dannymolloy:

First of all, there has been some confusion here on Tumblr as to what my intentions are with this post. If you read this and honestly believe I condone pedophilia, I can tell you now; I don’t. Simple as that. If you read this post, written out of my own emotions and translate that to me not caring about yours, that’s simply false. Just because I share mine, doesn’t mean I don’t care about yours. Each their own. Simple as that. 
If you truly believe I wrote this piece to trivialize abuse victims and/or glorify sexual predators, you think very poorly of me and I invite you to come and talk to me to get to know me better. I guarantee you, I’m a very nice, loving and caring person.

Secondly, we’re talking about a fandom. Almost in all fandoms, there is love for protagonists and antagonists alike. This does not mean we condone crime, rape and murder in real life. Look at the love for The Joker, Sephiroth, Moriarty, The Master,  Mason Verger etc. Is everyone that loves these characters a bigot and contributor to the trivialising of crime victims? No. Wether it’s a villain that not so bad or a ‘hero’ that’s not all good; it is still fiction.
No matter how real our feelings are for certain fictional characters, this is not a real reflection of our stance in real life. Period.
Especially in VC, the fandom is based on loving killers. We love Lestat. We love Armand. All the vampires in VC have done horrible, horrid stuff, taken lives and committed an array of criminal acts to (for example) get undeniable wealth. To go into this and pin pointing one guy with a flaw that makes him in all honesty a villain (Marius in this case); is funny to me as they then all are. They are all criminals. They are all killers, arsonists and thieves and all have their own mental issues to cope with. I will gladly have discussions about individual characters and their crimes or contributions to the fandom, but don’t point fingers saying I discredit crime victims when the whole series does that in romanticizing vampirism in the first place. If you don’t like the books, I discourage you to read this post or anything I post on my Daniel blog. 

If someone reads this and still finds me a horrible person, I insist you contact me personally in PM for an open conversation. Don’t hide behind others. If you want your voice to be heard, speak up. I am open to any civil, reasonable conversation.

ON TO THE ACTUAL POST.

——

One of my dear friends just messaged me about how she feels terrible about the fact that Marius is being portrait as an abusive monster by a lot of people of the fandom and nothing but that. And I just want to share with you my story to let you guys know why there are people out there that love him.

Reading this story take in account that I am religious.
When I was 15 I got into a particular fandom which stimulated my art, my creatively and my love for roleplay. I fell madly in love with one of the characters and RPed him for a looooong time. Nonstop. Only back then I did not know what a muse was. I did not know of the word. And darker forces took advantage of that. When it was revealed that this particular character died in the next book, it tore my heart to shreds. And instead of experiencing the muse as an inspirational source for my writing, it became a constant presence that would ‘talk’ to me. Said it came to be with me. Demand things of me. For almost two years this thing pretending to be him tried to isolate me and drag me down a dark path. I would be his and only his. I even broke up with a boyfriend back then whom I was crazy about. Because he told me to. And in the end he would even start telling me to off myself to truly be with him. Thank god something then clicked in me, only then realising this was going too far. I believe by recognising it, God reached out and expelled it. This thing left. But I didn’t realise it was my own strength- my own doing that did this. So I was distraught. It broke me. It left me depressed and unhappy for more years than I dare admit. It ruined my ability to be romantically involved with anyone which I still suffer from till this day.

But then something happened. I got introduced to the Vampire Chronicles fandom. I was scared at first. The confrontation with such strong, vibrant characters and the overwhelming subject of death made me so very weary for this fandom. But when I reached the point in The Vampire Lestat where Marius dug Lestat up and Lestat said he had never laid eyes on something so beautiful, I was roused. And as I kept reading, this Marius- this beautiful, man so full of life and optimism and love for life made me smile again. He was calm and wise and friendly and so extremely patient. An artist too and in love with everything beautiful in life. He appreciated the simple gesture of opening a door and all his strength and power made him humble towards weakness. Through his death, he only loved life more. All these lessons overwhelmed me. Shook me to my core. Slapped me in the face and told me this was the muse to follow.
And he saved me. He literally saved me.
I smiled again. I started appreciating life again. I went back to art school. I started appreciating the small beauties around me again. He opened my eyes again to the beauty of living.
Getting back into roleplay scared me but I met a girl who for the first time explained what a muse was and only then did I realise that I had been tricked. That I had been taken advantage of by darker forces. And so then I decided that if I was going to RP again, I was going to keep the now called muses at a distance. And I did. And I still do. And I can enjoy it again. I can enjoy life again.

—–

In Marius’ defence

Yes, after reading all the books, I realise he has major issues. I know he made some really bad decisions and a million more mistakes. But let me tell you; I was happy to see he wasn’t perfect. I was relieved to know that even those we look up to are flawed. And yes, in the span of his life, which is over 20 lifetimes!!!!, it is really quite OKAY for him to make more mistakes than we do in a lifetime. But lets not forget he is a vampire. Do we blame a lion for killing the antelope? No. It’s in his nature. Do we blame a vampire for manipulating and taking lives? No. It’s in their nature. It is quite unfair to throw shade at Marius for faltering every now and then when he so desperately tries to be human.
And then there are some things I wish to point out that people seem to forget.

– If it wasn’t for Marius, The Parents would have died thousands of years ago and the vampire race would have gone extinct. There would literally be no VC if it wasn’t for Marius sacrificing his freedom to harness and protect the Core.

– The knowledge of Marius’ possible existence was the thing that kept Lestat going in TVL. It was Marius that dug him out of the ground for a second shot at life. It was Marius who showed Lestat there was more to vampirism than the pain he had suffered so far.

– Without Marius intervening, Daniel would have been lost. Despite Marius’ double agenda to kill his own loneliness or feeble attempts to make it up to Armand, taking Daniel in was an act of kindness. Marius saved Daniel and only could through his endless patience.

– Marius welcomes Mael into his house. This is such an important aspect of his endless attempts to be good. Do not forget Marius was a very, very happy man in his mortal days. Mael stole that away from him. He robbed him of a simple but wonderful life and tossed him into this whirlpool of death and loneliness and misery. And yet Marius lets him sleep under his roof and offers him his own clothes!! His kindness is often obscured by acts of petty behaviour, but in his heart he is a genuinely good man who wants peace. He tries. And that is what matters.

– It is Santino that destroyed Armand. Not Marius. It gets my blood boiling when people have Armand speak in defence of Santino and somehow dare to shove all the blame onto Marius. Despite his questionable ethics with children, Marius wanted nothing but to give the boys and especially Amadeo a second chance in life. He wanted to make him happy, knowledgeable, successful and powerful. Marius is not the one that set the Palazzo on fire. Marius is not the one that tossed children in a fire. Marius is not the one that cruelly made Amadeo kill his best friend.
Marius is the one that got burned to the bone and had to recover for 100 YEARS!! Marius is the one that had to suffer the loss of all his children. The loss of his happiness he experienced in Venice. The loss of his acolyte. The loss of his empire. His pupil. His lover. Marius is the one that served Akasha and was therefor told to leave Amadeo behind. I am not saying he was right in leaving Amadeo behind. Yes, t was one of the biggest mistakes he made. Despite being weak and in excruciating pain, he gave up on Amadeo because Santino had already tainted him. The fact that Amadeo forgot about his trauma’s in the past, Marius had a clean slate to make the best piece of art he had ever made. But Santino went over it with a sharpy and Marius, forever being the perfectionist, did not see a chance of saving it. And yes, that was wrong of him. And yes, he should have tried to get Amadeo back and save him. But it is extremely unfair to forget all these things in play. Marius suffered tremendously through this ordeal and caught his own traumas on the way.

– He stays positive. He couldn’t marry the girl he loved due to discrimination. He was kidnapped. He was robbed of his mortal life by a man whom he later had to safe by pulling his head off and putting it back the right way. Three of his houses got burned down to the ground. He sacrificed his own freedom for the sake of his kind by taking care of The Parents. Akasha then thanked him by crushing him and breaking all his bones. He lost his happiness and the love of his life by a Satan-worshipping cult. He suffered 100 years because he was set on fire. He got the chance to finally be with the woman he loved but literally missed the memo. And yet… he stays positive. His natural optimism of living a happy, mortal life is what kept him going. It’s what made him a child of the millennia. He is the eternal optimist because he knows how precious life is.

So again; I am not saying you don’t have any right or reasons to dislike Marius or distrust him. All I want to say with this, is that despite his flaws, he inspired and set in motion more than the fandom gives him credit for. He suffered more than the fandom gives him credit for.
He saved my life and therefor I will always defend him. He deserves it.

This is a long post, I’m sorry for the dash intrusion, and for making it even longer, but for a year and a half now I have often thought about this post. It’s one of the posts on tumblr that has most stuck with me in the past 5 years. I always wanted to reblog it, but didn’t have the courage until now, bc I felt that the spotlight that my blog can put on a post can sometimes exacerbate an issue. Such is the nature of social media 2.0, where controversy is what makes posts explode (do we still say “go viral”?) more often than not.

But I’m reblogging it now and I’ve bolded some things for ease of skipping around so as not to read through all of it. For what I have to add, tho, NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN.

So…

I remember when I first saw this post in March of 2017, I was floored, immediately deeply respected it in its entirety, and how OP has kept it in their archive, even when challenged about it. I have often cited this post, referred to it, shared it privately with others. And in the event that OP ever deactivates or deletes this post, I wanted a version of it I could point to and say, with pride:

This is the kind of fan I aspire to be. Showing love for a fictional character who had a positive influence on them, a real person.

This character for sure has flaws, and has been interpreted at different times as being

problematic, and sometimes not at all. If I recall correctly, at least from the fics I was able to find during the war on fanfic the mid-1990′s, Marius was sometimes written as an uncool Dad figure, setting rules for Lestat & Co. to break, typically in silly!fics. At other times, I’ve known fans who found inspiration in his intense dedication to keeping TWMBK and the development of his art in painting and film, etc. and hardly focus on any other aspect of him. I personally see him as the adoptive benefactor trope, with some teacher/student kink, the dedication to his art, etc., and some of that romance novel stuff mixed in. I’m not a hardcore shipper of him with anyone but I do love the shippy fanart/fic people make, bc it’s made by fans as an expression of their love for the characters, it’s the artists and writers I love more than the fictional characters. And I know of people who are convinced that Marius is little more than a lure for Anne Rice’s alleged thinly-veiled pedophile propaganda. 

^None of these ideas of him are totally wrong, and although there may be some things about him that more of us may agree on, to my mind, none of this is totally right, either, because he’s a fictional character and we all draw our own and equally valid interpretations based on our own educations and experiences. A person might find him as

inspiring as someone else might find him absolutely disgusting. Neither are right or wrong. It’s not that black and white, in my opinion.

I want to highlight this from OP:

“No matter how real our feelings are for certain fictional characters, this is not a real reflection of our stance in real life. Period.”

*WILD APPLAUSE*

Your interpretation of a fictional character does not supersede anyone else’s, no matter how well-supported your arguments are, no matter what the author of the original work says about their characters, etc.

When a person claims that Character X saved their lives/made their life better/inspired them in a positive way, you don’t get to decide that Character X didn’t.

Granted, you can certainly flip that around and state: “When a person claims that Character X ruined their lives/made their life worse/inspired them in a negative way, you don’t get to decide that Character X didn’t.” That may be true, but if a fictional character had such negative impact on your life, wouldn’t you want to stop reading that book/series, at the very least? Which is what OP described above, and thankfully, they were able to unload that negative influence.

Personally, I would stop reading that book, I would find something I found more positively inspiring. Maybe I would seek therapy, I’m sure JAWS and IT sent people to seek professional help. I don’t mean that with any sarcasm, I have had therapy sessions in the past, and found it extremely helpful. I for sure wouldn’t have the energy or interest to try to preach that others see the light of how negative this character is. You can blame violent videogames and Marilyn Manson music for school shooters, doesn’t mean that that media is solely responsible, but I’m not providing links for that bc this is not a blog for that. @fiction-is-not-reality might better direct you on that.

It feels incredibly childish for me to say this but: I wish we could stop waging wars over characters. I don’t jump on posts or respond to asks that seem like they’re coming from a place of bad faith on this topic. I come to fandom for entertainment, to unwind, to be among my friends. I don’t have time for unwinnable arguments that are more about moral superiority than anything else. 

Good or bad faith arguments about problematic characters, it doesn’t really matter either way, as it’s been around since long before the internet, it’s going to keep happening as long as people can communicate in whatever form it takes. It just seems to have escalated in fandom in the last few years and this is where we’re at right now, it seems, so my comments on this post are for OP, as an apology that I should have added these comments a year and a half ago, and my comments are for anyone who loves fictional characters, however problematic others may say they are, no matter how problematic they are in canon, no matter how problematic their own original authors say they are! Try to be as strong as OP and I when people come at you for liking, what is essentially, ink on a page.

Creation/consumption of ANY fiction =/= endorsement of it in real life.