omg half of me is like AWW I’M SO GLAD PEOPLE ARE BEING CREATIVE AND MAKING CONTENT AND CONTRIBUTING THINGS, VC FANDOM IS TINY BUT WE ARE ALIVE AND PASSIONATE!
but then the other half of me is all HAAAAAAH HA HA I TRICKED EVERYONE INTO DRAWING ME LOUIS IN VARIOUS COMFY SWEATERS
But like fuckit yknow I think this is a win/win/win/win situation.
(Reminder: I am/was not a gender studies major, nor a student of fandom. This is just an entertainment blog and all that follows is my opinion only.)
This is a highly sensitive topic that people study academically for many fandoms, and I will hardly do it justice here. But I felt it was important to share what I can, anyway. Some links are under the cut for further reading about this topic, even though they do not apply to VC fandom specifically.
The short answer is that, from my experience, yes, most ppl in the VC fandom seem to be women. This is based on the past 20 years of AR’s booksignings I’ve attended, online communities, interviews/articles over the years, AR’s FB (her own posts + comments from her People of the Page), and AR’s Twitter. However, I would add that she absolutely does have fans who are men, NB, agender, genderqueer, transgender, etc. It would be difficult to do a thorough demographic study of all of her fans (current/past/specific time period(s)/etc.), so I wouldn’t know what portion of the fanbase is made up of women.
^What is superfan thinking? Does she think Santiago is a REAL VAMPIRE? Does she want to die? … or, is she simply a groupie of that media and enjoying it as a fantasy situation? We don’t get her backstory in the movie, so we may never know.
^Santiago has had to deal with hecklers and admirers for years so he’s not really fazed by her disrupting his show, and when he shuts her offer down, it draws a laugh from the audience. Laugh at the fan who confessed her love for the fantasy of it all and offered herself as tribute.
Before we specify why women are in VC fandom, one thing to consider is What is fandom?In my opinion, it’s a group of people who are drawn to a shared space bc of a shared interest in specific media. Within that, you still have to reach out to individuals in order to become friends. You don’t necessarily have to agree on every aspect of the media you each enjoy, but having chemistry certainly helps. Participating in fandom can also mean creating/consuming fanworks without having any personal connection with other fans. Sometimes it’s just in posting fic and/or leaving kudos. Some join a skype chat group so that they focus primarily on their personal connections with other fans. It’s a wide spectrum and there are different ways to engage with other fans within a fandom.
Why VC fandom?We all have our reasons for being in VC fandom. I would prefer not to speak for other fans as to their reasons, but everyone is welcome to respond in the comments/reblogs of this post, or message me on/off anon, and I might gather up those responses and add them to this post.
Why I was drawn to VC:
Personally, I’m a woman, and I’m in this fandom bc the canon/fanon is intellectually stimulating to me. I’ve made some of my best friends here. We share a love for these characters and we discuss them at length. This does not mean we 100% support everything the characters do in canon. We enjoy them as fictional characters, not necessarily as role models.
Secondly… I had posted a personal account about my reasons for being into VC canon, but later deleted that post bc I was informed that my reasons weren’t acceptable. That VC was not for straight women. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ll briefly tell you my reasons for being attached to VC, under the cut.
Brief historical context:
These books are/were written by a straight white woman, and she’s always advised her fans to “write the book you want to read.” She currently writes for herself, presumably, as she does not use an editor in the traditional sense. She began VC in the early 1970s with the short story, “The Master of Rampling Gate” (which eventually became the full novel IWTV). The short story was published in Redbook magazine at the time, which is/was a magazine for women, and the short story was written in the vein (pun intended!) of the older gothic romance novels that were extremely popular in the ‘60s.
^In fact, this edition of IWTV is straight-baiting, as the only female love interest that Louis might have gotten into that physical position with would be Babette, and that… definitely doesn’t happen.
IWTV is a dissection of Louis’ feelings, and Louis was a stand-in for Anne herself. VC in general has a lot of emotion, both in the dialogue, and the introspection woven into the narrative itself. The fact that these books are mostly written from the 1st person perspective is a very intimate means of communication to the reader, and makes the novels that much more emotionally rich. Some might say that such emotional writing tends to appeal to women.
The books are intimate. There is a constant thread of intimacy throughout which seems to appeal to women of all sexual orientations, in my opinion. I started the series with IWTV when I was 11 yrs old and I’ve heard from other fans of other genders that they also started VC when they were young, even around the age that I did. Being right before puberty, maybe that adds some extra addictive quality to it, that it explores a kind of intimacy when we’re in the phase of life where we’re just becoming interested in sexuality. I remember mooning over pics of Brad Pitt in my table group at lunch, and we would talk about him, but I doubt any of us would have wanted to actually kiss him at the time, we just wanted to speculate about dating and romance!
After the first book, the intimacy continues with TVL, where we get Lestat’s backstory, and as the series progresses, it just keeps going. Whichever book new VC fans enter the series, they’re going to hit that vein, more or less. It’s not as strong in the most current books, but it’s still there. I would say that AR found that the way she wrote the first 2 books was so well-received that she felt validated in her style of writing, that it was appealing to her readers, and continued to produce it.
There’s also quite a lot of wealthporn, where the characters describe their expensive clothes, jewelry, or lavish surroundings, none of them have to hold a dayjob or anything menial like that. Since many of us do not currently enjoy such luxuries of material goods and/or freedom of leisure time, it’s another element that might make it appealing to certain demographics. There’s a ton of wish fulfillment in the books.
Hit the jump for a little more.
My reasons for being into VC
Basically, I was bullied when I was 11 (for having a bad fashion sense and bad teeth), which is right around the time that someone gave me a copy of IWTV. I had always loved horror novels and scary stories as a way to study monsters and see if I could unpack them and better understand them. I drew inspiration from the way the VC characters handled their own obstacles, I loved getting Lestat’s backstory, he was not just a colorful antagonist, he had his own reasons for acting the way he did. Reasons are not EXCUSES, but in understanding monstrous behavior, we can equip ourselves to weather it when we see it in real life. Eventually, I got braces, grew out of my 90′s grunge phase, and while the bullies changed form over time, I learned how to deal with them.
Could I have drawn inspiration from other books/movies/music? Yes! And I did. But VC, for the intimacy of the stories, for the vibrancy of the characters, for so many reasons that I can’t go into on a post I’m trying to keep brief… this is a piece of media that I’ve held onto over the years. Not the only one, but certainly the main one, for me.
A few good posts to check out re: women in fandom:
And I don’t mean to attack you, Anon, but these posts are written with a tone because there is so much criticism of what women in fandom are not allowed to enjoy. Please read at your own risk, but they have some very good points about why women might be into certain things in fandom.
YES, I loooooved OLLA! Definitely one of my faves.
So many questions about those characters! I want the backstory on all of them. How are they turned? When was Eve turned? She seems to have some kind of touch-telepathy with materials, like a druid? How did Ava get turned, is she older than Adam? WHAT HAPPENED IN PARIS 87 YRS AGO? Some bad shit went down in Paris for our faves, too.
(From what I understand, based on my behind-the-scenes knowledge (I know a dude who is good friends with the director, Jim Jarmusch) much of what does happen in OLLA is based on real things that happened in the director’s life, specifically, experiences with an ex (in the movie, represented by Ava).)
It’s almost the VC movie we’ve deserved for a long time and I loved it! Like a documentary or a diary entry, almost. It’s humorous, sensuous, clever, dramatic, all built on a strong foundation of the characters’ chemistry w/ each other. It offers its own take on some of the vampire mythology (they don’t have reflections in mirrors, they are susceptible to blood diseases). Not alot actually HAPPENS, plot-wise, but it doesn’t need to. We’re getting a slice of life of these characters. It’s mostly a collection of charming subtle moments, like Adam trying Eve’s new “cuisine” for the first time:
^Yes, this moment has a sexiness to it *drool* but more than that, he is almost childlike in both his resistance to *~and his curiosity about~* this New Thing bc he won’t let Eve know she can improve his mood so easily bc Adam is a SERYUS Brooding Musician ffs.
Btw, there is/was an Adam RPer, @wastefulselfobsession. You might check out their archive for more OLLA. They have character backstories!
So Adam is something of a Louis/Nicolas hybrid, being the bookworm musician who lives in a shambles and doesn’t care for fashion (or conditioner apparently). Like Louis, he doesn’t want to go around hunting the Evildoer. I can’t help but make a few more little comparisons to IWTV…
^Frickin’ house rules, ppl!!! Hot dad is angry.
^Claudia and Ava are SOOO sorry. Like really. So apologetic. They’ll never do it again, seriously. They are voracious little monsters, aren’t they?
^Little sisters to big bro/sis/makers: “We are going to have S O M U C H fun”
More comparisons could be made but I like ppl to think I am just a casual fan and not a corkboard maniac that’s alls I got for now.
Armand fans: please reblog and rant about why you love him. I remember a point where I found him intriguing but I carry Lestat’s grudges more than he does I need you guys to remind me why Armand is cool.
smol
face like an angel
cute grumpy bf
eclectic taste in music
canonically kinky
adorably curious about dumb shit
waaaaay the fuck smarter than he looks
powerful telepath
easily the most interesting character in VC like even on a surface level he’s always the dichotomy between how painfully physically gorgeous he is against the atrocities he’s committed and how he’s retained this almost innocent beauty and how disarming it can be when he does cruel things from behind that face but like even when he’s been cruel it’s so easy to explain his behavior by the layers and layers of trauma from his life both as a human and as a young vampire and despite all of it and despite how emotionally stunted he was for such a long time and it’s such a satisfying character arc that other vampires don’t tend to get in this series due to AR either abandoning her characters or getting sloppy with her writing but it’s so wonderful the way he opened up to Daniel and evolved so much as a person in that short time and it’s so heartbreaking that like i really think he’s such a good dude on the inside and it’s been so buried by all the terrible things that happened to him and the mechanisms he had to adopt just to survive and he can be a little bratty like face it I really think he’s the ACTUAL brat prince and he’s a complete fucking troll and sometimes I think it’s still a symptom of his centuries living underground and being emotionally repressed because it’s like he doesn’t know to express himself from not being able to for literal hundreds of years but even when he’s a salty little fucker he really cares about the people in his life like even with Lestat it’s like they’re always gonna be bros and rivals but they need each other to endure and Armand would be crushed if anything happened to Lestat and even when he acts like an asshole he’s opened up when it counts like even in the new books he opens his homes to everyone and takes in Antoine and he’s just a really fucking good dude that’s been through a lot of legit garbage and I love him
THIS. And please guys please just read the descriptions of Louis properly in the books. HE DOES NOT HAVE LONG HAIR. His hair is relatively short, and wavy. Pleeeeease can we have more canon Louis and less Pitt!Louis and his bizarre hair.
I am 100% supportive of #in other words plz don’t cast the same damn guy. That “twin” comment from TVL was more about their personalities than physical resemblance:
I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas.
Although, I’d say canon Nicki has dark and curly hair… the first time Lestat describes Nicki in TVL:
Only his hair was what it used to be, dark and very curly, and boyish looking for some reason though it was tied back with a fine bit of silk ribbon.
Re: Louis: I gotta say, I do love me some closer-to-canon depictions of Louis! All fanart of Louis is good, but yes, @wicked-felina and I have discussed this privately for longer than I’d want to admit and I am convinced that Louis has short, wavy/curly hair as shown above.
Brad’s Louis will always have a place in my heart, long and Barbie-like, almost chestnut color (I think Brad himself called it “Lion King” hair”)! I don’t remember if Louis actually has long enough hair in canon to tie back in a ribbon, and if he doesn’t, then really, shorter like this fanart here, is more canon-compliant, at least in my reading of canon.
BUT ANYWAY I wouldn’t trample on anyone’s depictions of Louis, #Your Headcanon May Vary, and all that, but it is true that we have more of Brad!Louis than not, so I encourage everyone to try their hand at a Louis with shorter hair (it will also serve the dual purpose of pissing off Lestat, so, y’know, there’s that).
The fanartist in question is Avimedes, a Taiwanese fanartist who draws primarily for Undertale. On May 10th she posted on her Plurk (warning for images with blood, needles) that she was given cookies as a gift; she ate one and a needle pierced her tongue.
Here is a translation of her post:
Warning, these photos contain a lot of blood.
I’m very sorry that I haven’t had a chance to say my thanks (for the convention?) and I am venting. But I received a needle in my dessert gift from the convention. Thank you, I have one more piercing now.
I am not trying to ask for comfort, I am only trying to tell everyone how serious is this matter, so do not comfort me.
This matter is unable to be investigated and hopeless to be investigated. This matter has made me lost of trust towards something, but from today onwards, I will not be accepting any more handmade food by others.
Any more follow up and notice will be posted(if there’s any), thank you for your attention.
From discussion (Twitter, Reddit) it seems likely that she was given these cookies because she draws Sans/Frisk art, and a “fan” decided that drawing a ship they didn’t like was worthy of attempted murder. Had Avimedes swallowed the needle it could have done considerable and possibly irreparable internal damage.
So I will say this again: DO NOT HARM REAL PEOPLE OVER FICTIONAL ENTITIES. I don’t care what the content is. These purity crusades need to STOP. The amount of vitriol and anger that the anti-shipping circles not only accept but encourage is dangerous, unhealthy, and unless stopped will lead to more people being hurt. There’s already been at least one incident of an artist being harassed into a suicide attempt.
Your moral indignation/righteous anger/upset feelings DO NOT justify the injury or death of other people. You have every right to protect yourself from viewing objectionable content, but that right stops far, far short of hurting other people. Going on these crusades DOES NOT HELP against the sort of issues that are purportedly being championed; it only causes more harm. We need to break away from this mindset, from purity culture, before someone is permanently injured or dies.
FICTION =/= REALITY STOP HURTING PEOPLE
Things like this makes me loose faith in humanity
Hall of Shame
rational people: hey maybe don’t literally attempt murder on someone over shipping drama that’s one of the least okay things you could do with your free time
slime mold at a keyboard: i mean that’s debatable but it really depends on the ship
antis are confirmed sociopaths atp
but GOD FORBID MURDER
I’m reblogging this again because wtf
Just Anti Things: this
Also I feel like we really should make an anti hall of shame for stuff like this
Hello! This question, actually, is much deeper than it appears.
I’ve addressed it physiologically before, and originally, I was going to link you to that privately, but then I remembered a tattoo from years back (under the cut bc it was under a cut on the person’s blog), and it inspired me to make further considerations, more in the context of the purpose of a tattoo. In that secondary but equally meaningful aspect, I haven’t addressed what the tattoos represent to the ones who wear them, and why the erasing of a tattoo could be devastating to a fledgling vampire. (As always, this response is only about Ricean vampires.)
I’m answering this with good intentions, just the exploration of this deeper question and context. I’m not trained in the issues that I will touch on, but these are just my thoughts on the topic at hand, and not meant to be authoritative in any way, shape, or form. I invite anyone who has gotten tattoos or is thinking about getting them to share your thoughts on this, to get some more perspective.
PART I: The physical aspect:
I don’t remember any tattooed Ricean vampires in canon, so I can’t say definitively whether the tattoo ink would remain or not :- This may be a question for the author. For our purposes:
On the one hand, as @thebibliosphere added to one of my posts: “I treat vampires as just very long living humans, which means even tattoos fade over time as the skin cells regenerate.” [X] I’m inclined to agree. I also think a tattoo could be removed from vampire flesh “by scraping/cutting/etc. off the tattooed skin and letting it regenerate to its natural state).” as @skeletalroses put it [X].
HOWEVER! On the other hand, the ink could be flushed out along with anything else on the body that is incompatible* to the vampiric parasite at the time that the vampire is turned (*“incompatible” meaning “unnecessary,” like the bodily organs for solid food breakdown or whatever else that are flushed out). Is a tattoo, or the ink thereof, an “imperfection” also an “incompatible” thing? I don’t know. So would the vampiric blood erase a tattoo? It’s possible!
– PART II –
People get tattoos for a wide variety of reasons, here’s just a few (and the first three I’m asterisking & bolding bc I feel like those are the reasons that I didn’t address properly before, and I want to try do so, albeit in a limited way, further down).
*To change something about themselves bc they are unable to change a larger aspect of their lives, possibly they want to transition from one gender to another, and are not financially able to do so,
*They are in the process of changing
a larger aspect of their lives, maybe they are gathering more information about the processes in order to make informed decisions about transitioning, or are taking HRT and gradually seeing the changes, or they have a specific quote/motto that is helping them through the change,
*To show that they have MADE a change about themselves and want to commemorate/celebrate that change, maybe they transitioned genders, or accomplished a life-long goal,
For protection/good fortune/etc., – my cousin has a viking rune of protection
To be part of a group – symbols that indicate allegiance to a group or religion,
To advertise one’s interests – like getting a Superman logo might draw other fans of the character to you and strike up a friendship or more,
(Some ppl do get tatts purely bc they’re aesthetically pleasing)
Etc….
Those first three are my focus right now, and I have not undergone a life change of that magnitude so I do not wish to offend anyone by presenting any misinformation.
But I can speculate that it is a deeply meaningful body modification. In some cases, it’s the only body modification that can be made and it has tremendous value to the person who chooses to have it. On a related note, when ppl ask about vampires and hair dye, I think this may be a similar kind of body modification, something that one can do if they are unable to do the larger desired change.
>>So a mortal gets a tattoo, or several, that help them feel like they’ve made at least that change to their bodies, and it helps them, whether it’s for a change desired, a change accomplished, or a change-in-progress.
If that mark is erased when they become a vampire, what does that mean about the change that the tattoo was about?
Is it erasing the change
desired/accomplished/-in-progress?
If that mark is erased, is being a vampire a sufficient replacement?
What are the consequences of erasing that mark as it pertains to the change desired/accomplished/-in-progress?
What emotional impact would it have on the vampire that that mark was erased?
So when this question is asked, it’s also about the fact that when someone chooses to get a tattoo for the sake of representing CHANGE, will that representation of change last into eternity? Would the mortal WANT it to? Would they be devastated that it was gone? These are all considerations and I don’t have the answers.
On the other hand, and on a lighter note,
Does this mortal really want that conversation-starter of a Superman logo on their thigh for ETERNITY?
How frustrating would that be to be stuck with something they’ve decided they DON’T like and/or support anymore, and keep getting asked about it repeatedly??
It could make for some intriguing vampire emotional exploration. #NO REGERTS indeed.
Again, a tattoo that I remembered from years back, which inspired me to make these considerations, is under the cut bc it was under a cut on the person’s blog originally.
I-want-my-IWTV 