the fire will not consume us

Lover Boy Louis

louis gets to be black and desired, cherished and wanted with his whole personhood. louis gets to fuck up, be fucked up, forgive and be forgiven; he gets to be black and a whole person. claudia is disabled into helplessness by her little girl body that seems to keep signalling people to treat her like a boxed doll. its not a coincidence that she gets louis to plot against lestat by telling him he’s a kept thing, telling him he is all the things she experiences. the anger in her voice when she calls louis a slave, it feels situated against the incessant inertia she was always running on because she had no other choice.

in nola, its claudia micromanaging with an eye and ear on everyone. she nurses louis after the drop, she maintains the thread of their plotting. in europe, its claudia learning the languages, claudia keeping up the story, claudia maintaining hypervigillance. she notices the bombs about to blow while louis’ being woeful and hallucinating lestat. louis gets to be lost in lestats eyes; louis gets to dance with humans in romania; louis gets to run around paris ‘out on the streets’ while shrugging off armands warnings. louis gets to be careless, gets to be oblivious, gets to drown in his pain and still be protected and unconditionally loved. what louis couldnt even give her

“weaponizing antisemitism”

“weaponizing the holocaust”

“essentializing antisemitism”

“eternal victims”

“victim card declined”

And guess what? It didn’t change a thing about how Louis and Lestat treated her. She’s still a victim. Still a bandaid for a shitty marriage. Still a roof shingle that flew off of their house. They still doomed her to an eternity of misery.

I do think Lestat saw her the most clearly though. He saw how monstrous she could be and loved her all the more for it, not in spite of it. Stained Glass Eyes, while self-indulgent, is more about how he thinks she might react to him rather than purely his own grief. He was complicit in killing her, after all. It doesn’t mean he can’t love her. Love between vampires can be countless things.

I know people post this quote a lot, but it’s a really good one.

Y'all. Y'ALL. This portrait is Gabriella Vecce per 3x06, has to be, it's in the coffin room, the only portrait that I've noticed that's in the coffin room itself rather than the exterior bedroom or another room in the house, and it's MASSIVE. The pic quality isn't great (sorry) but there is at least a passive resemblance to Lestat in the shape of the nose and the strength of the gaze. Doesn't look much like Jennifer Ehle as Gabriella, but of course they hadn't cast her yet. Looks much more like Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet though (with straight hair, at least). Portraits aren't an exact science and, again, they hadn't cast yet. I'm not complaining.

But while there are Doylist reasons for the way this looks and the discrepancies and other implications it carries, I am far more interested in the Watsonian reasons.

First off, when was this portrait painted, and when did Lestat acquire it? The portrait is of a young girl, hair uncovered and loose. This is a Gabriella that Lestat never knew. This is an unmarried girl, specifically--a married woman would have her hair contained in some way. Was this painted for her wedding? Was it perhaps painted before that and was part of the negotiations for her arranged marriage? If so, is this the original (likely held in storage for a hundred years by Roget after the French Revolution and collected for the New Orleans townhouse)? Or is it a later copy? Or was there no original? Did Lestat consciously choose to paint (or have painted) his mother at an age he never knew her, capturing her last moment of hope of freedom before the Marquis "delivered her ruin"?

Regardless of the provenance of the painting itself, are we to take the hair color as accurate? It's far darker than we ever see it in show, a brunette to Gabriella's blond that later greys to an icy pale white/silver. Was her hair darker in her youth? Hair color can change naturally, though in my experience at least (maybe not universally, who knows) it's more common for children with blond hair to darken with age than the other way around. Or is this a marker of taste, showcasing features considered to be attractive, painting the subject with an eye to idealization rather than a photographic-accurate snapshot? I'm not an expert in the styles of the 1740s, but based on my knowledge of the region in the centuries surrounding it, it seems unlikely that a portrait would be commissioned to give a natural blonde brunette hair. I suppose it's possible that Gabriella could have lightened her hair to blonde intentionally, using lemon juice and lye and whatnot as Lucrezia Borgia was known to do two hundred years earlier, but I think we can set this possibility aside as nonsense. Why would she perform that level of intense beauty routine for a husband and a family that she's barely interested in at best and actively detests at worst?

Okay, another option is just that there's a tacky dark varnish on top of the work (either for preservation that darkened over time, or for stylistic reasons) that is warping my perception of the underlying colors of the painting, this happens in art all the time. Though if that were the case you'd think Lestat would pay to remove it.

But also. That's a huge ass painting. Good lord. No wonder Louis was pissed (and that Lestat acknowledged that was a good point after they came to an understanding). But also no wonder Louis didn't clock the Sofia=Gabriella of it all on his own. If this isn't originally a wedding portrait or a copy thereof, did Lestat commission it with that in mind, to obfuscate things in case she showed up again? Probably unlikely, given that he hadn't seen her in a century by that point, Lestat being deeply in denial and running from his problems and actively wanting to start a new life with Louis as if he had been "dragged out of the bayou, gills to lungs, for you and you alone". But perhaps, especially since he was actively avoiding other vampires like Armand who would have known? He did actively lie to Louis and say she died in 1794 of consumption, so maybe he was hoping she might show up and he could introduce her as...well, as someone other than who she was.

because to hear even Tumblr the "gay gender website" talk people only wear harnesses while strapped into a sex swing while being fisted

but the reality is that the harness, both leather and spandex, in gay male world is like stiletto pumps, a bright red lip stick, a short skirt or push up bra.

sure some people are wearing those things because they're about to get laid or hoping to. But lots of people wear them just to feel sexy, confident or powerful. And there's nothing X rated and "shouldn't be seen in public" about any of that.

lots of gay guys wear harnesses to bars or clubs not because its a sex thing, but because its a sexy thing, they feel attractive and confident.

I get that gay men feeling attractive and confident terrifies people, but if you're at Pride and a guy walks past you in jeans and a harness, either shirtless or over his shirt, he didn't violate your civil rights or do a sex thing in front of you, he's wearing a totally appropriate outside that makes him feel confident and powerful.