Controversial Opinion™ but: it’s ok to like things that other people don’t like and it’s ok to let other people like things you don’t like.
Controversial Opinion™ but: if you don’t like something in fandom/fiction, the solution is to not pay attention to it and not read it and not look for content of it, and instead just go about your day as per usual.
Controversial Opinion but: this shit shouldn’t even be a controversial opinion….
I don’t have a well-articulated way of putting this yet but so much anti rhetoric strikes me as deeeeeeply sexphobic?
Like….. sexual attraction isn’t inherently predatory. Arousal is a largely involuntary process with no moral implications. Getting aroused by weird, benign, even horrifying things is a normal part of being human, and if it’s not distressing to you or causing you to act in antisocial ways then it’s not even a little bit an issue.
The idea that being aroused by another human is inherently objectifying of that human is some straight-up 18th century Kant philosophy. It was predicated on a lot of ideas we now know aren’t really true, and are deeply sexist besides. And they’re still just as wrong and sexist now as they were then? Sexual arousal isn’t a prequel to violence, attraction isn’t objectification, can we please all just in general stop being so afraid of other people’s and our own sexual feelings and start figuring out how to be accepting and positive about them in a way that benefits everyone
I got an email from a reader earlier. The sender was a lovely young woman who had just re-read my first published fic and wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed it—how it made her feel, how it made her smile, how it made her cry, how it made her excited to get home each night and curl up in bed with it, how it helped ease the pain of a difficult patch in her life, and how much she misses it now that it’s over. It was a beautiful letter, and my reaction to it must have been visible enough to make my saner half take notice from across the room. He shot me a questioning look, and I turned the laptop around and gestured to the screen.
I followed his eyes as they scanned each line, saw his lips tip up in a smile that grew broader as he read, then braced myself for the good natured snark I’ve come to expect when my little literary hobby comes up in conversation.
“Wow.” He said. “That was kind of amazing. How does it feel to be someone’s favorite author?”
“Don’t be a dick,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder.
“I’m serious,” he replied, gesturing to the screen. "That’s what she said—right there: You’re my favorite author.”
“I think she means favorite fic author. Not real author.”
“Is there a difference?” He asked.
“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes. ”Of course there is.”
“Why?”
“Because, as someone in this room who isn’t ME is fond of pointing out, self published gay mystery romance novels aren’t exactly eligible for the pulitzer.” I said, turning the computer back around.
“So what?” he shrugged, “Something you wrote inspired a stranger to sit down write what it meant to them and send it to you. A lot of total strangers, as a matter of fact. You write, people read it and react. That makes you an author.”
“Huh.” I said, very eloquently, then got up and went into the kitchen to start dinner.
Hours later, sitting down to reply to the letter in question I find myself writing this post instead. Because here’s the thing: That wonderfully crazy man who lives in my house is right. (But please don’t tell him I said that)
From the moment I realized that letters made up words and words made up sentences and sentences made up worlds that were mine to explore any time I wanted to I’ve been a reader. I have fallen in love with perfect phrases and epic stories and countless characters pressed between the pages of the thousands of books I’ve read in my life so far—and sitting down to string together those same 26 letters into tens of thousands of words of stories I felt needed telling? That makes me an author.
I have adored the work of countless authors in numerous genres, and the world of fan fic is no exception. I have admired and cherished and savored the words of talented writers whose work is no less legitimate for the fact that their names include random keyboard characters and their words don’t live on bound paper on a shelf.
It’s not JUST fan fic. It’s literature. It’s published. It’s read. It’s loved.
It matters.
Thanks to all of my favorite authors for every word on every page on every screen that I’ve ever loved.
“Here’s the thing a wise man once said, ‘The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference.’ And Loki is not indifferent to Thor. He hates him. And in order to hate someone, you must still, therefore, love them. So I think there is, somewhere down the line, the possibility of redemption for him, because he is just in real need of self-esteem.” – Tom Hiddleston
^I found that pic, and the quote in two different places, so I’m not sure which is correct (or, given internet sources, whether it’s Tom Hiddleston’s quote at all) but it’s a powerful statement, whoever said it.
The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference.
I’m calling on the Thorki fandom, what do you make of this quote? Agree? Disagree?
So one of the things in VC is that these vampires are like sappy emotional goofballs and there’s a reoccurring theme of love transcending traditional boundaries. It’s also implied over and over that they experience love on a level that is unfathomable to us as MERE MORTALS because of their big magical vampire brains.
I do think their relationships in general can be looked at on an individual basis and their history dictates the sort of tone there—I think they’re all just super extra and will always refer to companions as lovers even when there are dramatic qualitative differences in their relationship dynamics—like for example Louis & Armand strike me as a more traditional couple model, vs. Marius & Daniel strike me more in a father/son way because Marius takes care of him. Though, it’s a little hard to speculate because we don’t see a lot of them together. But! In this world, with the love transcending boundaries blah blah, it doesn’t mean they aren’t lovers in this universe and this context, because you see the same with Louis & Claudia or Lestat & Gabrielle. And even though there are a lot of areas in the stories where sex is implied through symbolism and coding and whatever there isn’t literal sex, so when you take sex out of the equation it’s a little easier to apply these broader definitions of love to these pairs of characters. And you see it over and over again that they never just like someone, or have a crush on someone. They’re just constantly ~IN LOVE~ with each other and they’re all so obsessed with how beautiful everyone is lol.
But also re: blood/sex !!!
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
Again, I think we have to take individual characters or ships into consideration with some of these questions. Like, were they feeding intimately? Until Louis v.2.0 showed up I don’t think he was. Marius and Daniel feed on each other but Marius is always very generous with his blood with his lovers because he wants them to be strong and safe. I don’t think the vampires can share blood WITHOUT it being intimate but it’s important to decide what you think “intimate” means. Because bloodsharing can be compared to sex, which is intimate in its own way, but i also see it being akin to breastfeeding, and that’s super intimate too. We have ways of knowing that these two things are different versions of intimacy and obviously the vampires would, too. But then, again, there’s the idea that the way they love each other is so much bigger than just being about sex, and their definition of intimacy is something much more infinite than we can comprehend. It’s also worth acknowledging that when they share blood they’re literally opening up a stream of their own thoughts and emotions, which is something that we IRL only experience on an implied or symbolic level when we have intimate moments with real people in our lives. So their version of intimacy is a lot more complex due to the literal mechanics of what happens to them and also that they’re canonically just super emotionally intuitive.
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
Every now and then I see discussions where the blood is reduced to sex on such a literal level and it strikes me as being really crude, and to me it does a huge disservice to one of the things I love the most about this series. And that’s, yknow, like I said, something that can vary to a degree between different people. I’m a very sex-positive person, but I’m also asexual. I don’t like reducing intimacy to meaning sex. So “lovers” to me doesn’t necessarily mean sex partners and it also doesn’t necessarily mean blood sharers, either. Like we know that Louis wouldn’t take blood from the others, which tells me he didn’t try it with Lestat or Armand pre-2000. That doesn’t mean he and Armand weren’t lovers. I think it often just means “I love this person, therefore they are my lover.”
You could take the ~just dudes being bros~ attitude to them or to any set of vampires living together if you really wanted to but I really think they’re such sappy motherfuckers that they wouldn’t spend so much time around each other if they weren’t in love, with or without blood to complicate it. I also think the overuse of the word lover is an expansion on romance and not a reduction of it, so in any case where a romantic pairing is ambiguous because of the language I think it’s always better to err on the side of them being in love.
Having said all that I will also say I’m super dying to know more about what goes on at Trinity Gate with Benji and Sybelle and we just DON’T HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO KNOW. I’m curious to see if the coven/family-like nature of the household diffuses the intensity between them, especially if Louis is around to keep Armand occupied.
So! Anyway.
Kind of a hard question to answer because I think you have to take everyone on a case-by-case basis but I would definitely say that they all feel really big passionate feelings and don’t have casual crushes on each other. If they’re living together they’re probably in love with each other, in some ridiculous vampire way that doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Why the fuck do I talk so much when I answer asks idk but
TLDR I think companion and lover are often used interchangeably in VC because these vampires are clingy dramatic saps and that they have a really liberal definition of “lover” and apply it in ways that we don’t as real people in the real world.
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
…
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
^Now, if anyone wants to define the vampires with human labels and definitions, that’s absolutely fine. You do you!
I’m going to stray slightly from Anon’s ask, and focus more on the larger aspect of categorizing/analyzing//judging/defining, bc looking for concrete differences between (A)“they are considered to be lovers” when (B) “they could be just friends,” and really, I think like all questions directed at clarifying VC ships/characters/plot/etc., it’s in the eye of the beholder/reader’s interpretation of the text and discussing it with others, if they choose to, like in sending an ask to me, @monstersinthecosmos, or anyone else.
On Analysis:
When Anne Rice said, “You’re interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!!! ;A; ” we all laughed. We still do, bc it sounded then, as it does now, at face value, like she’s a child stomping her feet and telling us we were judging her works objectivelyunfairly. That any negative or critical reviews could be labeled altogether as bullying, more or less.
…But really, over time, I’ve come to see this statement more as: “If you interrogate/criticize/analyze the text with a lens/rubric that the author was
(a)
not aware of, (b) not subscribed to, or (c.) was not a consideration during or preceding the time the work was written, you are very likely to find the text disappointing, and it will fail your judgment.” I think that Anne took it personally when fans were disappointed bc of this, but she steadfastly refused to accept guilt for disappointing them, and I admire her for sticking to her guns on that. There are fans who want her to include more POC, there are fans who insist that Lestat is straight, there are fans who want her to denounce all the VC and witch books bc they depict vampires and witches in a favorable light, etc. Since she cannot please everyone, she pleases her biggest fan only: herself.
I found a rubric for grading art (from thevirtualinstructor.com), probably for students in elementary or middle school, probably between 6-13 years old, I assume “S” means “student” and “T” means “teacher” but I can’t find the actual post about it, ANYWAY…
^So this is ONE example of a means of judging a work, and honestly, for a child, I’d say it’s sufficient. I would rearrange and add a lot more it to judge an adult, but it would depend on the adult. Maybe something like Effort, which might seem to only apply to children, would still be a factor for someone recovering from surgery or doing art as therapy.
ANYWAY, so if you reread @monstersinthecosmos‘s post there is so much to consider, especially re: the way we define “lover” and “companion” being very much in line with what I’ve added here, considering the rubric/lens from which we judge VC.
The questions then become:
Are you looking to be disappointed? Are you looking to be impressed? What do you need from a fictional work?
^And I think the answers to these will be different for everyone. In my experience, it’s been more enjoyable for me to take VC for what it is, and take pleasure in the acceptance, corrections, and/or manipulations (like AUs) of canon to fandom through fanworks and respectful discussion.
To my mind, when the word of the author is not even the authority, and there are unreliable narrators, no one’s opinion supercedes anyone else’s, no matter how hard they might try to push you to agree with them. Curate your experience with fandom and your own headcanons.
(The temptation to drop this image and post is pretty strong but I’ll go on just a little more in the remote chance that you’re being serious.)(But really when you look at him, there’s pain there, in addition to the humor he’s trying to cover it up with, what he’s actually saying here is pretty flippant “We’re lucky to have such a home,” No honey, it’s not luck and you know it, but that’s a discussion for another time.)
NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN
I’ve been there, Anon, and at least in my case, I’m an adult and I don’t live with my parents, so I don’t need them to also like what I like, and I don’t need their approval to like the things that I like, but I remember feeling so validated when they DID like what I liked. I had a very good relationship with my parents over and above the fact that I admired them and respected their opinions on pretty much everything.
I talked about VC when I lived with them and they were receptive when I needed them to clarify things for me that
I didn’t understand at 11 years old. But this is the case with every piece of media and every new thing that I came across as I was growing up and all the way to currently, they were and are a valuable resource and sounding board for my developing ideas.
Sometimes I brought up VC to illustrate a point. Like Armand’s line in the movie was pretty motivational and helped me immensely when I was a bullied kid and needed confidence:
~We must be powerful, beautiful, and without regret.~
^Which Louis rejects bc he knows that regret absolutely does have value, especially to him in that scene. But I think, isolated, I took it as:
“You’re carrying too much regret, wallowing in guilt is not working for you, and you need to let go of those things that are out of your control now, past mistakes are in the past, try to learn from them and do better, move on and you can be happier.”
And I think that while my parents may not have been thrilled that I loved a series that centered around murderers, they had no issue with it as long as I wasn’t taking inspiration from it out in the backyard sacrificing rats to Louis or whatever! We would watch reruns of the Twilight Zone, Unsolved Mysteries, the X-Files, plenty of shows with crazy shit happening, we liked the thrill of monster stories, murder mysteries, all that stuff that takes you to dark places safely. Stories that didn’t shy away from exploring the various aspects of crime, accidents, monsters, and we talked about all of it! As we did then and still do, the lively debates about these things were and are very intellectually stimulating.
I don’t know how old you are, but do you agree with your parents that you talk about VC too much? I think it depends on what you’re saying when you talk about VC. It’s a work of fiction, if it’s making you unhappy you can chuck it out the window. If it’s making you happy, then keep talking about it.
There are those who have asked Anne Rice to denounce the VC. When she returned to religion, there were Christians who felt that writing about ghosts, witches, and vampires was very wrong and bad, with no consideration as to the actual content of her books. There are so many more reasons for censorship out there. Some ppl might want to censor her books for daring to suggest that the same gender person can love the same gender person, and I know from conversations with other fans that it was a heartbreaking epiphany, to find fictional characters who could do that, that simple and natural thing, those readers who identified with that felt validated and relieved that someone was writing about it, someone was finally accepting them. It helped some of them realize that they were not alone.
VC brought people together for what it contains, it continues to bring people together, I have met some of my best friends through VC. One of them I have driven my claws into and will not release has stuck with me for over 20 years, my first Real Life VC friend, and we met because I saw her reading QOTD on the bus to school. How dark and miserable my life would be without her.
Censorship, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
I have to bring it up for the millionth time, #sorry not sorry. I’ll bring it up until my dying breath.
Censorship has become a bat some fans use to bludgeon other fans. I can’t support the crusaders who on a daily basis want to shame other fans for liking fictional characters. Despite their flaws, there are characters that have inspired readers. There are characters who have saved lives by opening readers’ eyes to the beauty of living.
Knowing what I know now, I think it would be hard for me to decide whether to let a child of mine read these books at the age that I did, and yet, I started to read them when I was 11 and I loved them. I think as long as a reader of any age has someone(s) they can rely on for clarification, then the books can be read. They can be discussed. They can inspire.
What is storytelling? In so many forms, whether it’s sculpture, painting, music, theatre, TV, movies, books, cave-painting… It’s sharing one’s own experience, trying to spin straw into gold, trying to find the silver lining, trying to tell one’s story to exorcise one’s own demons, and maybe, to try to give others the tools to exorcise theirs, too.
I hope your parents can see that when you talk about it, you’re looking for a connection with them, whether to share your impressions or get their feedback and clarification as they have more life experience than you do. Many parents miss out on the best part of having kids, which is the mutual sharing of ideas and perspectives. Mine knew it. I hope you have the kind of parents who know that, too.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
This might come as a surprise but it’s ok to not like a ship, or even hate it viciously for no real reason. You don’t need to come up with reasons why it’s morally inferior to what you like, or call anyone who likes it a criminal or anything like it. Not everything you hate is “evil”, sometimes you just plain don’t like a thing and that’s ok
i know this has been brought up a million times before but reblogs are so so crucial to unknown artists on social media. if you’ve enjoyed something i’ve made the best possible way you can show it, short of commissioning me, is helping to ensure my work gets out there. i don’t want to seem needy about it or anything but if i’m going to keep making things i really need to feel like the things i make are being seen.
I-want-my-IWTV 
