I feel ya! We need more Lestat/Armand fanfic and fanart! #FANFIC REQUEST #FANART REQUEST. With and without lots of sex(ual tension) and all amounts of angst and fluff <333 and yes, @monstersinthecosmos is one of my fave fanfic writers, too. 

BTW, I have one short Lestat/Armand fic on AO3… *scoots this link in…* since you’re thirsty for A/L…

A Brief Reprieve – After the events of Prince Lestat, Lestat reflects on certain aspects of his new spirit animal, snuggled up lovingly with Armand by a fire in winter. Slightly AU in that they are snuggled up together lovingly by a fire in winter!

[^Here’s a fanart of A/L for you, source unknown, even reverse-image searched. Tell me the source if you know it!]

Anon, hey, if you’re in creative writing class, then you’re learning, you’re starting out *u* You could be a writer of 10/10 A/L ff yourself someday. The laziness you feel might be more of a fear of failure; I recognize that’s what laziness is for me when I have a mountain of fanworks I intend to do and I’d just rather… y’know… rewatch an episode of the Walking Dead.

ANYWAY Lestat and Armand have referred to eachother in canon as being brothers of a sort, so I tag them #murder brothers, if you want more Lestat/Armand action in my blargh. 

Writing can suck at any time: whether you’re just starting out or even when you’re a published author, but there can also be good stuff nestled in among the suck, and like I was often told about drawing, you have to get a ton of bad drawings out before you can get to the good ones. With writing, it’s plot bunnies you want, and good turns of phrase, good dialogue… Then you have to nurture your plot bunnies, and encourage them to multiply by spending time and effort feeding them or talking about them with others. It’s also like exercise, at least for me. It’s a habit/muscle that needs training and attention. It’s been enormously helpful for me to have @wicked-felina as a collaborator, bc we do push eachother to be productive ❤ Your class is probably doing that! 

I personally feel like everyone can write, whether you write superficial or deep topics or anything in between, it’s all wanted in fandom. We just had a post going around about VC characters playing Dungeons & Dragons (an anon asked @monstersinthecosmos about that and others jumped in, so yes, that’s pretty superficial, but it’s still something the fandom wants to speculate about! Who knows, a fanfic about that could lead to the exploration of deeper issues. 

More on writing under the cut, cut for length.

For me, writing is about 1 or more of these basic setups, sometimes combined and interwoven:

• (a) presenting a problem and exploring it, 
• (a) presenting a problem,

  exploring it, and (b) offering a solution, 

• (a) presenting a problem, exploring it,

  (b)

  offering what the author feels is a BAD solution and © showing the consequences of that bad solution.

QOTD could fall into the third one: “The Queen of the Damned, Akasha, notices over the years that (a) there is a ton of war on earth, and she has concluded that it’s due entirely to men, so (b) she decides the solution is to kill off 90% of the men, and she starts doing that and © the other vampires try to talk her out of it, bc it’s ludicrous, and so forth and so on.”

^Now there are alot more things going on than that in that book, lots of interwoven issues that are and are not affected by this main plot. 

With writing, at least for me, I like to ask What would Louis/Lestat/etc. think about X situation, place, etc.? Even something as superficial as dessert. Would Armand be jealous that he didn’t get to try some of the really fancy desserts that we have these days like water cake? Would he buy them and prod at them anyway? Would he read food reviews just to try to experience this stuff or not care at all? And so much the better if it DOES lead to something at least a little deeper like Yes, that’s why he made mortal!Daniel try everything on a menu and describe it in detail, he was living vicariously through Daniel. Writing can let you explore superficial and deeper topics. 

As far as the smut, I feel you on that, I haven’t written much in that category either. I’ve read some amazing smut so my bar for that is set very high (and I have alot of pet peeves about the writing of it), but someday I’ll conquer that, too. The thing with smut is, is there a point? Is it PWP (”porn w/o plot” or “plot, what plot?”)? Or is it the consensual culmination of a slow burn of like 10k words? Is it a power struggle (Like with that kind of sexual scene between Lestat and Armand in TVL when Armand bites Lestat w/o asking first)? Is it the story of someone’s first time and the awkwardness that might surround that? So smut can be considered a topic like any other, and can be explored like any other. 

Anon, don’t be so hard on yourself, start slow, dip your toe in, look at fic you love and try to figure out what makes it so good for you! Don’t be afraid to fail.