Kapetria’s Tale and the saga of the Replimoids are simultaneously the most boring and the most cracky sections of the book. I cackled over the Space Birb aliens that created the Replimoids, but I don’t think I’ll ever reread those sections.
The sections about the hijinks of Lestat and his vampire court? Those are more like what I want/expect from a Vampire Chronicles book. For example, I am terribly fond of Prince Lestat, and have reread it a couple of times. Is it as good as the original Vampire Chronicles trilogy? No.
Finally, Anne Rice has stated herself (not that I can find links to the interviews where she said it) that she had been working on a stand-alone Atlantis book for over a decade, but couldn’t get it to where she was happy with it, and decided that it should be combined with a Vampire Chronicles book. I … do not agree with her authorial choices about this.
TL;DR: No one should feel they have to slog through Kapetria’s Tale in RoA. Yes, it ends up changing the whole mythology and backstory of the vampires, but … I reject those changes.
Thanks for your addition, @gothiccharmschool! Very much appreciated, and I am with you 100% on wanting more hijinks of Lestat and his vampire court! Good reminder about reading your liveblog of PLROA, I’m sure your liveblog can help me get through it.
Re: Finally, Anne Rice has stated herself (not that I can find links to the interviews where she said it) that she had been working on a stand-alone Atlantis book for over a decade, but couldn’t get it to where she was happy with it, and decided that it should be combined with a Vampire Chronicles book. I … do not agree with her authorial choices about this.
I, too, do not agree with her authorial choices about this. Here’s her quote about doing her specialty VC-mashup funtimes for PLROA:
… i, too, am unable to finish PLROA for MONTHS bc of Kapetria’s Tale! FOR THE SAME REASONS. I mean maybe it’s not boring to some ppl? But for me, I’m just… I was weirded out before by the Replimoids and getting to her tale I just didn’t want to buy more of what was being sold.
So I have been really struggling to pick it up again EVEN THO IT IS RIGHT ON MY DESK IN PLAIN VIEW, mocking me every day that I don’t just CRACK IT OPEN AND TAKE MY MEDICINE like I should if I really cared about this series (which I clearly do).
I went and asked around & skimmed ahead bc I very much like to be spoiled, and I won’t spoil you here, but from what I skimmed and from what I’ve been told, I don’t think you need to know Kapetria’s Tale to understand the rest of the book. It goes back to our vampires and their shenanigans and SCIENCE, and in the old days we might have called this all very “cracky” stuff, but the ending might even have been written before the Atlantis portion was added in, it seems to depend so little on it, but again, that’s from my spoilage.
…But currently? What are ppl’s thoughts on how PLROA ends? I would like ppl to speak freely, so there may be spoilers in comments/reblogs.
Message me privately, if you prefer, and I’ll add it to this post under a cut if it’s spoilery.
“I was working on a novel called Born for Atlantis, and I just couldn’t get it to work. I thought, “What if I could somehow combine this with Lestat and the vampires?” And it was like, everything worked. Something happens to me when I write from Lestat’s point of view. There’s no question about it. By the time I was done, it felt inevitable, like it always had been…. It was a rare experience.”
This isn’t all that random, I’ve had far more random questions than this!
^So much love for Brad that as miserable as he may have been WAS, this was perfect, capturing that kind of orgasmic quality while being fed on ❤
In the vampire chronicles mythos, are there any benefits/positive reinforcements for humans that are fed on?
Not sure what “benefits/positive reinforcements for humans that are fed on” means… but I do get the impression that it’s a deeply intimate act, that the vampire doing the feeding is doing their best to keep their victim calm and complacent, ecstasy is a pretty good state to shoot for and that would be beneficial? I mean, if the vampire’s intent is to finish off their victim then there’s no real benefit for the human, lol, but if not an intent to kill, ecstasy is a pretty positive reinforcement! There is some fanon that the vampire can make it a really painful and negative experience if they want to, with the speed that they draw the blood, etc.
I know the vampire itself experiences a sort of euphoria when feeding, but is this also true for the human?
I don’t have my books w/ me either, but I distinctly remember the ecstasy they describe experiencing when they’re being fed on as mortals. Daniel goes into a state of being almost addicted to the feeling (and to the drops of blood Armand gives him in measured amounts).
This is intensified when they’re being given the Dark Gift, the part when they’re almost completely drained. It’s an immersive sensory experience for both the vampire and the mortal.
There’s fanon that a mortal does experience certain physical enhancement in their senses from drinking vampire blood, but just being fed on would probably not enhance them, as Louis dragged his sorry butt back to Pointe du Lac after Lestat fed on him the first night. He seemed pretty bent out of shape.
Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt | Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Okay, so let’s talk about Tom Cruise for a minute.
One of the things I love about this movie is that the scenes with Lestat make it SO different if you go into them on Lestat’s side. Tom Cruise nailed it so hard and I recall hearing that he read the books for research? So he had such a deeper grasp on Lestat’s personality than if they’d only used the Interview source material and taken Louis’s word on Lestat’s personality and temperament. There’s so much subtext to these two characters that you don’t really get from Interview alone because Louis is such an unreliable narrator*. But for example, the scene with the hookers: Louis makes Lestat out to be this horrifying monster and it’s like such a heartbreakingly different scene if you go into it on Lestat’s side and realize that he’s trying to help. PLZ CHILD PLZ EAT SOMETHING! And they drop a teeny clue earlier in the movie about how Lestat kills evildoers and it’s subtle and I’m not sure if everyone who hasn’t read the book picks it up? But knowing that going into the scene and being able to deduce that these women deserve to die makes it so different.
And there are so many little clues in their scenes about how much he truly cares for Louis, and even just his acting like YOU CAN JUST SEE IT IN HIS FACE HOW MUCH HE ADORES LOUIS and it’s just like so fucking special. Like the part where he drains the rat into the glass, he’s doing that to help, and the look he gives Louis when they have the “there’s nothing in this world now that doesn’t hold some-” “-fascination” exchange UGH. he’s basically like 😍😍😍😍😍
* I MEAN, DEPENDING WHICH ONE OF THESE IDIOTS YOU DECIDE TO BELIEVE. The options are A) Louis is salty as fuck and Lestat is actually like a mostly-loveable happy vampire dude, or B) Lestat is bipolar as fuck and everything Louis said was true and we get to see Lestat’s bullshit behavior unfolding later in the series and we see the way he packages it as if it’s normal because he’s an egomaniac. IDK WHATEVER. Point is, even when Lestat is doing atrocious things, his sense of humor is such a strong voice in the series, and it makes you like him, so what I’m saying is that it was amazing that Tom Cruise played it the way he did, and that the crew obviously used extra source material to get that bit of his personality, and if this movie had turned into a series it would’ve been believable later on when you learn that Lestat is a silly jackass. ❤
It’s something that could’ve been neglected so easily and like I’m forever the happiest and luckiest losernerd that I got the rare Excellent Adaptation for a book I love to death.
Louis does get stimulated by fire, and unusual or gorgeous things in nature, just the immersive quality of those things. When he looks at these things, he’s mesmerized by the interplay of colors and shapes, the movement even in a still painting or photograph, it’s an immersive experience for him. So I’m very picky about what I put in that tag, only things that I feel like he would want to watch for a good long while as if he could enter the work itself, bodyless, just mentally engaging with the composition. That’s very stimulating for him.
In my mind, Lestat’s porn is usually more related to fashion, I’m thinking of it as like, adjacent to his need for retail therapy. The idea of wearing something and what it projects out to the world about you, the tactile nature of wearing it and being touched whilst wearing it, the interplay of the lighting, space, and environment in which you wear the thing. Dazzling a crowd of people without needing to say a word. The storyteller/actor/sensualist in him loves the idea of drenching oneself in shimmering dream skins, so it’s another type of immersive experience.
^Now I’ve sort of convinced myself that their porn, altho dissimilar on the surface, actually sort of brings them to a similar state of mind. Something immersive, some level of deeper appreciation for nature/art. Some level of changing reality, and for creatures that cannot themselves change, maybe that’s what is stimulating.
Being turned into a vampire is an act of metamorphosis, it’s the greatest intimacy they can experience. I would think that things that remind of them of transformation and complete immersion like that would be stimulating in what we might consider a sexual way.
Lestat would probably also love watching the sillier porn tropes like the pizza delivery guy thing, but more bc of the comedy than it being sexually stimulating. Probably also likes to watch vintage or vampiry ones with Daniel and/or Armand, like Intercourse with the Vampire, they’re all rolling on the couch, giggling at it like 7 yr olds.
Although, Lestat can also be somewhat deviant and cruel, to his loved ones but usually to his victims, so I would imagine he has trawled the internet and video stores for… more legit porn to watch alone. Even so, I would hope that he wouldn’t be into any really gross kinks, nothing really degrading to anyone involved. But I can’t say for sure bc he is highly Problematic :[
I-want-my-IWTV 