A;
As it was so painfully underscored in Claudia’s Story, the last name Claudia hears Louis call for is “Armand,” bc calling her name won’t do them any good. But to her, it feels like a final betrayal, that he’s calling for Armand bc he cares more about him ;A;
Claudia and Madeleine get locked in the well, and when Claudia sees the sunlight approaching, she’s already starting to cry, trying to wake Madeleine to try to figure out a way out… there is none and then they can only brace themselves bc there IS NO ESCAPE ;A;!! The acceptance of their own deaths is part of the tragedy.
It’s a pretty universally nightmarish situation, even though sunlight is not fatal for ppl (most, anyway), but we can all relate to the experience. It’s like being pushed onto subway tracks and not being able to escape in time ;A;
2. Her death was a failure in diplomacy, basically. The Theatre des Vampires, led by Santiago, held a kangaroo court (although they may have felt that they were within their rights) in which they found Claudia guilty of attempted murder of her maker, and decided to punish her with the death penalty.
Louis tried to protect her from it as best he could, he tried to make a deal to save her life, but failed. In the book:
“ `Listen to me, Lestat,’ I began now. `You let her go, you free her… and I will… I’ll return to you,’ I said, the words sounding hollow, metallic.
3. It kills a part of Louis when Claudia dies. His immediate reaction is extremely sad (not even factoring in the revenge he takes after).
I have a more thorough commentary on this scene here. It’s in this moment that Louis has lost the most precious person, the one who’s told him what to do, someone he could worship and follow, someone who metered out his doses of happiness with her approval. In the movie, he calls her “my child,” Armand tries to correct him: “Your lover,” and Louis compromises with “My beloved.”
In the book, the next night, Louis finds Lestat clutching Claudia’s bloody dress and sobbing over her death, too. Even though he was the very person who testified against her! Even he could not prevent their “justice.”
“And then I saw the thing in [Lestat’s] hands. I knew what it was. And in an instant I’d ripped it from him and was staring at it, at the fragile silken thing that it was – Claudia’s. His hand rose to his lips, his face turned away. And the soft, subdued sobs broke from him as he sat back while I stared at him, while I stared at the dress. My fingers moved slowly over the tears in it, the stains of blood; my hands closing, trembling as I crushed it against my chest.
Louis was expecting Claudia to go on and live with Madeleine, that he would still be in touch with her and see her occasionally. So that potential continued relationship was destroyed, too ;A;
4. What did Claudia mean to the audience/reader…
I know I sympathized with her and very much enjoyed her overall, and I like to think that other readers/viewers agreed, and don’t totally blame her for her actions against Lestat… after all, she was a victim herself. Lestat doesn’t blame her when he speaks of her in canon. We saw the love they both had for her ❤
Is that enough to convince the readers/audience to care enough for her that her death is sad for them? All those factors help!
~💀I hope that helps, Anon! Now make us cry!💀~
Do you think any members of the VC Cast have any irrational fears (canon or non canon)? If so, what do you think they are?
Oooh that’s a good question! Idk if phobias count as “irrational,” per se, bc you can have an irrational fear of anything, but phobias at least have categories that are common? Right?
These stories are open enough that you could make an argument for more than one irrational fear or phobia for each character, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to focus on one or a few for each, and keep my support brief.
(TBH I started drafting this and just one character got really lengthy, so I’ll do a series of them.)
1) Louis
A) Claustrophobia – The fear of small spaces like elevators, small rooms and other enclosed spaces.
Canonically, the first one that comes to mind is Louis’ claustrophobia. Idk if Brad was aware of that character trait, but I see it in his face when Lestat closes him up for his first night in a coffin. He has his hand on the lid at first, and then lets it go kind of reluctantly I don’t have that giffed out so you’ll have to believe me on that.
“All my life I’d feared closed places. Born and bred in French houses with lofty ceilings and floorlength windows, I had a dread of being enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in the confessional in church. It was a normal enough fear. And now I realized as I protested to Lestat, I did not actually feel this anymore. I was simply remembering it. Hanging on to it from habit, from a deficiency of ability to recognize my present and exhilarating freedom.” – Louis, IWTV
^And then post-trial at the Theatre des Vampires, he gets nailed into a coffin and walled up, UPSIDE-DOWN. It’s a bad time. It’s a pretty bad punishment on its own, probably a standard one for the TdV, but I can’t help but think they had some idea that this was one of Louis’ fears specifically that they read in his thoughts and capitalized on.
B) Atychiphobia – fear of failure, specifically re: a fear of confrontation/decisions, because it so often ends in the death or pain of those he loves, particularly Paul and Claudia.
There is a more elaborate meta post out there about this, and I can’t find it, anyone can reblog this and add the link. @wicked-felina and I were discussing Louis and his fear of confrontation/decisions last night, here’s what we came up with:
- Louis tends to refuse to engage, except when he physically has to fight people to save Lestat in TVL ❤
- Re: Paul, imagine you having a fight with a family member and mocking them (being confrontational) and then they die right in the middle of your argument, and you’re blamed for it, and you blame yourself for it ;A;
- Claudia wanted him to choose between her and Lestat, “Now’s time to end it, Louis.” And Lestat ends up dead ;A;
- And he has to stand by and watch Lestat (debatable, but I consider Lestat to be his lover at the time) be hurt, lay there suffering as he appears to die on the carpet, then Louis has to help Claudia finish him off.
“The numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened to lift and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat. This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal darkness.”
^This suggests to me, plus the pull he felt to go down with Lestat, that he absolutely cared for Lestat, more than just for what secrets he took with him in death ;A;
- Armand wanted him to choose between him and Claudia for him, and Claudia ends up dead ;A;
People really put Louis in terrible situations and he’s frozen with indecision. Anne Rice has compared him to Hamlet, there’s so much weight on whatever he chooses.
“ …`That passivity in me has been the core of it all, the real evil. That weakness, that refusal to compromise a fractured and stupid morality, that awful pride! For that, I let myself become the thing I am, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I let Claudia become the vampire she became, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I stood by and let her kill Lestat, when I knew that was wrong, the very thing that was her undoing. I lifted not a finger to prevent it. And Madeleine, Madeleine, I let her come to that, when I should never have made her a creature like ourselves. I knew that was wrong! Well, I tell you I am no longer that passive, weak creature that has spun evil from evil till the web is vast and thick while I remain its stultified victim. It’s over! I know now what I must do. And I warn you, for whatever mercy you’ve shown me in digging me out of that grave tonight where I would have died: Do not seek your cell in the Theatre des Vampires again. Do not go near it.’ ” – Louis, IWTV
C) Autophobia – fear of one’s self – Not sure if this is the right type of fear, but I would add that Louis’ fear of his own vampiric nature in IWTV was a thing, too.
I never revealed to him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and self-loathing from using even half of his own. – Lestat, TVL
^It has to do with wanting to remain human, and exerting his vampiry gifts was a glaring reminder that he’s not; having grown up a Christian, he felt that being a vampire was monstrous and evil. This was something he struggled with more during IWTV-era than later, as we see in much later canon he uses his powers without explicit canon complaints about it.
Louis has grown in canon, and he doesn’t seem to have these fears any longer, but we seldom know what’s going on with him as we don’t revisit his POV until the most recent books, and he doesn’t mention these things specifically. There’s probably still traces of them, though.
Brad Pitt is doing a subtly different performance in these two roles, using similar physical mannerisms, but not identical. A comparison can be drawn. Maybe Louis would be the colder version, Mills the hotter version, of reacting to this similar situation.
- Both have been roughed up somewhat by their antagonists at this point, but are dressed nicely.
- Both are reacting to the first moment of being informed that their wife/S.O. and infant child was murdered (for Louis, Madeleine is the freshly made child!).
- What’s especially upsetting about Louis’s loss is that it echoes the beginning of the movie, in which he’d lost his wife and child in childbirth. He’s come all this way and IT F*&KING HAPPENED AGAIN GDI SANTIAGO ;A;
- What’s especially upsetting about Det. Mills loss is that he didn’t know he was going to be a father! ;A;
- Both have to grieve very quickly in order to move on to…
- ☆*:.｡. ~VENGEANCE~ .｡.:*☆
- Det. Mills serves it up fresh, impulsively, just walks right into the trap laid for him by his antagonist.
- Louis serves it a bit cooler, the next night, with some planning involved, and alot more death, taking his antagonists by surprise.
- Both essential use fire to do it. Firearm! Get it?? yeah.
- Louis knows Revenge is a dish best served en Flambé.
“… two wet shriveled things that had been alive, mother and daughter in one another’s arms, the murdered pair on the kitchen floor. But these two lying under the gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, … the hand that clutched at the child was whole like a mummy’s hand. But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.”
– Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire
I-want-my-IWTV 