Let’s talk about vampires and bubble gum. Can they have it? Do you think they like it? I bet Lestat discovers it and starts trying like EVERY flavor (though he has certain favorites).

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I think vampires would be curious about it, even if it existed during their lifetime (definitely for Daniel), there are new flavors, shapes and sizes of gum these days!

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[^Quote from @goddessofidiocy]

As far as actually enjoying gum, idk, I’m of two minds with that. On the one hand, I like the idea of Lestat doing it just to irritate ppl, blowing big bubbles, and popping them while someone is trying to talk *cough* Armand *cough* I’m sure he would find all the packaging/tins and

gumball machines graphically appealing.

On the other hand, I had an ask about whether they’d wear chapstick and I wrote:

The flavored makeup would probably not taste good to them like it does for us since those flavors are meant to simulate actual food; cherry chapstick – which I personally love bc it gives you tint and a pleasant smell/taste – would probably taste like a smear of motor oil to a Ricean vampire.

Soooo… I feel like gum, also meant to taste like food to mortals, could taste inedible to them. Altho even if it tasted bad, I think Lestat would still chew it just to be annoying #Actual 7 yr old.

They need to hurry with the show! I’ve been waiting forever.

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I KNOWWWWW… beLIEVE me, I know that feel. 

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…and yet, I, personally, wouldn’t want them rushing it out just bc they CAN, like with movie!Queen of the Damned. I mean, hey, I don’t know the backstory on that production, so maybe they DID put a lot of thought and effort into that movie… and let’s not forget that ppl DID enjoy that movie and even now they find it nostalgic, ppl liked it as an adaptation or as a standalone (if they hadn’t read the books, they probably weren’t judging it for being non-compliant w/ canon), for whatever reason (Aaliyah! Was actually great, IMO!). So I’m not the arbiter of taste, and neither is any one fan. I’m glad some ppl enjoyed it bc hey, maybe whatever success that movie had is part of why we may get the VCTV series! And whatever failure it had, that can be learned from (like, maybe, don’t rewrite canon to the point of switching around makers for whatever reason, like making Marius Lestat’s maker? BC that just screws up so many connections, among other issues?).

If the VCTV series happens at all, it’s inevitably going to disappoint some fans no matter what it does or doesn’t accomplish, no matter how canon-compliant* it is or isn’t. There is NO PLEASING EVERYONE! Our headcanons DO vary. Everyone projects their own ideals of beauty and everything else onto these stories, the act of reading a story involves adding your own experience, supplying it with your own imagination. 

(*Altho, AR has said that she DOES want to make it as canon-compliant as possible, and hopefully that means she won’t try to shoehorn in the later ALIEMS into the story before they contaminate it come in much later in the series.)

I think it’s great when we can agree on some things, like I would say we all agree that Lestat’s red velvet cloak was RED in color, but then we could debate DARK RED or BRIGHT RED until we are blue in the face so like… even little details like that can be a point of disagreement *shrugs* 

ALL THAT SAID, it would be WONDERFUL if this adaptation gets like a B+ with the majority of the fandom, that’s how low I’m setting the bar lol. 

oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like “I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!” with no build up whatsoever.

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may-shepard:

airyairyquitecontrary:

vintagegeekculture:

Yeah, that is a good question – why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised. 

IIRC “Judgment Day” was part of the inspiration for the excellent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars.”

This whole post is liquid gold for writers.