picspam: interview with the vampire

A vampire, Louis, decides to tell his story to a mortal boy, Daniel. In the novel (handily cut from the film) there's a lot of boring preachy stuff about his brother, who loved God a lot and spoke to saints, and blah blah Louis' guilt and culpability in his brother's death. Louis basically exists to have angst about every single everything in his entire little life, and just sort of pouts and walks around in the rain a lot (seriously, watch the movie and count how many times Brad Pitt wanders around in the rain with big sad eyes). So he's angsty and human and basically dying of illness?? misery??, and this vampire Lestat finds him and offers to turn him. Louis and Lestat have an incredibly contentious relationship full of lots of drama and subtexty gay vibes. But, like many marriages, when things are starting to truly fall apart between them, Lestat decides to try and solve it by having a baby. A fucking awesome vampire baby.

Louis tries not to feed on humans because he has Angst, but one day when he's walking in the rain he happens upon a little orphan girl clinging to her dead mother's body and, while comforting the girl, loses control and starts to feed on her. Lestat finds them, blah blah stuff happens, and then Lestat turns her since she was going to die anyway. She is five years old. Her name is Claudia.

Louis and Lestat love her desperately and they have a nice little vampire family for a while. (Sidenote: vampire incest and pedophilia! Omg why does Anne Rice describe Claudia as 'sensual' so often? SISTER HAS THE BODY OF A FIVE YEAR OLD.) The thing is, though Claudia's body doesn't ever change, her mind does. She ages mentally, becomes clever and dangerous and fuckin awesome, but she's an adult woman trapped in the body of a very small child. She is understandably resentful. One of my favorite things about Claudia – and something I've noticed in lady vamps in general – is that she has this very very dangerous rage. Something I like about female vampires is that I think becoming a vampire allows them a freedom they would never know otherwise, especially if they were turned in a historical setting. They suddenly have total freedom. They don't have to worry about society or men or convention or anything except what they want. So they become amazing and cruel and selfish and phenomenal and I worship them. And Claudia has an extra edge of tragedy because she is eternally trapped in a body that will never reflect who she really is.

So she decides to kill Lestat. She's not successful, but she wounds him enough to fuck him up for the next hundred years or so, and it allows her and Louis to escape to Paris (from New Orleans, where the first half of the novel/film is set) to search for others of their own kind. They find Armand, and a bunch of other vampires who are actors in a vampire theatre. Louis and Armand have a super gay connection and they do a lot of close talking, but Louis loves Claudia more than anything on earth and refuses to leave her. Armand kind of sucks, and he orchestrates a situation that puts Claudia on a sort of trial for killing her maker – in the novel, with the reluctant help of a mostly-destroyed Lestat, and in the film by ~reading her mind. This is all just to have Louis to himself, really, because everyone wants Louis because he is so very pretty and sad. Claudia is put out in the sun and dies. Louis and Armand stay together for years, but he is completely ruined by Claudia's death and never gets over it. Then later in the series he and Lestat get to gay all over each other yet again but that is a story for another day.