cloudsinvenice:

i-want-my-iwtv:

advice? ADVICE? Um, wowww… so I usually have strong opinions on ALOT of things, especially VC-related, but this sort of knocked me speechless. For about a minute. Then I wanted to write a thesis on the subject but managed to keep it to this much.

I would suggest that:

• If you want to RP as one of the characters, or an OC, you really have to read at least the first 3 books. And lots of fanfiction 😉
• We have awesome fanfiction and AO3 aims to protect it.
• Did I mention the fanfiction? It fills in the gaps that canon leaves. And it’s also just delishus.
• The RPers on here are SO fun to follow. Try finding some in the vcdirectory or the vcdirectoryold (I don’t know the difference, but hey, go investigate!)
• With the canon: you should have an open mind to Crazy Shit Happening

• DUE to the Crazy Shit that Happens later in the series, you are not required to consider it all canon 😉 Alot of people don’t consider books 5-10 to be canon. Or 4-10. Or wherever they want to draw the line. That is FINE.
• Brace yourself, because Prince Lestat is coming. No, not like that, you filthy thing! ARRIVING. 10/28/14. And, depending on its crackiness, there is going to be a divide between people who consider it to be canon and people who do not, and that is FINE. 
• There’s a divide between People of the Page and People Off the Page, described here.
• In general the People Off the Page are a low-drama fandom, but we do have our spats, even the illustrious human behind i-want-my-iwtv has experienced a few direct situations, and that’s just life, bc people are people, after all. I’ve accepted my share of the fault in these situations and learned from the experiences. I’m not perfect, nobody is :-

The bottom line is that it’s a fandom that only in the past year or so has really come back to life, we were in hiding bc Anne Rice disapproved of fanfic and waged war on us in the 90’s for it. Now that she seems to have lowered her weapons about that, and even praised some VC fanart – permanentglitter for example! – and with the announcement in March of the new book, well, we’re all coming out into the light and making friends and it’s been wonderful!  

I hope you see this, Anon, because we all know there’s a human behind that gray face, too, and I want to personally welcome you and anyone who’s just joining us now… we are a different kind of vampire fandom, that’s for sure. 

This is awesome advice, but I think it’s worth adding that the etiquette around linking to specific fics is tricky in this fandom. AO3 is willing to take the risk of hosting our fic, but because of the tortured legal history of Anne Rice vs. her fans, and because AO3 is yet to have its principles tested in court, people are often uneasy about being publicly linked with their fic in case Shit Happens again.

For the same reason, it’s risky to link to fic hosted in places other than AO3, which lack its finances/willingness to deal with the legal fallout. Basically,  it’s only been five years since Anne Rice lawyered an RP forum out of existence, so short of an outright “Here’s a rainbow to promise I’ll never flood the earth destroy the fandom again, guys!” message, a lot of us are still treading carefully.

That RP exists openly on Tumblr is a wonder and a delight to me, but the history suggests that we have this happy situation only because none of the People Of The Page have taken it upon themselves to shove links in Anne’s direction. (One individual did link to the official IWTV manga, which was published in Japan but not elsewhere years back, and AR, having apparently forgotten about this, went to defcon 1 before someone apparently reminded her what it was.)

But most people will talk your ear off about their favourite fics if you send them an ask – we’ve basically been living under a rock, fandom-wise, while other fandoms grew, so we’re super-welcoming to new people and will love you and hug you and call you George want to hear all your headcanons and stuff. 

cloudsinvenice just improved this post by 10,000%! Damn. All that is TRUTH which needed to be articulated.

Some RPers have also added their thoughts on whether u need to read canon/fanfic to RP well, so read the notes on this post for that. I stand corrected once again!