I like David Talbot. Particularly, I like him in Tale of the Body Thief. He’s essentially an audience stand-in, but he’s smart and capable and empathetic. I identified with him quite a bit while reading TotBT the first time.
He knows about vampires, but he’s like… pretty cool about it. He doesn’t get completely obsessed like Daniel, because he’s read the books. He’s had time to process.
He empathizes with Lestat. Thinks he’s at heart a decent guy, he just has to drink blood to survive. He’s doing his best ya know? At least he’s honest.
David helps his buddy out, saves the day, and gets a sweet body upgrade out of it! I even respect his choice not to put his dick in crazy. We all make mistakes sometimes.
And it’s all just self-delusion. He’s woobified Lestat. He ignores every single red flag because Lestat is charming and handsome and lonely. And I did too. I read about Lestat eating a mother and her infant child in TVL but I took him at his word when he said he’d adopted a moral code later on. Of course all those people who Louis describes him torturing in IWTV were bad and deserved it! Sure he’ll murder nameless random people, but he wouldn’t hurt named character and audience stand-in David!
My favorite scene in TotBT is when Lestat betrays and turns David. We see the gut punch sink in. Why the fuck did you trust him? He told you what he was. He offered to show you even, but you were happier not to be confronted with reality.
And you remember what kind of story you’re in. It’s not an adventure with a hero. The villain didn’t just get his head crushed in. This is a horror story, and the real villain is inside the house and what if you were helping him? What if you WERE him, watching yourself hurt someone you love in slow motion because that’s just who you are? What if you were really enjoying hurting them? What if being evil was fun and it felt good and you got turned into a monster and said “thanks, I was hoping you’d figure out that my morality was actually performative nonsense and I really just wanted to have freedom and power and killing people is not that bad really”.
TotBT completely recontextualized the previous books in the series for me. It’s always interesting for me to read fic or analysis that seems to perceive Lestat the same way David did… as basically good. I get the desire to avoid writing about the rage, the violence, the selfishness, the murder. But it always seems to be fundamentally missing the core of what Anne was writing. She wanted us to see true monsters as they saw themselves. Mostly justifications and illusions, with moments of horrifying clarity that get subsequently buried by a new self-serving narrative. “I lie to myself, and I lie to others.”
Is David problematic in later books? Sure! But I imprinted on him fiercely when we went through TotBT together. Love him for that, OG delusional Lestat Stan.
