Aren’t there gradations of evil? Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, plummeting to the depth? 🦇🖤
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Close Quarters
“So what if we had to sleep on lumpy pallets, and the neighbors woke us up with fighting.” -Lestat, The Vampire Lestat
Was it the first night? The second? Third? It had all been a whirlwind to me, the excitement of arriving in Paris, the world suddenly such a different place from where I’d spent the last 21 years. People everywhere, the stench of shit and piss in the streets, the sounds of horses and church bells and music everywhere. How I loved it.
We’d rented a tiny room at the top floor of a building–one bed, two windows, a shelf and a basin in which to wash. Such a small space! Such heaven to me, such cramped and glorious beauty.
The first night we’d made wild, happy love, tumbling into the lumpy, uncomfortable bed twisted and entwined and endlessly delighted in each other. The bells of a church chimed the hour in the distance, the moonlight spilling into the little window and onto the floor of the flat. I remember this image as I drifted off to sleep, a strange thought coming to me that I hoped my mother was okay, that she was becoming well again, perhaps.
It was maybe an hour later that I was roused, abruptly, by shouts. The wall above our head thudded as something hit it–something heavy.
“Nicolas–” I shook him, then, his eyes snapping open.
“What is it? What the hell–?” He sat up, nearly conking heads with me, both of us turned to face the wall behind the headboard.
The screaming continued, followed by the shattering of glass. I know my eyes widened, then–I’d experienced plenty of abuse and yelling in my years, yes, but never had I been privy to the violent fighting of complete strangers, not in such an intimate way. I’d grown up in a damn castle, for God’s sake–the walls were thick and the place devoured sound.
Then Nicolas began to laugh.
I snapped my eyes to his, “How can you laugh? It’s terrible!”
He fell back against the bedclothes, snatching my pillow as he laughed and throwing it at me.
“Welcome to Paris, Lestat.”
I saw someone asking about if vampires could have their picture taken and IIRC in Merrick Louis had a photograph of Claudia so it seems like vampires can have their picture taken right?
Yes, that’s in Merrick. It seems like Ricean vampires can be captured with photography, film, and video.
[^X not quite the right Claudia, but this is an evocative photo titled Livia by Frederick Sommer.]
Louis tells David about it:
“But the photographs, the daguerreotypes, that’s what she wanted, the real image of herself on glass…. But then years later, when we reached Paris, in those lovely nights before we ever happened upon the Théâtre des Vampires and the monsters who would destroy her, she found that the magic pictures could be taken at night, with artificial light!“
He seemed to be reliving the experience painfully, I remained quiet.
“You can’t imagine her excitement. She had seen an exhibit by the famous photographer Nadar of pictures from the Paris catacombs. Pictures of cartloads of human bones. Nadar was quite the man, as I’m sure you know. She was thrilled by the pictures. She went to his studio, by special appointment, in the evening, and there this picture was made."
He came towards me.
"It’s a dim picture. It took an age for all the mirrors and the artificial lamps to do their work. And Claudia stood still for so long, well, only a vampire child might have worked such a trick. But she was very pleased with it. She kept it on her dressing table in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, the last place that we ever called our home. We had such lovely rooms there. It was near to the Opera. I don’t think she ever unpacked the painted portraits. It was this that mattered to her. I’d actually thought she would come to be happy in Paris. Maybe she would have been … But there wasn’t time. This little picture, she felt it was only the beginning, and planned to return to Nadar with an even lovelier dress.”
Hello, I wonder if vampire can be taken a picture? Can their image show up in photos?
//ooc; idk about other vampires, it varies. The What We Do in the Shadows vampires could have photos taken of them, but couldn’t see their own reflection in mirrors *shrugs*.
Ricean vampires can see their own reflections in mirrors.
Omg, I totally forgot about this, but apparently Khayman has mental photoshop powers?? From QOTD:
[Khayman] liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling
books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images onthese pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman
people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes.
I headcanon that Ricean vampires can be photographed, and they take selfies…
[X
When he sneakin’ kisses from the bae and ya get jealous even though y’all ain’t official
by @kotilae]
Jesse also sees photos of Armand in QOTD:
David had put something in her hand. Reluctantly she took her eyes off the painting. She found herself
staring at a tintype, a late-nineteenth-century photograph. After a moment, she whispered: “This is the same
boy!““Yes. And something of an experiment,” David said. “It I was most likely taken just after sunset in impossible
lighting conditions which might not have worked with another subject. Notice not much is really visible but
his face.” True, yet she could see the style of the hair was of the period. I “You might look at this as well,”
David said. And this time he gave her an old magazine, a nineteenth-century journal, the I kind with narrow
columns of tiny print and ink illustrations. There was the same boy again alighting from a barouche-a I hasty
sketch, though the boy was smiling.
you know, I’ve always wondered about this… Ricean vampires ONLY drink blood, right? But, why just blood? Because “normal” food doesn’t taste good for them anymore? What it would happen if they try it?? Maybe they’d get sick?? I don’t know, but I would love to find out :p (Btw, LOVE your blog)
Thanks for the blog luerve! <333 I really appreciate it.
Yep, Ricean vampires can only drink blood 😛 In some fanfic, they can take little sips of other liquid, but IIRC, they can only consume blood in canon.
^This is from What We Do in the Shadows. I don’t think it would be exactly like this for Ricean vampires, but it’s hilarious (but GROSS) so WATCH IT (if you can handle the gross). For these and the Ricean vampires, eating people food is bad, but not lethal.
Ricean vampires lose a lot of digestive anatomy when they’re turned. So their bodies just can’t metabolize it. So, cooking smells become repulsive to them, as Louis describes it in IWTV:
“The slightly nauseating smell of cooking meat… I caught the sweet smell of the spices and the fresh green of marjoram and bay; and then in a wave came the horrid smell of the cooking meat, the blood and flesh decaying in the boiling fluids.“
If they were to try a bite of a plate of food, it might be like trying to force yourself to eat something inedible, like an old soapy sponge, maybe? Our body’s way of defending itself from inedible things is to make them taste bad (but then there are people with Pica, who eat inedible things and then there’s the fact that some edible things that are good for you might not be very tasty unless prepared somehow so… idk).
I would guess that eating a whole plateful of food would just make Ricean vampires throw it back up, no enjoyment in or out 😛
@roselioncourt RPs as Rose de Lioncourt, and that muse has experimented with food made from blood. You could ask her about that.
BONUS: Louis Xavier Lewis-Smith, who played Denis in movie!IWTV, teaches us how to make a British Mojito:
Hi! So I have to ask am I the only one who wishes Anne Rice had written a short novel about Daniel and Armand? Because with QotD we only got little glimps and short tales. Also, I got a bit upset that Marius had Daniel but didn’t tell Armand until much later on the books. (( Now this could be Marius protecting Armand from Daniel’s insanity at that point in time but it just really irks me is all.)) What do you think?
*nods* well, I feel ya, but it is at least addressed in canon. So much more Daniel and Armand is always needed and wanted, tho! That’s what fanfic is for ;D
@monstersinthecosmos has some good Daniel/Armand stuff on AO3 you should definitely check out.
i added captions to blank bubbles *u*]
Essays could be – and probably have been – written on the topic of Daniel’s sanity, and on his relationship with Armand before and after he’s turned. Whether it’s real insanity or a “spell” as Marius calls it in B&G, Daniel and Armand are not compatible for a period of time in canon.
TL;DR: Daniel and Armand’s fallout is at least addressed in canon. It seems to me that Daniel left Armand of his own free will, and Marius took him in at some point. It doesn’t seem to be a secret from anyone involved.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
“Also, I got a bit upset that Marius had Daniel but didn’t tell Armand until much later on the books.”
Well, that’s our unreliable narrator/retconning that AR does. Daniel is turned in QOTD and we see some of his fledgling struggling. I don’t think Daniel’s in TOBT at all, bc that’s a mostly Lestat book, as is MTD, so it’s TVA when we find out from Armand what’s happened between him and Daniel. Then we get a glimpse of Daniel living with Marius in B&G. So Marius couldn’t tell Armand about it sooner than that.
So no, they don’t get a whole book in canon, but we do see where Daniel went and we get some explanation about it.
It seems to me that Daniel left Armand of his own free will and at some point, Marius took Daniel in. Armand says in TVA:
With Benji and Sybelle I rejoined the world in a way which I had not done since my
fledgling, my one and only fledgling, Daniel Molloy, had left me.
Marius tells Thorne in B&G:
“… I took Daniel with me because he needed me. I took Daniel because it’s unendurable
to me to be utterly alone…”
And then in PL, there is a closer relationship implied between Daniel and Marius, possibly a legit canon ship.
I don’t know how much Marius was trying to protect Armand or anyone else from Daniel’s insanity. I wouldn’t necessarily label it “insanity” either, but that he was going through a difficult time. Everyone has their own headcanons about it.
Armand in TVA, he doesn’t say Daniel is insane, just that he and Daniel are out of tune:
Daniel, though alive and wandering, though civil and gentle, can no more stand my
company than I can stand his.…
I was no Marius to him afterwards. It was too exactly as I supposed: he loathed me in
his heart for having initiated him into Living Death, for having made him in one night
both an immortal and a regular killer.…
There was never any innocence for us, there was never any springtime. There was
never any chance, no matter how beautiful the twilight gardens in which wewandered. Our souls were out of tune, our desires crossed and our resentments too
common and too well watered for the final flowering.
Marius explains it to Thorne in B&G, it seems more like being “under a spell,” not a loss of sanity:
“Have you ever seen one of our kind under such a spell?” Marius asked.
Thorne shook his head, No, he had not. But he understood how such a thing could
happen.“It occurs sometimes,” said Marius. “The blood drinker becomes enthralled. I remember
centuries ago I heard the story of a blood drinker in a Southern land whose sole passion
was for finding beautiful shells along the shore, and this she did all night long until near
morning.She did hunt and she did drink, but it was only to return to the shells, and once she looked
at each, she threw it aside and went on searching. No one could distract her from it.
Daniel is enthralled in the same way. He makes these small cities.He doesn’t want to do anything else. It’s as if the small cities have caught him. You might
say I look after him.“Thorne was speechless, out of respect. He couldn’t tell whether Marius’s words affected
the blood drinker who continued to work upon his world. Thorne felt a moment of
confusion.Then a low genial laugh came from the youngish blood drinker. “Daniel will be this way
for a while,” said Marius, “and then his old faculties will come back to him.”
^Marius seems to be saying this is some kind of temporary spell, he doesn’t seem to be doing much in terms of mental health care for Daniel other than being supportive and taking physical care of him.
So I noticed in the movie IWTV when the vampires go to sleep in their coffins they don’t wear pajamas, why is that?
Hmmm, I don’t know! We only see them in the coffin (for sleeping, as you said, not like in the scene Louis gets locked into a coffin by the TdV) a few times in the film. That could be a sample size problem, maybe other nights they did change into pajamas!
1) There’s the night Louis gets turned, maybe there wasn’t enough time that night to change his clothes but he really ought to have, since his clothes would’ve gotten messy from the procedure (the whole “your body is dying” thing) maybe the filmmakers didn’t want to give him the chance to change clothes bc that would be too caring of Lestat, gotta keep the focus on Lestat being an antagonist.
2) Maybe in these shots w/ Claudia, she is dressed for “bed,” but Louis didn’t have time to change, or maybe he likes dressing in what he’s going to wear the next night… but I think it’s mostly to try to reduce the pedo taboo. He’s a faher figure, even though he’s technically her brother. If he was wearing something more comfortable or showing anymore than face & hand skin, it could be construed as … not fatherly.
IIRC, changing clothes for bed isn’t mentioned in the book!IWTV. I’ll reblog a few posts of vampires in bedclothes for ya ;D
Lestat talks about putting on a special outfit when he stays over at Marius’ house in TVL. He finds a gold mask w/ a hood, leather gloves covered with gold scales, and a blanket with gold plates on one side.
“I realized that if I put on this mask and these gloves – if I laid
over me the blanket – then I would be protected from the light if anyone
opened the lid of the sarcophagus while I slept.”
Can anyone actually see the books Claudia is reading up on in the film? Before her and Louis begin to travel.
I bet Louis and the guys in that library scene saw what she was reading! But the audience? No, we don’t see what the titles of her books are… but maybe someone recognizes the illustration style in this one, at least, and can tell us? It looks like “Hell and Damnation” is a chapter in it. Maybe it’s a book the props people designed just for the movie, though.
In the movie, Louis says:
“She studied the myths and legends of the Old World, obsessed with the search for what she called ‘our kind’ ”
^So, probably books about those that were available in the US in 1860ish.
Hit the jump for a book!IWTV quote, cut for length.
I can’t find any references to specific titles mentioned in book!IWTV either.
In the book, this is what Louis says about Claudia’s interest in going to Europe, but not that she studied any specific books about it:
“Meantime, she made a plan. It was her idea most definitely that we must go first to central Europe, where the vampire seemed most prevalent. She was certain we could find something there that would instruct us, explain our origins. But she seemed anxious for more than answers: a communion with her own kind. She mentioned this over and over, `My own kind,’ and she said it with a different intonation than I might have used. She made me feel the gulf that separated us. In the first years of our life together, I had thought her like Lestat, imbibing his instinct to kill, though she shared my tastes in everything else. Now I knew her to be less human than either of us, less human than either of us might have dreamed. Not the faintest conception bound her to the sympathies of human existence. Perhaps this explained why – despite everything I had done or failed to do – she clung to me. I was not her own kind. Merely the closest thing to it.”
Within the canon of the Vampire Chronicles, can vamps get sick?
Sick meaning: the flu, viruses (like HIV), and cancer? From my understanding, no, Ricean vampires are not susceptible to these kinds of diseases. In Only Lovers Left Alive, those vampires have arrangements w/ mortal agents to get clean blood rather than risk taking victims, whose blood could be tainted w/ modern disease or drugs, which OLLA vampires are vulnerable to (but they don’t go into much detail about it). I can’t think of any other vampire media that even touches on the issue of blood diseases and/or other physical illnesses.
@anton-mordrid makes an excellent point here [X]: #1 how the fuck can you not associate HIV/AIDS with vampires, you personally literally made it a blood disease transmitted by explicitly sexual acts between your gay male protagonists.
I’m not educated enough to go any further on this issue, but if you want more on this, go to @vraik and @anton-mordrid.
Sick meaning: physically repulsed to the point of having a visceral reaction? Yes.
[^Horror Vacui, Exploring the darkness (2/?) by @sheepskeleton]
In TVL, Lestat tosses his cookies (ok he vomits some blood, no cookies tossed) at the sight of a pile of dead bodies the night he’s turned. (He also hurls as he’s escorted down to the Children of Darkness meeting).
“In a deep prison cell lay a heap of corpses in all states of decay, the bones and rotted flesh crawling with worms and insects. Rats ran from the light of the torch, brushing past my legs as they made for the stairs. And my nausea became a knot in my throat. The stench suffocated me.
He also says that vampires can’t stand to be around the dead bodies of their kills, either:
Revulsion at the sight or smell of death seemed part of my nature. I couldn’t watch executions any more than when I was that trembling boy from the Auvergne, and corpses made me cover my face. I think I was offended by death unless I was the cause of it! And I had to get clean away from my dead victims almost immediately.
Dead blood is not poisonous to them, just distasteful. In TVL, Lestat goes to Armand in Paris for help after Claudia and Louis try to assassinate him a second time, and Armand throws him in a locked cell with a dead mortal for dinner: “Sometime in the dark, I discovered a mortal victim there. But the victim was dead. Cold blood, nauseating blood. The worst kind of feeding, lying on that clammy corpse, sucking up what was left.”
^So clearly dead blood is not bad in the sense of being poisonous, just icky 😛
When was the first time you saw Interview with the Vampire? For me I watched it at age 10 or 11 I think, I do remember I was very young. I remember my older sister watching it and I guess I decided to watch it along with her. I remember watching it with her when we visited our dad and he wasn’t home. We weren’t allowed to watch such movies like that but we didn’t care. My dad’s from Liberia and they’re very superstitious (well at least my dad is) and movies like IWTV frighten them.
Well first of all, #I love these kind of stories, where ppl talk about how they got sucked into this fandom, whether it’s when they first saw movie!IWTV (or movie!QOTD) or starting reading one of the books…
Movie!IWTV is frightening, there are brutally scary parts. It touches on a lot of taboo subjects. The kind of violence it has is scary partly because there’s the element of betrayal in many instances, definitely when Claudia knifes Lestat, and then when Louis sets him on fire ;A; We laugh about it now bc if we didn’t have a sense of humor about it, it would just be too cruel. But that is really cute that you watched it with your older sister, hopefully she explained things that were confusing or at least provided some support during the scary parts ;]
I was given book!IWTV when I was 11 and saw the movie soon after, sneaking over to my best friend’s house bc it was rated R and I wasn’t allowed to watch it. It was dark comedy to us, and we ended up watching it repeatedly, trying to memorize the lines so we could say them along with the movie. Our favorite line had to be:
“Just remember: Life – without me – would be even more unbearable.” And I can’t really gif that out, the shot is pretty dark, but you remember, it was here:
That line was a declaration between us, too. We’re still best friends to this day, 20+ years after bonding over this series!
VC had a huge enough influence on us. For better or worse *shrugs*
I was an ambivert. I was completely obsessed with antagonists, too. The VC encouraged me to develop all those extroverted traits I loved in Lestat, which other characters didn’t always approve of, but he dgaf! He marched to his own drum. He craves the spotlight for validation but his own love for himself outweighs these external rewards. The VC has been a huge source of strength. So much great advice. Here’s an example, that suffering can be embraced as being a valuable part of our experience, too:
“It’s an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn’t destroy us, if it doesn’t burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.” – Lestat, Queen of the Damned
But really, the quote that bound me and my best friend together, that’s what I hope for fandom to accomplish. We do come and go, but I’ve been in this for 20+ years, and it seems to me that VC fandom as a whole will always be here for those who want it.
“Just remember: Life – without me – would be even more unbearable.”
^What I think is also worth mentioning here is that Lestat could have killed Louis or just left Louis in NOLA at any time (before Claudia). But he didn’t. Even at his worst, Lestat was still fascinated with Louis, and life – without him – would have been even more unbearable ❤
I-want-my-IWTV 