My father and I…clashed from a very early age. He was always tougher on me than the rest of my brothers, always expected more yet was never satisfied. I can’t fathom what I could have done to upset him so. My only crime seemed to be that I existed.
I don’t know if he loved me. I think not. He apologized in his dying moments for snatching me out of the monastery and burning my books, begging my forgiveness, but I think perhaps he was more concerned with his immortal soul than my peace of mind.
Tag Archives: cries forever
What sort of relationship did you have with your father? Did he love you?
nightmare
Leave "Nightmare" in my askbox dont-send-memes-here: And I’ll generator a nightmare my character has with yours in it. Numbers range between 1- 16. Read More4. Your character is trapped somewhere and mine can’t save them, try as they may.
Nicolas knew only that he was running.
Around him were the streets of Paris, but it was not Paris, it was the Auvergne as well—twisted little roads and back alleyways: sometimes the walls of the buildings were tall, sometimes they were the smaller buildings of the village where he had grown up. He run through puddles and mud, alternating between straw-strewn hard-packed earth and the cobblestones of their adopted city.
He stopped. Before him was the castle of the Marquis—or was it the Palais du Louvre?—the aging stones offering no solace to the anxiety that pumped through his body, the fear that shook his fingertips.
He yelled something unintelligible that was carried away in the wind. His hands closed into fists, beating at the ancient wooden doors that barred his way.
Then the screaming began.
He could hear the cries and knew immediately (in the way one always does in dreams) that they were Lestat’s. The panic rose in his chest as he beat the door harder, kicking against it with his boots and crying out to be allowed entrance. The screams grew in volume, sometimes tapering out into a groan, sometimes cutting out completely, as though they’d been shut up with the crack of a fist meeting a jaw.
He was crying now—the door would not budge, and no one was heeding his cries to open it, open it please! He leaned his cheek against the wood, sobbing, his fists beating ineffectually against that barrier. If he could only get in, if he could get past those terrible creatures that were the de Lioncourt sons, if he could burst into that dungeon room, that oubliette of sorrow where he knew they took him to beat him—then he might be able to help him, to cover Lestat’s body with his own, to take the whippings and beatings for him.
But he could not he could not he could not and he would never be able to save Lestat from the biggest monster, that terrible, dark, hulking force that lived within those walls and took him at will that tortured him and petted him and warped his mind until all Lestat had was a fractured memory and a broken soul.
When Nicolas awoke in his bed in San Francisco, he was weeping, the blood tears streaming down his face.
Still broken, two hundred years later.
Neither of them would ever be saved.
TRUTH SERUM: What is the sexiest thing you ever did with/for Lestat? Were either of you into anything kinky when you were mortal? TELL US.
-shrugs- What do I care? Nothing about those days merits keeping private.
With Lestat: Honestly, the first time we made love was, for lack of a better descriptor, one of the “sexiest’ things we ever did. His hesitance combined with the absolute, soul-crushing sincerity of young love was almost painfully beautiful. There were other times, of course, when the undeniable synchronicity of our love-making brought tears to the eyes, but that time stands out above and beyond so many others.
For Lestat: This is more…difficult. To be quite honest, despite his duplicity and his inability to remain monogamous, Lestat treats his lovers with an undeniable amount of sweetness and care. In almost all instances, he comes out far above me where our mortal relationship is concerned. There was a time, once, in Paris, in our little flat, where he had one of his…mental collapses. After much coaxing, coddling, and sweet soft kisses, he did allow me to make love to him—slowly, carefully, as one might treat a frightened and wounded animal. It sounds frightening, but there was a beauty to his sadness, his sweet naivité on that night. But does that qualify as ‘sexy’?
I hate to disappoint you, but aside from some very mundane spanking, there was very little about our sexual lives that contained what mortals now refer to as ‘kink.’ We were quite vanilla, I’m afraid.
;A;
Ok I need to ask what is probably the stupidest question ever and I’m sorry, I’m new (I’m talking 50 pages into the first book new)! So, in IWTV Louis lost Paul. But in the film he lost his wife. To my knowledge, Anne Rice wrote the script for the film so what I wanted to know is if that means any small details that weren’t included in the book, such as this one, are considered canon for both book and movie!verse? That Louis was actually married at one point all?
Wow, I have so many thoughts on this. There are spoilers there, but you might be interested in my post about Louis’s rings, and in the jewelry tag.
Not a stupid question. The short answer is No, the VC fandom is all pretty much in agreement that Louis was never married. Or that he had much of a romantic attachment to any woman in IWTV aside from Claudia and a certain sister of the owner of a neighboring plantation.
In terms of whether any other big or small discrepancies between the movie!IWTV and book!IWTV are considered canon? Ummm… I don’t know. That would be up to each person’s own headcanon, which I describe below.
I think alot of the film’s dialogue has been added to our collective canon, since, as you correctly put it, AR did write it! But I can’t think of any specific examples… most of that was revised dialogue from the book and we all tend to remember the movie quote over the book quote. It would be a huge project to try to pick them all out.
—> Now, we all have what we call “headcanons“ and that means, whatever you believe to be canon based on:
- your own reading of the books and watching the movie(s)
- reading fanfic on AO3 (or elsewhere)
- reading RPs here
- meta posts like this one
- Whatever you want!
It’s just that you might not find anyone to agree with your headcanon that Claudia and Louis have been hiding out in Amsterdam knitting blankets with Eric, or whatever ;]
In the movie version of IWTV, they (Anne Rice and Neil Jordan worked together) changed a few things from the book, maybe partly to keep it to a 2 hour runtime (I think it was uncommon to have movies over 2 hours in the early ’90s) and partly to open up the story to a wider audience. That’s my explanation for the casting of Antonio Banderas as Armand in my Defending Antonio tag. It’s more upsetting to more people for Louis to have lost a wife in childbirth than a religious zealot of a brother who wanted him to sell the plantation and donate all the money to the church!
PLUS: It actually makes Louis’ transformation into a vampire that much more jarring for his character; he’s married (presumably by the church), had created a new life (the baby), and lost those both at once. That would be devastating to anyone. He immediately turns to drinking and prostitutes, very against the church’s idea of appropriate Good Person behavior. But all that is within the context of being STRAIGHT.
Becoming a vampire not only meant Louis would have to break a big commandment regularly (that pesky Not Killing people one), but it also put him in a confusing relationship with Lestat, a dude, very against the Bible’s idea of appropriateness.
One of Neil Jordan’s previous films dealt with sexuality vs. religion (The Crying Game), so I’m sure he was keenly aware of and even enhanced this crisis of character that Louis would have to undergo, to accept himself as being at least bisexual. That, plus the need to kill people, would mean letting go of those religious principles and societal propriety, because he had to accept that he was no longer human and no longer capable of achieving Goodness. That he had lost his chance for Heaven if it exists.
Of course Lestat told him, “no creature under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves.” meaning that the religious rules do not apply to vampires.
The Judgment of Solomon a la V.C.
There are so many subtle religious references with Nicolas. I’ll give you an example, in the bible, we have the story entitled “The Judgement of Solomon”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, it goes a little something like this (copy pasted from wikipedia bc I’m lazy. Sue me.):
Two young women who lived in the same house and who both had an infant son came to Solomon for a judgment. One of the women claimed that the other, after accidentally smothering her own son while sleeping, had exchanged the two children to make it appear that the living child was hers. The other woman denied this and so both women claimed to be the mother of the living son and said that the dead boy belonged to the other.After some deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared that there was only one fair solution: the live son must be split in two, each woman receiving half of the child. Upon hearing this terrible verdict, the boy’s true mother cried out, “Oh Lord, give the baby to her, just don’t kill him!” The liar, in her bitter jealousy, exclaimed, “It shall be neither mine nor yours—divide it!”
The king declared the first mother as the true mother, as a true, loving mother would rather surrender her baby to another than hurt him, and gave her the baby. King Solomon’s judgment became known throughout all of Israel and was considered an example of profound wisdom.
And so, I’ve been thinking a lot lately how in the books Nicolas is constantly telling Lestat he has a light inside of him. This is true, and Nicolas has one inside of him as well, though he is blind to it. In fact, Lestat and Nicolas are almost the same person, near reflections of one another. And I can’t help but feel that the conflict between them is the light and who has it. Nicolas, the cynic of the two ultimately forfeits his life. And I truly believe in my heart of hearts that this was an act of love. Now, I’m not saying Lestat was in any way comparable to the bitter jealous woman in the story, I’m just saying the story is of love and sacrifice. And Nicolas, loving Lestat so much — even through his madness and cynicism — gave his own life so that Lestat could grow and flourish as a vampire; the same way the true mother forfeited her rights to her child to prevent it from facing death.
Then again, I could just be stretching it a bit, but idk. I just feel like the stories are in the same vein. And, I apologise because Nicolas is not dead. The ‘forfeiting of life’ is simply a metaphor and cannot hurt him. He merely claimed to be dead, okay?
#damn you and your perfect headcanon perfection.
what was the most romantic night of your existence
This took me a while because there have been a few romantic nights that stick out to me, but I think above all of them I would have to choose the second night of my second week in Paris with Lestat. We were already pinched for money and my E string had broken — not to mention the fact that we had only enough money for one meal that day and decided not to eat until just before bed. So, Lestat had left to go grab us something to eat before all the shops had closed; I stayed behind because I was in a mood and sulking. But this particular night he took longer than usual, and I became rather irritated. I wondered if he had become distracted by something and not made it to the bakery in time to buy us some bread, at least… and I was anticipating an argument upon his return. But, when he did return, just as I was about to start off on some lecture to chastise him, he presented me not only with bread but also a new string for my violin. Turns out he had spent a lot of time haggling with the baker because he had spent the majority of our funds on a new string for me, to cheer me up. And, I think that was possibly the first real time someone had done something nice… just for me, for Nicolas. And even if it’s not terribly romantic, or anything steamy, it means a lot to me. And yes, for the lot of you still wondering if any kissing or things of the like took place after that.. Yes. But, that’s all you need to know.
Armand just wants to be loved
Also I kind of want to share this from a PM conversation I had and something I shared on the phone with monsieur-le-rockstar last night:
I agree, yeah, Marius did a lot of dumb shit to try to prove he could give something to Armand, that he had something to offer when really time and distance grew them apart. Marius was his first loves, not last one you know? And ugh. Well, I mostly believe Marius isn’t blameless in the way he instilled in Armand how to think love is to be treated. People forget that yes while Marius rescued him from the brothel, there is also the point that Armand was probably raped on the way there and defiled and beaten to amnesia. And when someone he thought to be his savior, who he welcomed so willingly to save him, took him home…This same savior taught him a “carnal” type of love. I mean he pleasured a very traumatized rape victim who had also come from a background beforehand where he had literally been taught to not even KNOW how his dingly functioned. It’s just…he went about it the entirely wrong way and continued it. You can see evidence in TVL when Armand bites Lestat after sharing blood with him and Lestat interprets it as a rape (which it is) and pummels him. Because that was all Armand was taught to know, and probably was not taught much differently under the oppression of the children of darkness who were just as blind to propriety and how to handle these things in a modern age. I think at that moment he wanted to draw Lestat in as a companion, a lover. He just kind of fucked up in consent department(seriously Lestat had NO clue how vampires loved like that back then). Personally, I think by now Armand is coming to terms with thoughts like these with ALL his relationships and happenings in the past .
(I don’t want to cheapen this wonderful commentary in any way but it did remind me of this sweet little fanart so here it is:)
[fanart is Angsty Boys by CosmicCoffee]
I-want-my-IWTV 