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In your opinion, who has the most/ least daddy issues in VC?

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“Daddy issues” is an unfair term in real life bc it’s a judgment that carries different implications, either that someone is functioning badly bc of a bad relationship with their father, or that they had too good of a relationship with their father and are spoiled; etc.; there is a wide range, but it basically all boils down to the cheap jab: “That person has daddy issues.”

When I see that term used on fictional characters, it’s more about people outright shitposting or having a touch of dark humor (sometimes more than a touch!) because we know these characters are not real people, they’ll never actually hear us insulting them. And what’s intriguing to me about that term used in analysis or in canon about these characters is that sometimes it’s considered a huge fault, something you say to put a character down; but at other times, it’s a badge of honor that a character can function so well even carrying the burden of “daddy issues.” 

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(530): THAT GUY IS NOTHING BUT TROUBLE. HE’S 40% PRETTY HAIR AND 60% DADDY ISSUES.

Loki and Tony Stark are great examples of fictional characters w/ “daddy issues,” bc they both had unhealthy relationships with their fathers and it was a very formative experience for them. They are very layered and intellectually stimulating characters, would they be this way if they’d had the benefit of better relationships with their fathers? Isn’t there a kind of catharsis in watching them struggle and battle through their demons in order to reach their goals? Isn’t there extra reward when we see them succeed despite the emotional burdens they bear? And especially when others taunt them about their “daddy issues” and they are strong in the face of that adversity, too? 

Google gives the definition of “Daddy issues” as:

“a pejorative for a lot of social, psychological or behavioral issues that may OR MAY NOT stem from an unhealthy relationship with one’s father. It’s usually used to marginalize issues women are having, though to be honest men are perfectly capable of having “daddy issues” too.”

I was asked this a few months ago and it’s a delicate subject bc, again, “daddy issues” is a pejorative, and therefore it can belittle/marginalize real people who have ‘social, psychological or behavioral issues that may OR MAY NOT stem from an unhealthy relationship with one’s father.’  

But since these are fictional characters I feel like we can discuss it without causing harm, and I would agree with @vampires-and-witches who had made commentary that Claudia would probably be the fictional character with the most daddy issues in VC [X]. 

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^And yet, in spite of her “daddy issues,” Claudia had persevered (at least, temporarily) when she thought she had killed her own dad/maker. As much as I love Lestat, he did have that coming to him, he deserved it, and he doesn’t even blame her for doing it. So when Claudia rose up and attacked the one who had wronged her the most? 12 year old me was thrilled, cheering her on! I wasn’t about to copy her and kill my parents *eyeroll* but what it showed me was the immense strength of character, someone who was at a great physical disadvantage, AND burdened with “daddy issues,” and yet she executed her plan entirely on her own and succeeded!

I will add that I think VC has a ton of terrible fictional parents (mortal/biological and vampiric/makers). Many are neglectful, abusive, manipulative, etc. or a combination. A terrible or absent parent/maker can affect someone’s future relationships with everyone they interact with. It’s those fictional characters who bear that burden and rise up and succeed (or at least keep trying!) despite it, those are some of the best characters in the series, in my opinion.

So I’ll open this up, anyone can reblog/comment about the characters with the most “daddy/maker issues”! 

I gotta a question! So we all know that Louis is completely against turning a human into a vampire right? But at the same time, he wanted to leave Claudia to be with Armand. How on earth did he think it was going to work out? Obviously, he had to turn someone into a vampire in order for Claudia to be cared for since she couldn’t grow up.

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Louis does not approve of making vampires himself, that’s for sure! But yes, Louis wanted to be with Armand and Armand didn’t want Claudia as part of that equation and she knew it. 

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So, right, IDK what Louis was thinking about how it could possibly work out w/o making her a new adult vampire companion. He had little choice in that. He couldn’t bear to think of her out there on her own, she clearly wasn’t going to be invited to join the Theatre des Vampires, and she couldn’t make an adult vampire herself. There was a line in book!IWTV where she tells Louis: “ ‘Can you picture it?’ she said, so softly I scarcely heard. “A coven of children? That is all I could provide…” <– whether she could actually turn a child is not known. We don’t know of it happening successfully anywhere else in canon before or after that point. Louis probably would not have approved of that, either.

Worth noting here is that in the first version of IWTV, Claudia wasn’t killed off by the Parisian coven (from the Vampire Companion):

“In the first version of [IWTV], Claudia eventually goes off with three vampire brothers whom she meets in Paris. She does not die. As such, it was as if Rice had attempted to give her daughter a form of immortality. Rice, however, experienced psychological problems that cleared up only after she had rewritten the ending – by killing off Claudia and taking Louis through an experience of intense grieving. This version was much more cathartic for Rice.”

Just out of curiosity, is there any books you recommend that have a similar humorous/ dark tone as VC?

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Hey! Book reccs! Always a good topic.

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It’s tough for me to answer bc I think it depends on every individual reader’s sense of humor,… even within “humorous/ dark tone as VC” there is a range*. So I can’t say definitively that these reccs are in line with what you’re looking for necessarily, but you can use this list as a starting point.

*Lestat dancing w/ Claudia’s mom’s corpse: Some ppl find this moment dark and hilarious and other ppl think it’s just disgusting, so… there is a range. Personally I find it pretty amusing.

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(There are some duplicates on this list, sorry about that, but I wanted to list them by recc’er.) (And I added ** next to those that @gothiccharmschool​ just recc’d in two recent posts which I will reblog momentarily for you.)

In no special order:

  • (Okay this is the first one bc it IS special, and the closest to the humor of VC I’ve seen in awhile) This is a mockumentary/movie but it sneaks onto the top of the list bc it is just SO good, courtesy of @theamazingdrunk for reminding me in a comment on an older rec post:​ WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
  • **Salem’s Lot – Stephen King, personally, I find several Stephen King books to be darkly humorous, this one is a good one. I find humor in the Shining and Firestarter, too, but less so. 
  • Vittorio – don’t forget Vittorio. Not sure if you read this one. It’s also by Anne Rice and technically not a VC book, he has a different origin story and is not part of the VC vampire group.
  • Some short stories – @soyonscruels​ posted: those who dream only by night: the gothic short stories rec list – Not full-length books but still, short stories are good! There are 20 short stories listed, writers include @neil-gaiman​, Roald Dahl, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, each of whom I’ve found to have some level of humor along w/ dark tones.
  • More E. A. Poe is offered up here, from @keep-calm-and-heta-oni​, which includes little capsules about each.
  • @consultingcupcake​ said: “I really love the Cirque du Freak series, and **Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. Both have teenage protagonists
  • @fantasticfelicityfox​ said: The Historian is very good
  • @stitcheskitty​ said: Sookie Stackhouse novels

  • Movie and book (and a few anime) Recommendations here.

  • @riverofwhispers said: Carmilla is good
    Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse books, but only the early ones.
    the Rachel Morgan series but again starts out good gets weird later and it’s not about vampires so much as there are vampires in it.
  • @bluestockingcouture said: ‘The Angel’s Cut’, sequel to ‘The Vintner’s Luck’, is very atmospheric and well worth reading. Not quite as moving and intense, but there are some excellent new characters.
  • @sanguinivora said: Also, as to voice: IWTV opens in the late 1700’s/early 1800’s. Don’t know about either a southern American or French hinterlands-with-a-gloss-of-Parisian dialect, but for the grammar and vocabulary, one cannot go too far wrong looking to the novels of Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian.
  • @dragontrainerdaenerys said: I just read Fevre Dream, George R.R Martin’s own vampire novel, and while I didn’t liked much his vampire mythology the main characters are charming! Besides, it’s set on the late 18XX and goes on the Mississipi River, so it has similar scenarios to IWTV!
  • @baroquebat said: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, while futuristic, has a loooot of lovely gothic set pieces in the anime movie, plus its just gorgeous and has the rare treat of having a dhampir lead!

@annabellioncourt’s Recs, and these are mostly her descriptions, too, compiled from other recc posts:

  • The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories – Angela Carter
  • Carmilla – Bunch of adaptations of this.
  • A Taste of Blood Wine –  Freda Warrinton, for romance and decadence.
  • **Blood Opera Sequence (or “Trilogy”?) –  Tanith Lee’s vampire series was out when Lestat was playing rockstar
  • Historian – Elizabeth Kostova, for its worldliness
  • **Fevre Dream (yes its spelled fevre) by George R. R. Martin (yes, its THAT Martin, and his take on vampires is Very Good.)
  • Sunshine by Robin McKinley
  • **The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot, also for romance and decadence. (the recently-published edition from Valancourt Books has a foreword by @gothiccharmschool!)
  • The Hunger by Whitley Scriber
  • **Dracula – Bram Stoker, for its stereotype-setting content
  • Lord Ruthven – Byronic vampire, Lestat doesn’t catch the irony of John Polidori’s mockery of the foppish, arrogant, and well…Lord-Byron-y vampire

>>>>Moar recs from @annabellioncourt​ under Spooky Book Recommendations

>>>>Moar recs from @gothiccharmschool: here, here, and in her #vampire books and #vampire novels tags. 

>>>>My #VC adjacent recs tag

Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this with other VC-adjacent book recs! 

@hyperbeeb (<– is very well-read and took one for the team to read Blood Vivicanti!), @gothiccharmschool, @fyeahgothicromance, @thebibliosphere, (@annabellioncourt, too, but you are technically off the hook as I’ve already posted your recs!), got any recs for books w/ similar humorous/ dark tone as VC? 

Dear Lestat, I’m deathly sick with the flu and my temp is 102.7. Drawing fanart of you, Louis, and Armand kind of distracts me for a while, lol. Have any tips to get better? Also, have you ever tried hot blood before? Just wondering if you’d find it great or nasty.

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[//ooc; If you are in fact deathly ill, please seek medical attention! This is just a fandom blog.]

♛Serious viral illness is one thing I definitely do not miss about being human. Although, the remedies for these, many of them didn’t exist in my time. Humidifiers! Detox baths! Electrolyte drinks in every color of the rainbow! Medications! We had bone broth and soup, herbal teas. 

Art has long been a cure for many kinds of ailments, even if it only serves to provide mental pain relief. Advice on improving your art? Do what you love, explore it with an open mind, don’t criticize your progress too harshly. And share your drawings of us *smiles* Art has healing properties for those who view it, as well *winks*

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You asked about hot blood, well, human blood is naturally the same as normal human body temperature at about 98.6°

Fahrenheit, which happens to be a perfectly palatable temperature for vampires. I think we sense it as hotter than that, since

mortals tend to enjoy coffee between 120°-140° Fahrenheit.

 A little internet research tells me that:

  • Cat and dog blood is close to human blood, at 101-102.5° F.
  • Rat blood is a little less at 96.6-99.5° F. Imagine my poor Louis drinking what is essentially cold, stinky – and furry – coffee for some four years? Disgusting.
  • Hotter than that… I’ve never measured it but I’m certain our vampiric blood is far hotter than mortal blood. I’ll have to ask Fareed. It tastes hotter. The internet tells me the boiling point of blood is 212° F, and I would believe it if Fareed told me our temperature was near to that. 

I’ve never boiled blood or experimented with it to taste, but @roselioncourt​ certainly has been intrigued by working with blood in the kitchen. Any thoughts on this, ma cocotte? I bought her a cute little chef hat and apron, matching, of course.

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Anne Rice said, in the comments of one of the latest posts, that Holliday Grainger (Lucrezia Borgia in “The Borgias”) would be a perfect Bianca or a perfect Gabrielle! Ah, the post was about her asking what we (People of the page) were doing. And down below Rice’s comment, Caleb Landry Jones has been suggested as Armand! What do you think?

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I don’t have an opinion on any of these, could work! She seems a little young to play Gabrielle, but it could work. 

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I remember that @gingerhairedimmortal-archived, an Armand RPer, had used Caleb Landry Jones as a face claim, so you might want to check out their archive for more on that.

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Hello! You know, now that some other anon just mentioned the whole Casting Stress™, I have to admit that the Lestat casting is freaking me out. Maybe I just got too attached to Tom Cruise (’cause, c’mon, he was BRILLIANT but maybe i’m just fangirling here) and now I’m too afraid that Lestat won’t be as good played by another actor and it is, indeed, stressing. Like, everyone in this fandom has a different headcanon and goddamit that’s tricky!

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First of all: “Casting Stress™” ? ACCEPTED. New tag. 

RE: “Like, everyone in this fandom has a different headcanon and goddamit that’s tricky!” That’s an understatement, lol. Even AR has a different headcanon than we do, apparently. Reconciling all our headcanons is highly unlikely, but it’s great that we have Tom’s Lestat as evidence that the actor CAN win ppl over based on their acting (and the rest of the cast & crew’s efforts**) to overcome their physical non-compliance re:

headcanon.

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Obviously I’m also very attached to Tom Cruise’s Lestat, I feel ya there ❤ 

TL;DR: I would hope that whoever gets cast will give it their professional best AND win us over as best they can, have a whole team supporting them well, and a director/showrunner with a clear vision. It’s not all on the new Lestat’s shoulders. It’s a team effort.

Hit the jump for a little more.

And I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: I’d love to have him train the new Lestat, or at least be available as an adviser, but a new actor will probably want to stake their own claim on the character, like Heath Ledger made his own Joker w/o Jack Nicholson’s advice (I don’t think they talked about it). Different Jokers, different films. Gonna be a different Lestat for a different adaptation. 

What made Tom’s Lestat so great? A lot of factors had to come together but mainly, he did his homework, he had read at least the first three books (maybe the 4th, too), he practiced reading aloud from books from the time period the character lived in, watched videos of lions attacking prey (yes they used to show that kinda thing on TV!), etc., and did a lot of that work on his own. I see it in the tags pretty often that ppl who dislike Tom in general loved him in this role.

**But more than his own work, he had a director* with a clear vision and a full cast and crew supporting that vision. Every department contributed to his (and the film’s) success, makeup, costume, set design, special fx, music, etc., it all harmonized in the end. I’m not saying it was the BEST FILM OF EVER, but it was a successful adaptation in my opinion, and I’m not the only one of that opinion. I’ve been told publicly and privately that that adaptation was the gateway drug to many ppl reading the books, so in that sense, it was successful!

*Apparently Neil Jordan was responsible for most of the comedy that got into the script, mostly in Lestat’s dialogue/actions. It was Neil’s idea to add that ending, which was more upbeat than the original ending (which was the book’s ending). That’s an example of a director making a choice that deviated from canon and it working out (admittedly, it would have caused canon continuity issues for a sequel). I’m sure there are ppl who would still prefer the canon ending, but the majority of opinions I’ve seen/heard have been that ppl liked the changed ending.