so like i was curious and sketched louis with long hair. same hair type and face i usually draw him with, just longer strands—but he ended up looking more like a nicki?? and that already goes against everything i believe in bc nicki and louis are two very separate ppl stfu lestat
so then i decided to try the brad pitt hair, but with my already-very-feminine-art-style he just became somebody’s bitchy sister?? ?
so like i was curious and sketched louis with long hair. same hair type and face i usually draw him with, just longer strands—but he ended up looking more like a nicki?? and that already goes against everything i believe in bc nicki and louis are two very separate ppl stfu lestat
so then i decided to try the brad pitt hair, but with my already-very-feminine-art-style he just became somebody’s bitchy sister?? ?
how do y’all do it lol
Louis can be like a bitchy sister sometimes, so you’re not wrong… he’s Claudia’s (and others…) bitchy older brother, technically!
There’s similarities between Nicolas and Louis, and when Lestat says they’re like twins, he emphasizes the similarity in their personalities:
I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas. (TVL)
The hair Brad!Louis had will always have a place in my heart, long and Barbie-like, almost chestnut color (I think Brad himself called it “Lion King” hair”)! I don’t remember why it was that long, there’s some story out there about how Brad insisted on keeping it long bc it had to be long in another movie he would be filming close to that time and wouldn’t have time to regrow it, or that it was a decision made by Neil Jordan or someone else in charge *shrugs*
BUT ANYWAY I wouldn’t trample on anyone’s depictions of Louis, #Your Headcanon May Vary, and all that! Give us more, we are insatiable ❤
Idk what you’re intending to do with these screencaps, here ya go, use them tactfully! And link me when you make your thing 😉
These screencaps are almost funny enough w/o any dialogue at all! Reminds me of a meme I did FOUR YEARS AGO (omg I have been on here awhile??) so I’ll rebagel it for you, Anon.
^I had to flip Dan horizontal so he’d have better eye contact w/ Louis, but if this looks ‘off’ to you, that’s probly why. Anon, you might prefer to do the google and grab a pic of River Phoenix looking disgusted from My Own Private Idaho or whatev bc he was originally going to be Daniel.
Back during the time when it was popular to bash Twilight for both legitimate reasons (Edward being borderline abusive to Bella, the whole child grooming plot point in Breaking Dawn, etc.) and not (REAL VAMPIRES DON’T SPARKLE THATS GAY), I saw this meme on Facebook where it was Louis and Lestat from Interview With The Vampire commenting on Edward’s sparkling and making fun of him for being gay. Like… Buddy My Guy. My Fair Dude. My Dear Sweet Homophobic Idiot. Not only are the Vampires in IWTV super duper gay, you’re lying to yourself if you think Lestat wouldn’t slam dunk his entire body into a tub of glitter on any given occasion. You Fool. You Imbecile.
[It’s a great reminder of canon characterization as too often fanon has casted him as a beautiful, frail flower destined and carried by Lestat’s will.] *nods* Yep.
I think we can blame movie!IWTV for some of that fanon, bc he’s shown at his weakest in that movie, when he was struggling emotionally about vampiring, and the film also emphasized his appeal to other characters (like the scenes where Santiago is stroking his hair while deciding his punishment, and when Lestat literally sweeps him off his feet with the first bite), and the film took a number of important BAMF-moments/lines from him (like the one I mentioned in that post). Consequently, there are fans who base their headcanon of him mainly on the movie interpretation, even after they’ve read the book(s), since it left such a strong impression for them.
[I love that he knows he’s beautiful and he lowkey manipulates the fuck out of people and that he isn’t a delicate pretty face, like you said, he can still cut a bitch! He’s equally if not alot more dangerous than the rest.]
^YEP. In his speech to Madeleine about her wanting to be a vampire, he acknowledges “Do you find us beautiful? Magical?” He knows how he appears to mortals and other vampires. He’s calling her out on her request as being flimsy and uneducated, that she is completely out of her depth and has no idea what she’s really asking for, it’s not just a makeover!
We use the word “manipulative” on tumblr as having a negative connotation, and I wouldn’t say that Louis manipulates for nefarious purposes. I think he’s tactical. He wants to keep the peace in this scene:
“I wish you would play the music,’ I said softly, unobtrusively, but as persuasively as possible. Sometimes this worked with Lestat. If I said something just right he found himself doing what I’d said. And now he did just that: with a little snarl, as if to say, `You fool,’ he began playing the music.” (IWTV)
I don’t think Louis finds himself particularly attractive, I think when he calls himself handsome in IWTV, it’s his acknowledgement that others find him attractive; it still baffles him that they do. He absolutely recognizes it as a tactical advantage, he just doesn’t explicitly preen about it like Lestat does. No need 😉
Hit the jump for a little more re: the “frail flower” trope, under a cut for respect to the anon bc I this anon isn’t fond of it.
As you mentioned, you may not be fond of it, and that is absolutely fine! It’s not for everyone. I know I can’t read those trashy romance novels at the supermarket. They’re unappealing to me. But I get that they have an audience, bc they’re still there, still selling!
With Louis, other than all those loving descriptions of him from other characters, I think it’s worth noting that there are truly very few canon moments wherein he’s a *~a beautiful, frail flower destined and carried by Lestat’s (or whoever else’s) will,~* yes, it’s that damsel-in-distress, bodice-ripper kind of trope. Is it as effective if he’s always pursued and never caught? I think some readers, like myself, need a bite of carrot now and then. It’s a subjective thing. We should be glad AR hasn’t turned him into the smut vehicle so many other characters became *sigh*
It’s a fantasy to be carried off by some angelic stranger, it’s been around since ppl have told stories. We can identify with Louis, or we can identify with Lestat, both sides of the fantasy is appealing in its own way. In shipping them, you get to have both. So I understand the appeal, but again, it’s not necessarily for everyone. Not everyone likes shipping, period, and that’s absolutely fine, too!
Feel free to send me rants about this mournful-yet-will-cut-a-bitch-while-looking-like-an-angel angel (<— NICE), bc #we appreciate and love louis in this house, as @13bels so eloquently tagged that post ❤
[EDIT: Tumblr ate half my post! I took out all the indented “quote” formatting to fix it]
IKR?? He tolerates it, rolls his eyes at it when he reads it, but when it gets to a certain amount…
Louis says of himself in IWTV:
“You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive,” said the vampire. The boy nodded. “I was. Nothing structurally is changed in me. Only I never knew that I was handsome. Life whirled about me a wind of petty concerns, as I’ve said. I gazed at nothing, not even a mirror… especially not a mirror… with a free eye.”
The compilation of descriptions of Louis that @i-see-light-blog put together are mostly from Lestat, I think, and at least one or two are from Armand, both were lovers of Louis at one point. The others who describe him are Daniel, David, and Marius.*
And I think the deal with describing Louis is partly that, hey, it’s fun to do, like having a favorite flower, and AR takes the opportunity to remind us of it, and put the camera on him in a scene, so we know he’s present. It also serves a purpose, we usually get at least a scrap of context about him and/or the scene:
“I glared at him, at the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, […] his wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation of his upper lip.” -Lestat, The Tale of the Body Thief
Lestat glares at Louis. –> Lestat is clearly pissed.
Louis’ imperturbable face –>
Louis is not scared of Lestat being pissed.
And then Lestat lavishes this extra description on him, appreciatively. Attention on the lip area, now we’re picturing him pointedly staring there, which might precede a kiss, so we can infer that Lestat desperately wants to kiss him, probably. What I get from all that is the exquisite tension of Lestat wanting someone he can’t have, someone he treasures and wants even MORE bc of the difficulty. And Louis knows this when he reads those flowery descriptions. I think Louis secretly enjoys the power that he holds over all these hopeless admirers, when he reads these descriptions.
It’s the tension of the other characters pining for Louis that AR wrings every drop out for us, she’s showing us how helpless these other characters are that they can only try to capture Louis with descriptions since he defies being owned by anyone. Unrequited love is a powerful thing.
In my reading of IWTV, Louis was not just some dishrag Lestat could toss around at will. Even before Claudia appears, Louis is setting boundaries with Lestat:
“And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed the Frenieres long ago if I hadn’t stopped him,…
…`You call me the idiot, and you’ve been the idiot all along. Do you think I don’t know why you made me a vampire? You couldn’t live by yourself, you couldn’t manage even the simplest things. For years now, I’ve managed everything while you sat about making a pretense of superiority. There’s nothing left for you to tell me about life. I have no need of you and no use for you. It’s you who need me, and if you touch but one of the Freniere slaves, I’ll get rid of you. It will be a battle between us, and I needn’t point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my little finger than you in your entire frame. Do as I say.” – Louis, Interview with the Vampire
^And this is part of Louis’s hawtness, as well. He absolutely will cut a b*tch, if necessary.
Hit the jump for a little more, cut for it’s-slightly-off-topic-but-oh-well
*I’m pretty sure the other quotes are from Daniel, David, and Marius, I’m not checking bc I’m like 90% sure.
Daniel’s drawn to him in IWTV bc his story is so compelling, and that Louis is a vampire in the presence of a mortal who knows what he is, so he has that preternatural thing going on, mortal!Daniel is enthralled. Plus, Louis may have spellbound him inadvertently, as according to Armand:
“Louis… unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom mortals fall in love…” – the Vampire Armand
David probably has some mixed feelings about Louis, especially in Merrick, bc Lestat’s out of the picture for most of that book, and I think David is stepping into Lestat’s role in his absence, to some extent, so I think he’s trying see Louis as Lestat sees him.
There was an artist in IWTV who painted Louis’ portrait, it makes sense that Marius, another artist who has done portraits, would also be drawn to Louis for this reason. Marius also thinks about what would happen if Louis were upgraded, and hey, I would think he’s had those thoughts about other vampires who are significantly younger than himself, for whom an upgrade really might change them. Now that I’m thinking about it, this was info that Marius confessed to Lestat when Lestat was drafting QOTD, and I bet this comment stuck in his mind, he very much wanted to upgrade Louis for awhile, but for different reasons.
I-want-my-IWTV 