Tag Archives: annabellioncourt

Just out of curiosity, is there any books you recommend that have a similar humorous/ dark tone as VC?

Leave a comment

Hey! Book reccs! Always a good topic.

image

It’s tough for me to answer bc I think it depends on every individual reader’s sense of humor,… even within “humorous/ dark tone as VC” there is a range*. So I can’t say definitively that these reccs are in line with what you’re looking for necessarily, but you can use this list as a starting point.

*Lestat dancing w/ Claudia’s mom’s corpse: Some ppl find this moment dark and hilarious and other ppl think it’s just disgusting, so… there is a range. Personally I find it pretty amusing.

image

(There are some duplicates on this list, sorry about that, but I wanted to list them by recc’er.) (And I added ** next to those that @gothiccharmschool​ just recc’d in two recent posts which I will reblog momentarily for you.)

In no special order:

  • (Okay this is the first one bc it IS special, and the closest to the humor of VC I’ve seen in awhile) This is a mockumentary/movie but it sneaks onto the top of the list bc it is just SO good, courtesy of @theamazingdrunk for reminding me in a comment on an older rec post:​ WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
  • **Salem’s Lot – Stephen King, personally, I find several Stephen King books to be darkly humorous, this one is a good one. I find humor in the Shining and Firestarter, too, but less so. 
  • Vittorio – don’t forget Vittorio. Not sure if you read this one. It’s also by Anne Rice and technically not a VC book, he has a different origin story and is not part of the VC vampire group.
  • Some short stories – @soyonscruels​ posted: those who dream only by night: the gothic short stories rec list – Not full-length books but still, short stories are good! There are 20 short stories listed, writers include @neil-gaiman​, Roald Dahl, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, each of whom I’ve found to have some level of humor along w/ dark tones.
  • More E. A. Poe is offered up here, from @keep-calm-and-heta-oni​, which includes little capsules about each.
  • @consultingcupcake​ said: “I really love the Cirque du Freak series, and **Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. Both have teenage protagonists
  • @fantasticfelicityfox​ said: The Historian is very good
  • @stitcheskitty​ said: Sookie Stackhouse novels

  • Movie and book (and a few anime) Recommendations here.

  • @riverofwhispers said: Carmilla is good
    Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse books, but only the early ones.
    the Rachel Morgan series but again starts out good gets weird later and it’s not about vampires so much as there are vampires in it.
  • @bluestockingcouture said: ‘The Angel’s Cut’, sequel to ‘The Vintner’s Luck’, is very atmospheric and well worth reading. Not quite as moving and intense, but there are some excellent new characters.
  • @sanguinivora said: Also, as to voice: IWTV opens in the late 1700’s/early 1800’s. Don’t know about either a southern American or French hinterlands-with-a-gloss-of-Parisian dialect, but for the grammar and vocabulary, one cannot go too far wrong looking to the novels of Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian.
  • @dragontrainerdaenerys said: I just read Fevre Dream, George R.R Martin’s own vampire novel, and while I didn’t liked much his vampire mythology the main characters are charming! Besides, it’s set on the late 18XX and goes on the Mississipi River, so it has similar scenarios to IWTV!
  • @baroquebat said: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, while futuristic, has a loooot of lovely gothic set pieces in the anime movie, plus its just gorgeous and has the rare treat of having a dhampir lead!

@annabellioncourt’s Recs, and these are mostly her descriptions, too, compiled from other recc posts:

  • The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories – Angela Carter
  • Carmilla – Bunch of adaptations of this.
  • A Taste of Blood Wine –  Freda Warrinton, for romance and decadence.
  • **Blood Opera Sequence (or “Trilogy”?) –  Tanith Lee’s vampire series was out when Lestat was playing rockstar
  • Historian – Elizabeth Kostova, for its worldliness
  • **Fevre Dream (yes its spelled fevre) by George R. R. Martin (yes, its THAT Martin, and his take on vampires is Very Good.)
  • Sunshine by Robin McKinley
  • **The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot, also for romance and decadence. (the recently-published edition from Valancourt Books has a foreword by @gothiccharmschool!)
  • The Hunger by Whitley Scriber
  • **Dracula – Bram Stoker, for its stereotype-setting content
  • Lord Ruthven – Byronic vampire, Lestat doesn’t catch the irony of John Polidori’s mockery of the foppish, arrogant, and well…Lord-Byron-y vampire

>>>>Moar recs from @annabellioncourt​ under Spooky Book Recommendations

>>>>Moar recs from @gothiccharmschool: here, here, and in her #vampire books and #vampire novels tags. 

>>>>My #VC adjacent recs tag

Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this with other VC-adjacent book recs! 

@hyperbeeb (<– is very well-read and took one for the team to read Blood Vivicanti!), @gothiccharmschool, @fyeahgothicromance, @thebibliosphere, (@annabellioncourt, too, but you are technically off the hook as I’ve already posted your recs!), got any recs for books w/ similar humorous/ dark tone as VC? 

Leave a comment

annabellioncourt:

monstersinthecosmos:

The fact that all the Vampire Chronicles exist in meta form within the Vampire Chronicles is actually so fucking genius and I think AR gave us a beautiful gift with which we will always be able to hand wave away any plot holes or characterizations that deviate from the norm.

Continuity error? The narrator remembers the events differently.

OOC behavior? The narrator is too dense to properly interpret someone’s feelings.

The sudden inclusion of a phrase she really likes all over the book from various people’s mouths? (ie: Lord God!) It’s not ANNE saying these words, it’s the characters picking up each other’s mannerisms.

It’s created a rich breeding ground for all types of discourse and headcanons, and we never have to be truly heartbroken by critique cause there’s always the possibility that Lestat is just being a jackass and doesn’t know wtf he’s talking about. 

It also creates this beautiful sense of suspending disbelief in that the characters are all “real”

Video

Leave a comment

annabellioncourt:

gothiccharmschool:

I feel this video was more successful than the companion video, 40 Years of Women’s Goth Style. This one felt less costume-y, and more authentic.

Also, I predictably covet the shirt, coat, and cape from the 90s vampire look. My cliches, I embrace them.

I was hesitant, but yeah, this felt so much more natural than the women’s one did; save for the cyber punk and some of the make up on the death rock one, this is more of what I’ve actually witnessed (….though I’ve only been in the sub-culture a decade, and only aware of it for a little more than that)

image

(^Anne Rice book spotted in the Women’s Goth Style vid!)

[send me a tv show/book/fandom and i’ll say the top 5 things i’d change about it] OLLA (it’s a movie but still)! Bwahahaaa… this should be challenging.

Leave a comment

annabellioncourt:

oops, I forgot to list movie, that was part of it.

1. Those wigs gotta go. They….kind of….worked for Eve, making her look like an antique doll with dusty, tangled hair; but looked like a dead animal on Adam, 10/10 horrible mess.

2. the zombie references were annoying, it seemed like such a juvenile thing for a 200 year old vampire to say, especially one that supposed to be so intellectual.

3. Ian didn’t have to melt away in the water/acid, the CGI for it wasn’t that great, and it was a bit of gore that was mostly absent from the rest of the film, and it interrupted the flow of an otherwise very consistent style.

4. I liked that vampires could be killed by drinking diseased blood, but it didn’t have to be played out, it could have just been mentioned/referenced. 

5. Tom Hiddleston has the least beleivable vampire smile I’ve ever seen (I have seen a lot) and it ruined an otherwise great closing shot.  I understand that we’ve been prying into their private lives the entire film, and having them come towards the camera like that at the end was almost like saying “we can only learn so much and live,” putting us in the place of their victims: we’ve witnessed it, we can’t be allowed to share this. But…ugh…maybe no fangs? Maybe less snarl? I have no idea how to fix that, but I cringe every time I see it. Tilda’s as awesome though, she makes an exceptionally convincing vampire.

bonus: Adam plays the entire No. 5 instead of just a minute of it becuase that solo….daaaaaaaamn. Also pls fuck the whole MARLOWE IS SHAKESPEARE bullshit with a chainsaw. I love this film enough that I can ignore it, but why. Why.

Send me a book/movie/tv show and I’ll tell you five thing’s I’d change/

#Perfect just perfect! For you, @annabellioncourt since u loved it so much lol…

image

[^X by @hiddlescheekbatch]

Hello! I hear there is actually a tv series in the making for ‘let the right one in’. The first people have been cast! I just read your thoughts on the swedish movie. Spoiler alert for Elis gender (it doesn’t influence the plot at all tho). Eli was born a boy and her full name is Elias. Eli got castrated while she was turned into a vampire by a vampire. She does say ‘I’m not a girl’ in the book and both movies. But it isn’t clear what she wants to be called or seen as.

Leave a comment

Thanks for the info! Wow, we are going to be spoiled w/ all these TV adaptations… all the glorious bingeing…

image

The whole gender thing for Eli is ambiguous in the films, and, from what ppl who have read the books have told me, also ambiguous in the book. 

From what I’ve heard about the book, the character is referred to with female pronouns until the ritual castration is revealed, and then the character is referred to with male pronouns. It is up to every reader’s interpretation to determine gender of the character at any point. If the author wanted us to have a definitive answer, I feel like that answer would have been made less open to interpretation.

  • amadeo-child-of-the-renaissance said: //Adding it here: Eli himself doesn’t mind being addressed with female pronouns. Please keep that in mind. Best regards- a genderfluid person. 
  • skeletalroses said: I ~have~ read the book (and seen the Swedish film), and Eli did not seem to me to identify as a cis boy. I could certainly see agender or something as an alternative to the transgirl interpretation, but I’d be pretty skeptical of calling Eli a cis boy. 
  • Re: Eli saying “I’m not a girl,” in the films, annabellioncourt said: yeah the book (original and translation to english) and the american film call her “her/she” and its 90% clear she means “not human” in this film. 

Hopefully, the TV series will clarify this debate, if it is important to the creators/director to do so. Even without an answer to this, the story is still very compelling and I’m excited to see more of these characters!

I’m about 150 pages into ROA and its killing me because the Atlantis plot might have been really interesting, albeit out there, sci-fi novel, and her sections with the vampires aren’t any worse than PL, but together its so…../no/.

Leave a comment

*nods* That’s the general impression I’m getting from ppl about it. I still haven’t read it but I WILL. 

image

[X]

^Kitty by @berrym 

Those things in the new book: Atlantis, aliens, our vampires, etc. are intriguing separately. There’s no doubt about that.

When I was 11 years old, I loved choc. syrup and baloney sandwiches, and let me tell you… choc. syrup ON a baloney sandwich? My brother and tried it and…../no/. We didn’t like it, but I am sure that there’s someone out there who probably LOVES choc. syrup on baloney sandwiches! I hope they use potato bread, at least, it’s cake-ier than white bread.

About the Lestat thing, I think it’s also the way in which the novels try to convince you that he’s real. Anne has a lot of faults as a writer but she’s excellent at that. The only other writer I have read that makes you forget their stories are fiction and not history in that degree is Hugo. But what Hugo does with events, Anne does with people. And I think a lot of it stems from how much Lestat feels real to her bc that’s what makes the parts of the story that try to convince you feel genuine

Leave a comment

annabellioncourt:

“WHAT HUGO DOES WITH EVENTS, ANNE DOES WITH PEOPLE.”

YOU PUT IT IN PERFECT WORDS. That’s exactly it, Victor Hugo’s characters are great and well drawn, but because of the third person narration, they are a little less personal; but his take on the events of Notre Dame and Les Mis (for the two best known examples), feel like actual accounts of history.

Sure, Anne’s got chararacters that are immortal walking between heaven and hell (litereally) but at the same time, they’re talking to you and just feel so real.

#eloquent eloquence #SEE THIS is what I’m talking about when I say I’m picky about other vampire media, these are strong and rich characters first, and they’re vampires secondarily.

Tonight, I need sleep, but tomorrow, I’d like to host a stream; OLLA I think, was the next on the list, but anything that will distract everyone, anything that we can all just watch together and enjoy.

Leave a comment

annabellioncourt:

most likely around 8 or 9 PM, New York City time.

#PERFECT JUST PERFECT #bring yer own blood popsicles