Surprises from reading IWTV for the first time I knew the TV show was a reinvention/reinterpretation from the books, but just coming off of re-watching the movie there were some things that I was surprised to find out: - Louis helps Lestat kill someone before he's turned him into a vampire (???) - Louis kills Lestat's father but makes him forgive him first without knowing the full story (it's like a mercy killing because the old man is dying so that "merciful death" nickname is a whole thing isn't it) - Louis kills a priest for being understandably annoyed when someone confesses to have been killing for a hundred years (did you think he wouldn't be offended be serious louis) - Louis says killing people was not a moral, but an aesthetic choice (very surprised, I thought the killing people was the main point of conflict but no?)

- There's a subplot with another wealthy slave-owning family where Louis tries to stop Lestat from killing a young man and is involved with his sister named Babette when he fails (it doesn't go well for her...) - Louis knows that Lestat wanted to be priest but was taken out of school by his father - Lestat calls books "mortal nonsense" (lol) - Louis' late brother who had religious visions also had yellow hair so parallels - Louis is weird about money (he's spending all my money, but he never has trouble getting his own, I have to manage everything, I keep him dependent on me, etc., etc.) - Lestat massacres the slaves on his way out, and Louis appears to join him (Very hard to tell for sure) - Louis drags nearly everything about Lestat except for his physical appearance - Lestat falls asleep at the opera (they're long Louis!) - Lestat loves Macbeth and will shout lines from the play at passersby on the way home (unfortunately that's the love of your life) - Claudia is colder and creepier in the book (it's interesting that she never plays music after Lestat is gone...) - Lestat threatens to kill Claudia all the time behind her back and at least once to her face - Louis notices that Lestat is afraid when Claudia asks questions about vampires stuff - Lestat, in a clear fib, tells them there's no other vampires besides them - Claudia tells Louis that she's going to kill Lestat and he's in the room where it all goes down - Claudia gots the hubris ("Do you think I will have my power and his when I take him?") - She is also super convinced that Lestat is dead the second time, but girl why? - Claudia and Louis have troubles before Armand shows up stemming from the murder of Lestat (she did tell you what she was going to do!) - Louis pretends to a vampire hunter to explain some weird stuff in Eastern Europe where they find mindless vampires (like some else said, why would you bring your 5 year old daughter to the vampire hunt??) - When they can't find any other vampires like them, Louis is like I might have believed that we were the only ones if Lestat was the kind of person to have been some kind of serious sorcerer — but he clearly ain't (lol) - Louis is totally head-over-heels ignoring all red flags and ready to go as soon as Armand shows up (even after Armand is like killing vampires is exciting that's why it's forbidden and btw I used my powers to influence you to make Madeline a vampire...) - Madeline is a dollmaker and makes elegant miniature furniture for Claudia so she lives like a fairy queen - Armand keeps going on and on about a tower and how a healthy vampire would survive falling off it (-_-) - Armand is like yes, mindless vampire are called revenants and it's like how do you know that but no one asks - Lestat is in Paris when Claudia is killed, clearly tricked and confused he thinks he can take Louis home with him (He is also afraid of Armand. Insane that there's like ten years between the publication of IWTV and TVL, it's so clear that something went down between the two of them but there's zero hints in IWTV on what it was) - Lestat is frantic and weepy when Louis sees him in his grey gardens area. Louis thinks he is dying the way vampires die according to Armand, he can no longer endure immortal life (maybe it was the being murdered more than once that got to him Louis? Just maybe that might have had some effect...) Overall, I found book!Louis infuriating, hypocritical, complicit (NOT passive) and kind of self-involved. Impossible to tell what it felt like to read it for the first time without having knowledge from later books. Reading TVL makes me more sympathetic towards book!Louis because there's just so much he doesn't and couldn't know — especially about Armand and his hypno-powers. Obviously, it's very likely that he was doing a similar thing to Louis to what he tried to do to Lestat. Also, Lestat's version of himself sounds exhausting. He wants to go out every night!!