(Reminder: I am/was not a gender studies major, nor a student of fandom. This is just an entertainment blog and all that follows is my opinion only.)
This is a highly sensitive topic that people study academically for many fandoms, and I will hardly do it justice here. But I felt it was important to share what I can, anyway. Some links are under the cut for further reading about this topic, even though they do not apply to VC fandom specifically.
The short answer is that, from my experience, yes, most ppl in the VC fandom seem to be women. This is based on the past 20 years of AR’s booksignings I’ve attended, online communities, interviews/articles over the years, AR’s FB (her own posts + comments from her People of the Page), and AR’s Twitter. However, I would add that she absolutely does have fans who are men, NB, agender, genderqueer, transgender, etc. It would be difficult to do a thorough demographic study of all of her fans (current/past/specific time period(s)/etc.), so I wouldn’t know what portion of the fanbase is made up of women.
^What is superfan thinking? Does she think Santiago is a REAL VAMPIRE? Does she want to die? … or, is she simply a groupie of that media and enjoying it as a fantasy situation? We don’t get her backstory in the movie, so we may never know.
^Santiago has had to deal with hecklers and admirers for years so he’s not really fazed by her disrupting his show, and when he shuts her offer down, it draws a laugh from the audience. Laugh at the fan who confessed her love for the fantasy of it all and offered herself as tribute.
Before we specify why women are in VC fandom, one thing to consider is What is fandom?In my opinion, it’s a group of people who are drawn to a shared space bc of a shared interest in specific media. Within that, you still have to reach out to individuals in order to become friends. You don’t necessarily have to agree on every aspect of the media you each enjoy, but having chemistry certainly helps. Participating in fandom can also mean creating/consuming fanworks without having any personal connection with other fans. Sometimes it’s just in posting fic and/or leaving kudos. Some join a skype chat group so that they focus primarily on their personal connections with other fans. It’s a wide spectrum and there are different ways to engage with other fans within a fandom.
Why VC fandom?We all have our reasons for being in VC fandom. I would prefer not to speak for other fans as to their reasons, but everyone is welcome to respond in the comments/reblogs of this post, or message me on/off anon, and I might gather up those responses and add them to this post.
Why I was drawn to VC:
Personally, I’m a woman, and I’m in this fandom bc the canon/fanon is intellectually stimulating to me. I’ve made some of my best friends here. We share a love for these characters and we discuss them at length. This does not mean we 100% support everything the characters do in canon. We enjoy them as fictional characters, not necessarily as role models.
Secondly… I had posted a personal account about my reasons for being into VC canon, but later deleted that post bc I was informed that my reasons weren’t acceptable. That VC was not for straight women. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ll briefly tell you my reasons for being attached to VC, under the cut.
Brief historical context:
These books are/were written by a straight white woman, and she’s always advised her fans to “write the book you want to read.” She currently writes for herself, presumably, as she does not use an editor in the traditional sense. She began VC in the early 1970s with the short story, “The Master of Rampling Gate” (which eventually became the full novel IWTV). The short story was published in Redbook magazine at the time, which is/was a magazine for women, and the short story was written in the vein (pun intended!) of the older gothic romance novels that were extremely popular in the ‘60s.
^In fact, this edition of IWTV is straight-baiting, as the only female love interest that Louis might have gotten into that physical position with would be Babette, and that… definitely doesn’t happen.
IWTV is a dissection of Louis’ feelings, and Louis was a stand-in for Anne herself. VC in general has a lot of emotion, both in the dialogue, and the introspection woven into the narrative itself. The fact that these books are mostly written from the 1st person perspective is a very intimate means of communication to the reader, and makes the novels that much more emotionally rich. Some might say that such emotional writing tends to appeal to women.
The books are intimate. There is a constant thread of intimacy throughout which seems to appeal to women of all sexual orientations, in my opinion. I started the series with IWTV when I was 11 yrs old and I’ve heard from other fans of other genders that they also started VC when they were young, even around the age that I did. Being right before puberty, maybe that adds some extra addictive quality to it, that it explores a kind of intimacy when we’re in the phase of life where we’re just becoming interested in sexuality. I remember mooning over pics of Brad Pitt in my table group at lunch, and we would talk about him, but I doubt any of us would have wanted to actually kiss him at the time, we just wanted to speculate about dating and romance!
After the first book, the intimacy continues with TVL, where we get Lestat’s backstory, and as the series progresses, it just keeps going. Whichever book new VC fans enter the series, they’re going to hit that vein, more or less. It’s not as strong in the most current books, but it’s still there. I would say that AR found that the way she wrote the first 2 books was so well-received that she felt validated in her style of writing, that it was appealing to her readers, and continued to produce it.
There’s also quite a lot of wealthporn, where the characters describe their expensive clothes, jewelry, or lavish surroundings, none of them have to hold a dayjob or anything menial like that. Since many of us do not currently enjoy such luxuries of material goods and/or freedom of leisure time, it’s another element that might make it appealing to certain demographics. There’s a ton of wish fulfillment in the books.
Hit the jump for a little more.
My reasons for being into VC
Basically, I was bullied when I was 11 (for having a bad fashion sense and bad teeth), which is right around the time that someone gave me a copy of IWTV. I had always loved horror novels and scary stories as a way to study monsters and see if I could unpack them and better understand them. I drew inspiration from the way the VC characters handled their own obstacles, I loved getting Lestat’s backstory, he was not just a colorful antagonist, he had his own reasons for acting the way he did. Reasons are not EXCUSES, but in understanding monstrous behavior, we can equip ourselves to weather it when we see it in real life. Eventually, I got braces, grew out of my 90′s grunge phase, and while the bullies changed form over time, I learned how to deal with them.
Could I have drawn inspiration from other books/movies/music? Yes! And I did. But VC, for the intimacy of the stories, for the vibrancy of the characters, for so many reasons that I can’t go into on a post I’m trying to keep brief… this is a piece of media that I’ve held onto over the years. Not the only one, but certainly the main one, for me.
A few good posts to check out re: women in fandom:
And I don’t mean to attack you, Anon, but these posts are written with a tone because there is so much criticism of what women in fandom are not allowed to enjoy. Please read at your own risk, but they have some very good points about why women might be into certain things in fandom.
I do answer asks directed to Lestat under #Lestat muse! His responses are just a touch edgier than mine, a little wordier bc I’d imagine he likes flexing his vocabulary, he’s a Writer, an Actor, an ARTIST. I imagine that he’d love blogging, getting questions from fans and that whenever he sits down to do it, he’s in a good mood, recently fed and warm and wanting to be generous with his affection and his time. So it’s somewhat //ooc bc the ‘real’ Lestat would probably be much sharper, have a shorter fuse, than the way I treat him.
I’m super picky about what I reblog bc I try to keep posts to a 10/day limit, but I do have a #Lestat likes this tag, and #Lestats closet, for stuff I think he’d like/have. It’s a very high compliment that you feel like this blog is actually run by him <333 I’ve always been drawn to his sense of humor, some of his fashion sense aligns with mine, and his overall desire to give/receive affection is something I can relate to, even if we both fail at it sometimes. He’s an enormous failure in many ways but he keeps trying.
I am aware, bc I’ve read all of canon (except, not yet finished PLROA I’M SO SORRY but it will happen!), that he is also extremely problematic and I choose not to discuss my opinions about that publicly, but it is something I do grapple with privately. Reconciling some of his worst crimes against others with the loving, sassy, charming being he can be and wants to be most of the time, that’s a challenge. I choose to focus on the positive aspects of this fictional character in public.
Some thoughts on this under the cut, cut for length.
It is, admittedly, always fun to deride Lestat for this
screwup
decision when Marius (for all his own f*cked-upedness, he does have a little decent advice to give at various points) specifically told him: DO. NOT. TURN CHILDREN. INTO VAMPIRES. EXCEEDINGLY NOT COOL.
In TVL, Lestat says he wanted to do it just because he wanted to see what would happen:
^I don’t think this is the reason (or at least not the MAIN reason), I think this is Lestat’s bravado, and knowing that he’s writing the book FOR LOUIS, really, knowing Louis is going to be reading it, and this is the answer he’s putting out there to make himself look that much more callous, bc the real answer is too painful to share.
Someone (she’s not on tumblr, I’d tag her if she was) once suggested that Lestat made Claudia to keep Louis’ conscience clear; after all, Lestat is essentially ‘saving’ her from death. The line in the movie is, “Your conscience is clear.” If Louis had actually killed a child (a Holy Innocent!) that night, it would have been the worst crime he’d committed in vampiring, and Lestat didn’t want Louis to bear that burden of guilt. Louis might have even felt guilty enough to kill himself over it, also something Lestat did not want to happen.
So I think Lestat would prefer that Louis think of this as just another gross, horrible act to add to the list of gross, horrible things Lestat has done, and he’d prefer that we write him off as an antagonist, which is easier than being confronted with what he does and why he does it.
I know it’s a bit of a reach, but I feel like Lestat admitting that he made a child into a vampire, knowing it was a crime against nature, and condemning her to the body she was turned in, was a sacrifice he made to prevent Louis from bearing the guilt of her death, it’s all too painful, and could invite questions about it, and he just can’t let anyone in that close.
I understand that it’s a very problematic book, but this is also why I can’t throw the entirety of TOBT out, because Claudia comes back to haunt Lestat to confront him with the decision of turning her. He reflects on it off and on throughout the book and finally admits that even knowing what he knows now, he would still do it all over again, and that’s taking into account the joy they all experienced as a little family, but also the pain and suffering she felt as she became aware of the trap of her own body.
I-want-my-IWTV 