Utsukushii Kare S2E4: Face Me Straight On

Utsukushii Kare S2E4: “face me straight on”

Thanks to @linnie-la91 for this screenshot. This line, along with the one following it, ended up being a pretty good summary for this whole danged season: “But he’s a weirdo. We always fight.” Thankfully, the season ended with Kiyoi and his weirdo getting along better.

At long last, here are my thoughts on the big moments in season 2 episode 4 of Utsukushii Kare. There were a lot of them! I’m going to touch on some of the psychology threads I’ve been examining throughout this season but I’ll save my really in-depth analysis of those for another post on the season as a whole. 

Every episode of this season has been packed with character development and things that both clarify and chart changes in the relationship between the leads. It’s not surprising that in the final episode this ramped up even more. Overall, in terms of the dynamics I’ve been writing about, Hira and Kiyoi are finding a more balanced way of relating to each other. Emphasis on *more* balanced, since it’s definitely not there yet, and they might not want it to be entirely balanced anyway. It’s a much-needed and significant improvement. Instead of Kiyoi completely on his own pursuing Hira and getting nothing but fake-pursuit role-playing in return, we saw Hira taking risks and showing awareness of Kiyoi’s actual mental state (instead of the thoughts he wants to ascribe to him for fantasy reasons). 

So, first, the “I’m not going to kiss you…until you finally decide to take me seriously” scene. This move might strike some people as manipulative on Kiyoi’s part. Withholding affection, contact, or physical intimacy definitely can be manipulative. But I actually think it’s a very reasonable boundary to set under these circumstances. Kissing, and whatever might come after it, is one of the few types of pursuit (maybe the only one?) that when Kiyoi engages in it, Hira reliably reciprocates. But physical intimacy often works differently from other types. It’s not unusual at all for someone who distances in other ways to be the pursuer or be much more receptive to being pursued when it comes to sex. In Kiyoi’s case, there are a couple of reasons why this kiss moratorium makes sense. One of the main recommendations for repairing a polarized pursuer-distancer situation is for the pursuer to stop or reduce pursuing (in a calm, mature way, not engaging in reactive distance). Usually this leads (eventually) to the distancer having to try doing some pursuing in order to get their needs met. This is the area of their relationship in which Hira is most likely to really feel the absence of Kiyoi pursuing him. It’s a good start to trying to reverse those roles. 

Also, if I were in Kiyoi’s shoes, as much as I might really want the comfort and reassurance of some physical intimacy after all of the hurt I experienced, I would be very wary of getting into something that would likely feel very bittersweet at best under the circumstances. Being physically intimate with someone who has hurt you deeply when that hurt is not resolved can be painful and destructive. It’s not unreasonable to want to avoid that. Acting like he was going to kiss Hira and then announcing the moratorium in that way was a little mean. But I can see why Kiyoi felt like turning the tables on Hira a bit. 

The talk in the park/on the shrine steps was a huge deal and moved the needle in a few different areas. First, Kiyoi accepted that hints and implications wouldn’t work with Hira and voiced his thoughts and feelings directly. This meant putting himself in a more vulnerable position, which isn’t easy for him. It showed real growth. Hira responded in kind, which represented even more growth for him given how much he’s been living in his own head throughout season 2 (well, arguably, his entire life). Even though his thinking about being “unworthy” of Kiyoi wasn’t hugely different, the fact that he was speaking about it openly and listening to what Kiyoi had to say in response was a big change. 

I loved the direct yet gentle way Kiyoi said, “I don’t care if you’re a pebble or not.” This was immediately followed by Kiyoi doing the same movement/pose he did when asking Hira if he would keep his dance lessons a secret in season 1, looking Hira in the eye from close up and slightly below him. There was a strong contrast here given how much closer they’d become and how much kinder Kiyoi was being, but at the same time, there was also a parallel in that Kiyoi was challenging Hira by saying, “I won’t let you have a one-sided love again.” 

Speaking of parallels, I find it really interesting that Hira brings up what Kiyoi said the night they got together, but I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. Rather abruptly, he looks at Kiyoi and says, “‘If it’s the same as until now, then no.’ When you said that, it made me happy.” I don’t blame Kiyoi for thinking Hira might be making fun of him, because he does his sort of sneaky smile here, just like when he’s teasing Kiyoi about being cute. But I think he seems sincere. This is also the first time either of them really talks about that night (despite parallels galore and clearly intentional references to it in the show). I think it’s promising that Hira is actually acknowledging it after seeming, pretty much this entire time, as if he’d forgotten all about it. But I’m not sure how to interpret that weird smile! And I’m not super clear on the comment about it making him happy. Is there a part of him that was already more willing to change, more interested in finally meeting Kiyoi as equals, than most of his actions in season 1 would suggest? 

Then there’s the exchange about jobs and supporting themselves, which I actually think is one of the most significant moments in the episode. Hira has been talking himself down in part because he’s convinced he won’t be able to find a job after graduation, so Kiyoi brings up the fact that he could actually afford to support both of them. Hira makes a really obvious sour face in response to this and turns away. Kiyoi’s voiceover says, “There it is. Lord Hira gets stubborn about the weirdest things.” (It’s worth noting that this wording sounds a lot like Koyama’s description of Hira in season 1 when he badmouths him in front of Kiyoi as a sort of test–but that’s just in English, I don’t know about the original dialogue.) Kiyoi says, “You don’t like that?” and Hira nods decisively. “Then I was lying. I want you to be like a workhorse. I’ll throw you away if you cause me any trouble.” Of course, Hira grins at this. When Kiyoi says, “So creepy,” I don’t know if I’ve ever agreed more with him applying that label to Hira. 

But for all the weirdness of this exchange, it’s a lot healthier than the way they’ve been communicating, and if Hira is paying attention to this and doesn’t get selective amnesia again, it could point the way toward progress. The blatant way Kiyoi says, “then I was lying” makes it particularly clear he’s just saying what Hira wants him to say, just playing along. If Hira needs for Kiyoi to be this cold, imperious, princely figure, he’ll play along sometimes, but he’ll make it pretty obvious that it’s just a game. If Hira can be content with this and not, as I said, conveniently forget about it being more like role-playing than reality, this could really be a way for them to compromise. Kiyoi just wants to know that at the end of the day Hira knows he’s an actual human being who really loves him and that he’ll drop the servant act long enough to meet Kiyoi’s need for a real partner. Hira has been expecting reality to conform to his fantasy and when it doesn’t, he’s just given up on perceiving reality accurately and let his fantasies seep into real life. If he can handle getting his needs met through this playful version of the fantasy and still remember that it’s not a fully accurate reflection of their relationship, they could really get somewhere.

I want to just briefly touch on Kiyoi’s conversation with Anna here. I found it really sweet. He shows a side of himself with her that he hasn’t anywhere else on the show. He’s partly being deferential out of politeness, but he also seems sincerely in awe of her and genuinely shy. At the same time, he’s remarkably unguarded and sincere whenever they talk. I love his expression and his manner when he comes out to her. It’s so direct in such a cute way. Her excitement about his relationship is also really endearing. Like other folks, I can see that events seem to be pointing toward her being in danger in the movie and I’m also worried for her, because she’s such a likable character. Her mention of “trusting [her]self” and “being true to [her]self” is interesting but I’m not sure if it’s pointing toward something to come in the movie or meant to apply to this episode.

Next up: Hira’s rather bizarre job interview with Noguchi Hiromi. This whole thing was pretty fascinating. I loved Noguchi’s outspokenness. He really went after Hira with no holds barred and yet he did it in a remarkably nonjudgemental way. I found it very significant that even though Noguchi is very critical both of Hira’s personality and his photography and even though at a certain point Hira’s aware that Noguchi is offering him a job, with all of the job interview associations that brings up, he never stutters when he’s talking with him. Well, I take that back. He does stutter very briefly when they first start talking, and then when he starts to excuse himself after Noguchi says his assistant quit so he’s super busy. But those are very low-stakes moments, moments when they’re just starting to interact or he thinks they’re about to stop. When Noguchi really starts giving it to him with both barrels, he’s fine. He even speaks to him in a rather challenging way when he asks, “What part of that makes you want me to be your assistant?” Despite his thought that “he and I don’t match,” it seems they’re actually really well suited to each other. 

The other really notable thing is, of course, Noguchi’s take on Hira as seen through his work, coupled with Hira’s confirmation that “it’s like he sees right through me.” Noguchi sees things in Hira that the viewer hasn’t really had a chance to observe. I’ve read a little bit of the first novel and some of this comes through more there, but there are only the slightest hints of it in the show. Here’s what Noguchi says (per the Viki subtitles, flaws and all): 

It was such a childish photo. You should’ve just chosen an empty place rather than erasing people. Going out of your way to erasing [sic] people made it very clear that you hate this world…What I felt from your photo was tremendous selfishness and disgust. You haven’t succeeded at all, but you think you’re amazing. But instead of showing it outright, you make a shell by belittling yourself. You look down on this world with youth, stupidity, and ambiguity.

I wrote previously about how in some ways Hira seems like a depressive personality but in others like a self-defeating one, and how the biggest difference between the two is that the self-defeating person typically feels aggrieved or resentful. We haven’t seen that aggrieved side come out overtly in Hira in the show much at all, but Noguchi sees it, and Hira confirms it. This is actually pretty consistent with other aspects of his character as well, but I’m going to save my full discussion of that for my post about the season as a whole. 

And now, for that job announcement/gift/kiss scene. Whew, it’s a lot. Hira tells Kiyoi about the job with Noguchi, then tells him, “there’s a photo I want to take.” Basically, he wants to take at least one photo of Kiyoi as a professional and have it published somewhere with his name attached.  Kiyoi understands what this means and is really moved. It’s symbolic of something a lot bigger than just taking a photo. Hira’s talking about meeting Kiyoi on something resembling his own level. This is a great example of what Kiyoi was looking for when he asked Hira to “face [him] straight on.” 

Next, Kiyoi gives Hira a gift for Valentine’s Day, a little box of chocolates and a rubber duck. The duck thing has particular significance given the short thing that the show released on social media a little while ago, in which Kiyoi and Koyama are talking about Hira and they both talk about Hira’s relationship with “Captain Duck” in a pretty disparaging way. Giving Hira a duck is a way of showing acceptance of his eccentricities and meeting him where he is. And Hira’s excitement bears this out–he’s ecstatic. 

And then we have the part of the scene where Kiyoi holds out a piece of chocolate to Hira, ends up feeding it to him, and then one thing leads to another and they’re kissing and collapsing to the floor. I’ve already analyzed this to death so I’ll just summarize here. It’s not 100% clear whether Kiyoi’s moratorium on kissing just applied to him making the first move. It would make sense if it did, since the whole point was for Hira to come to him instead of him always having to do all the pursuing. But either way, it seems like he was ready to lift it, because Hira really had made quite a bit of progress by that point. Or, well, he at least was clearly heading in the right direction. His thing about photographing Kiyoi professionally seemed to clinch it in Kiyoi’s eyes. 

With that kiss, the show also suddenly acknowledged a dynamic that apparently is very overt in the novel because it’s more explicit about their sexual relationship. I gather it should also be pretty obvious, from the use of certain words and other cues, to folks who are familiar with certain tropes that often show up not only in BL and yaoi manga but also other genres. This set of tropes was also mentioned in the first episode of season 1, when Hira apologized for being “too persistent” and said he couldn’t help it because Kiyoi was “cute.” Basically, between these references, the actors’ performances in the kissing scene, and the distinct way of talking that Hagiwara Riku adopts when Hira tells Kiyoi, “I can’t wait any longer tonight,” it’s heavily implied that there’s a kind of role reversal that happens when Hira and Kiyoi are physically intimate where Hira is very authoritative while Kiyoi is more reactive, even shy. Of course, there’s always something to be said for a climactic kiss as you’re nearing the end of any sort of romance-dominated story. But it’s also a bit of a wild choice to throw this very different way they relate to one another at the audience so close to the end of the season. 

Which brings us to the end of season 2. I’m grateful that the most pressing issues between Hira and Kiyoi were left resolved, but there are still tons of loose ends and things that were just getting started when the season ended, which makes sense as they were leading toward the movie. That works great for the audience in Japan, who just have a little over a month to wait until Eternal comes out in theaters. But there’s no telling when it’ll be available to those of us in the U.S., and folks are saying that similar things have taken between six months and a year to make it over here. Well, here’s hoping they at least make an announcement before too long so we’ll have an idea of what to expect…and preferably that they announce it won’t be an entire year.

Does anyone have that post that's like "Donald trump tweets were like a Cambrian explosion of vocabulary"

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You know, it always stayed with me, when I first read “The Vampire Lestat”, the end, when Lestat reveals what happened to him in Paris with Armand, and reading it once again, I’m reminded of why it never left me.  It’s maybe the most heartbreaking thing in the whole book, and that’s saying a lot, considering all the tragedies of Lestat’s life up to that point.  Armand’s cruelty to Lestat here is breathtaking, the way he manipulates him, and then imprisons and starves him in order to place him in a desperate enough state to give testimony against Claudia and Louis, when already Lestat was in such horrifyingly dire straits.  Making it all the more heartbreaking is the way Lestat holds no ill will or grudge towards either Claudia or Louis for what was done, how he even feels he deserved what they did to him, and the way he had no intention of revenge, or even knowledge of their presence in Paris, but how Armand uses him to exact his own revenge for Lestat’s rejection, a thing Lestat never even conceived, and a thing even if he had understood, he couldn’t have given to Armand anyway.  It’s just so awful, and sad beyond words, the final blow being when Armand pushes Lestat from the roof of the tower.  God, it’s brutal.

And the sadness of it is really driven home all the more when so many years later, Armand finds Lestat again, and Lestat is rotting away, cut off so completely from life and the world and humanity, with no real will to live, and we see the tragedy doubled in Armand’s own loneliness and despair, the way he’s wrought his own ruin too, deserted by Louis, his duplicity and manipulation and assault of before rendering any kind of genuine reconciliation with Lestat impossible.  The way he tries one last time to win Lestat’s love and companionship, only he uses the same methods of deceit as always, conjuring illusions to win the love he craves.  And it’s far too late, too much bad history between them, too many mistakes made, and Lestat is too far gone at that point for it to have ever worked.

I think what really drives these scenes home in their tragedy too is the kind of juxtaposition of Lestat and Armand, the way their roles have in a way reversed, with Armand decked out in the modern finery of the 20th century, moving among the modern world, while Lestat lies in ruin beneath the foundations of a rotted out relic of a house from the 18th century, clothed in rags and lost in despair and physical degradation.  But both of them are totally alone still, cut off and outcast in their own ways.  Armand’s strange obsession with Lestat, continuing to hang about near to him, and Lestat’s consuming despair at last driving him under the earth.  It’s just such a powerful and poignant and heartbreaking study of loss and aloneness and what it means to be truly outcast.  I felt so deeply for both of them while reading this, even with the horror I felt at Armand’s cruelty. 

I think the paragraph that got me the hardest was this:

“The earth was holding me.  Living things slithered through its thick and moist clods against my dried flesh.  And I thought if I ever do rise again, if I ever see even one small patch of the night sky full of stars, I will never never do terrible things.  I will never slay innocents.  Even when I hunted the weak, it was the hopeless and the dying I took, I swear it was.  I will never never work the Dark Trick again.  I will just… you know, be the “continual awareness” for no purpose, no purpose at all.”

It speaks so hauntingly and with such sadness to Lestat’s true tragedy.  That he feels so lost in the world as this being with no purpose, no use, no point. 

His one and only consolation in life was this idea that he could give his life meaning through doing good in the world, and he’s left now an immortal who can give his eternal life no meaning at all.

Ah, I weep.

How can one not feel for Lestat?  How can one ever accuse him of being a shallow or frivolous person?  I’ll never know.  He’s anything but.

Lestat’s relationship with Nicki and how it impacts his relationship with Louis:

So I’ve been re-reading “The Vampire Lestat” recently, and one of the most amazing things, I think, is how well it ties in to “Interview with the Vampire” in terms of psychologically explaining why Lestat was the way he was with Louis, why Louis thought of Lestat as he did, but also, why Louis’ perception of Lestat was so wrong.  There’s countless examples of this throughout the book, psychological excavation of Lestat which sheds so much light on his behavior in Louis’ story.  But I wanted to focus here on one particular aspect of it, and that’s how Lestat’s general positivity as a character, and the ways in which it impacted those around him, how those around him reacted to it, especially Nicki and Armand, would later inform Lestat’s affected apathy and seeming detachment with Louis.

Lestat explains early on in TVL that, growing up, he was often treated as a burden by his family.  That his refusal to accept his lot in life, his persistent dreaming and hope, his persistent attempts to improve and even escape the dreary dead-end of his provincial life caused a great deal of consternation, disapproval and even anger and cruelty from his father and two brothers, even at times resulting in physical and verbal abuse at their hands.  So early on in life, Lestat was already taught by those closest to him that his enthusiasm and fighting spirit and positivity were bad things.  That to truly be himself, to be the free spirit that he was and to fight for what he really wanted, were things he couldn’t do without being a “bad person”.  He even has a conversation with Gabrielle specifically about this, about Lestat’s fears that to defy his father and brother’s is equal to him being bad, that he can’t be himself and do what he actually wants without giving up the ability to be good.  And anyone who knows anything about Lestat’s character should know that the true driving force behind basically every one of his actions is the desire to do and be good.

So already at this early stage of his life, Lestat is made to believe that who he is, his natural personality, is a thorn in the sides of most people he knows.  I know that in this fandom, it gets made fun of often, that Lestat is referred to as “a lot”, and people laugh about his overbearing personality.  But it’s actually incredibly sad, that here we have a person who, because of his innate optimism and hope, was made by his own family to feel like a disappointment and a burden.

Moving on, and looking at how this aspect of Lestat’s personality, this positivity, his refusal to quit and his undying belief in the “impossible”, effects his relationship with Nicki in particular, I think is vitally important in understanding Lestat’s relationship with Louis later on, and why it plays out the way it initially does.

The entire story between Lestat and Nicki is particularly heartbreaking, because of the deep and genuine love which existed between them, and how it eventually eroded and ended in genuine resentment and even hatred toward Lestat from Nicki, and specifically, because of how this ends up effecting Lestat and his perception of himself and the way he ends up conducting himself with the other great love of his life in Louis.

Nicki goes mad, slowly descending into an ever deepening depression and general negativity after he and Lestat move to Paris, and it’s later revealed that Nicki had hoped, by moving to Paris, that he and Lestat would “go down”, to use Nicki’s own words.  He wanted them to fail as a means of rebelling and disappointing his own father, as a way of making his father angry and upset.  The very basis of his reasoning for going to Paris was the opposite of Lestat’s.  Lestat wanted to go to Paris to do something good and positive with his life, to give meaning to his life.  Nicki went to Paris to destroy his life as a final “screw you” to his family, a reason driven by negative emotion, as opposed to the positive emotion driving Lestat.  He never told this to Lestat, of course.  He simply went along with him and pretended to share in his hope and enthusiasm for the future.  He tells Lestat later that he believed that once they’d gotten to Paris, Lestat would become disillusioned with the world and stop pursuing his dream of doing good with his life.  He’d hoped, secretly, that Lestat would give up, the way Nicki himself had long before given up in believing in anything better.  But one of Lestat’s defining traits as a person is his refusal to ever give up.  He’s a fighter through and through.  He’s an eternal optimist.  No matter how bad things get for him, he never loses his hope or belief in the impossible. 

When things really get bad between Lestat and Nicki is after Lestat reveals to him he’s been turned into a vampire, and Nicki uses Lestat’s own generosity and desire to help his loved ones against him, guilt-tripping him for sharing the “Dark Gift” with his mother, but not with Nicki himself, accusing Lestat of giving preferential treatment to his direct family because of their royal blood.  He essentially tells Lestat that giving money and gifts to him, to the actors they worked with and the theater they worked at, was an insult, a dismissal of the less important people in his life.  This is all wrong, of course.  It couldn’t be farther from the truth.  Lestat showers Nicki and everyone else with gifts and material wealth as a means of expressing his genuine love for all of them, given the abject poverty he himself grew up in.  He wants to take care of them, and provide for them, as he’d always done with his family.  But Nicki, suffering from his worsening mental illness, uses this against Lestat, badgering him with it until Lestat’s sense of guilt and driving wish to do good makes him act against his better judgement, and he gives Nicki what he wants, turning him into a vampire too. 

Lestat has a final, climactic confrontation with Nicki in the theater they worked at as mortals, in which Nicki reveals to him how Lestat’s positivity truly effected him.  In which he reveals to Lestat that “his light”, as Nicki refers to it, was a source of anguish and torment for him.  He tells Lestat that his refusal to give up, that his general positivity and ability to push through even the most dire and seemingly hopeless circumstances, that his ability to make the impossible happen and make a success of himself despite all odds being against him, was like a “piercing” to Nicki.  He explains that for every moment of exuberance and enthusiasm and passion in Lestat, it created a proportionate amount of darkness and despair in Nicki, a proportionate unhappiness and hopelessness.  He basically blames Lestat here for causing his own, deranged mental state simply through the power of his own, overwhelming positivity.  He reinforces in this moment what Lestat had already been taught over and over again by his own family.  That his very existence, his natural state of being, was causing harm to those he loved.  You see where I’m going with this?  Lestat is made to feel here, by Nicki, that just being himself is what caused Nicki to lose his mind completely.

“And when we decided to go to Paris, I thought we would starve in Paris, that we would go down and down and down.  It was what I wanted, rather than what they wanted, that I, the favored son, should rise for them.  I thought we would go down!  We were supposed to go down… But you didn’t go down Lestat… The hunger, the cold- none of it stopped you.  You were a triumph!… You didn’t drink yourself to death in the gutter.  You turned everything upside down!  And for every aspect of our proposed damnation you found exuberance, and there was no end to your enthusiasms and the passion coming out of you- and the light, always the light.  And in exact proportion to the light coming out of you, there was the darkness in me!  Every exuberance piercing me and creating its exact proportion of darkness and despair!  And then, the magic, when you got the magic, irony of ironies, you protected me from it!  And what did you do with it but use your Satanic powers to simulate the actions of a good man!”

He tells Lestat that it’s some sort of irony that Lestat, who wishes to do good, should be given a power which can do only evil, while keeping it from Nicki himself, (Nicki, who wishes to do evil and will use the Dark Gift “properly”, unlike Lestat himself), in an effort to protect him. Lestat later imagines that what Nicki really meant, without saying it to him, was that Lestat wouldn’t allow Nicki to have what he could believe in.  The exact words that he imagines Nicki saying to him are “Let me have what I can believe in.  You would never do that.”  Lestat is blaming himself here for crushing Nicki’s own dreams through the sheer force of his personality.  He feels like Nicki’s downfall is his doing because he failed to understand just how depressed Nicki was, that he couldn’t understand how depressed he was because Lestat himself is such an innately positive person, and instead of supporting Nicki in his wish to self-destruct, he encouraged him and tried to inspire him and make him believe in himself as a force of good, as Lestat believed in himself.  Nicki reveals to Lestat that he wanted to fail, and Lestat had refused to let him do it, and that’s what Lestat ends up believing.  That in his efforts to help Nicki, he only ended up hurting him.

We can see then how this experience with Nicki, this sense of guilt and responsibility that Lestat takes on to himself for Nicki’s downfall, later impacts how he behaves with and treats Louis.  Louis is very much like Nicki.  He tends towards depression and melancholy.  He has a tendency to get trapped in his own head and self-obsess and think of himself as “evil”.  These are all traits which are eerily similar to Nicki, and to Nicki’s state of mind before he went truly mad.  Recognizing this, and remembering what Nicki said to Lestat about how his “light” made Nicki descend deeper into darkness, we then see how Lestat doubtless feared that history would repeat itself with Louis.  That the force of Lestat’s overwhelming positivity and enthusiasm would do to Louis what it had supposedly done to Nicki, that is, send him further into despair and self-destruction.

Louis recounts how, later on in their relationship, when he and Lestat would go out to a play or some sort of show, Lestat would afterward go dancing through the streets, reciting the play’s lines out loud with overexcited enthusiasm and passion, even frightening the people passing by with his energy and bursting joy.  This was Lestat’s true personality coming through.  This was who Lestat really was.  Seeing theater productions would remind Lestat of the happiest days of his life, when he was still mortal, living in squalor with Nicki in Paris, working as an actor in the theater, living out his dream and doing something he genuinely believed was good, and it caused, in the present with Louis, his true personality to come to the surface, rather than the biting, dismissive, apathetic personality he’d affected since then.  Louis recalls then how he would express to Lestat, in these moments, that he was actually enjoying his company, and upon doing so, Lestat would again retreat into himself, he would withdraw and once more become that detached, apathetic and dismissive person Louis believed him to be, dispassionate and caring about seemingly nothing.  It would be weeks and even months, then, before Lestat would again ask Louis to go out with him.  Why is that?  Well, in the context of Lestat’s relationship with Nicki, and what Nicki accused him of, of destroying him through the force of his overbearing positivity and enthusiasm, it makes perfect sense why Lestat acted like he did with Louis, why he, upon hearing Louis’ positive reaction to Lestat’s genuine nature coming out, would retreat back into himself and put on the act of someone who doesn’t care.  Because the last time Lestat was in a romantic relationship with someone, and he was himself, that person went insane, blamed Lestat for it, and ended up killing themselves later on.  Really think about that, and then think about how that must have effected Lestat’s relationship with Louis, seeing so many of the same traits in Louis that existed in Nicki, and remembering how Nicki blamed Lestat for his depression.  Louis himself had expressed numerous times his own wish to die.  In Lestat’s mind, mistaken though he was, he no doubt feared that being who he really was, showing his true personality, his true passion and love for life and for people, his true eternal optimism and hope, would drive Louis to self-destruct the way he believed it had driven Nicki. 

This fear in Lestat could only have been exacerbated too by his relationship with Armand, and how Armand, like Nicki, blamed Lestat’s positivity, his self-belief and powerful will on his own downfall, with the destruction of his coven and his way of life.  Just like Nicki, Armand accuses Lestat of coming in and wreaking havoc and destruction through the sheer force of his personality, his refusal to give up or give in.  He blames Lestat for causing the other vampires in his coven to lose belief in worshiping Satan simply because Lestat himself refused to submit to their will, and fought back when they tried to burn him and his mother and Nicki in a pyre for doing so.

From childhood on, Lestat is essentially taught and shown by everyone around him that his personality causes destruction.  That his self-belief and can-do attitude is a burden at best, and a force of chaos and evil at worst.  He’s taught to believe that being himself is somehow the worst thing he can be, because it drives everyone around him to despair and misfortune.  With that in mind, it becomes painfully clear just why Lestat adopted with Louis a personality that was, in reality, wholly opposite of who he truly was, and why Louis, in turn, formed such a tragically false conception and misunderstanding of who Lestat was.