#iwtv 1.02

[pynkhues]

I know that the line “you can be on top” is often taken as a joke, but not long ago I started thinking that Lestat hides all the important things behind humor or anger. And that’s how I came up with a theory that this was their first wedding night, and that it may have been the first time since Magnus that Lestat, of his own free will, chose to be a bottom. No one forced him or pressured him he simply offered it to Louis himself. I don’t know but to me it feels incredibly romantic and painfully sad.

Honestly, I think the people who take it only as a joke are approaching it with a specific motivation and/or a preconceived notion, because if it was Louis who said it, you know it'd be seen as inarguably canon.

Putting that aside though, I do think Lestat hides a lot behind humour (although I don't know if I think he hides behind anger? Anger's often an emotion people default to because it's usually easier to feel than pain, panic, humiliation or shame, and I tend to think that's why Lestat goes there so often, rather than him actively hiding in it), but I don't read that line as a joke at all, really? I think it was a little flippant, sure, but I think it was actually specifically about trying to put Louis at ease after his turning and burning (rhyme not intended, haha), and a furthering of Lestat's belief that turning Louis would empower him beyond the constraints of his mortality and give him what he actually wanted.

Having Louis top on their wedding night after he'd revealed his own monstrosity and turned Louis was about, at least in my reading, delivering on what he knew Louis wanted, but also in handing over a perceived sexual power in order for Louis to give into desire and feel in control of the night in a way he didn't the night with Miss Lily.

In that sense, I actually see it as Lestat continuing this conversation from 1.01 (below a cut because it's long):

He knows Louis wants a lot of things, but power, autonomy and agency are really up there, even if Louis can't always admit it to himself, because up to and including that moment, he can read Louis' mind. When Lestat takes Louis to coffin on their wedding night, he can't hear his thoughts anymore, of course, but I think that was still in his head. In that sense, I think he invited Louis to top because I think he was into it (obviously, haha), but also I also think he knew it would help ease Louis' experience of being turned because the rush in taking the monster that made you would be a huge power trip and a taste of what Lestat promised in the church and what Louis said yes to. Love and power, in one package.

Yes, the effects of that clearly wore off in the depressed and repressed years that followed when they both faced the reality that so long as they lived in a human society, they were still beholden to that human society, but I really do think a big part of it was about knowing it would help Louis both feel in control and tempt him into something like ease.

It very well could though be the first time Lestat had bottomed since Magnus too. I have a bit of a headcanon that Lestat slept with someone on the ship to the US, but we really have no idea, and I do think Louis could have been first too. That does really weight that first night in a way Louis couldn't possibly comprehend, especially going through his own transformation, but you're right that it really would equal parts sad and romantic. It's going to be really interesting to see what the show does with that window of time.

[pynkhues]

Still an all timer, but as always reconfirms how their unknowability to one another is both their biggest source of conflict and in many ways the greatest foundation for their intimacy. No one knows the other better, but no one has ever had to work harder to know - and keep knowing - them either. It's the draw, it's the frustration, it's the effort and the want over centuries. You're a closed book I'll never stop trying to read. I dog-ear your pages and write in your margins, but there are lines that were scratched out before I knew you and paragraphs written after we last part, but I still have you on my bedside table every night, all the creases in your spine raw and exposed and mine beneath my lamp.

[pynkhues]

Memory is a monster is such an iconic line <3

Early into the interview, Daniel already started to find/point out incongruencies in Louis' recollection and it really drove it home the whole theme of unrealiable narrator(s) -- and it continued, he kept finding them (and/or we are given hints as to whereabouts the things are not totally clear like with sudden change in clothing etc.) -- I LOVE this storytelling that goes beyond telling the audience what it's about, iwtv excels at showing.

I'm following your rewatch and it's making me fall in love with the show all over again!

(x)

It's so good, anon, and I love how early they really establish that, particularly given this is the episode where we get our first real moments where Louis' memories are pointedly fallible (Rolin has to be one of the most patient writers in the world to seed the bit with the tractor salesman in 1.02 and not pay it off until 2.08). It's so satisfying, and makes me simultaneously very excited and full of dread that TVL is being split in two too, haha.

And I'm so glad! Re-watching it has been making me fall in love with it again too, which has just been such a nice feeling after, y'know. *gestures to everything*, haha. It was especially fun to re-watch 1.02 last night, because I feel like it's been a long time since I've watched that particular episode in its entirety, and it's got such a great pace to it in how quickly it spans almost a decade.

[pynkhues]

Them having this conversation beneath the portrait of their father, an image that tears Louis between his positions as Grace's brother and father, is he the uncle or grandfather of her children? There's a familial legacy here he doesn't know if he's a part of anymore, and still it's about him. Grace asks if he hears her in the same shot he looks at their father, at the new portrait of their brother. He doesn't hear her. He'll never hear her.

(And yet forever, he'll miss her too).

[pynkhues]

Even in the somewhat colder/more in control (at least sometimes lol) version of Lestat that Louis remembers in season 1 (as we see in the two versions of Claudia's turning, or the two different glimpses of Lestat showing Louis the suits he's had made), it's amazing how much hurt you can see in Sam's eyes when he says "I'm your family, Louis"

(x)

It eats me up, anon, and I always think it's kind of reflective too of Louis having a sense of Lestat's trauma around family. We know that he knows some of it after all - he doesn't flinch at Lestat telling Paul about his father and brothers, so it feels like he knows some of that already in 1.01 - and the fact that that inevitably bleeds into even his most unforgiving memories of Lestat feels so tender to me. It's such an interesting part of their dynamic too, because Louis' family is obviously really complicated, but it was still inherently loving, whereas Lestat's is really in a cycle of deliberate harm and abuse that belies any love that might have been within it. I just really can't wait to see the full complexity of that really teased out next season, especially given Louis might know about Lestat's father and brothers, but it really doesn't seem to me like he knows about his mother.

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/SamReidLover/status/1941667676041969766

i don't expect them to go back and revisit ever little moment, but with the difference they showed in 2.08 between Louis' initial recollection of how Lestat looked when he was giving Louis the suits in 1.02 and the memory of how he really looked (more nervous, less confident), I wonder if Lestat actually was/looked more nervous or eager or something here than this kind of suavely confident guy Louis remembers. Especially after reading your Abel fic lol

I’m curious too, anon! It’ll be interesting with the new season to see what moments they choose to go back to, and what they use new scenes to perhaps give new context to old ones? Like, I don’t really think we’ll go back to either Louis or Claudia’s turning - especially Claudia’s, given it would make for a third time - but I’d expect we might see a little more of the fallout of the latter?

The reality of the new season though is that we will see Lestat turn two more characters in Gabrielle and Nicki, and I do think that they could use that to cast a different sort of light on the turnings we’ve already seen. I think they did that pretty deftly with Louis turning Madeleine, and how that obviously brought the depth of Louis’ feelings for Lestat back to the surface, just as I think it reflected how much Claudia was their daughter because they’d wanted her to be, not through the act of turning itself.

So yeah, it’ll be interesting to see, especially given Gabrielle and Nicki’s turnings are so different again in Gabrielle’s being such total liberation and Nicki’s being as bleak as it is. Given the latter is the last person he turns before Louis too, I think they could play around with Lestat’s feelings about it as being more complicated than Louis realised at the time for sure, although how they do that is anyone’s guess right now.

[pynkhues]

lol Louis and Lestat roleplaying Lestat as a handsome soldier could be a great fic.

Also I still think it's hilarious that the salesman went home with them after Louis moaned SUUUUUUGARRRR while staring at him unblinkingly. What did he think was going to happen.

(x)

I always kind of pendulum on whether or not I think Lestat and Louis would be any good at roleplaying, because like, on the one hand: yes, of course, Lestat's an actor, and Louis' competitive, it feels like a no brainer, right? But they're also both insane, haha, and I ended up writing it into Dogless, but I do think they'd both kind of get weirdly jealous and possessive in a roleplay sometimes too? It would probably depend on how seriously they took it and what their relationship was like at the time, haha.

That scene with the salesman genuinely kills me too. Everyone was at their absolute worst and I love it for them and for us, haha.

[peterbscaprisweatpants]

"your savoury inferiors" is an all time line