Why did Louis have a wife in the movie, instead of a brother?

I don’t know the real reason, I don’t know anyone who does. I don’t know if it was Anne Rice’s choice, or Neil Jordan’s. 

I think there were a lot of factors that went into that decision, and it stirs up alot of issues and questions, alot has been written about it and alot more can be written about it!

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TL;DR: 1) I think it was done to cut time, Louis being distraught about losing a wife and child is immediately understandable to anyone who hasn’t read the books. It starts off the film with Louis questioning the reasons of a God that could punish him for seemingly no reason at all.* 

2) The other main issue is whether Louis is/was straight or if he actually was bisexual/homosexual/etc. as a mortal and Lestat entering the picture and pulling Louis into vampiring made it possible for Louis to let go of his preconceived ideas and social/religious/etc. repression and accept himself for what he really was. Neil Jordan probably wanted that left open-ended and unanswered. 

(*It could have set up the whole Louis-frustrated-about-how-religion-plays-into-vampiring, but that was cut from the film, too.)

1) One of the audiobook recordings for IWTV has a runtime of 14 hours and 28 minutes [X] and that’s ALOT OF STORY to condense down into a movie that can’t be that long. Scenes have to be cut. 

  • The movie we got is 2 hours long, and in 1994, I seem to remember movies being more in the 1.5 hour range. Titanic, clocking in at a little over 3 hours long, was kind of ridiculed by the critics for that lengthy runtime. These days, a 2-3 hour movie is not really as big a deal.
  • Building in the right amount of time/scenes to show the circumstances of Paul’s death and why Louis felt so responsible for it, that would have increased the runtime and delayed the amount of time we get to the actual vampiring. I can’t check the film right now but I think Lestat appears within the first 15 minutes of the movie, for good reason. To get the vampiring STARTED.

2)

In 1994, same-sex marriage was legal in zero states. Now it is the law of the land. Movie!IWTV was already pushing the envelope to suggest that Louis/Lestat were in a romantic relationship together. So, if Louis starts his story as having been married to a woman, it would appear that he’s established as being straight. On the surface. 

  • HOWEVER! this is a Neil Jordan movie, and one of his previous movies, the Crying Game, Jordan had gender issues and sexual orientations as main concerns, so perhaps starting Louis off as SEEMING TO BE STRAIGHT and then having Lestat swoop in and now Louis is “with” Lestat somehow, experiences that moment of intense intimacy when he is given the Dark Gift… so Jordan seems to be asking the audience if Louis was actually bisexual or homosexual as a mortal and suppressed it? Since we never see Louis and Lestat actually make love on screen (aside from the Dark Gift happening), does it still count as a homosexual relationship?
  • ^I think Neil Jordan wanted these questions left open-ended, and for that to be part of the exquisite torture that is the Louis/Lestat ship. Is it platonic or romantic? Jordan isn’t telling, and neither is Louis. 

There is, as I said, a lot more to it than that, but these are the main issues that come to mind for me, and I’m also trying to be concise. Anyone can reblog/comment with more ideas.

Your recent post made me wonder – if Lestat is bad with technology like he says in the most recent book, do you think someone had to teach him how to set up a facebook account? Louis trying to show him the difference between the search bar and the status bar after he accidentally posted someone’s name for all to see? So many questions.

i-want-my-iwtv:

Keep reading

VC Failbook 3/?

What’s the most frantic you’ve ever felt?

devilsfool:

I’ve detailed one moment, when I was mortal, and with Nicolas in the inn. The realization of nothing, of endless darkness with no explanation or answer for suffering… I’ve learned since that these are called ‘panic attacks.’ We didn’t have such words, then. 

Another instance was when I was young. I think I might have been eight, maybe ten years old? I was being punished, though I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what I’d done. Most things, especially simple things, were enough reason to punish me, I suppose. I’m sure I wasn’t an easy child, and my father was not an easy man by any stretch of the imagination. 

He’d had my brothers lock me in my bedroom. But Charles, in a fit of charming cruelty, locked me not only into my bedroom but also into the wooden trunk at the foot of my bed. 

Oh, God, the panic. Have you been locked in a very small space before? And I don’t mean a coffin–a coffin, especially as a vampire, is a different experience. I mean a small, confined space into which you know you are not meant to be placed. I beat at the inside of the trunk for hours, crying and screaming to be released–but it was a castle, n’est-ce pas? Who was going to hear me outside the great stone walls of my room? 

Eventually, my nurse came to find me as night fell. It must have been when I did not appear at the table in the great hall with the rest of my family. What had they done when asked where I was, my idiot brothers? She didn’t even have the key, poor woman. From what I came to understand, Gabrielle finally forced its surrender (she has since told me that she slapped him; I find that satisfying) and came to my bedroom herself to free me. 

One happy family, non?

Greetings! I’ve been advised to take my question to you ^^ At the end of IWTV, Louis talks about this young, newly made vampire that is mad at Lestat for not getting out of his chair (tries to feed him a baby). Now, this cannot be Antonie because that guy hadn’t seen Lestat from the late 1700s until 2014 when Prince Lestat came out. But as far as I can tell, this unnamed fledgling is never mentioned anywhere else. Do you think he slipped through the cracks and was just forgotten by Anne?

Hello! I have thought about this, probably thought about it TOO much… and while I don’t a clear answer, it’s a stimulating question: 

Was this young ‘nurse’ vampire a fledgling of Lestat’s? 

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^How does the old fandom joke go? Every time X sound occurs, Lestat makes another fledgling? *facepalm*

I agree w/ your point about re: Antoine, it seems like Lestat or Antoine would have confirmed that it was in fact Antoine who was the unnamed young vampire in that scene in IWTV.

TL;DR: We have unreliable narrators** in BOTH Lestat and Louis*. I personally don’t think that the unnamed ‘nurse’ vampire in this scene was made by Lestat, but it’s quite possible! Lestat has never mentioned him again in canon, but we might find out about him in the next novel.

Hit the jump for more, cut for length.


This is an excerpt from the scene

in IWTV (the book, not in the movie) w/ the unnamed young vampire @terryfphanatics is asking about:

“Because shortly after that I saw a vampire in New Orleans, a sleek white-faced young man walking alone on the broad sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue…” (this mystery vampire kills a woman and takes her baby to a shabby old house where he meets up with Lestat) “My eyes widened as I studied this stooped and shivering vampire whose rich blond hair hung down in loose waves covering his face…

… “ ‘You all leave me!’ [Lestat] whined now in a thin, high-pitched voice.

‘You can’t keep us with you!’ said the stiff young vampire sharply.”

(Louis taps at the window)

…“ ‘It’s Louis! Louis!’ [Lestat] said. `Let him in’ And he gestured frantically, like an invalid, for the young `nurse’ to obey. … and I could see the tears welling in his eyes…How baffling and awful it was, this smoothfaced, shimmering immortal man bent and rattled and whining like a crone.”

So yes, Lestat might have made this ‘nurse’ vampire as Marius made Bianca, a dedicated fledgling vampire to help him in his recovery. 

As with the previously unnamed musician vampire in IWTV – who later became known as Antoine in PL – I used to headcanon that

Lestat couldn’t bear to even mention the musician vampire’s name in later canon bc he was either A) an embarrassment to Lestat or B) that they had broken up violently, C) both, D) the musician vampire had really been killed by Claudia, or E) other reasons. This unnamed young ‘nurse’ vampire might fall under A, B, C, or E. Or maybe someone else has killed him since then *shrugs*

When Lestat says: ‘You all leave me!’ ;A; This could be about his fledglings, bc, yes, when you take TVL into account, up to this point in canon all four have chosen to leave him: Gabrielle, Nicolas, Louis & Claudia (at this point in canon, the unnamed musician vampire appeared to have been destroyed). Armand’s warnings to Lestat about making fledglings

in TVL are relevant: 

“Oh, but it’s always a travesty, don’t you see?… And the veil will always come down between you. Make a legion. You will be, always and forever, alone!


If the ‘nurse’ vampire was not made by Lestat: It also would have been possible for a rogue vampire to find Lestat, perceive that he was an older vampire, and might have wisdom or power, or the rogue had heard of the legendary Lestat, and come in search of him purposely. I feel like this is more likely given how beaten down Lestat was from the assassination attempt and his survival of the Theatre des Vampires in such close proximity.


THEN we have THIS (also from IWTV, prior to the scene excerpted above):

“[Armand] told me something he’d concealed from me since the time we were in Paris.

“Lestat had not died in the Theatre des Vampires. I had believed him to be dead, and when I asked Armand about those vampires, he told me they all had perished. But he told me now that this wasn’t so. Lestat had left the theater the night I had run away from Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre. Two vampires who had been made with Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.”

^Like…. WHAT?

Maybe Armand had heard it through the grapevine that Lestat had these two caretakers, but since Lestat never mentions having siblings in the blood from Magnus, it’s possible that Armand is lying so that Louis thinks Lestat already has enough support and doesn’t need a THIRD caretaker. 

Or, of course, Anne Rice either A) forgot about these two sibling vampires or B) chose not to address them. They would probably both have been too old to be the “young nurse vampire” but… MAYBE WE’LL GET THEM IN THE NEXT BOOK WHO KNOWS? Anything! is possible!

*Further complicated by the fact that Louis’s story went through Daniel and Daniel’s publishers, who may have added misinformation of their own for a better story! Reprehensible that this young vampire would bring Lestat a baby as a victim, but in Lestat’s defense, he doesn’t want it: “ ‘You might have brought me something else!’ said Lestat bitterly.”

**And there’s also the unreliable narrator issue, there is some speculation as to whether this scene occurred at all, or that it occurred differently than Louis reported.

Kind of an “out there” question, and I’m unsure if anyone has asked, but how do you think Lestat would get along with Batman villains like, for example, Harley and Joker.

That is kind of an “out there” question, but intriguing! I’m sorry that I’m not familiar enough w/ the Batman villains to answer that

(here’s a wiki list), I’ve seen most of the movies but haven’t read the comics or had serious discussions about the characters, but I’ll open it up to the group. Anyone have answers for anon? @queenofthesavagegarden uses Margot Robbie as the FC for their genderbent Lestat muse, Lestel, and so that mun/muse may have opinions about how the recent Harley Quinn bears a striking resemblance to Lestel (or the other way around).

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^Here’s fanart of Marius and Armand dressed up as the Dynamic Duo by @askvampnesia (aka @vampirebarons​)

As a side thought: I headcanon that Lestat loves all the superhero movies, being a Sam Spade fan. Intellectually stimulating or just brawling or anything in between, he loves it all! I headcanon that, even though it was an older movie and thus lacking in the SFX we have today, Lestat really loved the Reeve!Superman where Superman was given the chance to give up his powers, and how that went very badly, and Superman had to then get them back in order to save the day.

Lestat would also probably have superhero costumes of his own and fly around in them. Would he wear a mask? Hmmm… Gonna need to see some costume ideas. #FANART REQUEST #FANFIC REQUEST.

VC Nicolas

claudiasashes:

Dear Fandom,

does anyone have a link to that post about all the reasons Nicki is still alive?

Here it is, ideas were from a Yahoo group posting on 3/5/2006, then posted to tumblr w/ commentary by @devilsviolinist 😉

REASONS WHY NICKI MIGHT ACTUALLY BE ALIVE…

^Keep in mind that this was posted 4/6/2014, pre-PL and pre-PLROA. 

good evening, i have some kind of headcanon ask for you! so, Armand became a vampire as teenager, and probably looks very young (due to vampire beauty, or something… i remember he was described like this, but maybe it was translation). do you think that he was even stopped by the police and asked why is he alone so late in the night, warning him of the dangers and proposing to give him a ride home? sorry, i don’t know if it happens in USA, but it happened to me and my friends quite some times.

That’s good that the police are concerned for your safety and have offered to give you & your crew a safe ride home! Yes, I would think that Armand does get this kind of interaction,

more because if the fact that he was under 21 when he was turned and not so much bc of the vampire beauty (from TVA):

I would never be anything but the seventeen-year-old boy you see now… [but] I am not a waif and never have been. I am a strong child.

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^Portrait of a Young Man 3., Botticelli]

Even if he looked “strong,” I’m an adult and it would concern me to see a 17 year old out in a bar late at night, too! I wouldn’t approach him myself, but I might worry that he’s in danger and alert a staff member. From my experience in many states in the US, it is a liability for a bar or club to have underage people even in their building, so most don’t even allow underage people in at all. 

Armand probably has a big deck of fake ID’s that say he’s 21, though, and some people really do look younger than they are… combine that with his Mind Whammy abilities, so I’m sure he gets in wherever he wants.

Going off of someone’s ask about a Lestat AU Drunk History, what are your headcanons for what all the main vc characters are like drunk? What type of drunks are they? Just wondering lol

“If I want to sleep all day and drink all night, I’ll do it, damn you!”

– Lestat de Lioncourt

I’ve had this ask sitting here for far too long, Anon, I’m sorry for the delay on reply. Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment with mortal or vampire headcanons!

Also, @blood-of-the-rose posted the vampires as (alcoholic) drinks, you might want to check that out.

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[^X digging up an oldie from the archive…]