Beyond the shadow you settle for

Made of

Ethical romantasy

I absolutely love this scene in the film. The tension is palpable, there’s a sense of anticipation, Armand and the audience are left holding their breath, whilst Louis, on the other hand, pulls away after coming within a hair’s breath of the other’s lips. And this is the visual summary of the relationship between Louis and Armand in the book. Armand will never have Louis as he would have liked. He is with him, yet at the same time he isn’t really there.

The film has changed and brought forward the timeline: Louis leaves Armand shortly after the theatre’s destruction and goes his own way, whereas in the book the two stay together for at least 50 or 60 years, but the conclusion is the same. Perhaps Pitt’s Louis is more abrupt in leaving Banderas’s Armand, his disappointment is mingled with the anger that still boils over what he has just done. The pain of Claudia’s loss is still fresh. In the book, Louis is cruel in his impassivity, yet he nonetheless leaves Armand to face the modern world alone. Both Armands utter the words "I’m dying", and both Louis remain unmoved. The film manages to set this beautiful farewell in its time (we are still in the 19th century) because the new world is drawing ever closer. The era is already changing, and Banderas’s Armand is frightened by it, just as Armand is in the first half of the new century. Progress is accelerating, and he does not think he can cope.

Conclusion: As always, I’m a huge fan of this film, every time I watch it, I discover something new. I hope I can get my hands on the new DVD with the deleted scenes🥹

“Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd

Drabble Requests | Open

"Flagrant…FLAGRANT! That was a flagrant, what do you mean— he twisted his arm, what the hell do you need to see the footage for! Bench him, you idio—"

"Louis."

It's not the call of his name, but the firm press of a familiar hand on his shoulder that eases his spiral. He's standing mere inches from the expensive flat screen television— when did that happen, when did he leave the sofa?— fists clenched as he watches the referees debate the foul call.

Only when the screen cuts to a tampon commercial does Louis allow himself to be pulled away, dragged like a punished child back towards his spot on their sofa, and locked helplessly in Lestat's sturdy arms. They wrestle for a moment, Louis shirking his dignity for one minute to squirm out of Lestat’s hulking bear hug and untangle their limbs.

"Not that I don't love seeing you like this," Lestat smiles. "But we're already on thin ice with the neighbors for noise complaints."

Louis, now locked fully back on the television, only spares him a sideways glance. "And whose fault is that?"

"Not mine!" Lestat scoffs, full of hot air and indignation. "At least my music is tasteful— I'm not the one screaming my lungs out over grown men wrestling for a ball."

"It's the playoffs." Louis all but waves his hand in absentminded dismissal. Then, after another pause when he's sure the commercials will continue on: "And what do you mean, seeing me like this?"

Dark brows pinch together in that earnest look of confusion that makes Lestat want to crumple his face and kiss him all over and squeeze his unbearably cute guts out.

"Like…this." Inarticulate as always, Lestat sweeps his hand across the space, motioning generally between the tv and Louis.

"Watching sports?"

"Invested in something," Lestat smiles. "Angry. Passionate. It's…dieu, what's the word…it's butch."

“…Butch." Louis frowns in that terribly aristocratic manner, as if he’s just tasted something unsavory— as if the word itself is an affront to his mouth.

"Yes, butch!" Lestat laughs, accentuates the end consonants even sharper just to cement his point. "Masculine," he continues on, and inches closer with that infuriatingly suave grace, like a cat stalking it's prey. "Macho." Another inch, and he's got his lips just below the tender lobe of Louis' ear: “Hot."

Louis does nothing to stop him when he presses his lips against the sensitive flesh right over his pulse; only exhales and drops his shoulders a little more, becoming soft and pliant even as his eyes remain fixed on the colorful explosions and race cars advertising the newest action film in theaters.

“Is that so?” he finally breathes, only to garner a gentle laugh from Lestat.

“Yes, really.” Lestat bites at the spot with the blunts of his teeth, and on any other night this would have been game over, but as it stands Lestat cannot even be sure that the race whether the race of his pulse is from the avid attention, or the stakes of his little basketball game.

Regardless, Lestat continues his agenda. Oh, he has always loved these games; the thrill of playing house, as if he's a poor desperate housewife, vying for the attention of a strong brutish husband against the All American television. Yes, Louis is ravenous when the game is so close, whipped into a froth that feels so different, so alien to that sad and sulking creature who once haunted the riverside taverns like a wraith.

“So hot,” he breathes against the tender flesh between kisses, worshipful and attentive as he bites and kisses and coaxes the thoroughly warmed blood to the surface so that he might—

"NO, NO, NO!”

There's a jolt of pain as Lestat's neck is bent crooked, Louis' palm colliding straight into his face to push him away.

“TECHNICAL FOUL?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, TECHNICAL?”

Even as his back hits the cushions, Lestat cannot help but laugh at the burst of that ancient-blooded strength that Louis so often reserves.

"TECHNICAL, MY ASS!"

"You can eat faster."

10. In the second to last book in the series Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Lestat goes to the lost city of Atlantis! This is not in fact a thing that happens in the book. It's a fun book, you should read it.

9. Anne Rice hated [insert character here] which is why they aren't in the later books! No she probably didn't, she probably just forgot they existed. She cared much less about minor characters than any of us do. She also didn't feel like she could write Louis because of his headspace being so tied to a particular point in her life.

8. In Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, you find out that the vampires are aliens! That's also not what happens in that book, go read it, it's pretty fun book.

7. Anne Rice hired a ghostwriter to write Blood Canticle, or any of a number of her other books! Literally what the fuck are you talking about, why would someone write that book if they weren't Anne Rice!? Also, you think Anne Rice let someone else write LESTAT!? A thing she famously had a weird problem with!?

6. Anne Rice disowned and denounced her former work when she reverted to Christianity! All of the actual quotes about the series from her after she stopped writing it because she consecrated her writing to Christ are much funnier than the thing you're hallucinating, go look them up, she said something about how even her pornography was probably divinely inspired.

5. None of Anne Rice's books after The Queen of the Damned underwent any editing! It's not editing she was talking about, it was developmental comments from her editor, her editor who would give her feedback as she was writing the book. All of her work was copyedited, some better than others, and she actually paid for additional editors for some of her books to catch continuity issues. If you're wondering why she stopped taking developmental comments from her editor, I can only speculate, but I can tell you from reading her diary that her editor thought she should scrap most of that Armand nonsense in the middle of The Vampire Lestat. So I can't be too mad about it.

4. The concept of an unreliable narrator is central to the series throughout! No it's not, well, that and most people are using the term wrong or using it inconsistently. The series is a bunch of books mostly in first person, they rarely contradict on actual external events and most of the places where the point of views diverge are purely the personal opinions and subjective experiences of the characters. You are almost never supposed to assume a character is lying in the narration, and there are only two points in the series where anyone is actually noted to have been false in their narration. Neither of the falsehoods is a significant plot point.

3. Anne Rice didn't write books with female leads because she had too much internalized sexism and was ignorant about it! Anne Rice had internalized sexism she was completely cognizant of and actively working through in her work, you can find a bunch of interviews of her talking about it. She also did write fewer female leads because they didn't sell as well, you can find a bunch of interviews with her talking about that too. You don't have to love the way she writes about women, you can't complain she didn't write enough female leads unless you actually read the books that she wrote with female leads in them. You should go read The Witching Hour, it has a great female lead, and if you don't have time to read half a million words, go read Pandora, which is also great.

2. The books aren't gay because she either had to censor them because she couldn't make them gay in the '70s, or because she was naive and homophobic! Neither of these things are true, Anne Rice wrote Cry to Heaven in 1982, she confirmed the queerness of her characters as early as in the first book in the second half, and if you really need it hammered home, it's also in the second and third books. For what it's worth she didn't try to make them less gay later on either. It's Anne Rice, if a character isn't bisexual that's an anomaly. The sex stuff is for thematic reasons in the lore, and there's a bunch of sex stuff that doesn't contradict the lore later on. It's crazy that people who have read The Vampire Armand think this woman was avoiding writing gay sex.