“It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow, there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face.” Interview with the Vampire – (1994)
“Even in his cruelest moments, Louis touched
the tenderness in me, seducing me with his staggering dependence, his
infatuation with my every gesture and every spoken word.” – The Vampire Lestat
Thanks for the compliments! YES THIS THING IS GLORIOUS ♥u♥
So I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at, re: an ‘audience book’ vs ‘author’s book’ but it I do know that AR has always advised to “write the book you would want to read.” She just put up two quotes recently that I think are relevant here:
Unfortunately, I think we generally prefer those books coming from negative places for her, and I think it’s because she spun gold from the misery, she fought her demons through those stories and the product was captivating, clawing into the reader and giving us some secondhand catharsis.
Stories that came from a more positive place for her seemed not to produce that kind of engagement for the reader, but it’s important to remember that some ppl may prefer those.
Either way, she’s given us an incredible gift. The stronger works resonate with us to the soul like only our favorite music and art can, the weaker works are humorous and we can lovingly refer to them as “the vampire crackicles,” but even they still have good moments in which AR has tapped into the old veins (pun intended!) to give us that gold we’ve come to expect from her.
I stand by my previous short answer on this subject: I think AR can still capture that old quality we all fell in love with, albeit in slivers. Which is why I can’t disregard any of the books entirely. It’s still hard for me to accept Prince Lestat as canon, I might never, but there are moments and lines of dialogue in it that are SO VERY GOOD. Moments where I’ve had to pause and smile, because it was as if the old Lestat, from IWTV or TVL, actually graced us with his presence, if only for a moment.
Hard not to notice that I’ve been putting out more Lestat casting ideas than any other, hm? They’re alternatives for a particularly divisive option that I’d honestly rather the Powers That Be not choose. If it were MY choice, I wouldn’t want to contaminate the entire project w/ such negative baggage on our Lestat (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, sorry, but I refuse to answer publicly any further on it, you can try to find it in my #vc casting tag, tho).
But yes, always important to consider Nicolas! Half the duo? Well, yes, in a way, bc I do agree Nicolas gave Lestat his first long-term loving relationship, despite its flaws. It shaped him in a very powerful way, for better and worse. Mostly better ❤ I do think it’s some of Nicolas’ brand of sass that Lestat displays towards his loved ones in IWTV ;] But since Nicolas does not occur in later canon as a living character, I don’t consider him “half the duo” currently.
AND YES we don’t have nearly enough characters with brown eyes, dark brown eyes, that you can lose yourself in. Tender and sometimes scary depths. MORE LOVE FOR BROWN EYES.
Ben Barnes, okay, so I looked at some pics and gifs bc I haven’t seen his movies, and he’s won me over! I think there was an RPer using him as a face claim here, and I don’t remember their url, but those are usually still images so I didn’t really see it until now. He would probably make a fine Nicolas and he has my vote!
Fun facts on his IMDB page under the cut but for now ONTO SOME GIFS.
^“I don’t believe it, ” Nicolas said bitterly. “He wouldn’t be ashamed
of us.” There was a suppressed rage in his voice, an ugly grief. “And
why did he leave the way he did? I heard him calling me! The window
was smashed to pieces! I tell you I was half awake, and I heard his
voice… Lestat would spit in the face of anyone who would
be ashamed of us!” ;A;
^Nicolas being forced to dress up to deliver the red velvet cloak but HE’S NOT GONNA SHAVE U CAN’T MAKE HIM. I actually prefer him with this scruff.
^Willing to kiss dudes is a major plus. Not that I personally need it for any kind of nefarious reasons! maybe a little bit, but I do think it’s relevant that Nicolas and Lestat are very gay for each other, and it would be nice to have that loving relationship on screen to contrast how bitter the loss of it is for both of them ;A; Also his hair is perfect here.
Hit the jump for moar. Cut for length and moar opinions.
^Did I mention he looks great in period costume? He DOES. Also his hair is perfect here. Maybe a bit short.
^He has tons of excellent smiles and I just had to settle on one, this is good stuff ❤
^
“Oh, not goodness again,” he said. “You and your malady of
mortality, and your malady of goodness. “He had been looking at the
fire and he turned to me with a deliberately scornful expression.
“We’re a pack of actors and entertainers who can’t even be buried in
consecrated ground. We’re outcasts." Nicki you mean bastard >:[
^He even looks good flushed like this.
Fun facts on his IMDB page:
“He can also sing, play drums and piano,” which means we could train him to play violin! Obviously has some musical inclination, can probably read sheet music.
“Was in the short lived boy band Hyrise; his band performed their song, "Leading Me On” in 2004 for Eurovision Song Contest.” – Okay ex-boy band, to me, reads, Has sense of fun and theatrical performance over and above regular character acting. Which would be gr9 bc I would love to see a little more Theatre des Vampires action than we got in movie!IWTV, especially the moment it was born!
“His father is a psychiatrist and his mother is a therapist.” – They are probably great resources for him as an actor. And as the son of such, he probably knows all too well what it’s like to be over-analyzed and rebel against it!
Supports Make-a-Wish Foundation.- ok well my heart. THIS is the kind of baggage I like on an actor, HAPPY baggage!
Was one of the four finalists for the role of “Edward Cullen” in Twilight (2008). – SO WE KNOW HE WAS WILLING TO PLAY A VAMPIRE BEFORE
This seems like a Nicolas quote, it’s Ben Barnes from his IMDB page: “I don’t wear underpants in bed. They are really uncomfortable. I don’t wear anything in bed. I like girls to wear the same as me. His ‘n’ hers matching invisible outfits. But I think I am a gentleman in bed.”
As a side note, It shouldn’t be surprising to me that so many newer ppl to the fandom seem to gravitate towards Nicolas, but it does surprise me. Why is he of interest now? Lestat does reach back and mention him at times, but I just don’t remember there being so much interest in him 10 yrs ago.
It seems like in general, it’s more of a current fandom thing to pick up and care for these characters the author has handled less than the main characters, almost as if the readers have more blank space to fill in for them. So that makes sense.
I also think Nicolas reflects this generation of young adults better than any other VC character, with his disillusionment, his struggles with religion, and his anguish at how much talent he has and how little chance of success there is available to him in life in general, and defining what is success? What is contentment? He also may have some undiagnosed mental illness, which is another thing that’s much more out in the open these days than it was even 10 years ago.
The only character I can think of that could come close to all of ^that would be Armand, but he is a much more able to center himself and much more in control of his outward display of emotions than Nicolas. Armand was a coven master, a director, accustomed to being in a position of power, and Nicolas is more truly a performer, and artist, an open heart with little self-defense other than his rapier wit and scathing sass.
There is some fanon headcanon that his Mind Gift is too strong for him to really control, and that was another thing that drove him more deeply mad after he was turned.
^Stan and Michele Rice on the left, Lestat and Claudia de Lioncourt on the right. As a side note, before this gets into the more serious topic, AR has said she based Lestat on Stan, and there is a story out there that his name was meant to be “Lestan,” but ended up as “Lestat” bc of a typographical error. I don’t have a source on that.
(In the first draft of [IWTV], Rice described Claudia as three or four years old.)… Rice based Claudia’s appearance on her own daughter, Michele, who died at the age of five from leukemia. Claudia even shares Michele’s birthday, September 21.* However, despite the intense tone of suffering and guilt evident in Louis’s telling of the story, Rice insists that she had not been aware that she had included her feelings about Michele’s tragic death. “I never consciously thought about it when I was writing the book,” she says. “I wasn’t conscious of the connection. I knew that I was using the physical beauty of Michele as the model, but Claudia was a fictional character in her own right. The character, the voice, and the things Claudia say have nothing to do with my daughter – but there’s no question that this is the symbolic working out of a terrible grief. What else can it possibly be?”
In the first version of [IWTV], Claudia eventually goes off with three vampire brothers whom she meets in Paris. She does not die. As such, it was as if Rice had attempted to give her daughter a form of immortality. Rice, however, experienced psychological problems that cleared up only after she had rewritten the ending – by killing off Claudia and taking Louis through an experience of intense grieving. This version was much more cathartic for Rice.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length, not content.
From Premiere Magazine, November 1994:
(sorry, I don’t have a link, I transcribed this from the page)
In real life, Claudia was a nickname for Michele Rice, Anne Rice’s vibrant blond daughter, who had once piled her hair on top of her head, and spoken in a smoky voice like Claudia Cardinale. She was three years old when she developed leukemia, and five when she died, in 1972.
At first, Rice soaked her maternal despair in a steady stream of sixpacks. Then she unleashed her rage unto paper, into what eventually became Interview with the Vampire. Michele was reincarnated as Claudia, the raging woman locked in a child’s body. “Louis was me,” says Rice. “That dark, brooding, melancholy person ripped from Catholic faith and tormented with guilt – that was me. I’d love to be Lestat: the wishful me, the active, the dream, the other one. Louis was the more true, autobiographical portrait of the conflicted and lost and orphaned person. That’s what the book is about. It’s about being orphaned.”
“Writers write about what obsesses them,” says Rice. “You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.“
You’re remembering it correctly, Louis didn’t really test his own powers in IWTV in the way that you’re describing bc he was too busy existential angsting :[
He doesn’t seem to have gotten any substantial powers anyway, being Lestat’s 3rd fledgling and made such a short period of time after Lestat’s 2nd fledgling. There is also some speculation that the blood transfer needs to be exchanged more than once (how it was done w/ Louis) to ensure a stronger fledgling. Marius, for example, exchanged blood with his maker multiple times when he was turned.
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, 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.
Armand did coerce Louis into climbing up a building once, tho!
“`Listen to me; we are going to climb to the tower,’
Armand was saying.“
`I cannot . . it’s impossible … I-‘
‘You don’t begin to know your own powers. You can climb easily. Remember, if you fall you will not be injured. Do as I do.’ ”
And he did climb it, but he didn’t seem all that thrilled about doing so.
Lestat tells us in TVL:
“I never revealed to
him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and
self-loathing from using even half of his own.”
Louis says to Armand in IWTV:
“I don’t see our
life as powers and gifts. I see it as a curse. I haven’t the courage to die.”
In later canon, we still don’t see Louis testing his powers, but it’s fanon that he has some and seems to have no interest in exploring them.
There’s fanon that his sense of smell is stronger than the other vampires, so that’s something!
More under the cut. Cut for length, also mild spoilers.
In TVL, Louis does admit he felt something when Akasha was in the neighborhood, so either he was sensing Akasha or sensing what other vampires were able to sense of her:
“I don’t have your powers,” he said unobtrusively, “nevertheless I felt
this thing. And I tell you it was alien, utterly uncivilized, for want of a
better word.”
Armand describes Louis’ lack of powers here in TVA:
“…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.”
Marius considers upgrading Louis in QOTD: but he is not authorized and you know Lestat would throw the hugest tantrum if it happened
This one was so gifted yet not gifted at the same time; [Marius] wondered if the human light would go out of
Louis’s eyes if he ever gained more power, if he ever had, for instance, a little of the blood of Marius in his
veins…
Just a little blood, and Louis might be stronger, true, but then he might lose
the human tenderness, the human wisdom that no one could give another; the gift of knowing others’
suffering with which Louis had probably been born.”
“There’s no way to cheat a sensualist like me, somebody who can die laughing for hours over the pattern of the carpet in a hotel lobby.”
-Lestat
I really connect with this quote because just as Lestat spent ages laughing at something not actually that funny, I spent ages laughing at this fucking quote
I was the vampire Lestat again. I was back in action. New Orleans was once again my hunting ground. And I was asking myself, Lestat, what do you want to do now? Old rules didn’t matter to me now. I wanted to break every one of them.
In a perfect world, the casting of Lestat for the new movie is someone THIS decorative, but with the acting skills to ensure Lestat is more than a one-note spoiled brat. (Because while he’s the Brat Prince, the stupid egotistical rock star vampire has layers.)
(I’ve mentioned that Lestat is one of my favorites, right? Well I’m mentioning it again.)
Ok but Claudia called Armand Louis’ “companion” and it’s p obvious that Armand wants to fuck Louis and then she asks for Madeline as a “companion” and this is probably a gross thought cause Madeline is like “I want a daughter who can’t die” and Claudia is (in appearance) a child but could she be a lesbian?
I know she pines after an adult body but could it be more than that? Could she want a woman to sleep with?
This is a fascinating idea and I have thought about it myself quite a bit.
Possibly a very unpopular opinionbut: I don’t think they were sexual w/ each other in the mortal sense, but there was more to them than a mother-daughter relationship.
I don’t think Claudia’s pursuit of Madeleine was purely for a platonic mother-daughter relationship. That may have been part of it, and it was how she sold it to Louis because he couldn’t perceive Claudia as more than his daughter or as an adult trapped in a little body who would be capable of being involved in a romantic way with anyone, and she needed him to actually do the work for her since she was unable to perform the Dark Gift herself (and I do think she tried before asking him).
While it may not have been a relationship in a more conventionally romantic sense (I don’t believe they had anything sexual, in the mortal sense, going on), I do think Claudia/Madeleine was a ship of sorts, more of an emotional relationship. Claudia was the one in control, she was comparatively older and stronger in personality.
I-want-my-IWTV 