Vampire Family Law LLP

not a lawyer (yet), just enchanted with the concept of a vampire family management conference. this is a sideblog.

[sugarcarnation]

something something the way the entirety of s2 is structured around louis wanting to go home to lestat. in the very first episode he asks claudia if they can’t just go home (and she immediately realizes what he means by it: "pry up his bones, why don’t you?"). and being denied this option he has to conjure images of his home himself. lestat follows him around, wearing the clothes from their courtship and companionship. even when he himself eventually denies himself the opportunity to go home (choosing armand, traveling the world together, never going back to nola), we eventually realize he never stops wanting to go home. he organizes an interview that lets him revisit his past his life with lestat and simultaneously acts as a call to lestat (louis own way of saying come to me if you want). he does this twice!! and meanwhile we realize that his visions of lestat never stopped. he still sees him in dubai eighty years later. his desire to see lestat, to be with lestat is still just as strong as it was way back when he first uttered the wish to go back home. and then finally in the last episode he does what he wanted to do from the start. he returns to nola. he goes home. he goes to see lestat

[armasc4femstat]

I figured it would be something like this ~canonically~. Still, a guy can dream. I still stand by her being so insanely trans-coded, and honestly I think QOTD will hopefully give us more to support that, even if just in headcanon. Time for me to go back to the fanfic mines.

[vampirefamilylaw]

I think there's also a dimension that I haven't seen discussed a lot re: his experience of sexual abuse. Like, Gabriell(e/a) would not have done that to him if he had grown up a girl - the abuse was rooted in his maleness. And Magnus wouldn't have abducted him if he had been a woman. So much of Lestat's trauma derives directly from his masculinity (and, tbh, his queer masculinity specifically) that I just assumed that was what he was talking about there. [This is also why I personally really really dislike when people read him as a trans woman. His queer masculinity has shaped his character so much that making him Not A Man feels like a betrayal of how he has managed to cope with that trauma. It feels, to me, like saying "jk none of that actually mattered" (even though that's not what those who enjoy the headcanon are saying, I know, I know, truly no judgment). And that also hits in a particular way for me personally, as an experiencer of female queer masculinity whose childhood covert incest trauma was similarly rooted in masculinity. So like by all means have your fun, I do not begrudge anyone their headcanons, but I will probably mute or block you depending on the platform for the sake of my mental health.]

[vampirefamilylaw]

Man, in the context of the show universe: how much do we think Lestat's experience of trying to get Louis to function during his extended vampiric-anorexic depressive episode just felt to him like one long impenetrable flashback to being Akasha's keeper. Obviously we can talk about parallels with Nicki, but the Akasha parallels did not occur to me until now

[vampirefamilylaw]

I have seen a few takes like "they didn't have to make Louis such a flagrant capitalist!!" and meanwhile I'm over here like, there he is, the most relatable vampire entrepreneur in the world.

The thing you have to understand about business people and corporate life is that they are all on the spectrum and their special interest is Business. Louis is what happens when you take that and add vampirism

[lighthouseweeper]

See the way Lestat is punishing Louis is by not letting him handle the business side of the tour. He’s acting calm in front of Lestat but in private he’s screaming, crying and throwing up about how it’s being mismanaged. He’s got a binder devoted entirely to what he would have done and someday Lestat is going to have to sit through ‘a presentation’. He’s not jealous of Christine for sleeping with Lestat, but for getting to file his paperwork. His capitalism balls are bright blue.

[vampirefamilylaw]

I guess extra bonus of Hannah Moscovitch taking over as showrunner is that now I can so easily expand my blocklist based on who in the fandom is weird about Jews

[vampirefamilylaw]

if you guys girlboss Akasha next season, then so help me G-d i'll

[vampirefamilylaw]

Me going into my admin law final tomorrow

[vampirefamilylaw]

I have been thinking about a key distinction i see in the Louis-Claudia vs Lestat-Claudia family relationships that really explains everything about her séance revelations for me. And it is that Louis sees Claudia as his daughter (conceptual), whereas Lestat sees Claudia as his daughter (literal).

Like for Louis, Claudia is his daughter in that she is His Little Girl. As long as she is his daughter, she is a child to him. It's the idea of having a daughter, and not an actual, dynamic father-daughter relationship. And that's why as she ages, it has to change to "sister" for him to even try to treat her as a grown up.

And then on the other hand, for Lestat, it's literally. That's literally his daughter. She's his little girl daughter as a child, and he entertains her like she's a kid. In her later teens, that's his teenage daughter who needs to learn how to drive a car and what sex is. And then when she becomes an adult, she's his grown-ass daughter who he treats as a competent, if antagonistic, adult.

I think this explains why Lestat is not onboard with the sister switch - the relationship is ongoing and developing over time, it's nonsensical to him that you could just substitute one relationship concept for another because the relationship is tangible, it's there in the real world. It also explains why he refers to her as his daughter less than Louis does - Louis has to reaffirm the concept, but for Lestat it's not necessary.

Also I think that's why Claudia hated dealing with his bullshit less than Louis's bullshit, which really is what she meant by "I liked him more". Better to be treated as a grown daughter than a little girl sister. And part of why Lestat would be harder to manipulate - with louis, she could play into the conceptual His Little Girl, but there's no equivalent for Lestat, because what he sees when he looks at her is an adult woman he raised, not a child to be protected

And I wonder if that's part of why she's not at the long table. Not only that she said all she needed to say, but that that relationship is so grounded and real for lestat that there's no reason for his brain to give him dying revelations about it, and a projection of her wouldn't be believable for him because if anything, he sees the real her too well for either of them.

To be clear I'm not saying either dynamic is better or worse. A relationship characterized by absolutely zero illusions is rough as hell and that's why they both hate loving each other so much

[eosphoroz]

Reminder that Anne Rice was always fierce.

(From Anne Rice: Playboy interview, 1993)

[vampirefamilylaw]

I have decided to no longer feel bad about the realization that I'll never be actively into Claudeleine because Madeleine, despite being a good and interesting character, simply makes me as a Jew too personally uncomfortable

[ambitiouswitch]

Lestat's off behavior during the trial.

[ryfkah]

gabrielle truther by which I mean I firmly believe that her Outrageous Italian Accent is entirely an artifact of lestat's pov and to everyone else she just sounds vaguely like miranda priestly

[lioncourtz]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 01.01 | "In Throes of Increasing Wonder…"

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT 03.06 | "Montreal"

[vampirefamilylaw]

So the "coming out of a coma" line is definitely a Merrick reference right? Like we all see that?

[ambitiouswitch]

People saying that the revenge porn is a response to the diss track and somehow equal because Lestat didn't accept Armand's apology are either 1) stupid 2) don't watch the show 3) stupid and only watch Armand's scenes.

Armand never relented, this is not a revenge for a line a fucking song that wasn't written about CSA by the composer of the fucking songs out of universe (morons, he would have mentioned it). This is a takedown. A tactical revenge because, again, Armand craves his 'rules' and cultish behaviour as much as he craves Lestat.

And all this shit is an isolation tactic. Let's explain it with steps, shall we?

Step 1: Get into Lestat's band by brainwashing Alex.

Step 2: Go to Lestat's bus and vaguely threaten him about the Great Conversion.

Step 3: Kill Larry and further turn Alex against Lestat.

Step 4: Get Alex to film Lestat while he is being sexually abused by Gabriella.

Step 5: Get into Daniel's head and exploit his ego and sexual deviance for him to publish the video as revenge porn that will forever be associated with Lestat.

Step 6: Get Louis and everyone he loves disgusted with Lestat and further isolated him from everyone. (Didn't work with Louis but might work with the the rest of the band).

Step 7: Decapitate Lestat and Louis and separate them.

Step 8:??? Next episode

Armand is not hurt about the fucking diss track, you dumbos (and even if it was hurt... I don't know how to tell you, but mean words are excuse to sexually assault someone). This is the same tactic he used in the trial,, the same he used with Claudia, the same he used with Nicki: fake spectacles and humiliation to isolate his victims. He is a a cult leader, that's what he does. And when it comes to Lestat, he is a leech. He can't stand rejection, even if the reasons are laid (like killing Claudia!). He wants to control Lestat by any means possible, even if that's something that will be violating and disgusting for the rest of his life.

[lioncourtz]

the same expressions: hesitation, disgust, and regret

[vampirefamilylaw]

this is why I feel 100% sure that Lestat is like a 5.5 on the Kinsey scale and has virtually no actual sexual or romantic interest in women. like there is just enough there that he can justify it, when in reality he only sleeps with women when 1) desperately alone and in dire need of emotional support or 2) extraordinarily high.

[softest-beigest-pillows]

the first episode he spends entirely with louis is also the first where he doesn’t hallucinate even one person. i’m going to be sick