#vampire sam

(By which I mean I've been shipping him with Rashid for so long I've forgotten they are not canon and I'll be disappointed if they don't have at least one scene together.)

Christopher Heyerdahl as the vampire Sam in Van Helsing (2016)

Lumberjack

Clean girl

Emo clown

Devil incarnated

Catboy

I'm sure everyone has talked about this in great detail, I just noticed that several scenes with people talking but it's not their voice.

Is moving their voice box and mouth a general body manipulation thing like force slamming people (Armand) or aggravating Parkinson's (Louis) or making someone slap themselves in the face(Lestat)?

Is it just a matter of throwing a voice like Santiago does? Like when he mimics Louis' voice at dinner?

[I Want You More than Anything In The World TS:20:13-20:34 talking at the same time, Santiago is talking mimicing TS 20:35- 20:50 Santiago mimicing Louis' voice uncannily, not talking.]

This differs from vampire mind speaking to each other while their mouths are saying something else (like when Santiago is on stage with the victim of the night and asksdemands Armand kill Louis but neither Claudia nor Louis seem aware of this) or when Santiago is mind talking to Celeste and Estelle who are in Roget's office while rehearsing Waiting For Guido.

It's not compelling information like with Roget or with the guard at the Vichy Mansion.

If you look at several Sam Barclay scenes he's mouthing words but someone else is speaking.

Like when he's rehearsing Waiting For Guido lines. At first it looks as if he's unconsciously mouthing the words to his play, prompting the actors on stage simply because he knows the words so well as the playwright. But this is also going on while Santiago is in a mind teleconference with Celeste and Estelle while they mindgift Roget into confirming Lestat is not in contact.

I Want You More than Anything In The World TS 5:59 -6:15 Quang Pham VO: I'm leaving you. I wish to tell you that now. Santiago I thought as well you'd make a flowery announcement. Tell me what a monster I am what a vulgar fiend.

.

Or during Trial! [When it's not just Lestat being mind prompted lines by Romaine, I think.]

I can't find a gif of him mouthing lines, but it's there. I Could Not Prevent It TS 10:13-10:17 Sam Bacrlay mouthing this as Lestat talks. "An unfathomable sadness seeped" TS 37:49-51Armand VO as Sam Barclay mouths dialogue we can't hear: Piranhas looking up through the tank water, waiting for the chum to be dumped.

Sam seems to be the only vampire whose moving his mouth while someone else is talking.

ETA: We only see Sam moving his mouth while someone else is talking while other vampires in the scene are mind talking to each other and they're actively messing with the mind and/or body of a third target, whether it's other vampires or a human. We don't see him doing it at other times.

You know when we don't see him doing it? In the rehearsals for Trial! in Armand's flashback. Wouldn't the playwright be more likely to be mouthing lines then, especially since the lines aren't as rehearsed? I'm not sure he's even in the flashback at all.

CLAUDIA CUSSES OUT THE AUDIENCE ABOVE EVERYONE AND ANYTHING ELSE

We're lead to believe Claudia asks for a last wish, Santiago goes to deny it, but Lestat insists going off script. We're lead to believe Claudia's last wish before being executed is to see everyone's faces in the audience, and her last words are a vow of vengeance beyond the afterlife to kill the audience and then she sings "I don't like windows when they're closed" while burning up and then locks eyes with Lestat.

Of course she has rage at the audience, her sick groupies.

And maybe it makes the most sense to her in those last moments as something the coven would have a hard time shushing, turning the words they put into her mouth back on them, and flipping the dynamic of pleading for her life with vampires on stage or the audience that happens with the woodcutter skits. What's one more onstage death for her when she's died hundreds of times? Would they expect her to atone for her sins and reaffirm the proceedings like a lot of prisoners do in their last moments to look brave?

But --why the audience over everyone else and only the audience?

Why not the coven -- or Lestat? Or Louis? or Armand?

Or even Sam Barclay specifically (for the fuck-ass Baby Lulu play and this sham trial play? Seriously, nobody wants to turn Sam Barclay into nitrocellulose ashes at any point, this makes no sense whatsoever.)

She's being executed for wanting to exist as anything than a thing to keep Lestat and Louis together.

CLAUDIA'S LAST WORDS RETIRE BABY LULU, ABSOLVE THE THE VAMPIRES AND REMOVE MUCH OF HER MOTIVATION TO HAUNT THE MAIN CHARACTERS

Opening a Skylight (Window)/ "She Don't Like Windows When They're Closed"

Claudia's last actions are a great thematic way to cap off killing off Baby Lulu and retiring the play from a playwright's point of view because it's meta breaking the 4th wall. They start the play by reminding the audience she's Baby Lulu just in case they can't recognize her out of costume! I wonder that they didn't shove her back into a costume; bridge troll Luchenbaum probably cranked out all of those groupies' costumes and probably has one lying around. Half the regulars are Baby Lulu groupies. She was the closest thing they had to a celebrity. She's the one signing autographs, not anyone else.

Can I Say I'm Sorry Too?

Vowing to fuck up the audience beyond the grave and not saying anything about Lestat or Louis or Armand or the coven, absolves all of the vampires present. Which is a very strange thing for Claudia to do, in light of everything about the show trial play from their capture, the staging, the torture to the end.

It removes the textual motivation for Claudia to come back and haint any of the main characters or put them in any danger. Who would she haint in later seasons? The original audience -- most of whom are dead? Lestat's band, tour audience and venues? The concert fans of Daft Punk? It certainly wouldn't make as much sense for Louis to hallucinate Claudia right before he walks into the sun out of guilt--Claudia's not blaming him!

Poltergeist Claudia's Bete Noires

In the books Claudia is five years old and her rage is enough that Lestat walks into the sun, switches bodies and keeps talking to Lestat for years after The Queen of the Damned, and through the events of The Body Thief. In Merrick it also drives Louis to call a seance in which poltergeist Claudia stabs him in the heart and he decides to turn Merrick into a vampire right before he attempts to briquet himself. Book Claudia's source of rage is just being stuck in her body and having another vampire made. She only knows the theater vampires for a week or two at most, she never joins the coven.

Show Claudia has all of that plus being taunted, abused, and attempted murder for self defense and defense of Louis -- classic domestic violence. In addition, she joined the coven, because she wanted their company and friendship, and they knew her for years. The show trial is far more personal in nature. Her justifications and sources of rage are much more intense and multi-focal for a poltergeist and it would make no sense (to me) that a Claudia haint would only confine her rage to humans or audiences.

Louis kills all the vampires in the theater -- but doesn't succeed in killing Sam and apparently doesn't attempt to again and doesn't want to (which makes no sense with the information the audience has in any version of this story we've seen.)

It wouldn't make sense for poltergeist Claudia to leave Sam alone because he wrote the plays and used her ashes as eyeshadow (according to Santiago). That's like #1 of pissing off a ghost -- fucking with their remains. I also wouldn't be surprised if poltergeist Claudia went for relational violence because she and her companion are the casualty of these relationships that everyone else gets to have but she got executed for. The way to hurt Lestat and Louis is to hurt the vampires they care the most about in the world -- or their fledglings. Lestat and Armand love (or think they) Louis so unfortunately Louis is a target even if she loves him. She (thinks she) killed Antoinette, but Felix exists. She can't burn Armand de Daywalker in the sun on her own, but Daniel, human or vampire, Armand's fascinating boy/Armand's only fledgling, making money hand over fist by peddling a book that wouldn't exist without her diaries, is a prime target.

COULD CLAUDIA'S LAST WORDS BE SCRIPTED

Daniel supposedly hands a copy of the play with Armand's notes -- showing that Louis's death was planned. What makes you think Lestat's little line wasn't planned as well and there aren't additional stage directions on a copy somewhere about each of their executions?

And Armand, when he tells his version of the execution, makes a point of mentioning the "perfectly timed the sun in the sky." They stole a whole enormous lens from Meudon to stage a special execution -- that's a lot of work either for a stage prop or something they need to work.

ETA: Why would they plan to spend the entire play using vampire powers to shut up Louis, Madeleine and Claudia by stunning them and grinding their mouths shut on top of slashing their tendons so they don't disrupt the script only to let Claudia YOLO her own lines at the end? Claudia is the absolute last person they want talking.

It's known the coven stage manages how they execute the victim of the night in the middle of the woodcutter script with the planned "interruption" and Santiago taunts and lulls/fogs the victim into a trance "No Pain No Pain" before they all pounce and drain. Why wouldn't they plan out the sentence as well?

Pretend surprise is part of their plays -- is Romaine really shocked at Lestat's ad libbing? Or Lestat going 'off script" to go yell at an audience member about homophobia? For all we know this guy might be a ringer. Lestat going up to a man and making him sob with loneliness seems like it was planned.

These are not vampires or a theater that does improvisation or rolls with it -- anything that looks spontaneous. Real surprise freaks them out.

ETA: Romaine looks freaked out when Lestat ad libs a line a throwaway line about a tennis match. It's a huge deal when Lestat apologizes to Louis because the "projections are off sync." Remember, this is the 1940s, each minute of animation is 1440 frames that Tuan had to hand draw and photograph and film and there's a full hour of animation for one time use to put on special Gevacolor film that they stole.

IF CLAUDIA IS NOT SINGING OR SPEAKING ON HER OWN, WHO IS PUTTING WORDS IN HER MOUTH?

Do you think someone was puppeteering Claudia's mouth and voice box for all or part of her last actions? They spent the entire trial trying to shush her by rattling her brain and grinding her mouth shut.

Why wouldn't there be stage directions or a script for that? Would Sam be doing this? What about Santiago?

Santiago

Santiago is shown to throw voices and mimick very well. But also someone wrote "Tweedily Deedily Dead" on her mirror after her execution and Santiago is known to hate that song. [Luchenbaum does but his special powers aren't shown. That isn't Armand's handwriting because he would have a reaction to it -- and he doesn't burn the coffin that's in front of the mirror.]

He's also sadistic enough to violate Claudia's ashes. Or say he does.

Lestat

Is Lestat really too spent to puppeteer Claudia's mouth and voicebox after supposedly doing this to the audience to 'save' Louis? This seems like a smaller use of power to do this to one more being than trying to puppet the audience into saving Claudia? He seems horrified but I could see him doing it anyways if it was still a matter of saving Louis over Claudia -- who he chooses every time and just did. He also kept calling her a bird and there's no reason one way or the other to assume the coven wouldn't have him know about the song if mentioning Baby Lulu is part of the script that they rehearsed.

In previews, Lestat's able to force choke Daniel (not sure if Daniel is a vampire at this point.)

Sam Barclay

Sam's in two places at once, in Louis' faulty memory (which Louis doesn't resolve even after he reads the surprise script and slams Armand into the wall.) But also Sam Barclay is the only person moving his mouth while someone else is speaking, saying words he wrote.

Sam also always ushers the victim of the night and prompts them "The vampires are real! They're trying to kill us" while taking the scythe off stage every night.

Sam seems to not be egotistical about his plays but he did write My Baby Loves Windows and Trial! And notice that every one of the theater scripts survives, several copies even.

Armand

Armand is egotistical enough that he thinks turning her into Vampire Disney Bird Red Shirt on repeat is just method acting and perfecting craft. He's also there watching her.

Armand and Louis get Daniel to repeat back things but that's in wiping his memory of it and getting him to remember something else and they're speaking out loud.

The Entire Coven that's on stage (sans Tuan maybe who is in the projection booth)

Why not? They were stunning Louis and Claudia and Madeleine the entire time.

From his IG.