For October’s issue and the celebration of Halloween, I chose a Vampire story for two reasons:

The love language between Louis and Lestat
How Anne Rice’s original descriptions translate visually into Midjourney interpretations.

The love between Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt was never tidy, nor modern, but in contemporary terms best described as: toxic.

Anne Rice built their bond on a frequency that resists ordinary romance or loyal friendship. Two beings who can’t share a silence, yet can’t stand a world without the other’s shadow in it. Like straight from a ballad by Annie Lennox, “can’t be together, can’t be apart”.

Louis expresses love through sorrow and deep reflection. His language is reserved, characterized by long pauses, lives in his mind, grappling with philosophical questions, showing devotion more through his presence than words. He tends to question everything and can become existential when he struggles to make sense of things. In doing so, Louis often neglects and overlooks the simple beauty that can naturally appear around him.

Lestat, on the other hand, expresses love through spectacle and manipulation. He believes in his own illusions and uses them to attract others. He makes followers feel like they are the only ones who matter and are special, unaware that this feeling is merely performative. A manufactured image that can easily fall apart. His language is assertive, commanding, and loud, an undeniable presence. His devotion comes on like an uncontrollable storm: dramatic, destabilizing, impossible to ignore. The best way to protect oneself from this storm is to run away and never look back.

Together they form a dialect of grief and fire. Lestat can only live in a world that he creates. This forces Louis to quietly rebel as he clings to what makes him Louis, salvaging any pride and self-respect that he was originally before Lestat turned him into a vampire.

Their love is not a healing type, nor is it complementary, but an unexplainable gravitational pull. When they’re together, they try to change each other, ruining the natural love and tenderness they’d cultivated in 20 minutes.

By the end of the saga, they are not quite lovers, not quite friends, but something rarer: two halves of an immortal mind finally learning how to rest beside one another.

Hollywood vs Midjourney

To understand what Rice really envisioned in her writings, I wanted to see what Midjourney would depict based on how she originally wrote all her characters.

In the Hollywood version, Anne Rice wasn’t too thrilled with Tom Cruise playing Lestat, and went on to say that Tom wasn’t a tall blonde European who had a lion-like essence.

I’ve been watching the newest AMC version of Interview with the Vampire and thought it was a great revival from the 1994 Hollywood feature with Tom Cruise.

Written Character Descriptions

Louis is a mourning angel, **“green eyes like glass in candlelight,”** skin pale enough to look carved, a man who carries his grief as visibly as a scar.

Lestat is **“bright as a torch,”** with a mane of golden hair and gray-blue eyes that hold both mischief and hunger.

Armand is the eternal adolescent, the **“boy with the curling auburn hair,”** his face the soft, dangerous beauty of a Botticelli angel.

Akasha is described as **“alabaster,” “immovable,” “a statue with fire behind the eyes,”** her stillness older than any language.

Claudia is small, perfect, and terrifying; she appears with **“gold ringlets and china-doll features,”** a child’s body animated by a gaze far too ancient for its frame.

Prompt Ideas
( MJ-ready snippets, not copyrighted)

Louis de Pointe du Lac

“pale romantic vampire, reflective green eyes, sorrow lit by candlelight”
“marble skin, soft shadows, a face built from grief and beauty”

Lestat de Lioncourt

“golden-haired immortal, gray-blue eyes sparking with appetite and rebellion”
“charismatic vampire, bright as a torch, elegant and feral in the same breath”

Armand

“eternal adolescent vampire, auburn curls, angelic face carved from sorrow”
“dark, luminous gaze, Venetian softness, beauty frozen at seventeen”

Claudia

“porcelain child vampire, gold ringlets, ancient intelligence behind innocent eyes”
“doll-like beauty with a predator’s stillness, lace and shadow”

Akasha

“alabaster vampire queen, obsidian hair, ancient stillness, statue come alive”
“divine, terrifying presence, gold and white silks, eyes lit with centuries”