“Just so, one loop over the other, then under and through…” he said, the laces of Claudia’s shoes forming into a bow under his nimble fingers. “And pull tight, ma chérie. Simple as that.” Without a moment’s hesitation, her little fingers tugged the laces back open and tried now, for the very first time, to tie them on her own.
They sat on the carpet, her body curled forward in concentration, whispering the directions again to herself as he smiled down above her. He reached out and tucked a stray golden curl behind her ear and she spared him not one bit of attention.
In the warm light of the lamps, I watched them from across the room. We had been together now for some four years, Lestat and I. In that time, I had rarely seen this expression on his face. When he seduced his victims it was with rapt attention, his tongue flicking at his fangs imperceptibly to them, so vulgar to me. He would slink towards me catlike after killing and it was similarly intoxicating. I would let him take what he wanted, and there was lust for him, his wandering hands and whispered praise, but was that love? It left me satisfied, guilty, confused.
This was new, he was patient with the child, embraced her not to consume but with compassion. Their laughter lent a sparkle to the space I had shared with him alone. Together they brought things out of me I assumed I did not have.
“I did it!” said Claudia, her face upturned to him brightly. “Bravo!” he applauded with polite clapping as if at an opera. She shifted position, undid her bow and busied herself with tying it again.
It was in that moment that he glanced at me, his smile still tender and gentle, I felt my heart trip and stop for an instant. He waved me over and I came, entranced. He gestured for my foot. “Oh no, it looks as if,” in one fluid motion he hooked a finger in and opened my shoelaces. “Papa Noir’s laces need tying, whatever shall we-”
“Me,” said Claudia, starting already for the laces. “I’ll fix them for you.” I felt Lestat’s hand on my ankle, his nail lightly stroking my skin, then move up, squeezing my calf as we watched her together. That was the moment I fell in love with him.
I, uh. Haven’t posted any drabble offers or memes for probably about a year, so I’ve no idea what challenge you’re referring to. I’m sorry, but I hope that you like this little bit anyway!
Louis always took longer than Armand did to wake. Armand could have used that time, spent it, but for what? What purpose, when the being by whom he marked his place in the world still lay dead? Instead he would lie nearby, almost immobile himself, and observe. Little things intrigued him, at first. The fan of jet lashes across a sheened cheek, the shadow cast wavering with the gas-lamp’s flame. The warm light and that movement all combining to make Louis look something other than a corpse. In Paris, he’d believed so dreadfully that Louis was not dead. By weeks and months, he began to learn the signs, and the lack thereof. To differentiate a twitch of eyelid from a wayward air current, a move to wakefulness from wishful imagining. And then he began to learn more. A fly’s weight was not enough to disturb the torpor their kind remained in during their personal day-lengths. An insect could buzz about Louis’s ear or crawl over his skin, tolerated and unnoticed. Insignificant. The curling hair was deader than dead, soft and smooth between Armand’s fingers, utterly unbothered when he stroked it or twisted it into fine plaits to puzzle his love upon waking. The cold flesh… Cold, cold, soft cheeks and chest and lips he could touch for only a moment. Their kind could defend themselves, if need be. A deep, reptilian thread of self-preservation ran through their back brains, keeping them alive even when they seemed empty and lost to all, and it was… Violent. Fascinating. When Louis’ claws slashed Armand’s wrists, when his white hands crushed his throat, when his lovely ivory fangs rent Armand’s trespassing mouth, it all felt like hope.
Other, More Considerate People: I like to keep my story as close to canon and ship-free as possible so everyone can enjoy it. 🙂
My Self-Indulgent Ass: ‘Sup, assholes, here’re all my implausible OTPs, their future children, a bunch of OCs that play prominent roles, and all my sexuality headcanons are in effect.
“To understand this fic you’ll need to refer to page 15, side A of my Extensive headcanon timeline of the entire history of this character and everyone he ever met, the contents of which are helpfully provided absolutely nowhere.”
“behold as I construct the precarious scaffolding of this story from discarded tumblr shitposts, my id, a dream I had once, poorly concealed psychological projection, the abstract concept of the way it feels to look out at the sea, and a bunch of dumb jokes I couldn’t stop cackling to myself about. oh, but it’s fanfiction.“
and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.
but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.
time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.
as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.
cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.
so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.
summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.
this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.
cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…
from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…
after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.
aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.
time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.
one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.
she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.
she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.
years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.
two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.
or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.
her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.
uses of the terms “lemon” and “lime” (apparently there was a difference. lemons were porn but i’m STILL not sure what a lime is. i also have NO idea how “lemon” came to mean “porn”. not sure i want to, tbh.)
soooo many “i do not own please don’t sue me” disclaimers
fics where the whole premise that the whole cast was trapped someplace together and the reviewers would leave questions in their comments and then the characters would answer them in-story. like “ask that guy with the glasses” except shitty and usually self-indulgent towards the author’s preferred ships. (i may have written one of these when i was 12.)
authors who legit updated on a schedule (and stuck to it). some every fucking day. (you still see this on ao3, but not NEARLY as much.)
fanfic authors who basically had a following and fandom of their own. (again, this still happens, but not as much. not sure if that’s a good thing or not.) not bad considering most of them were 13.
“yaoi!!! that means boy kisses!!! don’t like don’t read!!!”
putting “————-” or “xxxxxxx” bc ff.net wouldn’t let you insert a horizontal line to show the end of a section
very long, very rambley author’s notes
some of which had the authors interacting with/talking to the characters in the fic.
fics that weren’t so much stories as they were a chapter-by-chapter detailing of all the cliche plots and tropes used in that fandom’s shitty fanfics. (i actually sorta miss these, tbh)
songfics. no, not fics inspired by songs. fics where the lyrics were put in between every paragraph, with some lyrics altered to fit the characters. it was horrific.
fics that were up-front about the oc being a stand-in for the reader so they can read about themselves getting with their fave character. as in, it was written in second person and the summary outright said the pov character was meant to be the reader.
the forums being used for roleplay before tumblr rp was a “thing”
long, LONG author profiles, filled with things like “copy/paste if you’re a [whatever] shipper!” or obviously fake sickly sweet anecdotes (think chain email levels of bad), or worst of all (in my opinion), a pro-life anti-abortion story from the point of view of a fetus. it was as bad as it sounds, if not worse.
listing all your ships on your author profile page
seeing a title that was all lowercase letters and thinking “lazy” rather than “aesthetic”
“101 one ways to annoy [insert character here]” (voldemort was popular for these things)
it being fucking impossible to find f/f fic that wasn’t porn
writing ships as “characterxcharacter” instead of “character/character”
author’s notes in the middle of the story. literally you would be reading a fanfic and all of a sudden, in between paragraphs… “A/N: awwww isn’t it cute how they’re thinking the same thing!!! XD”
for that matter, author’s notes using the XD emoticon
people FLIPPING THEIR SHIT whenever their fave author (or just a well-established author in the fandom) changed their username. ESPECIALLY if they changed it from something fandom-specific to something more neutral.
“character x/character y. NO CHARACTER X/CHARACTER Z.” bc apparently you think i’d think your fic clearly marked character x/character y would be nothing but character x and character z making out.
trollfics trying to capitalize on my immortal’s infamy. there are still trollfics, of course, but they tend to be more subtle.
for that matter, trying to pass a trollfic off as a legitimate fic rather than just admitting it’s a parody
specifically reading fics for your notp just to bash it in the reviews
people putting replies to reviews for the previous chapter in the author’s notes (this died down a LITTLE once ff.net finally added a reply function, but not much)
the great fanfiction.net purge (ahh yes. history lesson time. basically, back in the olden days of fanfiction, when everyone actually used ff.net, one fateful day, back in biblical times – 2011 – ff.net decided to make MA rated stuff – basically porn – not be allowed on the site anymore. ofc people kept posting it anyway, but then ff.net started deleting stories from the website with no notice to the authors. just poof! gone. the aftermath was HORRIFIC. people were FURIOUS, as a lot of people had no backup and just lost their stories. so ff.net stopped enforcing the rule, but the damage was done. this was when people began to officially leave for ao3, i think.)
lots of harry potter fanfics about the my immortal versions of the characters interacting with the canon characters. some of these were actually quite funny – i think they’re still around, but i don’t see them as much. (i actually wrote one of these stories. it is still, to this day, the most popular story i ever wrote.)
drabbles that were ACTUALLY 100 words long.
fictionpress (a sister site for original fiction. it was like wattpad before wattpad was wattpad. it never really took off. come to think of it, i may still have some stuff on there from when i was 12 i need to take down)
“crackfics” that consisted mainly of “lulz iM SO RanDOm!!!111!!!!!oneone XD cheeeeeeeese!!!!!!” humor
“i suck at summaries”
“this is my first story so please be nice”
“i’ll only update if i get 10 good reviews”
AUs before “AU” was a really widely used term, so the author’s note would have a length explanation for why they had to change things for the story and apologizing over and over instead of just noting the AU in the summary
AUs out of laziness rather than for creative/plot reasons (ie, “luna’s a gryffindor in this fic because i couldn’t find another reason for her to be here”)
authors notes apologizing for late updates
being genuinely shocked when you found a GOOD fanfic
I got an email from a reader earlier. The sender was a lovely young woman who had just re-read my first published fic and wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed it—how it made her feel, how it made her smile, how it made her cry, how it made her excited to get home each night and curl up in bed with it, how it helped ease the pain of a difficult patch in her life, and how much she misses it now that it’s over. It was a beautiful letter, and my reaction to it must have been visible enough to make my saner half take notice from across the room. He shot me a questioning look, and I turned the laptop around and gestured to the screen.
I followed his eyes as they scanned each line, saw his lips tip up in a smile that grew broader as he read, then braced myself for the good natured snark I’ve come to expect when my little literary hobby comes up in conversation.
“Wow.” He said. “That was kind of amazing. How does it feel to be someone’s favorite author?”
“Don’t be a dick,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder.
“I’m serious,” he replied, gesturing to the screen. "That’s what she said—right there: You’re my favorite author.”
“I think she means favorite fic author. Not real author.”
“Is there a difference?” He asked.
“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes. ”Of course there is.”
“Why?”
“Because, as someone in this room who isn’t ME is fond of pointing out, self published gay mystery romance novels aren’t exactly eligible for the pulitzer.” I said, turning the computer back around.
“So what?” he shrugged, “Something you wrote inspired a stranger to sit down write what it meant to them and send it to you. A lot of total strangers, as a matter of fact. You write, people read it and react. That makes you an author.”
“Huh.” I said, very eloquently, then got up and went into the kitchen to start dinner.
Hours later, sitting down to reply to the letter in question I find myself writing this post instead. Because here’s the thing: That wonderfully crazy man who lives in my house is right. (But please don’t tell him I said that)
From the moment I realized that letters made up words and words made up sentences and sentences made up worlds that were mine to explore any time I wanted to I’ve been a reader. I have fallen in love with perfect phrases and epic stories and countless characters pressed between the pages of the thousands of books I’ve read in my life so far—and sitting down to string together those same 26 letters into tens of thousands of words of stories I felt needed telling? That makes me an author.
I have adored the work of countless authors in numerous genres, and the world of fan fic is no exception. I have admired and cherished and savored the words of talented writers whose work is no less legitimate for the fact that their names include random keyboard characters and their words don’t live on bound paper on a shelf.
It’s not JUST fan fic. It’s literature. It’s published. It’s read. It’s loved.
It matters.
Thanks to all of my favorite authors for every word on every page on every screen that I’ve ever loved.
Re: canon or AU, I’m not sure if you’re looking for fanfic or published fic. As far as published fic, tbh I don’t really read other vampire series than VC 😛 I used to read Christopher Pike and Poppy Z. Brite but I barely remember them now. I never actually read Dracula (the h0Rr0r! I am a terrible vampire fan) but from what I understand, it would have the atmosphere you want but may have characters that turn into passive, thoughtless pawns devoid of personality. I think that may be why I’ve struggled to get myself to read it, that’s not my thing, either.
As far as fanfic I mostly read VC fanfic, and I can’t say that any of the fics I’ve read do that to our characters… in canon we do have some vampires who go into a kind of sleep/vegetative states for periods of time (called “going to ground,” and sometimes involves them actually burying themselves and staying underground for years), and one might say that fledgling!Nicolas was a passive, thoughtless pawn devoid of personality when he was first turned, but he snapped out of it when given the right stimulation. So I think sometimes that state is temporary if it’s incorporated into fic.
I also struggle to pick out authors of fanfic bc I can’t think of one that has both the atmosphere and the vampire romance… I feel like most of my fave authors spend SOME time on atmosphere but more time on the characters’ interaction, dialogue, the plot, etc. Our series is pretty heavy with purple prose so we tend to use it sparingly in fanfic.
IF YOU REALLY WANT THAT ATMOSPHERE YOU’LL HAVE TO GO OUR SOURCE. I’d suggest that you read Interview with the Vampire or The Vampire Lestat and JOoooooOOoooooOIN US! ❤ [Me: attempts to steal a very talented fic writer from their fandom into ours]
^It’s a movie but worth mentioning bc I think you’d like it: Only Lovers Left Aliveis, in my opinion, an example of an atmospheric vampire romance without shoving the romance down your throat; it’s subtle, but it’s there. Also:
Although the characters are pretty sedate most of the time, neither character in the central ship turns into a passive, thoughtless pawn devoid of personality.
I think this would appeal to you bc there’s a lot of tenderness, with a good dose of silliness, too.
It’s got a good mix of spooky + pretty aesthetic, being set in crumbling Detroit, it shows the beauty of things that might look run-down and of little value at first glance.
BONUS: It stars Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as the main ship and they are A++++
^Similarly, there are two adaptations of novel Let the Right One In. I didn’t read the novel, but have heard great things about it, although it is darker and scarier in nature than the adaptations. The first of the 2 adaptaions has the same title as the novel and I think it’s the better of the two. The second one, the American version, is called Let Me In.
While it’s not a romance between ADULTS, it’s got atmospheric vampire action and I would say that it might fall under a YA kind of romance feeling. I’ve read some of your fic and I really think you’d like this bc it has a lot to say about giving/receiving care, being vulnerable, and those first feelings we get about “I love my friend so much and I am afraid of scaring them off by letting them know, I want to be closer to them but not at the cost of hurting them.”
I hope that helps, again, anyone is welcome to comment/reblog with reccs for @radiatorfromspace!
I-want-my-IWTV 