maybe i want to be joyfully joyless!

louis...that vile creature you insist on calling your daughtersister keeps pointing at different bugs on the sidewalk and saying "that's you". how do i make her stop. louis this is most vexing. she said i was a slúg, louis. a horrible slimy slúg. i am not a slug. i am like a venomous butterfly. tell her i am like a butterfly, louis.

glasses version + additional sketches

it's frustrating to me that people seem to earnestly and in good faith think analyzing louis in a feminized position ignores or obfuscates race. as if the collapses and contradictions of the public and domestic spheres were not the bread and butter of the first season and as if extralegal marriages between women of color and european men were not part and parcel of french and spanish colonies and as if that past didnt linger over 1910s new orleans...behind those "don't forget about race" posts is the implicit belief that a subject cannot be racialized and gendered at the same time. which is crazy like i'm sorry that's insane. Obviously i understand the difference between LDPDL and betty draper that doesn't change their shared positionality in their respective nuclear family units? and relatedly it's also crucial that louis coveted the private feminization and that's part of his blaming himself for claudia's death and his own abuse. i'm really not sure how else we're supposed to read him describing his forced and blissful submission to lestat in 1.1 as "black tar heroin" or him mimicking that posture with armand in 2.6 but in the lestat role and that being the hollow basis of his argument to claudia that armand belongs to him rather than the inverse. yes i am aware femininity and bottoming and submission are all discrete things but between the above and the culminating mother and child painting at the end when louis resolves to live honestly, to live the immortality lestat gave him as a gift-- the text clearly . CLEARLY shows that they are not discrete for louis. also like these takes are saying he cant be an innately feminine person because that would mean he innately wanted to be abused / racially subjugated. When thats what louis said to himself for 77 years and unlearned at the end of the story?

Wh-What human would want me? Perverts? […] or little boys? INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE | 1x05 A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart

in some ways louis ‘killing’ lestat is the most romantic moment of the whole season, bc it’s one of the few times that they both understand the gesture (of louis not actually killing lestat) for exactly what it is - louis being horribly, terribly, irrevocably in love with lestat.

Interview with the Vampire | 1.06 

i read little to no iwtv fic anymore and one major reason is that even well-written iwtv fic is impossible for me to enjoy if louis is treated like set dressing. like if we're lightly rehashing canon details so you know where the story is situated and the author has to begrudgingly admit louis is there, even as every interaction every other two characters have in the show is IN REALITY hinging upon their feelings for / actions around Louis. treating him like a fucking ghost. treating him like he's dead. the greatest invention of the show, the MOST CENTRAL CHARACTER. oh thank god we can write fic that isn't about THAT GUY, RIGHT? it's so fucking ugly

the point of Fandom for me is like okay here's a bunch of people making gifsets of Louis so i can slow down and look at Louis longer and think about him differently. you know, the main character from the TV show. and some of you just want to shove the TV show out of the way to do something else, but still call it IWTV for no reason other than the way transformative works are degraded under current intellectual property laws (the lasting precedent set by ANNE RICE HERSELF in response to the milennium copyright act!). like you're doing something too close to the show to not fear bogus copyright strikes, but producing content that is totally unrecognizable to somebody whose foundation is THE SHOW and not "THE FANDOM"! and THE FANDOM is as racist as anne o'brien rice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i love bonkers porn and wildly transformative interpretations of work btw this is not a demand that other's creativity adhere to my personal taste. what i am identifying is a LIMITING tendency and i want to break more and more derivative (not a dirty word) artworks out of it. i am looking at the same patterns re-hashing in every so-called "fandom" i find myself on the periphery of and it is maddening lol. something about it happening to Louis feels so especially egregious. here's a zillion-dimensional character like a fuckin diamond and "fans" would prefer to go to the Shapes Store for some more Squares. what. some combo of rice's legacy of racism and copyright abuse paired with the very open and, dare i say, gleeful antiblack racism of shared-for-free Made For the Love of the Game devil's minion content is getting my fucking hackles up. it sucks so so bad.

Delainey Hayles as Claudia in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE | SEASON 2

Interview with the Vampire Season 1 | Episode 3 "Is My Very Nature That of a Devil"

S1 Claudia study :>