Feel free to send me rants about this mournful-yet-will-cut-a-bitch-while-looking-like-an-angel angel (<— NICE), bc #we appreciate and love louis in this house, as @13bels so eloquently tagged that post ❤
To my knowledge, we don’t really have a name, like the Potterheads for HP or the Hiddlestoners for Tom Hiddleston 😦
We’re just “VC fans.” If I’m differentiating between different vampire media, I’ll say “Ricean vampires” or “VC vampires.”
It’s an old fandom, so old that I’m pretty sure it predates fandom being the recognized thing it is today. We were also strongly discouraged from creating fanfic, so maybe that’s why we don’t have a name. VC fanfic was underground, the fandom was in hiding, we didn’t want to draw unwanted attention by having a name. The Talamasca slogan might as well be our fandom’s slogan, too: We watch and we are always here.
Sometimes I refer to us as “People Off the Page,” to differentiate us from the VC Facebook fans who Anne Rice calls her “People of the Page.” More on that here. They used to be a formidable army she could sic on other fans/reviewers/etc., but things have been peaceful for awhile now, thankfully.
I used to refer to us tumblr fans as “fanged little trash kittens” or “fanged little trash monsters” more frequently than I do now. Probably had to do with the fandom trend at one point of saying “I’m such X-trash!/I’m trash for X!” meaning that you loved X thing/character. Seemed only natural that we would be fanged trash creatures. And it’s gender-neutral.
Any variation on the words Vampire and Chronicles doesn’t wholly work for us, since there are so many other Vampire series and Chronicles series.
//I’d like to suggest “Children of Darkness“
I second “Children of Darkness”. So dignified.
Yes, we have been called that, or called ourselves that, in the past! I’m sorry I forgot! Here, I made us a super classy badge:
(Font is “Dr Sugiyama” from http://www.1001fonts.com.)
[EDIT: Tumblr ate half my post! I took out all the indented “quote” formatting to fix it]
IKR?? He tolerates it, rolls his eyes at it when he reads it, but when it gets to a certain amount…
Louis says of himself in IWTV:
“You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive,” said the vampire. The boy nodded. “I was. Nothing structurally is changed in me. Only I never knew that I was handsome. Life whirled about me a wind of petty concerns, as I’ve said. I gazed at nothing, not even a mirror… especially not a mirror… with a free eye.”
The compilation of descriptions of Louis that @i-see-light-blog put together are mostly from Lestat, I think, and at least one or two are from Armand, both were lovers of Louis at one point. The others who describe him are Daniel, David, and Marius.*
And I think the deal with describing Louis is partly that, hey, it’s fun to do, like having a favorite flower, and AR takes the opportunity to remind us of it, and put the camera on him in a scene, so we know he’s present. It also serves a purpose, we usually get at least a scrap of context about him and/or the scene:
“I glared at him, at the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, […] his wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation of his upper lip.” -Lestat, The Tale of the Body Thief
Lestat glares at Louis. –> Lestat is clearly pissed.
Louis’ imperturbable face –>
Louis is not scared of Lestat being pissed.
And then Lestat lavishes this extra description on him, appreciatively. Attention on the lip area, now we’re picturing him pointedly staring there, which might precede a kiss, so we can infer that Lestat desperately wants to kiss him, probably. What I get from all that is the exquisite tension of Lestat wanting someone he can’t have, someone he treasures and wants even MORE bc of the difficulty. And Louis knows this when he reads those flowery descriptions. I think Louis secretly enjoys the power that he holds over all these hopeless admirers, when he reads these descriptions.
It’s the tension of the other characters pining for Louis that AR wrings every drop out for us, she’s showing us how helpless these other characters are that they can only try to capture Louis with descriptions since he defies being owned by anyone. Unrequited love is a powerful thing.
In my reading of IWTV, Louis was not just some dishrag Lestat could toss around at will. Even before Claudia appears, Louis is setting boundaries with Lestat:
“And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed the Frenieres long ago if I hadn’t stopped him,…
…`You call me the idiot, and you’ve been the idiot all along. Do you think I don’t know why you made me a vampire? You couldn’t live by yourself, you couldn’t manage even the simplest things. For years now, I’ve managed everything while you sat about making a pretense of superiority. There’s nothing left for you to tell me about life. I have no need of you and no use for you. It’s you who need me, and if you touch but one of the Freniere slaves, I’ll get rid of you. It will be a battle between us, and I needn’t point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my little finger than you in your entire frame. Do as I say.” – Louis, Interview with the Vampire
^And this is part of Louis’s hawtness, as well. He absolutely will cut a b*tch, if necessary.
Hit the jump for a little more, cut for it’s-slightly-off-topic-but-oh-well
*I’m pretty sure the other quotes are from Daniel, David, and Marius, I’m not checking bc I’m like 90% sure.
Daniel’s drawn to him in IWTV bc his story is so compelling, and that Louis is a vampire in the presence of a mortal who knows what he is, so he has that preternatural thing going on, mortal!Daniel is enthralled. Plus, Louis may have spellbound him inadvertently, as according to Armand:
“Louis… unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom mortals fall in love…” – the Vampire Armand
David probably has some mixed feelings about Louis, especially in Merrick, bc Lestat’s out of the picture for most of that book, and I think David is stepping into Lestat’s role in his absence, to some extent, so I think he’s trying see Louis as Lestat sees him.
There was an artist in IWTV who painted Louis’ portrait, it makes sense that Marius, another artist who has done portraits, would also be drawn to Louis for this reason. Marius also thinks about what would happen if Louis were upgraded, and hey, I would think he’s had those thoughts about other vampires who are significantly younger than himself, for whom an upgrade really might change them. Now that I’m thinking about it, this was info that Marius confessed to Lestat when Lestat was drafting QOTD, and I bet this comment stuck in his mind, he very much wanted to upgrade Louis for awhile, but for different reasons.
To my knowledge, we don’t really have a name, like the Potterheads for HP or the Hiddlestoners for Tom Hiddleston 😦
We’re just “VC fans.” If I’m differentiating between different vampire media, I’ll say “Ricean vampires” or “VC vampires.”
It’s an old fandom, so old that I’m pretty sure it predates fandom being the recognized thing it is today. We were also strongly discouraged from creating fanfic, so maybe that’s why we don’t have a name. VC fanfic was underground, the fandom was in hiding, we didn’t want to draw unwanted attention by having a name. The Talamasca slogan might as well be our fandom’s slogan, too: We watch and we are always here.
Sometimes I refer to us as “People Off the Page,” to differentiate us from the VC Facebook fans who Anne Rice calls her “People of the Page.” More on that here. They used to be a formidable army she could sic on other fans/reviewers/etc., but things have been peaceful for awhile now, thankfully.
I used to refer to us tumblr fans as “fanged little trash kittens” or “fanged little trash monsters” more frequently than I do now. Probably had to do with the fandom trend at one point of saying “I’m such X-trash!/I’m trash for X!” meaning that you loved X thing/character. Seemed only natural that we would be fanged trash creatures. And it’s gender-neutral.
Any variation on the words Vampire and Chronicles doesn’t wholly work for us, since there are so many other Vampire series and Chronicles series.
Awww thank you, love for the blergh is always appreciated
❤❤❤
I’m sorry you don’t have IRL VC ppl to talk to… There’s a VC discord chat you might be interested in, go to @firelight-fading or @monstersinthecosmos about that 😉
Casual VC-resemblance discussion is welcome here, and even better when it appears to be the offspring of one or more than one of the characters, especially one of your ships. AR was inspired by various ppl in her life, created these characters (some of these characters were created 40 yrs ago and may have outlived their inspirations by now :-O ), and we see her characters come to life in real ppl around us who behave or appear similarly… it’s a kind of immortality.
I had a boss who told me that he was the inspiration for a beloved Pixar character. That character is going to outlive him, and fans of that character might see his mannerisms/character in ppl that they know, or they may take elements from that character as inspiration for their own OCs, so in a way, my former boss has been immortalized, even though no one knows his name. You can be namelessly immortalized. We have ancient fandom memes and we have no idea who made them (urls go abandoned, but also, there was so much fear about claiming your own VC works for so long), but we know them. Like this classic(OP of that gif was not the creator, to my knowledge).
So, ok, Dino Jelusić: I’d never heard of this person before, I see what you’re saying re: his voice/attitude for Lestat. And you’re right, he has the broody brunette look to him (also his hair looks REALLY silky soft A+++ haircare, whatever he’s doing), although canon!Louis has wavy/curly hair.
This is a younger Dino on the left, and more current on the right, I think.
The Lestat vibe is there, CLOSE YOUR EYES AND LISTEN TO THIS DUDE:
Pretty sure he likes 80′s rock, I’m getting some Bon Jovi and Axl Rose in
Dino, for sure ;D
I’d consider auditioning him do the vocals for Lestat’s music in the VC TV series, just sayin’.
Bon soir to you, thank you (I need this week to be amazing bc it’s my first 5-day week at work in awhile, bc of the holidays and the snow day last week, omg it’s gonna be rough, lol), I’m very well! Hope you are, too, and that 2018 is treating you well, so far. I’m stretching my creative muscles again, making promises to ppl about fanworks I have in the pipeline that are ACTUALLY GOING TO HAPPEN. Yissss. 2018 is going to be a more productive year ^_______^
(No worries re: the spam of questions, I’m going to treat them as one mushed-together question, hope that’s ok with you!)
Louis having a living lineage and
being a patron to it is entirely possible! Do I personally headcanon that he does, definitively? That’s hard to say… I could go either way on it. I can parallel-headcanon, and have it both ways 😉 It depends on the fanfic/fanart/etc. I’m consuming, whether I headcanon yes/no on that.
A) On the one hand, I think he’d be charmed by seeing his own mannerisms (or that of his immediate family!) in his descendants, as can happen. ❤
I know I’ve seen at least one fic that had Louis discover a great-great-great….(idk how many?)…grand-niece in NOLA, and even being just a child, she resembled Louis physically and/or psychologically, and he was deeply touched about that *u* I don’t remember whether he became a secret patron to her… I think the fic was by @gairid/ @vampchronfic, if that ficwriter sees this post, they are invited to reblog/comment the name of the fic! It was sweet without being pure fluff.
B) On the other hand, I think Louis might take some comfort in the fact that he no longer has a family to support financially or emotionally, and no family to worry about from a distance,
…which Maharet has made a career of doing with her own family bc she enjoys it. Louis is fiercely devoted to and protective of those he loves, and he chooses those loved ones very selectively. Canonically (post-IWTV), he has few ties to the other vampires in the coven, and no mortal ties other than Merrick, but she bewitched him, and admitted to doing so, so I don’t think that she really counts. If we include PL/ROA, then one could argue he has an attachment to some of the mortals in those books, including Rose.
Another thing that’s come up in canon now and then is the idea that mortal relatives/descendants can be used to try to blackmail the vampires; mortals can be taken hostage and threatened with violence unless ransom of some kind is paid for them, as happened in PL. So I think Louis would be relieved that he wasn’t unintentionally placing any innocent mortals in harm’s way simply for being related to him.
^^^ALL THAT SAID, we could always use fresh fanart/fanfic/etc., especially on this kind of rarer topic, so anyone who sees this post is invited to share their headcanons on it, too 😉
Hit the jump for just a little bit more.
Canonically, Louis tells us that his sister married, and yes, he did give her money to invest for the family:
“My sister was married in my absence, for example, while I had a `malarial chill,‘
…With dozens of miserable headaches I would receive my sister in a darkened bedroom, the covers up to my chin, bid her and her husband bear with the dim light on account of the pain in my eyes, as I entrusted to them large amounts of money to invest for us all. Fortunately her husband was an idiot; a harmless one, but an idiot, the product of four generations of marriages between first cousins.” (IWTV)
I skimmed IWTV and I didn’t see any mention of his sister having any children.
I don’t know why AR included that the husband was the result of an incestuous lineage, that may have been normal at the time? I don’t know what impact AR intended that information to have on the story. Maybe just that the husband never questioned Louis’ strange behavior re: meetings in his darkened bedroom bc he was, as Louis said, “an idiot”? Maybe this was a little reminder of Louis’s ego, that he felt he was a better man than his sister’s husband?
BTW, Louis’s sister has a fanon name, some fans have accepted it as fanon anyway, Henriette.
Personally, I do headcanon that Louis has at least a few mortal friends in NOLA and San Francisco, like a particular barista at a coffee shop he haunts in the French Quarter, and a few other locals who have done work at Rue Royale over the years. @gairid/ @vampchronfic also has an OC, Brian Callahan, who I think Louis cares very deeply about ❤
Indeed, we have Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (PLROA). It’s the most recent book. We’re expecting at least one more installment after this one, no date has been given yet.
@bluestockingcouture — Ok I can’t phrase this very well, but tumblr won’t let me tag them, so I made a link to my reblog of their post in which they share that they wrote a 1,800 word review of PLROA that quotes Rousseau, so you might want to check that out on goodreads. (spoiler cut is there)
Here’s another by Kirkus Reviews2016-10-19. (spoilers in full view)
To be honest, near the end of PLROA I had to put it down bc it was about to launch into a monologue from a new character who I don’t really feel much affection for, and so I still haven’t finished it, but I am thoroughly spoiled as to what happens bc I love being spoiled.
There were many moments where I smiled bc it reminded me of the way the characters behaved in earlier books, there’s some development as to their current status, there’s some great little moments between them, and I think it’s worth reading for those gems.
I’ve always been able to read VC and cherry pick the things that I like (a good chunk of dialogue here or there, or something that seems to give more clarification to the established world/characters, etc.) and I have a flexible headcanon, so I can accept or not accept things based on the fanfic I’m reading, too, depending on what canon it relies on.
Having said that, PLROA feels very much like what would happen if one novel you were working on needed life support and you added your much more popular character(s) into it as a means of rescuing it.
“I was working on a novel called Born for Atlantis, and I just couldn’t get it to work. I thought, “What if I could somehow combine this with Lestat and the vampires?” And it was like, everything worked. Something happens to me when I write from Lestat’s point of view. There’s no question about it. By the time I was done, it felt inevitable, like it always had been…. It was a rare experience.”
^Anne Rice, Entertainment Weekly (August 5, 2016) [X] I’m glad that she shared that with us, because it explains why she brought these things together. Even if she hadn’t admitted as such, I think we would have been able to piece that together.
Some things are good on their own, some ideas can be brought together and the result is wonderful alchemy! But I think in this case, it felt like someone had dumped a river of ketchup on an icecream sundae. PLROA might count as what the fandom used to lovingly call the Vampire Crackicles.
Back then, we could have a good time, even when canon was wild. We could make fun of Lestat being a huge baby about his foot size in Blood Canticle:
Seldom did I see my feet in black socks. I knew almost nothing personally about my feet. They looked rather small for the twenty-first century. Bad luck. But six feet was still a good height.
Or, also in Blood Canticle, Lestat fixated by ice cubes:
…the sparkle in the ice cubes, the Miracle of the Ice Cubes.
^Our old familiar canon Rice Caps! Why can’t these things be funny anymore?
Or are the wacky things in PLROA too wacky to even find endearing? We do tentatively joke about PLROA, but not as robustly as we did over those older Vampire Crackicles. Maybe in a few years we’ll be more vocal about it, bc there will be even crazier canon. Lestat goes to Mars! Lestat ages backwards like Benjamin Button! Lestat accidentally destroys Alaska!
So IDK, I always recommend that ppl read the books before they judge them, but I think it’s easier to enjoy the wackiness if you can take it less seriously.
You’re not alone in this feeling, @paintedbybotticelli JUST made a post about that, and @eliestela made a comic fanart re: Lestat giving Armand a book of this kind of art w/ post-its asking if any of them are Armand!
Awww, thank you! That’s very kind of you. (I was hoarding this ask for a few days, sorry for the delay in reply.)
It warms my heart to see the fandom active, too! It’s always been waves of more or less engagement, but recently there does seem to be something of a renaissance. If the VCTV series happens, we’ll probably have even more engagement!
#InktoberVC and the @vcsecretgifts exchange both stimulated great fanworks, I’m planning on setting aside a chunk of time to go through and reblog those Dec. gifts here (I haven’t had a chance to read all the fics yet!) ❤ I’m hoping that more calls for fanworks get rolling in 2018, too, and I’ll make an effort to promote them. We can’t wait 9 months until the next #InktoberVC ;D
In this world in a time when we’re on the brink of nuclear war bc of reasons I can’t attempt to tackle on a blog for entertainment and there are people in power tirelessly dedicated to stripping away our rights one by one, people
determined to widen the class divide, people dehumanizing other real life people, and there is unpunished crime on a daily basis, I come here for an escape and to offer the same to anyone who likes this blog.
I hope 2018 is a better year for all of us, online and offline, Anon. *hugs*
I-want-my-IWTV 