♛I took to these modern products right away, and they come in flavors, some of them have warming effects, it’s dazzling!
But you know, there were such things before there were specific products for them. I preferred grapeseed oil, but you can use other oils. Contrary to popular belief, spit dries very quickly. Too fast to be of much use for this purpose.
Now, blood as lube took me longer to adjust to.
Our blood is thicker than mortal blood, and dries slowly, but even so… sometimes it’s easy to look at the landscape of my lover’s writhing body, see the blood that I’ve drawn or applied, and feel a frisson of dissonance. That I haven’t actually done them harm, unless that was exactly what they demanded from me…
For us, anywhere that can be bitten or cut can be an erogenous zone *winks*
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 wavecame 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:
That’s kerosene. Used in lighting oil lamps at that time, too.
(^From a draft of the script.)
Apparently, “kerosene in its natural state is a clear, colorless liquid. To comply with U.S. federal tax law, kerosene is dyed red.” [X] Idk what colors it came in Paris in 1860-5ish, when Louis burned down the TdV… 😛
The fact that it came in a keg like that, and that alcohol is flammable, one could easily mistake it in the movie for wine. So many victims bled to death on that stage, and then considering that Lestat had told Louis to pretend blood was wine, I think it makes sense that this kerosene is amber/red in the movie, figuratively, it seems to be blood or wine, even if that color might be wrong historically.
Oh this is that guy from the Don’t Stay in School vid, I remember him! What a powerful vid this is. Still gives me chills.
I do really like his look, but idk about him as Louis. I’d still screentest him for another role, a different vampire maybe. One of the Fang Gang maybe, or a theatre vampire.
There is a lot of debate about Louis’s hair, and I’ve done it publicly and privately (recently w/ my fanfic co-writer/collaborator @wicked-felina!) this dude’s hair… it’s more of a fanon thing for him to have long silky straight hair, canonically, Louis has “wavy, curly” and “black” or “raven” hair “curling just under his ear.”
^X by @i-see-light, probably more canonically accurate for Louis.
We all picture him differently, I think that’s part of what will make it so hard to cast an actor for this role. Some ppl headcanon his hair as long and more of a chestnut-color (like in movie!IWTV), or shorter and curlier (like in Lestat the Musical), or dark, longish and silky (which I think is influenced by
movie!IWTV but trying to pay some homage to canon), or something else entirely!
We all apply our own ideals of beauty (which are influenced by our own cultures, art, families, romantic partners, and/or friends, etc.) onto these fictional characters.
I enjoy the different interpretations in
VC cosplay and fanart, for the adaptation(s), it’s more important to me if he can act like Louis, so I’ll accept hairstylings I wouldn’t normally like for the sake of good script writing from the writers, and strong ic acting from the actors ^_____^
I’m sorry that it’s hard for you to get the VC books 😦
But again, and I don’t know about your internet connection, but here in the US it’s pretty easy to find VC online by googling for the pdfs.
What about libraries in your country? Sometimes you can ask your library to bring in books.
I get that shipping is expensive. I actually did a giveaway post where I offered to ship a few VC out as prizes, which I bought at a library book sale for like $1-$2 each, and I still intend to ship them out. Message me off-anon and let’s see if we can work something out.
BTW, if anyone is interested in shipping their unwanted VC book(s) out to someone in a foreign country who really wants to read them, as a show of VC fandom solidarity, message me!
I’m sorry, but sharing links to books for free online is illegal and my blog could get shut down for doing that 😛 so I’m asking that no one reblog this with links like that.
HOWEVER: I have done the google and found all of the VC (except PL and PLROA) illegally uploaded as pdfs, they’re not that hard to find. The problem with those pdfs is that the formatting is often wonky and there are misspellings, which can lead to misunderstanding the text.
You could also buy them on eBay, right? Someone must be willing to ship to your country.
Or make a friend who has access and is willing to ship to your country, you can work out some kind of payment situation with them. I’ve shipped books as gifts to friends in New Zealand and England.
I don’t know that summarizing VC will allow you to “catch up” with the fandom, you really only need to read the first 3 books and the Vampire Armand to get most of the jokes on tumblr, bc most of the jokes seem to center around:
Louis being a pyromaniac,
Lestat being an obnoxious but somehow lovable glittery murder machine,
Lestat and Louis being awesome and shitty murder dads,
Claudia being an ungrateful spoiled brat,
Armand being a little brat, or a slut, or an evul coven master, or all of the above,
Daniel Molloy just wanting to vampire plz!!!11!,
Marius being a pedo, or too bossy, or both,
Gabrielle is a bad mom and an ice queen,
Nicolas is spelled NICOLAS and he is NOT DEAD!,
Secondary characters not getting enough love from anyone!!
There are often spoilers in summaries tho, do you really want to be spoiled? I LOVE being spoiled.
We have these unreliable narrators, there is a lot of disagreement as to what canon really is, and some fans choose to ignore parts of (or entire books) in the series. We bring our own experiences to the reading, and we choose what to connect with, so I think we can agree on some things about each book, but you will probably get a different summary from any given reader. Even AR has told us to disregard the hybrid Mayfair/VC books (Blood Canticle, possibly Merrick and Blackwood Farm) when moving onto the more recent VC additions (PL and PLROA). So, for example, I have a friend who has only read the first 3 books. She doesn’t even know what happens after that bc she prefers to think it ended after QOTD. So any new vampires made after QOTD do not exist to her.#Your headcanon may vary.
Anyway, you want summaries.
http://vampirechronicles.wikia.com has a pretty good write-up for each of the books (they don’t have PL and PLROA currently, maybe they will eventually). It contains spoilers.
Lestat’s Bisexual Adventures in 18th Century France
Lestat’s Adventures with the Queen of the Vampires
Lestat’s Adventures as a Human
Lestat’s Adventures with Satan
Lestat’s Adventures in a Coma
Lestat’s Adventures with Polyamory
Lestat’s Adventures in the Deep South
Lestat’s Adventures with Not Being There At All
Lestat’s Adventures with Witches and Other Weird Shit
Lestat’s adventures with Being the Vampire Head of State
Lestat’s Adventures with Literal Fucking Aliens
(Note, Pandora and Vittorio are technically stand-alone “New Tales of the Vampires” books, but Pandora would be No. 6 of the 13 book series).
You can check my #VC Synopsis tag, which has more capsule humorous summaries.
Gonna try to do a little summary for each VC under the cut as a personal challenge.
Spoilers ahead! I’ll try to do this with as few spoilers as possible, as factually as possible.
1. Interview with the Vampire – Louis tells the story of his life and unlife to Daniel Molloy. Louis starts at the point in his mortal life just before he meets Lestat, and how his life up until that meeting influenced the unlife that followed after he became a vampire. Lestat’s reasons for choosing Louis are unclear to Louis, but he wants Louis to choose to be a vampire. Louis is under so much duress (failing health, still in emotional distress over his guilt re: a close family member’s death) that the choice is not 100% legit, Lestat can’t wait for a more opportune time and proceeds to turn Louis anyway.
The whole story could be seen as Anne Rice’s exploration of the role of religion and the reasons why terrible things happen to innocent people, the concept of punishment.
For me, it was also eye-opening bc I was 11 when I read it and it introduced the possibility of love between a same-sex couple, even if that was in more of a read-between-the-lines way.
It also has a child vampire and I hadn’t seen any media even attempt to tell a story with a child vampire before. Few media that attempt it seem to have captured the beauty and tragedy of such a creature as in this story, and she reappears in a few of the other VC. <— bc IWTV is from Louis’s POV, as told to Daniel, and then written out and possibly revised by his editors, this is the beginning of the Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series.
^ok that was too long, I’m going for shorter.
2. The Vampire Lestat – Lestat seeks to “correct the record” that Louis laid out in IWTV by giving us his own backstory, starting at his mortal youth and how that influenced the unlife that followed when he became a vampire, against his will (hence the “I’m going to give you the choice I never had,” line from movie!IWTV). There is more exploration in the role of religion and reasons why bad things happen to basically innocent people, and whether you really can make the best of a shitty situation or just give up. More about punishment. A very unique take on the origin of the vampires as a species is revealed. And the reasons why Lestat behaved the way he did (basically all secretive) in IWTV. <— This is more of the Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series, who are we to believe? Lestat or Louis? And the author’s retconning which is perceived as “making excuses later in canon for behavior that’s already happened.” Some readers really despise this. Personally, I like having the options and trusting one version of events, or none of them.
3. The Queen of the Damned – Lestat’s modern-era rock career wakes the Queen of the Vampires and she has this awesome Radical Feminist idea for world peace. She’s already gotten started on it! She upgrades Lestat physically so that he can help her accomplish her goals, but he’s not really on board. They meet with the vampires she has allowed to survive her purge and it doesn’t go very well. Also in this book, we have different narrators, more about the vampire origin story, and the Armand/Daniel ship is sailing at its best here.
4. The Tale of the Body Thief – Having suffered so much through the past 3 books, Lestat is a suicidal hamburger-brained moron and makes some very bad choices. Despite everyone advising him NOT to, Lestat makes a terrible trade with a body thief and learns quickly that he had idealized being human. He does some horrendous stuff, and wants off the Being Human ride. He has one friend who helps him set things back to the way they should be, and then he betrays that friend in a spectacularly cruel way. More importantly, Lestat also gets a wonderful cuddly doggo.
5. Memnoch the Devil – Lestat Goes to Heaven and Hell, meets Jesus Christ, meets God, meets Satan (who prefers to go by “Memnoch”) it’s all a huge interview process to decide if Lestat might work for God or Satan and it’s basically fanfic of the Bible. Some people hated it for those reasons. I found it really intriguing, bc it presents a reason why God created the earth, and why there’s suffering, why God allows suffering to go on, and where religion comes from. Like Lestat, Memnoch says he’s not the antagonist, but really the good guy in all this. When Dorothy gets back to Kansas Lestat returns to earth, there is disagreement about whether he went on a real trip or he was just fooled by a really talented spirit. Lestat is so confused that he throws a huge tantrum and then gets solitary confinement, then slips into a coma.
6. The Vampire Armand – Armand gets his spotlight and gets to really tell his story, do we believe everything he tells us?
Lots of good Italy times stuff.
Armand visits Lestat in his coma-state, and talks about that, too.
7. Merrick – Merrick is a Mayfair witch in NOLA who bewitches Louis in pursuit of his request for closure with Claudia, and hilarity ensues. Louis gets the most screentime he’s had since IWTV, but the whole book is told from a 3rd wheel’s POV, it would have been so much better from Louis’ or Merrick’s POV. Major fatal thing happens but fortunately Lestat wakes up from his coma in time to save the day.
8. Blood and Gold – Marius tells his story, as does the vampire Thorne tell his own story. Marius talks about his artistic influences and his experience with the early Talamasca and Santino and the Children of Satan. We see Daniel (now living with Marius) under a kind of spell, which Marius says is temporary.
9. Blackwood Farm – Lestat goes to the Deep South and hears the story of vampire Quinn (his story defies summary) and, with Merrick’s help, saves the day.
10. Blood Canticle – More vampire and Mayfair mixing. And Taltos. It’s a very big WTF book. But it has some very funny scenes and lines in it. It ends with Lestat promising the Dark Gift to someone.
11. Prince Lestat – Vampire scientists. A clone. Someone gets kidnapped. Ultimate Vampire Coven Gathering. Lestat is cranky, saves the day anyway. Ghosts apparently can linger on earth after death and make bodies for themselves. Characters from past books reappear. New characters are introduced. Louis writes a chapter about how OK fine, he does love Lestat. FINE.
12. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis – I haven’t finished this but basically… the REAL vampire origin story, and it involves bird-like aliens, who were sent to earth bc the aliens feed on the suffering of mortals. The bird-like aliens didnt want to create Atlantis. in fact they were pissed because this one creature of theirs, Amel, made Atlantis with the Luracastria (i dunno i think thats how it’s spelled) and their viewing tech couldn’t see through the material. Amel made Atlantis to spite the bird-like aliens omg i cant believe im typing this. Louis and Lestat finally have some legit canon cuddletimes.
– Pandora – the story of the vampire Pandora, and why Marius is bad at relationships. Lots of good Roman times stuff.
– Vittorio – is not a VC vampire, and wants nothing to do with that dysfunctional pile of fanged crazies. @monstersinthecosmos and @vittoriathevampire could give you a better summary of that one, since I didn’t absorb it too well 😛
*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.
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 we
wandered. 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.
//ooc; my Lestat never interacted with a Thorne, so mun will answer for him.
@nordic-thorns is the only Thorne RPer I know of (thanks for reminding me, @maestroderomanus! I remember seeing them on the dash but I couldn’t recall the name), not sure if they’re currently active. You can peruse their archive tho 😉
“A woman approached me on the street and called me “fine”. I am fine. I don’t need mortals telling me how I feel inside.”
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.”
I-want-my-IWTV 