#murder night

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

yooooo I made a fangame!!

Have you ever wanted to play a text-based "choose your own adventure"-style comedy-horror game where you can get Edgeworth and friends gruesomely killed off by a mysterious murderer? No? Well I made one anyway! I call it PROSECUTOR MURDER NIGHT!

You can try it out here!

The year is 2029. The prosecutors are having a teambuilding office trip in an isolated lodge halfway up a mountain when someone suddenly starts killing them off. It's up to you who ends up surviving. All of them? None of them? A mix of both? Make whatever choices you want and see what happens!

This is a full fangame (obviously not official, this is a derivative/transformative work, etc etc) lasting about 1-2 hours each run, with many branching paths and lots of replayability. There are some achievements in case you want an added challenge. It should be able to run fine on potato computers. Warning, some of the deaths can get VERY violent and gory... but that just makes it all the sillier. Also, spoiler warning for all six main games and the two Investigations games.

And here's a video of an example playthrough, if you'd like, but I do recommend trying it yourself without spoilers and seeing what kind of run you end up doing and how many people you keep alive. There's no wrong way to play!

Also, feel free to do whatever you want with this game. Mod it, stream it, dub it, translate it, make proper sprites for it... go wild. Last but not least, if you try it out and enjoy it, feel free to tell me!! I'd love to hear your thoughts!! (And be sure to let me know if you find any bugs!)

[nalyra-dreaming]

Is there also a confirmation that Louis was the one who slit his throat? If that's the case I hope that Lestat is allowed to be angry. I know that in the book he forgave Louis everything and never held it against him, but Louis in the book was much more passive. Show Louis actively killing him is another level of cruelty. I worry that the show is going to sweep it under the rug and not treat is as seriously as the drop has been treated for three seasons.

"Guilt. The sharing a coffin, slitting your throat guilt."

I think this pretty much confirms it.

Though I still think that there is more to it, since Claudia's words in the diary do not match.

[lighthouseweeper]

Is the garrotted by a coven line a reference to what Louis and Claudia did or…???

[virginiaisforvampires]

Since the show loves juxtaposition of present and past scenes. I had a thought that maybe the revisit of the murder night will happen while Lestat tries to off himself with the encouragement of Ghost Claudia (which is probably just a hallucination). Since he probably can't burn to a crisp as far as we know, he might try to do it the old way and repeat the wounds he had in the murder night and that's when we'll get the truth about that weird ass scene (seriously the more one rewatches Season 1 the weirder it gets. Some dialogue was choppy and over the top, Antoniette's changing fingers, Claudia leaving Louis alone).

What do you think, V? Something tells me that Lestat’s mental breakdown will go fairly linear with the backstory.

I would bet the murder night revisit comes when we finally get to see what was in Claudia's missing diary pages.

Because Lestat's "murder" wasn't truly justified. You were just made to believe it was via the tale. That was the point. Lestat was a monster who had to be "inevitably" killed hence why Louis repeated "we were going to kill Lestat" twice for Daniel in 1x06 after omitting the fact Lestat's chess outburst wasn't just unhinged rage but rather Lestat calling out Louis' role in Claudia's turning.

There is a reason those pages documenting murder night were cut out by Armand, and that's exactly because Armand had to rearrange multiple events in Louis' mind to place all the blame for Claudia's demise onto Lestat to cover the fact Armand had lied to Louis about the trial and made Louis think Lestat came to kill them while Armand saved him.

All of that goes hand-in-hand with the constant tinkering and spinning Armand had to do after he removed Louis' memory of the suicide attempt due to the fact that, back then in San Francisco, Louis knew the truth.

[pynkhues]

I mean if we're applying human norms to their relationship, how is the drop any worse than poisoning and then slitting someone's throat? If one is domestic violence then so is the other.

(x)

Sorry, I'm going to be pretty firm about this one, anon, because no. One is not equal to the other, and the drop is worse than murder night.

Mutual abuse is not real, and in situations of domestic violence, the abused responding violently to their abuser does not somehow equalise a dynamic. To directly quote from that article I just linked to:

Abuse is about an imbalance of power and control. In an unhealthy or abusive relationship, there may be unhealthy behaviors from both/all partners in response to the abuse, but in an abusive relationship, one person tends to have more control than the other.

Lestat has virtually all of the power in their relationship as it exists in the Rue Royale era, while Louis really only has an emotional power, which is why he withholds. Lestat is white, he has the benefit of passing as straight, he's got seemingly endless financial power, even if Louis himself is also wealthy (he still needs him to cashflow The Azaelia), he's a century older, he's Louis' maker and Louis has access to no other vampires that can dispute what Lestat tells him, and on top of that, Lestat is immensely supernaturally powerful.

The show has underscored this in 2.08 - Lestat had to let them kill him, because he is otherwise virtually unkillable.

The act of the drop is an act of intimate betrayal because Louis doesn't know he can fly, on top of it being an absolute flex of power and capacity for cruelty. Louis kills Lestat with the blade in his cane - not just a human object, but the very thing that drew Lestat to him in the first place. Lestat always knew he was capable of that - he pulled it on his brother, the person he loved most before him after all.

An abused person killing their abuser is a crime, it's an unethical and traumatic event, and it's a product of domestic violence, but it's not domestic violence. I'm not saying that it's not complicated - it is - and Lestat and Louis' relationship is a violent one by nature of their monstrosity, but I'd argue that to apply human norms to their relationship separates the events more, not less. On a thematic level in the show, they're able to explore it on a scale of checks and balances and finally growth between monsters. If we were to apply 'human norms' to said show, frankly, they should stay apart forever.

What Louis does to Lestat is immensely cruel, yes, just as it is also violent and criminal and ugly, but it's not domestic violence because Lestat still wields an absolute power and, ultimately, still has to let him do it.

[suikamelon6]

[welcometoyouredoom]

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi Nalyra!

Sorry if this has already been answered before (I'm still pretty new to the fandom 😅), but I've been rewatching season 1 and noticed something I'd completely missed the first time around: Claudia throwing a notebook out of the car in 1x07.

Since I haven't read the books, I had no idea until I read yours and Virginia's blog that there might have been a lot more to Murder Night than what we actually saw on the show. So now I'm curious: was that notebook the missing diary–the one where she writes about her anger toward Louis and the whole circumstances before and surrounding murder night? Or was it something else?

Before I started watching the show a couple of months ago, I knew almost nothing about the VC universe. I'd only seen the 1994 movie when I was about 12, and my memories of it were pretty fuzzy. I picked up the show because I'd heard so many good things about it, and by the end of the first episode I was HOOKED.

One of the things I love most about IWTV is that, unlike a lot of vampire stories, the romance is only one part of a much bigger narrative. I feel like at it’s core, it's about belonging, loneliness, grief, memory, and the sheer existential weight of immortality. The show–and I imagine Anne Rice's writing too–somehow manages to make us mortals empathize with experiences that are fundamentally inhuman.

Reading some of your asks, I sometimes find it a little disappointing that some people seem interested only in "are Louis and Lestat gonna fuck?" (and that's coming from someone who absolutely wants them together in the end.) But I suppose that's also a testament to how rich the show is: it’s a symphony. It has so many layers, and people will engage with it as deeply–or as superficially–as they choose.

One last thing before I stop rambling: I honestly think the show gets even better on rewatch. I was actually a little reluctant to revisit the first two seasons after starting season 3 because I love season 3 Lestat so much (and Sam's performance is just... chef's kiss). I was afraid I wouldn't enjoy the earlier seasons as much once I knew we hadn't really been seeing the “real” Lestat. But the opposite happened. There were so many moments where I caught myself thinking, no, that's not how Lestat would react, or he wouldn't have said that quite like that or with that expression, or even, this feels more like something Louis would attribute to Lestat rather than something Lestat would genuinely say. And sometimes I would see glimpses of the real Lestat and that was pleasurable in itself. And more than anything, watching the first two seasons again after season 3 made me realize just how much deeper these characters are than the versions Louis initially presents to us. Instead of seeing them as the somewhat flattened versions created by his retelling (even that of himself), I could finally see them as fully realized, complicated, contradictory people.

Anyway, sorry this ask somehow turned into a love letter to the show. 😅 And thank you for always taking the time to answer everyone's questions, even those from IWTV newbies like me. I'm really glad I ended up on Tumblr rather than Twitter.

Hey!!!

Oh never apologize for love letters!!! This show deserves ALL the love!! Glad to have you "here", and I hope you will enjoy yourself "here" and this show for a long time!! *hugs*

And yes, this how absolutely gets better and better on rewatches, I also do that regularly. Find the little things, and there are ALWAYS little things, and the more reveals we get the more the rewatches change, and it feels different every time.

And I just love that.

As for murder night - the words in Claudia's diary do not match what we saw - I'm quite sure we will get more context about that at some point.

But - and I'm sorry!! because it is a good catch 😅 - that is not a diary she throws out there.

It's the tickets Lestat had bought for them all.

She throws them out, because they are not going to South America.

Claudia's anger and details about murder night were likely in the removed pages of the diary.

Which were not torn out (like Louis did tear those out detailing Claudia's rape), but cut out with a ruler - by Armand.

So far, only the former have "shown up again". But... these other pages have to be somewhere still, too, imho.

And I bet they will carry a punch - eventually.

And given what we will still see this season?

I honestly CANNOT WAIT 😈