Something I love about Louis and Lestat is like, Louis is really good at reading subtext and Lestat's really good at reading outward emotion, and theyre both shit at doing the other, and it makes both of them terrible at dealing with Claudia
Louis was not just born and raised relatively wealthy in the south, and thus has a lot of experience with the "implications within implications" of how southern people can talk, but was also a black man in the 1920s and so he's had to get better at it. His narrations colder and more to the point for how most people talk, because he's likely relaying to Daniel what was *said* more than what was said
The most obvious counter to this being his family, who (mama aside) are all relatively warm and happy to him.....because he's reading them at face value. He seems caught off guard by the build up of them being afraid of him, and theres implications they were already iffy on his career as a pimp
Paul is presented as righteous but relatively happy and carefree, but he feels a NEED to go to church and confess regularly and its played as a funny quirk by Louis. Like, obviously suicides can happen without signs, but did Louis miss a lot of signs Paul had a lot of guilt and depression, and he missed a lot of implication in Paul's behaivor because he cant read emotions
Meanwhile Lestat is more emotionally honest when it comes to the big things, for all that happens he presents Armand relatively earnestly and he's open about his own emotional instability while showing us more of Louis as a warm and open person than even Louis gave us in his flashbacks. All that said....Lestat SUCKS at implication and subtext to almost a comedic degree
Lestat is constantly using his mind reading to figure out implications and subtext other people make that are either obviously racist or just the southern equivilant of saying "this is fake niceness, you know it and I know it but were doing this dance for formalities", and then shaking his head going "they dont respect you/he has ulterior motives", and then is confused when Louis reacts to an implication because he doesnt read subtlety or implication
Lestat, unable to read deeper into his past beyond the surface level. Probably genuinely not realizing Armand in his repressed subtlety was in love with him until Armand confessed, and not able to acknowledge his trauma or how fucked up circumstances were because he just read events on the surface level of how people around him reacted and supressed his own emotions there until they blew up
Neither of them able to fully help and communicate with Claudia because she was raised by both of them and had both of their strengths in that regard. Claudia raised with the best of Lestat's vampiric nature and Louis' social skills who couldnt really have a proper conversation with either of them
Claudia usually having a way of speaking closer to Lestat, often just laying things out as they are and not dancing around things or using implications in the way southern people and Louis often do. Louis, like with his mortal family, seeming to struggle to understand the emotion shes presenting because its not done with the same subtext and implication hes used to dealing with
Claudia, raised knowing implications and subtlty that southerners use, often assuming early on Lestat is doing the same and then later on often using her skill with it to be fake kind once she stops wanting to be nice to him, and then seeming to read a lot more subtle malice into how Lestat talked than was there. Lestat the person best able to relate to Claudia, sharing similar trauma with her, and neither being able to have a genuine conversation because both spoke rather plain and to the point and assumed there was a subtext to the other that stopped them ever talking anything out, and made sure their conversations were only genuine when both were at their worse
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