I’m not sure if this is as debatable of a topic as she claims it is, but I thought this was interesting for those who have read, or are reading, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis. @i-want-my-iwtv
I don’t really need to cut this or do a spoiler alert, since AR is now telling us this isn’t the definitive answer for what Memnoch is, but I’ll do a cut just in case.
From PLROA, Lestat’s POV:
^I didn’t know this was even a debate, but Magnus says this pretty definitively, he even claims to have escaped Memnoch’s realm. So… should be interesting to see what AR does with Memnoch. I almost feel like she’s hanging onto him to spite everyone who gave Memnoch the Devil bad reviews way back when, but for whatever reason, I think she may be setting him up as a major player in the next book: (Is this Kapetria narrating? I think so…)
Back in September I bought cheap used copies of all the Vampire Chronicles (and New Tales) for myself so that I could reread them in time for PLatRoA. And I wrote in them and stuff. It was pretty fun. I crammed all 14 books in 10 weeks and it was PRETTY EXHILARATING.
So anyway, for as long as it interests me, watch this space as I flip through them again and make posts of quotes and passages that I enjoyed. 🙂
I’ve been wanting to do this myself for the longest time!! Do the different colors of highlighted passages mean anything? 🙂
yisssss
I was mostly just using the pink primarily (sometimes I switched to green because I went through like 4 packs of highlighters and tbh Marius is a Highliter Ruiner and I kept running the pink ones out), but I’d switch to blue if I wanted to extra emphasize something in the paragraph, or I’d switch back and forth with pink & blue if there were two paragraphs/sentences back to back that I wanted to highlight for different reasons, like I found each section to be a complete idea etc. Then I saved purple for EXTRA IMPORTANT STUFF.
It was really fun and enlightening and definitely heightened my enjoyment of these stories. Plus like, I’ll be honest, not every step of the way was the most academic endeavor, because I was highlighting and noting a mix of “This is really important to the plot and this character” and “THIS GIVES ME THE LOLS”
You should do it! IT WAS FUN. 😀
^There is SO MUCH humor in VC!!! I feel like ppl forget that sometimes…
^This would be all over everything if I did this… w/ tons of 😀 and D:
I don’t think AR has said anything about casting Claudia specifically.* It’s another tough role to cast age-wise, bc she’s supposed to be just barely 5 years old, and 5 year olds definitely age.
^X@claudia-lilvampire found this pic of Christopher Mason and his daughter Basie (she looks closer to 4 here?), very Lestat and Claudia ❤
Casting Claudia will probably not be an issue if they start with TVL, bc Claudia’s only in IWTV, and just mentioned in later books. But… let’s cast an actress as Lestat’s little sister for TVL, the 8th de Lioncourt child, and then have her play Claudia, too! The resemblance would be so heartbreaking! ;A; Mireille de Lioncourt, so named by@viaticumforthemarquise.
For funsies tho, I must inform you… awhile back, @hyperbeeb suggested Mia Talerico [X], who just turned 9 on 9/17/16, and I have to agree!
Mia’s had a long career already (IMDB says she was eleven months old when she started filming Good Luck Charlie, so that’s 7 yrs of acting, being directed, being comfortable in front of the cameras, etc.). I did a whole post about her here. She’s pretty much my headcanon when I write Claudia.
Anne said age wouldn’t be as much as an issue for Claudia since they won’t be spending as much time with her as they are with Armand. She basically said any talented little girl will do.
But I want Miaaaaa.… *w*
Thanks @firelight-fading, I don’t follow AR’s FB or the OVCFB religously enough to have answered as definitively as you did, I’m glad that she is still planning on telling that story, as well.
Today, Anne Rice had two livestreams on Facebook, the first as a general Q&A and the second specifically related to the Vampire Chronicles television show. Part way through the second livestream, the video glitched and I missed a minute or two, but overall this is what I had.
I’ve divided the information into 3 sections and highlighted the most important or interesting things she mentioned in my opinion):
Anne Herself
Anne wants to assure fans she is the ONLY one who answers and sees emails sent by fans. She tries hard to view all of them
She also reassures that shes been trying to read as many comments given on Facebook as possible and to consider them
In her writing process, she can’t do all-nighters anymore; her books about Christ were the last time she really did this
She
loves how people in New Orleans love life and celebrate it. She misses
New Orleans terribly. She notes, “Lifestyles [down there] are inherited and have a
beauty”
She reads more non-fiction than fiction and constantly
takes notes from them, especially about archeology (which she loves:
“It’s like eating ice cream for me! I love it so much”)
She
says she no longer identifies as a Christian, but still has a love for
Jesus and what he has done for her, such as helping her solve problems and beyond that
She has some new announcement coming soon not concerning the vampires
She feels this is the age of the nerd where
readers’ opinions are most important. Says she has always taken us the readers seriously and wants us to feel appreciated. She appreciates our
power and what we have done for the series.
The Books and The Characters
*spoiler* There is NO certainty Mona and Quinn are dead. This is just what Lestat believes.
She went through the pronunciations of characters’ names
Marius is pronounced like Marius in Les Miserables
Mekare is May-care-ee, but thinks other pronunciations are beautiful too
(And I think as a fandom we’ve come to agreements on everyone else’s names. She went by the names fast!)
Anne says she sums up the story of the chronicles as “how badly Lestat wants to be the hero of his own life”
She appreciates fans pointing out mistakes in her writing since she wants to be as accurate as possible, especially when it comes to history/time periods
When
asked about the taste of blood/how it functions, Anne says blood is
like every kind of drug- it’s sex, alcohol, drugs, everything
She
writes a TON of notes since she occasionally forgets when/how certain
things are mentioned, such as how the Savage Garden was introduced in
the novel (which she no knows as something that occurred during Our Conversation with Nicolas and Lestat)
The name “Talamasca” came from a book on old witchcraft she found
Lestat’s
name was a “blunder” rather than a “eureka” moment. His name was NOT
based on her husband Stan intentionally. She was trying to look up old
french names.
The transformation process of human to vampire (after getting the Dark Gift) is a little slower than how the IWTV film portrayed, but close in Anne’s mind (she truly appreciated how the film went above to stay close to her own visions and her work)
During his time with Louis and Claudia, Lestat attempted to give answers
that would “keep them alive” rather than actual answers, knowing that he
couldn’t reveal what he knew due to what Marius had told him (essentially, not just answers that he thought would satisfy them but that he thought would carry them on by themselves…which worked in my opinion)
There were several questions
about Gabrielle and Becket commented about how Gabrielle is a fan favorite before he introduced the questions:
Anne says Gabrielle is cold, but admits that she loves Lestat yet at the same time doesn’t need him.
She does not see Gabrielle as
autistic (she laughed at this question which really irked me )
She will not write about a memoir from Gabrielle’s point of view since
she wants Lestat to stay the focus of “the tribe” and she’s done with
writing those sort of side books.
Lestat’s main concern right now is “keeping the tribe together”
She wants to continue with exploring some of the newer characters, Fareed and Seth were mentioned as a part of this.
Anne
has an “ambivalence” towards Louis and she loves him since he
represents an old part of her, but this is also the same reason she has
trouble going back and writing for him, because she feels she is now a different person
She
appreciates that there is no “real” consensus on what is the best/worst
of her books amongst the fans (though Memnoch was her first example for
worse soooo 😏)
In some ways, how Amel speaks to Lestat is a metaphor for how Lestat speaks to Anne.
The Television Show
(Casting)
Armand will NOT be played by someone around 14, because of the long filming process and how it will age the actor. She acknowledges fans want someone young for Armand but feels it
will be too difficult to use (um, hello Anne, CGI??)
She thinks Cate Blanchett would be a wonderful pick for Gabrielle.
Says
the looks are most important for Lestat, Louis just has to be beautiful
(lol)
She really cares about the appearances of the cast and their availability to do about 5-6 years of filming
(Chronology and Production)
She
thinks she will not go through network tv, so the home to the show would be Amazon,
Hulu or Netflix.
She feels the show won’t be as violent as Game of Thrones but wants that
integrity and style, and that “authenticity” to the books that Game of Thrones has (So for the rating,
I’m guessing she feels around M?)
Anne wants to be true to the books and what the fans want to see (in regards to characters and plot points)
She appreciated
the commitment of the team for the IWTV film and wants to keep up to that standard. She does not want unreasonable changes and compromises
Chronologically, she wants to begin with TVL with Lestat as a young man.
Feels around the 2nd/3rd season is where IWTV would start
The books are long, so it will not be a one season / one book situation.
It
will begin chronologically, so it won’t be Lestat reading IWTV and THEN
starting with his story as a response, it will start in France as the
events happen (I was hoping it would be the former…)
No Mayfair witches in the show
Characters who are introduced later, but existed chronologically earlier like Benedick and Magnus, will be put earlier in
the show
The Talamasca will be heavily involved “eventually” in
the series, possibly earlier on. Related to this, she wants to tell the
history of her vampires and those entities.
She
wants to definitely (so badly) cover the scene where Lestat is being
turned “stage by stage…” meaning him being in the tower and having
realizations about his strength after drinking the blood. Also, how he
turns Gabrielle (possibly wants to have a young actress to play
Gabrielle and have her human age appear through makeup so the transformation will be more dramatic)
Louis’ story WILL be told, but the show will be mostly from Lestat’s POV
Anne hopes the show will go into production before the end of this year. Around 2018
is when it would come out
Anne and Chris have had a lot of interested companies already looking into
developing the project (but she doesn’t want to reveal who is talking to them since it “wouldn’t be fair”)
She isn’t sure if the show will break the 4th
wall. She acknowledges that Lestat does it in the books, but she feels
she would have to stick with it for the entirety of the show and that
would be difficult (so it sounds like mostly a “no” but she’s considering it)
Christopher
and her are currently outlining around 5 seasons (estimated) for the TV
series. They are also writing drafts for the first 4 episodes
Clarifying a few notes for everyone since they were brought to my attention:
Casting Armand: Anne said she wanted to do this chronologically as the events happened in the books, not as the order the books come in. When we are first introduced to Armand, yes, he is 17, but his story in The Vampire Armand begins when he is 14/15 (when he is kidnapped and before he meets Marius). She mentioned something about the later half of the first season or the second season being dedicated to Marius telling his tale to Lestat and the history of the vampires, so, based off her suggestions, it was implied TVA would also be a part of this (maybe expanding a viewer perspective to outside of what he tells Lestat)…
Or maybe she totally forgot his age, but she said “14” in the stream, so that is what I wrote down.
The lengths of the seasons going along with the books: Anne said it would depend on how many episodes there would be per season. I guess she’s thinking of shorter lengths of episodes and seasons to focus solely on certain plot points? It’s a bit odd. I think one book = one season could definitely be do-able, however…
I think with the production quality she wants in the amount of time she wants it, I think her goals are unrealistic. I have other thoughts about what she said, but I will keep them to myself unless asked. That being said, if anyone has questions or concerns, feel free to send me an ask and let me know
If there is anything I missed in my highlights post in regards to these two videos that you would like to bring up / discuss, feel free to mention it in a reblog or in the comments section.
Re: @firelight-fading‘s post: “How many of you actually feel that Louis’ visiting Lestat at the end of IWTV and the conversation that followed actually happened? Lestat insists that it didn’t, but both him and Louis are unreliable narrators…”
Hey, look, you are free to believe in whichever unreliable narrator you want! Clearly we don’t all agree on this. I still don’t know what I believe, but I lean towards it happening, that they met, just maybe not as Louis described it.
Anon says: If the scene didn’t take place at all how did Louis get such an accurate description of Lestat’s condition?…
It’s not like Louis can take images from Armand’s mind either.
^Louis had seen a pretty battered Lestat around 1865, and then he thought Lestat was destroyed in the TdV fire, so he’s probably guessing that his maker looks like toast now, if he’s in fact still alive.
Lestat acknowledges in TVL that Armand came around to pester him in NOLA, which, yes, is presumably after Armand and Louis went their separate ways. But Armand could have visited Lestat before that separation, or gotten the information from another vampire who had seen Lestat in NOLA. They’re probably not the only vampires in New York during the time that they’re there.
Anon says: even if he had visited once before why would he give Louis the full disclosure? In IWTV, Armand tells Louis that Lestat is in NOLA:
“Then, finally, Armand urged me in another way. He told me something he’d concealed from me since the time we were in Paris.
“Lestat had not died in the Theatre des Vampires. I had believed him to be dead, and when I asked Armand about those vampires, he told me they all had perished. But he told me now that this wasn’t so. Lestat had left the theater the night I had run away from Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre. Two vampires who had been made with Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.
^So how Armand knew this, we don’t know, but I assume he read it from Lestat’s thoughts when he visited Lestat in NOLA prior to Armand’s separation with Louis, or from another vampire who had seen Lestat passing through NY.
Armand wants Louis to see Lestat for himself bc he wants Louis to “come back to life.”
” `You care about nothing …’ [Armand] was saying. And then he sat up slowly and turned to me so again I could see that dark fire in his eyes. `I thought you would at least care about that. I thought you would feel the old passion, the old anger if you were to see him again. I thought something would quicken and come alive in you if you saw him . . . if you returned to this place.’
^Sorry Armand, fail on that 😛
Whether Louis actually met with Lestat the way he described it in IWTV is up for debate, but Louis might have gotten such an accurate description of Lestat’s condition verbally from Armand. Perhaps, as you say, Louis might have exaggerated the patheticness of the conversation to get a reaction from Lestat, as he was trying to provoke Lestat into coming out of wherever he was hiding.
Or maybe Louis just wanted to tell his story to another soul, like confession, and get some feeling of absolution from the act of telling, maybe it felt good to invent this portion for no good reason. I don’t personally think that’s very IC for Louis but… who knows?
Can we just look at this for a minute….
Two vampires who had been made with Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.
^This used to really irritate me, these two vampire siblings of Lestat who never appeared again in canon, I have to assume Armand invented them for whatever reason (make Louis jealous that he didn’t help Lestat himself?) or that Daniel’s publisher added them in for whatever reason *shrugs*
Today, Anne Rice had two livestreams on Facebook, the first as a general Q&A and the second specifically related to the Vampire Chronicles television show. Part way through the second livestream, the video glitched and I missed a minute or two, but overall this is what I had.
I’ve divided the information into 3 sections and highlighted the most important or interesting things she mentioned in my opinion):
Anne Herself
Anne wants to assure fans she is the ONLY one who answers and sees emails sent by fans. She tries hard to view all of them
She also reassures that shes been trying to read as many comments given on Facebook as possible and to consider them
In her writing process, she can’t do all-nighters anymore; her books about Christ were the last time she really did this
She
loves how people in New Orleans love life and celebrate it. She misses
New Orleans terribly. She notes, “Lifestyles [down there] are inherited and have a
beauty”
She reads more non-fiction than fiction and constantly
takes notes from them, especially about archeology (which she loves:
“It’s like eating ice cream for me! I love it so much”)
She
says she no longer identifies as a Christian, but still has a love for
Jesus and what he has done for her, such as helping her solve problems and beyond that
She has some new announcement coming soon not concerning the vampires
She feels this is the age of the nerd where
readers’ opinions are most important. Says she has always taken us the readers seriously and wants us to feel appreciated. She appreciates our
power and what we have done for the series.
The Books and The Characters
*spoiler* There is NO certainty Mona and Quinn are dead. This is just what Lestat believes.
She went through the pronunciations of characters’ names
Marius is pronounced like Marius in Les Miserables
Mekare is May-care-ee, but thinks other pronunciations are beautiful too
(And I think as a fandom we’ve come to agreements on everyone else’s names. She went by the names fast!)
Anne says she sums up the story of the chronicles as “how badly Lestat wants to be the hero of his own life”
She appreciates fans pointing out mistakes in her writing since she wants to be as accurate as possible, especially when it comes to history/time periods
When
asked about the taste of blood/how it functions, Anne says blood is
like every kind of drug- it’s sex, alcohol, drugs, everything
She
writes a TON of notes since she occasionally forgets when/how certain
things are mentioned, such as how the Savage Garden was introduced in
the novel (which she no knows as something that occurred during Our Conversation with Nicolas and Lestat)
The name “Talamasca” came from a book on old witchcraft she found
Lestat’s
name was a “blunder” rather than a “eureka” moment. His name was NOT
based on her husband Stan intentionally. She was trying to look up old
french names.
The transformation process of human to vampire (after getting the Dark Gift) is a little slower than how the IWTV film portrayed, but close in Anne’s mind (she truly appreciated how the film went above to stay close to her own visions and her work)
During his time with Louis and Claudia, Lestat attempted to give answers
that would “keep them alive” rather than actual answers, knowing that he
couldn’t reveal what he knew due to what Marius had told him (essentially, not just answers that he thought would satisfy them but that he thought would carry them on by themselves…which worked in my opinion)
There were several questions
about Gabrielle and Becket commented about how Gabrielle is a fan favorite before he introduced the questions:
Anne says Gabrielle is cold, but admits that she loves Lestat yet at the same time doesn’t need him.
She does not see Gabrielle as
autistic (she laughed at this question which really irked me )
She will not write about a memoir from Gabrielle’s point of view since
she wants Lestat to stay the focus of “the tribe” and she’s done with
writing those sort of side books.
Lestat’s main concern right now is “keeping the tribe together”
She wants to continue with exploring some of the newer characters, Fareed and Seth were mentioned as a part of this.
Anne
has an “ambivalence” towards Louis and she loves him since he
represents an old part of her, but this is also the same reason she has
trouble going back and writing for him, because she feels she is now a different person
She
appreciates that there is no “real” consensus on what is the best/worst
of her books amongst the fans (though Memnoch was her first example for
worse soooo 😏)
In some ways, how Amel speaks to Lestat is a metaphor for how Lestat speaks to Anne.
The Television Show
(Casting)
Armand will NOT be played by someone around 14, because of the long filming process and how it will age the actor. She acknowledges fans want someone young for Armand but feels it
will be too difficult to use (um, hello Anne, CGI??)
She thinks Cate Blanchett would be a wonderful pick for Gabrielle.
Says
the looks are most important for Lestat, Louis just has to be beautiful
(lol)
She really cares about the appearances of the cast and their availability to do about 5-6 years of filming
(Chronology and Production)
She
thinks she will not go through network tv, so the home to the show would be Amazon,
Hulu or Netflix.
She feels the show won’t be as violent as Game of Thrones but wants that
integrity and style, and that “authenticity” to the books that Game of Thrones has (So for the rating,
I’m guessing she feels around M?)
Anne wants to be true to the books and what the fans want to see (in regards to characters and plot points)
She appreciated
the commitment of the team for the IWTV film and wants to keep up to that standard. She does not want unreasonable changes and compromises
Chronologically, she wants to begin with TVL with Lestat as a young man.
Feels around the 2nd/3rd season is where IWTV would start
The books are long, so it will not be a one season / one book situation.
It
will begin chronologically, so it won’t be Lestat reading IWTV and THEN
starting with his story as a response, it will start in France as the
events happen (I was hoping it would be the former…)
No Mayfair witches in the show
Characters who are introduced later, but existed chronologically earlier like Benedick and Magnus, will be put earlier in
the show
The Talamasca will be heavily involved “eventually” in
the series, possibly earlier on. Related to this, she wants to tell the
history of her vampires and those entities.
She
wants to definitely (so badly) cover the scene where Lestat is being
turned “stage by stage…” meaning him being in the tower and having
realizations about his strength after drinking the blood. Also, how he
turns Gabrielle (possibly wants to have a young actress to play
Gabrielle and have her human age appear through makeup so the transformation will be more dramatic)
Louis’ story WILL be told, but the show will be mostly from Lestat’s POV
Anne hopes the show will go into production before the end of this year. Around 2018
is when it would come out
Anne and Chris have had a lot of interested companies already looking into
developing the project (but she doesn’t want to reveal who is talking to them since it “wouldn’t be fair”)
She isn’t sure if the show will break the 4th
wall. She acknowledges that Lestat does it in the books, but she feels
she would have to stick with it for the entirety of the show and that
would be difficult (so it sounds like mostly a “no” but she’s considering it)
Christopher
and her are currently outlining around 5 seasons (estimated) for the TV
series. They are also writing drafts for the first 4 episodes
(ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
Re: the above, it’s a #Long post, so extra huge thanks to @firelight-fading for taking one for the team and not only watching the OVCFB livestream but gathering up all this info into such clean formatting for us! We salute you.
Anne Rice is starting off with a Q&A livestream on her page and then in half an hour (30 minutes) will do one regarding the new Vampire Chronicles tv series on that page.
I will be posting some of the questions and conversations here in a singularly reblogged feed (meaning it will start with one post and I will reblog that post with updates for everyone to see)
How many of your actually feel that Louis’ visiting Lestat at the end of IWTV and the conversation that followed actually happened? Lestat insists that it didn’t, but both him and Louis are unreliable narrators…
Personally, I think it did, however, I think Louis put in some of his own scenes within his telling of the moment to provoke Lestat. That’s why Lestat says it didn’t happen, because it didn’t fully to the extent that Louis said it did.
I actually got the Barnes and Noble edition of the first three novels of the Vampire Chronicles for Christmas, so I’ll eventually be reading back soon to see if my opinion changes or if something suggests otherwise.
Yes, I’d like to know what ppl think about this, too! Pls comment/reblog with whether this happened, or if it happened differently than reported ;D
For the ever lovely @i-want-my-iwtv, who wanted some happy Vampire Murder Family times, and since it’s now winter I figured I’d have them out on a snowy stroll~
(Louis was meant to be there on the very left but he isn’t quite done yet- he was being stubborn, probably because he knows how much Lestat adores the attention, so, I’ll be adding him in later on an edited version on my account. And I’ll draw you some other doodles to make up for it since your other prompts gave me ideas~)
I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season and I wish the best for you in the upcoming year~ ❤
Please check out this Facebook page if you want to give your input on the new tv series!
So if ya’ll didn’t see @claudias-ashes‘ post, Christopher Rice, along with mama Anne, set up a Facebook page for fans to give their input on the series and on the casting for the new television show for our beloved Vampire Chronicles at https://www.facebook.com/officialvampirechronicles/
I highly advise everyone to take a look and to also comment their fancasts and their wishes for the series as I have begun to do so. If you look at the most recent post, they are currently casting for Armand, and right now, no offense to the others, the comments are pretty dreadful, with namedropping some actors who are WAY too old to play Armand (though, there are a few good suggestions).
)
I-want-my-IWTV 