Yes, we have a series of #unreliable narrators in the VC who tell the stories from their experiences, and their “facts” don’t always align.
[^X Remember these Social Network posters I did? I REMEMBER THEM]
There are many examples of canon “facts” being different in different books. One of the best examples of this is whether Louis visited Lestat sometime after he burned down the Theatre des Vampires, but before his interview w/ Daniel. Lestat says it didn’t happen.
Lestat acknowledges that IWTV was inaccurate but he doesn’t hold it against Louis:
“But this is the tale that was told by Louis in Interview with the Vampire, which for all its contradictions and terrible misunderstandings manages to capture the atmosphere in which Claudia and Louis and I came together and stayed together for sixty-five years.
… As for the lies he told, the mistakes he made, well, I forgive him his excess of imagination, his bitterness, and his vanity, which was, after all, never very great. I never revealed to him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and self-loathing from using even half of his own. ”
When ppl complain about the storylines/facts being inconsistent, well, I can only remind them that she wrote the books in the order in which she was exploring her characters. Did some things get lost or confused along the way? YES. I don’t read other series, so I can’t say that there is – or should be – a standard to which we hold authors and expect them to have consistent storylines/facts.
But from what I know of the Bible, considered a sacred canon by many ppl worldwide, even that text has unreliable narrators describing scenes which vary to the point of discrepancy.
I understand that inconsistencies can pierce the delicate suspension of disbelief for some readers. The seeming concerted deviation from the pre-established VC verse is a major reason why it’s impossible for me (and others) to accept PL in its entirety. So I know that feel, bro!
Basically what I’m saying is that the #unreliable narrator excuse quiets this type of confusion for me, for the information that I accept as canon.
Quinn has a foot & shoe fetish, w/ a touch of exhibitionism. That’s canon
✔
Tarquin Blackwood, Blackwood Farm:
“She broke into a delighted riff of laughter, and as I came around in front of the table again and saw her shoes glittering there as if her feet were immortal and could carry her anywhere, I suddenly detached from all decorum and went down on my knees and bent my lips to kiss her shoes.
This I had done often with her; in fact, I had caressed her shoes and kissed them to tease her, and liked the feel of her arch in them, and I kissed that too, the thin nylon-covered skin, often and now, but for me to do it in front of Lestat was outrageously amusing to her. And on and on she laughed in a lovely soft high laugh that made me think of a crowded silver belfry against the blue sky gone quite wild.”
There are a number of spooky tales from Louisiana, but one of the most enthralling is that of Manchac Swamp. First of all, Manchac is rumored to be haunted. It’s also rumoured to be the haunt of Rougarou, the Cajun werewolf. As well as that, it’s said to be haunted by Julia Brown, a once practicing voodoo priestess, who put a curse on the entire town the day she died. Legend says that on the day of her funeral in 1915, a deadly hurricane ripped through the town, destroying three villages and killing a number of people. A number of curious visitors to the swamp have reported hearing shrill screams from a disembodied woman.
^This could be the swamp from IWTV! It’s in Louisiana, it stretches to Lake
Pontchartrain.
“Claudia had wrapped Lestat’s body in a sheet before I would even touch it, and then, to my horror, she had sprinkled it over with the long-stemmed chrysanthemums. So it had a sweet, funereal smell as I lifted it last of all from the carriage. It was almost weightless, as limp as something made of knots and cords… I went deeper and deeper in with Lestat’s remains, though why, I did not know. And finally, when I could barely see the pale space of the road and the sky which was coming dangerously close to dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the water. I stood there shaken, looking at the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy surface. The numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened to lift and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat. This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal darkness.” – Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire
IDK about other vampires, but I would say that Ricean vampires are not in fact poisoned by dead blood, they can drink it, it’s just very distasteful to them. I’m not going to use all the equivocating language like “may,” and “might,” this is all my very strong opinion on this topic so as always #your headcanon may vary, don’t take it personally if we disagree.
{{Oh Louis, bb, we know, it gets cold so quickly…}}
The huge difference between dead mortal (human or animal) blood and vampire blood is that the *~vampiric parasite~* in vampire blood keeps them alive/undead. Ricean vampires aren’t 100% dead (though they may poetically feel that way), they are metamorphosed into a supernatural accident.
Lestat does say in the movie (and this is probably where the confusion about the supposed lethalness of dead blood comes from, too), “You let me drink *dead* blood?!” and it might seem like he means that the deadness of it was the lethally poisonous aspect of it, when in actuality he knows he’s been drugged, it was the absinthe & laudanum combo that’s incapacitated him. Still, those drugs are not poisonous to a vampire; he asks to be put in his coffin like a mortal might want to be put to bed, to sleep it off. Claudia did it to bring his defenses down so she had a chance at killing him. He couldn’t fend her off as well in that drugged state.
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 😛 It must still have some minimal nutritional value since he feeds on it anyway.
Hit the jump for a little more, cut for length.
Lethal/poisonous blood is not about the blood itself, but is about the moment of death of the victim: What movie!Lestat warns Claudia about in Vampiring 101: (and he warns Louis in the book!IWTV) is that she must stop drinking before the victim’s heart stops, at least in the beginning, or else the victim could take her down with them in death. That’s more about the soul separating from its body at the moment of death. Older/stronger vampires can keep drinking and slurp the impact of the death down, too. Lestat describes doing it in TVL against his maker’s advice bc of course he goes against his maker’s advice:
“…and when the blood came it was
pure voluptuousness. In fact, it was so exquisite that I forgot
completely about drawing away before the heart stopped. We were on
our knees in the snow together, and it was a wallop, the life going into
me with the blood. I couldn’t move for a long moment. Hmmm,
broke the rules already, I thought. Am I supposed to die now?
Doesn’t look like that is going to happen. Just this rolling delirium.”
Also worth noting is that when mortals are turned in canon, they describe vampire blood as being extremely delicious, satisfying in more than a physical way:“And it was not merely the dry hissing coil of the thirst that was quenched and dissolved, it was all my craving, all the want and misery and hunger that I had ever known.” – Lestat (TVL). Strong words! AR has equated the Dark Gift to childbirth and I think the act of the fledgling feeding on their maker is very much like an infant at its mother’s breast. That kind of nourishment is physical AND emotional.
Personally, I’ve tasted dead blood very recently, I just had chocolate blood pudding a few days ago at the Feeding Hannibal dinner (with @mferret9, @sarah-thetrappedcat, and @thatironstring!) and it was yummy but it does not produce that kind of satisfaction. At least not for me!
Well, it depends what part of canon you’re at, and what amount of canon you accept.* I’m still not entirely sure what my headcanon is w/ his current abilities, but even if you ignore all of canon after IWTV, he’s been a vampire 225 years so he’s stronger just through age if nothing else.
He’s also one of the only vampires in canon who has never “gone to ground” (hiding/burying oneself in the ground for an extended period of time in a state of complete or semi-unconsciousness), even though he’s had very good reasons to ;A;
Armand describes Louis’ lack of powers here in TVA:“…unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom mortals fall in love.”
Just from IWTV and into the later books, yes, Louis is referred to as physically weaker than the other vampires, and he doesn’t exhibit any of the gifts that some other fledglings have in canon (like telepathy, telekinesis). This doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any of these now, but that he hasn’t really exercised them in canon.
Lestat tells us in TVL: “I never revealed to him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and self-loathing from using even half of his own.”
But he’s still stronger and faster than a mortal. He’s also able to defend himself and kick a lot of ass, so to call him “really weak” is probably an overstatement. What he lacks physically he makes up for mentally, he’s strategic in the way he attacks when he does attack, and he can hold his own against much stronger and older vampires (he took out most of the Theatre des Vampires on his own in IWTV!)
Part of his weakness in comparison to the rest of the coven is the fact that he was Lestat’s 3rd fledgling in such a short period of time after Lestat’s 2nd fledgling (Nicolas). In Ricean vampire physiology, a maker needs to wait a good long while between making fledglings; too much frequency will make subsequent fledglings weaker than they could have been. Plus, even though Lestat had the blood of a much older and stronger vampire when he was turned, Lestat himself was only a decade into vampiring himself. It seems the vampiric spirit discourages the transfer of powers from young vampires to their fledglings. If anyone got the bulk of that power, it was Gabrielle, Lestat’s first.
There is also some speculation that the blood transfer needs to be exchanged more than once (how it was done w/ Louis) to ensure a stronger fledgling. Marius, for example, exchanged blood with his maker multiple times when he was turned.
*Spoilers under the cut.
Louis was upgraded in Merrick, and in PL, he can fly (the Cloud Gift). We don’t know if he has any others now. Maybe we’ll find out in PLROA! He has a significant role in it, according to AR.
What you’re really asking is “When people of color are turned, does their skin color change?” because not all African-Americans are people of color, and there are many people of color who are not African-Americans.
I have seen other vampires of color (”VoC”) in other media like Blade (1998), Blacula (1972), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Vamp (1986), Twilight Saga, True Blood (2008-2010), Vampire Diaries (2009-2010). The vampires I’m familiar with in those examples have retained their skin color.
You would probably get a better answer from @askavampirologist-blog, because I think they have a wider spectrum of vampire media knowledge than I do, since this blog is mostly about Ricean vampires.
For Ricean vampires, they retain their original skin color, and over a very long period of time, their skin does become lighter. You would have to ask AR directly why she wrote her novels this way, I’m not going to guess at her intentions on that.
Here’s a VoC in QOTD:
“Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy,… His skin had a gold glow to it, the Dead glow which in the case of white Dead guys made them look like they were standing in a fluorescent light all the time.”
^We don’t know how old this vampire is, but it appears that his own skin color acquired a “gold glow” when he was turned.
[^X] Akasha is an Egyptian VoC played in movie!QOTD by Aaliyah. According to Wiki, Aaliyah “was African American, and had Native American (Oneida) heritage from a grandmother.” Even though Aaliyah was not the same ethnicity of the fictional character, I was pleased that the filmmakers chose a person of color to play this vampire of color character. She was one of the best parts of the movie.
Akasha is described in the novels as having porcelain white skin because she is very old, and Ricean vampire physiology involves the lightening of the skin over time. This is a point of contention in the VC fandom, that AR has whitewashed her. I don’t have a stand on this partly because there is a debate as to what color the Ancient Egyptians’ skin really was. I have links to 2 articles about that, and some thoughts on the skin lightening issue, in a post from awhile back [X].
^This was from Vampires Suck (2010), a parody vampire movie, and aesthetically, I didn’t like the way they did the makeup for this vampire of color. He looks like someone assaulted him with baby powder! But that was probably intentional, to make him look unattractive? IDK maybe someone digs this look!
For some reason in my mind Lestat is some kind of a pervert xD And after all this time without Louis this is the first thing he was waiting for Lestat: I missed your backside, Louis!! Louis: … -.-# Screw you…
#I was getting all emotional about this and then #butts
Thanks for the compliments on my blargh! *u* I try to answer asks thoughtfully and respectfully and expect the same consideration back from whoever reads my answers ^_____^
As always, #your headcanon may vary, bc we’re talking about fictional vampires, they are not people. Whether you consider them to be people in their own world is up to you. For me, I see them as ex-people. They share a supernatural parasite that gradually eats away at their mortal parts, replacing it with its own immortal substance, perfecting their host bodies to its own design. So they exist beyond the definitions of sex and gender for me.
I do not believe the vampires are canonically capable of penetrative sex but do I love fanart/fanfic/RP where they have penetrative sex? YES, YES I DO, MORE PLZ. Have I commissioned such fanart of it for myself? Y E S. Will I commission more of it or write my own in the future? YOU’RE GOTDAMN RIGHT I WILL. I love the creativity of the fanon interpretations and I will support these ideas forever.
According to Lestat vampires don’t feel sex drive,
I don’t recall anywhere in canon where Lestat says that vampires do not feel a sex drive. He has described himself as a sensualist, and we know he falls in love easily. I think that they do feel a sex drive, just not in the genitally-penetrative sex way (not the most eloquent phrasing there but I can’t think of another way to put it; “PIV/penis-in-vagina” just doesn’t apply to most of our gay ships).
Turning vampires seems to be their ultimate “sexual” act that they can perform, bc it is equivalent to pregnancy (a fledgling is being “born to darkness”), and it is always described primarily as the sharing of the Blood between maker and fledgling. I headcanon that Lestat loves the act of performing this, and that’s partly why he has had SO MANY FLEDGLINGS. So I believe that they still do feel sexual lust, it’s channeled through the experience of taking/sharing blood, and other sensually physical things.
In fanon there is a wide spectrum of whether they can have genitally-penetrative sex, some even speculate that their um… output… would be very bloody. There is fanart/fanfics/RP/etc. in which they can have that kind of sex, and ones in which they cannot.
in The Tale of the Body Thief one of the things he wants to expierence when he has a human body is sex because he says this is something he can’t do with his vampire body.
^This is up to every reader’s interpretation, and yes, in my opinion, Ricean vampires in canon cannot have penetrative sex. My main evidence for them as being unable to have genitally-penetrative sex comes from [hit the jump for spoilers].
AR has written alot of other novels with genitally-penetrative sex being an important factor, so I doubt it was an oversight in denying it to her vampires. If you want to go by her as the authority on her novels, and many ppl do, she posted definitively about it when asked about Daniel and Marius in PL:
AR does not go into much further detail than that, even in canon, other than the fact that the sharing of blood is more intimate for them than than simple mortal penetrative sex. Part of why she chose this may be to avoid the issue of pregnancy the way mortals do it; a baby cannot grow in undead flesh, y’know?
TL;DR: Personally, I headcanon them as unable to have genitally-penetrative sex. There are human couples who are unable (or do not want) to experience genitally-penetrative sex, and they can still be sexually intimate with each other in other ways. So it’s partly in how you define sex and intimacy.
But in his book Armand mentions that he had sex with Marius several times.
Armand was mortal for some of that book, and Marius did sexual things with him, but not genitally-penetrative sex. After Armand is turned, Marius and Armand have an intimate moment with a mortal woman together, but again, it is not genitally-penetrative sex for them.
My main evidence for them as being unable to have genitally-penetrative sex comes from:
Louis’s description of sex in IWTV:
Claudia asks Louis about sex in IWTV, and he replies that it “‘…was something hurried…And… it was seldom savored… something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.’”
^He’s talking about it as occurring in the past, I think he means when he was mortal. Here he says it’s not equivalent to the act of taking blood from a victim, sex is a lesser experience for him.
Lestat’s description of his non-functioning Priapus in QOTD:
“I studied my reflection … and the organ, the organ we don’t need, poised as if ready for what it would never again know how to do or want to do, marble, a Priapus at a gate” – Lestat, Queen of the Damned
^This quote has been interpreted over and over again as meaning many things, one of which being that the vampires have a permanent boner, which I disagree with. I highly doubt Louis, someone with a lot of dignity, would be fine with walking around for eternity with a permanent boner. I blame this misunderstanding on the translators who translated “poised” to “erect” in various other languages.
I interpret that quote as meaning that his Priapus is just “waiting.”
and Pandora’s description of Marius’ non-functioning (but very hard) dick in her book. Pandora wants Marius to sex her up on their ‘wedding night’ and he can’t do it, but they try, awkwardly:
He covered me and kissed my cheek. “Drink from me,” he said, “drink until the pain goes away. It’s only the body dying, drink Pandora, you are immortal.“ “Fill me, take me,” I said. I reached down between his legs. “It doesn’t matter now.” But it was hard, this organ I sought, the organ forever lost to the god Osiris. I guided it, hard and cold as it was, into my body. Then I drank and drank, and when I felt his teeth again on my neck, when he began to draw from me the new mixture that filled my veins, it was sweet suckling, and I knew him and loved him and knew all his secrets in one flash which meant nothing. He was right. The lower organs meant nothing. He fed on me. I fed on him. This was our marriage. –Pandora
I think AR is telling us that in order to be immortal, a great sacrifice must be made. Not just outliving your loved ones, food and drink, sunlight, and your appearance being altered. For many people, sex is as necessary to life as eating and breathing. To give that up for eternity is a huge sacrifice, but, you do get super powers an immortality. Fair trade?
I-want-my-IWTV 