IKR?! Part of what sets VC above other vampire series for me is that it’s got so much comedy -intentional and unintentional- and so much suffering, too. All mixed in together.
I don’t know the story of Leonardo Davinci /Salai! It’s possible AR was inspired by it, I haven’t seen her mention Salai… Did they do this kind of cute stuff?
[^X by @unionthesalmon, reblog from the X or the source!]
Nope! Not that I’ve been made aware of. AR didn’t give us a reason why Universal was no longer involved. She just announced to us 11/26/16 that she had the rights back [X] and was developing a VC TV series. So I would assume that Universal rights expired, and they didn’t choose to renew. AR might have raised the renewal cost, too.
I hope we do get the backstory on that someday, but my guess is we never will. Probably the same kind of development hell that happened w/ movie!IWTV from ‘94, the rights were jostled around for almost 20 yrs bc, from what I understand:
*@moral-cipher and I were talking about this, and the way ppl criticize canon, and that’s fine, I encourage it! But it is a very problematic series and just about every character is dysfunctional, every character has suffered or has caused suffering in others. The new motto for VC fandom might as well be:
I watched it on VHS** for the first time, now I have it on DVD, but I don’t have any other formats. The real crime is that I’ve never seen it in a theatre ;A; I was under 17 when it came out!
[^X former fan fave for Lestat, Travis Fimmel]
Lestat has mixed feelings about watching IWTV, bc he enjoys a lot of it, and he loves to tease Louis about the rats and the poodles, it is visually appealing, the kills are pretty accurate and he does love to revisit his seduction of Louis and the times when they were happy <3. But he also feels like the movie overall paints him in an excessively negative light. There are also many scenes that are painful for him (and Louis) to watch, like, y’know, Louis defensively setting Lestat on fire… and when Louis finds Claudia’s ashes. They’ve been through so much ;A;
I would think it would be hard to watch a movie of a time period in my own life, with other people playing me and my family, loved ones, and the people who antagonized me (intentionally or not). To have some enormously famous actor playing me would be flattering but that I’m portrayed as the antagonist in my lover’s life? That would probably hurt. I DO antagonize ppl and ppl antagonize me. We’re all the protagonists in our own stories, and none of us are perfect cinnamon rolls – except Mojo – we’re all works in progress, and I think Lestat watches IWTV with that in mind. He’s grown a lot since then, through a lot of effort and a lot more obstacle-conquering, he’s proven that he has a place in this world, even if he’s mostly serving as a cautionary tale (basically: ”Don’t do this thing that I did!”)
Asterisked stuff and my own movie!IWTV-watching preferences
under the cut, cut for length.
Re: Which do you prefer? I haven’t bought the Blu-ray bc I don’t have a Blu-ray player; I have a small DVD collection but I didn’t want to have to rebuy them all. I agree, the picture quality is in fact better in the Blu-ray,* bc I’ve seen it, so I should probably bite the bullet and get the Blu-ray *pouts* For now, I’m okay w/ missing out on a few of the actor’s eyelashes and skin pores, lol.
I have to listen to music in order to be productive, and I hum or sing along with it. I love listening to the TV or movies when I’m working on my memes or other artistic things, I make jewelry as a hobby, too. But I can’t listen to TV/movies when doing video edits, bc then the audio clashes. Knowing so many of the lines in IWTV, it’s a good one to listen to and say the lines along with it. My voice sounds like a 12 year old’s, I should dub myself in for some of Lestat’s lines and post vids, you’ll think it’s Claudia making fun of him, pfffft.
So yes, I’ll listen to IWTV sometimes for background noise, but when I want to actually watch it on its own or w/ ppl, the DVD is fine, or the Blu-ray, if I’m visiting someone and they have that format at their place.
**There’s something nostalgic for me about the VHS tape format, which I don’t have anymore. It was a big hunk of plastic w/ a thick protective plastic box in my little tween hands when I was 11, and it seemed more substantial, more worthy of carrying a whole tragic & beautiful movie than these fragile little circles in their skinny little cases that we have now. My copy was well-used, and I took good care of it, I never noticed a decrease in the picture quality even after countless replays even tho I’ve heard ppl say that VHS tapes would get worn.
*Re: Picture quality: At first glance, on a laptop or smaller device screen (and at this teensy size like ugh) these two shots of Louis look identical (it’s not exactly the same frame but it’s as close as I could get w/o going crazay):
But when you see it on a bigger screen, there’s more resolution on the
Blu-ray
version, it’s a sharper image:
IKR?! It makes my heart hurt so YOU HAVE TO HURT, TOO. I am aware that Lestat is one of the biggest antagonistic monsters in canon, but that’s not all he is, and when he’s cut down like this, you can’t help but feel bad for the poor guy.
Let me torture y’all a little more…
^HE THINKS SHE FLAVORED THEM FOR HIM. He’s being slightly cute here with the way he’s gesturing theatrically to her, don’t think about all the times he and Louis “acted Shakespeare together for Claudia’s amusement…” He thinks she went to EXTRA EFFORT to make this peace offering special for him! Well, she did, but not the way he thinks ;A;
^(Just a still of Claudia bc of reasons) Then she basically tells him it was dead blood* she gave him, which, in the context of movie!IWTV, is apparently dangerous to them. On her first kill he told her that they always have to “stop before the heart stops,” but he doesn’t say why. So now he knows she poisoned him, and the laudanum is working, bc look how incapacitated he is:
^It’s probably no accident that his right hand is in his crotch there, he’s been emasculated, brought down by his own daughter *cries*
^That whole right arm is just not functional, he tries to put weight on it, and it just collapses ;A;
Even if he COULD grab her at this point, he’s in no shape to try to fight her physically. He can barely even talk!
In the context of the scene, there’s no going back for her at this point, she poisoned him intentionally and there would have been no way to regain his trust. All the sadness.
Asterisked stuff under the cut.
*In the film, it’s implied that the deadness of the blood is what’s incapacitating him, and that’s fine, for the film. He taught her this in her first kill. But in the books, it’s about the laudanum** that actually would have a strong effect on him. If Louis had been able to put Lestat in his coffin, Lestat could have slept off this opiate dose and been fine the next night.
**Laudanum is not just any drug, it’s a BAMF (Wiki):
“Reddish-brown and extremely bitter, laudanum contains almost all of the opium alkaloids, including morphine and codeine, and its high morphine concentration makes it a potent narcotic. Laudanum was historically used to treat a variety of ailments, but its principal use was as an analgesic and cough suppressant.”
One more note on the dead blood – if those boys were truly dead, Lestat would have known just with his own senses. Vampires can’t stand to be around their dead. But we’ll have to just ignore that ;]
My day was very good, thank u! Hope yours was/is, too.
I looked for the painting and I found 3, there are probably even more than that… thanks for pointing these out to me, I hadn’t seen them before, I can definitely see some Armand in each of them.
In all of them I see the “spun amber” hair thing, as David Talbot being a borderline perv including touching him w/o asking first describes Armand in TVA:
“Your hair’s like something spun from amber, as if the amber would melt and could
be drawn from candle flames in long fine airy threads and let to dry that way to make
all these shining tresses. You’re sweet, boylike and pretty as a girl. I wish I had one
glimpse of you in antique velvet the way you were for him, for Marius. I wish I could
see for one moment how it was when you dressed in stockings and wore a belted
doublet sewn with rubies. Look at you, the frosty child. My love doesn’t even touch
you.”
Apply that description to these:
^Portrait of a young man holding a medallion. Altho this one doesn’t resemble Armand to me, it reminded me of his painting the ikons in the caves. “Yeah this took me maybe a half hour… commissions are closed.” Bonus points for the subtle trompe-l’œil effect of his finger sort of out of the frame like that.
^Portrait of a Young Man 3. This is more physically Armand to me, and of the attitude of Armand, who has perfected the very difficult to achieve front-facing side-eye expression. He’s also throwing a gang sign, is that a W for west coast or an E for east coast? Armand is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
^Portrait of a Young Man. This one has awesome hair, all swirled like that. You might call this portrait boring at first glance but if you give it more of a chance, it has a haunting effect. Is he leaning forward a little? It seems like it. This is more of the coven master face to me than the other two. “If there were a leader… I would be the one.”
Y’know, I don’t think it was ever explained in canon! We’ve had a few Mael RPers over the years who might have have a good answer for you… @thevampiremael, @maelgallia come to mind. Other RPers, or anyone else, are welcome to comment/reblog w/ ideas on this.
[^X Brock O’Hurn bc of reasons *swoon*]
Mael had been turned (pretty soon after Marius was turned) by Avicus, another God of the Wood who had survived the Great Fire. Even if Avicus had done a bad job turning him or had recently turned other fledglings, that shouldn’t have been a factor in Mael’s vulnerability to sunlight so many years later, since Mael was old enough to have earned some durability on his own. The only answer I can think of rn is that Mael’s combusted remains were further destroyed by frightened mortals who saw it happen? Idk! It’s an answer I’d like to have.
I love your blog by the way and you seem to be a lovely person ❤
Awww thank u for the blargh love and comment about me, that’s very sweet of you! ^_____^
That sounds like a great idea to me! I bet AR would be down, too, as much as she loves Shakespeare, the way his plays do that. As you say, it’s been done for a long time. Or a transman. I wouldn’t require the actor to be cismale.
^In Shakespeare in Love (1998), Gwyneth Paltrow played Viola De Lesseps, passing as male actor Thomas Kent. In this screencap, I think “Thomas” is about to kiss a male actor who is playing a female role, another thing Shakespeare would do.
^She still looked like a woman to me, but it didn’t matter, bc the other characters saw her as male, they believed it, so I could suspend disbelief. That was probably part of the cheeky quality of that film, that we as viewers still saw her as female, but everyone else seemed so easily fooled, like Clark Kent w/ glasses is so obviously NOT Superman! Pfffft.
But yeah, the idea of casting a woman or another gender to play a youthful male character like Armand? VERY COOL SIGN ME TF UP.*
*I mean, not suggesting casting me specifically bc I don’t think there’s enough movie magic to transform me into a male character, but conceptually, I support this 😉
(2/2) so cruel because she KNEW being really kind to him for once would make him the most vulnerable so she could kill him. And if that’s not evil I don’t know what is.
It’s one of the best scenes in the movie! And one of the most heartbreaking ;A;
“When Claudia starts her assassination plot by bringing him a human gift, Cruise’s eyes show Lestat’s surprise that someone has finally done something nice for him for the first time in the film…
In that moment, we realize that while Lestat is capable of love, he’s never been loved back.” – Amy Nicholson, Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor
[X]
You are preaching to the choir re: Tom’s Lestat 😉 He may not have LOOKED 100% like Lestat but I thought his performance really captured the essence of the character. I think Kirsten took a lot of her acting cues from his Lestat, too. They were so well-matched that it was easy to believe that they were “father” and “daughter”; she seemed like a little girl version of him, inheriting more of his cruelty than his kindness, but definitely taking on both ❤
She really did lead him to believe that they had forgiven each other, and doing that one nice thing for him, to a person as starved for affection as he was… she knew it would kindle his hope for reconciliation, she KNEW that would make him the most vulnerable and YES that is pretty elite evil *cries*
Oh definitely, he is alot of ppl’s headcanon for Lestat ❤
^X Robert Plant by @remarried
robert plant, what a gorgeous creature. ref used, photoshop.
I-want-my-IWTV 
