I think it’s important to note that you’re not going to connect on a super deep level with every friend you have. There are many kinds of friendship and some of them involve just going for coffee, or just talking about a single, certain subject, or just chatting about books, or meeting up when the other is in town and doing the “how have you been?” routine for an hour and then saying goodbye.
Not every friendship is going to be this we-connect-on-every-level-no-one-has-ever-understood-me-this-way sort of soulmate. And that’s ok.
I think it’s important to note that there’s a difference because I never had the latter, what I’ll just call a kindred spirit, until I got to high school. And after that, I wanted all of my friendships to be like that, and when they weren’t I got frustrated, and probably ended up hurting a lot of people in the process when I burnt out or realized that isn’t what I really wanted.
Kindred or casual, neither is better than the other. Both are good. It’s ok to have kindred spirits and it’s ok to have casual friends–human beings need both. You can’t get to know everyone intimately, it’s impossible and exhausting.
And I just feel like there’s this perception that you have to have a best friend, like you have to choose, and you have to hold onto them for years and years and years, and all of your friends have to be kindred spirits or they’re “acquaintances” and I’ve seen so many people categorize their friends as like … if someone doesn’t know you intimately and won’t do certain things for you that are associated with kindred spirits they’re not “real/true friends” and I keep seeing this demarcation between “friends” and “best friends” and I think that’s kind of an unhealthy attitude and I don’t really think that’s true.
Sometimes you need someone you can spill your soul to, who peers into all your dark corners, who youdon’t lie to and who you feel gets you in a way no one else has. And that’s good and that’s healing.
Sometimes you just need someone who will geek out with you about a new rock or a new album or who is down for meeting you at a diner at 3 am or whatever and that’s it and there aren’t any expectations for soul-bearing (which is exhausting let me tell u what) and you’re both fine with that. And that’s good and that’s healing.
Listen, life is full of some really amazing things, and you’re going to meet some really amazing people. Sometimes they’ll hold your hand for the whole journey, or a long portion of it, and sometimes, they’ll just grab you and spin you around before letting go. And both are good.
It doesn’t matter how long they held it, what matters is that they took your hand. What matters is that they left you laughing.
Tag Archives: advice
*I don’t think I deserved the day, unless it was a punishment of some sort from a higher power for my sins. But my health is not improving, my best friend broke my heart and all my creative work I worked hard on was torn apart by critics. It feels like the whole world turned its back on me Monsieur.*
♛
Any one of your issues would be enough to be legitimately sad about but having them all at once is cosmically unfair *frowns* I wish I could swoop in, take you in my arms, and solve all your problems for you. But that would be doing you a disservice, because it would steal the feeling of satisfaction that you’ll get when you overcome these things with your own power.
You know, and please don’t take this the wrong way, bear with me for a moment; this reminds me of those exasperated people you see in crowded public places like shopping centers, sometimes with a number of brats hanging off of them, or some other burdens, or they’ve dropped their enormous coffee-desserts across their shoes, and you see them gaze skyward, cell phones glued to their heads, reporting to whoever will listen: “God is testing me. HE’S TESTING ME.” They say it as if God was becoming a real nuisance, deriving some kind of sick pleasure in throwing obstacles at them. Do they deserve their obstacles? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Life is full of them, and you get them either way. Sometimes I myself am the obstacle when an evildoer meets their end.
Whether you believe in God (or Goddess!), a non-specific spiritual entity, or nothing at all, we’re all tested. It just rarely comes in the form or at the time we would prefer it to, does it?
I could cheerlead for you – in authentic uniform or in the nude – until the break of dawn, and you would absolutely enjoy it as long as it lasted, and the memory of it, believe me. But eventually, the joy wears away and you’re left with the weight of your obstacles once again.
In my experience, you have to tackle each of your obstacles to earn your power back and have the wheels going your way again.
There will be times in your life when it feels like the whole world has turned its back on you. It happens. Better to get accustomed to pulling yourself back on your feet, dusting yourself off, and getting ready for another round. It’s better when we have supportive friends and family, but there were many times in my life when I was all I had. And I succeeded. It can be done.
Let’s get down to brass tacks, as they say:
- Your health is not improving? Find out whether it’s in your power to fix it. Is it as simple as getting more sleep? Better hydration? You’d be surprised how effective sleep is in curing crankiness, I remember this from my devoted mortal bandmates, as I nearly drove them mad rehearsing them into sleep deprivation. If it’s something you can’t fix, find a way to get to a professional who can guide you in this regard.
- Best friends are excellent heartbreakers. They know your weaknesses and they know where to place the knife and turn it. If this is the end of that friendship, take time to heal and be glad it’s over, you’ll have that part of your life open for a new best friend when and if you’re ready for it. If this is not the end, take time to heal anyway, and try to heal with this person, if possible. But don’t let them hurt you again. Don’t become their punching bag.
- The number of times my creative work I worked hard on was torn apart by critics is just… I’ve lost count *ragged sigh* I could never even start the count. It seems like every creative contribution I’ve made to anyone has unleashed harsh criticism. I take the constructive criticism to heart and have to let the rest roll off, otherwise I’d give up altogether. My creative output has always been mainly for myself so at the end of the night, as long as I’m happy with it, it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. Art, music, and writing are all highly subjective. But occasionally, someone will point something out in my work that might be rephrased to better capture what I’m trying to express, and it endears me to that person who dared to suggest the improvement, that they dared test my infamous short fuse. I am trying to take this kind of constructive criticism better, believe it or not.
I wish you the best, know that I’m supporting you from afar.
Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.
Jon Bon Jovi (via infamoussayings)
A Note on #VC Casting
That feel when you’d rather answer questions all day in a state of weird and pleasurable natural – albeit caffeinated – high rather than attempt to do any real productive Work for your Job.
I just want to mention, and please take this completely w/o attitude bc I do not intend any attitude here: I get a number of VC Casting ideas on a regular basis, and I do enjoy them a lot! But if you don’t see an answer for yours it’s either bc:
- I haven’t had a chance to research the actor yet;
- I researched the actor and they don’t reeeally work for me and I’m trying to come up with another role for them so I can still answer publicly; or,
-
I researched the actor and they don’t work for me and I can’t think of another role for them, so I might have to let it go unanswered or just delete it.
If you haven’t seen your Ask answered, and it’s been a long time, it may have been a #3 sacrifice. Not every male violinist can be the illustrious Nicolas de Lenfent! But you are more than welcome to post your own casting ideas, and tag them #VC Casting, and I will be tracking that tag so I might reblog from your blog ;D
(I’m only talking about casting in terms of the physical attributes of the actors and their acting abilities, not their personal lives.)
As we all know, casting is highly subjective, and “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What a terribly boring world it would be if we all fell for the exact same faces!
The whole thing stirs up beauty as a concept. We argue whether Louis’s hair is long and straight, and chestnut in color, like in movie!IWTV, or that it’s shoulder-length, wavy and raven black as described in canon. In some fanart it’s drawn just long and black and silky straight, in some, it’s short and curly!
In considering VC Casting, we will have to make compromises, it’s unlikely that whoever is cast will look or be styled sufficiently to please everyone. I have my own subjective ideals for beauty and how the characters should look, don’t take any of my opinions personally (unless you want to agree with me!), I would never want to cause anyone discomfort simply because I disagree with their choice.
Whoever is finally cast, let’s try to give the actors a chance to do their jobs and try to keep in mind that these are fictional characters, and the movie people want us to enjoy their product, and buy the BluRay of it, and make a cult classic out of it, and all that jazz.
More on beauty under the cut.
My 8 year old cousin just told me on Saturday night, right in the middle of a lovely collage session in which we were cutting up models from Seventeen and making fashion plates, that she wished she had “straight blonde hair.” She said curly hair was ugly. Her hair is perfect Louis de Pointe du Lac hair to me, brunette and maybe a little lighter than his, but silky and slightly wavy to her shoulders, then descending like a little bubbling waterfall into the most perfect little shining curls for about 4 inches. Oooh purple prose! But I had to paint a picture since I can’t post one here, so let me be briefly flowery just for the sake of description, ok?
I knew I didn’t have a satisfactory answer for her concern, because telling her “But you have beautiful French girl hair!” “But mine is just like yours! Is mine ugly?” would have meant nothing in the face of a culture that forces certain ideals of beauty at us from such an early age. She said “I wish my hair was straight and blonde,” as if that would solve all her major problems, so that she could then go on to tackle the important ones.
She then followed it up with “- like my dance teacher Lilly.” Ah! Now it was clear! She wanted to look like someone she deeply respects and appreciates! Hopefully that’s really where it’s coming from and not the mass media trying to convince us all from an early age that our inadequacies are many and can only be overcome with dye, paint, etc. I admit that I wear makeup, but for me, it’s more like war paint, and bc I enjoy the art of it.
I told her anyway, “My best friend has straight black hair, and she told me that many girls like her get their hair professionally curled, they pay a lot of money to try to get their hair curly like yours.”
“Really?” said my 8 year old cousin.
“Really.” I said.
She seemed somewhat pleased with this factoid and we went back to our art project, but still… It just brought up this whole beauty topic. It’s not resolved, the conversation is far from over, but at least we started it.
Hi there! stumbled upon your glorious blog after started re-reading VC. And let me tell ya, when I first read the entire thing some 13 years ago, it seemed to me so completely different, that I flip through pages now and go ‘wow, that really happened’. AR didn’t loose her touch with PL (which I detest and do not consider part of canon), but it reads more as an ‘audience book’ vs ‘author’s book’ as the previous ones do. And this is exactly what happened with some other novels, which is sad.
Thanks for the compliments! YES THIS THING IS GLORIOUS ♥u♥
So I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at, re: an ‘audience book’ vs ‘author’s book’ but it I do know that AR has always advised to “write the book you would want to read.” She just put up two quotes recently that I think are relevant here:
[May 11, 2016 – X] [May 10, 2016- X]
I had posted recently about the fandom’s general judgment of the quality of VC as a series, and most ppl seem to agree that canon is stronger in the beginning, and it makes sense because those works drew their strength from the emotions she fueled them with at those times in her life.
Unfortunately, I think we generally prefer those books coming from negative places for her, and I think it’s because she spun gold from the misery, she fought her demons through those stories and the product was captivating, clawing into the reader and giving us some secondhand catharsis.
Stories that came from a more positive place for her seemed not to produce that kind of engagement for the reader, but it’s important to remember that some ppl may prefer those.
Either way, she’s given us an incredible gift. The stronger works resonate with us to the soul like only our favorite music and art can, the weaker works are humorous and we can lovingly refer to them as “the vampire crackicles,” but even they still have good moments in which AR has tapped into the old veins (pun intended!) to give us that gold we’ve come to expect from her.
I stand by my previous short answer on this subject: I think AR can still capture that old quality we all fell in love with, albeit in slivers. Which is why I can’t disregard any of the books entirely. It’s still hard for me to accept Prince Lestat as canon, I might never, but there are moments and lines of dialogue in it that are SO VERY GOOD. Moments where I’ve had to pause and smile, because it was as if the old Lestat, from IWTV or TVL, actually graced us with his presence, if only for a moment.
Spring is here! Tips for getting that summer body you have always dreamed of.
-Scope out your options ahead of time, long before tshirt weather arrives. Advance planning is a must!
-Find somebody who inspires you and has their shit together. It’ll make for a much easier transition into a new lifestyle when you take over their body. Highjacking the body of someone who lives paycheck to paycheck is only recommended for very experienced bodysnatchers with background in method acting.
-Chose adults. Bodysnatching children under the age of 16 is often considered bad form. Ethics aside, children are often closely monitored for behavioral changes and allowed less freedom than adults, making them unsuitable candidates. Although the idea of reduced responsibilities and being taken care of is appealing to many would-be bodysnatchers, the costs quickly outweigh the benefits, and many lazy snatchers report being forced into soccer practice and other tedious after school activities.
-Parents with young children and other dependents should also be avoided. You will arouse a lot of suspicion if you suddenly fail in your responsibilities as caretaker and may attract serious legal trouble if found negligent.
-By extension, be very careful about pets. There have been reports of dogs and some cats apparently detecting their owners’ mental intruders. Dangerous and/or exotic animals may pose special needs that inexperienced bodysnatchers will be unable to meet.
-College students can be very good targets for beginners. Not only do they often have meal plans, easy access to parties, and some social cushioning, but they’re away from home and expected to be going through major personal changes. No one’s going to notice if they suddenly become someone else. Most importantly, many college students are stressed to the point that they welcome possession as a release from academic and personal responsibilities. This can lead to a very satisfying arrangement for both parties. While it is certainly preferable to make actual effort in the school, it is also possible to coast by for a semester and then jump into a new host during summer or winter vacation. Some bodysnatchers have spent many happy years simply jumping between college freshmen.
-Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! Nothing is more awkward than botching your ritual. Make sure you have all your supplies and can clearly and accurately recite the incantation. Mispronunciations and expired ingredients can lead to unexpected and sometimes dangerous consequences – one infamous example is of Arthur Welch, a minor Australian occultist who accidentally invited the consciousness of his target’s pet cane toad into his own mind and was unable to rid himself of the unwanted mental companion. Although Welch was eventually able to bring his condition under control, he had to be institutionalized during breeding season each year for the rest of his natural life.
Additionally: it is not advisable to try to bodysnatch celebrities. This is for several reasons. Firstly, they are under intense public scrutiny and frequently have less control over their lives than you might think. Aberrant behavior or a dramatic drop in talent will absolutely be noticed in short order. Secondly, you will have fierce competition. When everyone is trying to be John Malkovich, you will be up against the most elite bodysnatchers. In recent years, celebrity bodysnatching has become a kind of sport, in which there are no referees. These ‘territorial disputes’ have claimed lives, so unless you are prepared for mental warfare, it is best to avoid possessing public figures. (Side note: there are prolific rumors claiming that there are no big name celebrities who are inhabited by their original hosts, and have simply been cycled through generations of champion bodysnatchers) Finally, many canny celebrities and government officials have established mental security systems which can cause devastating psychic injury. While there are ways to circumvent these systems, there are new methods constantly in development – a psychic arms race, if you will. Ronald Reagan was known for having an especially deadly anti-possession system, which, though now obsolete, caused the utter mental decimation of no less than sixteen would-be bodysnatchers.
How many people have scrolled past this after seeing the title?
Has Anne Rice ever confirmed officially that Claudia=Michele?
^Stan and Michele Rice on the left, Lestat and Claudia de Lioncourt on the right. As a side note, before this gets into the more serious topic, AR has said she based Lestat on Stan, and there is a story out there that his name was meant to be “Lestan,” but ended up as “Lestat” bc of a typographical error. I don’t have a source on that.
Re: Claudia=Michele?
From the Vampire Companion:
(In the first draft of [IWTV], Rice described Claudia as three or four years old.)… Rice based Claudia’s appearance on her own daughter, Michele, who died at the age of five from leukemia. Claudia even shares Michele’s birthday, September 21.* However, despite the intense tone of suffering and guilt evident in Louis’s telling of the story, Rice insists that she had not been aware that she had included her feelings about Michele’s tragic death. “I never consciously thought about it when I was writing the book,” she says. “I wasn’t conscious of the connection. I knew that I was using the physical beauty of Michele as the model, but Claudia was a fictional character in her own right. The character, the voice, and the things Claudia say have nothing to do with my daughter – but there’s no question that this is the symbolic working out of a terrible grief. What else can it possibly be?”
In the first version of [IWTV], Claudia eventually goes off with three vampire brothers whom she meets in Paris. She does not die. As such, it was as if Rice had attempted to give her daughter a form of immortality. Rice, however, experienced psychological problems that cleared up only after she had rewritten the ending – by killing off Claudia and taking Louis through an experience of intense grieving. This version was much more cathartic for Rice.
*This is mentioned in canon in Claudia’s diary entry in QOTD, which recounts one of her birthdays.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length, not content.
From Premiere Magazine, November 1994:
(sorry, I don’t have a link, I transcribed this from the page)
In real life, Claudia was a nickname for Michele Rice, Anne Rice’s vibrant blond daughter, who had once piled her hair on top of her head, and spoken in a smoky voice like Claudia Cardinale. She was three years old when she developed leukemia, and five when she died, in 1972.
At first, Rice soaked her maternal despair in a steady stream of sixpacks. Then she unleashed her rage unto paper, into what eventually became Interview with the Vampire. Michele was reincarnated as Claudia, the raging woman locked in a child’s body. “Louis was me,” says Rice. “That dark, brooding, melancholy person ripped from Catholic faith and tormented with guilt – that was me. I’d love to be Lestat: the wishful me, the active, the dream, the other one. Louis was the more true, autobiographical portrait of the conflicted and lost and orphaned person. That’s what the book is about. It’s about being orphaned.”
From People Magazine, 12/5/1988:
“Writers write about what obsesses them,” says Rice. “You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.“
Dear Marquis: In your books, we were first told that vampires are supernatural creatures for which there is no scientific explanation, then that scientists would risk their reputations to study you, and in your latest book we learn that despite such dire warnings, some “thirty to forty” scientists *have* undertaken such a step and of those, “at least two dozen” have paid for it with their lives. My question: if there is truly nothing there, then why are mortal scientists dying for it?
♛Do NOT address me with that title. It died with my father.
Before you go pointing it out, yes, I own the castle. I don’t own the people around it the way that that title did. And I wouldn’t want to.
There is obviously a reason that the scientists’ pursuit of vampires is worth their effort, otherwise I wouldn’t mention it in the first place in my books. And worth the risk of their reputations. Obviously my own concept of what we are has changed as I’ve learned more about what we are.
One reason I mention it is to remind our own kind to be careful about who they reveal themselves to, so as not to become imprisoned in such a manner.
I don’t know what the scientists’ reasons to pursue us would be, but the first thing that comes to mind would be the possibility that they might have an authentic specimen to display and finally prove everyone wrong who scoffed at them! That’s one kind of motivation. That would probably be my own reason, if I were a mortal scientist.
I’ve described our blood as having curative properties. What might that mean to the human race? Distilling out whatever gives it this healing ability could save countless lives from some of the most lethal causes of mortal death. Cancer, for one. AIDS. Other degenerative diseases like Multiple Sclerosis.
The fact of the matter is that mortal scientists die in pursuit of all kinds of study. They die in pursuit of the cure for cancer. They die in pursuit of the Loch Ness monster. Witches. Bigfoot. Fairies. Sirens. The supernatural is just one area of study, and within it are many subsets, some of which even overlap.
They seek answers when others tell them "there is truly nothing there.“
I was told many times to many questions throughout my life that there were no answers. I found answers. Answers which delighted me, deeply disturbed me, answers that I do not necessarily believe. It’s part of this journey that we call life, asking questions, seeking answers, considering them, choosing what we want to keep and what we must discard, and sharing that knowledge with others. That’s why I bother to write my books at all, a record for myself and my loved ones. Hopefully someone can learn from my experiences and not have to suffer as much as I have.
My goal in life is to be one of those people who are just light. You see them and you suddenly feel so warm inside and all you want to do is hug them. And they look at you and smile with the warmest light in their eyes…. and you love them. maybe not in a romantic way but you just want to be close to them and you hope some of their light transfers onto you.
I-want-my-IWTV 