This is a study in the power of the gaze. Who is really observing whom? Is it creepy Santa spying on a little girl? Is it the girl with her materialistic lust in her eyes? Or is the doll the true observer, shaming the others by her awareness that they can each only find fulfillment in the control and possession of others’ emotions?
But there was so much that was good about movie!IWTV!… I know I know, it’s fun to poke fun at it regardless… movie!QOTD was much more cinema sinful. IWTV’s greatest sin was Antonio!Armand but c’mon, ppl who didn’t read the books didn’t know that…
There’s two times in IWTV that Lestat says he just wanted to talk to Louis post-swamping.
1. “There’s something I must tell you… about that night in the swamp.“
^Lestat says this to Louis in Paris, at the Theatre des Vampires, re: smtg Lestat had wanted to tell Louis the night Louis and Claudia put him in the swamp, seemingly dead.
Neither of them ever bring it up again, but my guess would be that it had smtg to do with the feeling Louis had when he put Lestat in the swamp. In the book, he walks into the muck w/ Lestat’s body, going far from shore, and feels a pulling, like he should go down with the body:
“I felt a pull suddenly, as if some force were urging me to go down with him, to descend into the dark water and never come back. It was so distinct and so strong that it made the articulation of voices seem only a murmur by comparison. It spoke without language, saying, `You know what you must do. Come down into the darkness. Let it all go away.‘”
Being maker and fledgling, they technically cannot read eachother’s thoughts, so maybe, in this extremely emotional moment, Lestat was able to pierce that veil to cry out for Louis in the only way he could ;A; Or maybe it was just Louis feeling guilty about, idk, helping kill his own maker!!!
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
2. “ ‘I wanted to talk to you so much,’ he said. `That night I came home in the Rue Royale I only wanted to talk to you!’… `I went to Paris after you…’ ”
^At the end of IWTV, when Louis finds a very decrepit (but not dying, Louis says “dying” but it’s emotionally dying, not physically) Lestat, Lestat insists he just wanted to talk to Louis the night he dragged his soggy butt out of the swamp and back to the Rue Royale, but it seems to refer to what he said in Paris, smtg about the swamp.
[^What a bittersweet moment in movie!IWTV, that “final” meeting before Louis goes to SF to find some cute guy to tell his life story to.]
Based on the fact that Lestat wrote an entire book in response to IWTV, he most likely wanted to tell Louis EVERY SINGLE THING that was in that book. It’s Lestat’s backstory, everything else he couldn’t tell Louis during the 65ish years they were together in NOLA, and most importantly, WHY he couldn’t tell him any of those things.
^yah so I don’t have access to any photoshoppin’ tools rn but whatever… that is yours truly and @roselioncourt.
So LOTS of things happening and tbh I’m a little overwhelmed by all the info we’ve gotten in the last week, and the posts in response, some of which I’ve seen… and I was trying to keep up w/ it all on my phone the whole frickin’ time it was happening (I have 100+ tabs open *laughcries* and the phone is not a happy camper)… it’s a little overwhelming.
As Ron Swanson famously said: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” I’m gonna whole-ass all the things when I have the time this weekend, I got all your messages and plan to do massive replies. Also need to make a post about the PLROA booksigning, I took notes (altho there is a video of it on the official VC FB).
… I also have to read the new book (!!!)… I asked for spoilers and you should know that I *facepalmed* or “Oh, Anne”’d at almost every new piece of canon information.
this picture of anne rice at a book signing in the 90s feels reeeeally important
thats it, thats exactly the experience of reading an anne rice book. You even make the same face.
^TRUTH
^im sorry for this
Booksigning today in NYC for PLROA! I will report back… but given the avalanche of news we’ve had recently, I am pretty sure there won’t be anything new that hasn’t already been covered wurwulf crossover next I just know it plz no 2016 stahp but yes I do need to catch up on all the news bc there has been A METRIC TON
♛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-want-my-IWTV 