In no particular order: Lestat/Louis, Lestat/Daniel, Lestat/Armand, Lestat/Marius, Lestat/Akasha, Lestat/David, Lestat/A fancy chair, Lestat/Big silk pillows, Lestat/A cameo collection, Lestat/his reflection in a mirror…
*Glares at the list of ships, noticing a particular ship missing.*
Lestat/Nicolas = not as hot as Lestat/A fancy chair. (just kidding ahhh! Omission was an honest mistake! The ellipsis should’ve covered that ship but I’ll see myself out)
Just got this message from an Anon, and if it is to be believed, it sounds like AR had an unnecessarily vitriolic reaction to an innocent fan *hugs Anon*
I know I should have just posted your story without commentary but it got me to thinking about the criticism aspect of your story… I’m always intrigued by these kinds of interactions with Mater Glorioso, if anyone has more, please share!
On criticism: when one criticizes someone’s work… telling them what you don’t like about it… whether they are a Tumblr RPer, or a globally-known best-selling author of incalculable wealth/prestige, that’s a very delicate subject. Especially for THIS best-selling author of incalculable wealth/prestige, who hasn’t had a beta-reader since VC book 4 (that is speculation) and won’t collaborate with anyone (including her best-selling author of a son) because of the level of control she needs in order to craft her stories. Criticism can come across as a personal attack bc an author’s writing is the conduit to their deepest self; some of the best writing seems to be explorations of what they want to explore in their own psyche.
For this reason, I try not to negatively criticize anyone’s work negatively bc I know I can be vicious. One has to establish a foundation of trust first. Even that is not always enough. That’s why people choose their beta-readers carefully, when they want one, bc it has to be someone that can criticize constructively and if they DO come across as hurtful, the writer knows it’s unintentionally hurtful.
I don’t mean to criticize you for criticizing her, just attempting to explain why she may have overreacted the way it sounds like she did *hugs Anon again*
In no particular order: Lestat/Louis, Lestat/Daniel, Lestat/Armand, Lestat/Marius, Lestat/Akasha, Lestat/David, Lestat/A fancy chair, Lestat/Big silk pillows, Lestat/A cameo collection, Lestat/his reflection in a mirror…
And here, the biggest lesson of them all, and a summation of all the problems.
You are in the way of your story.
Hard truth: writing is actually not that important.
Writing is a mechanism.
It’s an inelegant middleman to what we do. It’s a shame, in some ways, that we even call ourselves writers, because it describes only the mechanical act of what we do. It’s a vital mechanism, sure, but by describing it as the prominent thing, it tends to suggest, well, prominence.
But our writing must serve story.
Story does not serve writing.
This is cart-before-horse stuff, but important to realize.
Listen, in what we do there exist three essential participants.
We have:
The tale, the teller of the tale, and the listener of the tale.
Story. Author. And audience.
That’s it.
You are two-thirds of that equation. You are the story (or, by proxy, its architect) and the teller of the story. The telling of the story is most often done through writing — through that mechanical act, and because it’s the act you can sit and watch, it’s the one that is used to describe our role. I AM WRITER, you say, and so you focus so much on the actual writing you forget that there’s this other invisible — but altogether more critical — part, which is what you’re writing.
So, what happens is, early on, you put so much on the page. You write and write and write and use too many words and too much exposition and big meaty paragraphs and at the end all it serves to do is create distance between the tale and the listener of the tale.
It keeps the audience at arm’s length.
Quit that shit.
Bring the audience into the story. This is at the heart of show, don’t tell — which is a rule that can and should be broken at times, but at its core remains a reasonable notion: don’t talk at, don’t preach, don’t lecture, don’t fill their time with unnecessary wordsmithy.
Get. To. The. Point.
Chuck Wendig, Five Common Problems I See in Your Stories (via vickiexz)
*mic drop*
advice? ADVICE? Um, wowww… so I usually have strong opinions on ALOT of things, especially VC-related, but this sort of knocked me speechless. For about a minute. Then I wanted to write a thesis on the subject but managed to keep it to this much.
I would suggest that:
- If you want to RP as one of the characters, or an OC, you really have to read at least the first 3 books. And lots of fanfiction 😉
- We have awesome fanfiction and AO3 aims to protect it.
- Did I mention the fanfiction? It fills in the gaps that canon leaves. And it’s also just delishus.
- The RPers on here are SO fun to follow. Try finding some in the vcdirectory or the vcdirectoryold (I don’t know the difference, but hey, go investigate!)
- With the canon: you should have an open mind to Crazy Shit Happening
- DUE to the Crazy Shit that Happens later in the series, you are not required to consider it all canon 😉 Alot of people don’t consider books 5-10 to be canon. Or 4-10. Or wherever they want to draw the line. That is FINE.
- Brace yourself, because Prince Lestat is coming. No, not like that, you filthy thing! ARRIVING. 10/28/14. And, depending on its crackiness, there is going to be a divide between people who consider it to be canon and people who do not, and that is FINE.
- There’s a divide between People of the Page and People Off the Page, described here.
- In general the People Off the Page are a low-drama fandom, but we do have our spats, even the illustrious human behind i-want-my-iwtv has experienced a few direct situations, and that’s just life, bc people are people, after all. I’ve accepted my share of the fault in these situations and learned from the experiences. I’m not perfect, nobody is :-
The bottom line is that it’s a fandom that only in the past year or so has really come back to life, we were in hiding bc Anne Rice disapproved of fanfic and waged war on us in the 90’s for it. Now that she seems to have lowered her weapons about that, and even praised some VC fanart – permanentglitter for example! – and with the announcement in March of the new book, well, we’re all coming out into the light and making friends and it’s been wonderful!
I hope you see this, Anon, because we all know there’s a human behind that gray face, too, and I want to personally welcome you and anyone who’s just joining us now… we are a different kind of vampire fandom, that’s for sure.
monsieur-le-rockstar said: Prince Lestat is coming. No, not like that, you filthy thing! HEY MAN MAYBE HE”S COMING
I stand – possibly – corrected. I can’t speak to Lestat’s current whereabouts or bodily functions.
There are some mortals I look at who will never meet their full potential because they are either too afraid or too lazy. There is a deep unrest in these people- they hate themselves. I see them everywhere: walking past my house, in the streets, in libraries, in malls, on trains. Their self-loathing, perhaps it is even subconscious- permeates the space they take up and keeps them stagnate like an old rank pond.
I want to shake them, to scream at them, “Stop wasting your life before a fiend like me comes along and snatches it away! There is so much passion bottled inside you, must I tap into it, pour myself a glass of your very life and hold it in front of your eyes before I swallow it down? Will you get how important you are then?” And perhaps they would, but by that time it would be too late.
“TL;DR” shut up it’s only 2 paras, ^READTHIS thankyoubye.
advice? ADVICE? Um, wowww… so I usually have strong opinions on ALOT of things, especially VC-related, but this sort of knocked me speechless. For about a minute. Then I wanted to write a thesis on the subject but managed to keep it to this much.
I would suggest that:
The bottom line is that it’s a fandom that only in the past year or so has really come back to life, we were in hiding bc Anne Rice disapproved of fanfic and waged war on us in the 90’s for it. Now that she seems to have lowered her weapons about that, and even praised some VC fanart – permanentglitter for example! – and with the announcement in March of the new book, well, we’re all coming out into the light and making friends and it’s been wonderful!
I hope you see this, Anon, because we all know there’s a human behind that gray face, too, and I want to personally welcome you and anyone who’s just joining us now… we are a different kind of vampire fandom, that’s for sure.
reading “The Vampire Armand” made me feel like God just pointed at Baby-
armandAlexei and said “And fuck you in particular”
