Sex is more than an act of pleasure; it’s the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it’s almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you’re a part of them.
This is only one side of the phenomenon: you have antis demanding that fanon content educate people, then that adults in fandoms take care and protect children, and what does it all tell you?
These teenagers are being left alone on the internet and are projecting the parenting they’re either not receiving or are not receiving as they need on perfect strangers on the web. They legit believe that they can make the internet space they like safe by demanding that the adults in it become their surrogate parents.
Sorry, random teenager on the internet, I’m not your parent, I’m not your teacher, and nobody owes you anything. Fandom is not a safe space. Internet is not a safe space.
I don’t have a well-articulated way of putting this yet but so much anti rhetoric strikes me as deeeeeeply sexphobic?
Like….. sexual attraction isn’t inherently predatory. Arousal is a largely involuntary process with no moral implications. Getting aroused by weird, benign, even horrifying things is a normal part of being human, and if it’s not distressing to you or causing you to act in antisocial ways then it’s not even a little bit an issue.
The idea that being aroused by another human is inherently objectifying of that human is some straight-up 18th century Kant philosophy. It was predicated on a lot of ideas we now know aren’t really true, and are deeply sexist besides. And they’re still just as wrong and sexist now as they were then? Sexual arousal isn’t a prequel to violence, attraction isn’t objectification, can we please all just in general stop being so afraid of other people’s and our own sexual feelings and start figuring out how to be accepting and positive about them in a way that benefits everyone
So one of the things in VC is that these vampires are like sappy emotional goofballs and there’s a reoccurring theme of love transcending traditional boundaries. It’s also implied over and over that they experience love on a level that is unfathomable to us as MERE MORTALS because of their big magical vampire brains.
I do think their relationships in general can be looked at on an individual basis and their history dictates the sort of tone there—I think they’re all just super extra and will always refer to companions as lovers even when there are dramatic qualitative differences in their relationship dynamics—like for example Louis & Armand strike me as a more traditional couple model, vs. Marius & Daniel strike me more in a father/son way because Marius takes care of him. Though, it’s a little hard to speculate because we don’t see a lot of them together. But! In this world, with the love transcending boundaries blah blah, it doesn’t mean they aren’t lovers in this universe and this context, because you see the same with Louis & Claudia or Lestat & Gabrielle. And even though there are a lot of areas in the stories where sex is implied through symbolism and coding and whatever there isn’t literal sex, so when you take sex out of the equation it’s a little easier to apply these broader definitions of love to these pairs of characters. And you see it over and over again that they never just like someone, or have a crush on someone. They’re just constantly ~IN LOVE~ with each other and they’re all so obsessed with how beautiful everyone is lol.
But also re: blood/sex !!!
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
Again, I think we have to take individual characters or ships into consideration with some of these questions. Like, were they feeding intimately? Until Louis v.2.0 showed up I don’t think he was. Marius and Daniel feed on each other but Marius is always very generous with his blood with his lovers because he wants them to be strong and safe. I don’t think the vampires can share blood WITHOUT it being intimate but it’s important to decide what you think “intimate” means. Because bloodsharing can be compared to sex, which is intimate in its own way, but i also see it being akin to breastfeeding, and that’s super intimate too. We have ways of knowing that these two things are different versions of intimacy and obviously the vampires would, too. But then, again, there’s the idea that the way they love each other is so much bigger than just being about sex, and their definition of intimacy is something much more infinite than we can comprehend. It’s also worth acknowledging that when they share blood they’re literally opening up a stream of their own thoughts and emotions, which is something that we IRL only experience on an implied or symbolic level when we have intimate moments with real people in our lives. So their version of intimacy is a lot more complex due to the literal mechanics of what happens to them and also that they’re canonically just super emotionally intuitive.
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
Every now and then I see discussions where the blood is reduced to sex on such a literal level and it strikes me as being really crude, and to me it does a huge disservice to one of the things I love the most about this series. And that’s, yknow, like I said, something that can vary to a degree between different people. I’m a very sex-positive person, but I’m also asexual. I don’t like reducing intimacy to meaning sex. So “lovers” to me doesn’t necessarily mean sex partners and it also doesn’t necessarily mean blood sharers, either. Like we know that Louis wouldn’t take blood from the others, which tells me he didn’t try it with Lestat or Armand pre-2000. That doesn’t mean he and Armand weren’t lovers. I think it often just means “I love this person, therefore they are my lover.”
You could take the ~just dudes being bros~ attitude to them or to any set of vampires living together if you really wanted to but I really think they’re such sappy motherfuckers that they wouldn’t spend so much time around each other if they weren’t in love, with or without blood to complicate it. I also think the overuse of the word lover is an expansion on romance and not a reduction of it, so in any case where a romantic pairing is ambiguous because of the language I think it’s always better to err on the side of them being in love.
Having said all that I will also say I’m super dying to know more about what goes on at Trinity Gate with Benji and Sybelle and we just DON’T HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO KNOW. I’m curious to see if the coven/family-like nature of the household diffuses the intensity between them, especially if Louis is around to keep Armand occupied.
So! Anyway.
Kind of a hard question to answer because I think you have to take everyone on a case-by-case basis but I would definitely say that they all feel really big passionate feelings and don’t have casual crushes on each other. If they’re living together they’re probably in love with each other, in some ridiculous vampire way that doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Why the fuck do I talk so much when I answer asks idk but
TLDR I think companion and lover are often used interchangeably in VC because these vampires are clingy dramatic saps and that they have a really liberal definition of “lover” and apply it in ways that we don’t as real people in the real world.
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
…
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
^Now, if anyone wants to define the vampires with human labels and definitions, that’s absolutely fine. You do you!
I’m going to stray slightly from Anon’s ask, and focus more on the larger aspect of categorizing/analyzing//judging/defining, bc looking for concrete differences between (A)“they are considered to be lovers” when (B) “they could be just friends,” and really, I think like all questions directed at clarifying VC ships/characters/plot/etc., it’s in the eye of the beholder/reader’s interpretation of the text and discussing it with others, if they choose to, like in sending an ask to me, @monstersinthecosmos, or anyone else.
On Analysis:
When Anne Rice said, “You’re interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!!! ;A; ” we all laughed. We still do, bc it sounded then, as it does now, at face value, like she’s a child stomping her feet and telling us we were judging her works objectivelyunfairly. That any negative or critical reviews could be labeled altogether as bullying, more or less.
…But really, over time, I’ve come to see this statement more as: “If you interrogate/criticize/analyze the text with a lens/rubric that the author was
(a)
not aware of, (b) not subscribed to, or (c.) was not a consideration during or preceding the time the work was written, you are very likely to find the text disappointing, and it will fail your judgment.” I think that Anne took it personally when fans were disappointed bc of this, but she steadfastly refused to accept guilt for disappointing them, and I admire her for sticking to her guns on that. There are fans who want her to include more POC, there are fans who insist that Lestat is straight, there are fans who want her to denounce all the VC and witch books bc they depict vampires and witches in a favorable light, etc. Since she cannot please everyone, she pleases her biggest fan only: herself.
I found a rubric for grading art (from thevirtualinstructor.com), probably for students in elementary or middle school, probably between 6-13 years old, I assume “S” means “student” and “T” means “teacher” but I can’t find the actual post about it, ANYWAY…
^So this is ONE example of a means of judging a work, and honestly, for a child, I’d say it’s sufficient. I would rearrange and add a lot more it to judge an adult, but it would depend on the adult. Maybe something like Effort, which might seem to only apply to children, would still be a factor for someone recovering from surgery or doing art as therapy.
ANYWAY, so if you reread @monstersinthecosmos‘s post there is so much to consider, especially re: the way we define “lover” and “companion” being very much in line with what I’ve added here, considering the rubric/lens from which we judge VC.
The questions then become:
Are you looking to be disappointed? Are you looking to be impressed? What do you need from a fictional work?
^And I think the answers to these will be different for everyone. In my experience, it’s been more enjoyable for me to take VC for what it is, and take pleasure in the acceptance, corrections, and/or manipulations (like AUs) of canon to fandom through fanworks and respectful discussion.
To my mind, when the word of the author is not even the authority, and there are unreliable narrators, no one’s opinion supercedes anyone else’s, no matter how hard they might try to push you to agree with them. Curate your experience with fandom and your own headcanons.
I just had a hilarious conversation with someone on IM who wants to remain anon, I can’t imagine why, regarding the types of magic in Phangs, and allow me to just say without anymore preamble, no, the vampire does not need to use blood magic and or necromancy to sustain an erection 😂
He manages just fine on his own, thank you.
To your tags
If he doesn’t need to feed before it how he get boner and stay boner?
My vampires are human like in their physiology. Just extremely long lived and mildly demonic, particularly before their morning coffee. Which is not to say that they don’t drink blood, it’s just less prevalent in their day to day unlives than popular myth would have most folk believe.
“Really?” Nathan asked, sounding almost a little bit disappointed with his answer. “The whole virgin blood thing is a myth?”
Vlad cleared his throat delicately, gaze rolling up towards the ceiling and making a careful study of the crumbling plaster. “I wouldn’t exactly say it was a myth, not quite...”
When Nathan failed to fill the silence that followed he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, one megalomaniac with a fetish does not an entire species make, all right?”
Nathan held his hands up. “All right.”
“And besides, have you tried finding a virgin in this day and age? Oh I’m kidding, don’t look at me like that.”
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait is this entire book about punny gay idiots who happen to be undead??????????????
That…about sums it up yes. Think Addams family meets Terry Pratchett punnery and rage. Cause that’s what I’ve been told it reads like. And hahaha your tags, I’ve been calling it a satirical romance this whole time :p
[continued] But it rubs at emotional raw points when the agency of a character who is a minor has their agency completely written off. Mostly because it reminds me of the kind of things that were said to keep me repressed. So what I’m saying is’ yeah I can see how someone who has been there would write that’ not that I would, mostly because I live in fear that my weirdness will hurt others.
Hello Anon, thank you for sending me this message. Responding to these kinds of questions is intellectually stimulating for me, and sometimes the research and crowd-sourcing with trusted advisers changes my mind on things I thought I knew! It’s a learning process.
Reminder: This is a fandom blog for a fictional series, for entertainment only.
^Not shouting at you or anyone, Anon. I’m just reminding people that I recognize that I am out of my depth on certain topics, and trying to express myself without hurting anyone, too. I tried to answer that ask as sensitively as possible, as I, too, don’t want to hurt people who were abused, or anyone else. I’m addressing your message because I feel like you were hurt just for your interest in these things, which I feel is unfair.
TL;DR: Anon, I’m sorry that people trampled you to the point that you felt like your interests were harmful to others. Thoughtcrime is not crime.
Being interested in learning about sex, as a minor or as an adult, is not a crime. I don’t know if you create/consume dark fiction, or even specifically the kind of sex you were intrigued about as a minor, but human beings (for the most part) are sexual beings and are interested in it. In Non-fiction:
Books/essays/TED Talks/etc. are written on it,
There are people who devote their careers to it as a scientific study, see Sexology.
There’s at least one Museum for it! The Museum of Sex in NYC, which I still need to check out one of these days.
More than just for the mechanics, there’s the psychological aspect, the power dynamics, the intimacy with another person/people. It’s a unique experience and one that is defined differently by many people. Some relationships involve people who can’t (or don’t want) penetrative sex, but are intimate just the same.
“But it rubs at emotional raw points when the agency of a character who is a minor has their agency completely written off. Mostly because it reminds me of the kind of things that were said to keep me repressed.”
Right. Did Amadeo have agency in his relationship with Marius? That is up to the individual reader to decide. When people trample others, insisting their opinion is fact, and that you must be completely dense or willfully ignorant (or both!) to even suggest otherwise!!! please keep in mind that they are just a person, no matter how strongly they state their opinion, and you have every right to your own opinion and can disagree privately or publicly.
Repression of interest/education/participation/etc. as it relates to sex has long been used as a means of controlling people, and is too big a topic for this blog post. But I absolutely agree that repression is used to control people, for better and for worse.
Before we move on, re: the concept of hurting people: I’ve been thinking about this quote, (which I thought it was a McElroy quote, but I see that it might actually a Louis C.K. quote? I don’t know who said it originally) Here’s the tweet:
“When someone opens up and reveals that they have been hurt by you, they are being vulnerable. It’s not always easy to admit that you’ve been hurt, and if someone tells you that you’ve hurt them, the least you owe them is your respect and acknowledgment of their pain. The worst thing that you can do is make them feel bad for opening up to you, make them feel like they’re the one who did something wrong, or tell them that you didn’t actually hurt them. You don’t know their feelings. If they’re telling you that you hurt them, then you hurt them. Accept this and apologize.” [6 Lessons We Can All Learn from Louis C.K.]
^It’s easy enough to apologize when you’ve physically stepped on someone’s toes because you weren’t looking. I’m grateful when someone tells me that I did that, rather than bottling up their frustration and thinking I’m a clumsy person. It’s easy to apologize in that situation.
It’s much harder to apologize when you wrote/said something that you thought was socially acceptable, in private or in public, and someone tells you that it was hurtful. A sincere apology is still necessary, but harder to do.
I struggle with wanting to be able to speak my mind on these very sensitive topics, like about Anne Rice being interested in sex before the age of consent and how that affected her writing, inspiring socially taboo situations in her works. To even suggest that there is nuance and something worth exploring in dark fiction, that could be taken (even unintentionally on the part of the person creating/consuming/discussing dark fiction) as hurtful to abuse survivors or anyone else. When I create/consume dark fiction, it’s an exploration, not promotion. I am not intending to belittle the experience of survivors of abuse or hurt anyone else. I can’t speak for Anne Rice or any other content creator/consumer, but I can keep saying that in my opinion, creating/consuming/discussing dark fiction is not a crime. Dark thoughts are not a crime.
When someone is hurt by this exploration, it is partly their responsibility to avoid it.If X person tells me that my discussion of dark fiction (specifically incestuous/pedophilic undertones) hurt them, Louie C.K. is correct,I do not get to decide that I didn’t hurt X person. AND I apologize sincerely. I might also change my opinion of something based on this interaction.
But I also remind X person that this is only my blog, with my own unauthorized opinions. Every blog is an opt-in experience, you choose to read it. If discussing these things = endorsement to X person, then I would ask them, respectfully, to Unfollow/Block me and not read my blog. In a social network like this, it may be difficult to avoid a blogger that upsets you, especially when it’s one of the fandom’s more popular blogs like mine is, but that’s why we tag things. I’m tagging this post with #pedophilia mention tw and #incest mention tw for those who don’t want to see even mentions of it.
I hope that helped, Anon, and to anyone else reading this, it was not my intention to hurt anyone for expressing my opinions about learning about sex or about dark fiction.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
To get back to your question…
Anon asked:
“What you were saying about Anne being interested in sex before she was the age of consent, and that being part of her motivation in writing sexual stuff with underage characters. It makes a lot of sense to me. I have some.. interesting emotional baggage from being interested in sex when I was a minor.”
*nods* I think many people are interested in sex before the age of consent, if not the psychological implications, then just the mechanics of it. It’s like anything you learn to do, like anything else, there’s a first time, it takes some practice and there’s awkwardness, so of course we’re curious about it!
I was curious about it as a child, my parents never tried to sell me on anything fictional like the stork bringing babies to expectant adults.
The fact that the age of consent varies by country and even states in the US shows that different societies have different ideas about when a person can consent to physical intimacy, and it’s not universally 12:00 am on your 18th birthday.
Anecdote: My ex-roommate lost her virginity to her boyfriend at age 15. She told me she had no regrets about it. Maybe she did and never told me, or never admitted it to herself, but I am sure that there are those who had similar experiences and were not necessarily abused.
“A lot of wounds that tumblr likes to stick it’s fingers in and that I dare not react to for fear of how aggressive this site can be”
You’re absolutely right about that. I have seen people dogpiled for all kinds of reasons. Generally, it’s thrilling to feel righteous. It feels good to be part of a group attacking a common enemy. There are all kinds of reasons for it and you are absolutely not obligated to expose yourself to people who are looking to pick a fight and bully someone off the site. As someone accurately described it to me, some people are predisposed to disagreement, and you do not have to engage in fruitless, unwinnable arguments. They’ll even move the goal posts so if you think you’ve made a valid response to their point, supported by reasons, they’ll say that wasn’t the point in the first place *eyeroll.* For some people it’s more about just winning your submission.
{{ BTW, I don’t think we often address when X person claims that they were hurt in ways (or for reasons) that are hurtful to the one they claim has hurt them, but that absolutely happens. X person might say this is tone-policing or victim-blaming, but I’m sure that some of them are aware that they wield their argument more as a sword than anything else. Both sides can be hurt by call-out posts, for example, which are less about teaching and more about mob mentality and shouting into the void, but I don’t want to delve further into that. }}
//You know… physically speaking vampires would still be able to be on the receiving end of sex. It’s not like their orifices were supernaturally disappearing after being turned… A functioning member is not the only thing that grants a man the ability to have sex.
Some vampires say the blood acts as a sort of substitute. That they simply don’t feel the need to have sex in a physical way. Which is fine. To each their own.
But I sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it is really necessary to view the (IMHO obviously remaining) anatomical ability of vampires to still have sex in some form as a thing that is somehow suddenly so impossible that it borders on the absurd to even think of it. Some seem to be rather aggressive about it-
I’m in agreement – Blood-sharing is the highest form of intimacy between vampires but why should that include other forms of intimacy and closeness, especially with creatures who are so attuned to physical sensation? We were told in the Story of the Twins that the spirit Amel (and this was known even before we learned AR’s take on what Amel really was/is in PL and PLRoA), was starved for the sensations of the physical, driven to wanting physical experience to the point that it actively sought contact, drew blood from human in minuscule amounts and then ultimately assumed a symbiotic relationship with Akasha’s body as she died, creating a new sort of being altogether.
It was about sensation, about experiencing all that was possible to experience. Vampire senses are enhanced upon their change from mortal to immortal and those enhancements continue throughout the existence of the vampire. That’s my verbose way of saying –why deny the pleasures of the flesh (unless that is one’s choice rather than an impossibility)?
And if the vampire embarks on a relationship with a mortal (probably not advisable, but arguable inevitable with some personalities) certainly there is nothing to prevent the vampire from pleasuring the mortal or even taking pleasure from that moral. In addition, the mind gift would likely have uses as an ehhancement.
Canonically, AR began with the idea that vampires did not have sex, but even that had exceptions(Marius and Pandora, for instance) after time had passed. It was described as less than satsfying. Many -most, actually- physiological details are left ambiguous, so who is to say what is functional or not.
Fanfic, though…it goes anywhere the imaginations of the authors want to take it. Some prefer to stick to canon, others, not so much. There are as many variations as can be imagined and they can and do change with the levels of interest each author might want to express/explore. I don’t see either way why it would be impossible, only that the pull of blood-drinking might be al that some of them want. Everyone’s mileage vary on the subject, of course.
I-want-my-IWTV 
