#THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF LOUIS IS THAT HE IS THE WEAKEST AND MOST HUMAN VAMPIRE

[nightcolorz]

so funny that people are only simping this hard for Louis because he tells us every single episode he's the saddest most tragic serial killer in the land. Literally seeing people with my own eyes say Louis has experienced trauma and loss Armand can never imagine under gifs of Louis making fun of human trafficking and the palazzo attack.

Like obviously Armand is a deranged bbgirl torturing and manipulating those men for love!! But people treat it like it's a 1v1 pvp whoever has the weakest finishing move is the Objective Innocent Victim, like abusive relationships between two mass murderers aren't more complex than numerically tallying who you think has the most strength points at any given moment. like louis has barely been concealing his disdain for armand since they met. He gives armand NOTHING. all he does is recreate every shitty abusive act he's ever complained about other people doing to him and doing them to armand.

swear the only thing that man thinks about when armand shares his tragic backstory is embarrassment at finding out that the entire time he was bragging about how everyone in the avant-garde movement tooootally like his art more than Picasso, Armand had paintings in the louvre.

Cw iwtv typical sexual abuse talk and spoilers for iwtv s2

ur so right literally say that shit 🙏‼️ I love Louis and I honestly find it so gross ?? How some people act like Louis is only capable of being objectively the exclusive victim in any given situation or relationship. like it’s fucking weird that someone would reduce him so exclusively to victimhood bcus he was in an abusive relationship to point where theyd insist Louis is not capable of causing harm or being a complex flawed person beyond his victim hood. It takes away his agency and reduces everything that is interesting about his character to one dimensional victim which like, why would u die on that hill as someone who loves Louis’s character?? It’s once again, fucking weird. Louis has been presented to us from the beginning as capable of violence cruelty and selfishness, and him being abused by lestat doesn’t take away his capability of being cruel to Armand 💀 I think that some people were so attached to their assumption pre s2 that Armand would be lestat part 2 who is even more abusive that they refuse to accept or embrace the much more complex reality. Loumand is toxic but very much mutually so, there has been thus far nothing to suggest that Armand is forcing Louis to be with him or abusing him in anyway akin to how lestat abused Louis. Jacob Anderson has even spoken about how louis and Armand are mutually toxic and louis mistreats Armand 😭and louis being a fucked up person is like, smth I wouldn’t understand why anybody would want to deny, it’s very overt. And dying on the hill of “Louis is never ever bad” is like, very weird to me especially since Louis is like canonically capable of being sexually exploitative (literally a pimp) and violent and selfish. Like I love Louis!! In all his horribleness 🙏 and you can too believe me 😭

it’s also fucking weird to insist that Armand is always 100% being manipulative and abusive in everything he does towards Louis bcus, especially in the case of him talking about his trauma, it makes some rlly uncomfortable and gross implications?! Like, I’m not here to say that Armand is the most ideal partner of all time who does no wrong 💀 obviously, he’s pretty mf gaslighty and horrible and violent, but suggesting that what is presented non ambiguously as Armand being vulnerable with Louis about his sexual abuse trauma because louis wanted to know the real him is definitely abuse and manipulation is…like fucked up? 😭 like?? The jump to “oh this character I don’t like is talking about being sexually abused to his partner after having a conversation about how they aren’t vulnerable enough with each other, yes this is Manipulative” is genuinely kind of fucking insane I’m sorry 😭🙏 what Armand has been through is incredibly horrific and noticeably difficult for him to talk about and the assumption that since everything is black and white and Armand is bad he must be talking about this with evil intent is dumb and it’s ignorant. Like yes abuse victim talking about his abuse to his partner who explicitly asked for him to share that, wow that is so emotionally manipulative of him. What a hill to die on 🙏I hope u guys who think like this don’t think this way about ur friends when they vent to u cuz omg 😭

I guess my point with this is that I’ve noticed a lot of people in their refusal to interpret Louis as anything but unambiguously in the right all the time r being like unintentionally offensive and ignorant in a way that’s wild to me 😭 Like guuuys, you can love Louis and talk about how his relationship with Armand is bad for him and Armand harms him without insisting that Louis mockingly telling Armand that the man who groomed and raped him as a child “made him into a little bitch” was justified 😭. Also, friendly reminder that Louis’s daughter was raped and abused in a similar way that Armand was, which rlly goes to show imo how fucked up the way he treats Armand’s sexual abuse is. Like if he is so willing to say shit like that to Armand the moment they have an argument I imagine that his empathy for Claudia does not extend so far. He still was a pimp lol 🙏 and it’s been pretty overtly portrayed time and time again that living a good portion of his life having a position of power where he sexually exploits women for money has limited Louis’s perspective and capabilities for empathy for the people who have been sexually abused in his life 🙏 and guess what!! 😋 this is the horrible abusive murderer show, u can still love Louis (I do) while knowing he is horrible 🙏

thanks sm for the ask ‼️

[covenofthearticulate]

ROLIN JONES TURN ON YOUR LOCATION I JUST WANT TO TALK

[sangcreole-archived]

(omg i had no idea it was your birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!) ok so i listen to the coven podcast and knowing that Louis is your favorite vc character, could you tell me why? what made you fall in love with him? what do you like about him, what do you not like? (ps i love louis too so if you ever need to just wanna rant abt him i am here. pps, I will probably come back with some deep ass question abt Louis at some point)

//Hey thanks so much for the birthday wishes and such a great question!

GOD I love Louis for so many different reasons and could really go on for days lmao but I think the main reason I love Louis so much is that he reminds me why humanity and life is so precious. I’ve always found his character interesting because as one of the first “reluctant vampire” tropes, he was vampire I was introduced to who had a moral compass. 

This is going to sound a little weird and maybe a bit narcissistic, but for my job training, I had to take this personality test called the Clifton Strengths Analysis test, which will tell you what your strongest personal and leaderships skills are. My number one “strength” was empathy. And while I wasn’t thrilled to have empathy as my strongest quality, I’ve actually learned to love it, through learning how Louis utilizes this quality throughout the series.

When we first meet Louis, he is the personification of guilt because of what happened with his brother, but that guilt sticks with him throughout his transformation, and it becomes incredibly important as he attempts to navigate the new world as a transcended being. He is conflicted as hell, and insists on punishing himself via starvation because he is so heartsick and guilty and full of grief both for his brother, and for his humanity. When he is first turned, the empathy that he possesses doesn’t exactly work in his favor. He is overly empathetic, and refuses to take life because he empathizes too much with everyone (this is doubly hard considering that he does not have the mind gift, so he cannot weed out the bad seeds from the good ones; he tends to assume most people are innocent, or at least undeserving of death). But as he grows older and begins to figure stuff out, I think he is finally able to sympathize and empathize with humans in a gentler way, and I really admire that. He eventually learns to exist in the world and admire the human beings that he walks amongst, and I love that about him. In fact, one of my favorite moments in the series is when he stands up to Akasha and says: 

“Then kill me! I wish that you would. But don’t kill human beings! Don’t interfere with them. Even if they kill each other! Give them time to see this new vision realized; give the cities of the West, corrupt as they may be, time to take their ideals to a suffering and blighted world.”

He is fiercely attached to the human race, even though he is no longer a part of it, and he’s even willing to risk his life for them. 

Another of my favorite things about Louis is that he’s ridiculously complex and dichotomous as a character, which makes him super interesting in my eyes. You know that phrase: “I’m lover, not a fighter, but I’ll still kick your ass”? Yeah, that’s Louis. Like I said earlier, he’s very empathetic and intuitive and emotional, and he purposefully remains the weakest vampire and rejects the vampiric gifts because he wants to remain as close to being human as possible. Yet his determination in fighting the vampiric gifts makes him incredibly strong in a different way, and I really admire that. Louis, unlike Lestat, Armand, Marius, and most of the main characters of the series, has never went under ground. He has stayed alive and sentient for two and a half centuries without needing a break. His stamina and stubbornness are incredible, and yet when people think of Louis, these usually aren’t the first qualities that come to mind. Louis is a Romantic, melancholic beauty, sure, but he’s also like a great oak tree: strong and solid and unyielding. 

And at the end of the day, he’s a straight up ruthless killer. We see this in his treatment of not only Lestat, but Armand’s entire coven. And while these were killings of passion, it is also evident that he is a meticulous and heartless killer when it comes to his hunting methods.  In fact, one of my favorite moments in the series is when the Queen of the Damned herself calls him out and says: “Yet you yourself are the most predatory of all the immortals here. You kill without regard for age or sex or will to live.” So how can someone so full of emotion and empathy kill so carelessly? I think the answer lies in the fact that he does not have the mind gift, and has never willingly accepted or used it, so he cannot pick out the “evildoers” like the others, and therefore must kill indiscriminately. But one thing that I also headcanon is that because Louis is so constantly tormented by guilt and overwhelmed by emotions, he could never sustain himself if he didn’t have some way to switch the emotions off; he’d be too drained to do anything (in fact, we even see this scenario play out in his first few years when he’s feeding on chickens and rats). So he eventually learns how to switch those emotions off when he hunts. It’s a defense mechanism. And while it ensures his survival, it also makes him dangerous as fuck, because that means he can switch of his empathy and love for mankind like a fucking light switch.

ANYWAY, I think my main love for Louis can be summed up in this description of him by Marius:

“Just a little blood, and Louis might be stronger, true, but then he might lose the human tenderness, the human wisdom … the gift of knowing others’ suffering with which Louis had probably been born”

TL;DR: I love Louis because he is so complex and though he is the most human-like vampire who possesses an aching tenderness and erudite nature that speaks to my very soul, he is also a dangerous badass whose moral stance is highly debatable. I love all sides of him!!

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[covenofthearticulate]

Tbh I don't like Claudia that much after the insinuation that how easy it is to manipulate Louis. To me her humiliating treatment of Louis is worse than Lestat's slit throat. Granted she's not alone to share that opinion about Louis and he played his part in her tragic story too. But she has the attitude of shitting on the same plate she's eating from. A spoilt brat with hardly any redeeming character. She just knows how to play the "5 year old in body" card well.

For some reason, Louis also makes himself most susceptible to Claudia's emotional abuse, less like a parent and more like a brainwashed puppet. It makes him less believable to be someone running a plantation or handling the family finances. Maybe by standing up to her/disciplining her with a firm "NO" like a child (her weakest point), he will learn how not to be taken advantage of by people.

LMAO that is totally fair! I have a very love/hate relationship with Claudia as well for the same kinds of reasons. I think as a character she is absolutely fascinating! Like, we all talk about Louis being this symbol of melancholy and depression, but to me, Claudia has always been the heart of tragedy in IWTV. She really captures the essence of horror that drive's Anne Rice's vampirism, like yes all vampires are killers, but Claudia embodies horror beyond the blood and gore, she is a fucking terrifying case study of what it's like to be trapped inside your own body.

But you're right— Claudia is spoiled! She's bratty! She's manipulative and every bit as evil as Lestat raised her to be! She hated Louis and Lestat, for very good reasons. But again, I think even that smoldering hatred in her character earns some sympathy in my book because she doesn't know how to live any other way. She was raised as a vampire, she was never really human.

Also, like. In regards to her manipulating Louis: it obviously sucks for Louis, but from Claudia's perspective, it's a survival skill. She's not strong enough to physically defend herself, so she has to latch onto Louis to do her bidding for her, or at the very least protect her from Lestat.

In terms of "Louis also makes himself most susceptible to Claudia's emotional abuse" I don't think that's true! Did Claudia take advantage of his love for her? Sure. But you also have to remember...Louis felt utterly trapped with Lestat at the time, and also honestly I think part of him still felt so guilty for turning Claudia that he looked to her to punish him for it. It's not so black and white! Louis isn't the Poor Little Meow Meow people make him out to be! He has different motives of his own and I think it's unfair to blame everything entirely on Claudia taking advantage of him!

Idk man. in theory I agree, like, that girl gets on my damn nerves too. HOWEVER I don't think you can look at her actions without acknowledging the fact that 1. Claudia has literally 0 ties to the outside world and thus is dependent on Louis 2. She was raised to be manipulative and cruel, only she turned out much worse than anyone expected because she has 0 humanity in her.