^@sheepskeleton has spoiled us w/ two vampire mermaids so far, and I put them in the same pic pretty badly but oh well… [X][X] They look like sirens on the hunt for sailors to feeeeeed on….
Ordinarily YES this is the place for VC fandom love! Much of the mermaid (merpire? vampmaid? *sigh*) excitement has died down by now, but yeah, until we get PLROA we won’t know definitively if there will be mermaids but we can still have fun w/ it as an AU *u*
Our manic excitement/panic/craziness thrills Lestat “Bad attention is better than No attention” de Lioncourt.
♛It is a good song and good ear, anonymous person! I won’t confirm or deny *smiles* That’s one of my little secrets… I do collaborate with musicians, but under pseudonyms. If they knew they were working with the famous Rock Superstar Vampire Lestat, they might hold back creatively, or get all overly obsequious, or both, and I wouldn’t want that. So stifling.
The coven does not, generally, support my original musical compositions, probably because they are envious of my incredible talent with it. Especially with lyrics.
That’s their loss. I don’t bring them along to the recording studio anymore.
I mean sure, they’ll ask me to play Chopin or Haydn or whatever at gatherings, they know I can’t refuse. So I’ll throw in some improvisation until they catch on and beg me to go back to the music as written.
Obviously I agree re: Charlize Theron, and she’s a fandom fave casting for Gabrielle, but Viva Bianca is a choice I had not considered! She was gr9 in Spartacus.
^Very Gabrielle here.
It would probably be easier to age her up for the duration of time that she needs to be older, than it would be to make the older actresses you mentioned appear younger for the vampirism part. Also, as much as I love Meryl Streep and Rene Russo, they are both much stronger of facial feature than I headcanon Gabrielle, who’s meant to have kitten-ish features and resemble Lestat.
Lestat is an excellent dancer bc he practices on corpses. As for the singing, well, he struggles with the desire to entertain ppl at the slightest provocation. It will be an issue at the wedding.
As always, #your headcanon may vary, but from my own reading of the books and the characters focused on (the main coven), AR does not make it clear how much power the vampires have in the world* beyond the fact that they’re rich if they want to be (like Armand and Daniel owning and running the luxurious Night Island, a lucrative hotel/entertainment/casino/art-space/etc.), or not (Louis living in a dilapidated shack w/ few physical possessions).
Santino and the Children of Darkness might have had some impact with their religious zealotry, but targeted at the world in more of a negative way, a League of Shadows sort of group. Other vampires, especially the new ones introduced in PL, we don’t know much about their interest in economic or political influence.
Speaking of Louis…
he put the Coven of the Articulate’s stance very eloquently in QOTD (my emphasis added):
“It’s their world, not ours,” he said humbly. “Surely we forfeited it when we lost our mortality. We have no
right now to interrupt their struggle. If we do we rob them of victories that have cost them too much! Even in
the last hundred years their progress has been miraculous; they have righted wrongs that mankind thought
were inevitable; they have for the first time developed a concept of the true family of man.
… Don’t interfere with them.
Even if they kill each other! Give them time to see this new vision realized; give the cities of the West,
corrupt as they may be, time to take their ideals to a suffering and blighted world.“
Cut for length, not spoilers.
*That was the issue that was brought up in QOTD, whether they had a responsibility to have political power and/or have influence the world or not. There was a council of sorts, and some heavy debate was had, mainly on the part of Lestat’s ultra feminist SJW girlfriend vs. literally everyone else except Lestat who mostly sat there terrified into silence and not taking sides, and it ended with the general agreement that they shouldn’t meddle in mortal affairs.
This is partly bc writing their involvement into actual historical events could be difficult if not impossible (What, did they fight in WWII? Which side? How would that even work, concealing their vampirism from their fellow soldiers??!), and partly bc AR herself wasn’t very political back in earlier canon.
Even now, in the later books, AR keeps her world mostly separate from the Real World; IIRC, Hurricane Katrina was never mentioned in canon, and one would think that NOLA-branch coven founders Louis and Lestat would at least comment on that obviously devastating tragedy. At least one fanfic writer did take up the challenge of weaving in Katrina, and did it very tastefully. So it’s possible, but AR hasn’t gone there.
Louis will probably spend a lot of time fawning over Lestat, there will probably be a wedding and he’ll probably get another gawdy emerald ring to add to the pile of them. IDK but apparently he can fly now, so he’s using his vampiry gifts finally! Hopefully we’ll see some more of that.
“I’ve been asked often: will there be crossover books involving my vampires and my werewolves? Will we see more crossover books with the vampires and the Mayfair witches? — As I see things now, no, I will not be doing crossover books again that involve two different series. The simple reason is: I’ve discovered from experience that each series has a certain texture, a certain ambience, a certain dominant set of aesthetic rules; and crossovers seldom do justice to the series involved in this regard. I’m proud of the hybrid vampire/Mayfair novels (Merrick, Blackwood Farm, and Blood Canticle and appreciate very much those readers who enjoyed them), but these books have not aged well in my mind and heart. I also think many readers were confused by them, especially Mayfair readers who did not especially care for the vampire books I wrote. But I would never say never to anything now. I love to experiment, break new ground, take twists and turns. Who knows? And I do appreciate the questions on this very much.”
[As a side note, I would really love to read one or more of these books as an audiobook, and I’d do it and put it on YT, but I have to look into whether you need the rights for that first.]
ANYWAY.
I found MtD on Amazon, looks like it’s available through Audible and it’s unabridged.
You can enjoy IWTV as a stand-alone book! You can do whatever you want! It’s your life.
However, The Vampire Lestat is a response to that story, it’s all the things Lestat wanted to tell Louis but couldn’t, and it only really mentions IWTV briefly. TVL is almost a standalone book but it ends on a cliffhanger, so it makes you want to go on to the next one. And the next, and the next, so that’s sort of why I read all of them.
I would always recommend reading at least the first 3 bc those are generally, fandom-wide, considered the best.
12 books is not that many when you have a lifetime to read them. I’ve re-read all of them except Vittorio (only 1x for him), so they’re more like 36+ books for me. I read them for different things when I re-read them. People read the Bible over and over and look for different things in it.
Just about any of the books could be stand-alones, you can pick based on which characters you like best. The Vampire Armand could be a stand-alone book, he goes deeper into his story, which he gave in previous books. Some books give a different perspective on previous events in the series (what we call the “unreliable narrator”).
Most stand-aloney: The Vampire Armand Blackwood Farm Prince Lestat Pandora Vittorio the Vampire
I think different ppl would consider different fics “notorious” but as for my own “notorious” list, we still keep those hidden. Our fandom experienced a war on fanfic like no other, and many great works were lost forever ;A; The few notorious fics that remain, well… you have to earn the trust of someone who knows where they are bc altho AR’s stance has changed (in that she tolerates the existence of fanfiction), it doesn’t mean she wouldn’t change her mind and slam writers with legal action at some other time.
I’d love to just link things out here so that ppl can enjoy them but I can’t :-
However, here’s a post in which I put links to some of my faves that I feel are in a pretty safe place, and a few of those may be considered “notorious.”
I-want-my-IWTV 