#nicki asks

[pynkhues]

LOVED how Magnus left and Gabriella too, but Nicki stayed, because despite how everything ended he still loves him and holds their past dear. Oh maybe it's foreshadowing that we will get something about Nicki in future episodes. Definitely one of those

Me too, anon!! I just tagged it on a gifset, but that fantasy/memory of Nicki both as happy and able and willing to stay really got me. It speaks so well to the fact that they were both performers and were connected through art, and that still being something that's true despite everything matters. The music is an expression for Lestat, but it's also a way of dancing with these ghosts, these muses, and the idea that Nicki would be the one to stay until the final notes just really speaks to the role music and art played in their relationship, even during the horrors of it all. I loved it a lot.

[pynkhues]

I watched episode three after reading the new chapter of trick… did you notice Lestat talking about a ‘patron’ to Nicki? do you think it’s possible that Lestat also engaged in sex work like other actors did, and that’s why having a patron could have been seen as a good excuse

I did!! And I lowkey yelled, anon, haha.

I do think it can be interpreted in a range of ways though. As I've said a bit, aristocrats sponsoring actors in this period of time and that being tied to sex work was very (very) common (although patronage didn't always mean sex work), and with this episode, we do get a bit of a timeline. Lestat moves to Paris at 29, he's turned at 34, and he works cleaning at Renaud's for two years before he ever makes it onto the stage. That means he's acting for another two before Magnus abducts him.

What Lestat's experiences in those two years were is anyone's guess right now, but the fact that he'd use it as an excuse for Magnus' money with Nicki when they've been in a relationship as long as they have can, I think, be read as let's say familiar? Whether that's just Nicki understanding this part of the industry, or, frankly, either him or Lestat or both having done sex work before, is open to interpretation, but - - yes! Really interesting beat!

[pynkhues]

I do wonder how them both being musicians will play into his relationship with Nicki. Especially if Lestat’s playing would be considered more domestic / unserious.

(x)

Them both being musicians/artists is genuinely one of the things I find most compelling about their relationship, both because it's one of the biggest points of connections and the biggest point of division. Nicki literally trains under Mozart until his dad drags him home, and yet when he and Lestat both run away back to Paris again, it's Lestat, technically untrained in acting but willing to clean the theatre and the actors in order to learn from them, who briefly becomes the star in Paris. Gosh, Lestat even gets Nicki the job at Renaud's, and Nicki loathing him for all of that is literally book canon.

There's a lot I think that's implied about their class distinction and the sort of role they have with one another in the book, but I definitely think that if the show chooses to emphasise the instruments they play in their mortality - Lestat being a singer and playing the piano (perhaps even being self-taught), Nicki being a Mozart-trained violinist - it will only add more weight to that.

[pynkhues]

"Hit the Lights" -- I love Sam's voice on this. It's so unvarnished.

What do you make of these lyrics? Because my opinion is that something happened between Gabriella and Lestat before the wolves, though I doubt it was sex. So the lines he sang in the show, the "you taught me how to kiss" sounded like it might refer to her. But then the lyrics of the whole song make it sound more like it's about Nicki, or Louis, or both. Except that this Nicki presumably wouldn't have taught Lestat how to kiss in Paris? That didn't seem like they were presenting him as that level of inexperienced. Although I guess it could be that Nicki was more sophisticated at that than he was and still taught him things?

He really does sound so stunning on it, anon, I think it's already in my top five songs of the season, I really, really love it.

Personally, I think the song is about Lestat's feelings of isolation, helplessness and emotional distance from those he loves as his relationships break down, so I don't think it's really about any one person? I think it's Gabi, Louis, Nicki, definitely, but his brother is in the opening line of the song (personally devastated that there might have been a point they were once even a little close), and I actually hear Claudia in there too (the line about writing songs and trying to bring someone along feels to me like a reference to him teaching her piano and playing duets with her even when they hated each other [especially given we know she wears that duet dress as a muse next episode]).

It's deeply personal, but honestly pretty non-specific, which I think is what a lot of good songs are?

The kissing line I do think is likely about Gabi, but it really could be about Nicki too. I don't think Lestat was a virgin when he and Nicki met, but I could see him being not very good at sex and intimacy at that point because it's pretty clear he at the very least hasn't had a relationship. Nicki's been at university, he's been studying under Mozart, he's had a life, y'know? Even if it was also one with heavy parameters. There's kind of a nice little thought in there that Lestat might have gotten to step backwards with Nicki a bit and explored something like kissing in a space that was just both safe and honest. That said, the line immediately following the line about his brother and confession/the church does feel - - yes. Loaded, and again, I do think it's probably about Gabi too.

[pynkhues]

if Lestat's the mare/married out of the de Lioncourt family and into Magnus'... it makes me think of the relative freedom widows have had historically (relative being the key word, ignoring factors like expected subservience to in-laws or struggling to provide for children). They did their bit, they removed themselves from being their family's obligation, and then suddenly their new legal ... proprietor (for lack of a better, pithier word) is gone. If the widow is the sole inheritor of whatever is left, they're don't have to be accountable to anyone. Lestat has a miserable but brief "marriage" and then is almost immediately widowed, with all the inherited assets of his elderly husband and a proportional amount of trauma.

I don't think I have a cohesive and coherent thought after that, but there's something there about his period of running wild ending when his "maiden" connections intersect with it. Not even touching what it means that his husband's society ALSO makes itself known as a disapproving force.

Lestat is just trying to be in his Girls Just Wanna Have Fun era and get some belated self-discovery, and instead it's all "you should be wearing widows' weeds and praying the rosary for your dead husband and your sins" (somewhat kidding)

(x)

Totally, anon, and I love that you brought up Magnus' money as a sort of 'widow's inheritance' because I think that's something that's really keenly depicted in TVL. That money might be Lestat's by way of his brief marriage to Magnus, but other people feel endlessly entitled to it in a way that I think speaks to the feeling that a widow's inheritance in this era was never entirely her own too. Lestat uses Magnus' money to buy Renaud's theatre, but he gifts it to Eleni and Laurent when they escape Armand's slaughter of the Children of Darkness, then Nicki demands it like an an angry child in their break-up (which in some ways he is, given he never could've been turned if Magnus hadn't turned Lestat. It goes to that feeling of child and spouse as synonymous for vampires), and then tries to take the money from Roget's.

Here's the bit from the break-up:

And here's the bit about Nicki trying to take the money:

In the end though, he gives both the tower and Renaud's theatre to Armand, which is especially interesting because Armand's attempt at taking ownership of Lestat really makes him cast himself as a proxy of Magnus, which the book is explicit about, and given 2.03, I think the show's about to be too.

Here's the scene where Gabrielle and Lestat offer Armand the theatre, Magnus' tower, and money (the coven at this point is Eleni and Laurent and Nicki in the Theatres des Vampires):

And here's the bit where Lestat gives Armand the keys to Magnus' tower:

If Nicki's entitlement is that of a child, Armand's, to me, is almost that of a distant relative who expects to marry Lestat and both step up within the broader family unit and seal it off. Magnus is an outcast in Paris, but Armand pretty clearly knows him long before Lestat's in the picture at all, and feels A Way about Magnus being held in personal regard by the Vampire Queen, who talks about him with a degree of fondness. I think that speaks a bit to Armand's place in the Paris vampiric society at the time, even if he's leading the Children of Darkness.

When they meet though, Armand plays into Lestat's memories of Magnus and tries to cut himself briefly into his shape in ways that confuse and trigger Lestat, culminating in the sexual assaul. He's a wise older relative, he's a boy playing dress-up, he sees Lestat first as Magnus' beautiful bastard fledgling - his child, his spouse - and he tries to possess him while simultaneously becoming the ultimate inheritor in Paris. He gets Magnus' tower, he gets the theatre that Lestat loved, that Magnus' money paid for, and he even gets Nicki, but he doesn't get what he actually wanted which is Lestat. It really plays pretty amazingly with gothic machinations of family, control, power, wealth and desire in such compelling ways to me.

It almost calls a little back to the OG gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, with Isabella's betrothed being killed on the day of their wedding, only to be pursued and obsessed over by her betrothed's uncle who's desperate to keep it in the family (and stave off a prophecy), and claim the virtue of an effective widow (they never quite get married in that one).

There's a lot though that's happening there I think in terms of widowhood and inheritance and the perverted family unit, and I think the show's really going to go there, especially given Armand's already cast himself as Magnus by placing himself in the audience at Renaud's, watching Lestat, in a way he never does in the book.

[pynkhues]

I’m sorry you’re being attacked for your stance on Nicki. No one deserves that, especially over shipping opinions. That said, I strongly disagree with your perception of him, and I feel compelled to speak up. I agree that Nicki wasn’t the ideal partner for Lestat, but I also think it’s clear that Nicki was only a “first love” because he was turned and lost himself. If they had both remained human, I truly believe Nickistat would have endured and had the potential to be a lasting love.

Louis only enters the picture because Nicki is no longer an option. That’s why it’s hard to read fics where writers suggest that Lestat would have chosen Louis over Nicki or left Nicki for him; that just doesn’t align with how their relationship is portrayed in the books. Lestat’s love for Nicki doesn’t need to be minimized to emphasize his love for Louis. We already know he loves Louis deeply, but that doesn’t erase his profound, enduring love for Nicki.

And I would genuinely like to know in what way “the fandom overromanticizes Nickistat?” Loustat is the most overromanticized pairing in the show and chronicles. Show Loustat should not be a couple, and in the books they are basically best friends.

It's okay, anon, and I love that you feel that way about Nicki and Lestat's relationship. It really is one that means a lot to me too, even if people don't believe it, although it sounds like for probably very different reasons.

I've kind of been going on and off answering this one, not because of anything you've said, just because it kind of feels like one at risk of kicking things off again, but you felt compelled to send it quite a while after that flurry of activity in my inbox over how I depicted them in my fic, and I guess I feel still compelled to reply.

I disagree that Nicki's bad reaction to vampirism was the only reason their relationship deteriorated. In my reading of the book, they were genuinely in love and a lifeline for one another under the oppressive abuse of their respective fathers, and that they had a honeymoon period in Paris that was real, and deeply romantic, but that Lestat's success in the city and his gravitational pull on, well, everyone, took a toll on Nicki. Even if you put aside their post-turning break-up where Nicki tells Lestat he only wanted to go with him to Paris so they'd both die as a lie or perhaps influenced by the dark gift, I think their conversation the night Magnus takes Lestat makes it clear that Nicki resented Lestat on many levels, but especially his found fame and the fact that he has to depend on Lestat for creative opportunities when he was the artist trained under Mozart.

I've always felt the writing was on the wall for them in that sense, and that's what makes them so compelling to me, because I think the love was real, and I think they chose each other (love as a choice you make is a favourite trope of mine!), and I love a doomed romance, haha. I think they did save each other for a little while, but they'd never be each other's answer, or where each other's story stopped, and I think Anne makes that clear in the way that he breaks up with Lestat long before he dies.

But I do have to push back on the idea that Lestat and Louis are more best friends in the book (and the idea that that isn't romance in itself anyway), and that Lestat wouldn't ultimately choose Louis. You're right in a sense that Lestat's initial attraction to Louis is tied to Nicki, but Anne's explicit that Lestat loves Louis more. Here's the scene from The Vampire Lestat where this is literally written out:

Louis' hold on Lestat is more powerful than Nicki's hold on him. Any comparison, any sense that Louis is a punishment for Nicki falls away. Lestat loves him, plain and simple, so I disagree that Lestat would choose Nicki in any world where Nicki's still an option, but again, I don't think that diminishes Lestat and Nicki's relationship. Them having a finite deadline for their intimacy even as a love lives on doesn't make it meaningless, in fact, I think some of those relationships are the richest and most important, which I do think Nicki is for Lestat.

And I don't know. It's okay if you don't like the way I write them, you don't have to read my fic - it's certainly not tagged as Lestat x Nicki - but I don't feel like I'm minimising their love story by exploring it at its end point. I love a good break-up, I find them compelling and telling and interesting, just as I found their genuinely hideous break-up in the book to be (I've said it on here before, but I think it's one of the hardest scenes to read in TVL because of both its cruelty and the weight of emotion in it). In that sense too, I guess to answer your question, I'd say why I think the fandom overromanticises them is asks like yours, which see their love story as one that can endure when it's one of the only explicit actual definitive break-ups in the books (at least of the ones that I've read).

That happened for a reason, and in my interpretation, the turn to vampirism compounds certain feelings, it doesn't create them. Nicki turning on Lestat in that way that he did was always in him, at least in my reading of the book, and I think that's pretty explicitly threaded through their relationship pre-turning. It's okay if you disagree, that's just the way that I see it.

[pynkhues]

How do you think they're going to reconcile things like Louis talking about Armand chopping his hands off or Lestat saying Nicki died after they parted ways? I don't think they just forgot those beats, but I do really hope they have a plan beyond an Easter egg to the fans and a lie at the trial.

I think I've talked about it before, and I could be wrong, but I actually don't think Louis' line in 2.05 about Armand chopping off his hands was about Nicki? Lestat can't have told Louis about that given he never told Louis about Armand or TdV, and I can't really imagine a world where Armand would've volunteered that information to Louis either, at least not as it related to Nicki specifically? I've always figured that Louis probably heard it as it was listed off at some point as one of the punishments for people who defied the great laws when Armand was leading the Coven, and that's what Louis was leading with. The 'lick my boots or cut off my hands' always feels more to me like a nod to that chapter of their lives where Armand was his sub, but also the Coven maitre, and I know you probably don't want to hear this given your ask, haha, but I think the show did just use the hand reference as an easter egg for fans in the case the show wasn't renewed.

I actually do think it works with how the show's adapted it though, because that night at the apartment is the sort of thing that would've become Coven lore by the time Louis and Claudia are in Paris. None of the TdV members are original beyond Armand at that point, at least as far as we know, and I think the show probably is framing the story of Nicki's hands as one that got passed down and mythologised over time that Armand was able to weaponise in keeping the Coven in line. It would fit to me in terms of the subjectivity of memory and how it warps truth into different things over time.

A few people have suggested that Armand could've tampered with Lestat's memories though too in the way that he does, which I do think is very much possible too!

As for Lestat saying it at the trial though, I don't think that's Lestat lying, I think it's what Sam scripted because Armand wouldn't have wanted the reality of Nicki's death addressed beyond what was useful to him. It's Claudia, Louis and Madeleine on trial, not him, not even Lestat, despite Lestat explicitly trying to be put on trial with them. The beat of Lestat saying Nicki died with help from others is I think the beat where he goes off-script and says something that's true.

In that sense, I don't know. I don't think they necessarily need to be reconciled? I appreciate people feeling differently though!

[pynkhues]

am i crazy or was nicki saying to lestat (about gabi) with that smirk on his face “she only gave you a finger?” a sexual reference/about lestat bottoming with nicki…?

Ahah, it was about Antoinette, not Gabi, and I do think it was mostly about their respective amputations, but the double entendre did feel deliberate to me too, yeah, especially given Nicki doesn't cut off his hand for Lestat.