“She had an incredible talent, a sort of compulsive creativity,” said Jim O’Quinn, a fellow performer and frequent collaborator. “She was an artist in her heart and soul, and she lived the life of an artist. She wanted to transform life experiences into art.”
…She also appeared in movies such as “Hard Times,” “Everybody’s All-American” and “Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles,” in which Tom Cruise broke her neck – in character, as Lestat, the vampire.
“He was very careful and concerned not only about how he would break my neck, but how it would read on camera,” Ms. Owen said in a Times-Picayune interview. “He is the consummate professional film actor.”
This is pretty sad… also a reminder that even the vampires in the movie are mortal, too ;A;
And yet my sorrow did not overwhelm me, did not actually visit me, did not make of me the wracked and desperate creature I might have expected to become. Perhaps it was not possible to sustain the torment I’d experienced when I saw Claudia’s burnt remains. Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over any period of time.
Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire (via monstersinthecosmos)
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!💀~
OKAY LIKE HI HELLO, I realize I haven’t killed anyone in my fics in a while but my never-gonna-be-fucking-finished novel is about death and grief and was closely based on my own grief process following the deaths of two of my friends in the span of three months so. Here’s what I want to say !!!
The points @i-want-my-iwtv are all super true, but I also want to say that to write an effective death scene or to be affected by a literary death you have to try to empathize with what death really feels like IRL. So, for me? Grieving hinged (and hinges, lbr, it never really goes away) on three things:
The immensity of the concept that you will never see the person again.
That as time goes by it’s not just “missing” them because you won’t see them again but that it’s been longer and longer and longer since the last time you saw them and you miss them the way you can even miss the living that you haven’t seen in a while.
The ruined potential of everything this person had to offer the world.
This is all pretty personal and grief is super emotionally complicated so obviously different people have different experiences and I AM SO EXCITED THAT AS CREATIVE HUMANS WE ALL HAVE WAYS TO EXPRESS WHAT WE INDIVIDUALLY WANT TO SAY ABOUT IT, that’s super special and I think it helps heal people a lot. But to me that’s kinda like how I narrow it down personally.
So when it comes to a story I think it’s going to depend on the POV of the text itself and also if the grief is more directed at other characters or at us as the reader.
Things to consider:
Are you trying to make us sad for US, for our own sake, because we will missing having the character around in canon? Are we attached to them?
Are you trying to make us sad for the survivor(s) of the death who we have grown to love?
In IWTV specially I think the movie does more of a job of letting us care about Claudia as her own person because see her with a bit of a wider frame, vs. the book I think heavily weighs on us caring about Louis and feeling empathy of his loss.
So if you want to make the character’s death “really sad” I think we have to first decide who we’re feeling sad for and go from there. Are we having to survive without them as a reader or are we just empathizing with someone like Louis, that we care about and feel sorry for?
EITHER WAY an important thing to note, whichever approach you take, is that we need to understand the value of this person and what they had to offer and why someone should miss them. If you’re trying to make your reader sad for the character I think it’s important to make sure they are valuable and liked and that we will care that they are gone. I think in the IWTV novel that Claudia is sort of cold and savage and by the time they’re in Paris she’s pretty cruel to Louis, so it’s natural for me not to feel personally affected by her loss, but as a reader I know that Louis is crushed because it’s the loss of his daughter. So even if the character is cold/cruel/unlikable/etc we can still hurt for someone who cares about them anyway.
So.
IDK!
@i-want-my-iwtv had super good points but I also just wanted to add that. Grief and death are messy and horrible and I think the emotional depth and sense of loss makes all the difference.
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!
“Döden” (“Death”) by artist Janis Rozentāls, 1897. It rare to see death depicted in white.
It’s a refreshing change to see Death in a liberator sort of role rather than a condemner. Here they are shown light with feminine features and scythe held low and non threatening. She is bent forward and speaking as if to apologize for the sadness she will leave in her wake, but also conveying the reverence and respect she has for her position and those souls she reaps.
“I pray that my soul comes to maturity before it is reaped.”
Look what arrived, look what arrived! Finally, a proof copy of The God in the Field for me to thumb through and make sure all is well. And all is beautiful! Production can finally finish now thank goodness!
This is a painting of Jacek Malczewski called simply ‘Death’ and it’s my favourite personification of death in any medium.
She’s not creepy or scary, or sexy, or abstract. She is this thick woman with worn hands, dressed as normal, with a non-stylised scythe and pins in her hair: like a farmer’s wife that just came form the field and rests against the wall, catching some sun. She is not creeping about the dying one holding her scythe over their head, she is just there, calmly waiting her turn.
This painting always fills me with peace and optimism when I think about death. She is just there, outside the window, in no hurry at all, sensible and down to earth. I can live with that.
I-want-my-IWTV 