#lioncest asks

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/wolflioncourt/status/2063347937174839411

I'm walking into traffic, anon.

[pynkhues]

Hi, idk if you have answered a similar question before but- how do you think show!louis will react to gabriella's (sexual and emotional) abuse towards lestat?

Hi! I've talked about a bit on here before, but honestly, I think a lot of it is going to come down to how the show approaches her abuse of him generally. We don't know the extent of how they're interpreting and adapting it at this stage (hopefully we might have a better idea after NYCC, especially now that we know Jennifer is going to be there), and there's a really big spectrum there between enmeshment, neglect and blurred boundaries, and outright sexual abuse.

I don't think Louis' going to like her though, and I think he's probably going to have a lot of complicated feelings about her generally. I've been thinking a bit about how the show might approach her introduction, and I kind of feel like it could be a bit of a domino effect which means Louis probably wouldn't be able to get a grip on their relationship for a while? If they're fighting about the book at the start of the season already, I can see her arrival really fanning the flames of their conflict given Louis doesn't seem to know Lestat turned her, let alone that she's still around or their complicated and traumatised history. If that's the case, I feel like any conversation about her is going to be pretty messy, y'know?

It's also tricky, because I don't think Lestat will see it as abuse. He doesn't in the books, even when he can acknowledge her neglect and abandonment and her slapping him, so that's something I think Louis (and Daniel) will have to figure their way around, but unlike with the Marquis, Lestat's brothers, Nicki or Magnus, Gabrielle being both alive and present does mean that Louis' going to be seeing them interact in a way that will let him form his own opinion unfiltered by Lestat.

I do think in that sense he'll see it for what it is, and I think he'll have capital-f Feelings about it, and again, I don't think he'll like her at all, but it's a unique position for him to be in in a lot of ways, because regardless of how he feels about her, she's his mother-in-law (and technically his blood sister) and Lestat loves her. She's going to be a part of their immortal lives in some way, shape or form forever, and I think that's going to probably be a bitter pill for him to swallow, but I do think it's one he'll swallow.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I don't think there'll necessarily be any one big reveal for Louis to react to in terms of her abuse in the way that there probably will be with Magnus and Armand, rather I think the big reveal with her for Louis will be her existence at all, which I think he'll take badly (although I also think his hunger for family could see him come around briefly to her), and then probably a slow-dawning dread as he hears and sees more.

Who knows at this stage though! Again, hopefully we might have a bit more of an idea with NYCC next weekend.

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I'm not sure what emotions Lestat is experiencing in the strip club. His facial expression seems more surprised than excited.

Honestly, the glimpse we get of it is so quick that it's really hard to tell, but it does seem like he's most likely watching Gabrielle approach the stripper to kiss her.

(Caps made from @squirrellypoo's very generous clean up of the trailer here.)

It could very well be that he's more surprised than anything else though. If it keeps to the book, Lestat won't really know of her being with anyone else but his father and, well, him at this stage, so it's probably pretty confusing to put it mildly. I have a (very premature, haha) theory too that they're likely going to tie this scene in the strip club to the scene between Gabrielle and Lestat after the wolfkilling too, just because it feels like such a loaded choice to have Lestat in a fur here. If that is what they're doing then - - yeah. I can't even begin to imagine the tangled up feelings Lestat might be going through.

[pynkhues]

Something about Gabrielle giving birth to children she doesn't want children who die. And something about Lestat giving birth to a child he doesn't want, fully aware that the child is doomed from the start.

(x)

I'm actually kind of curious about what they do with that, because Lestat's the one who actually wants Claudia in the book (although it is partially to babytrap Louis, haha). I don't think they'll revisit her turning again - and I don't want them to, I love the version we got - but I do hope they play around a bit more with Lestat wanting a family, not just a companion. Like I mentioned in those tags too, him having so many fledglings and wanting them, and his mother having so many children and not wanting them kind of sits with her relating Lestat killing the wolves to her having Augustin / childbirth to me in this kind of strange, sticky, deeply compelling enmeshment where they entangle these things that shouldn't necessarily be connected as a part of her relating his body to her own / taking ownership of his body and experiences, and him sort of still living with the long tail of that. He's compulsively making babies by choice when she was forced to - although that new dynamic with Louis sort of forcing Lestat to make Claudia (although obviously under very different circumstances) kind of feeds into that too in a way that could be really interesting.

I'm just thinking out loud now, haha, sorry, but yeah! It definitely feels like themes that are in conversation with one another.

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What do you think means Lestat was groomed from Sam and Rolin’s recent interviews? English is my second language so I am afraid I may not have understood somethings.

(x)

Ah, you probably haven't misunderstood things, anon! It's still been pretty vague so far, but I think Sam having stressed both in his In Creative Company interview a few weeks ago, and on the SDCC panel last weekend that Lestat has been hypersexualised from a very young age, and not by choice, points pretty entirely to Gabrielle having been the one to sexualise him, especially as Lestat is fairly isolated for most of his youth. In the context of their dynamic as mother and son, that does lend itself to grooming, particularly when you incorporate the book dynamic of her being foundational in shaping the way he understands love as something that will be generally withheld from him, no matter what he does, and offered only as the other person chooses to give (or, in the case of Magnus, Armand and Akasha, try to take) it.

Here's the quote from the In Creative Company interview:

This guy is like a hypersexualised person not necessarily by his own design, but, y'know, when you try and find out - - when you're discovering things about yourself at very formative ages, and you learn that a lot of your power comes from like this - - the desire of other people, um, be that - - um, well, yeah, anyway, desire of whatever, I won't go too far into that one because, um - - but I think when we look at the Theatre, what we're really trying to show is that this is like a seductive being just walking around owning everybody else, which is how Armand sees him. So he's like prancing and preening and kind of writhing all over the stage and seducing the audience and you know, like, making him feel seen and making him want him and desire him, and that is like the superficial level of Lestat's trauma as well, but we don't really dig into that there, because Lestat is an object of desire to a lot of people and a lot of creatures, and through that, you know, want of him, um, you know, he ends up finding himself in some pretty shit situations.

And here's the little one from the SDCC panel:

Lestat is a hypersexualised character in himself, um, and will be, y'know, throughout his life, and has been, from a very young, young age, so I think it's like, very interesting to explore sex and sexuality through music.

Rolin hasn't really said too much about Gabrielle yet beyond her being the most important of the new characters this season, but there's something to the way he said in the EW interview "She’s coming in like an asteroid in season 3. She’s about to destroy everything in her wake." that really just feels like it underpins what Sam says, I thnk?

Lestat facing this reality of his sexual trauma only to be suddenly faced with one of the people who not only shaped him, but one of the first people who victimised him - a person who was simultaneously one of his abusers, a fellow victim to his father, and his lifeline for a huge chapter of his life - is really confronting, and I think the implication right now is that they're going all in on that.

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Regardless of if they have sex I don't want people to blame Lestat for the incest with their insensitive and cruel 'Mummy issues' comments. He was groomed, period.

Agreed, anon. I did already feel pretty confident that that was how the show was going to depict it too based off of Sam and Rolin’s recent interviews, but I feel even more confident with that framing too. I think they’re going to be pretty clear about what it is, although unfortunately I don’t think that’ll make much of a difference with certain parts of the fandom.

[pynkhues]

Just realized that Gabrielle in that scene is touching a wound on his leg, not the groin area exactly, or that's how it seems, and it absolutely is sexual, clearly, but keeping some level of plausible deniability there makes more sense to me

Yeah, the cleaned up cam footage definitely makes it clearer that her hand is slipping into his torn breeches to touch a wound, presumably from the wolfkilling, which is good to know, because I thought it was her hand slipping into the fabric at his groin initially too. It's definitely sexualised/eroticised though regardless, and even just from the angle of the shot with her looking down at him / in the heightened position, it looks like it's emphasising Gabrielle as the parent and the one in control, and Lestat as the child, which I'm glad to see.

It's interesting to me too that it looks similarly angled in the contemporary strip club scene, which really lends itself to underlining her authority over him still, which I think is a good move. I know a lot of people think she's not really his mother anymore after he's turned her, but I don't think that's true at all, and I think keeping that dynamic is really important to how their relationship (and her abuse) is depicted.