Ricean vampires, unfortunately, are condemned to enjoy the Deathsleep which renders them unconscious for the daylight hours. The plus side being: no snoring can wake them! Not that they can snore, since they don’t breathe. But still.
Louis, IWTV: “Numbness came over my limbs, and then the paralysis of oblivion.“
Louis, IWTV: “You see, I wasn’t sure then why I awoke each evening when I did, whether it was automatic when the deathlike sleep left me, and why it happened sometimes earlier than at other times.”
In movie!IWTV, yes, Claudia is awake right at dawn and seems fully conscious, as she tiptoes carefully around the sunlight.
^It was too perfect a moment not to include in a movie about lonely ppl, that singular act of a daughter climbing into bed w/ her mommy!Louis (bc we all know he’s the mom) rather than sleep alone! ❤ And purely platonic at that point in the movie.
There is a fic out there that suggests that Ricean vampires do awaken during the day when they are under extreme emotional duress, and it’s a very disorienting state to be in, they can’t function very rationally, as nocturnal animals also act erratically in daylight.
I sleep in a bed when at home….and mostly when I travel. I prefer it and it is comfortable to awaken in. I do keep coffins in hidden areas of the house, however and these are fail-safes, when I need to feel more secure. The ground or tombs only when there is no other alternative….or I’ve decided that I’ll sleep for a few decades or so.
I have also found that I sleep less now than I ever have before. It is possible that my “promotion” has altered my need for it. During the day, if I am awake, I stay hidden in the dark as much as I can…it stings my eyes less and I don’t have to move around much.
In true slumber, I will murder anyone that I sense to be a threat and this seems to be an unconscious action. I have found that if blood is shared, I’m less inclined to sense them as a threat and kill them. So it is possible to sleep in bed beside me or in my arms…..however, for all intents and purposes, I am dead. Pooled blood, rigor mortis, clouded eyes….all that fun. So be prepared to sleep next to a corpse for several hours.
All at once….but then it is just deafening noise. My preternatural senses have evolved in such a way that they allow me to pick through the layers and find what I want or need to hear. Sometimes I fail if my concentration is broken and that is where my migraines come from.
{½} Absolutely NOT a stupid question! Congrats on earning the post-final exhaustion ;D
I loooooooooooooove vampire biology questions
sign me the FRACK up 👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 and it required 2 separate answers so yeah that’s why this took so long, had to really consider it.
You are correct, Ricean vamps can’t eat food. Blood doesn’t need to be warm, specifically, but it needs to be coming from a LIVING victim.* Even more fun when that victim is almost blackout drunk like Louis is here (more on that in my second response to you):
I don’t recall any specific mentions of lipstick or chapstick in canon! ANY. So I’ll go with my own headcanon and say that it probably varies, vampire to vampire, but I would guess that their heightened senses make the texture of lipsticks and lipglosses interesting to wear and kiss on others.
The flavored makeup would probably not taste good to them like it does for us since those flavors are meant to simulate actual food; cherry chapstick – which I personally love bc it gives you tint and a pleasant smell/taste – would probably taste like a smear of motor oil to a Ricean vampire.
Can you imagine Lestat pulling out a napkin and wiping off your lipstick before he kisses you? “There that’s better. That ah…. color didn’t suit you.”
*Dead blood is not really poisonous on its own, but is just very distasteful, like really old coffee.
When Lestat is sickened in IWTV, it’s bc it’s dead blood, the victim’s soul had already left, but the blood was still warm from the laudanum. Vampires have an intense dislike for being near dead bodies, Lestat was probably so overcome that Claudia seemed to want a truce that he ignored all the red flags ;A;
Interview with the Vampire (1994) dir. Neil Jordan
one of the greatest performances ever
I’m in love with this film for Tom Cruise ‘s performance and the fabulous long hairstyle of Brad Pitt.
Definitely one of my fave scenes. There’s so much going on here. Lestat bursts in and immediately looks around to see if he can salvage anything out of this, but knows he can only save Louis, and still has time to have this thorny little exchange bc he’ll be damned if he isn’t going to take this as an opportunity to lay in a little verbal smackdown. “Have us sleeping in the field like cattle!” He has this subtle pain in his eyes, as if Louis was actually trying to usurp his role as the captain of this ship, not that he was in fact trying to commit suicide. It doesn’t even cross Lestat’s mind to remark on the fact that that’s what this was, a suicide attempt. Or maybe it does, and in not giving Louis the choice to go down with his fiery mansion, Lestat has made a renewed internal vow to guide Louis into becoming the vampire he knows he can be.
Lestat could have easily just let Louis burn up with the house.Except that he loves him. Even though this was an act of ENORMOUS REBELLION it only makes Lestat love Louis more, bc only a BAMF like Louis could do something like this, try to destroy everything an apparently materialistic creature like Lestat has ever wanted, and not care about the consequences. But that’s not who Lestat really is, that’s all just retail therapy, hoarding shiny things to fill a void, and they both know it. Having stripped away Lestat’s treasured hoard, Louis’ face is 99% sexual ecstasy, he’s so satisfied with himself here.
Louis didn’t do this to rile Lestat, he did it to win, and finally do away with himself. But seeing his maker there, clearly to rescue Louis, the most precious thing to Lestat in the whole place, had to touch something in Louis. Because he lets Lestat save him without putting up a fight, and he doesn’t run away as soon as he’s capable. He stays with Lestat. As much as he doesn’t like his methods or philosophy, he’s captivated by Lestat. He trusts Lestat.
They’re both helplessly bound together in how much they want and need each other ;A;
Part of what makes them so shippable is how much Lestat wants to own Louis, and how not-for-sale Louis is, but how much he is drawn to Lestat against his own better judgment, like a moth to flame.
Ricean vampires, unfortunately, are condemned to enjoy the Deathsleep which renders them unconscious for the daylight hours. The plus side being: no snoring can wake them! Not that they can snore, since they don’t breathe. But still.
Louis, IWTV: “Numbness came over my limbs, and then the paralysis of oblivion.“
Louis, IWTV: “You see, I wasn’t sure then why I awoke each evening when I did, whether it was automatic when the deathlike sleep left me, and why it happened sometimes earlier than at other times.”
In movie!IWTV, yes, Claudia is awake right at dawn and seems fully conscious, as she tiptoes carefully around the sunlight.
^It was too perfect a moment not to include in a movie about lonely ppl, that singular act of a daughter climbing into bed w/ her mommy!Louis (bc we all know he’s the mom) rather than sleep alone! ❤ And purely platonic at that point in the movie.
There is a fic out there that suggests that Ricean vampires do awaken during the day when they are under extreme emotional duress, and it’s a very disorienting state to be in, they can’t function very rationally, as nocturnal animals also act erratically in daylight.
Hit the jump for a bit moar, and spoilers.
(Similarly, Louis seems to be painfully awake as Claudia and Madeleine burn in the sunlight ;A;)
When movie!Louis takes revenge on the Theatre des Vampires, it’s right before dawn, and he is perfectly able to function right up until he leaves the safety of the theatre, and it’s the sunlight more than the fact that it’s daytime that saps him of any functionality. But that was part of the plan, revenge, then suicide.
Ricean vampires can, however, fight in that unconscious state: Lestat says Gabrielle defended herself in her sleep: “And those mortals who did find us during the daylight hours, unless they exposed us to the sun at once, were doomed. For example, outside Palermo she had slept in a cellar far below an abandoned house, and when she had awakened, her eyes and face were burning as if they had been scalded, and she had in her right hand a mortal, quite dead, who had apparently attempted to disturb her rest.”
Amount of sleep needed seems to be related to the age and/or power of the vampire, and Louis, being weaker, needs more beauty sleep than the older and stronger ones.
Even in a place like Alaska in which nighttime extends during the winter months, Ricean vampires are still susceptible and want to fall into a reasonable Deathsleep rhythm.
In QOTD, Akasha purposely chases the night around the world, preventing Lestat from falling into the Deathsleep. Whether it was bc she had too much to do in too little time, or she was purposely using sleep deprivation as another means of controlling him (or both), we don’t know, but Lestat reflects on it:
“We’d been following the night around the world, perhaps, or rather moving at random in it, as Akasha maybe didn’t need at all to sleep.
I needed it, that was obvious. But I was too curious not to want to be awake. And frankly too miserable.”
Akasha tells him, a little bit later, that he requires sleep for his upgrades: “But you must sleep now. You are young still and fragile. My blood’s working on you, changing you, perfecting you.”
Vampires in other media, like Only Lovers Left Alive for example, CAN stay awake during the daylight hours if they feel like it, and they do sleep in beds. Are they trying to imitate mortals? Maybe!
That feel when you’d rather answer questions all day in a state of weird and pleasurable natural – albeit caffeinated – high rather than attempt to do any real productive Work for your Job.
I just want to mention, and please take this completely w/o attitude bc I do not intend any attitude here: I get a number of VC Casting ideas on a regular basis, and I do enjoy them a lot! But if you don’t see an answer for yours it’s either bc:
I haven’t had a chance to research the actor yet;
I researched the actor and they don’t reeeally work for me and I’m trying to come up with another role for them so I can still answer publicly; or,
I researched the actor and they don’t work for me and I can’t think of another role for them, so I might have to let it go unanswered or just delete it.
If you haven’t seen your Ask answered, and it’s been a long time, it may have been a #3 sacrifice. Not every male violinist can be the illustrious Nicolas de Lenfent! But you are more than welcome to post your own casting ideas, and tag them #VC Casting, and I will be tracking that tag so I might reblog from your blog ;D
(I’m only talking about casting in terms of the physical attributes of the actors and their acting abilities, not their personal lives.)
As we all know, casting is highly subjective, and “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What a terribly boring world it would be if we all fell for the exact same faces!
The whole thing stirs up beauty as a concept. We argue whether Louis’s hair is long and straight, and chestnut in color, like in movie!IWTV, or that it’s shoulder-length, wavy and raven black as described in canon. In some fanart it’s drawn just long and black and silky straight, in some, it’s short and curly!
In considering VC Casting, we will have to make compromises, it’s unlikely that whoever is cast will look or be styled sufficiently to please everyone. I have my own subjective ideals for beauty and how the characters should look, don’t take any of my opinions personally (unless you want to agree with me!), I would never want to cause anyone discomfort simply because I disagree with their choice.
Whoever is finally cast, let’s try to give the actors a chance to do their jobs and try to keep in mind that these are fictional characters, and the movie people want us to enjoy their product, and buy the BluRay of it, and make a cult classic out of it, and all that jazz.
More on beauty under the cut.
My 8 year old cousin just told me on Saturday night, right in the middle of a lovely collage session in which we were cutting up models from Seventeen and making fashion plates, that she wished she had “straight blonde hair.” She said curly hair was ugly. Her hair is perfect Louis de Pointe du Lac hair to me, brunette and maybe a little lighter than his, but silky and slightly wavy to her shoulders, then descending like a little bubbling waterfall into the most perfect little shining curls for about 4 inches. Oooh purple prose! But I had to paint a picture since I can’t post one here, so let me be briefly flowery just for the sake of description, ok?
I knew I didn’t have a satisfactory answer for her concern, because telling her “But you have beautiful French girl hair!” “But mine is just like yours! Is mine ugly?” would have meant nothing in the face of a culture that forces certain ideals of beauty at us from such an early age. She said “I wish my hair was straight and blonde,” as if that would solve all her major problems, so that she could then go on to tackle the important ones.
She then followed it up with “- like my dance teacher Lilly.” Ah! Now it was clear! She wanted to look like someone she deeply respects and appreciates! Hopefully that’s really where it’s coming from and not the mass media trying to convince us all from an early age that our inadequacies are many and can only be overcome with dye, paint, etc. I admit that I wear makeup, but for me, it’s more like war paint, and bc I enjoy the art of it.
I told her anyway, “My best friend has straight black hair, and she told me that many girls like her get their hair professionally curled, they pay a lot of money to try to get their hair curly like yours.”
“Really?” said my 8 year old cousin.
“Really.” I said.
She seemed somewhat pleased with this factoid and we went back to our art project, but still… It just brought up this whole beauty topic. It’s not resolved, the conversation is far from over, but at least we started it.
I had it through the blood of my mother, who had come from those people, the daughter of a Keltic chieftain married to a Roman patrician.
Marius, The Vampire Lestat
I just don’t understand how this works? Could she still be a Roman citizen, even if he defines her as a Celtic ‘princess’? Was she a freed slave? ARgh I need answers!
She was not a Roman citizen. If Marius’ father indeed legally married her, she must have been a freed slave. My headcanon is that he probably bought her on slave market, possibly after some successful military campaign in Galia (don’t bother figuring out if there was any at the time, there probably wasn’t). She was proably super expensive and the guy who was selling her surely made a point of her blood status to get a higher price.
Now, did he marry her before she was pregnant or after? He must have married her before Marius was born, that’s certain. Marius was born as a free Roman citizen so his mother couldn’t have been a slave at the time. I assume his father bought himself a pretty barbaric princess, got her pregnant and decided to free and marry her so his child would be a citizen. Did he fall in love with her? Was there any other reason? Who knows.
What alternative was there? Should I have dragged him around Europe with us in the search for Marius and for the answers that I did not have? What about when Gabrielle finally left and I lost all hope? Would he have gone to ground with me? Would he have been careful in his feeding habits when unleashed and roaming the countryside? And when I was rescued by Marius….when I finally looked upon Akasha’s face, would he have stood by my side?
I think not. It was he that returned to Renaud’s and it was he that formed The Theater of the Vampires! He hated the sight of me and I him but for different reasons….I hadn’t perished, the light never left me despite my descent into darkness! And he was a madman….half broken creature of dark genius! Would he have been happy to leave Paris? To stare at my face every evening and leave his music behind?
You know the answer if you are reading. Why ask me the questions to which you already know the answers? Are you attempting to demonize and damn me once more? Are you attempting to point out my mistakes when they parade themselves before me again on a nightly basis?
I have laid it bare at your feet and my sins are available at any time for you to browse and review over and over if you like. I am done with them, a tired tune indeed! Ask me no more!
I will find a way to give Nicolas purpose again but I realize that together, we do nothing but poison the well over and over until neither of us can drink.
♛You want fun facts? Fun facts… mon dieu, what haven’t I told you about myself in all these books? Minutiae I suppose. Or what I consider to be so.
1. I have a coffee-colored birthmark on my lower abs, on the left, near my Adonis muscle, which can be seen just above the waistline of low-rise jeans. My mother has an identical mark on the opposite side, a mirror reflection of mine. It was something she and I had some kind of inside joke about when I was a small child, but I can’t for the life of me remember the punchline. It would send us both into the kind of laughter that makes your face hurt.
2. Oh! This is worth telling: I discovered sometime in the 90’s that we can be tattooed, but that the tattoo will fade away entirely during the Deathsleep. Daniel may have been involved. Of course we decided that I absolutely had to get a large tattoo across my chest that read, “Property of Louis”in huge black calligraphic lettering, just to see Louis’ reaction. When I spread open my shirt to reveal the work of art, every drop of blood drained from his face!
He was frozen in that special moment before the judgment begins. It was a sight to behold. Instead of lay in with the judgment as usual, he actually shifted into damage control, terrified it would last forever, and immediately started looking into laser-removal treatments! He fell asleep at the computer that morning and had to be carried safely to bed.
How relieved was he when my branding had disappeared by the following night? After some heavy physical punishment to my person, he treated me very well for the entire night. How so? Read between the lines, mes petits.
3. I do have taste preferences with blood. For the appetizer, as you know, I like it young and fresh, and I like to get the victim fairly emotionally stimulated because it adds spice. Women especially, for the more delicate package, too, and all the softness. For the main course, older is better, and angry, preferably. A touch of fear is good. Adrenaline makes older blood that much richer. Men, usually, the struggling muscles feels so very soothing.
4. When I’m not devising a scheme to drive him crazy, I leave Louis post-it love notes hidden in various places where he’s sure to find them. Yes, I do that! I am sickeningly romantic. Tactically romantic; those notes tend to plead my case better than I can when we’re deeply embroiled in a fight.
5. I may have ordered custom-made fangs for a special precious friend of mine, molded off of my own. And I might tell you more about that another time… if you beg properly.
If it makes you feel better, I haven’t read Twilight either.
(//If I might add a little here, I really like this answer. If reports of Nicolas’s death were greatly exaggerated, and he was knocking around somewhere currently, I HIGHLY doubt he’d want to read the VC. He has no interest in learning Lestat’s spin of what happened 200 yrs ago nor any in reading a current YA vampire series w/ all the reputation it has. That part of their unlife is long, long gone. Their ship is very sunken ;A;)
I-want-my-IWTV 