Louis, in the style of an Orthodox Christian icon.
below, some stuff about inspiration and the process:
These are the two icons I mainly used for inspiration. I thought the designs/ornaments in the halo were a nice touch that would also distinct it from the background + the red outline also makes it stand out in a good way.
regarding the color red, to my understanding it can symbolize many things, but in my case i would go with "blood", hence the dark red & adding some red to louis' clothes.
i chose this picture of him because he has an almost saint-like pose, with the hands clasped.
while humans in general do not get wings on icons, there are a few exceptions, so this is also not completely unorthodox (lololol). given the remark about claudia calling him an angel, i felt it was important to give him wings. backgrounds of icons are also quite empty so this was great to fill the space.
This October, we are celebrating our titular vampire's 147th birthday with a month-long creative challenge. This is the second edition of this event, and you can see the fan creations shared last year in the tag, here ►
How does this event work?
Louis's birthday is October 4th, so we have four broad prompts, and ten prompt quotes. Prompts have no assigned date, and they are meant to be interpreted freely.
Prompts
Love / Family
Memory / Art
Gender / Sexuality
Vampirism / Power
Quotes
"For the first time in my life, I was seen."
"I had powers now, and decades of rage to process…"
"Allow me my odyssey."
"The absence of metaphor is striking."
"Are we the sum of our worst moments?"
"She called me an angel."
"But the suit changes nothing."
"My rage had risen, followed closely behind by my madness."
"I’m companion enough for myself now."
"I didn't know it was a gift."
Some ways in which you can participate include:
fanfiction,
fanart,
fanmixes,
moodboards,
gifsets,
photomanips,
graphics,
video edits and AMVs,
meta and analysis in written, audio or video form,
poetry,
music,
headcanons,
fanworks and meta recommendations...
...and anything else you can think of!
And, if you end up creating something that doesn't quite respond to any prompt, you're still participating, as long as your creation is about Jacob Anderson's Louis de Pointe du Lac.
Please take a look at our participation guidelines, and don't forget to tag your posts with #IWTVfanevents or tag @iwtvfanevents so we can share them on the blog. You can also add them to the collection on AO3: Happy birthday LDPDL!
If you’re on Twitter, we’re over there too!
And, as always, we encourage you to use the #vampterview tag for your posts about the show. Learn more about this fandom tag here ►
Finally watched Queen of the Damned and it was as bad as everyone says it is. One cool thing tho was that I noticed that Marg Downey who plays Evelyn in The Newsreader shows up in the movie as a Talamascan. Small world.
Also loved Jesse’s vampire bar fit. The space buns were very cute.
And of course Aaliyah, who has a minimal amount of time on screen. RIP.
I am all for ArmDan and I enjoyed the dm chapter in QOTD but can we please please please please admit (not the right word since this is evident) that show ArmDan literally hate each other right now like armand is not secretly in love with daniel they both hate each other deeply and I think that’s very fun. Like the looks they give each other in Dubai are death glares they despise each other and the reasons why are very very very clear and make a lot of sense. They are both obsessed with Louiiiiiis 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕 (and Armand’s obsession with Daniel is fueled purely by hate hate hate and jealousy bc Louis likes Daniel y’all in fact he loves him actually wait he’s Daniel’s lifeline whoah pause everything in Daniel’s life leads back to Louis wait wait wait—)
I finished the book back in April LOL but just never got the urge to write about it. It took me an excruciatingly long time to finish, and that was because the writing was very repetitive imo. AR has the ability to make a vampire origin story so so so so so boring. Which is crazy, because The Story of the Twins is interesting and Maharet and Mekare are interesting characters, but the writing I found pretty bland. Which, again, is crazy because the writing in the Akasha and Lestat chapters?? Fire! So I know AR can do it lol but unfortunately none of it really hit when it came to the Twins and a lot of other chapters. Those parts read a lot like the dreadful Marius chapter/section in TVL and that shit nearly bored me to tears (insane bc that's when you finally find out about TWMBK).
Under the cut I get into more spoiler-y stuff about the last two chapters, including some (not so) subtle racism in the writing + things I actually did like about the book (bc there were some!!).
----It's been a while so I don't fully understand my notes but this is what I managed to make of them----
So, last two chapters, we finally get the showdown between Akasha and the rest of the vampires, and really they just talk and try to reason with each other. Here are some of Akasha's reasons for why humans need vampires to intervene in their affairs.
"Millions have been exterminated by one small European nation on the whim of a madman", "Entire cities were melted into oblivion by bombs", "The screams of the hungry are deafening, yet unheard by the rich who cavort in technological citadels", "the idiot foolishness upon which the complacency of the rich has always been based"
I singled these quotes out because it shows that her issue is not just with men, but with the rich and powerful. And her solution, of course, is to kill all men except 1 in 100 and kill all male babies born except 1 in 100. I'm upset that there was nothing behind Akasha's motivations when it came to the Twins other than wanting power and control, and her true motivations in this case are also gaining power and control over the women that she would eventually rule over rather than actually caring about the things that she listed to Marius & Co. Regardless, that doesn't make what Akasha is saying untrue. She's right, obviously, these problems exist! But the vampires also bring up another great point which is that: humans are aware of these problems (are literally the victims of these problems), and are revolting! They are rising up against the rich and powerful. Those humans do not deserve to die.
Marius tells her: "But it is the outcry against these horrors which is the light I speak of."
And then shortly after he hits me with the: "For the Western world, not to resist would be unthinkable." And maybe I'm reading too much into it, but coupled with previous instances of weird quotes about the East, this reads to me as yet another casual statement of non-Western countries being hopeless or lost causes. Like, "of course you were able to mass kill in the East, Akasha! They just roll over and take whatever horrific thing is committed against them! But the West won't have it!" That's how it reads to me.
[Note: The vampires' problem with violent resistance in general is strange, considering they are literally vampires who kill to survive, but whatever. They keep saying violence is bad and I'm like don't you "violence" every day?]
Anyway. Another insane quote:
This is said by Lestat, in reaction to Khayman putting on the equivalent of a fake tan to look more human (Khayman is Egyptian and I think(!) was described as having dark skin at some point):
"Sometimes, he covered himself with a darkening pigment- burnt sienna mixed with a little scented oil. It seemed a crime to do so, to mar the beauty." ???????????? Insanely racist thing to think say Lestat/Anne.
Alright so overall, was an insanely long read, definitely my least favorite book out of the 3 I've read, and it has put me off reading any more even though I really want to... but what I did like was:
Jesse Reeves
Claudia haunting NOLA house
AKASHASTAT, those chapters were golden
Devil's Minion chapter
That's all I can remember of the good. Will watch QOTD movie soon. Soon.
(also crying at my last post ab this book being me making a wildly incorrect prediction thinking it was so obvious, i am so bad at predicting things lol)
This is such a loser moment but last night I came home from work tired and feeling sick and my brother had people over for like a small party so like the siblings of people I knew from high school were seeing me in such a gremlin like state and they had all traveled home from college and were going “you moved back? oh…” anyway they were all over the house and blasting music right by my window and I had to be asleep by 10pm bc I had to wake up early for work the next day and it was like 8ish so I said alright why not watch Queen of the Damned to pass the time so I opened my laptop and looked up the movie and right as I was about to press play the colors of my screen got inverted…like my taskbar was inverted and so was my chrome page but not other things anyway I spent so long rebooting my computer reverting back to default settings digging for anything that could be the cause disliking any forum comment that said “just turn the color filter off” bc it was fucking off already that was the problem and I started crying bc all I wanted was to watch QOTD while drinking my ginger tea and pretending there was no party at the house. It took my 2 hours to figure out the cause was some high contrast chrome extension I got years ago that suddenly activated for some reason and I deleted it and went to bed. So that was my experience trying to watch QOTD.
in response to anonymous re JA as the supporting character going forwards (apologies, sis, but this is gonna run long):
had to do some sleuthing to double-check where those blogs got the quotes from Rolin Jones and yes, from what Jones is saying, Jacob Anderson will be a supporting character going forward. while this isn't surprising, what is disconcerting is the contradictory statements Jones makes about POV, unreliable narrators, memory, and objectivity that further frames seasons 3 as the true start of the show because now it will follow Lestat, and Lestat's POV is the only ordained perspective through which we can view and interact in the world of TVC.
i wish I could find the post that brilliantly discussed why some fans are dismayed by the end of S2 being a naked pivot for S3 and the Lestat show, but those of us who have been watching television, no matter if its an adapted work or original scripts, know that it is exceedingly rare for a show, not marketed as a "black" show, featuring a black lead, to continue to center that black lead (see Sleepy Hollow, New Amsterdam, shit, might even make an argument for Evil). IWTV had the distinction of pulling off a really excellent adaptation by revising Louis from the original book in such a way that bloomed the storytelling potential beyond expectation. but now, with the growing series of interviews by Jones, it seems that that distinction made through revisionist storytelling will turn out to be empty signifying, merely a (very good) sleight of hand at revisionist storytelling. like Anne Rice, who very much liked the idea of transgression to sell culturally determined ideas of the culture back to the culture without ever truly being subversive (except for her feelings about pederasty), Jones continues the tradition of being transgressive within the parameters set by US-centric popular culture, which is dominated by the white imaginary.
we see this white imaginary most clearly in the social response to it: fandom. and this might be why the inclusive interaction that we saw during season 1's broadcast thinned to nearly exclusively white-women led accounts who focused on queerness and Devil's Minion and Lestat shaking his ass and eating paper--AMC and Jones had to focus on their target audience. i accept it, just as i swallowed being gaslit into watching TVD for so long on the off-chance they'd give Bonnie Bennett her due, just as i accept Disney used the image of John Bodega wielding that Skywalker lightsaber to drum up excitement and consternation for The Force Awakens. what bothers me, however, is the carelessness with which Jones speaks, and, knowing that the lines between industry and audience have been blurred to the point of being porous, that his carelessness gives credence to some of the more noxious elements of antiblackness and gender essentialism in IWTV fandom.
every single time Jones comments on objectivity, he also comments on subjectivity, and in this context, the subject position is the suspect position. to go further and say that point of view and memory will no longer be a concern or of interest in season 3 clarifies that Lestat's voice will be the only true rational voice; the camera over his shoulder will now be showing you, the audience, the true story. "setting his story straight" means returning to the race blind (i say this because there exists in TVC the colonial having "a bit of the other" and it is weirdly disengaged from race and yet entangled with darker skin tones being enticing and edible) world of Lestat, the world of Jones wanted to adapt in the first place. but don't worry, this "straightening" will not touch the gay, no, now that the black vampire and brown vampire are estranged and with their respective white partners, gay sensuality will return in full effect!
the question of Louis' unreliability is my personal war. i have been on this hill; my plot has been staked out. Louis is no more unreliable than any monsterfucker in this show. His unreliability wasn't in question when Brad Pitt portrayed him or when he was introduced in 1976. the whole fucking tagline for this show, "memory is a monster," is now positioned as only that for Louis; the monster in this show is Louis. we who have been irritated to downright disgusted by the treatment of Louis by the fandom at large, that for all the "they're all monsters," content warning, Louis still somehow figures as the most monstrous of them all (see the withholding claims, the pimp claims, the either he's the Daddy Dreadful or Mommie Dearest or both at the same time claims, etc.), can now see that they aren't just making this shit up--they've been anticipating and explicitly decoding Jones:
[...] The Vampire Lestat — the book the showrunner reveals “originally attracted me to the whole thing” [...] (Hollywood Reporter, 6.30.24)
The new season will be centered on Lestat, who is resentful of his portrayal in Molloy's book and, determined to set his story straight, becomes a rock star.
"Sam worked really hard for two years as a supporting actor, and I think Jacob is very excited to do the same thing for him, and put Sam front and center," Jones tells EW. "We've just scratched the surface with Sam, who's an incredible actor."
The showrunner knows it was "maddening" for Reid to constantly play other characters' perceptions of Lestat rather than the actual character, but that's finally come to an end. "We gave him one scene that is objective, the scene in New Orleans," Jones says. "In that moment, that's nobody's point of view. The camera's over there watching both of them, so there you go, fans. One scene so far of the real Lestat." (EW, 6.30.24)
“The big difference moving forward is Lestat will be front and center telling the story, so it should feel like this show has been taken hostage by Lestat,” Jones says. “Aesthetically, it is going to feel different. It is not going to feel like two old guys in a room trying to figure out what brought them together. It is going to be over the shoulder of Lestat de Lioncourt, of whom you have probably seen about an 80%-accurate version of who he is — on fire and reckless. So it should be fun and dangerous.” (Variety, 6.30.24)
"Everybody’s free to judge the rest of it. If all goes right, we’ll have six or seven more seasons to work on you coming around to that, or the redemption of that. [In season one,] the audience wants to kill Lestat along with Louis and Claudia. But we had to sit on it for a year and a half. So it’s okay for people to think that we made a supervillain out of Lestat and then to come around to a fuller portrait. In season three, [Lestat is] front and center, and Jacob takes a supporting role. And it’s not all about point of view. We got 80 to 85-percent of Lestat pretty solid. Retribution is easy, right? It’s being contrite. [There’s] the idea that forgiveness should be part of this cycle, too. That’s something I think we’re trying to sell."
"So, what am I interested in? I’ll be less interested in point of view and memory as much. The challenge of the books is that there’s not a lot of forward story. I don’t think that you can probably mine the arcs of those for origin story after origin story after origin story. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take the same material and in very inventive, exciting ways move it forward." (AV Club, 7.1.24)
"The gift of TV is you have this extra time. There are a couple of challenges, though, especially when we split the book into two seasons. You’re gonna have two problems: There’s no plot in the second half of this book, and two of your major characters — Daniel and Lestat — disappear for 200 pages.
That’s frustrating to begin with, but it’s an opportunity. There’s not a lot of plot, so we structured it around dialogue: How can we creatively get to this point where Armand says this? It’s just a different way of writing. In other adaptations, you have a lot of action, so you have to figure out, What do they say in between? It’s just putting on a different thinking cap, but you’re still jackhammering the book to come up with these things. We just got lucky that we get more time to sit with characters." (Vulture, 7.2.24)
what boggles my mind is not being interested in point of view but then saying season 3 is based on TVL, which is written in first-person, and will have Lestat in control of the story. is POV different in screenwriting, playwriting, narratology than in, like, fiction? does it differ from the POV of literary or rhetorical analysis? asking for a friend. also, Daniel and Lestat disappear from IWTV so what does one do? Dreamstat (*comments on Daniel incoming). why do they disappear? because it is not all about that blonde man but the effects of the blonde man on this sad, Catholic plantation owner and what erotic latencies are stirred up in him (aka dickmatizism, by Armand). they could have spent much more time on the eroticism and passion Louis felt comfortable having, let alone expressing, for Armand than absolutely needing to shove Lestat in there.
anyway, to the denouement: Louis. in various interviews Jacob Anderson sounds like he's giving his farewell toast, saying he's glad that this story, for Louis, has resolved in some way. he also talked about this:
“That period with Paris specifically was seen as a safe space for Black artists,” he says. “Louis talks about being welcomed there and not being a victim of America's particular brand of racism. Especially if you have a gift, if you're exceptional in some way, you have a space here, and that's not lost on Louis.” Anderson says the team had discussions about this ultra-specific slice of representation, and he even lobbied to take it further than what’s seen on screen and make the subtext even more overt. “I wanted Josephine Baker in the show,” he says. “There was a point early on when we were talking about what Season 2 would be like, Louis was going to make friends with [famed photographer] Gordon Parks and be kind of like his human companion. There wasn’t time, but there's some inspiration from him and James Baldwin’s experiences in Paris.” (BET, 5.13.24)
things like this sours me, because Sartre can pop up, but not Parks? instead of having Louis talk about it, we could have seen it. bet we will see it for Lestat, though. they will stock this man's world with identifications because it will be easy for them, it is the representation they are most comfortable reproducing. there is always time for them. but. but! let's remain positive. let's not be killjoys. remember when Jacob said in the post-s2 finale interview that Daniel's like an annoying little brother now?
"But as for the final mic drop of the season, when Daniel reveals he's been turned into a vampire by Armand, Jones teases there's a lot more to come from that storyline. "One's a maker and one's a fledgling," he says. "We would be very, very poor dramatists if they were never in scenes together again. We just needed to set the stage for a lot of new writing for Louis, and I think that sets him off. There's new writing to be done for that character." (EW, 6.30.24).
so not only will Louis be a supporting character, he'll be a supporting character (a roof shingle) in the stormy romance that is Daniel and Armand. maybe he'll get a second chance at brother's keeper. canna wait.
*i do not care about Daniel. i care that Eric Bogosian cares about being on the show and working with Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman and using this opportunity as a bit of auto fiction/meta fantasy/last hurrah/old men fuck thing.
yousharknotpass
vaporwave
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
amandla
baratheonpilled
stormborns
jacobvanloon
