We got a question about our headcanon of Louis’ accent in our coffee shop AU collab, and, I thought others might be interested in our answer so here it is!
[^X] My answer: in canon, Louis would have spoken French as his native language, and Creole in NOLA. Being a vampire, he probably began learning English from various people during his travels with Armand after Paris, and then really got the full dose of it when they were living in NY together in the 20th century.
For our AU, I think of him as having moved to NOLA as a child, and his family moved back to France when he was in college or otherwise old enough to be living on his own; or that he still has family in NOLA, and in modern day, people do speak English there. There’s definitely some Creole and a mixture among the natives now so he might have picked up some of that, but I would think he always went to schools where he had to speak English.
When I visited NOLA (I’ve been a few times now) I didn’t notice everyone there having a heavy southern accent. I would think that a bookworm like Louis might have even less, being kind of antisocial and learning his words from books and speaking mainly to his few close friends and family.
As in canon, his French accent should be noticeable but doesn’t mark him as completely a foreigner, just different emphasis on certain letters, a tendency to hit “th” a little like a “d,” for example.
Gaspard Ulliel’s voice is my headcanon for Louis’ accent, although it is a lower register than I think of Louis.
Yep, I pretty much echo what @i-want-my-iwtv says and my headcanon is more or less in tune with hers –
In the fic, Louis comes from a solidly French family from Brittany (I believe we may have stolen this location from @gairid).He moves with them to New Orleans (or its environs) when he is a child, and he learns English whilst there.
However, his accent is tempered by the following things:
a) His family are Francophone and speak French almost exclusively at home; b) Their relatives in Louisiana are Acadian, so there is that dialect of French and/or Franglais colouring his accent; c) The family is upper class
Of course, his English would have the Louisiana lilt to it, but all that above, too.
From my own experience, French people seem to be amongst the ones who most strongly cling to their accent when speaking English. I have worked with and have many friends from France (including from Brittany) who are fluent in English but have that ‘sharpness’ to the consonants that Daniel references in IWTV.
I also have found that every French person I know pronounces ‘idea’ as ‘idee’ (i.e. the French way) no matter how fluent they are. I pointed this out to my French boss once and was told that we pronounce it The Wrong Way because it is a French word. XD
me: i can’t wait for people to read this story!!
brain: you have to finish writing it if you want people to read it
me:
me: now that doesn’t sound right
She has said (2013-14?) on her FB page that she basically doesn’t care one way or another, she chooses to ignore it—she hasn’t given her blessing but no, not “illegal”.
@vampchronfic is correct, AR currently ignores fanfic:
(^I don’t know the year of that one, I screencapped it before FB had the year listed in the comment, I think it’s 2014.)
Much argument and analysis has been made of the war on fanfic that Anne Rice waged against her fans in the 1990′s and early 2000′s, and yes, those being copyrighted characters, she was within her rights to wage that war.
However, many of us, in many fandoms, have written fanfiction for pleasure and not for profit, for many years. And times have changed.Anne Rice said, in 2012:
“I got upset about 20 years ago because I thought [fanfiction] would block me,” she said. “However, it’s been very easy to avoid reading any, so live and let live.”
There are authors who currently recognize fanfiction as just one of many ways that fans engage with their published and copyrighted works, Anne Rice being one of them.
AR now “ignores fanfiction.” That’s her current stance. We don’t have her approval, we have her tolerance.
*~And AO3 has pledged itself as a safe haven* for fanfic writers to post their works!~*
Some of AR’s fans also disapprove of VC fanfic, and that’s fine. But if she ignores it, I would ask others to ignore it as well. This fan explains his reasons for ignoring VC fanfic:
Speaking for myself, and other fanfic writers, we feel that we can realize her characters, storylines, and detailed worlds. For us to translate our imagination into words for the fandom’s enjoyment is a gift for us, too. There are many types of fanfic, many things left unaddressed in canon, and then there’s the AU fanfic, etc…. we just want to play with her toys, we are not taking them away from her, or trying to sell them as our own. And she is tolerating it.
A Wintery, Storm Blown Sigh – La maison sur l’Île Saint-Louis
Fandom: Vampire Chronicles Rating: Not Rated Relationships: Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Characters: Lestat de Lioncourt, Louis de Pointe du Lac, Brian Callahan (OC), Armand (Vampire Chronicles), Additional Tags: Angst, Backstory, Drama, Romance Series: Part 3 of Torn, Frayed and Mended Summary:
Part 3 of the series Torn, Frayed & Mended -Lestat and Louis clear the air of a buried past ; they quit the tower and make their way to Paris.
Sorry for the delay in posting…Happy New Year, everyone.
I can’t speak for Daniel’s transition, but from what he told me, what made it into the record that I compiled as the novel Queen of the Damned… he originally wanted the Dark Gift because he fell in love with Louis’ story, and wanted a seat at our table, so to speak. When he met Armand, it became about wanting to be with Armand, made so much more frustrating because of Armand’s struggle to accept Daniel, whether to bring him over.
Then, when that had been overcome, there was Daniel as a fledgling; there are so many physical and emotional changes that happen to a vampire during that time that few of us really experience it as a very “graceful” time. I famously vomited up my own blood and then, in a state of delirium, licked it off the stone floor of a filthy cell full of rotten corpses! Among many other grotesque things that happened in those first nights.* Two exceptions to the awkward fledgling phase: Gabrielle and Claudia, who both bloomed in their own ways, very gracefully, as fledgling vampiresses.
Advice…
One thing is for sure, satisfaction is not guaranteed, ma petite. In every sense of the phrase.
The process itself is dangerous. It’s called the Dark “Trick” for a reason. Your maker has to kill you first. It’s extremely erotic, but extremely painful. They have to actually forcibly pull your life away entirely – and you’ll fight them through it if you want to survive – and then feed a demon, a kind of cancer, into your body and soul. We still don’t know if it’s contamination or evolution. And it doesn’t always work.
There are worse things than death.
//ooc: *@gairid/@vampchronfic has such a beautiful and tragic story about another thing Lestat did in those first nights, that you really should read it, We Are Our Own Saviors (Chapters 15-16). #Damn you and your perfect headcanon perfection ;A;
Lestat continues after the jump, cut for length.
♛The other aspect of being a vampire: Killing. Few people seem to realize how customer-service oriented this lifestyle really is. You’ll have to kill people, or practice the Little Drink (most fledglings have difficulty stopping mid-kill). If you are able to master it, you’ll spend even more nightly time pursuing more victims than just the few that would satisfy you if you killed them. Killing means you have to find fewer, but still, victims. Louis refused to choose, feeling unworthy of making that choice. Could you do it? Really? Or, you can not choose. As he later was able to embrace. Could you do that?
Louis’ practice of drinking animal blood as a substitute for human blood for his first few years, I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons he was so weak for so long. And so cranky! For whatever reason, animal blood is just not as satisfying for us as human blood is, and I would speculate that it has something to do with the difference in souls. Not to say animal souls are lesser; Mojo had more soul than so many humans I’ve met. But there is a difference. So the animal solution is the vampire equivalent of eating fast food, and it takes its toll.
Those are the main concerns, that young naive mortals should consider seriously before they agree to become one of us. There are many more, but these seem to be required for everyone. Should you be offered the choice to take the Dark Gift, your maker would be having these conversations with you, specific to you, and to them, about other considerations.
The Ao3 Tag of the Day is: Yet another trope I will devour no matter what even though I know exactly what is going to happen.
“Now, I’m getting into the coffin, and you will get in on top of me if you know what’s good for you.” – Lestat de Lioncourt, Interview with the Vampire
@wicked-felina and I are trying to include as many canon-compliant details as we can (hello Armand flirting w/ the blender, lol), and I personally have to satisfy my RL best friend who is a coffee aficionado (gotta prove to her that we know wtf we’re writing about, lol)… We’re using most of the ideas we come up with but we do have some spin-off chapters that may come later when the fic is finished.
…Psssst we would also love fanart of any of it, if anyone is so inspired…
I didn’t think a coffee shop AU was possible for VC either, but yes, from all the lovely comments we’ve been getting on it, it is working ^______^
(Loving the angst too. Even in a coffee shop AU, these idiot boys manage to fuck everything up, lmao.)
^This is why it’s working, bc we’re absolutely devoted to keeping them as IC as possible. Some canon-diversion has been necessary, and being AU, it’s naturally got a more comical bent, but yeah… we’re trying to keep them IC ;D
We love this pile of dysfunctional vampires hipsters.
I-want-my-IWTV 