my own headcanon is that first time louis met daniel was in a gay bar and was trying to flirt with him but let it slip that he was a vampire and daniel instantly wanted to interview him and louis was like “pls i’m trying to get laid”
I understand your confusion! To be honest, your message is extremely difficult to answer, there is plenty of evidence that they are not lovers, as you point out in your message: they “absolutely hate and insult each other” during IWTV (and in later books, too), and yes, Claudia tries to kill Lestat 😛 Those aren’t signs of love.
In my reading of canon, they do get together, but it is always a fragile “together.” They meet before Lestat’s concert, they are together at the end of QOTD, etc., there are many times in canon when they are physically together but, it is usually thick with the tension of whether it can last ;A; Perhaps that’s another reason why the L/L shippers make so many fanworks; we just don’t get enough L/L explicitly in canon.
When Anne Rice wrote IWTV, Lestat was clearly the main antagonist (other antagonists included Santiago, the theatre vampires, etc.). Lestat was intended to antagonize Louis. At the end of IWTV, one can say that Louis has won; even if he might not be all rainbows-and-sparkles-happy about life, Louis ends the book at least as a functionally independent vampire, whereas Lestat is miserable and broken, seemingly having difficulty even hunting for mortal victims on his own (dependent on a young “nurse vampire” bringing him a victim). There is disagreement between Lestat and Louis whether that scene even happened, but, whether it did or not, by the end of IWTV-era, it seems like Louis has overcome his abuser/monster and is the stronger one of the two of them.
Still, L/L did explicitly share some intimate moments in IWTV, when Lestat fed on Louis, and sharing the intimacy of the Dark Gift (the most intimate experience for vampires), and beyond than that, Lestat tells the reader in TVL to “Read between the lines.” A relationship does not need to be explicitly stated to exist, it is up to each individual reader to decide whether they want to ship those characters or not based on their reading of the story.
Personally, I ship
Louis/Lestat and thankfully, I have found plenty of other Louis/Lestat shippers in the fandom! Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this post as to why they ship Louis/Lestat ❤
TL:DR; Throughout canon Lestat pines for Louis QUITE A LOT. It is my personal belief that most of this pining is to “make up for” all the awful times during the years in IWTV when Lestat abused his fledglings, when they fought back, when Lestat was frustrated at being unable to give them the truth of their vampire nature by sharing his knowledge with them. To make up for the scenes that were not explicitly described in IWTV.
1) Here’s Lestat talking about Louis, from TVL:
I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter… Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had…
And why should I bother to tell of the times he came to me in wretched anxiety, begging me never to leave him, of the times we walked together and talked together, acted Shakespeare together for Claudia’s amusement, or went arm in arm to hunt the riverfront taverns or to waltz with the dark-skinned beauties of the celebrated quadroon balls?
^You could say he lied about any of this, we do have unreliable narrators. That’s up to you as a reader to decide if you believe Lestat’s account on this or not.
2) More of Lestat talking about Louis in TVL:
I kept glancing at him and away from him, as if his green eyes were hurting me. In modern parlance he was a laser beam. Deadly and delicate he seemed. His victims had always loved him.
And I had always loved him, hadn’t I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?
^This seems, again, to be very clearly stating that Lestat loves Louis. Whether that love is reciprocated is up to the reader’s interpretation.
3) In the immortal words of @high-fructose-lesbianism: “Now matter how hard you ship Louis and Lestat you will never ship Louis and Lestat as hard as Lestat does.” [X] Part of why it’s such a tough ship is that AR just does not let us have much in terms of explicit canon fluff of them! It mostly happens off-screen. Which is where fanworks steps in to satisfy that need ;] I have some more of this kind of thing mixed into my #nobody ships Louis and Lestat harder than Lestat ships Louis and Lestat tag.
“…but if I did have to choose, [my one companion for all eternity] would be Louis. My longest most enduring friendship and love affair in this world was with Louis. And though his limitations can be maddening, they can also be as inspiring to me as his virtues… the best choices we make are not always the wise choices. Sometimes they are intensely emotional choices. And I’ve always had a deep Romantic respect for emotion. My love for Louis transcends wisdom. And I may need the pain as much as the consolation that an eternal relationship with Louis would involve.“
6) Anne Rice gets this question on a regular basis. I don’t know if her answer below convinced the commenter, Romeo Naghdi, that Lestat is “totally bisexual, totally omni sexual” (which was another term for bisexual some years ago, IIRC). To be honest, I think when she answers these types of questions she is answering so that others can see her statement, even if the commenter might remain steadfast in their own opinion.
[^X 6/26/2015] ^Personally, I don’t know how Romeo Naghdi (and others who share his opinion) read the same books that I/we did, but I don’t care what he thinks of Lestat’s sexuality, and I would encourage you all to go with Anne Rice on this. She made her statement and then let it go.
I am not attempting to erase any queer representation in mentioning that we have these people who headcanon Lestat as straight. I included it only to give the context to AR’s comment.
I hope that helps, Anon! Again, anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this as to why they ship Louis/Lestat, even though they “absolutely hate and insult each other” during IWTV!
I’m sure you receive many, many emails of this kind, but I could not let my gratitude go unexpressed.
The short version of it is that I may not be here today were it not for you.
Now, the longer version of it is that in my 17th summer, my sister went to our town’s sparse public library and brought home a massive stack of paperback novels to get us through the long, hot, enui that can be the countryside days and nights. Interview with the Vampire was among the books, and I happened to grab it first. Honestly, I was more amused by the title than interested, so I decided to see if my predictions for “a little light horror fiction” might come true. Well…
I practically locked myself in my room for three days until I had read it, and then re-read certain passages three and four times over. I had found a new respect for the power of literature.
You see, this was a time when I was beginning to understand my homosexuality, and I had never encountered such rich and erotically charged writing with two male figures. But beyond that–and, more importantly–no work of fiction or fact had ever made me feel that its author had, somehow, reached a hand inside my mind, pulled out the most important philosophical questions that I could not yet put into words, and then laid out the answers in ways that made me hunger for more, and which made me want to live.
The true nature of that time is that I was terribly sad and suicidal because, in my very small and inhibited world, I was sure there were no other boys like me. No one to learn from, no one to take solace with, no one to confess all my fears and doubts to. At 17, as you are aware, I’m sure, the world is always about to end for things that people get through every day. For me it was no different, yet it was insanely compounded by the “gay thing” in the rural south. I won’t go further into that, I know you know what it means.
So, as I read, I saw myself so completely in the character of Louis–and I desperately wanted to be him, sad as he was–that I was able to forget my “family prison”, as I called it, and started thinking about how to really be who I was meant to be. I’ll tell you the part that got me weeping, and that I go back to often when I need to re-feel that old passion that first woke me up…
It’s the section of the book when Louis is in Paris with Armand, and they’re in Armand’s chambers discussing the nature of good and evil, and Louis asks him if they are the children of Satan. Growing up in the Baptist church, I had been taught that “my kind” were just that, and so this was one of my eternal questions brought to the printed page for discussion with a Master (I was shaking by this point!). And then came that beautiful answer–please forgive me if I murder the direct quote: “Exactly. And, consequently, if you believe that God made the world around you, then you must also believe that God made Satan, and that all of Satan’s power comes from God. There are no children of Satan, really.”
And that was it. That was the moment I realized I didn’t need to end my life because I was this aweful thing that didn’t belong in the natural world. I decided to embrace what I was, just as Lestat and Armand had been trying to teach that lesson to Louis, and I have never looked back, hard as the road has been at times.
Now, in my 40th summer, I am studying to be a therapist so I can help others overcome the same suffering I went through and overcame. This confession, though, is not the first time I have revealed to others what, or who, saved my life so long ago. In my efforts to fully connect with others who are struggling, I often tell them of the power of your story, and how it offered a perspective rarely encountered even in the best “self-help” books. Sometimes, a beautiful and tragic allegory can elicit the most catharsis. Lucky for all of us.
In closing, I’ll say again how fortunate I feel to have found you and Louis that summer. He is always with me on some level. I’m not really sure I have the exact words to express all the levels of gratitude I feel, but I hope this letter can convey even a 10th of it. You may absolutely feel free to share it with others, if you think it would be of benefit. I am forever grateful, and forever changed for the better, because of your incredible spirit and voice.
superhiki I’m so hyped about the new #vampirechronicles TV show- I’m throwing my full support behind @thomasjwf as Lestat- if there is any doubt in your heart here is some proof. 💟🦇💟
thomasjwf🤯💖 Oh wow that is so totally flattering. Thank you so much! Let’s hope I get the opportunity to give it a shot. 🤞🏻🎬🧛🏻♂️
superhiki @thomasjwf I hope so too! You’ve got a growing crowd of supporters. 💐💐
I-want-my-IWTV 