I don’t think I have that, you’ll have to dig around on her Facebook 😛
^Does anyone know of this post? Let me know.
In the meantime, there was some discussion about his accent on this post and tbh I probably trust fandom more than Anne on this.
Armand has no accent. You can speak any language to perfection. His English, for example, is soft, fresh, and perfect. Maybe his articulation is a little old, and formal. He has a perfect ear.
Thanks, anon! Very kind of you. It looks like eliciadonze’s ask box is closed, so I will tag them here, @eliciadonze and hope that they see this post with your message!
♥♥♥
You can also email them; a screencap of their header with their email address is below the cut. I have emailed them in the past and not received a reply, so I don’t know how often they check it or if they reply to messages, so I will not be emailing them your message.
It’s a touchy subject, recommending blogs, as inevitably I’ll leave someone out and then they may feel, well, LEFT OUT :-
(BTW I respond to asks for Louis with ♠ in the #louis muse tag, so you can ask him things, but he can’t go on to do full threads)
I don’t follow as many RP blogs as I used to, it was too much to keep up with the various threads, some have gone inactive, new ones have started up… All attempts to make VC directories usually fail.
However, and that said, so you know I’m not playing favorites, there are some I remember by name or saw in the notes for this roundup post, and so I tagged them below, but this is an incomplete list. Let’s make this an Ask Louis and Louis RPer roundup! People Off The Page, reblog/comment with any Ask Louis and Louis RPer blog I left out 😉
(active-status not guaranteed):
@merciful-death – rarely active but their archive might interest you
(TBH I am not current with AO3, so this is a tragically short list, anyone is welcome to reblog/comment with more suggestions, preferably from AO3 bc that site protects its ficwriters. FF.net and Wattpad suggestions are also welcome.)
– Of course I have to start the list off with the collab I did with Rebness/@wicked-felina, Coffeeshop AU. Slow-burn longfic ;D
The Last Drop is technically a few scenes that didn’t fit into the main story, but could be read on their own as stand-alone AU if you’re looking for smtg shorter.
Interview with the Frat Boy the_corinthian – This is a WILD ride, a college AU. It’s silly and unashamed about it’s silliness. A few of its tags say it all: #No Homo #Yes homo #Heavy Drinking #Drunk!Louis #General douchebaggery #several different and uniquely poor kinds of childcare
Interview with a Cannibal or Appointment with a Vampire by (?) – was a Hannibal/VC crossover, so not really an AU, but I can’t find it to link you. Might have been taken down ;A; REMEMBER TO DOWNLOAD AND SAVE FANWORKS U LIKE!!
The Hostile Takeover by StellaMachiavelli (@stellamachiavelliici) – is a legendary fic. “Lestat de Lioncourt is a high-flying businessman out for revenge on ruthless boss Santino, with the help of his best friend David Talbot. There’s just one complication: on Santino’s side is Lestat’s ex, Louis de Pointe du Lac.”
To Die as Lovers May by @goth-mabel inspired this fanart by @13bels, and I haven’t read this series of cis-swapped fics, but @13bels describes it: “very thoughtfully written, drama-filled as our vampires are known to be, and an engaging read, if it’s your cup of tea! Although, it does contain triggering content, so please proceed with caution and read the tags if you haven’t read it and would like to. I enjoyed it especially! I love seeing this trope be experimented with <3″
I have to say I’ve never gotten a race casting suggestion quite like this before! So this is a first ^_________^ It’s especially appropriate to answer it on MLK Jr. day here in the U.S., when we reflect on the progress we’ve made and how far we still need to go in pursuit of an equal society for all.
Some characters may change where “ethnicity is flexible”
Anne and Chris agree that POC being casted are important and will be considered in casting. The Millennial vamps (older gang) will most likely be largely POC.
Marius was played by a black man in the musical and Anne thought he did a great job. Marius can be any ethnicity so long as he’s half Roman. She’d prefer to have Marius as blue eyes and blonde haired like Lestat but it’s “not imperative for him”.
Anne and Chris to be inclusive, but will always focus more on how fine the actor is. Talent is needed to get the role, not just looks.
TL;DR #1:
You might be right about Daniel’s race not being explicitly stated in canon, and if it were up to me, I would be open to considering a POC to be cast as Daniel, or other characters. Any adaptation provides a chance to improve on canon the way fanfic/fanart do 😉
TL;DR #2:
However, casting Daniel as a POC may introduce racial considerations that AR & Co. are not capable of addressing well, especially during the mortal!Daniel/Armand time period (1975-85), a decade in the U.S. when interracial relationships were still somewhat taboo. Since we have our fair share of racial issues now, too, whether
AR & Co.
shift the Modern Era to now, or leave it 1975-85, racial issues would still need to be addressed.
[^Everyone loves John Boyega and he would cost a bazillion dollars to cast in anything now, but I saw him in the movie “Attack the Block” years ago in which he’s more like Daniel to me, and I think he was great in that, dealing with packs of
weird
roving aliens, and I think he’d do well with
weird roving
vampires! So yes, as a casting suggestion, Boyega would be my first POC choice for Daniel.]
An adaptation is a director/showrunner’s vision for the canon material. It’s like an official fanwork. Some changes to canon in an adaptation are for the better, but “better” is subjective, of course. We tend to consider the opinion as objective when the majority agrees on the change being “better.”
Claudia was aged up by about 6 years for movie!IWTV, bc they couldn’t find a child close to the canon age who could act better than Kirsten. For that role, I think the performance was more important than the canon-compliance, and her being closer to achieving physical maturity made her more tragic ;A;
Armand was aged up and physically very different, the director may have wanted him to be more convincing as Armand-the-oldest-living-vampire-in-the-world to audiences who had not read the books. Many fans of the books STILL DO NOT LIKE this change.
Claudia’s Story was an official VC graphic novel, since by nature it was from Claudia’s POV, some of the narrative from IWTV was altered or removed entirely. Was it for the better? I felt like we got a better understanding of Claudia’s character, so maybe it was, but for me, it relies on and coexists with IWTV, it’s a slightly different story.
Movie!QOTD changed many things from canon, including making Akasha visibly a POC, even though she is described in canon as being white from age and *handwaves* AR’s vampire physiological reasons. I think many ppl would agree with me that that change was definitely for the better, but many of the other changes in that movie? Not as good, but some ppl love that movie and/or consider it nostalgic.
So could a POC Daniel be good for the adaptation? I can’t pick a side so I’ll say: Possibly!
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
1) You’re right that we don’t have much diversity in canon 😛 This casting could add a new dimension to the Armand/Daniel ship that wasn’t there before. According to Wiki:
Interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision that deemed anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, with many states choosing to legalize interracial marriage at much earlier dates.
Daniel meeting Armand in 1975 would mean that interracial marriage had been fully legal for less than a decade. From 1975-85, their “courtship,” I think it was a time when interracial relationships were still somewhat taboo in society, at least in the U.S., and it still is taboo in some places in the U.S. and around the world. So that would need to be carefully addressed. Or they could change the time period to be more current, but I would say that we have different race issues now that would need to be addressed, no less pressing than in 1985.
2) Anne, Bryan*, Chris**, & Co. may not be equipped to handle racial issues very well. Anne has gotten criticism from fans, at least from what I’ve seen here on tumblr, that when she writes POC she “fetishizes” them. I haven’t fully accepted that term itself, but I can agree that AR often writes POC in a way that treats their superficial qualities as being overly sexy and appealing. I think she tries to address – but may not quite grasp – the deeper racial issues that could be addressed, but writing about POC issues is also something I am not well-educated about, so I wouldn’t know how to improve her writing of this subject matter.
Here’s an example of how she describes her POC characters, this is Davis, a black vampire in QOTD:
Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy, as Baby Jenks saw it. His skin had a gold glow to it, the Dead glow which in the case of white Dead guys made them look like they were standing in a fluorescent light all the time. Davis had beautiful eyelashes too, just damn near unbelievably long and thick, and he decked himself out in all the gold he could find. He stole the gold rings and watches and chains and things off the victims.
Choosing a race for a character whose race might appear open-ended in canon to make them Good Representation, could pose the risk of Bad Representation.
*I don’t know the American Gods series and I haven’t watched the adaptation, or heard reviews about the casting of a POC person specifically, so I don’t know if that’s a sign that it was a widely-agreed upon successful change to the canon material.
**Similarly, I haven’t read any of Chris’s books so idk if he even has POC in them.
I had to think about this one for awhile, bc my immediate reaction was to defend Louis and say: “Oh no, our sweet bb Louis wouldn’t kill a child! Nor a preteen or teens! He may not choose guilty from innocent but surely a teen and under would be safe from him??!”
But he’s NOT a sweet bb. He’s a vampire.
Louis killed Claudia, or attempted to do so. More on that in a bit. The only further explicit reference we have re: his killing methods in canon is in QOTD, when Akasha states that he kills “without regard for age or sex or will to live.“ and since she can read his mind and Louis does not correct her on that statement, I would assume that she’s pinned him accurately.**
(**Note 1: in the scene at the end of book!IWTV (which we still don’t know if it actually happened or not, bc unreliable narrators), Louis takes a baby that a young vampire brings to feed to Lestat, and returns it to its home: “I returned to the small house from which the vampire had taken the child, and left it there in its crib.” So maybe BABIES are safe from Louis!)
(**Note 2: Louis accepts the offer of taking a bite of Denis, Armand’s mortal preteen/teen pet at the Theatre des Vampires, not knowing if Armand intended him to kill this offering or not, but in the book, Louis takes it without any resistance and Armand takes Denis back before Louis can finish him BC HE MIGHT HAVE.)
TL;DR #1: Yes, I do think Louis would kill a lost child/preteen/teen, and I think that the circumstances of such a choice could be worth exploring in fiction.
TL;DR #2: I think it would be unlikely for Louis, on his own, to kill one member of a group of ppl of any age, for the practical difficulty of killing one of them w/o the others noticing and causing a scene. I think this would make his kill more difficult than necessary, as Louis kills perfunctorily, only exerting the amount of time and effort required to satisfy the need:
“I would let the first hours of the evening accumulate in quiet, as hunger accumulated in me, till the drive grew almost too strong, so that I might give myself to it all the more completely, blindly.
“…I lingered only a short while, long enough to take what I must have, soothed in my great melancholy that the town gave me an endless train of magnificent strangers.
“For that was it. I fed on strangers. I drew only close enough to see the pulsing beauty, the unique expression, the new and passionate voice, then killed before those feelings of revulsion could be aroused in me, that fear, that sorrow.” (IWTV)
^If his killing style had changed since then, I think he would have mentioned it to Daniel during the interview.
It also begs the question whether he would kill the elderly, people with disabilities (mental, physical, etc.), and other types of people whose defenses are lowered to some degree, and I think “indiscriminate” applies to all of those categories. Yes to all, Louis kills indiscriminately.
TL;DR #3: Claudia is a child Louis kills (well, attempts to kill) in canon, and her similarity to Anne Rice’s daughter (who died at the age Claudia was turned) was very likely the reason for Anne writing IWTV in the first place. Through the characters in IWTV, I think Anne asked the questions to get the answers to exorcise her demons regarding that loss. Fiction is a safe ground from which we can examine and lance the pain we have experienced in real life and release it, and in sharing the story, we might give others a catharsis, too. I think this novel’s rich exploration of these difficult issues is part of what has made it so beloved by her readers, we can relate deeply with her story in our own ways and feel a catharsis from her explorations.
There are parents who outlive their children bc of these early-childhood diseases (and other reasons) and they have to find a way to go on living, and even trying to be happy again. I’m sure Anne will always experience pain from this loss, but through fiction, she may have been able to achieve enough closure to go on living her life.
I think Anne’s answer for herself at the end of writing IWTV was, “Neither you nor your daughter, nor anyone else, were being punished. Michele was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
1. “So if a lost child happens to cross his path would he kill them?”
A) I think that Louis feels like he, personally, shouldn’t judge who should die, and that therefore ppl who cross his path of any age are fair game. Louis was very Savage Garden about it before he was aware of the concept. In the Savage Garden, tigers can’t really be held responsible for killing the young, infirm, or elderly of their prey. Vampires are not human, even though they were once human, and some seem very human still… some of them hold themselves to human laws and morality about killing, but some of them do not.
B) If a child is lost at night without a parent or guardian, if the child was as abandoned as Claudia was, I think Louis would probably still kill them. It could be considered a case of the child being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After all, it would fall under the Savage Garden concept, they’re at risk of more than just being Louis’ dinner. Louis is just another risk out there, maybe scarier because you might be able to reason with him where you can’t with, for example, a virus or a tiger.
C) is for CLAUDIA: While it’s true that Claudia didn’t exactly “cross his path,”
Louis was drawn to her cries and she was a lost child, abandoned by her parents. Her father had left, her mother was dead, and she was defenseless. Claudia might have already been sick with the plague, or might have died from starvation.
One could argue that Louis killing her was more merciful than the slow death she might have suffered if no one had found her ;A; There are situations where death is more preferable to suffering. We don’t know whether she could have been saved from death if brought to the hospital in time; even a hospital and the best medical care is not a guarantee that a life will be saved.
Louis was filled with guilt and shame when Lestat found him with Claudia, and I do think that Lestat turned Claudia to take that guilt from Louis. At that time, this was Louis’ first human kill in years, and Louis might have committed suicide for the guilt of having killed an innocent child if Lestat hadn’t “given her another life.”
2) So if a bunch of punk preteens or teens
happen to cross his path
would he kill them?
As far as “a bunch of punk preteens or teens,” Louis still would not judge them, even though society tends to think less of “punks” for disrupting the peace, vandalizing property, or otherwise purposely causing trouble. So I don’t think they would be targets for Louis specifically because of their “punk” label.
Louis would
probably not be interested in a group of any type or age (even a group of violent middle-aged bikers would be safe!); as it would be difficult to kill one of them in the presence of the others without creating trouble. He goes for people who are out on their own. I don’t think he’d want to go to the effort of coercing one away from the pack.
It’s not canon but I would think Louis can share kills with other vampires now, and he would be able to do so more stealthily with another vampire or two with him, if they wanted to take down more than one victim together, any age.
3) Re: Claudia being Michele Rice: I think that Louis’ attempted killing of Claudia is the major impetus behind IWTV being written in the first place.Anne Rice lost her own daughter at the age Claudia is turned, and Anne was going through the pain of that loss, asking why it happened to her daughter. Had Anne been an irresponsible mother? Was it God’s punishment for Anne (and/or her family) failing to be a devout enough Christian? Was her daughter being punished for some crime?
Was it Satan?? Was it a case of a bad thing happening to a good person?
To my mind, IWTV’s real cornerstone, on which the rest of the story was built around, Anne Rice created muses through which she could ask these questions and try to get the answers.
Anne said she modeled Louis after herself, but he also represented Death. Anne wanted these answers:
Why did Claudia die?! Bc Louis killed her.
Who’s this Louis monster and why did he have to kill her?! Well, he’s a vampire, that’s what they do.
Ok… But why did Louis have to kill an innocent childspecifically?Bc he was a vampire who had been sustaining himself on animal blood for years. and he was in a state of malnutrition and extreme desperation, and this child was nearby and defenseless. She had done nothing wrong.
Also, Louis felt terrible for this, even though he admits to Daniel that the act itself (as all blood drinking is to vampires) was pleasurable. Louis does not bring it up to Claudia herself until she began to rebel and demand answers.
So I think Louis battling with his religious upbringing, whether he was from the Devil, and having so much guilt about killing all victims (especially Claudia!) was a release for Anne, bc she could empathize with the entity she created who killed her child.
If the murderer himself felt guilt over it, that may have helped Anne achieve some measure of peace.
I-want-my-IWTV 