[X] Interview with the Vampire concept art by Mark “Crash” McCreery
(Warner Bros., 1994) Haunting head & shoulders portrait of Tom Cruise as the vampire “Lestat” struggling on the ground while blood is gushing from his slit throat. Accomplished in pencil on a leaf of 14 ¾ in. x 8 in. artist’s illustration paper. Fine.
♛I bare my soul to you so thoroughly and so often for so very long and you want to put me on medication *sigh*
[X] My initial reaction is offense, you’re right about that, but I know you meant it in good faith. Perhaps it’s because Armand has suggested it so many times as an insult, and I detest that there’s a connotation that anyone “on pills” or “seeing a shrink” is somehow lesser for doing these things. Who the f&ck decided that wearing glasses to improve one’s vision was acceptable but needing extra chemicals to improve one’s brain functions was somehow an indication of being some kind of, I don’t know, freak of nature?! Oh right, wearing glasses will get you bullied, too *tosses up hands*
Here’s the thing that I maybe failed to convey to you or that some of you chose to misread.
I grew up with neglect and physical abuse on a regular basis. Directly proportional to any time I wanted to strike out and try to find what any child craves – affection, love, support. I had so little of those things. I starved for them. Do you know what it’s like to have to sit at the dinner table and be polite to someone sitting at the head of the table who less than an hour ago beat you to the ground, your face on the cold stone floor, and ridiculed you for crying about it? You’re wearing bruises from it, you have some bandages, you taste your own blood in your mouth from your split lip with each bite of the food that YOU brought home to this person? Trying not to shake or cry. This person who asks you to play chess with him after dinner as if nothing happened?
This person who then acts surprised when no, you don’t want to play chess or sit with him and hear about old family history, because all you would be doing is looking at his hands and thinking about how different they look when not folded into a fist. That you sometimes flinch when he gestures at all with them.
To go without praise or being hugged by a family member for months.
Fine, skip all that. Say that I should have grown some balls and a thicker skin and been beyond all that.
Not sure if you remember this part, but I was an orphan when I was first turned into a vampire. My maker gave me the most intimate experience I’d had up until that point, life-altering really, and then left me the barest set of instructions, a big old box of cash, a big old musty castle, and then orphaned me on the spot. I’ve made several vampires of my own since then and let me tell you something else you may not know: the blood shared between a maker and a fledgling is binding. So even if I’d gotten over my shitty childhood, here I was freshly neglected, freshly wounded by this bond being made and destroyed in the span of less than an hour. Sifting through his ashes. Another shitty parent for Lestat.
I’m not rehashing the rest of my unlife for you but suffice it to say I don’t think my high-highs and low-lows are the result of a malfunctioning lump of fat and blood in my skull.
I do see a therapist privately (and for couples therapy with Louis) and that’s been improving things gradually. Progress is not smooth, it’s erratic, but I’m learning and practicing tools to help me in many ways.
Nicolas, he might definitely have benefited from modern medicine in this regard. I wonder whether he would also have taken offense, or if he had really considered it and embraced the magic of modern science, would it have saved his life? I think so.
I would rather BLEED OUT than sit here and talk about my feelings for 10 mins.
Interviews & Rec (6/?)
I assume you wanted a fluffy answer (and I answered something similar here in a fluffy way) I mean I have an OTP tag that is dominated with Lestat/Louis and I was all well and prepared to answer you as such, but when I really thought about it… and was talking about it with thelionscrimsonclaws…
I remembered this quote:
“I don’t like myself, you know. I love myself, of course, I’m committed to myself till my dying day. But I don’t like myself.“ – Lestat de Lioncourt, Memnoch the Devil.
And I feel like I doubt whether canon!Lestat can truly trust any of all his lovers to be the ONE TRUE LOVE. I think his one true love is himself, and his mission to find the answers he needs, so really, LIFE ITSELF.
No one is better than he is at beating himself up and then healing from it; he’s had to rely on himself and his own judgment for most of the big decisions in his life. For better or worse.
Also, I think Lestat requires a lot of different interactions with different lovers, no one individual seems able (or willing) to satisfy all these myriad needs. Everyone who loves Lestat intimately seems to accept that they will have to share him, but he has an enormous amount of love to give, there seems to be a limitless supply for all of them ❤
Spoilers ahead…
Of the ones you mentioned, each one was a unique relationship. He’s never the same exact person, he behaves differently in different pairings.
Louis: If there were a One True Love, it would be Louis. Their relationship, while volatile, even lethal at times, is something they both cleave to. Louis has learned from Lestat’s example and has become stronger over time, emotionally and physically (although he was always somewhat of a BAMF). Lestat has gained the skills of inner peace and patience from Louis’ example. Their chemistry has been the best of any pairing; they’re not two halves of one whole, but two individuals who challenge each other, who strive to surprise each other still, and in my opinion, that’s what the best relationships do.
However,
Louis tried to check out of the series w/out permission at one point, and well… that can’t be ignored.
Nicolas was Lestat’s first real long-term relationship at a time when Lestat desperately needed love and nurturing and wanted to give it back, too. Nicolas is the first person who really listened to him and they both helped each other immensely… but I don’t think that relationship could ever really work, because deep down Nicolas and Lestat always wanted different things out of life.
Akasha used Lestat. She held him in captivity and drugged him on her blood and her mental illusions, keeping him in a disoriented state by screwing with his Deathsleep patterns. She made him believe it was love, but it was really more a form of addiction. She needed him as a pawn in her grand scheme, both bc he’s a total studmuffin and also to win over the vampires that were loyal to him. She said to him that he would be her “instrument:”
“You are my only true companion, my finest instrument…. But as the stars are my witness, you will aid me in my mission. Or you will be no more than the instrument for the commencement, as Judas was to Christ. And I shall destroy you as Christ destroyed Judas once your usefulness is past.” – Akasha, Queen of the Damned.
So I wouldn’t call Lestat/Akasha a loving relationship, but hey, if you like it, that’s fine, too, I’m a #Ship and let ship girl!
Rowan Mayfair – to be honest, I can’t remember much of this pairing except that Lestat seemed captivated by her for no apparent reason other than that she was a strong woman and had a kind of tortured soul, which he recognized as being like his own. He promises her the Dark Gift:
“And the night will come when we’ll share the Blood. I promise you. The Dark Gift will be yours.” – Lestat, Blood Canticle
But AR diverted from canon with Prince Lestat, essentially rendering the Rowan/Lestat ship null and void. AR decided to sink that ship. I couldn’t really envision Rowan as being part of the coven, and it would be painful to see Louis shoved aside YET AGAIN to make way for YET ANOTHER fledgling.
…Fortunately David Talbot hasn’t minded being relegated to the background, and only getting brief moments of (dubcon) intimacy from Lestat. David knows he has to share.
I-want-my-IWTV 