That’s so sweet of you (I’m very touched!), that you were worried about me bc I wasn’t posting! Rest assured, I have a big queue, so if this blargh ever stops posting… then you can worry.
Save anything you want from me though, bc I worry about this current administration in the US and whether it will have an impact on net neutrality. There might come a day night in which Lestat making a nice fresh glass of rat blood for his very picky eater of a fledgling could be considered inappropriate *cries*
Anyway, I appreciate the heck out of you all… but I don’t mind losing followers. It happens, I don’t take it personally. If you don’t want to see my posts in your dash, Unfollow me for awhile, or permanently, it’s totes fine. If I lost all my followers tomorrow, I’d still be doing my thing, but I had no idea that having followers would make this so much more fun ❤
As always, #Your Headcanon May Vary, these are just my own opinions, and I am SURE other ppl have other excellent answers for this.
I’m focusing on Louis’s strength at turning and the first few years after, since he does grow more powerful over time on his own (and he also gets *~upgraded~* later in canon, idk whether you accept later canon but it happens!).
TL;DR: I don’t think Lestat purposely made Louis weak, it was a combination of factors, but mostly that the procedure isn’t an exact science*, Lestat was a young maker and turned Louis too soon after making two fledglings before, and the fact that Louis was malnourished** (refusal to kill ppl) for those first few years might have been a contributing factor.
**So Lestat does talk about Louis being weak in IWTV, but not that he purposely made him that way, just that he allowed it to go uncorrected; he didn’t force Louis to kill ppl, or force Louis to embrace his vampiric gifts and learn how to use them:
“Lestat looked at me. ‘I expected you to feel these things
instinctually, as I did,’ he said. When I gave you that first kill, I
thought you would hunger for the next and the next, that you would
go to each human life as if to a full cup, the way I had. But you didn’t. And all this time I suppose I kept from straightening you out because
you were best weaker. I’d watch you playing shadow in the night,
staring at the falling rain, and I’d think, He’s easy to manage, he’s
simple. But you’re weak, Louis. You’re a mark. For vampires and
now for humans alike. This thing with Babette has exposed us both.
It’s as if you want us both to be destroyed.‘”
^Lestat is saying Louis is weak by choice, and he’s describing weakness of character more than physical strength, so I believe he was physically weak bc of the Dark Gift. The Dark Gift is not an exact science*, despite all good/bad intentions, it’s the vampiric form of pregnancy. But there are things about the procedure that can affect the strength of the fledgling:
Whether the blood is transferred once (for Louis) or multiple times (for Marius) between maker and fledgling – Multiple times seems to make a stronger fledgling. Why didn’t Lestat do it multiple times for Louis? I think Louis was already in such bad physical shape that Lestat didn’t want to risk it. Plus, he had already turned 2 fledglings using the single transfer procedure, he probably felt like that was good enough.
Age, power, and timing of making previous fledglings of the maker – it seems like power is outweighed by the other two factors.
The fledgling’s diet after turning – Louis was feeding on animals for the first 4-ish years of vampiring, which is like bad junk food, and probably not drinking
the volume of blood he needed, either.
Yes, post-QOTD (and pre-Merrick), Louis refused to drink Lestat’s blood. I headcanon that that felt like a rejection of Lestat bc blood-sharing is a major expression of intimacy for vampires. He might have refused it bc he saw how it had changed Lestat and he didn’t want that to happen to himself, but I think he also wanted to preserve his own vulnerability, in case he wanted to suicide ;A;
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
“So I’m confused, was Louis weak because Lestat made him that way on purpose?”
I don’t think it was on purpose. It’s not an exact science* and Lestat had only done it 2x, had only heard about the procedure from Armand and Marius. There is some speculation that the blood transfer needs to be exchanged more than once to ensure a stronger fledgling. Marius, for example, exchanged blood with his maker multiple times when he was turned, but with Louis, Lestat only did it once. I think that’s because Louis was so weakened by the bloodletting he’d been forced to undergo (”When
I was subdued finally, and exhausted then almost to the point of death,
they bled me. The fools.”) that Lestat didn’t want to risk exchanging more than once? Idk.
Also, Louis was feeding on animals for the first 4-ish years of vampiring, and that’s like bad junk food. He was probably not even drinking the volume of blood he needed, either. That might have had an impact on his strength. It probably contributed to his attitude at the time, being underfed and undernourished for so long ;A;
“Or was he weak because he was Lestat’s third fledgling in a decade?”
This is probably more of the reason. As Marius tells Lestat in TVL:
“Well, for one thing, ” he said, “your powers are extraordinary, but
you can’t expect those you make in the next fifty years to equal you or
Gabrielle. Your second child didn’t have half Gabrielle’s strength and
later children will have even less. The blood I gave you will make some difference. If you drink… if you drink from Akasha and Enkil,
which you may choose not to do… that will make some difference
too. But no matter, only so many children can be made by one in a
century.And new offspring will be weak. However, this is not
necessarily a bad thing. The rule of the old covens had wisdom in it
that strength should come with time.And then again, there is the old
truth: you might make titans or imbeciles, no one knows why or how.
In Ricean vampire physiology, a maker needs to wait a good long while between making fledglings; too much frequency will make subsequent fledglings weaker than they could have been. Plus, even though Lestat had the blood of a much older and stronger vampire when he was turned (Magnus), Lestat himself was only a decade into vampiring himself. It seems the vampiric spirit discourages the transfer of powers from young vampires to their fledglings. If anyone got the bulk of that power, it was Gabrielle, Lestat’s first.
“Wouldn’t he be stronger because Lestat had Akasha’s blood in him?”
Marius said that that would make “some difference” but I think the fact that Lestat had already turned 2 vampires, and was young still himself, prevented that power from being transferred.
“I know Louis refused to drink from Lestat, was he ultimately weak because he chose to be?”
He was weak by vampire standards at first, and yes, I think he chose to remain that way. But he’s still stronger and faster than a mortal. He’s also able to defend himself and kick a lot of ass. What he lacks physically he makes up for mentally, he’s strategic in the way he attacks when he does attack, and he can hold his own against much stronger and older vampires (he took out most of the Theatre des Vampires on his own in IWTV!).
*Re: the Dark Trick is not an exact science:
Armand mentions in TVL:
But let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is unpredictable, even when passed on by the very young vampire and with all due care. For reasons no one knows, some mortals when Born to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others may be no more than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with skill. Those with great passion and indomitable will should be avoided as well as those who have none.
♛We do have magnificent long and sharp fangs, some of us even have more sharpened teeth than the usual two.
Oh yes, French kissing other vampires can be a
deliciously painful experience! We are all masochists by nature of what we are, whether or not we were in life.
Kissing mortals is a little more difficult, best to keep those kisses less intense, unless they know what we are, and then really, we just have to be careful with them. It can be extremely pleasurable for mortals, more than you might think.
Bless his sweet inexperienced heart, Louis was trying to kill this evildoer through her tongue!Would have taken ages, good thing I finished her off for him.
If Louis had gone back to France like his brother wanted, well… who knows what his life would have been like? His brother wanted him to sell “everything we owned, and use
the money to do God’s work in France.” So, would they move the women into a convent to be nuns; freeing Louis and Paul to become priests or monks? In Paris, or some other part of France?
If Louis was a priest in Paris, would he have drawn the attention of any of the vampires there? The Theatre des Vampires was set up and had been going for some 10 years by the time Lestat met Louis. Armand was there. If he met Louis as a mortal, would he have been interested in him at all? I don’t know. Part of what drew Armand to Louis was his connection to Lestat. Would Louis still be as appealing without that connection? Would he be appealing as a companion to any other vampires roaming around in France at that time?
Those are all questions to consider.
I don’t think anyone would have chosen him to vampire, if he were some French priest, probably dissatisfied with his life choices. They might have just killed him for fun, though. The TdV killed innocents and they seemed to really enjoy killing the beautiful ppl, and he still would have been attractive enough for that.
As to Louis having a different maker, that’s why I couldn’t answer this ask sooner. It’s too big a question for me!
Physically, he probably would have been better off. He was Lestat’s 3rd in about a decade (and Lestat himself was still very young!), contributing to his ‘weakness’ as a vampire, and lack of some of the vampiric gifts that others can get when they’re turned.
But I think no matter who turned him, or how strong he was, he would still struggle with the whole killing people issue. Marius might have helped guide him into it more slowly. As problematic as Marius became later, in earlier canon we knew him as a mentor figure, and if he had just been that, with no Amadeo situation, he might have been a good maker for Louis.
I’ll open it up to everyone else bc it’s just too big a question: Who would have made a better maker for Louis, and why?
Ok so basically Marius was dressed as Antonio!Armand? I will say that red robe looked very inviting *u*
Now I have this vision of Marius flipping pancakes (since the smell of cooking meat is gross to them), that seems like the kind of thing he’d be willing to cook. Dreams are strange things…
I’ll open this up tho, anyone else have VC dreams? There’s some in my #dream tag, I’ll reblog a few just for you, ‘nonnie.
In response to a number of political things happening in the Real World that I don’t post about here but I think about… and that this response will continue to be necessary for, probably.
♛You may say so. He has no idea how delicious he is. No matter how many times he’s told. Probably for the best.
He’s actually very sensitive about being objectified like this, so I try to keep my appreciation of him to my physical expression of love, rather than verbal praise *winks*
What you’re interpreting as his “sexy” eyes, or that he’s capable of looking into people’s souls, that’s usually his ability to spellbind others, and he does it without even consciously trying to do so. It’s not just his physical attributes, it’s one of his vampiric gifts he hasn’t really needed to consciously hone. I wish that he would, though *dreamy sigh*
♛Guilty of being anaemic? That’s not necessarily under your control. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t study blood like our scientific brethren do… I know what I like to drink, though, and for me, the physicality of the blood is merely the carrier for the moment that I’m locked to my victim, to take what I really require, which is their essence, their soul. I don’t discriminate based on taste; I would just prefer it to be living! (Dead blood is not poisonous, but it’s so so distasteful.)
I’m sure that I have tasted this already, apparently anaemia affects a quarter of the population. One of the causes of it is blood loss, so I’m sure I’ve been the cause of it for some of my Little Drink victims *grins* Oh well…
Other causes of anaemia are dietery, genetic or infections, and as far as I know, whatever the engine is that makes me what I am defends me perfectly from all of these. I’ve never had an illness in that sense. It’s physical food and drink that I can’t handle, but that just comes back the way it came. Very unattractive when that has happened. I can take little sips of real drinks, yes, but none of it has ever had much taste to me.
I won’t lie, I love trying new flavors of blood, Little Drinks from partygoers, and I have a taste for bourbon by proxy now. Drugs? Not as much, as I’m wary of allowing myself into that far of an altered state of mind. Potheads, yes, when I’m in the mood for a gentle kind of high.
As for your question though, I do notice variation in the taste and texture of different blood types, but I usually don’t know the reason. Something a little flatter about blood with less red blood cells or smaller red blood cells, perhaps the closest comparison would be champagne that has gone a little flat, but all mortal blood is still preferable to animal blood. There’s more in it that we need than the physical substance; we need the soul as well.
Although I have met many animals with much more soul than some of the evildoers I have to get involved with, human souls are just more nutritious for us, for whatever reason. Even Gabrielle has confessed to me that she ends up needing to hunt indigenous tribes every so often on her travels, to supplement her usual non-human intake.
I-want-my-IWTV 