
I was the vampire Lestel again.
I was back in action.
New Orleans was once again my hunting ground.”

I was the vampire Lestel again.
I was back in action.
New Orleans was once again my hunting ground.”
I couldn’t sleep the night before, and then came the day. I was like, “Okay, this is really gonna happen.”
– Tom Cruise on the plane stunt in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Okay but is this not Lestat “I’m Gonna Do the Thing” aka “Adrenaline Junkie” aka “Look What I Can Do!" de Lioncourt:
Not a bother at all I LOVE being asked things and I do make an effort to answer bc honestly who wants to read a boring “Yes” or “No” like, no that’s boring bye. And, no, I don’t think I’ve answered this before so here we go…
Some vampires probably could do it with just sunscreen. Part of the difference is whether they can even be conscious during daylight hours. Mostly it’s due to their unique physiology. I could write an essay on this so I’m gonna keep it to 4 vampire types.
1. Meet Joe Black Deacon Frost, vampire from Blade, slathered up in sunscreen:

Well, Blade calls it sunblock, but same thing. It’s working for Frost in this scene (and I think he’s put it in his hair to cover his scalp, too, hence the greasiness), but as he says to Blade, “It’s a start, right? The goal, of course, is to be like you. Daywalker.” (Blade himself is a hybrid vampire so he can go out in the sunlight.) The rest of Frost’s skin is covered up with clothing which may also be treated in some way to protect him but his eyes aren’t protected, they should be affected but maybe it’s only light-sensitivity of the skin in that type of vampire.
For more, hit the jump.
2. This is Adam from Only Lovers Left Alive, getting a burn from sunlight:


Adam and Deacon share the ability to be awake during daylight hours. So it’s possible that Adam could wear sunscreen for protection, but given such a harsh physical reaction to such a small amount of exposure, I wouldn’t think any strength or amount of sunscreen would be strong enough for him, even if he was able to cover every last bit of skin, which would be a real challenge.
3. Louis de Pointe du Lac from movie!IWTV can’t handle the sunlight, but he’s fully conscious, reaching up to try protect himself.

Sunscreen might work for movie!Louis, too, but he would have the same issue as Adam, could he cover enough skin to make it work? I doubt it.
4. Louis and Claudia from book!IWTV fall into the Death Sleep during the day. They cannot be conscious during daylight hours, their physiology prevents it. So sunscreen, or other protective gear, would not work for them.

[fanart by Mangademon333]
The Death Sleep is basically the unconscious state that the Ricean vampires succumb to when their bodies sense the sun rising, and they only break out of it when the sun sets again or they’re under attack. There’s also fanon that they can wake from the Death Sleep during the day when under extreme emotional distress. Even defending themselves in their sleep, they’re not really conscious and only realize what happened when they wake normally. Lestat says in TVL:
And those mortals who did find us during the daylight hours, unless they exposed us to the sun at once, were doomed. For example, outside Palermo [Gabrielle] had slept in a cellar far below an abandoned house, and when she had awakened, her eyes and face were burning as if they had been scalded, and she had in her right hand a mortal, quite dead, who had apparently attempted to disturb her rest.
“He was strangled,” she said, “and my hand was still locked on his throat. And my face had been burned by the little light that leaked down from the opened door.”
Now matter how hard you ship Louis and Lestat you will never ship Louis and Lestat as hard as Lestat does.
A question only I can answer?! Pffffft, that would be true only if I was Anne Rice herself. Although really she ought to deputize me as one of her fandom spokespeople, my VC obsession has made me such a great resource for the fandom!

[art by Thomas Blackshear, very Gustav Klimt, oui?]
Spoilers under the cut.
1. Does Louis just not care that she put a “fix” on him or does he still not believe her?
In his letter, Louis says that she admitted to bewitching him:
“No talk from Merrick of her potent spells can excuse my actions, though in fact, she does indeed claim to have brought me to her with magic I cannot understand. What I understand is that I love her…” – Louis de Pointe du Lac, Merrick
I think that as he writes this, he feels love for her, but he knows it can’t be real love. He must feel tricked at some level, why else commit suicide right after making a loved one into a vampire? If he really loved her, he would want to stay alive and be with her. I think he’s chosen death because he knows what he did was wrong and rather than just adding another vampire to the world, he’s taking himself out, so there’s no change in the number of vampires ;A;
2. Is that spell still there?
I think Louis is still bewitched as he writes his letter, but it’s probably worn off to some extent in the process of his resuscitation. It has definitely worn off by the time he is himself again, but I think at that point he has to consider Merrick with some natural love, because she is his fledgling and there will always be a bond there. The Dark Gift is probably the most intimate experience a vampire can give/receive.
3. And why does Lestat react so nonchalantly to it, as if it was funny rather than a bad thing? Shouldn’t he be a bit more…I dunno, jealous and pissed?
Lestat has just woken up again, cut him some slack! He’s disoriented! “With an awkward step, as though his body, so long unused, revolted against him, he made his way closer to Merrick,”
Lestat also often goes into a kind of emotional and physical paralysis when such devastating things happen. It happened when he was mortal, too. The humor that follows is also a defense mechanism against feeling the pain of the situation.
He knows that there will be an opportunity much later to get jealous and pissed, but in the immediate aftermath his thoughts are narrowed to the emergency and how to save Louis ;A;
I’m not sure why he insists on sharing his blood with Merrick, though. That seemed to condone her trickery too far for my tastes, but I suppose he did it because he saw that Louis still loved her. Making Merrick more of an equal was a gift to Louis.
Or, perhaps he wanted to drink from her to experience her side of the story, without any of her witchery, and sharing blood with her was an excuse to do that.
I don’t think I answered this before and anyway I love an excuse to post yummy fanart so here ya go:
Nicki & Lestat by garama:

Louis & Lestat by garama:

garama‘s fanart is a great illustration for this answer bc when you compare these two relationships, there are similarities, but you can see very clearly that there are almost 4 characters here: mortal!Nicki, mortal!Lestat, vampire!Louis, and vampire!Lestat. The 2 pairings physically resemble eachother, but there’s alot of deeper stuff going on that’s described by those poses.
Anne Rice was answering Fan Questions for Lestat as Lestat at one point and she said:
“…but if I did have to choose, the companion 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.“
I’m inclined to agree with Lestat on that. Lestat would choose Louis over everyone. They have an inexplicable chemistry that binds them hopelessly together.
Do you really want my full opinion? Hit the jump.
Nicolas was Lestat’s first real long-term relationship at a time when Lestat desperately needed love and nurturing and wanted to give it back, too. Nicolas is the first person who really listened to him and they both helped each other immensely.
Lestat was a different person when he was with Nicolas; quite literally! They were mortal lovers, and they were in their early 20s, they went through alot together in escaping from their homeland to Paris, and thrived there. Their relationship was horribly shattered when Lestat was kidnapped from their apartment, and things were never the same between them after that happened. Even aside from that, Nicolas revealed that he had a different mission in life than Lestat did:
“And when we decided to go to Paris, I thought we would starve in Paris, that we would go down and down and down. It was what I wanted, rather than what they wanted, that I, the favored son, should rise for them. I thought we would go down! We were supposed to go down.” – Nicolas de Lenfent, TVL
So even in your Alternate Universe suggestion that Lestat could be with Nicki again, I don’t think that relationship could ever really work, because deep down Nicolas and Lestat always wanted different things out of life.
Lestat was about 31 mortal yrs old when he met Louis, and he had grown and experienced a lot. He was more mature, more in control of his emotions. He saw vampiring as being a great adventure and he saw the potential in Louis to be the companion he always wanted. He was right. Louis has been one of the strongest vampires in the coven, without needing to display it in physical feats of strength, but in emotional ones, and in the choices he’s made.
Louis consistently chooses Lestat, I might add.


Yet within six months he had dropped the movies for video cameras and must make his own films. All over New York he dragged Daniel, as he interviewed people on the nighttime streets. Armand had reels of himself reciting poetry in Italian or Latin, or merely staring with his arms folded, a gleaming white presence slipping in and out of focus in eternally dim bronze light.
– “The Story of Daniel”, Queen of the Damned
Bonsoir à toi, aussi, mon avocat gris 😀 Rereading the whole series, my gosh what a challenge and what fun! oh if only i could lay around reading books all day and sipping iced tea or an adult beverage that would be heaven siiiiigh…..

#pffffft Shut up Gaston #you’re like illiterate ok #Augustin de Lioncourt
Not sure which specific book you’re referring to, or if you meant that as kind of a silly observation, but I really enjoy how she jumps around! When you really consider these breaks in the “main” story, they’re like side dishes to a meal. When you really consider them you’ll find that those breaks are not so “random” after all, even if they are not connected to the actual plot. Not every piece of a story needs to be connected to the actual plot in order to make a story enjoyable. In fact it can keep you guessing, wondering whether you should keep this information in mind as the tale unfolds, or whether it was put there to throw you off the trail a bit!
Of course, #your headcanon may vary. If you choose not to accept some of these side stories, that’s fine, too.
There are alot of stories-within-stories in the VC. Characters tend to dig deeper and interview eachother. At one point, we have Lestat telling us what Marius told Lestat about what an Egyptian vampire told Marius about the origin story of the vampires written down in archives! That’s like 4 levels?! Interviewception.
In QotD,
from the beginning
Lestat tells us straightup that the story will be laid out like that:
“So we will move out of the narrow, lyrical confines of the first person singular; we will jump as a thousand mortal writers have done into the brains and souls of “many characters.” We will gallop into the world of “third person” and “multiple point of view.”
And by the way, when these other characters think or say of me that I am beautiful or irresistible, etc., don’t think I put these words in their heads. I didn’t! It’s what was told to me after, or what I drew out of their minds with infallible telepathic power; I wouldn’t lie about that or anything else.
The bastard monster who made me what I am picked me on account of my good looks. That’s the long and short of it.
Now, be assured: though I am leaving you, I will return with full flair at the appropriate moment.”
that’s not how that works? but she is a mayfair with a great rack isn’t that enough?
ooc; i-want-my-iwtv on how Merrick can get by with insulting deities when she summons them
i’m dying plz send help
(via merciful-death)

(I struggle to describe it to ppl, I usually cater the length and depth of my description based on my audience, for example, to describe it to my 7 yr old cousin (who loves vampires and was a vampire princess fairy for Halloween): “It’s mostly about a happy vampire family with 2 dads, and they don’t always get along with eachother or the world.”)
As Tom Cruise put it so eloquently, “The movie is not for everyone.” No value judgement there; it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea, so I don’t try to sell it.
“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book…?”

“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”

“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”

“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”

“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”

You can also try my vc synopsis tag, but there be spoilers there!
….That last gif is also tribute to antoineandthepiano who loves that gif! And it’s appropriate here, bc if I think the person might actually like it, I do tell them to #READ THE BOOK in the hopes that I can make them one of us ❤