#loudaughter

1) The paying someone to sit in a room and talk with him—actually, mostly to listen to him—in an attempt at a kind of pseudo-therapy. For this, he chooses people that are convenient, non-judgemental, and who he genuinely likes—Miss Lily, and Daniel (well, older Daniel is not non-judgemental anymore, but regardless, Louis needed him in order to revisit and reappraise their first interview).

2) Then, there’s the “replacements”—stemming from his loss of and yearning for family, and in which he projects people onto other, newer people. At this point it’s been a straight generational line—Paul and Grace begat Claudia begat Regina. While in Claudia’s case, she was also a stand-in for the child(ren) “of [his] own” Louis couldn’t biologically or legally have, being both gay and undead; as well as for companionship whenever he was (physically or emotionally) estranged from (or just annoyed with) Lestat. Really, she was a lot of roles and symbols to him, which is why he became so emotionally dependent on her (‘my daughter was my sister was my throw pillow…’) and they became so enmeshed. 

DtMF | Louis and Claudia | Interview with the Vampire

Louis going from son & brother to head of household. Sitting at the end of the table, opposite of Florence, where their father sat. Now his mother’s husband, father to his siblings. Louis having to shed his former familial role and don a new one to keep them afloat.

Louis relationship with Claudia has always been built of her dependency on him and anytime she gets a bit of freedom, the only way she comes back to him is when she's broken down and he relishes that. Or at the very least does nothing to fight it makes no effort to give her freedom and when he does actually give her her own independence. It's petty. It's him sitting in the seats at the theatre while she's openly disrespected like.l "Well, that's what you wanted". And then you get the actual moment where he decides fuck maybe I do need finally to give her freedom and he makes Madeline for her but of course that literally seals her fate

"what now daddy Lou?"

Maybe he didn't mean to, but this was always where it was going to end up because as much as he believes going through the interview was some kind of rebirth for him. It really didn't change anything cuz the moment he sees her he starts to pin all his crap on her because she's his source for feeling important and fulfilled by being "inservice" to her (which oh my f****** God let's talk about the fact that they f****** mirrored this relationship with the f****** Gabriella relationship) he stalks her, then he looks her up, finds out she's in a difficult position, presses her about letting him "help" her and when she said no he still came back.