superhiki:

Armand is the gateway drug into VC. People watch the movie, they see art of the mysterious red head, and then they ask the person closest to them with a hook up into VC just who this ‘Armand fellow’ is. 

Pretty sure three people have asked me this exact thing and I’m always trying to caution them about the book lengths and the nitty gritty messy of it all but 

Much like any other fun drug

I’m secretly hoping they get just as hooked as me so we can ride that high together. 

Okay so last night I went to go draw Louis since it was his day of birth recently and I ended up drawing Lestat and only Lestat and if this isn’t some metaphor for his incessant need be the center of attention i dont even know

He has that effect on ppl.

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@grimdarkthroes: How I found VC and my descent into vampire hell

grimdarkthroes

My (bio) cousin makes video games for a living, plays and makes guitars, and is a massive video game and roleplaying nerd. So little me went all spiral-eyed whenever he did anything for me. 

He bought me two very important books for my 12th birthday. The Vampire: the Requiem rulebook (the red book), and IWTV. Naturally, I devoured both.

I read IWTV and everything was wonderful pretty much instantly. There wasn’t a single part of that book I didn’t adore. It was through my rapid and all-consuming obsession with vampirism that I actually started to bloom; creatively, socially, mentally, everything just started to resolve and I started to become a person I like. Yes, I read Twilight during this initial discovery stage. Yes, I was in the fandom briefly. But it was so hollow compared to what I had already read that I was perplexed that others seemed to not want to branch out into real, monstrous vampirism. 

Essentially IWTV is what sparked me going from awkward pubescent to actually pretty great 20-something. I now LARP with the MES (VtR, of course) and write urban fantasy and am generally completely in love with vampires. 

But now a confession: I’ve only ever read IWTV. I haven’t read all of the VC, despite owning literally all of it (sometimes multiple covers per book!) So which should I finally read next?! 

#I love stories like these, how we got into this mess series. 

It’s heartwarming to see how the Ricean vampires have had such a positive effect on ppl in their formative years. They are dysfunctional hipster vampires, all kinds of flaws and existential crises, they try to resolve them, they try to find the answers to questions big and small, and in general promote a trust in one’s self, an inner confidence and an ability to draw pleasure from even simple things. These are good things for anyone, of any age, to absorb.

YOU SHOULD READ THE VAMPIRE LESTAT NEXT you’re going to love it! 

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Is it true that everyone in the fandom has, at some point, had a massive crush on lestat?

I think it’s true that everyone in the fandom has, at some point, had a massive crush on Louis.

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Psssst we know that, Louis.

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I do think Louis was a gateway drug for alot of fandom ppl. It’s his story at first. I read the books in order and I’d recommend doing it that way, even tho it’s not necessary. TVL really is a response to IWTV, and part of the charm of that book is Lestat’s joy at breaking open the floodgate to release all the forbidden answers to all the burning questions Louis had in IWTV. I loved Lestat more knowing that alot of his bastardness in IWTV was frustration that he was sworn to secrecy, and couldn’t risk putting Louis, Claudia, and himself in danger by telling them any of it at that time. 

I think this varies from person to person in the fandom, and some ppl despise Lestat, and have from whatever book they started in. Like the movie itself, he’s not for everyone and doesn’t have to be. 

My gateway drug was Claudia, and then Louis, and then Lestat. How crazy that the antagonist of IWTV ends up being, very quickly in this series, the lead and clearly the protagonist? As the series shows, he’s not wholly an antagonist to Louis. It wasn’t so black and white, as it is in real life, there were misunderstandings and gray areas.