[Give us some of your first impressions, who are your faves? What are your ships? And um, excuse u, 5 books in 2 months when you have Real Life, too, that’s not slow to me, heck, when I reread just one of these books it takes me at least 2 months, squeezing it into my “Copious Amounts of Free Time” and I hope this blog isn’t spoiling you too much, if spoiling bothers you I frickin’ love being spoiled, myself).
Awwww thank u! What a lovely thing to tell me. Welcome to our little corner of tumblrland mmmm fresh blood….
So I try to keep this thing purely VC, and I have my self-imposed post limit, so I think for A LOT of my followers, they probably are like you, and see a post from me, and go, “Oooh a VC blog, I should foll- oh yeah, I already follow it!” Sometimes I even see smtg reblogged from me on my own dash and I go, “Oooh! New VC fanart! I should reblo- I ALREADY REBLOBBED IT!”
I used to have a rule about reblogging stuff only once so I wouldn’t have duplicates in my archive, but the audience changes, there’s tons of new ppl out on tumblr every year, so WHY THE HECK keep some awesome fanart from their dash just bc I reblogged it 2 years ago??! So I reblob stuff from my own archive sometimes, usually when I’m in there looking for smtg else and I find an old fave that PPL SHOULD SEE! ❤
BTW if you want some more VC stuff, we recently did a @vcsecretgifts, that archive has a bunch of VC fanworks in it and you can find more VC blogs that way ;D
YASSSS Lestat totes swoons over pink. I’m gonna reblog some of my collected pink Lestat stuff in your honor RIGHT NOW bc whatever whatever I do what I want.
^Claudia wasn’t mentioned but I rarely get to use this gif and the font is in pink, so it counts as part of a professional response from a professional fancy blogger such as myself, with the quality and candor you have all come to expect from such an eloquent and magnanimous person as such, that I, in fact, am. (Yours truly is a more than a little extra sugar high today btw)
It’s so fun to see at least this shot from the other side of the door, lol…
I’ll transcribe it somewhat for y’all:
The narrator is all about the *~secrecy~* like of course Tom Cruise wanted to keep the secrecy of his costumes and makeup and whatever, so as not to spoil the surprise! We have closed sets all the time these days and back then. I don’t think that was just Tom, I think everyone involved in making the movie wanted that secrecy.
The narrator pronounces his name the way AR prefers, not the way it’s pronounced in the movie
I FEEL YOU 1,000% I think Tom had the rights to TOBT so he could star in it, even tho that’s the bodyswap episode at best, and all this other soggy mess at worst… I think the 90′s audience and reviewers being all IWTV was “TOO GAY”/”NOT GAY ENOUGH” really soured him on the whole series, but he has always kept Lestat in his heart ❤ (Brad, not so much)
I would love it if Tom were consulted on his opinion re: casting, and then when they do cast a Lestat, Tom could train/advise him personally. BC PLENTY OF PPL WHO NORMALLY DISLIKE TC ADMITTED THAT THEY LIKED HIM IN THAT ROLE.
Brad’s advice to the new Louis would probs be “You’re going to be miserable, just don’t hold back with that… You do get like 2 scenes to take out your aggression when you get all fiery so take full advantage of that.”
My not-so-secret casting fantasy would be to have Tom back to play the Marquis. LIKE HOW PERF WOULD THAT BE?? He’s old enough for it… more villain roles for TC! *bangs fist on table*
We have *~several~* redheaded characters to choose from, anon! Age is relative tho, there’s youngest in actual years, then there’s youngest in appearance.
****Opening my overcoat to reveal the gingers****
The Vampire Armand
He’s probs your best bet, being the youngest in appearance, he was turned into a vampire when he was 17. He’s one of the main characters and pretty easily recognizable even to ppl outside VC fandom. He’s over 400 yrs old now. Other characters often compare him to the youths in Botticelli’s paintings; so pretty, he mentions that he’s mistaken for being a girl at least once in his mortal life.
[^Portrait of a Young Man 3., Botticelli, and I think the expression is very Armand, he’s pretty much the sassy teen of the series but as grumpy as an old man]
I would never be anything but the seventeen-year-old boy you see now… [but] I am not a waif and never have been. I am a strong child. – Armand, The Vampire Armand
^X@amadeo-child-of-the-renaissance found this, another Botticelli angel Armand, with a face that’s more canon-compliant IMO 😉 AR bases Armand off these Botticelli angels and they have varying straight and curly hair, usually wavy at least.
Armand’s hair is described as curly when he was mortal and when he was a fledgling, so I think that’s the natural state of it.
Armand can be dapper or grungey depending on his mood, so the crucial aspect is really his hair, and if you want extra credit, you may want to carry a blender around, that’s sort of the fandom joke about him and Daniel going nuts over blending stuff in QOTD.
Here’s some Armand cosplayers (they’re mixed into that link) you might wanna check out 😉
Other redheads in the series… bc I don’t wanna hide the rare VC ladies under a cut! NO CUTS WE LONG POST LIKE MEN
^I’m not wild about her portrayal in the QOTD movie but anyways… she’s a little over 30 when she’s turned, and it was 1985, so she is technically younger in age than Armand. He will always look younger than her, tho.
Cosplaying Jesse Reeve would involve smtg about her being a Talamascan, maybe, or carrying Claudia’s diary? She finds it in QOTD.
^The redhaired twins. You might go to @redhairedtwin, a Maharet RPer, for descriptions of the twins.
^X Maharet (left) and kid!Jesse (right) in the QOTD movie. I headcanon Maharet and Mekare as being younger in appearance than we see Maharet in the movie, but idk right now how old they were when they were turned (I don’t have my books to check either). Early 20′s, early adulthood, I think. Maharet and Mekare are technically the oldest on this list but they might look the same age or younger than Jesse.
Cosplaying one of the twins means a bloody mouth or bloody eyes.
^poor Madeleine in the the IWTV movie barely had any screentime, she got a little more in the book, but she’s rarely mentioned in later canon. Louis’ first fledgling, made to take care of Claudia so he can go bang Armand move on with his afterlife. She’s a more obscure character, but she’s A REDHEAD SO SHE COUNTS!
If you want to cosplay her, carrying a doll that looks like Claudia, or wearing a locket with a portrait of a Claudia look-alike, that’d be a good accessory 😉
I think that’s all the relevant redheads in VC, but if anyone can think of more, feel free to reblog and add!
Mona Mayfair
@sheepskeleton said: Do we keep pretending that Mona doesn’t exist? xD Because I’m on board with that tbh, but I think she is also a young redhead 😉
RIGHT So Mona Mayfair is from the Mayfair Witch series and appears in the crossover Mayfair/VC books that AR refers to as “hybrids,” but since AR said that those books “haven’t worn well over time,” she has asked us to disregard them as part of VC canon.
!!!But Mona Mayfair is technically a cosplayable VC character, should you choose to accept those books as canon.!!!
~ SPOILER ALERT ~ <– wow, a real warning, and not a sarcastic one tossed on to add salt to a rant, what a thing.
^RPer @opheliaximmortal used to use Kate Mara as a face claim and I think that’s perfection. That RPer might give you a better description of the character, bc I just barely remember her, aside from her being Young, Pretty, and a Redhead, but just a warning, there’s NSFW text and images on her blog.
Mona is 18 when turned. In her early/mid teens, she favors tartan skirts and blouses and hair ribbons – she thinks of it as her disguise because she’s obvs doing a lot of things not expected of a schoolgirl. Once she transforms in Blood Canticle she dresses up in Aunt Queen’s high heels (she’s 18 here, so again, a late teen/early 20s fan could cosplay this well) and some kind of fancy dress; basically she goes out on the town all glammed up so that could be fun as well.
Mona was so awesomely sassy in Blood Canticle:
Lestat: “I told her to change clothes. That short sequined dress was just too damned distracting. And we had some heavy matters to address immediately.”
[argument ensues]
Mona: “ ‘And I know why you’re so fired up over Rowan, she’s the first adult female other than your own mother who’s ever caught your attention for more than five minutes, and Hello! Lestat Discovers The Opposite Sex! Yeah, females do come in grown-up sizes! And I happen to be one of them, and this is not the Garden of Eden, and I am not taking off this dress!’ ”
Sarcastic Spoiler alert: she doesn’t change her dress.
Also, re: Jesse:
Jesse’s 35 when turned, Jesse’s chapter in QotD has some descriptions of what she typically wears – I THINK she goes with flowy skirts when she’s in London “or jeans when she was in the States”, because Anne Rice thinks jeans haven’t arrived in Merrie Olde Englande yet, lol.
Also, a really cool cosplay detail for Jesse would be a silver Celtic bracelet, because Mael gives one to her as a gift.
Also, re: Maharet & Mekare:
…bizarrely Maharet and Mekare could be as young as 16!! So a late teen could pull them off.
We have *~several~* redheaded characters to choose from, anon! Age is relative tho, there’s youngest in actual years, then there’s youngest in appearance.
****Opening my overcoat to reveal the gingers****
The Vampire Armand
He’s probs your best bet, being the youngest in appearance, he was turned into a vampire when he was 17. He’s one of the main characters and pretty easily recognizable even to ppl outside VC fandom. He’s over 400 yrs old now. Other characters often compare him to the youths in Botticelli’s paintings; so pretty, he mentions that he’s mistaken for being a girl at least once in his mortal life.
[^Portrait of a Young Man 3., Botticelli, and I think the expression is very Armand, he’s pretty much the sassy teen of the series but as grumpy as an old man]
I would never be anything but the seventeen-year-old boy you see now… [but] I am not a waif and never have been. I am a strong child. – Armand, The Vampire Armand
^X@amadeo-child-of-the-renaissance found this, another Botticelli angel Armand, with a face that’s more canon-compliant IMO 😉 AR bases Armand off these Botticelli angels and they have varying straight and curly hair, usually wavy at least.
Armand’s hair is described as curly when he was mortal and when he was a fledgling, so I think that’s the natural state of it.
Armand can be dapper or grungey depending on his mood, so the crucial aspect is really his hair, and if you want extra credit, you may want to carry a blender around, that’s sort of the fandom joke about him and Daniel going nuts over blending stuff in QOTD.
Here’s some Armand cosplayers (they’re mixed into that link) you might wanna check out 😉
Other redheads in the series… bc I don’t wanna hide the rare VC ladies under a cut! NO CUTS WE LONG POST LIKE MEN
^I’m not wild about her portrayal in the QOTD movie but anyways… she’s a little over 30 when she’s turned, and it was 1985, so she is technically younger in age than Armand. He will always look younger than her, tho.
Cosplaying Jesse Reeve would involve smtg about her being a Talamascan, maybe, or carrying Claudia’s diary? She finds it in QOTD.
^The redhaired twins. You might go to @redhairedtwin, a Maharet RPer, for descriptions of the twins.
^X Maharet (left) and kid!Jesse (right) in the QOTD movie. I headcanon Maharet and Mekare as being younger in appearance than we see Maharet in the movie, but idk right now how old they were when they were turned (I don’t have my books to check either). Early 20′s, early adulthood, I think. Maharet and Mekare are technically the oldest on this list but they might look the same age or younger than Jesse.
Cosplaying one of the twins means a bloody mouth or bloody eyes.
^poor Madeleine in the the IWTV movie barely had any screentime, she got a little more in the book, but she’s rarely mentioned in later canon. Louis’ first fledgling, made to take care of Claudia so he can go bang Armand move on with his afterlife. She’s a more obscure character, but she’s A REDHEAD SO SHE COUNTS!
If you want to cosplay her, carrying a doll that looks like Claudia, or wearing a locket with a portrait of a Claudia look-alike, that’d be a good accessory 😉
I think that’s all the relevant redheads in VC, but if anyone can think of more, feel free to reblog and add!
That was a wild ride from start to finish, Anon, lol.
Armand would HAAAATE being compared to some fast food restaurant picture…
Person: Hey Armsy Person: ARMSY Armand: Yes what P: That poster looks like you! A: *looks* A: No it doesn’t P: Yes, it does! The hair is even parted the same! A: That’s a girl. A girl child. P: But you look like her, don’t you?
*pause* A: No, I do NOT. P: I’m just saying, smile like that… A: *storms out*
… Armand dumps fireants on a random person bc reasons.
(Omg, if you’d written to me back in Feb. of this year, there was a blogger @somniferousdelusion, now deactivated ;A; who said Magnus was their fave character, this blogger could have been someone you might have had good convos with… Does anyone know if they just changed urls?)
No, I don’t think AR has ever been asked about writing a full novel about Magnus, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did! What are you drawn to about Magnus? There’s plenty of room for fanfic/headcanons about him, so if you are so inclined… write it for us!
I feel like if you want a book about Magnus you must be fascinated with him in some way, so I don’t mean to trample you if you do, but from all my time in fandom, I can say that Magnus is probably considered among the Absolute Worst if not THE MOST Problematic character in the whole series.*
>>>Quick interlude, on the subject of Problematic characters: I found this great essay by Warren Ellis. Here’s a taste, with my emphasis added in bold:
“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.”
*….Which could be good for him bc AR has been taking the Absolute Worsts and putting them on pedestals lately. I don’t know what you’ve read so far, but as you may be aware, Magnus tells his story, albeit briefly, in Prince Lestat.
Magnus is also in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis in a snazzy new… erm… “form”?, so we’ll probably see more of him, but my money is on AR focusing on how cool he is now, and not really digging any further into his past or forcing Lestat to have any difficult conversations with him, which they sort of briefly had in PLROA.
There was a Magnus RPer, @theycallmemagnus, gone inactive now, but you might find good stuff in their archive, might reach out to any active RPers you find there, who may be into talking about the character.
// Hey, just adding my 2 cents here, after 10 yrs in this fandom I don’t think there’s any kind of general consensus on who’s the “worst” character in the VC series, and I don’t think it’s really a relevant question either. We see Magnus as an antagonist because he’s mortal!Lestat’s personal bogeyman and Lestat is the narrator, but the same could be said of many beloved characters in the series if their stories were told from a different perspective.
As someone who read the series, spotted the former cult leaders and torturers and went “THIS ONE. THIS ONE IS MY BABY”, don’t feel bad about liking Magnus’ character just because he’s a villain.
He’s a brilliant medieval alchemist who successfully attained eternal life (how many alchemists can say that they actually ACHIEVED the Ultimate Goal??) by figuring out how vampires turned each other and then replicating the process by capturing a vampire and “stealing” the Blood! And then he lived for centuries and eventually went mad! It could be taken straight from an early 20th century horror story à la H. P. Lovecraft or M. R. James, and I for one think it’s awesome.
(ETA: original post edited after reblog, so consider reblogging from OP)
Great addition, @bloodyvampchrons! (The part I removed when I edited the post is under the cut.)
I will 1,000% defend anyone’s interest in any fictional characters, for any reason. @awareofwhatsaforementioned did not express anything other than an interest in learning more about this character, specifically: whether the author would write more about him. That’s all.
Not all fiction is written as propaganda. Not all fiction is written for wish-fulfillment. Fiction may not exist in a vacuum, but it also is, in the end, just a story. It can be shelved, burned, critiqued, enjoyed, by any reader who encounters it.
Problematic characters are there to antagonize, to provide friction, obstacles, whatever the author intends for them to do. Maybe even to be a Hate Sink:
“A Hate Sink is a character whose intended role in the story (the role the authors made for him/her) is to be so despicable that the audience wants him or her to fail just as much as they want the heroes to succeed. However, this individual doesn’t have to be the main villain of the story, or even a villain at all.
…A Hate Sink [provides] an easy target for the reader/audience/player’s contempt where there may not be one, and can serve as a foil to more likable Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain characters.
Essays and books have been written about it, so I’m not going into it in depth, but the issue I see again and again on tunglr dot com is Black and White Morality. From TVTropes.org:
“Good versus Evil. White hat versus black hat. The shining knight of destiny with flowing cape versus the mustache-twirling, card-carrying force of pure malevolence. The most basic form of fictional morality, Black And White Morality deals with the battle between pure good and absolute evil.
…- Motivation: The villains never have a sympathetic motivation for their actions. There aren’t any Well-Intentioned Extremists,… Rather, their intentions are entirely for the sake of Evil (and may involve taking over or destroying the world).”
^Even the most horrific fictional crimes might be done by a character thinking he is doing the right thing, in his own mind.
“In Real Life, seeing the world in absolute Black and White Morality is considered normal for small children, but seen as a far less healthy trait in adults. A person who regards the people around him as entirely good or entirely evil has this.” – Black and White Insanity – TVTropes.org
Every reader can interpret the text differently, and very little is known of Magnus’ intentions. Before you cry MURDER/RAPE APOLOGIST, any reader exploring the reasons for a character’s crime =/= making excuses for it.
Creating/Consuming/Exploring dark fiction and problematic characters =/= endorsement of these things in real life.
People are accountable for actual crimes, not thought crimes.
Give me 100,000 fans like @awareofwhatsaforementioned. In my opinion, the greatest fandom crime is to chase other fans away from fandom by shaming them for having an interest in dark fiction or problematic characters.
I won’t engage in pointless unwinnable debate over what a fan is allowed to be interested in, but to make someone feel ashamed enough about what they’re interested in to the point of making them leave a fandom is a loss to us all. Think of all the friends and discussions they miss out on, all the fanworks they never get to see, or MAKE.
I want the longfic of Magnus’ backstory. I want the fanart of him as a kid, as a monster, all of it! If I’m the only one, so be it. But I don’t think I’m the only one. As I said in my original reply:
There’s plenty of room for fanfic/headcanons about Magnus, so if you are so inclined… write it for us!
I feel like if you want a book about Magnus you must be fascinated with him in some way, so I don’t mean to trample you if you do, but from all my time in fandom, I can say that Magnus is probably considered among the Absolute Worst if not THE MOST Problematic character in the whole series.*
>>>Quick interlude, on the subject of Problematic characters: I found this great essay by Warren Ellis. Here’s a taste, with my emphasis added in bold:
“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.”
*….Which could be good for him bc AR has been taking the Absolute Worsts and putting them on pedestals lately. I don’t know what you’ve read so far, but as you may be aware, Magnus tells his story, albeit briefly, in Prince Lestat.
I-want-my-IWTV 