Obviously I agree re: Charlize Theron, and she’s a fandom fave casting for Gabrielle, but Viva Bianca is a choice I had not considered! She was gr9 in Spartacus.
^Very Gabrielle here.
It would probably be easier to age her up for the duration of time that she needs to be older, than it would be to make the older actresses you mentioned appear younger for the vampirism part. Also, as much as I love Meryl Streep and Rene Russo, they are both much stronger of facial feature than I headcanon Gabrielle, who’s meant to have kitten-ish features and resemble Lestat.
Lestat is an excellent dancer bc he practices on corpses. As for the singing, well, he struggles with the desire to entertain ppl at the slightest provocation. It will be an issue at the wedding.
As always, #your headcanon may vary, but from my own reading of the books and the characters focused on (the main coven), AR does not make it clear how much power the vampires have in the world* beyond the fact that they’re rich if they want to be (like Armand and Daniel owning and running the luxurious Night Island, a lucrative hotel/entertainment/casino/art-space/etc.), or not (Louis living in a dilapidated shack w/ few physical possessions).
Santino and the Children of Darkness might have had some impact with their religious zealotry, but targeted at the world in more of a negative way, a League of Shadows sort of group. Other vampires, especially the new ones introduced in PL, we don’t know much about their interest in economic or political influence.
Speaking of Louis…
he put the Coven of the Articulate’s stance very eloquently in QOTD (my emphasis added):
“It’s their world, not ours,” he said humbly. “Surely we forfeited it when we lost our mortality. We have no
right now to interrupt their struggle. If we do we rob them of victories that have cost them too much! Even in
the last hundred years their progress has been miraculous; they have righted wrongs that mankind thought
were inevitable; they have for the first time developed a concept of the true family of man.
… Don’t interfere with them.
Even if they kill each other! Give them time to see this new vision realized; give the cities of the West,
corrupt as they may be, time to take their ideals to a suffering and blighted world.“
Cut for length, not spoilers.
*That was the issue that was brought up in QOTD, whether they had a responsibility to have political power and/or have influence the world or not. There was a council of sorts, and some heavy debate was had, mainly on the part of Lestat’s ultra feminist SJW girlfriend vs. literally everyone else except Lestat who mostly sat there terrified into silence and not taking sides, and it ended with the general agreement that they shouldn’t meddle in mortal affairs.
This is partly bc writing their involvement into actual historical events could be difficult if not impossible (What, did they fight in WWII? Which side? How would that even work, concealing their vampirism from their fellow soldiers??!), and partly bc AR herself wasn’t very political back in earlier canon.
Even now, in the later books, AR keeps her world mostly separate from the Real World; IIRC, Hurricane Katrina was never mentioned in canon, and one would think that NOLA-branch coven founders Louis and Lestat would at least comment on that obviously devastating tragedy. At least one fanfic writer did take up the challenge of weaving in Katrina, and did it very tastefully. So it’s possible, but AR hasn’t gone there.
I don’t know enough about autism to agree w/ this headcanon.
AR is always taking questions, and she decides what she wants to answer, so you can go ahead and ask her yourself! (If you’re shy, you can always make a separate FB page just for this sort of interaction).
But even her headcanon doesn’t matter. Her headcanons are not universally accepted by the fandom. If you headcanon Gabrielle as autistic, go right ahead! There’s at least one person out there who headcanons her as transgender. She could be both transgender and autistic. Such is the beauty of everyone having an imagination! But it is really special when we find ppl who share our headcanons, and maybe someone will comment on this post if they agree w/ you ❤
Short answer: Yes, fanfic is okay now. AR now “ignores fanfiction.” That’s her current stance. We don’t have her approval, we have her tolerance.
*~And AO3 has pledged itself as a safe haven* for fanfic writers to post their works!~*
But even with all that, I still would caution ppl from sharing the more hidden fics unless you are sure you are communicating w/ someone who is not a POTP, bc they have “poked the bear” by sending things to AR under the guise of caring for her, but it always feels like a thinly veiled attempt to provoke drama *grumbles*
Just so you know: a lawsuit doesn’t happen immediately. She has to send you a C&D (Cease & Desist) letter first, and that’s a very scarily-worded letter that’s meant to intimidate you into taking your fanfic down, during the War on Fanfic™, ppl just complied, avoiding any further action.
I really should have an FAQ, sorry about, that bc I’ve answered this before 😛 I have more info on her stance on fanfic in these posts [X] [X], and in my #fanfic and #war on fanfic tags, if you want to more.
Louis will probably spend a lot of time fawning over Lestat, there will probably be a wedding and he’ll probably get another gawdy emerald ring to add to the pile of them. IDK but apparently he can fly now, so he’s using his vampiry gifts finally! Hopefully we’ll see some more of that.
“I’ve been asked often: will there be crossover books involving my vampires and my werewolves? Will we see more crossover books with the vampires and the Mayfair witches? — As I see things now, no, I will not be doing crossover books again that involve two different series. The simple reason is: I’ve discovered from experience that each series has a certain texture, a certain ambience, a certain dominant set of aesthetic rules; and crossovers seldom do justice to the series involved in this regard. I’m proud of the hybrid vampire/Mayfair novels (Merrick, Blackwood Farm, and Blood Canticle and appreciate very much those readers who enjoyed them), but these books have not aged well in my mind and heart. I also think many readers were confused by them, especially Mayfair readers who did not especially care for the vampire books I wrote. But I would never say never to anything now. I love to experiment, break new ground, take twists and turns. Who knows? And I do appreciate the questions on this very much.”
[^ fanart by @liquorandptsdvarietyshow who deactivated, but I’m crediting them and I have permission to repost their art]
We don’t really know much about mortal!Louis’ sex life… in the movie he had been married, and the wife had died in childbirth, one would hope that was his kid, and then he was hanging around w/ whores when he was trying to get himself killed, but he barely even acknowledges that one whore’s presence, even though he has his arm around her to stabilize himself. My general impression of Louis is that of all the vampires, he’s one of the least sexually-motivated.
In IWTV, Louis tells Claudia re: sex: “ ‘It was something hurried,’ I said, trying now to meet her eyes. How perfectly, coldly blue they were. How earnest. ‘And… it was seldom savored… something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.’ ”
We don’t know if he just said that to be make her feel better about the fact that she’ll never experience it but Louis usually tells the truth.
I don’t think Louis would have had sex w/ Merrick.
Spoiler alert.
So would Merrick and Louis have had sex? If Merrick wanted it she probably could have voodoo’d him into it, she voodoo’d him into breaking his moral principle to never make another vampire. Without bewitching him, I’d say no.
[As a side note, I would really love to read one or more of these books as an audiobook, and I’d do it and put it on YT, but I have to look into whether you need the rights for that first.]
ANYWAY.
I found MtD on Amazon, looks like it’s available through Audible and it’s unabridged.
You can enjoy IWTV as a stand-alone book! You can do whatever you want! It’s your life.
However, The Vampire Lestat is a response to that story, it’s all the things Lestat wanted to tell Louis but couldn’t, and it only really mentions IWTV briefly. TVL is almost a standalone book but it ends on a cliffhanger, so it makes you want to go on to the next one. And the next, and the next, so that’s sort of why I read all of them.
I would always recommend reading at least the first 3 bc those are generally, fandom-wide, considered the best.
12 books is not that many when you have a lifetime to read them. I’ve re-read all of them except Vittorio (only 1x for him), so they’re more like 36+ books for me. I read them for different things when I re-read them. People read the Bible over and over and look for different things in it.
Just about any of the books could be stand-alones, you can pick based on which characters you like best. The Vampire Armand could be a stand-alone book, he goes deeper into his story, which he gave in previous books. Some books give a different perspective on previous events in the series (what we call the “unreliable narrator”).
Most stand-aloney: The Vampire Armand Blackwood Farm Prince Lestat Pandora Vittorio the Vampire
I’ve been avoiding this Ask for two days bc I generally do not believe in rating things, my love for a thing fluctuates, and I wouldn’t want to offend someone by saying their most fave VC is my least fave VC but I felt like this was a good challenge to try anyways. Apologies if I offended anyone 😛
Another thing that makes it hard to rate them is that ALL of these books are problematic and they all have stuff in them that is painful and scary but you have to understand that I love that stuff, I’m not afraid of scary topics, I dig into them and unpack them and find the benefit of them, so I want to rate the books partly on the Revised Pain Scale by Hyperbole and a Half:
And actually this was a pretty cool thing to do, and I highly recommend you try it! Not surprisingly, when I plotted it all out afterwards, it shows how powerful the series began, at least for me. You guys might want to map it out for yourselves, I’d be curious to see if other ppl get similar results!
So I did a rating for the Happy Scale (H) and Pain Scale (P). Assume the Happy Scale is the exact opposite of the Pain Scale, but escalating in Happy from 1-11 (11 being near-death happiness overload). Dates below are dates of publication, but for MTD onwards, they are also the years I first read them.
Hit the jump for the ratings and a little commentary ^_____^
It appears that my initial love for the first few books is what got me to keep going, I keep hoping for the same flavor as the first ones had, what addicted me in the first place. I find it in small amounts and it’s enough to keep me soldiering on with it.
You have to realize that when I got into VC in 1994, only the first 4 books were out. After that, I had to wait as each one came out to read it! Bingeing through them just wasn’t an option for baby!Burnadette 😛
Before I go into this I have to say there’s a lot I love about the books and a lot of great and happy things happen in them, too! I usually don’t believe in rating books, bc my perception of them changes over time and depending on different life experiences I’ve had. Essentially, “To define is to limit” -Oscar Wilde.I can see why it might benefit others, tho. So I tried to rate them according to what I feel now, and what’s been consistent.
Your rating will probably vary, it depends on your tolerance level for problematic things, and your love of specific characters, etc. obviously.
The Vampire Chronicles
Interview with the Vampire (1976) – The book that got me into this mess. So passionate, so much subtext, a dysfunctional little family that shouldn’t have existed or had half as much love as it enjoyed, but did both, unpredictable, and a supernatural story like no other that came before or after. 9H, 7P.
The Vampire Lestat (1985) – The book that changed my mind about Lestat and problematic characters as a whole. A force to be reckoned with who just won’t accept defeat. A royal fuckup and an inspiration, that one can fuck up that badly and still try to improve his lot in life, over and over again. 10H, 6P.
The Queen of the Damned (1988) – Lestat’s crazy girlfriend tries to take over the world. What a ride! 9H, 5P.
The Tale of the Body Thief (1992) – Lestat’s vacation as a mortal doesn’t go as well as planned bc of course it doesn’t. There was a lot of difficult stuff in this book but also a lot of comedy, and if you toss it just bc “bodyswap episode” seems dumb to you, you may be missing out on one of the most Lestatuesque displays of Lestat being Lestat. I think it had some catharsis in there, too, bc he has to let go of his idealization of mortality and chooses vampiring over being human. 10H, 7P.
Memnoch the Devil (1995) – When we thought this was the last book in the series, it was bittersweet. On the one hand, we had VC fanfic of the Bible itself, and being an open-minded person I thought that the concepts presented were very stimulating and there were some hearbreaking moments “NOT MY DEAD!” On the other, we had the last shot of Lestat, the last thing he tells us, “Let me pass now from fiction into legend.” Honey, you’ve been a legend since 1976. *cries* I loved it. 9H, 10P.
The Vampire Armand (1998) – He’s not my fave but this book was insightful and made me understand him and feel feelings for him. 6H, 7P.
Merrick (2000) – Initially did not like this, but over time it’s grown on me. I would have loved this book a lot more from Merrick’s perspective, or from Louis. The major thing that happens in it is one of the most painful in the series so that tips my pain scale, and the resolution of it is so good that it tips my happy scale a lot, some might say that event was a cheap thing to pull but I thought it made sense in the fabric of the story. Still think the characters should talk about what happened then, have they all decided never to bring it up bc it’s unpalatable? It deserves more in-canon discourse. 5H, 9P.
Blood and Gold (2001) – Marius gets a whole book! I didn’t judge it on the historical accuracy/inaccuracy, and yes, some of it felt like a retcon, but so many VC books are retcons, and we have unreliable narrators, so I liked it for what it was. 7H, 2P.
Blackwood Farm (2002) – Most of this is almost not a VC bc it’s about this totally fresh set of characters, who I didn’t really like, so I couldn’t engage too deeply with it. 2H, 1P.
Blood Canticle (2003) – Well what can we say about this Mayfair/VC crossover except what AR has said? It hasn’t worn all that well. As AU fanfic it’s pretty fun. There are some great moments. 7H, 2P.
Prince Lestat (2014) – Treated this like AU fanfic and it was pretty funny, there were flashes of the characters being very believable, but for the most part, 3H, 6P.
Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (eta 11/29/16) – Pretty sure this is gonna be hilarious AU fanfic, predicting 5H, 2P.
New Tales of the Vampires
Pandora (1998) – I was never super into her, but I liked her story alright. Still a better love story than Twilight. 4H, 2P.
Vittorio the Vampire (1999) – I was never into him and I didn’t really care for his origin story idk maybe if I were more of a history buff I’d like him more… oh well. I should give him another try sometime but for now: 0H, 1P.
I-want-my-IWTV 