I’m ignoring movie!QOTD bc of reasons We can’t have a real sequel bc movie!IWTV ended w/ Lestat *riding off into the sunrise* w/ Daniel and that’s very not canon. It would be hard to wrangle the story back to canon, or harder to alter canon to allow for that ship (Lestat says he’s gonna give Daniel the Choice, pretty obviously setting it up that Lestat will turn him, and then where would that leave Armand in QOTD? Fledglingless!).
Plus, all the original actors are too old for their original roles, sadly. At one time, Tom Cruise was trying to get the rights (or had them?) for TOBT which I assume he planned to star in. All the gay backlash at the time probably helped kill that project ;A;
((BTW I wouldn’t mind casting them in other roles if they wanted it… Tom could play the Marquis de Lioncourt now…))
It’s crazy but I would love an animated feature… and then we could have the original voices back…
We could restart in IWTV:
Or we could start it in TVL and go in chronological order:
^Both by @garama . (This scene with Lestat and Armand (or is that Nicki?) didn’t happen in canon but I feel like we could scoot some silliness in there) These looks like stills from an animated feature, don’t they??! As for the original voices: Tom definitely. In fact why hasn’t he done animated voicework? It’s a crime that he hasn’t. Brad, well, I didn’t love him in his animated features (Sinbad, Megamind), so I won’t argue recasting Louis.
Someone asked me for my ultimate casting choices for a live-action VC movie awhile back and I haven’t gotten a chance to answer properly. In the meantime, you might have fun browsing my #vc casting tag ;]
“Oh man, I was disappointed in Lestat the first time I read the body thief also, but mostly bc he came across as a lot less intelligent than I had thought and that was a huge turnoff”
And I answered, basically, that there were a lot of extenuating circumstances, and pressure, you were under in that story… so I don’t really think it was a lack of intelligence on your part and I don’t think it’s your job to try to “turn-on” your readers/audiences with every story.
But how would you have handled that question?
It’s actually my favorite misadventure….mainly because it is really the first modern tale where it’s just myself telling the story. There is plenty of cast support, so to speak, but it’s all from my viewpoint.
I know I’ve expressed before, that every vampire is a frozen drop in an icy sea of time indefinite. I’m no exception to that rule. You bet, I love modern excess and read constantly but any self-proclaimed exclamation of genius is pure vanity.
I’m clever, that is to be certain….wily like a fox and I learn quickly but how best does anyone learn? Mistakes. I may have the body and visage of a god but like all deities in mythology, I’m fallible, baby!
I started out my life as an illiterate bumpkin! I was talented in four areas; hunting, fucking, drinking, and acting. Hardly the stuff of Hawking, Jobs, Tyson or any other modern mega-mind!
It took the Dark Gift to expand my capacity for thought and to retain knowledge. I’m a great mimic. Up until my time as a rock star, I couldn’t compose Chop Sticks if you paid me. I had no time for that, man! I was a bit busy….
Imagine now, that you take this demigod, frozen in time, suffering from post-traumatic stress due to the biggest let down of his life and set down before him, a large ‘Do Over’ button. It’s bright red and glowing in the center of the hole in his life and it says, “DO NOT PRESS THIS EVER!”
Who am I? What am I famed for? The neon signs came out, lit up like Christmas in Las Vegas telling me to do ANYTHING other than press that precise button! So of course, I smashed my fist into that son-of-a-bitch because I wanted to know! I wanted to remember what it was like! I’d tried Death and she threw me back! So how about life?
And ahh I thought I knew and remembered what it was like! I thought everything I lifted from every meal I engorged myself with made me an expert in the human condition! I was so horribly naive.
And I described how dreadful it all was! The eating, the drinking, the shitting, the paltry sex, the illness, the fragility! I could barely see! I could barely move or think clearly enough to qualify as much more than some en vogue, hunky, runway model…..no brain, all body, probably a dreadful accent! Best ogled, not heard! What was I to do with all that? I was almost that country pauper again.
I needed help and I was grateful for Gretchen, for David! Without them, I would have died…in one of the most wretchedly, abysmally common mortal ways.
This mind of mine combined with the Blood and this body is a complete package that works! Raglan didn’t do so hot inside it, if you recall?
I could describe my many attributes again but to sum it all up, I’m smarter than the average bear and I love telling a good tale but don’t let the golden fleece fall over your eyes, darling! This was an extraordinary event that happened to an otherwise ordinary guy.
*winks*
Afterword: If that disappointed you or broke your heart, then might I suggest developing a crush on my brainy squeeze, David! Or Louis? I surround myself with genius to put me in a brighter spotlight. Just don’t be in their beds when I want in. I have the jealousy of a bull in the midst of puberty.
#damn you and your perfect headcanon perfection #PERFECT JUST PERFECT #tldr #tldr i know #but seriously plz read this it is #perfection
Also, look how generous he is about sharing his toys people! “Just don’t be in their beds when I want in.” <- NOTE TAKEN.
For sure! He did come across as a lot less intelligent than he had proven himself in ALL of the prior VC up to that point, but there are legitimate reasons. Which I’m gonna lay out for you, under the cut, bc SPOILER ALERTS.
When you consider the larger picture: of the ocean of crap he’s waded through up until that point, we can’t just write him off as “crazy” or “dumb.“ He’s actually wounded in many ways, so his mind can’t be firing on all cylinders.
Not the least of which was the devastating betrayal of Louis and Marius, in their refusal to help him in his hour of need.
In IWTV he was an enigmatic tyrant, in TVL he partially corrected that by revealing his backstory and the vampire origin story and showed that he is a BAMF which means he CAN BE tyrannical sometimes,…
So if he comes across as such a disgusting moron, why share this story with us? Could be for the same reason he shared TVL: to correct the record, and to try to make some sense of it, get some closure, and maybe learn something from the experience as a whole. He’s sharing it with us so that maybe we can benefit, too, and as bizarre and as big a turn-off as it is, the very least you can take from it is the tried-and-true: “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR – YOU JUST MIGHT GET IT”which seems to be a recurring theme for him, and in VC in general.
[Spoilers ahead…]
It’s in QOTD when we see him attempt to find himself a role in the modern era, that’s also when he appears to lose some of that quick wit we loved him for, as his new SJW GF wears him down, intending to destroy the fabric of society in the name of Extreme Social Justice. He can’t dissuade her from her plans, so he eventually just stops trying. He’s practically praying for Marius internally. She is manipulating him vigorously throughout their time together, keeping him sleep-deprived and physically addicted to her, arguing her philosophy irrationally, he’s constantly reminding the reader that he’s slipping, losing himself in her, he’s actually terrified into submission to her to the point where he doesn’t know where his loyalty lies when it finally comes down to choosingsides. He was not the one to save the day in that story. He watches passively as someone else does.
Akasha’s damage was done, a part of him has been crushed… it was a major blow to his sanity and his ability to be rational about things before leaping into action. In the beginning of TOBT he’s suffering already, haunted by his past. He is not healed emotionally, not in a position to make the kind of deal that he makes with RJ, and after that, he’s even less equipped, emotionally AND physically, to try to remedy the situation that HE CREATED.
The most devastating blow is probably when Louis and Marius both refuse to help him. At that point, he’s broken mentally from that betrayal, more physically weakened, and just grasping at straws to try to get things back to normal.
So is all that an excuse for the awful, terrible things he does in that story? Absolutely NOT. But you can see that he’s crippled in many ways, so his mind can’t be firing on all cylinders.
You’re going to be disappointed in Lestat. He does some terrible, awful, things in TOBT. He’s done some terrible, awful things before it, and will do terrible, awful things after.
He’s not a #perfect cinnamon roll too good for this world. FAR FROM IT. He’s a little shit a lot of the time. There’s no way I can wave a magic wand and raise anyone’s opinion of him.
Pretty sure that ALL the VC characters are problematic in some regard. In fact, message me the characters with a list of their offensiveness. I would really like to compile a list.
What I CAN give you: If you’re disappointed in a character, does that mean it’s because you had a higher opinion of him before? Did you care about him before? Wanted to read his story? See more of him in canon?
Is it because you can see that he’s an evolving character, and though he has done bad things, he is capable of change? We don’t change overnight. People can continue to do bad things on their journey, failing bc of weakness or in an attempt to do the right thing.
With Lestat, you can rest assured that he wants to be good, but like an alcoholic, he falls off the “good” wagon. Repeatedly. It’s in his persistence in climbing back on again and again that should be considered when you’re formulating your opinion of him. If you can’t handle the failures, close the book. Unfollow his story. No one is forcing you to take the ride with him.
I think a crucial part of doing the right thing is having a better understanding of the wrong thing, a lot of Lestat’s failure comes from his inner turmoil. Even before he was turned into a monster, we can all agree that he had issues, to put it lightly.
“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.“
(a bit more under the cut)
“I don’t understand.” How many times have you read that in conjunction with a violent act?
“I don’tunderstand why he did it.” Or “I don’t understand why this happened.” Sammy Yatim, shot dead and then tasered by police on a Toronto streetcar, and even the chair of the Police Services Board asks, “How could this happen?”
….Here in Britain, our weakling government is attempting to launch a web filter that would somehow erase “violent material” from Internet provision — placing it, by association, in the same category as child pornography. Every week seems to bring a new attempt to ban something or other because it’s uncomfortably or scary or perhaps even indefensibly disgusting.
….we generally demonize violent acts and violent work. We make them Other, and we just distance ourselves. They are Other, and they didn’t come from us, and we’re just going to stand over there and shake our heads sadly. And, moreover, anyone who gets closer to it in order to experience or understand it must be a freak.
…The function of fiction is being lost in the conversation on violence. My book editor, Sean McDonald, thinks of it as “radical empathy.” Fiction, like any other form of art, is there to consider aspects of the real world in the ways that simple objective views can’t — from the inside. We cannot Other characters when we are seeing the world from the inside of their skulls. This is the great success of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter, both in print and as so richly embodied by Mads Mikkelsen in the Hannibal television series: For every three scary, strange things we discover about him, there is one thing that we can relate to. The Other is revealed as a damaged or alienated human, and we learn something about the roots of violence and the traps of horror.
… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.”
I would honestly prefer reading about the stupid paranormal romance where the weird non-human boyfriend can’t work out the DVD player over Brooding Manipulative and Controlling asshole trope
[screaming at the DVD player] IM 800 YEARS OLD CUT ME SOME SLACK
“I lifted the long wax wick, dipped it into an old flame, and
carried the fire to a fresh candle, watched the little tongue grow
orange and bright.
What a miracle, I thought. One tiny flame could make so many
other flames; one tiny flame could set afire a whole world. Why, I
had, with this simple gesture, actually increased the sum total of
light in the universe, had I not?
…«But why, Lestat?»
Because she was beautiful, because she was dying, because I
wanted to see if it would work. Because nobody wanted her and she was
there, and I picked her up and held her in my arms. Because it was
something I could accomplish, like the little candle flame in the
church making another flame and still retaining its own light – my way
of creating, my only way, don’t you see? One moment there were two of
us, and then we were three.
…«Are we close to God when we create something out of
nothing? When we pretend we are the tiny flame and we make other
flames?»
… I dipped it into an old flame, and made a new one burst
into being, hot and yellow and finally steady, giving off the sharp
perfume of burnt wax. I was about to say the words «For Gretchen,»
when I realized that it was not for her at all that I had lighted the
candle.
For Claudia, my precious beautiful Claudia? No, not for her
either, much as I loved her …
I knew the candle was for me.”– Lestat de Lioncourt, Tale of the Body Thief
So I lit a candle for a fictional character on his birthday at a real cathedral mentioned as a location in canon #NO REGRETS
oscar wilde was literally the coolest guy who ever lived
master of sass
HE WAS BISEXUAL. We get to claim the sass master.
NO YOU REALLY JUST Oscar Wilde lived in the VICTORIAN ERA He was a really controversial guy. He hated his society. He also went to jail and destroyed his career because he was in a gay relationship with a Lord. He was a badass. To be honest
His last words were “either the wall paper goes or I do”
Oscar Wilde IS Lestat
#TRUTH
Friendly reminder that Oscar Wilde changed his name to Sebastian Melmoth when he went into exile and that is one of Lestat’s aliases (extract from the Tale of the Body Thief, page 81)
Oh god
YOU KIDDING! O_O Lestat you clever bastard! 😀
::whispers:: it got better
Forgot to mention it was the name Wilde adopted after his exile for homosexuality (extract from The Vampire Companion, page 266)
I-want-my-IWTV 