The Vampire Lestat and his Two Wild Sides
I wanted to return to the topic of vampires after stewing on it for a while; I ran a campaign of Vampire; The Masquerade with some friends, which covers a lot of different folklore involving vampires, so I had fun trying to connect Lestat and Louis to my own interactions with the monster.
I read a bit of the actual novel Interview with a Vampire, but also some of the beginings of the graphic novel that focused on Lestat's actual experience and point of view rather than Louis'. It was really interesting to see the actual variants in the ways the two interpreted Lestat's personality and mannerisms. On one hand, Louis' clear repulsion of Lestat's bestial and un-concerned ferocity seems pretty well justified. Lestat, time and time again, proves himself to be needlessly cruel, horrifically wild, and really just a top-notch ass.
But, as can be expected in the comic from his pov., he's just a fun-loving party animal, who's astounded to hear his old buddy Louis has published a novel about him. It was almost laughable coming from some of the horrific stuff from the novel, like Lestat turning Claudia to keep a hand on Louis (and the seriously messed up nature of Caudia herself!) He genuinely comes out of the ground, from his deep dark vampire stasis, to hear and play rock music with a band known as 'Satan's Night Out'. Nothing could top my happiness knowing Lestat physically crawled back out of the ground to be involved with Glam-Rock.
He also partook in something surprising after reading the novel; working up the food-chain, so to speak, feasting on animals in the time after he arose before moving onto humans. Anne Rice's novel Lestat would have never stooped to that level; he would have grabbed the nearest person off the street-side and bled them dry. But graphic novel Lestat was even so picky as to drain specific humans; he went after people who had killed other people themselves.
Super interesting, especially since Lestat in the novel really was not picky with who he was getting his food from; he fixated on certain people, absolutely. But he did not have the moral compass to single out bad humans to kill, and it was interesting to see the reversal. I think it was really just to make him more appealing to readers of the comic; no one would sympathize with a man who immediately killed the first innocent they saw, especially in his initial introduction. Humanizing a monster like Lestat was an interesting choice to say the least, I know I had a lot more fun seeing the drama of the actual novel play out than the watered down version of Lestat that was introduced to me in the comic.
Really, the story of Lestat and Louis was something interesting! I'm not a super big fan of dramatics of the sort, but the novel had a lot of interesting dynamics within vampire society and the character's own moral hangups. Overall, I'll be keeping Lestat in mind, the original, gruesome, decadently savage Lestat, when I see the next hit vampire saga out and about.
I read a bit of the actual novel Interview with a Vampire, but also some of the beginings of the graphic novel that focused on Lestat's actual experience and point of view rather than Louis'. It was really interesting to see the actual variants in the ways the two interpreted Lestat's personality and mannerisms. On one hand, Louis' clear repulsion of Lestat's bestial and un-concerned ferocity seems pretty well justified. Lestat, time and time again, proves himself to be needlessly cruel, horrifically wild, and really just a top-notch ass.
But, as can be expected in the comic from his pov., he's just a fun-loving party animal, who's astounded to hear his old buddy Louis has published a novel about him. It was almost laughable coming from some of the horrific stuff from the novel, like Lestat turning Claudia to keep a hand on Louis (and the seriously messed up nature of Caudia herself!) He genuinely comes out of the ground, from his deep dark vampire stasis, to hear and play rock music with a band known as 'Satan's Night Out'. Nothing could top my happiness knowing Lestat physically crawled back out of the ground to be involved with Glam-Rock.
He also partook in something surprising after reading the novel; working up the food-chain, so to speak, feasting on animals in the time after he arose before moving onto humans. Anne Rice's novel Lestat would have never stooped to that level; he would have grabbed the nearest person off the street-side and bled them dry. But graphic novel Lestat was even so picky as to drain specific humans; he went after people who had killed other people themselves.
Super interesting, especially since Lestat in the novel really was not picky with who he was getting his food from; he fixated on certain people, absolutely. But he did not have the moral compass to single out bad humans to kill, and it was interesting to see the reversal. I think it was really just to make him more appealing to readers of the comic; no one would sympathize with a man who immediately killed the first innocent they saw, especially in his initial introduction. Humanizing a monster like Lestat was an interesting choice to say the least, I know I had a lot more fun seeing the drama of the actual novel play out than the watered down version of Lestat that was introduced to me in the comic.
Really, the story of Lestat and Louis was something interesting! I'm not a super big fan of dramatics of the sort, but the novel had a lot of interesting dynamics within vampire society and the character's own moral hangups. Overall, I'll be keeping Lestat in mind, the original, gruesome, decadently savage Lestat, when I see the next hit vampire saga out and about.
When finding out about Lestat's POV, were you presented with the nature of his actions? Does he have a motive to be so messed up? That is something I was curious about after I finished reading Interview With a Vampire.
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