Tag Archives: dark fiction

I knew that monsters were far more gentle and more desirable than the monsters living inside ‘nice people.’ Accepting that you are a monster gives you the leeway to not behave like one. When you deny being a monster, you behave like one.

Guillermo del Toro on why he loves monsters. (via lampfaced)

Since childhood I’ve been faithful to monsters. I’ve been saved and absolved by them because monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections.

Guillermo del Toro in his Golden Globe acceptance speech. (via shapeofh2o)

Why does most of the fandom like Armand? (I’m on Memnoch The Devil, and I know what the next book is) He cut off Nicolas’s hands, killed Claudia, and kills suicidal people. (I’m not trying to shame anyone, I just want to understand why.)

Leave a comment

It seems like you have sort of made up your mind about him, Anon, listing those crimes 😦 If you don’t like him for those reasons, or any reasons, you are under no obligation to change your mind, but I appreciate that you want to understand why ppl do like him.

If you’re on Memnoch then you know most of Armand’s story, and you know that Armand’s book follows MtD. His book goes into his story more deeply, and from his own perspective, and I think that’s part of what ppl like about him. His narration is different than Lestat’s (most of the books are Lestat’s POV or his recording of what others tell him), and I think some Armand fans are just glad to get out of Lestat’s head!! lol. 

image

[^X Bjorn Andresen, a fan fave as Armand]

In TVA, you get more detail and scenes from Armand’s mortal life and fledgling life, and some of what follows. You get how he feels about seeing Lestat in MtD and a moment of intimacy between these two alpha personalities who have had a simmering competition between them since they met.

Some ppl find that Anne Rice has done Armand a disservice in his own book by having him claim any amount of agency in what happened between him and Marius. That’s up to the individual reader to decide, what they think of that relationship, regardless of what the author’s agenda was when she wrote it. 

I do think some of the things Armand says in TVA are

somewhat

exaggerated because he is telling the story to David, who was flirting at him really hard in the beginning of that book, and I think Armand wanted to remind David that he’s not the cute bb 17 year old he appears to be, and not to mistake him as such. So the scene describing Claudia, I’m not sure I trust Armand that he really did anything to her other than do nothing when the other vampires of the theatre put her in that sun-well-thingie.

I wouldn’t say that most of the fandom likes Armand. I think that certain characters have waves of popularity, and some are talked about more than others at any given time… there was a period about two years ago, I think, that ppl were all over Nicolas, discussing him, theorizing that he might have survived, etc. 

Tom Hiddleston is talking about Loki here, I think, but the concept is captivating, and it applies to Nicki and Armand:

image

[ Tom Hiddleston quotes Josephine Hart, gifs from here X]

Nicki seemed to be one of the only canon characters that explicitly had a mental illness, and that was during a time on tumblr that ppl were being more open about having mental illness and identifying with fictional characters who also had mental illness.

We are drawn to characters who have traits like ourselves, and/or those that survive, and overcome obstacles when they are faced with challenges like our own.

I think Nicki also represented some of the disillusionment ppl were feeling about the world at large at the time.

It might be that Armand has taken on more of that role, some fans also headcanon that Armand has mental illness(es) and he can also represent fans who feel disillusioned about the world at large, since the world has been so cruel to him. 

More on all that later*, so I can address the other part of your statement now.

He (1) cut off Nicolas’s hands, (2) killed Claudia, and (3) kills suicidal people. (I’m not trying to shame anyone, I just want to understand why.)

^Ok, I’m going to address each of these things, since you want to understand. I’ll take it at face value that you’re not trying to shame anyone for liking a fictional character who does those things. 

Whether you want to agree with my explanations is entirely up to you. If you judge him by human, real-world standards, yes, each of these things is maniacal and horrible. So my explanations are for FICTION.

NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN.

^I have to stop doing that I’m going to get in trouble.

First off, I would like to point out that I don’t think canon indicates that he takes pleasure in any of those things individually, except for the normal pleasure of that last one, vampires love feeding, there’s no getting around that 😉

(1) He cut off Nicolas’s hands, 

This seems like fairly standard vampire punishment from a coven master. @damnitarmand, an Armand RPer, responded very well to this question, I’ll reblog it momentarily.

Armand may have been trying to help Nicki in the ways he knew how. Armand had been a coven master for hundreds of years, dealt with madness from many ages of vampires, maybe this was something that helped in other cases. It could be seen as cruel from our mortal standards, but maybe that was considered a reasonable form of treatment for vampires.

Eleni writes to Lestat in TVL: 

“[Nicolas] must be watched constantly so that he does not enlarge our ranks. His dining habits are extremely sloppy. And on occasion he says most shocking things to strangers, which fortunately they are too sensible to believe.“ In other words, he tried to make other vampires. And he didn’t hunt in stealth. “In the main it is Our Oldest Friend [Armand, obviously] who is relied upon to restrain him. And that he does with the most caustic threats. But I must say that these do not have an enduring effect upon our Violinist.”

“…I tell you these things not to haunt you but to let you know that we do our utmost to protect this child who should never have been Born to Darkness. He is overwhelmed by his powers, dazzled and maddened by his vision. We have seen it all and its sorry finish before.”

^So clearly, Armand does everything he can before punishing him so viscerally, and Nicolas really was getting out of control. Eleni even notes that Nicolas is not taking to vampirism very well and would never have been turned by the coven, they’ve had hundreds of years to learn about who can handle it and who can’t, and they have their own system of psychological care, such as it is.  

When Armand does take his hands, yes, it’s bc

Armand

has been pushed to being “maddened by the excesses” of Nicki! Not maddened for nothing. There is no indication that Armand takes pleasure in it. Further proof that it’s a standard punishment is when Eleni explains to Lestat that it’s temporary:

“It has come to the worst, as I feared. Our Oldest Friend, maddened by the excesses of Our Violinist, finally imprisoned him in your old residence. And though his violin was given him in his cell, his hands were taken away. But understand that with us, such appendages can always be restored.”

^So for all of the above, I don’t consider Armand’s cutting off of Nicki’s hands as a crime but as a merciful thing that’s standard procedure, albeit probably a last resort, for restoring vampire sanity.

(2) killed Claudia, 

^Armand tried to get Claudia a new adult vampire companion when he pressured Louis into turning Madeleine. Armand even admits to Louis that he himself takes the responsibility for Madeleine:

“ `But if it’s any consolation to you … surely you realize I had a
hand in it.’
” [Armand said]

`That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you …
yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!’ [Louis] said. 

“`No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn’t you know this?’ Woe.

I bowed my head. 

‘I would have made this woman a vampire,’ [Armand] said softly. `But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it…

“ `I loathe what I did!’ I said.
” `Then loathe me, not yourself.’

^To me, Armand’s plan was to have Madeleine take Claudia off of Louis’ hands, so that Louis could still communicate with Claudia but not be responsible for her anymore. 

I do think that the theatre vampires, led by Santiago, had other plans in mind, and that Armand had to cut his losses and let them kill Claudia since they were bloodthirsty for it. It’s exciting to kill vampires, as Santiago has said. Armand probably knew also, as a coven master, that it was a crime to turn a child anyway, and that she would have died at some point anyway (she might have even taken her own life). 

(3) and kills suicidal people.

^In canon, yes, it’s described as Armand calling to those who wanted to die. Whether they could have been saved by actual medical care, or psychological therapy, I don’t think that’s addressed in canon. So here you might have an actual crime, of him killing innocent ppl who are consenting to death but not really capable of consenting to death.

This is his approach to the dilemma of being a vampire and needing to kill ppl on a regular basis, there’s a few options for doing it in canon:

  • Take lots of Little Drinks, if you’re capable of that, and not kill anyone, but spend like 3x the amount of time every night having to find that many more ppl to feed from. For awhile, it seemed like Louis wasn’t capable of this, since he gets so caught up in the swoon that he can’t stop. He might be able to now, tho.
  • Kill evildoers – bc “they deserve it anyway!” and you’re “protecting the innocents!”, but you still have to struggle to find the ones that deserve the death penalty, do drug dealers deserve to die for selling pot? In TOBT, Lestat kills someone who’s a serial elderly rapist/murderer, one would think that evildoer is evil enough to deserve the death penalty, but everyone is entitled to a defense attorney under U.S. law. 
  • Kill indiscriminately, anyone who crosses your path, and don’t judge, bc they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time – Louis’ method bc he won’t judge evilness, lacking the Mind Gift but also, he doesn’t think he should be making that choice.
  • Kill innocent ppl – not very nice but some vampires do that. Claudia did.
  • Kill ppl who want to die as a form of assisted suicide; they are consenting to death – Armand is doing this, at least mentioning it in TVL and again in TVA. Medically assisted suicide is a very controversial thing but it is legal in some countries, and it reduces the prolonged suffering of terminally ill ppl. From wiki: “The three most frequently mentioned end‐of‐life concerns reported by Oregon residents who took advantage of the Death With Dignity Act in 2015 were: decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (96.2%), loss of autonomy (92.4%), and loss of dignity (75.4%).”

Armand’s killing method described in TVL:

[Armand] had perfected the act of
killing beyond the abilities of all the Children of Darkness that he knew. He
had learned to summon those who truly wished to die. He had but to stand near
the dwellings of mortals and call silently to see his victim appear. Old,
young, wretched, diseased, the ugly or the beautiful, it did not matter because
he did not choose. Dazzling visions he gave, if they should want to receive,
but he did not move towards them nor even close his arms around them.
Drawn inexorably towards him, it was they who embraced him. And when their warm
living flesh touched him, when he opened his lips and felt the blood spill, he
knew the only surcease from misery that he could know. It seemed to him in the
best of these moments that his way was profoundly spiritual, uncontaminated by
the appetites and confusions that made up the world, despite the carnal rapture
of the kill. In that act the spiritual and the carnal came together, and it was
the spiritual, he was convinced, that survived. Holy Communion it seemed to
him, the Blood of the Children of Christ serving only to bring the essence of life
itself into his understanding for the split second in which death occurred.

I think Armand’s assisted-suicides were mostly emotionally-driven, I don’t think canon goes into much further detail about it. I would think that Armand is killing ppl who are truly beyond saving, and the time period in which he’s doing it is not one that handled mental healthcare the way we do now. So at that time, that was probably not considered a crime, but a mercy killing.

Currently, his decision to kill “those who wish to die” (and possibly, he influences that on them), yes, he might be killing innocent ppl who might have had a chance at living otherwise. 

Armand in TVA, more modern-era, is now killing an evildoer/drug addict: 

Now I had to have blood. There was no time for the old game, the game of drawing out those who wanted to die, those who truly craved my embrace, those in love already with the far country of death of which they knew nothing.

…The next [victim] was a common desperate youth, full of festering sores, who had killed twice before for the heroin he needed so badly as I needed the doomed blood inside him.”

We don’t have as much information on whether he’s more of a “kill the suicidal” or “kill the evildoer” in current canon. In the TVA example above, the victim has killed “for the heroin,” so he’s an evildoer anyway.

*SO WHY DO PPL LIKE ARMAND??? O____O

Why do ppl like peanut butter? Or not like it? Some ppl are allergic to peanut butter. There are so many reasons to like a character! 

We’re drawn to characters for any number of reasons!

I think this current crop of tumblr VC fans is talking about Armand more bc he is also a victim of CSA, has undergone an enormous amount of trauma in canon, and survived it, even becoming a coven master in the cult that brainwashed him for centuries. It’s inspiring to see a character carry the weight of all that damage and seem to overcome it and, even, become strong and confident, and even happy, at least sometimes. There’s no denying there’s a lot of sass in Armand. 

Maybe fandom wants to embrace him and comfort him and give him all the happiness they would want themselves to have. It’s easier to project it onto a fictional character, and see it reflected back when you imagine him, in fanart or fanfic. 

Imagining Armand enjoying himself, exploring technology with Daniel or playing videogames and elbowing Lestat to try to mess him up on coven game night, all of his past is still inside him but he’s trying to make the best of things, trying to have a family, such as it is, trying to find his purpose in life. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? A home. And I think we like to see characters like ourselves find home and feel wanted, at least some of the time.

Has anyone ever asked Anne if she is ever going to write about Magnus? Full novel, not just things here and there about him?

Leave a comment

bloodyvampchrons:

i-want-my-iwtv:

(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.

image

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.

Leave a comment

futurecatladies:

feynites:

Winning the villain over to your side is a power fantasy.

Like, a really big one, too.

Social emphasis has it that men should value strength,
aggression, and violence, and women should value kindness, empathy, and
community. But really, anyone who has
learned to prefer social success to might/aggression is going to favour a
strategy where you can make your enemies into allies of some kind, over one
where you just kill them. As a display of dominance, killing is overly
simplistic. And it’s also hard to ignore the reality that luck usually has more
to do with most fights than actual strength.

So, many people vastly prefer stories where the villains don’t
die, but instead, get won over by the hero. It’s also a much more prevalent
power fantasy among women than it is among men, because women are often taught
that violence on our parts is inherently distasteful and ignoble. If you can’t defeat your enemies by putting a
bullet in their heads, then what could
be more satisfying than convincing that enemy to come and fight other people on
your behalf instead?

This is a major component to why villains end up as popular
shipping material. I honestly don’t think it’s the ‘bad boy’ impulse, or some
branch of misogyny, or at least, not in a majority of cases. It’s a total and
sincere power fantasy. Someone going ‘all I care about is myself and all I want
to do is DESTROY THE WORLD MWAHAHAHA’ meeting you and then being like ‘oh no
wait I also want to please you and spend time with you and I want that so much
that I will now give up those other things’ implies an intoxicating level of
charisma.

Of course, like most power fantasies, it pays to tread
carefully with it. Because real life rarely accommodates such things, and as
with some muscle-bound hero easily lifting a house over his head, being able to
take a wholly selfish being and convert them into a devoted companion is… unlikely to happen outside of fiction.
For a lot of reasons.

However, I bring it up because I am C O N S T A N T L Y
seeing the compulsion to ship characters with villains misattributed to A)
agreeing with the villains, B) some form of self-hatred, C) a noble impulse
towards compassion and understanding, or D) sheer stupidity, and really… it’s
just another power fantasy. Wonder Woman punches a tank. Tony Stark buys an
entire island. Storm calls down a lightning strike. Batman outwits all his clever foes. And some seemingly random,
ordinary human woman convinces Lex Luthor to chill out and stop trying to kill
Superman. It’s all power, displayed
in fantastical proportions.

(Which isn’t to say that you have to like it or think that
every such relationship is good and healthy, gods no, but once you realize that
everyone’s just pretending to be the Superman of relationships, it’s easier to just go ‘oh that’s what you’re after’ and… y’know… fret less.)

It’s no huge secret why I’m into ships where the guy has to confront the fact that he’s super duper wrong and the girl (in various ways) helps make him see that.

With a lot of men generally, but specifically with some in my life, that’s never ever going to happen.  That’s why, for me, a fulfilling narrative where a guy realizes and confronts his mistakes is better than the best PWP, tbh.

In Defense of the Dark: Tell me your stories…

Leave a comment

portraitoftheoddity:

If dark content (be it fic, books, films) has helped you at any point in time, either for catharsis, for escapism, for the sense you weren’t alone, for the ability to face a real trauma through the protective lens of fiction, to understand another’s trauma, to build empathy, or just to help you get through a crap day, shoot me an ask (or more than one if you need to break it up). Tell me about it. Anon is fine.

There’s a lot of purity wank around here insisting there is no value to any work that isn’t pure pastel fluff, and that’s a dangerous myth. So if you’re comfortable, please, lend me your voices.

Thank you for your Anne Rice/Fandom relation post and then the BOLDING of writing of dark content does not equate a desire for it to be replicated in the physical world. I’m a 100% behind that sentiment.

Leave a comment

Thank you for appreciating that [post is here]! It always feels like I’m going out in front of a firing squad when I say that “creating/consuming dark fiction is not endorsement of it in real life” because people who do conflate those will insist that I’m an x,y,z-apologist. No. That’s incorrect. 

ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT™ what is happening to me? I just miss you guys a lot, that’s what 😉

“Why did this person say/do this thing?”

I support the creation and consumption of dark content in media, in fic/art/music/etc. as a means of exploring it, as a means of unpacking it, as a means of trying to figure out where it comes from and how to recognize it. Sometimes it’s not so easy to pick out the “bad guy.” Sometimes the “abuser” seems to be a “good” person. Sometimes the “abuser” is reenacting their own trauma. Finding reasons for a behavior are not excuses for that behavior, but it can help provide answers for those of us who want them.

~Story time~

My grandmother was a tough old lady, what we call a “battle-axe.” She was blunt and tactless, and downright MEAN most of the time. She raised her children through terror and bullying, held grudges for decades, was short-tempered with her in-laws and grandchildren.

She was also very smart in her role as a professor in a college, and had a sweetness to her that very few people in my family experienced bc they were so deterred by her tough exterior. I was one of the few who got close to her, and I wanted to know why she behaved the way she did to others. 

Seeing movies like Mommie Dearest, in which Joan Crawford was portrayed as somewhat of battle-axe to everyone in her life, too, I could see similarities between her and my grandmother. 

  1. Could my grandmother have had the kind of pressure in her life that Joan did, competing with the misogyny in her career? I thought so. 
  2. Both of these women set incredibly high expectations for themselves and others, and then reacted badly if reality didn’t meet their expectations. They were not good at handling disappointment and would take it out on others.
  3. In other media, I would see “only” children worshiped by their parents and then these women were dissatisfied, bitter adults, who would never get that kind of attention again. (Not sure about Joan Crawford, but that was my grandmother’s childhood.) 

^What I’m saying is that media (fic/movies/books/music/etc.) gave me insights as to why my grandmother behaved the way she did. It provided reasons for the behavior. I didn’t take these as excuses, but it increased my empathy for her and others I met who were like her. Rather than do as the rest of my family did, by writing her off as “a mean old lady,” I could understand her and navigate my way into a better relationship with her. They missed out on her good parts because of her bruises.

image

^The first time I saw this graphic, I felt that expression in my soul. These are fictional characters. They are not real.

Writers write them. What is “writing” anyway, but speculative reality? We used to call fanfiction “specs,” short for “speculative fiction.” It’s thoughts. Not all writing is for idealized versions of life and/or wish-fulfillment.

I’ve heard from VC fans who are survivors of child abuse, sexual abuse, etc. who said that VC helped them in some way,

  • whether it was recognizing that the abuse they suffered really was abuse (and not normal!), 
  • or whether they have since made fanworks with VC characters that helped them explore their own past and examine it from a place of safety,
  • or in consuming other fanworks, they got some closure on their own experiences in some way and were able to heal or begin to do so, 
  • or just in making friends here that have helped them through difficult times,
  • I could go on and on… there is enormous value in creating/consuming dark fiction. 

Whatever Anne Rice’s agenda is/was in writing the Vampire Chronicles, it doesn’t matter to me, because of how much good I have witnessed that has come from it. If some of her inspiration for certain aspects seems relevant to me, I consider it, but it doesn’t really matter as far as I’m concerned. 

It all really boils down to the old adage “Live and Let Live.”