I always post my analyses for AMC's Interview with the Vampire under the IWTV TVC Metas tag, but I also have masterlists in the menu on my front page, where everything's listed, latest to oldest.
Louis Metas1 (S1 - S2 | S3)
General Metas2 (S1 - S2 | S3): inc. my Anne Rice books tier list | AMC / TVC Timelines | S2 & S3 episode reactions | AMC's Book/Research References for S1, S2, & xtras
Claudia / Armand Metas3 (S1 - S2 | S3)
Lestat / Gabrielle Metas4 (S1 - S2 | S3)
Over time I've had to split them into 4 parts cuz of Tumblr's hyperlink limit--they used to all be in one nice & neat post, pre-Season 2. 😔
Disclaimer: I'm a Black goth female who's been reading Anne Rice for 30 years. I stan AMC!Louis & AMC!Claudia. Antiblack racists & misogynists can kick bricks. 😘
(Lies & slander about me that I refuted with RECEIPTS: x x)
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Louis gets to just enjoy a HARMLESS casual fling with a "nice guy" like Lemuel; without some uber-obsessive/possessive man breathing hellfire down his neck. Just. 👏 Like. 👏 I. 👏 Said. 👏
Like sure, everyone knows Louis' a freak who loves friction, loves Bad Boys, and who actually finds nice guys like Lemuel (& Jonah, & ofc Armand) boring/dull/flavorless. We all know Loustat's endgame, but jfc let Louis at least sample the platter before he puts himself in another long-term till-death-do-us-part commitment. Let him LIVE a little! And see what it's like to NOT be in a toxic AF failmarriage for once in his immortal life!
Istg all the bellyaching from bitter AF Lestans making nasty comments about LouLaw just stinks of HATERISM (and a few other 'isms ofc). 🙄
What is ONE thing you'd ask viewers to NOT judge Lestat for? (People Magazine)
Jacob: That's what this whole season is, right? This whole season is CONTEXT. It's very important. I love Lestat! I've always loved Lestat. I don't judge him anymore.
Sam: I don't feel the need to ask the audience to NOT judge him. It's within his remit and his DNA to be judged, and he kind of welcomes that. And he is: "Love me or hate me!" I'm gonna be The Vampire Lestat anyway.
This is a very leading question, and smacks of a psyop, so I think Jam was very good to give a sensible & safe character-centric answer; rather than telling the audience what we should or shouldn't subjectively feel about a character. Cuz there's PLENTY Lestat can be judged for, clearly--esp. if People's scrambling to hear just ONE (1) thing to unequivocally redeem him for; and Jam refused to name anything. So if they're not even gonna be specific, then ofc they have no room to determine how the audience takes anything or not anyway. So yeah, just keep it character-centric.
Because like Sam just told Vulture, the whole point of the show is that no matter what, the one person Lestat is seeking validation/attention--forgiveness and/or judgement--from is LOUIS. And everyone knows that no matter what, Louis WILL forgive Lestat, with or without context, even. He swam the Mississippi in the middle of being rage-baited, and took Lestat back, warts and all. He loves that man, bless his heart.
So the context is really most necessary for each characters' own benefit.
Louis needs to understand that Lestat never hated his guts or regretted making him--that the love was always there; just buried under a mountain of trauma triggered by pisspoor communication & huge misunderstandings. BUT also, just like Lestat said in Big Bad Wolf, he can't ever be worthy of Louis' love if Louis doesn't even know what his own worth even is enough to love himself.
And Lestat needs to understand that Louis requires patience & empathy as he walks down his particular Devil's Road, and that he is allowed to find his way and make mistakes without being treated like a disappointment or a crazy person who can't be trusted to have his own agency/autonomy/independence. And how that independence does NOT automatically mean that Louis' rejecting Lestat, or trying to replace Lestat with something/someone else--he contains multitudes.
And they BOTH need to understand that they failed Claudia horrendously, in different but not unrelated ways (cuz cycles are cycling whodathunk). They can never be a family together as long as that gaping wound is still oozing pus & bile. But they need to actually TALK about it, and get more context about ALL the things that went wrong with the Unholy Family. Folks love acting like it was just ONE (1) thing that went wrong (even People is tryna pin it down to ONE thing, lol); when NO. Their family collapsed under a domino effect of catastrophes that befell them. ALL of this needs to be addressed.
A person can still be judged harshly for the things they did wrong, and still ultimately be forgiven; they're NOT mutually exclusive. Like Louis said in 1x1, this story is about "truth and reconciliation."
So I'm glad Jam was non-committal. Cuz it's not up to them to decide what the audience should feel. If the writing's solid enough, the fandom will decide that on their own.
THANK YOU. I've been seeing Louis Antis & mean-spirited (and highkey RACIST) Lestans talking about how Jacob Anderson hates Louis being called Helen of Troy because it's "regressive/misogynistic" gender-essentialism blahblah, when that is NOT what he said.
He said "THE MYTH AROUND HER" was misogynistic/regressive: that the sirens being women luring sailors to their deaths is misogynistic; that Helen being blamed for launching 1000 ships because of her beauty is regressive. And he's right! Everyone knows the ancient Greeks (cradle of Western civilization BTW) were misogynistic AF, and blamed women for literally everything (*cough* Pandora *cough*). Even the Bible blames Eve for the Fall of Man--that's what happens when you live in a patriarchy, DUH. Ofc the most beautiful hypersexualized objects of desire are loved & hated at the same dang time.
Even in the books it's CANON that Louis is the most beautiful vampire--so IDKWTF Lestans of all people (who claim they understand Lestat & love AMC!Loustat--LOL, lies) think they're doing tryna act like it's incorrect to see the parallels between Helen & Louis like????
"Beautiful One" is literally book!Lestat's favorite nickname for Louis! And AMC channels it all the time.
Jacob Anderson cosigns and even promotes the fandom embracing him/Louis as the most beautiful character that everyone would die for. 😍
He LEAPT at the chance to remind the interviewer that LouCob IS a "pretty princess"--and don't you ever forget it! 👏😤
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Sure, Homer was often vague AF, cuz the myths are just that: MYTHS. The Odyssey is NOT a historical text. But HISTORICALLY, it is a FACT that the ancient Greeks were well aware of Africa & Africans--and even included them in their mythic context. Hello--Perseus' wife Andromeda (the great-grandmother of HERCULES) was from Ethiopia, DUH. Cadmus (the brother of EUROPA), and the grandfather of DIONYSUS, wasn't Greek either, he was PHOENICIAN. You know, from the Levant & Tunisia (Africa), LOL???
So people need to stop acting like the Greeks never heard of Africa or met any Black people before or didn't have Black people in their myths, stop the cap! 🤣 The devil is a liar and they'll SWIFTLY get proven wrong every time (x x x).
Like, the ancient Greeks generally thought that the Lotus-Eaters Odysseus met were living in Africa (even though it's hard to tell wtf they were talking about, either--cuz Odysseus was wandering around the 1177 BC Bronze Age Collapse, FFS).
Homer literally said that Africa/Ethiopia was Poseidon's favorite hangout spot.
Like, what are we even doing here? 🙄😒
So just say you hate the very CONCEPT of Helen of Troy--the most beautiful woman on Earth--being a Black woman, or ANYTHING but white. 🤷♂️
Yeah, Helen of Troy was Spartan, but she was also hatched from an EGG that was inseminated in her mother by a BIRD, ffs. 🤦♂️🤣 Her being BLACK should be the least of people's problems. 🤨🙄🙄🙄
Apulian red-figure bell krater. Painter of Dijon, c. 375 - 350 BC. Provincial Archaeological Museum of Bari.
There’s a certain subset of the fandom who really don’t like when you use the A word (abuse) to discuss Anne Rice’s characters.
But they are abusive. Abuse is pretty much an entry level requirement for the gothic genre. It’s all about exploring taboo subjects but not necessarily imposing judgement on them and that’s precisely what she did. It doesn’t mean she’s a bad person. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you like her characters. I actually wish passive exploration of abuse was more common than it is because it is fascinating.
In Anne’s work, there is constant abuse, and that is what it is. That is the word we’ve coined for dynamics like the ones she writes about. She just writes about them as if she were a passive observer, which is where half the appeal of the books comes from imo. It’s far more interesting to read about how characters respond to toxic dynamics rather than for author to hold your hand and tell you they’re bad. Labelling it abuse isn’t passing judgment on the books or the characters. It’s just a clearer word for what’s going on.
We know Armand is being abused by Marius because his emotional outbursts (amongst other examples) are the most obvious kinds you’d witness in a real child being abused as he was.
We know Gabrielle is abusing Lestat (neglect is abuse) because Lestat desperately fawns over her whenever she’s around to try and prevent her from leaving again. We also know because Anne had a real issue with how neglectful Gabi was and said so directly.
The characters give real life responses that abused people exhibit and the story only benefits from this. Anne’s vampires are so heightened yet they’re still so terribly human which is why they’re so powerful. She doesn’t need to tell you it’s bad because it’s horror. That’s sort of a given.
And there are obviously a thousand other examples. You can pick any character and analyse their actions and intentions and you’ll find abuse. Louis and Claudia is in an underrated example. That’s what the series is about. Ironically, the readers who insist this isn’t the case could probably benefit from Anne being a little more direct in her framing of it, but I don’t think she needed to be necessarily. I actually love when a book or other piece of media doesn’t directly call out whatever issues it’s dealing with. It’s far more elegant to explore the impact this behaviour has on the characters rather than to just say it.
Now the racism we could do without. I think we can all agree on that. When I said I had an issue with her framing, I was mostly talking about all the colonial bullshit and how it impacts certain relationships. But there is the intent of the author and then there is the execution. I thought her execution was messy at times, but I wholeheartedly accept her work for what it is. I don’t want it to be different (again, other than the aforementioned colonial bullshit) and I don’t even think many of us disagree on the core ideals of the series. We’re just using different terminology. You don’t have to call it abuse, but it’s also not incorrect to do so.
And what cracks me up is how people will say "B-b-but trauma is different from abuse~!" 😩 and I'm like....? 🤨 As if trauma can't be caused by abuse? 🙄😒
All of these vamps live a long time, so their PTSD comes from a whole cocktail of abuses--physical, verbal, emotional, psychological/mental, neglectful, grooming, sexual, even substance abuse, etc. And like you said, Anne Rice has a way of not really stating the obvious--esp. because so many of her characters ARE traumatized, but trying to not dwell on it. And ofc Armand & Lestat are the best examples.
I was literally *just* talking about Dr Fareed giving Maharet new eyes, and there's a passage in Prince Lestat where you literally SEE Lestat get triggered and try to quickly push past it:
He's trying his hardest to not dwell on what was obviously a trauma-response to the rape (sexual abuse) he suffered under Magnus, when Magnus picked Lestat as his victim strictly because he had "the proper-color eyes" and hair. It's blink and you miss it, but it's there. Lestat is being triggered by things 200+ yrs after they happened; but folks wanna act like vampires have no concept of moral/ethical right & wrongs that they do to others, or are done TO them by others; and that people are crazy for calling out the things they do as abusive? 🙄🤦♂️
No, the REAL problem is that there are STANS in this fandom who know good & well what abusive behavior is--they just hate having their favorite characters accused of being abusers--and themselves as abuse apologists for defending them. Even the "professional/objective" journalists in the industry are stans, writing articles & reviews with their fangirl glasses on. And a lot of it is coming from book purists who HATE the changes AMC has made (Louis as a pimp, Lestat and the Ep5 Fight/Drop, GabriellA having explicitly *penetrative* sex with Lestat, Armand mindwiping Louis & torturing Baby Lulu, etc). That is the Ground Zero for the vast majority of the mental gymnastics people make to muddy the waters between what even constitutes as "abuse" between monsters, regurgitating every Santiagoism to justify why this isn't The Abuse Show and making very simple concepts so much more complicated than they need to be. 🤷♂️
As an Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles superfan from back in the day, I have a vexing but nevertheless entertaining problem with the show, which is I don't know when they're breaking from "the Lore" because they've decided to go into another artistic direction (entirely valid) or because it's A Clue.
For example, in Interview with the Vampire Seasons 1-2, there's an instance of post-transformation Louis hearing Lestat's thoughts. Which, in the books, is impossible.
Vampires lose the ability to hear the thoughts of their own fledgelings in Anne Rice's vampire system, and vice versa. It's one of the tragedies of enduring eternity, that while you're falling in love with this mortal you're going to turn, you're privy to their thoughts, and even more so, during the moment of transformation you basically combine your souls, but then after that you're silent to one another, even while you can continue read the thoughts of other mortals and other vampires who aren't so closely "related".
Well, it turns out in S2 of IWTV that this wasn't an artistic difference or the showrunners' just forgetting Louis shouldn't have been able to hear Lestat's thoughts. It was a clue that Louis's narration was unreliable.
Which brings us to IWTV Season 3/The Vampire Lestat spoilers (through the Queen of the Damned book):
So Louis and Armand show up to the auction in the opening scene with a missing eye (Armand) and a missing leg (Louis).
But the thing is, in the books, vampirism... doesn't really work that way? If you're missing a leg (or your eyes) before you're turned into a vampire, then they're gone for good, for the most part (see: Flavius and Maharet). You can attach a mortal version to your body and it might work for a bit, but then those attachments will sort of rot off over time. You'd need to get a new limb taken from a similarly aged vampire attached to you in order to replace the lost mortal limbs, in theory (and in practice, in Blood and Gold, though my memory is a bit fuzzy on why the original vampire's eyes wouldn't just grow back or why Maharet couldn't take another vampire's eyes sooner).
It's not super explicitly stated, as far as I recall, but detached limbs like eyes and legs that you had when you were a mortal and turned with would simply regrow, or you could attach them and they'd just fuse back on and heal. You can get burnt to a crisp and dismembered but you'll eventually with enough blood return to your perfect early vampire self.
SO, why aren't Armand and Louis healing? Is the damage just THAT terrible, perhaps inflicted by Akasha - which would be an artistic departure from the books. Valid, but a difference.
OR is it A Clue. Are they faking their injuries, removing the limb and eye at the beginning of the night before they feed, knowing they'll lead or reattach them later, perhaps to trick someone? Are the injuries just that recent? What's going on here? How come their perfect and genuinely near-indestructible vampire bodies aren't healing of these two injuries that, in the books, would likely not persist for very long?
💬 3 🔁 2 ❤️ 8 · Decapitation & Bisecting: TVC vs AMC on how to Kill Vampires · TVC contradicts AMC's claims in 1x7 that vampires can be kil
TL;DR: In the books, vampires CANNOT regrow limbs or missing eyes. EVER. Even if they had the eyes/limbs pre-transformation. book!Lestat got his whole eyeball ripped out, and Thorne donated his eyes. Neither grew back--they had to be given back their eyes by someone else, rather than just regenerating eyes on their own.
☝️ Correct.
So unless AMC!Armand's eye is being kept in a packet somewhere like book!Lestat's was, then no, it's gone for good. Like you said, replacement eyes inevitably start to rot, and it causes them great pain, and they can't really see too well out of them anyway (Maharet).
Because Anne Rice's vampires have human morals & ethics. Maharet was fine taking the human eyes of her victims cuz they were gonna die anyway when she'd eat them. But with other fellow immortal vampires, she thought it was hella unethical to just steal some stranger's eyes just so she could see again. Thorne GAVE his eyes to her voluntarily. So when Dr Fareed made her new ones, he took a human victim sentenced for death, artificially turned them into a vampire, took their vamp!eyes, killed the fledgling, and did a bunch of high tech surgical mumbo-jumbo to correctly implant the eyes in her so they'd work correctly--my linked post above explains why this is so important (SPOILER: extra deets why book!Armand's attempts to place vampire body parts on peoples' bodies failed).
So because AMC!Armand's only missing one (not BOTH), he probably figured it wasn't worth the hassle, and made-do with an eyepatch. 🤷♂️
Assad Zaman is a TROLL. 😂
But yes, those scars look hella fresh--like the stitches are still in or something.
I surmised here that I think it's highly likely that Akasha was involved somehow. There's no vampire we've seen oin the show who's as "near-indestructible" as SHE is. 💀 Armand's only 514yo. Poor Louis' barely pushing 100+ (and he's not even sunproof). Akasha is 6000yo. 💀💀💀 Not 6 hundred. 6 THOUSAND. She's 3x older than Armand's Maker Marius, who's one of TVC's most impressive vamps. So either AMC is gonna have the covens go after them the way they went after Lestat in 3x1, OR this has something to do with the Talmasca, OR we're dealing with The Mother of All Vampires. 💀 And she is perfectly capable of ripping off limbs with ease.
But even in the books it was totally possible for regular vamps to lose their heads, hands, arms, limbs, etc. And these body parts stayed chopped off--the wound will just heal closed if the limb isn't reattached. So with Louis, yes, the prosthetic required; his foot's gone. 😭
In the books, Dr Fareed had OP high tech cloning labs, where he was able to use vampire skin grafts to perfectly/miraculously re-make their missing body parts. We'll have to wait and see if AMC!Fareed can do the same thing. Otherwise, AMC's gonna have to arsepull a different solution, or keep the injuries as-is going forward.
Injuries "would simply regrow." NO. 😔
"Or you could reattach them and they'd just fuse back on and heal." YES. 👍 So long as you still had the eye/limb, you could fuse it back on. Vamp body parts don't rot--only the head (where their BRAIN is)
As for burning, that only counts for the BURNS themselves. Armand & Louis both set themselves on fire in the sunlight. Armand healed after draining a bunch of victims, and it took a hella long time. With Louis, Lestat-David-Merrick basically BATHED Louis in their blood, to heal his burns. Then Lestat fed him his super!blood directly, over & over & over again. In both instances, Loumand didn't have any missing limbs or anything; it really was just skin-deep burns.
Memory Is A Monster
As to your other point about memory, unreliable narrators, fake injuries, etc.
Yes, AMC totally tried to cover up the mistake they made in 1x2's writing by pinning it on Louis just misremembering if Lestat actually whispered to him or not. They got caught in a boo-boo and clumsily used Memory is a Monster as a crutch in 2x8.
Vampires still feel physical pain--and that would be extremely painful, it's not fakeable. Esp. with Louis' leg--that's a real prosthetic in a body part that he no longer has. 💀 Even if he kept his missing foot in a shoebox somewhere, you can't just casually reattach limbs & eyes like Velcro--the Blood will HEAL the injury. So they'd have to have the eye ripped out again. The limb torn off again. Why would they do that?
And who are they tricking? Everyone still knows who they are thanks to the book & documentary/songs--it's not like they're unrecognizable, or not vampires anymore.
What we're seeing at The Auction has nothing to do with AMC!Louis being unreliable at all--it's AMC literally effing with the book canon to do their own thing; since neither Armand nor Louis ever have these injuries in the books. And clearly Assad & Jacob haven't even been told yet how/why they got them. 🤷♂️
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“It’s mostly just Louis, the one who he wants to love him truly,” says the Vampire Lestat star.
Vulture strikes again! 🤦♂️🤣 Can y'all get your story straight ONCE?
I'm getting tired of this writer for Vulture (x x); she stays printing some bullcrap ISTG.
AMC, can y'all PLEASE pick a struggle? 🙏 Either S3 is a brand new Lestat--the "REAL!" Lestat that all the Louis Anti Lestans keep saying will "prove" how Louis' such a Liar™ about Lestat being a monstrous abuser & domestic terrorist to him & Claudia--or Louis was RIGHT about Lestat about the good AND THE BAD; so we're just getting CONTEXT, not a CLEAN SLATE/"Rewrite"/Tabla Rasa. ❓❓❓
This is part of why folks keep saying the marketing's been DOGTRASH. Y'all are pandering, that's what this is. Cuz y'all KNOW how split the fandom is about this show--how Rolin & Jam outright said they see how passionately the fanbase is willing to "go to war" over these characters. So AMC waffles between swearing on a stack of Bibles that TVL is a brand new IP that can attract new/general audiences (read: the Heated Rivalry fanbase--like no one's noticed that you're actively copycatting Hudcon's GQ magazine spread & Buzzfeed tweets about the Omegaverse/Mpreg; please go viral cuz they beat us in popularity after 4 months & we've been niche AF for 4 years 😭)--
--and then they'll come back with assurances (false platitudes?) S3 Lestat's NOT a different version from anything Louis/Claudia already described him as (despite the Lestans primed & ready with the Merrick of it all to say the exact opposite)--he's just more introspective and we have more context:
And this is why I say Lestat deserves EVERY lashing Claudia & Louis gave him, because facts are irrelevant, feels are everything! He said & did some heinously insensitive things over & over that caused a rift between him and his fledglings--even BEFORE Antoinette & Charlie & the Ep5 Fight--that made THEM FEEL like Lestat didn't love them or even want them. I've said this a billion times jfc. And that dominoed into Louis' own horrible behavior towards Lestat and Claudia--because CYCLES ARE CYCLING. And it ALL starts with Lestat and all the effed up stuff he hasn't unpacked from France.
And that's why despite me keeping my foot on his neck, I DO sympathize (overly!) & even empathize (slightly) with Lestat, in a way that I CAN'T with AMC!Armand, because I KNOW where Lestat comes from: what's affecting him, what he's pushing against & what he's trying to get back to. I know EFF ALL about Armand or where he's been or where he's going, cuz AMC's told/shown us EFF ALL. 🤷♂️ But I KNOW Lestat loves Louis & Claudia to pieces. I KNOW he's in pain. I said I agree with him being mad as all getout over the book. But it's also undeniable that he's ALREADY been caught in 4k lying on Louis ("Were you a stutterer as a child???"), making his hypocrisy just as egregious as Louis'. 😤 But I ALSO say that Lestat's character development is a marathon, not a sprint, and that we SHOULD trust Rolin & Hannah to get Lestat to a place where he CAN prove that he's worthy of Louis' love.
Shoot, *EYE* CRIED seeing SamStat perform Brutal Love. It's a friggin beautiful love song to Louis. I can't wait to see it on the show itself. Cuz like I said, I KNOW Lestat's honest about his love. I just hate how toxic & dangerously cruel he can be to those under his care whom he often has no effing patience for, Monsieur de Patriarch. 🙅😤 So I'm excited to see him move away from diss tracks like Butterscotch and be more authentic to the one person whose validation/love he wants most; and who deserves WAY more from his Maker than he's received.
I remain fascinated by this alternate vision Rolin had for composer!Lestat. Like, obvs he must've been channeling Amadeus at some part; but thank god Sam convinced them to stick to rock. They're already making so many changes to the source material that making him a classical composer might be a bit TOO much for the book!fandom to accept, not after waiting so long to see SamStat be a rockstar.
I'm so curious. Like, what does he mean by English vs American? Especially since there's nothing BRITISH (English) about Lestat? 🤔 The American part I totally get though--esp. since Lestat has clearly "lived" in North America for the bulk of his time--
--and because Lestat's (& Armand's) "contact with the age" was Louis (x x)--which is why him implying that Louis wouldn't've told him to get a more modern HAIRCUT than Life on the Prairie Realness is so effing ridiculous. 🙄
Is Sam saying Rolin & Daniel are more fearless than Hannah? 👀 God, what a frightening thought. 😅 But lowkey I believe it, Rolin's a mad lad, bless him--even when I'm cussing him out. 🥰
