#lestat asks

[leliorisen]

Gotta ask dearest Prince, any room in that tour bus for one more? I can sing and play guitar well.

Music is the quickest way to my twisted dark heart. Play for me, mon cher. Let me hear your voice.

We’ll do a little game of you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

Guitars of course.

[pynkhues]

can i say... it was hurtful when 'my shoes' was the first thing louis said when lestat threw up blood........ ;(

I actually loved that beat! It felt really true to the chaos and confrontation of the moment and the deluge of feeling to briefly hold to something like that because it's easy. To think about your shoes is to not have to think about anything else, and it doesn't hold, but it's a brief grip on the ground in the midst of a hurricane, y'know? I kind of think it was for both of them too, in many ways, and so any hurt from it was likely swallowed up by the bigger hurt that came (pardon the pun) on its heels.

I mentioned it last night, but I really love that Louis brought Armand up in that way too, not because it says anything about Lestat - it doesn't, and the circumstances are obviously completely different which Louis realises very quickly given how his reaction shifts - but because it reveals Louis' still carrying the weight of what Armand did to him. It feels really in direct conversation to the mediation scene in 3.02 to me where Louis's posturing and saying they can talk about Armand like it's easy when it's clear they haven't, and acting like he's completely healed from that chapter of his life when his emotional response here reveals that he's not. He responds badly to the incest, but worse to what he perceives as a century long lie - it triggers him in a way that I don't think we've seen much else do before, and I think as an emotional beat it really lands us back in the reality of how traumatising Armand's deception was for Louis.

I thought it was some really effective writing in that sense and cut through some of Louis' facade this season in a way that was very succinct, allowing him fullness of character and interiority while still allowing the scene to ultimately be emotionally anchored in Lestat's breakdown. Loved it!

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/lingerielestat/status/2068855530081177900?s=46&t=YvYeRHk__w1lzEKQ6x89cg bluebeard magnus!!!!!

!! So funny to get a friend's tweets sent to me, haha, but yes! She and I were literally just talking about this in DMs too! There was so much marriage symbolism this episode, and it doesn't look like that's going to stop given we're at the very least getting a blood ring and the wedding cake! The red and white flowers too:

Traditionally in gothic romance, red flowers symbolise the loss of virginity/innocence, while white flowers represent purity and romance, and when they're paired together, they're generally foreshadowing a wedding night. They work really well here in terms of an on-the-nose nod to Lestat's romanticisation/sanitisatation of what's actually happening.

[pynkhues]

It might interest you

https://x.com/vancemacabre/status/1994762574458753164?s=19

Yes! That's what I've been saying for a while, anon (although that poster articulated it all way better than me in that thread, haha) and is kind of a bit of what Trick of the Light is about (and Ungodly Hour too, with Louis making the connection that Magnus ultimately bought Lestat). I mentioned it in this post too, but gosh, in the chapter of history Lestat's from, the Paris Opéra-Comique was literally referred to colloquially as a 'prostitute training ground'.

With the new season seeming to be exploring sexual exploitation, it's going to be interesting to see how they adapt it and how explicit they make it all, because I do think that how Anne wrote Magnus taking Lestat, and that exchange of money for his body (and his life) was drawn from these sorts of dynamics (especially given Anne was obviously interested in exploring sex work as a narrative device). It really does feel like they might be going there, and how that weighs with Armand's history with sexual slavery and brothel work and Louis' history as a pimp is going to be - - yes. Really interesting to see play out.

[pynkhues]

Same!!

When I saw someone on stage approaching Lestat I thought it'd be Louis but no it was Paul - so much more heartbreaking. I loved their little moment and how the birds communicated with Paul <3

Lestat transcribing bird songs and Paul speaking with birds...

I'm so glad, anon! And gosh, the beat with Paul destroyed me. Just the layers there in terms of Paul as a type of guardian angel, the way that that concept had already been threaded through the Clarence Odbody moment with the passport (Clarence Odbody being the guardian angel in It's a Wonderful Life), the way they talked about Louis meaning - to me - it doesn't matter if any of this is real.

Lestat knows that Louis hung Paul's portrait. He knows that relationship means something to Louis, who's his family, with Claudia. The one he made, maybe the only he one needs, wants, as everything with Gabriella buckles. Louis' his anchor, and in many ways, Paul's Louis', and all of that is rendered something complicated, which we see in that beat, but it also just feels so organic to me in a way that I didn't ever expect?

I've said a million times on here that a huge part of the book to me is Lestat's break-up with God, and one of the things I think this episode captured so beautifully is that Lestat abandons religion, but he's still fundamentally a Believer. He believes in his mother, in Armand, in Marius, and here, in the show, he Believes in Paul. No, more than that. He Believes in Louis. The icons Louis has on his wall - Claudia's dress, Paul's portrait - are the stained glass windows of the church that Lestat sits in the pews of as a believer. The love there is holy, just as the hate is, and it's important there that the beat between Paul and Lestat isn't really about Lestat, it is, truly, about Louis. His love defined - defines - both of them. And Lestat believes, in all of it, that Paul loved Louis enough to maybe love him too.

[pynkhues]

Idk what to think about that stripper scene phone call line because it's so layered it comes as a throw away haha moment at first because it's very lestat humor but the more it sinks in the more sinister it sounds. Lestat is a vampire with powers and money so he can pretty much get away with things so why would he need to do transactional sex to get himself out of anything. I maybe overthinking lol but it's just jarring to me because as a human I can see that happening especially during his time as a performer but as a vampire that can read and control minds that clearly has money to afford luxury it just doesn't make sense. What type of business/connection lestat and Christine run that lestat questions whether he needs to fk him and she just responds with yes. This may end up being one of those up for interpretation which if it is it's going to drive me crazy. I need your thoughts because I really enjoy reading your analysis and am twisted myself like a pretzel over this lol.

I talked about this a bit during the hiatus, but to me it really harks back to the fact that in the time period Lestat's from, the line between acting/performing and sex work was virtually non-existent, to the point that the Paris Opéra-Comique was colloquially known in the 1700s as a 'prostitute training ground'. Many (many) performers were doing sex work to survive, either as cherry picked courtesans by wealthy, noble patrons, or in myriad other forms, and that's the context with which a teenaged Lestat first encounters performing.

The Marquis actually even says as much during one of the flashback scenes with Lestat at the dinner table, it's just mostly beneath Lestat's modern narration about Gabrielle, so I didn't even pick up on it the first time around. I've taken the latter out so you can actually see what the Marquis' saying about Lestat's brief foray with an acting troupe:

To Lestat's father, to France, actors aren't respected, and even here, they're sexualised - 'whores and whoremasters', people Lestat can fuck, but not anything he can be - and how that soaks into his sense of self as someone who feels a deep connection to the stage does, I think, impact how he understands and feels about his body as both an instrument of his art and a commodity to sell in order to be able to make art and call himself an artist at all.

And honestly? He's not wrong, even by today's standards - maybe especially by today's standards - sex and art are intrinsically tied, and while Lestat might operate at a level of vampiric and financial power (although I do think the show's decreased Lestat's wealth) where he's able to protect himself on some level, that's not necessarily how these things work. Money, profile and even physical power rarely equates to power in every context, and while yes, Lestat could kill or pay off or mindfuck his way ahead, what's that going to achieve for the career he's desperately trying to build for himself? Not much for a Lestat who is searching for legitimacy as an artist, in my opinion.

He's also a character who's been socialised to understand sex and sex work to be a part of the job of performing, so I do think that will play a role in how Lestat navigates all of these sorts of situations, and I think that being one of the threads in the tapestry of Lestat's hypersexuality is something the show's actively tugging on this season. Gosh, I even think we see that see saw between this scene:

And this one:

[pynkhues]

How did Claudia know about their hug in the hurricane? And if she knew, does that mean what she said about the trial was true? Armand told the Truth? Lestat came to the trial intending to get revenge, but he changed his mind.

It’s hard to know for sure at this stage, but my reading of what she said in that scene is that her spirit is disrupted / called forth to them (willingly or unwillingly) every time one of them talks about her or says her name, so I think the scope of what she knows is actually pretty limited. I think it’s why a lot of her fury and vitriol was aimed at Louis too - he hasn’t really stopped talking about her for the last seventy years (because he genuinely loves her!), but I think that goes to what Jacob was saying after s2 and more recently that Louis’ really always felt like she belonged to him. She’s still the gothic heroine, trapped in the house with the monsters, just where Lestat made her feel that way most when she was alive (and she killed him for it), Louis’ made her feel that way most in her death, a wound that probably started to fester on that stage when she found out Louis had misrepresented, however accidentally or unintentionally, the events of her turning, which is why that came up again here.

In that sense though, I don’t think she’d know anything really about the trial or Lestat’s involvement beyond what she knew when she was alive because I don’t think anyone’s talked about it.

[pynkhues]

Outside of the drop when was Lestat abusive towards Louis? Because after last episode and the utter disregard Louis has for anyone but himself, along with everything else we've seen until this point, the only abusive one in that relationship was Louis.

Answering in good faith, anon, but abuse isn't about disregard or selfishness or even necessarily cruelty. Abuse is, as per the UN's definition, 'a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.' Lestat's withholding of information around the broader vampiric society, and the way he cherry picked what information he gave Louis and Claudia in New Orleans about vampiric powers was fundamentally abusive, no matter the complexity of his motivations, because it was ultimately about maintaining control of the household and keeping them together.

It doesn't matter if he did that out of feelings of insecurity or loneliness or worry or order or love or entitlement. In that withholding of information, he took away Louis and Claudia's ability to make informed choices about their lives, which Claudia paid the ultimate price for with her life. It's why that release of control both in letting Louis and Claudia kill him, but also in letting Louis go in Paris, are vital parts of Lestat breaking the cycle and a tangible demonstration of growth.

It's also, pointedly, a cycle Louis hasn't broken himself yet with Claudia, as his hold on her diaries and use of them are an embodiment of his own pattern of abusive behaviour towards her.

That's not what he's doing with Lestat though, no matter how much his choices are hurting him.