If you’ve ever read my books, you know I maintain relationships merely because I’ve been lucky enough to find people who don’t throw me away when I reveal myself to be a complete and utter disaster who will sabotage everything we have if given half the chance. I’m a terrible person to give relationship advice.
So here, based on my own failings:
-Say you’re sorry. Mean it.
-But don’t say it all the time.
-Seriously, it loses all meaning.
-Even if you ARE sorry.
-No, sex with that other person isn’t worth it. Yes, I see how good looking they are. Trust me.
-Find ways to show love: notes, trinkets, kisses. Something to show that they are on your mind.
-But not gifts you’d rather just have for yourself, you idiot.
-Don’t buy them a house unless they asked for one.
-Don’t trick them into having children with you because you are afraid they’ll leave you.
-Don’t entrap them.
-Seriously, that one is never going to turn out the way you hope it will.
-Tell the truth. Even when it makes you look terrible.
-Trust them. Yes, especially when you don’t want to trust anyone.
-Tell them the things that scare you about yourself. If they are who you think they are, they can hold them for you.
-Know that they love you, even when they are so angry at you that they can’t bear to look at you.
-Say I love you. Yes, it’s going to hurt. Do it anyway.
“You forgot the most important point.
Allow yourself be loved. No matter how wretched and undeserving you feel.”
You’re so welcome! What a lovely thing to tell me, awww. Thank you for the blog love ^______^
Here’s a rare old memeything for you, it’s from almost 4 yrs ago… I’m not sure if I ever posted it. Probably not, if I didn’t think it was funny enough at the time, but c’mon, this is gold:
^Pretty sure the Dark Gift doesn’t work like that…
I do check on ppl’s blogs when they catch my eye in my activity feed, and a major way to do that is by leaving supportive comments, on my posts or my reblogs of other’s posts.
This is the lifeblood of a fandom right here, what you wrote on @sangcreole‘s post:
bless this post for such an insightful discussion. Louis is a beautifully layered character and you said it so well!
It was really a wonderful thing to say, that OP’s words had touched you, that it was worth their effort ❤
And another lifeblood is fanart, and you draw, so like… give us some VC fanart! We are insatiable for it! *grabby hands*
//Reminder that a lot of Louis’ problem concerning his ego has less to do with him coming from a rich bourgeois background and more to do with the fact that due to Lestat’s dominance and manipulation, Louis developed a crippling dependency on his intelligence because it was the one thing that Lestat could not take from him. He has always been philosophical, yes, but I highly doubt he was a Shakespeare fanatic or poetry addict before Lestat turned him (remember, he practically ran the plantation before his brother’s death, and after his death, Louis spent his time drinking and making half assed suicide attempts; he was never in his study reading books). And he not only sees his intelligence as something that somehow makes him better than those around him, but more importantly, something that differentiates him from Lestat. He cannot stand the thought of being anything like Lestat; he refuses to hunt like him, dress like him, or do anything that he would approve of. So, part of the reason he leans so heavily on his book smarts is because it creates a dichotomy between him and Lestat. And once he realizes how to play his cards correctly, he fucking goes all out and makes sure Lestat knows how well read he is, and how shitty and embarrassing it is that Lestat never properly learned to read. It’s no wonder he’s a rhetorical genius; I think he realized very early on in their relationship that rhetoric was his only weapon against a maker that was so much stronger than him in every other way.
He represents such an interesting mix of character traits, because while his core is highly emotional and intuitive and prone to grief, he relies heavily on logic and intelligence. He is equally headstrong as he is heartstrong, and that is where a lot of his conflict lies. In addition to all the reasons stated above, I also think his inflated self-importance connected to his intelligence may be a form of overcompensation, because Louis often feels stupid and irrational when he gets overly emotional. This doesn’t excuse his pretentiousness at all when it comes to his intellect, but I do think it presents an interesting challenge since Louis put so much effort into crafting a stuffy erudite persona that somewhere along the line he actually started to believe it.
“I first started to drive just a decade or so after the automobile was becoming widely accessible to the average consumer, sometime just before the 20s I believe. I never had a professional instructor as we think of them today, seeing as they were still rather new and potentially dangerous that most automobile manufacturers or sellers would volunteer a brief guidance lesson. It was odd to see the physical evidence of the world’s transition into the modern era, but the very first time I drove down an open stretch of road I was so overwhelmed with a sense of liberation that I could barely breathe. I cannot remember feeling more free than I did in that moment.
To fully answer the question, I did not get a modern driver’s license until 1957, and I did not require a teacher for that either. It was easy to read the guidebooks and memorize the rules of the road; I even went so far as to read and memorize the entire manual for my Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible. Driving a car is, understandably, much easier with enhanced eyesight and lightning fast reaction time- therefore, I’m an excellent driver by mortal standards and have no need for instruction.”
//Hey thanks so much for the birthday wishes and such a great question!
GOD I love Louis for so many different reasons and could really go on for days lmao but I think the main reason I love Louis so much is that he reminds me why humanity and life is so precious. I’ve always found his character interesting because as one of the first “reluctant vampire” tropes, he was vampire I was introduced to who had a moral compass.
This is going to sound a little weird and maybe a bit narcissistic, but for my job training, I had to take this personality test called the Clifton Strengths Analysis test, which will tell you what your strongest personal and leaderships skills are. My number one “strength” was empathy. And while I wasn’t thrilled to have empathy as my strongest quality, I’ve actually learned to love it, through learning how Louis utilizes this quality throughout the series.
When we first meet Louis, he is the personification of guilt because of what happened with his brother, but that guilt sticks with him throughout his transformation, and it becomes incredibly important as he attempts to navigate the new world as a transcended being. He is conflicted as hell, and insists on punishing himself via starvation because he is so heartsick and guilty and full of grief both for his brother, and for his humanity. When he is first turned, the empathy that he possesses doesn’t exactly work in his favor. He is overly empathetic, and refuses to take life because he empathizes too much with everyone (this is doubly hard considering that he does not have the mind gift, so he cannot weed out the bad seeds from the good ones; he tends to assume most people are innocent, or at least undeserving of death). But as he grows older and begins to figure stuff out, I think he is finally able to sympathize and empathize with humans in a gentler way, and I really admire that. He eventually learns to exist in the world and admire the human beings that he walks amongst, and I love that about him. In fact, one of my favorite moments in the series is when he stands up to Akasha and says:
“Then kill me! I wish that you would. But don’t kill human beings! Don’t interfere with them. Even if they kill each other! Give them time to see this new vision realized; give the cities of the West, corrupt as they may be, time to take their ideals to a suffering and blighted world.”
He is fiercely attached to the human race, even though he is no longer a part of it, and he’s even willing to risk his life for them.
Another of my favorite things about Louis is that he’s ridiculously complex and dichotomous as a character, which makes him super interesting in my eyes. You know that phrase: “I’m lover, not a fighter, but I’ll still kick your ass”? Yeah, that’s Louis. Like I said earlier, he’s very empathetic and intuitive and emotional, and he purposefully remains the weakest vampire and rejects the vampiric gifts because he wants to remain as close to being human as possible. Yet his determination in fighting the vampiric gifts makes him incredibly strong in a different way, and I really admire that. Louis, unlike Lestat, Armand, Marius, and most of the main characters of the series, has never went under ground. He has stayed alive and sentient for two and a half centuries without needing a break. His stamina and stubbornness are incredible, and yet when people think of Louis, these usually aren’t the first qualities that come to mind. Louis is a Romantic, melancholic beauty, sure, but he’s also like a great oak tree: strong and solid and unyielding.
And at the end of the day, he’s a straight up ruthless killer. We see this in his treatment of not only Lestat, but Armand’s entire coven. And while these were killings of passion, it is also evident that he is a meticulous and heartless killer when it comes to his hunting methods. In fact, one of my favorite moments in the series is when the Queen of the Damned herself calls him out and says: “Yet you yourself are the most predatory of all the immortals here. You kill without regard for age or sex or will to live.” So how can someone so full of emotion and empathy kill so carelessly? I think the answer lies in the fact that he does not have the mind gift, and has never willingly accepted or used it, so he cannot pick out the “evildoers” like the others, and therefore must kill indiscriminately. But one thing that I also headcanon is that because Louis is so constantly tormented by guilt and overwhelmed by emotions, he could never sustain himself if he didn’t have some way to switch the emotions off; he’d be too drained to do anything (in fact, we even see this scenario play out in his first few years when he’s feeding on chickens and rats). So he eventually learns how to switch those emotions off when he hunts. It’s a defense mechanism. And while it ensures his survival, it also makes him dangerous as fuck, because that means he can switch of his empathy and love for mankind like a fucking light switch.
ANYWAY, I think my main love for Louis can be summed up in this description of him by Lestat:
“Just a little blood, and Louis might be stronger, true, but then he might lose the human tenderness, the human wisdom … the gift of knowing others’ suffering with which Louis had probably been born”
TL;DR: I love Louis because he is so complex and though he is the most human-like vampire who possesses an aching tenderness and erudite nature that speaks to my very soul, he is also a dangerous badass whose moral stance is highly debatable. I love all sides of him!!
So although Lestat’s relationship with Mojo is touching, I personally like to think that Louis would also love to keep pets, though he’s definitely not the sweet and cuddle pet owner like Lestat. So I can say, with 100% confidence, that Louis would absolutely love to keep lizards or other reptiles! I personally think he’d do best with geckos or other small lizards, but tbh it would warm my heart to see him with a little tortoise or snake as well.
In all seriousness, though, reptiles are the best because they’re quiet, require minimum maintenance/interaction, but are still cute and sweet to play with. Also they’re coldblooded like him, so I can just imagine him lowkey pressing his hands against the cage for warmth sometimes.
Also headcanon that Louis likes to just sorta lounge around the house with his lizard pals on his shoulder or chest, and they like to sit right over his heart to feel his heartbeat, or burrow against his neck right after he feeds to feel the warmth there.
Lestat absolutely hates them and thinks that they’re weird and squirmy, and has threatened to feed them to the neighbor’s cat on multiple occasions. Louis, on the other hand, is very defensive of them.
He also takes super good care of them, and has a huge cage with the most expensive decor. He personally goes out into the garden to catch bugs for them to eat (they don’t have to eat every night, and it isn’t much of a hassle with his vampire sense anyway), and hand feeds them.
Anyway yeah that’s it. Thank you for taking the time to consider Lizard Louis (and thank you to @claudiasashes and @i-want-my-iwtv for encouraging this crack). Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
It’s a touchy subject, recommending blogs, as inevitably I’ll leave someone out and then they may feel, well, LEFT OUT :-
(BTW I respond to asks for Louis with ♠ in the #louis muse tag, so you can ask him things, but he can’t go on to do full threads)
I don’t follow as many RP blogs as I used to, it was too much to keep up with the various threads, some have gone inactive, new ones have started up… All attempts to make VC directories usually fail.
However, and that said, so you know I’m not playing favorites, there are some I remember by name or saw in the notes for this roundup post, and so I tagged them below, but this is an incomplete list. Let’s make this an Ask Louis and Louis RPer roundup! People Off The Page, reblog/comment with any Ask Louis and Louis RPer blog I left out 😉
(active-status not guaranteed):
@merciful-death – rarely active but their archive might interest you
Yes, I love his big cozy sweater + unkempt look aesthetic, too. Louis is a professional couch potato ;D
I love how soulful and wise and beautiful and plain human Louis is.
Yes definitely! He takes immense pleasure in simple things. Still uses oil lamps because the flame is so much friendlier than an electric lamp 😉
It’s stupid, but if I got to meet him I think we’d get along. I’d love to bring him old books of poetry and candles, surprise him with a fountain pen and parchment, and spend warm New Orleans nights at the Rue Royale flat with him. I just really really love Louis so much ugh jeez
What you suggested is absolutely NOT STUPID, I do think you’d get along well with him, it sounds like a perfect evening with a close friend ❤ More power to you, anon!
//Bruh, I love all the Louis positive content on this blog lately! Also to anon- if you ever wanna talk to Louis, shoot me an ask 🙂
A wild Louis appears! Thanks for offering, @sangcreole ❤
Anon, some RPers like this one are open to interaction as the characters you love, you can be on anon or not, go play with them ^_____^
(Other Louis muses are invited to reblog/comment and add themselves to this post, btw)
//okay but honestly how cool would it be if Louis’ dark gift was empathy all along??? Like, he obviously had the hardest time getting used to killing- harder than pretty much any other vampire we know of. And like, we know that when vampires feed, they kinda connect with the spirit of their victim- but what if Louis could do that without feeding? Like, he can’t read their thoughts, but what if he could feel their souls? What if he truly does have “the gift of knowing others’ suffering”???
And Lestat brushes it off like “lol ur just an emotional fledgling, chill out” and then Louis never ends up telling anyone about it lol and doesn’t bother mentioning it to Daniel bc he doesn’t think it’s important
This is really interesting, and Armand and Vittorio can do this to an extent, so it does exist in universe that you can kinda feel people’s souls/auras. It’s also telling when Armand mentions how Louis can spellbind people by accident haha. So yeah I could totally see him having some other version of telepathy that isn’t strictly verbal and maybe just never know how to articulate it.
I-want-my-IWTV 