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Art in the subterranean room of the Théâtre des Vampires

It was the terrible ‘Triumph of Death’ by Breughel, painted on such a massive scale that all the multitude of ghastly figures towered over us in the gloom. Those ruthless skeletons ferrying the helpless dead in a fetid moat or pulling a cart of human skulls,

beheading an outstretched corpse or hanging humans from the gallows.

A bell tolled over the endless hell of scorched and smoking land, towards which great armies of men came with the hideous, mindless march of soldiers to a massacre.

I turned away, but the auburn-haired one touched my hand and led me further along the wall to see ‘The Fall of the Angels’ slowly materializing, with the damned being driven from the celestial heights into a lurid chaos of feasting monsters (...) above to the very height of the mural, where I could make out of the shadows two beautiful angels with trumpets to their lips. And for a second the spell was broken.

The candle rose. And horrors rose all around me: the dumbly passive and degraded damned of Bosch, the bloated, coffined corpses of Traini, the monstrous horsemen of Dürer

The very ceiling writhed with skeletons and moldering dead, with demons and the instruments of pain, as if this were the cathedral of death itself. - Interview with the Vampire

Anne Rice, in the Vampire Companion:

I was very interested in the Northern European artists at that time - Brueguel, Dürer, Bosch - painters who I felt were absolutely grotesque in many regards.

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eglee + touching santiago

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vampiress

claudiafest day two

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Nicolas' Turning Random thoughts...

One horrible realisation I've had from exploring Nicolas' turning...

There's zero rapture in it. And that's how Anne Rice wrote it. Anne, who writes rapture in all other turnings I can think of, no matter how unwanted, no matter how violating, how like rape, how much the predator is a monster... she writes rapture. She writes ecstasy even in most deaths of humans (for the vampire, but often for the victim, too.)

But Nicki's turning? There is no rapture for Lestat, and none for Nicki...

And there's lots to unpick in it... but most tragically of all... I feel like although Lestat deeply loved Nicolas, I feel like it might mean that Lestat did not love Nicolas unconditionally...? Which I just hate the thought of... and yet...

He loved him, yes. So much so he thinks about him still now. But how does Lestat think of Nicolas for eternity? I think Nicolas remains kind of what he was here already - a cipher to Lestat's own (fear of his) lost humanity.

But I think Lestat in that baby-vampire era needed Nicolas to remain his last attachment to his own humanity. If Nicki was still human, somehow Lestat still had a real, tangible connection to his own human self? Lestat could somehow feel human still.

And so he must keep Nicki away from all supernatural things not only to protect his life - but to keep his fully human nature uncorrupted?

And I think this need was greater than his love. And in a horrible way it ties into Nicki's deepest fear....

Lestat perceives art as good if it moves and if it is *human*. Nicki, though, feels he has failed if Lestat/anyone *only* hears beauty in his music when it is hewn from despair. All he needs is for his music to be true... and his despair is not beautiful. So if what is heard is only beauty, Nicki feels unseen.

But I think Baby Vampire Lestat holds human Nicki as beautiful even as he knows he is destroying him, even as he sees his destruction occurring... he sees Nicki's destruction even as somehow beautiful art - as it is still human... Nicki is still human... right until it is too late.... and there is only death or dissolution for Nicki…

And that's literally an escalation of Nicki's fears about art turned into Lestat's perception of his entire self?

And, like - think on Lestat's joy when he stands outside Nicki's apartment and Nicki still senses Lestat's *human* self... Lestat *needs* that from Nicki... and I think he thinks he can somehow preserve or save or rescue that Nicki... but really the human Nicolas died the same day the human Lestat vanished with no explanation. That's when Nicolas, too was set on a new path that only gets increasingly impossible for there to be any good end to.

And then in turning Nicki into a vampire, Lestat is literally killing everything he loves about Nicki... and confirming Nicki's own deep-seated fears that all he is is a chasm of evil at the same time. Lestat essentially is murdering Nicki and the irony is it sort of would have been kinder to both Nicolas and himself to have just killed him. But he cannot as he does love him...

And Nicki, I'm sure would imagine there would have been rapture in his turning... as I am sure he knew that rapture even when violated and tortured by The Children of Darkness. We know he did, because Lestat comments on it.

And I'm sure Nicki would imagine the feeling would be deeper with Lestat.

And I am sure Lestat would imagine it would be so with Nicki for him too.

But it isn't - not for either of them.

It is HORROR. It is DEATH. It is the murder of a soul in a way vampire turnings aren't usually....

I mean.. we can also say that at this time, Lestat was so young in mortal years and a baby in vampire years, and had suffered a huge amount of trauma himself. So he always is trying to protect Nicolas by staying away from him.

But there are plenty of times before he turns Nicki when Lestat shows he understands how he is driving Nicki mad in how distant to him he remains. But he doesn't do anything at all about it.

The thing is, Nicolas' mind was always fragile and he would never have lived long - as mortal or vampire... but the real tragedy as I see it is not Nicolas' death... rather that it ended without love. Because there was a way that even though Nicolas was always destined to die, love did not need to die. It could have ended in love. There was a way that could have been.

Well... these are just random train-of-thought thoughts I have been having. (Not present in the thing I am writing at the moment... but rather just inspired by my horror at the mutually terrible and utterly alienating and death-feeling, revulsion of Nicolas' turning... which... y'know ENJOY when I eventually get around to posting that.... It is awful. For everyone.)

But even if you disagree with all of this.... are there other vampire turnings that involve zero rapture to them? Working on this one, I note that even from Lestat's description of Nicolas' turning, once he has made Nicki a vampire - in the very first second - when Nicki can't yet stand to support himself - Lestat himself describes that he holds Nicki up at arm's length... like the instant Nicki is a vampire... Lestat is utterly revulsed by the sight of him already - immediately as he turns him. And I am sure Nicki would feel that too.

Of course Lestat is repulsed! Lestat has killed what he loved in Nicki - his humanity... His soul... And yet, Nicki's humanity was destroying him...

And that was not art. It was REAL.

THE TRAGEDY!

Well, this is just train-of-thought commenting here... but y'know.

And it is no criticism of Lestat... he was a baby vampire and really young as a mortal... and Nicki always tried to his the depth of his darkness from Lestat... so it isn't Lestat's fault that there was so much he didn't know. But it's still Such Tragedy.... no?

But I am sure many disagree - I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts of the lack of rapture in Nicolas' turning for both parties... and on your thinking on why, or on other such turnings that come to mind where it was this way...???

And also... the utter lack of intimacy in Nicki's turning... even though Vampire Lestat does feel both lust towards human Nicki and obviously vampiric predatory desire.

Oof... there's so much going on, isn't there!

But it's that complete lack of rapture... and that instant revulsion... and I guess only added to as Vampire Nicki is pure-vampire... he *is* Lestat's greatest fear. And Lestat created that....

It's so Gothic and AWFUL!

And why... because often the implication is that the rapture and ecstasy is something inherent in The Blood... but... rather... maybe rapture in Anne's vampire turnings isn't just biological or supernatural, but requires some kind of authentic connection or recognition.

Even Magnus, total monster that he is who rapes Lestat into vampirism, sees something in Lestat and grants him immortality as dark gift.

But Lestat, in turning Nicolas, is acting against his own deeper knowledge of what Nicolas needs... He's enacting a kind of spiritual violence... is it that that poisons the very essence of the transformation?

The absence of rapture becomes a symptom of the fundamental wrongness of the act itself?

I always wonder - that line in TVL where Lestat says it "seemed" that Gabrielle said to Lestat "Do not do this thing..." But Gabrielle doesn't actually *say* it. Does Gabrielle speak it in Lestat's mind?

Or was it always actually in Lestat's own mind? Did he know... probably on a level he couldn't consciously admit to himself that he shouldn't turn Nicolas?

But of course.... what else could Lestat do? I mean... could Lestat himself have survived either killing Nicolas, or leaving him as a human and having to watch Nicki's descent go beyond what even Lestat could perceive as artistic beauty into his eventual utter destruction?

No. I don't think Lestat could have borne it....

But that's the thing.. it's a tragedy for Lestat... but for Nicolas it's more than that.  It kills love.  It annihilates love.

Think about what Nicolas experiences: the person he loves most, who claims to love him, who he's been desperately trying to reach and understand... that person ultimately sees him as something to be preserved like a beautiful object rather than truly known. And then, in the act that should be the ultimate intimacy - the sharing of immortal life - there's nothing. No rapture, no connection, just immediate revulsion and distance.

For Nicolas, it would confirm every terrible thing he believed about himself - that he's fundamentally unlovable, that even his music (his soul's expression) is misunderstood, that what others call love is really just their own needs projected onto him. 

What worse could you do to someone that you genuinely love?

Gosh, I hope Lestat never thought about it this deeply from Nicki's point of view (happily, Lestat generally avoids this degree of introspection other than of his own mind I think, so hopefully he remains oblivious to this level of Nicolas' experience... if you're out there, Lestat DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT, hahahahahah!)

And again... Lestat was simply young and in an impossible scenario and traumatised and didn't have the capacity to do more than he did.

But it doesn't alter the result....

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I'm always here for some sensual paradise/garden imagery, and clearly, so was Anne Rice because there's A LOT in these books <3

Watercolours, gouache, coloured pencils

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Thank you Carol Cutshall!!!

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You guys ever think about how Daniel Molloy is Armand's one and only fledgling?

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not the first time you meet, but the first time you recognize each other.

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I love how Devil's Minion Nation (myself included) preface every bit of speculation with "I KNOW I'M BEING DELUSIONAL..."

Baby, no! We're not being any more or less delusional than anybody else speculating about stuff! We know we're getting DM in some capacity at some point. Let yourself have some fun with it!

And I hope we get so much juicy Devil's Minion content, past and present, so we can all collectively have a great time giggling, kicking our feet, and feeling smug and satisfied.

Amen.

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my favorite thing about this vampire show is that it's fanfic.

obviously it's built off the books, to varying degrees, and also the film, and i'd bet from interviews with Anne Rice (who was nothing if not inconsistent)

but it's not an adaptation of the material so much as an exploration of it, a conversation (sometimes an argument) about the books, the contradictions, the characters. everyone has a different view and they spend half of the episode bickering, venting their case as to why their point of view is the right, how Lestat really dressed, what really happened to Claudia. or whatever.

it's consistently respectful without ever being slavish in the least and even when it does stuff i disagree with (often) it's still ...

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Interview with the vampire, episode 4, second season.

Claudia is playing Lulu, a character who believes that she is a bird and. By the end of the play, Lulu throws herself out of the window, believing she can fly. She can’t.

The poem Ismália, by the Brazilian writer Alphonsus de Guimarães, tells the short tale of Ismália, a woman who went crazy. In the poem, she fells off her tower trying to reach the moon.

Both Lulu and Ismália thought they could fly. Both died, Lulu by the ground, Ismália by the ocean.

xx

Ismália

Quando Ismália enlouqueceu,

Pôs-se na torre a sonhar...

Viu uma lua no céu,

Viu outra lua no mar.

No sonho em que se perdeu,

Banhou-se toda em luar...

Queria subir ao céu,

Queria descer ao mar...

E, no desvario seu,

Na torre pôs-se a cantar...

Estava perto do céu,

Estava longe do mar...

E como um anjo pendeu

As asas para voar...

Queria a lua do céu,

Queria a lua do mar...

As asas que Deus lhe deu

Ruflaram de par em par...

Sua alma subiu ao céu,

Seu corpo desceu ao mar...

translation in English:

When Ismália went crazy,

She began dreaming atop the tower...

She saw a moon in the sky,

She saw another moon in the sea.

In the dream in which she lost herself,

She bathed in moonlight...

She wanted to go up to the sky,

She wanted to go down to the sea...

And, in her folly,

She began singing atop the tower...

She was close to the sky,

She was far from the sea...

And like an angel,

She swung her wings to fly...

She wanted the moon up in the sky

She wanted the moon down in the sea…

The wings God gave her

Soared wide open...

Her soul went up to the sky,

Her body fell down into the sea...

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What with how the past several decades of Dracula adaptations have been going, I feel like there's a golden opportunity for a meta version that appears to be going the "reincarnated One True Love" route at first, only for Mina to quickly figure out that this is just a pickup line/recurring scam Dracula dusts off every century or two. I'm picturing one of the Brides taking a weary drag on a cigarette all like "he said he'd crossed Oceans of Time to find you too, huh?"

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re: the theater relocation, didn't Lestat make a sly dig about how he 'preferred the old place' in the trial ep? I know it was scripted by Armand, but as you said, there's no obvious reason (afaik) to lie about the TdV downsizing to a smaller, shabbier location. And it sounds to me like the kind of jab Lestat might've made of his own accord?

I guess there may be a dramatic reason behind it, but it honestly could be mundane too. By the 1940's cinemas were drawing way bigger audiences & putting many theaters out of business, even in a cultural hub like Paris. Clearly the TdV had their niche, but their weird plays would never attract wealthy Parisians or fill out a huge fancy theater. Tbh I kinda thought it was a sign that Armand didn't really have his finger on the pulse of what humanity wanted anymore, but he'd cling to the shell of TdV out of habit even as their art became more & more of an obsolete novelty act. Hell, he likely never understood what the theater meant to Lestat, he was only ever going through the motions. Imho an eventual downsize was inevitable.

It's still possible there was a big catastrophe at the old place though, can't wait to find out!

Me either :)

And yes, there was that jab, and it will be very interesting if and how they want to include a "reason" for the switch... but as you said, it could also have been more... financial reasons :)))

We'll likely see that.

But if it WERE financial reasons then I find the moved entombed vampires mightily interesting I have to say, because that then speaks its own language... and I do wonder if Armand went and took the stone tablets we saw in his fanfic tale (and it will be interesting if we will see that again in s3) and hung them up somewhere there as well?? I mean, some of his coven were of the old "children of darkness", too.

I wonder how that dynamic played into it all, and it will be interesting to see if they will pull back some of the "old" theater vampires for s3 (I'd love that, actually).

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Two freaks at the club: the dry-humping prequel~*

And a close-up <3

Also on Bsky!

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Genevieve Dunne (Eglee) and Ben Daniels (Santiago) behind the scenes of Interview With The Vampire

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Rewatching one of Sams interviews and I love how he low key confirmed that the theater was not supposed to be what it became. Sam has been pretty open about that aspect, mainly that Lestat does not like what the theater has become by 1940 and I do think (hope) they stick closer to the books with that one. Lestat loved being an actor and worshipped the theater!

I think they will maybe show how Nicki played a part in how the theater changed. And my theory is also that they relocated to the new location due to Nikkis death. When he burned he burned down along with the old theater and then they moved to the new one.

Also, I do hope when they revisit the trial they play up this aspect as well, like Sam pointed out some Horrific things have happened to Lestat related to the theater (magnus, Nicki's death) and being back in that space to essentially play a part to condemn his family via public humiliation must be torture for him and I am looking forward to the show explicitly describing this.

I mean, for a show this caliber it has to mean something that the theater in Armand's little fanfic retelling is a very different one to the one we saw in Louis' tale.

I mean, both were a tale... but I don't think Armand would go and remake that theater into something so glamorous and then his own theater in... well, not as glamorous one, you know? :) So there is truth there that this show will be sure to tap into.

Nicolas' influence will surely be part of it all - it could be that he burned it down - it will be very interesting to see how he got to be in the catacombs, that's for sure (if he really was there... I mean, we see Louis' memories there, but we know they were edited. So was Nicolas' really entombed there? Or was he long gone, and Armand just put that memory there from his own maybe? That remains to be seen...)

I think the trial will be one of those things, that, if and when seen in whole context, it will be a very, very different beast.

There are hints aplenty already. Lestat's behavior, the swaying, the coven "whammying" Madeleine. The moving pieces on the stage, the obvious discrepancies we know about. Sam saying he has the "real trial script", and that extra back then, noting how they put clues in...

I do expect us to see more of it all - next season Lestat will be a LOT on (various) stages :)) - and yes, in all likelihood dragged off some of these stages, too, if certain comments of "being kidnapped off the stage" will hold.