On the whole pronunciation of Lestat (LestAHt vs Lesaught) my theory is that it’s both. If we accept Lestat’s story from Blackwood Farm that his parents made up his name from the first letters of his brothers’ names, then maybe they never came up with an exact way to pronounce it. Maybe Gabrielle always called him by one, while his father would use the other. This has led to Lestat changing up they way he introduces himself for 250 years.
//or maybe they just called him “you” since their relationship wasn’t too… affective
^Ya, I like all this. I don’t LOVE Blackwood Farm but that explanation is as good as any. I’m sure his family called him all kinds of bad stuff including purposely
making
his name sound bad, and yes, maybe they never came up with a specific way to pronounce it. I think part of his self-deprecation comes from getting so little affection in his formative years, and not even having a consistently pronounced name is pretty mean ;A;
Anyone can pronounce his name however they want, I think he would be pretty chill about that. Especially considering that people have native accents that affect their pronunciation of words anyway, given how much international travel/business/etc. he does, I don’t think he’d be making an issue with every single person he encounters about the pronunciation of his name.
AR had intended to write his name as “Lestan” after her husband “Stan” + the French word for “the” which is “Le” when preceding masculine words. She’s said that “Lestat” was a typo that she ended up liking.
ANYWAY, since “Stan” is pronounced like “stand” and not “ton” my preference is to go with the ‘a’ of Lestat as like “stand” or “cat.” I kinda feel like AR’s whole obsession with pronouncing it like “Les-TOT” is another way she divides the “real fans” from the rest of the fans; if you don’t pronounce it her preferred way then you’re not really talking about HER character. But that’s just a theory.
I headcanon that Lestat likes nicknames based on his name, especially “’Stat,” a medical term: “Stat, used as a directive to medical personnel during in an emergency situation, is from the Latin word statim, which means “instantly” or “immediately.”” [X]
I always figured when Anne says “lesTOT” she’s just trying to write/say it in a way that – based on American English vowel pronunciations – approximates European [a], which is much closer to what English has in e.g. “father”, and kinda close to what American English has in “tot”, since that’s the sound it would have been in French. A French person would not say [lestæt] like “cat”.
Personally I like the more French/European pronunciation over the American [lestæt], because I’m not an English speaker, so I’m used to European pronunciation. And I’m not sure he would have Anglified his first name that much. But in the end it just comes down to how much you think he’s “gone native” tbh. But ya after 200 years in the US I doubt he minds people pronouncing his name the English way.
Okay so I know we talk a lot about how Armand is obsessive, and we talk a lot about Daniel and his trains and how he’s trying to build this tiny world that’s safe and contained and controlled because he’s too overwhelmed by the real world… but can we also discuss the fact that Lestat literally builds life-sized replicas of the periods in his life when he was most happy???
I mean, I know a lot of people don’t accept PL/ROA as a canon basis for characterisation for Lestat, and tbh I get that, but this isn’t just new canon, this is a thing Lestat does.
Immediately after he rises from having been underground, after the whole Akasha debacle blows over, as soon as he has a chance to sort of settle down after that, what does he do? He builds a fucking museum to That One Time He Was Happy With His Ex. He even conceals the modern appliances to make it look authentic! And then he gets his ex to move into it with him again. :’)
Old sport.
I mean, I guess we already know that Lestat writes books because he’s looking to inject some meaning into the meaningless series of events that constitutes a life, so in that context it’s not surprising that he’d want to organise his physical surroundings. And after all the shit that went down with him in QotD, tbh, I understand him wanting a bit of familiarity. Plus he’s literally hallucinating Claudia’s ghost throughout TotBT, so he’s not exactly stable. But it’s still interesting and sad if this is his coping mechanism. (And tbh it’s really interesting how much he and Louis live in the past (literally! *shot*) compared to some of the other vampires in the coven.)
Now I’m just wondering if we can posit an architectural scale of Lestat’s well-being. Renovating: he’s doing good. Reconstructing his old flat: he’s struggling. Reconstructing an entire village complete with château: someone call Gabrielle.
^Very much agreed! I do think he likes to repeat the past, for sure. It makes sense to recreate happier times., especially in times of anxiety about the present/future. I do think Lestat digs deeper into the memory albums of his past happy times when he’s in a bad place mentally, for sure.
I would also add that Lestat is a very big fan of retail therapy, whether he’s conscious of it being therapy or not.Everything about buying stuff, flirting with the salesppl, bossing around the construction ppl, getting things delivered and opening tons of packages, feeling like he’s upgrading things, it’s all therapeutic. He’s doing self-care.
He does it to ppl, too, like when he’s berating Louis for his threadbare clothes. Lestat dresses himself nicely to make up for all that time when he was poor and couldn’t afford (and possibly didn’t feel he deserved) any better than threadbare clothes. Unless he was wearing a costume for the stage, flashy and attractive to the audience, and being loved by that audience (which taught him that playing a role and being sparkly and attractive would win him the affection he craved and couldn’t get just by being himself). Or borrowing his lover’s red velvet frock coat, far fancier than anything Lestat had ever owned up until that point, and it probably smelled like Nicolas, and that felt good, too.
For Lestat, gifts are love. Gabrielle parted with her heirloom jewels to buy him a better life. She bought him hunting equipment, upgrades to help him do what he already did. The mastiff pups, the mare, those were some of the first gifts he received that loved him back. From the villagers, he received gifts for slaying the wolves: a good sturdy (and fashionable!) cloak, and a new pair of boots. Upgrades that were both functional and had pleasing form to him.
^Sorry for the cheesy gif, but I do think Lestat has a need to return to places and exorcise his demons there. Reclaiming the space. He probably does it as idiotically as Ace Ventura sometimes *eyeroll*
He revamps (ok pun intended) the Rue Royale and his castle in the Auvergne as an act of cleansing it of the demons and bad memories. The castle of his childhood was cold, dark, bare, inadequate, he was beaten there, repeatedly. It was a place of suffering. He might have lived out his life and died there. So now that he has the $ and the power to do so, he rigs it with heating, electricity, and loads it with fancy furnishings, making it a place he can possibly build new memories, better times ❤
He almost died in the Rue Royale, how must it feel to walk through a room that you once lay dying, bleeding out on the floor? On your way to pop a DVD into a player instead? And then go back to the couch and curl up under a blanket with the lover who had done nothing but stand by as you felt yourself pass out of consciousness? No animosity now. The place has been reborn.
I would also add that AR did this in TVL, too, with Nicolas revamping (pun intended again) Renaud’s into the ~Theatre of the Vampires~: “The Theater of the Vampires,” [Lestat] whispered. “We have worked the Dark Trick on this little place.”
(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.
A kink meme is a post on a blogging platform. In the comments of that post, fic and art requests are made and filled ANONYMOUSLY.
Does it have to be kinky? Nope! Kink memes originated to have a safe anonymous space for people to explore kinky tropes. But they always branch out to fluff, gen, etc. If you just really want a coffee shop AU, go for it!
There’s no min. or max. word count for fic, no deadlines, and you can prompt and fill as many and as few times as you want. It’s a free for all!
I’ve made a guide post for those who are new to kinkmemes, if you want some explanation of how to prompt and fill. It’s here.
Lemme tag a few ppl who should be made aware of this, too… Ppl, reblog and tag away! I’m tagging some RPers and a lot of fanartists here, prompts can be used for fanart, too 😉
My human death was long finished, I was ravenous, and surely my face was no more than a living skull. No doubt my eyes were bulging from their sockets, and my teeth were bared. The white robe hung on me as on a skeleton. And no clearer evidence of my divinity could have been given to the Druids, who stood awestruck as I came out of the tree. […] The voices were singing in concert around me as the priests placed the flowers in my hair, on my shoulders, at my feet.
These are separate calls for fanworks, the @vcsecretgifts exchange is not anon, and runs for the holidays only; I hope that the vampire chronicles anon fanworks meme will continue on beyond December. We needs a consistent one! It can be anon or not. More info on it as it becomes more developed.
(better known as a kink meme, but it doesn’t have to be kinky lmao)
💖 might be happening in december if ppl are interested!! 💖
right now i’m just asking around to see how many ppl would be interested in this, so pls reblog/comment/whatever if you are!
how it works, in a nutshell: ppl anonymously prompt things they want to see in fic or art. other people anonymously write the fic or make the art. prompts can be anything from armand/daniel kink to “fake dating mortal au” to “quiet night in at rue royale”. (if you don’t want to be anon, you don’t have to, of course. the anon is to avoid flaming, shaming, and being sued by anne.)
Yassss a VC kinkmeme for December! Should warm up those cold bodies of yours…
“In retrospect, I don’t think my initiation ceremony was exactly standard or approved of by the other members of the frat. All Lestat and I did was take body shots off one another and sleep in the same bed.”
I’m not sure if the author of this marvelous piece has a Tumblr, but credit to them!! I hope it’s all right that I drew this. It’s just such a beautiful fic, imo. I mean, the gang as asshole frat boys?? Sign me the frick up, any day. Besides, it’s relevant to my rl rn, mhmm. Really, it’s just, wo w.
Also, not ink completely again, but there’s sparkly pink ink on there!
here, have some more IWTFB (hehe) doodles. lmao i need sleep y’know.
InktoberVC—Day 22:A fanfic scene!
@hyperbeeb wasn’t this yours or am I mixing stuff up?
I think it is @hyperbeeb and it’s ridiculous silly fic, old-school style. Highly recommend!
I-want-my-IWTV 