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.
Louis feasting on a succulent rat while looking like the saddest vampire in all the world
I like this as an Aesthetic post and will reblog separately w/o commentary but you hit one of my #vampire physiology buttons, so let me add:
I gotta redo the math on how many rats Louis would have had to consume on a nightly basis. I did it once or twice and it was ridiculous. Bc if you calculate:
I) People blood needed for a fledgling vampire:
I can’t remember where it’s mentioned in TVL, but I’m p sure that Lestat killed 3 ppl/night (full grown adult humans) as a fledgling*, and that’s 1.2 to 1.5 gallons of blood per person.**
So that’s 1.35 gallons x 3 = 4.05 gallons of blood. PER NIGHT.
LIKE. I don’t think Louis was chomping on over 300 rats per night, which leads me to conclude that:
I am a lazy potato, I don’t think I could even unwrap and eat 300 candybars in one sitting, even if they were in a big pile right next to me on the couch and I had the stomach capacity for it. He had to chase each one of these things down and bite them individually, they’re not capri-sun packs (tho, those still take the effort of pushing a straw into),
So he probably didn’t want to do that 300 times a night,
So he probably didn’t actually get the volume he required on a nightly basis,
If you cut it down by half, like 150 rats, he had to have been killing SOME larger animals like dogs/cats/etc. to make up for the difference.
And that malnourishment added to the crap he was already dealing with. I’m cranky when I’m hungry. It certainly doesn’t help when you’re already under extreme duress from your daily nightly situation aside from the sustenance aspect.
ANYWAY Thank you for coming to my TedTalk on why Louis was malnourished for the first few years of his vampiring.
(Asterisked stuff under the cut.)
*1 of 2: By IWTV-era, Louis says Lestat killed 2-3 a night, a 10 yr old vampire might already need less than a fresh fledgling but *handwaves*
it’s so nebulous so idk.
“Lestat killed humans all the
time, sometimes two or three a night, sometimes more.” – IWTV
*2 of 2: Plus, consider that this might be less than for a “normal” fledgling, bc Magnus was an older vampire and *handwaves* you know, that means he himself feeds less often, so one could assume a fledgling from that vintage blood would also need less, but it’s so nebulous so idk. MEANING that Louis, being Lestat’s 3rd fledgling in less than 10 years would mean that, being of “weaker stock,” he might need more blood on a nightly basis as a fledgling.
//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!!
//ooc: This is another fairly old ask, from November, 2017. I think anon was trying to rile Lestat by calling Louis “a sad sack of a man and doesn’t really seem to be worth loving.” Limiting him to just being “beautiful.” And while it is fun to rile Lestat and see how he reacts, idk… I was kind of taken aback by this and I had too many thoughts about it to have Lestat respond flippantly, which he would have. I think Lestat either gets defensive about loving Louis, or just dismisses these kinds of comments, one less person for him to compete with for Louis’ attention, lol.
TL;DR: I think when ppl ask that, part of where they may be coming from is that THEY feel like a “sad sack” who’s maybe not worth being loved, especially by the main character in a series, a flashy glittery murder machine. They worry that even if they’re loved for being “beautiful” that that really isn’t enough for a relationship, and that’s absolutely true, if we’re defining beauty as superficial characteristics. The beauty of Louis, to me, is in his character, and the emotions of the scene.
I’ve written a lot about what draws me, as a reader, to love Louis, probably the best stuff is in my #we appreciate and love louis in this house tag. But I’ll try not to go overboard and answer you here, anyway!
I think the deal with describing Louis as *~SO beautiful~* is partly that, hey, it’s fun to do, like having a favorite flower, and AR takes the opportunity to remind us of it, and put the camera on him in a scene, so we know he’s present. It also serves a purpose, we usually get at least a scrap of context about him and/or the scene:
“I glared at him, at the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, […] his wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation of his upper lip.”-Lestat, The Tale of the Body Thief
^Let’s take this line and unpack it a little:
Lestat glares at Louis. –> Lestat is clearly pissed.
Louis’ imperturbable face –> Louis is not scared of Lestat being pissed.
And then Lestat lavishes this extra description on him, appreciatively. Attention on the lip area, now we’re picturing him pointedly staring there, which might precede a kiss, so we can infer that Lestat desperately wants to kiss him, probably. What I get from all that is the exquisite tension of Lestat wanting someone he can’t have, someone he treasures and wants even MORE bc of the difficulty.
It’s the tension of Lestat and other characters pining for Louis that AR wrings every drop out for us, she’s showing us how helpless these other characters are that they can only try to capture Louis with descriptions since he defies being owned by anyone. Unrequited love is a powerful thing.
Bringing these back, in case anyone else missed them and want to indulge in some Louis praise/discussion:
We can find ourselves slipping into the characters we love and identify with. Some ppl find Lestat relatable in his lust for life, self-centeredness, refusal to quit, constantly screwing up and berating himself in the narrative (but rarely being able to outright apologize to those he hurts)… a flawed character for sure but an inspiring one.
I think some ppl who relate to Louis and feel less flashy, less glamorous, there’s smtg very appealing about how such a character could be so idolized by the more flashy and glamorous one. What could such a *rockstar* like Lestat find attractive in Louis?? You said yourself Louis is a sad sack. And yes, beauty is not enough to keep a relationship going. But, as I mentioned above, Louis’ beauty is often described in a context that charges it with the emotions of the scene. At least to my reading, there’s more conveyed than just eye color.
Still, why wouldn’t Lestat demand someone who was more like himself?
But here’s the thing I think a lot of ppl miss when they’ve only seen movie!IWTV, or only read a few of the books.
I personally believe that Lestat sees in Louis a similarly wounded soul with a lust for life. At their core, neither really want to die. Louis kept getting into fights with ppl bc he couldn’t kill himself as a mortal. Lestat has stubbornly refused to die his entire life and has had plenty of reason to want death. They’ve both almost killed themselves and been brought back. There’s a similar torment in them dealing with their natures.
As an anon put it so eloquently: “I think ppl forget that Louis is just as passionate and vengeful as Lestat, it’s just that he isn’t as vocal or showy about it. He’s more intimate and intense.”
The way they communicate/express themselves, and the way they practice self-care is vastly different. Lestat builds up his beautiful shell with retail therapy, redecorating and refurbishing his dwellings, and attending all kinds of shows and making elaborate plans with his kills, just spoiling himself silly. Always down for indulging his senses. He’s chasing new experiences, learning the new slang, trying to keep himself in the latest fashions. Novelty.
Louis prefers his nights at home, low-drama, in his own creature comforts, with his books and poetry to escape into. We don’t know much of what he’s read but he seems to want to spend eternity reading. What is reading? Even if it’s nonfiction, it’s learning, being told a story, being more informed. It’s novelty, too. Escapism through the imagination.
And their personalities seem to complement each other. Lestat’s lust for adventure spices up Louis’ otherwise too-calm existence. Louis’ calm and dignified manner brings Lestat back down to earth when he gets too untethered. Their bickering is bc they care for each other, can see beneath each other’s disguises. Louis sees the frightened boy inside the frustration that makes Lestat lash out and attack first. Lestat sees the potential in Louis of someone who, if he could get over his inhibitions, could experience so much more in his life.
“…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.“
^This is one of those moments I talk about where I feel like she recaptures the old magic, taps into the vein (pun intended) that got us all addicted to this series in the first place. Why I can’t just discard the crackier later books. She’s not all that specific here, but it’s believable. At least, to me. Lestat admits that Louis’ limitations (and this can be so many things, things Lestat disagrees with him about as well as things Louis refuses to do) can be maddening, and inspiring.
And he admits that his love for Louis transcends wisdom. That may be a cop-out answer, but I’ve felt that kind of love in my life. Inexplicably bound to someone, despite the math of the personalities not seeming to mesh.
Love works in mysterious ways. Even for beautiful sad sacks and the arrogant bastards who love them ❤
Last night I dreamt that Lestat tried to crimp my hair and it looked terrible and when I woke up I felt sympathy for Louis de Pointe du Lac on a whole new level
Thanks for the praise on the recent Louis posts (links under the cut)! #we appreciate and love Louis in this house ❤
I think ppl forget that Louis is just as passionate and vengeful as Lestat, it’s just that he isn’t as vocal or showy about it. He’s more intimate and intense.
yeah he’s pretty but how can one forget him murdering a theatre full of ppl or that unlike most of our vampire friends hes the one that kills indiscriminately.
IKR? It took planning to kill a theatre full of older vampires who had honed their vampiry gifts. Louis does get pushed around, but he learns from it, and he comes back with a strategy. Lestat’s more of an impulse fighter.
And yes, Louis kills indiscriminately, which is scarier bc there’s nothing you can do to avoid it other than to not cross his path. At least you know you’re safe form Marius or Lestat as long as you’re not a certifiable Evildoer™
;D
In case anyone else missed them and you want to indulge in some Louis praise/discussion:
Hey! Thanks for coming back! I was glad to see the commentary that post and the other recent Louis posts (links under the cut) got, too. #We appreciate and love our lovely-yet-deadly angel Louis in this house ❤
As a character he’s so interesting; he has insecurities, but used his “assets” to his advantage. He isn’t afraid to be tactful and curb stomp anyone and that’s just another reason why I love him omg
^AGREED, well-put, anon! He’s flawed, but also inspiring and motivational.
(Did you mean “tactical” rather than “tactful” ? He’s both ^______^ )
In case anyone else missed them and you want to indulge in some Louis praise/discussion:
I-want-my-IWTV 