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INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 2.03 "No Pain"

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louis de pointe du lac — denial is a river

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I’m actually screaming

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Alright kids say it with me

My thoughts don’t make me a bad person

My feelings don’t make me a bad person

My thoughts, feelings, and impulses only exist inside my head, and none of it matters unless I act on it

Nobody can see my thoughts or emotions

The only things anyone can see and judge me on are my actions

There’s no such thing as a thought crime

thank u

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On IWTV, unreliable narration, and that train scene

Okay, I never want to be the person who's like 'I have a degree in literature so I am better at watching television than you' but I literally wrote my thesis on unreliable narration, so I want to talk about it for once.

A lot of people seem to have too narrow an idea of what unreliable narration is, to the extent that even the people involved in making the show are hesitant to call the characters, specifically Louis, an unreliable narrator. Because people see that term and read it as 'this character is blatantly lying all the time'. But that is not what unreliable narration is! And it's precisely because this show is so good at playing with actual unreliable narration in a way that is rare, especially on television, that I fell in love with it.

The thing about unreliable narration is that it happens on a spectrum, both in terms of the intentionality of the narrator and in terms of the way in which the narration is presenting information.

Which is why I always thought they might revisit the train scene, and why I think some people who are upset at the idea are not engaging properly with the way the narration in this show functions.

A great paper on unreliable narration is 'Lessons of Weymouth' (by James Phelan and Mary Patricia Martin) - it does a great job at going into all the aspects of unreliability (it defines six different kinds), and it's interesting to think of it in relation to this show. 'Weymouth' refers to a chapter in the novel The Remains of the Day in which the narrator reveals that throughout the story he has been telling, he obfuscated the fact that he was in love with one of the people in the story. Everything he told us was true, in a literal sense, but the meaning of the story changes entirely when we find out that there was a whole aspect of his experience that he left out. It's actually quite similar to how Louis/Lestat is presented in the novel of IWTV, where Louis (our narrator) only talks about Lestat in a negative, hateful way, until near the end of the book when suddenly we get a paragraph where he says

I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.

Which is when we realize that he has left some of his true feelings out of the narration so far.

The show doesn't quite use unreliable narration in the same way, which is smart, because television functions differently from a novel. They actually lampshade this change by making the '73 interview the one from the novel, where Louis is much more dishonest about Lestat from what we hear (he played without one iota of feeling). In 2022, Louis' narration still focuses on Lestat's wrongdoings and glosses over his love for him. But while he refuses to focus on it, now it bleeds into his narration - 'Lestat was my coal fire', 'the earth always felt liquid', etc etc. And because it's television and they are working with a voice-over, they can play around with the contrast between what we hear and what we see. We hear Louis say 'I was being hunted' on top of images of him and Lestat going on dates to the opera and falling in love.

His unreliability is more subtle because of these changes. Like I said, there is a spectrum of unreliable narration, both in terms of how aware the narrator is that he is unreliable (or lying) and in terms of what type of unreliability is used. Example: A narrator describes a room where a murder happened. We later find out that the murderer entered the room through a window that was left open. If the narrator describes the scene without saying the windows are open, he is unreliable. But there are a variety of reasons for why he might not have mentioned it! The narrator can be aware of the omission because he wants to hide this vital information (because he is or wants to help the murderer), but he can also skip it because he is not aware that the detail is important. That's intent. Secondly, in describing the scene, he can say the window was closed (misreporting) or he can not mention the window at all (underreporting). (and so on - there are a lot of different nuances here).

So a narrator who both knowingly lies and does it by describing things that did not happen can exist, but is only a very small fraction of all unreliable narrators.

In IWTV, Louis mostly either unintentionally misreports (it was Armand who saved him, it wasn't raining) or intentionally underreports (not burning Lestat, not talking about their happy times together). Even in the parts where he is the most wrong in what he tells us, he still isn't all the way to 'blatant liar' on the spectrum. Claudia's turning is the biggest 'lie', but by the time of the trial, he clearly has made himself believe the version he told her and doesn't realize it's wrong until he tells Daniel about Lestat's version. That's the arc of these two seasons! Louis is using this second interview to confront the lies he told to himself.

He also, to an extent, underevaluates or even misevaluates in his narration. Which means he doesn't always consider other people's perspective or isn't aware of certain circumstances that might change the meaning of an event. That is what I think The Vampire Lestat will play with. This already happens for people who have read TVL and beyond: we know that Lestat has been abandoned over and over before meeting Louis, so we understand why he reacts so extremely to the thought of Louis leaving him. But Louis doesn't realize that context, so Lestat is villanous in his narration to an extent that Lestat himself would feel is unfair or even false.

What is so important in this show (to me) is that there is not a single scene in it that is revealed to not have happened at all. That would be a cheap way of using unreliable narration, and they're not cheap. It's why I think it's ridiculous that some people say the reunion in 2x08 might not have happened - in the books that's possible, in the show I don't think it is. There are only scenes that have been underreported. Everything with Jonah in the woods happened, but it was raining. Louis slit Lestat's throat, burned a body, and left with Claudia, but in-between, actually, he screamed over his corpse and attacked his daughter. Armand and Lestat were both sitting in the room when 'banishment' happened, but Louis didn't see who was whispering. Claudia was dragged to the house, and Louis begged Lestat to turn her until he gave in. It just...lasted longer, and was more horrifying.

And so the train scene. I have thought for a long time that it would be a scene we revisit from Lestat's pov, and it surprises me that some people are so against the idea. But they seem to think revisiting it means it will be revealed that it did not happen, something that, again, has no precedent in the show. Instead, I have always thought it was underevaluated, if anything, and possibly unintentionally misrepresented. Lestat is at his most cartoonishly evil in it, which is much more in line with his character in the first book than with how the show generally portrays him. The only other time we see him that evil, at least to Louis or Claudia, is in 1x05 in the lead up to the fight - and we already got the more nuanced version of that! It's another scene that was underreported (they literally go to another room which we don't see) and underevaluated (Lestat's trauma influencing his behavior as well as Akasha's blood possibly making him more volatile).

So my guess would be that when we see the train again (or hear about it), he will be much more desperate and scared, which he overcompensates with the theatricality that scared Claudia. And that we will see what came before: him finding Louis close to selfharm, panicking in part because it triggers a memory of Nicki, and going to get Claudia back so Louis doesn't die. And that takes nothing away from Claudia or Louis' narrative! It just enriches the story and shows that there is no objective truth, and narration is almost always somewhere on the sliding scale of unreliability.

(and just so it's clear - having more context and backstory and a fuller sense of the narrative from all sides does not excuse his actions and doesn't mean his abuse is okay etc etc but the morality-in-the-gothic-vampire-show discussion is another post)

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Brazil just had the biggest false flag "communist" terror attack since the military dictatorship lmao

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A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett's The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.

I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.

All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."

But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.

It's intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it's very easy to find, but here's a link for it anyways.

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title of this is just ‘lesbian sex’

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Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”

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"nothing is real atoms never touch each other youve never touched anything in your life" ok. well when i pet my dog he is soft and when he licks my hand it is wet and that is far more real to me than whatevers going on at an atomic level

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face pressed up against your longing

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cant believe a bunch of english kids go through a fuckin cupboard and find a magical kingdom full of wonder and they go “yeah we’re the royal family now”

typical english behaviour

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romantic relationships blah blah blah okay but what about risking everything for your sibling. what about the unwavering love and care that can only come from a parent to a child. what about someone who just wants their best friend back. ever thought of that.

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the love was there. it didnt change anything and it wasnt even thematically relevant and honestly it kinda got annoying to the point where i wished for hatred and malice instead and it ruined the whole thing for me