♛I certainly do use emojis, I can have whole conversations through emojis, conveniently. >:} and >:C are favorites…
I often prefer the emojis made by letters to the more modern preset versions, as I started using them before the presets existed, and I find that they are more vague in simplified form, and can be more effective that way. These two are nowhere near the same emotion:
The older version conveys dissatisfaction layered with ennui, possibly disgust, or resignation. The drawn version is more pleased with itself, teasing. Of course they each have their use, some of the preset icons are excellent for quick requests…
To Louis: this message, for “Thirsty?” I had the droplet icons modified in our phones:
or:
To Louis, when he refuses:
To Louis when he puts his foot down about it:
Of course I very much like to send him barrages of flowers, hearts, and such, on a whim.
…And it irritates me beyond measure when he replies with this, repeatedly:
This could mean I am in for a serious tongue-lashing, or, a pleasurable tongue-lashing. He’ll keep me guessing until we’re face-to-face.
“I first started to drive just a decade or so after the automobile was becoming widely accessible to the average consumer, sometime just before the 20s I believe. I never had a professional instructor as we think of them today, seeing as they were still rather new and potentially dangerous that most automobile manufacturers or sellers would volunteer a brief guidance lesson. It was odd to see the physical evidence of the world’s transition into the modern era, but the very first time I drove down an open stretch of road I was so overwhelmed with a sense of liberation that I could barely breathe. I cannot remember feeling more free than I did in that moment.
To fully answer the question, I did not get a modern driver’s license until 1957, and I did not require a teacher for that either. It was easy to read the guidebooks and memorize the rules of the road; I even went so far as to read and memorize the entire manual for my Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible. Driving a car is, understandably, much easier with enhanced eyesight and lightning fast reaction time- therefore, I’m an excellent driver by mortal standards and have no need for instruction.”
Bonjour Michaela/@lixncourt~* Wishes received and appreciated, I wish you good health and happiness, too!
What an obscure question! I’m impressed. We see this silvery-black robe for like 20 seconds when he’s confronting Louis’ narration, “How did you wrong him? You said a name…”
That WAS a gorgeous silvery black robe, indeed. I’m guessing it was crushed velvet, you can see in the production stills below that it’s got “tracks” cut into it, so idk what fabric would do that, but it doesn’t look like a print to me.
@vinceaddams and @sanguinivora are costume ppl, they might know better what this is… I bet there were more scenes with Santiago in that robe, too, the full “trial” for Louis and Claudia under the theatre! but they were probably cut for time.
I also took a screenshot for you, and even though I tried to brighten it up, as it was a pretty dark scene, I don’t have the BluRay, it’s not the best quality 😛 Maybe someone has a better screencap.
So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.
Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.
Oh you youngins… How quickly they forget.
Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.
Cause guess what? That shit used to happen.
how soon they forget ann rice’s lawyers.
What happened with her lawyers.
History became legend. Legend became myth…. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
I worked with one of the women that got contacted by Rice’s lawyers. Scared the hell out of her and she never touched fandom again. The first time I saw a commission post on tumblr for fanart, I was shocked.
One of the reasons I fell out of love with her writing was her treatment of the fans… (that and the opening chapter of Lasher gave me such heebie-jeebies with the whole underage sex thing I felt unclean just reading it.)
I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)
The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.
But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.
The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)
And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)
Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…
Put simply: we all lived in fear of her team of highly paid lawyers descending from the heavens and taking us to court over a slashfic less than 500 words long.
all
of
this
Reblogging because I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t know the story behind fan fiction disclaimers.
Yep I used to have disclaimers on all my Buffy fic back in the day. The Buffy creators were mostly pretty chill about fandom but it’s not like it is now. You did NOT talk about fandom with anyone except other fandom people and bringing it up at cons was a massive no no because of stuff like this.
I think Supernatural (and Misha Collins specifically) was when that wall between fandom and creators started to break down. It’s a relatively new thing.
I remember going to a Merlin panel down in London and a girl sitting next to me asked the cast about slash and I thought she was going to get kicked out!
Fandom history is important.
Oh, this brings back some not so-awesome ‘90s fandom memories!
Oh man, let me tell you about the X-Files fandom. Lawyers for FOX sued, threatened, and generally terrified the owners of fan websites on a regular basis. God help you if you wrote or created original art set in their (expansive) universe or worse – dared to write about their characters. Even people who weren’t creating fanworks, just hosting Geocities pages about how much people liked the show would be sent C&D orders or actually fined. When I was first discovering the concept, the first rule of fandom was you do not talk about fandom because the consequences could be devastating.
It was such a strange and uncomfortable experience for me when fans in LOTR and Potter fandoms suddenly started shoving their work in people’s faces speaking publicly about fandom and wanting to engage in dialogue with the creators and actors of the Thing they were into. Fan stuff was supposed to stay online, in archives and list-serves and zines we passed around because it just wasn’t cool to talk about it and it could get you in a boatload of trouble. The freedom we have to create and gather together in a shared space, or actually be acknowledged in any way by people outside the fandom was inconceivable to my fannish, teenaged self. I want fans these days to understand how amazing modern fandom really is, cherish the community, and appreciate what it took to get us here.
“if you found this by googling yourself, hit back now. this means you, pete wentz”
Oh hey, even more blasts from the past.
I was one of the ones who got a love letter from Anne Rice’s lawyers. Bear in mind that up until that point her publisher had encouraged fanfic and worked with the archive keeper (one of my roommates at the time) to drum up publicity for upcoming books and so on.
I could tell such tales of how much Anne screwed over her fans back then. The tl;dr version is that she and her peeps would use fan projects as free market research and then bring in the lawyers once it was felt Anne could make money off of it herself. (Talismanic Tours being one of the most offensive examples of this.)
But where fanfic is concerned not only did we get nastygrams but one of my friends had Anne’s lawyer trying to fuck up her own privately owned business which had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ANNE RELATED. Said friend was a small business owner with health issues who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, so guess how well that went?
On top of that when yours truly tried to speak out about it I discovered that someone in Anne’s camp had been cyber stalking me to the point where they took all the tiny crumbs of personal information I had posted over the course of five years or so and used it to doxx me (before that was even a term and in early enough days of the WWW that this wasn’t an easy task) and post VERY personal information about me on the main fandom message board of the time. Luckily for me the mod was my friend and she took that down post haste, but it was still oodles of fun feeling that violated and why to this day I am very strict about keeping my fandom and personal lives separate online.
Hence why those of us in the fandom at the time who still gave enough of a shit to want to keep writing fic DID keep writing fic, but shoved it so far underground and slapped it with so many disclaimers they could’ve outweighed the word count of War & Peace. It wasn’t just for the purpose of protecting fic but for trying to protect our personal lives as well.
Lucasfilm also sent cease-and-desist letters to Star Wars fanzines publishing slash.
My favourite bit I read from one included the idea that you weren’t allowed to have any explicit content, of which anything queer, no matter how tame, was included, to “preserve that innocence even Imperial crew members must be imagined to have”.
Yeah. The same Imperial crew members who helped build the Death Star to commit planetary genocide.
(It’s one reason Sinjir Velus, while I still have some issues with him, feels like such a delicious ‘f*** you’.)
Later on, they were apparently persuaded to ‘allow’ fans to write slash, provided in ‘remained within the nebulous bounds of good taste’.
(On a related note, if I wasn’t quite so attached to my URL, I would 100% change it to ‘Nebulous Bounds’, because that’s just downright catchy)
Anne McCaffrey had this huge long set of rules about how exactly you were allowed to play in her sandbox. Dragonriders of Pern was my first online fandom, and I was big into the Pern RP scene – and just about every fan-Weyr had a copy of these lists of rules McCaffrey wanted enforced. One of which was ‘no porn’ and another was basically ‘it can’t be gay’ (and for a while ‘no fanfiction posted online’? which??? anyway.)
She relaxed a little as time went on, but still.
Let’s not forget: the reason AO3 is called ‘Archive of our own’ is because it was created in response to some bullshit that assholes were trying to play with fan creators. Basically (if I remember the fiasco correctly) trying to mine fandom creators for content which they could then use to generate ad profit on their shitty websites. When the series creators objected, the fans tried to pull their content, only to find that the website hoster resisted, claiming their content was all his now.
That wasn’t even all that long ago…
fandom history class
To this day, *talking* about writing or reading fanfiction – just acknowledging that it exists – to anyone other than people I know are in fandom as well, feels like a dangerous act. The strict separation I maintained between my real life identity, my online identity, and my fandom identity (yes, they were separate, because some of the most vicious and mocking people were fellow nerds) has broken down a bit these days, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to integrate them as freely as some younger fans do.
The OTW Legal Committee’s mission includes education, assistance, and advocacy.
We create and post educational materials about developments in fandom-related law on transformativeworks.org and on archiveofourown.org.
We assist individual fans when their fanworks are challenged, we answer fans’ questions about law relevant to fanworks, and we help fans find legal representation.
We partner with other advocacy organizations and coalitions in the U.S. and around the world.
We advocate for laws and policies that promote balance and protect fanworks and fandom.
And much more!
I haven’t been involved in fandom stuff all that long, but I find this stuff so fascinating!
whew, i feel old, but that’s mostly bc i was on forums way way waaaaay too young. but this? yes. all the way.
people had password protected forums on the weirdest, most unconventional websites. before you could even be approved by the mods they would search your blog, your other accounts, question you, everything, all because we were broke teens and preteens trying to do something for fun and if someone got in who could doxx you or send your work over to a lawyer? that was it, you were OVER. that’s also part of where fandom wars and the defense of fandom came from: quote unquote “enemy” fandoms would infiltrate just to hurt you.
@theglintoftherail makes a very good point: ao3 is a goddamn haven. and they’re a great team of lawyers and people dedicated to protecting fanworks! part of the reason it’s so great is because they know there’s no one like them out there. they also go to the ends of the damned earth to protect you and to be inclusive, which is why there’s shit like tentacle porn and underage and dubcon. because they’re dedicated to protecting readers and creators to the death. they don’t advocate for it and they have the extensive rating and tagging system because of that (legit the best tagging system i’ve ever seen) but they don’t know if you’re dealing with trauma or if you need to get something out.
do not forget your fandom, kids. jesus
Who else knew nothing about this? A show of hands
I’m just the right age to remember the disclaimers and to have HEARD about the Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, and X-Files fiascos, but I was never in any of those fandoms and I was more or less on the tail end of that. I can’t imagine having to be scared to tell people I write fanfic. So glad we’ve come so far.
20+ years ago, I used to be terrified someone would try to sue me for the fanfic I was writing. I covered my work in disclaimers and posted it from school PCs on the ‘guest’ account so no one could track me. I remember looking up at the school security camera as I posted my work, wondering if the school got a Cease & Desist letter if they’d trawl through the footage and discover it was me and know I was writing naughty gay fanfic. I imagined the entire school finding out what I’d written.
Conversely, last year, I featured in the ‘notable fans’ section of the Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary’ book – an official publication – as a fanfic writer.
It’s fantastic how fandom is becoming a part of enjoying content and is slowly, slowly being normalized ❤
This is a Very Important Fandom History Class – all newer/young fans should read this, and if you’re interested, check out more of the creators vs. fans history on Fanlore. I vividly recall the days when we were regularly threatened (and, in fairness, legally they were right) by cease-and-desist letters or calls from lawyers from Universal, Fox and other studios. I was in the X-Files fandom from its earliest days, and I know this happened to friends of mine. This was back in the days of actual paper zines – there was no FF.net or AO3, or really much of an Internet.
The Internet, though, had really just become a thing right about the time X-Files hit the airwaves in the early ‘90s (we had some of the first fan chats on the old Delphi forums – ah, the days of waiting for a line of text to slowlyyyyy unfold across the screen!), and so everything was already in the midst of a shift…it would be a little while before the studios realized that fans sharing and creating content was, bingo, FREE PROMOTION for their properties, and something to be encouraged, not shut down.
I never cease chuckling now when I read an issue of Entertainment Weekly that tries to analyze and parse fanfic or fan art, or see studios sending out content directly to Big Name Fans whom they know will blog and create buzz about it. Or see actors and talk show hosts sharing fan art and stories on the air, for good or for not-so-good. We would never have dreamed this would happen back in the old days, when we had to run scared of most of the studios in order to create fanworks. We’re actually pretty mainstream now, and although that, too, has its good and bad points, it’s SO MUCH BETTER now for fan creations than it ever has been.
Treasure that freedom – but know the past, too.
When I read Ngozi’s policy on fanworks for Check, Please, I nearly cried. The idea of a content creator encouraging fandom, LOVING fandom? That was revolutionary to me in 2016. IN 2016. But even there, she does ask that people acknowledge that the characters belong to her.
I grew up in fandom as an X-phile, and was doing kind of a lot of fanart/t-shirts and was METICULOUSLY careful to make no profit of any kind on them because it probably WOULD have gotten me sued. I wasn’t out money, but it worked out to the dime covering costs and no more.
I’ve been pondering fanwork-friendly fandoms as a concept for a while now, and have some ideas for ways of protecting both content creators and fans. Anyway.
Learn this history, young’uns. And then get off my lawn. *shakes cane*
Oh, you precious children. I’ve got 20 years in online fandom under my belt and I remeber, or was part of, *all of this*.
Bonjour! Happy very belated NYE to you, too, and I’m sorry this took so long, to be honest, your first question deals with a potentially very controversial topic.
I’m answering this publicly so other ppl can chime in if they feel comfortable doing so.
1|2 [How would you say Daniel’s relationship with Marius and Armand differ from one another but still hold similarities?]
^[X] I don’t know if this is a legit quote from Angelina Jolie (it’s more poignant now that they’re broken up, if so ;A;), BUT. I think the quote makes a good point.
A real relationship may not always be rainbows and sparkles. Someone seeing you at your worst and still loving you. It’s complicated. I know of relationships that seem to be all fluff on the surface, but underneath, resentment grows, when someone in it feels like they’re giving more than they feel is fair, but can’t communicate for fear of making it worse. When you confront your loved one with your issues, sometimes it gets ugly. That’s healthy, to be able to have those difficult conversations to improve things.
So when we compare fictional ships, like real life, there’s much that happens off-screen, whether in individual reader’s headcanons, or reported by unreliable narrators. We get info from canon and work with it.
Both ships you mention have potentially major controversial stuff about them and this is a blog for entertainment, so I don’t want to get deeply into that. But I would say, in my own reading, that I see both ships as having pairings who deeply care for each other, and express that love in different ways, and they’re not always able to do that smoothly.
Without meaning any disrespect to other fans, my own interpretation of these two ships is pretty superficial, as they involve characters I haven’t spent as much mental space exploring.
Daniel/Armand helped each other in many ways during the time that they were together. Daniel taught Armand about the modern world, gave him a will to live, and Armand was endlessly fascinating to Daniel, not only for being a vampire, but because of Armand himself. I do believe Daniel really and truly fell in love with Armand. Their sass was so complementary! And it was NOT all rainbows and sparkles for them, they had a feisty and rocky ship for 10 years!
The beginning of Daniel/Marius isn’t as explicit in canon… I remember just suddenly finding out sometime after QOTD that Daniel had gone to live with Marius and I was like, “Really?” and it seemed like Marius was in more of a caretaker role with him, as Daniel was somewhat mad, reeling from everything he’d experienced in QOTD, as can happen with fledglings for the first few months/years, and this developed into a legit canon ship between those two. Marius seems to have learned from the past that he can’t have a teacher/student ship and expect it to last, at least to my mind, he treats Daniel with the respect of an emotional equal. Maybe we’ll get more info on them in the next book.
2|2 [What if Louis’ brother had been turned and not Louis. How do you think Paul’s (( That’s his name right? )) story would have played out?]
[X] Yep his name is Paul. That’s really tough bc we barely get to know Paul, except that he’s 15, and deeply religious, ppl think he’s gone mad, so much so that he believes he really had visions of St. Dominic and the Virgin Mary. I think the killing-to-live aspect would have been totally rejected by such a religious person. He probably wouldn’t want to see his own family in his damned state, ever again ;A; Paul would probably rather go into the sun than feed on animals and enjoy any of the vampiric gifts.
The other way Paul might have gone is in deciding that Lestat was an actual angel, and choosing to redirect all his religious fervor towards Lestat… and we don’t need anyone doing that! Lestat says he wants to be worshiped, but I think these are the words of someone who was starved for affection in his formative years. He doesn’t want the unconditional love of a religious zealot, not really. He wants love that has to be earned, over and over again, and the reward of that love is that it’s genuine and not because he’s just that pretty.
So I think Lestat would tire of such a sycophant and move on, Paul would go into the sun.
//Hey thanks so much for the birthday wishes and such a great question!
GOD I love Louis for so many different reasons and could really go on for days lmao but I think the main reason I love Louis so much is that he reminds me why humanity and life is so precious. I’ve always found his character interesting because as one of the first “reluctant vampire” tropes, he was vampire I was introduced to who had a moral compass.
This is going to sound a little weird and maybe a bit narcissistic, but for my job training, I had to take this personality test called the Clifton Strengths Analysis test, which will tell you what your strongest personal and leaderships skills are. My number one “strength” was empathy. And while I wasn’t thrilled to have empathy as my strongest quality, I’ve actually learned to love it, through learning how Louis utilizes this quality throughout the series.
When we first meet Louis, he is the personification of guilt because of what happened with his brother, but that guilt sticks with him throughout his transformation, and it becomes incredibly important as he attempts to navigate the new world as a transcended being. He is conflicted as hell, and insists on punishing himself via starvation because he is so heartsick and guilty and full of grief both for his brother, and for his humanity. When he is first turned, the empathy that he possesses doesn’t exactly work in his favor. He is overly empathetic, and refuses to take life because he empathizes too much with everyone (this is doubly hard considering that he does not have the mind gift, so he cannot weed out the bad seeds from the good ones; he tends to assume most people are innocent, or at least undeserving of death). But as he grows older and begins to figure stuff out, I think he is finally able to sympathize and empathize with humans in a gentler way, and I really admire that. He eventually learns to exist in the world and admire the human beings that he walks amongst, and I love that about him. In fact, one of my favorite moments in the series is when he stands up to Akasha and says:
“Then kill me! I wish that you would. But don’t kill human beings! 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.”
He is fiercely attached to the human race, even though he is no longer a part of it, and he’s even willing to risk his life for them.
Another of my favorite things about Louis is that he’s ridiculously complex and dichotomous as a character, which makes him super interesting in my eyes. You know that phrase: “I’m lover, not a fighter, but I’ll still kick your ass”? Yeah, that’s Louis. Like I said earlier, he’s very empathetic and intuitive and emotional, and he purposefully remains the weakest vampire and rejects the vampiric gifts because he wants to remain as close to being human as possible. Yet his determination in fighting the vampiric gifts makes him incredibly strong in a different way, and I really admire that. Louis, unlike Lestat, Armand, Marius, and most of the main characters of the series, has never went under ground. He has stayed alive and sentient for two and a half centuries without needing a break. His stamina and stubbornness are incredible, and yet when people think of Louis, these usually aren’t the first qualities that come to mind. Louis is a Romantic, melancholic beauty, sure, but he’s also like a great oak tree: strong and solid and unyielding.
And at the end of the day, he’s a straight up ruthless killer. We see this in his treatment of not only Lestat, but Armand’s entire coven. And while these were killings of passion, it is also evident that he is a meticulous and heartless killer when it comes to his hunting methods. In fact, one of my favorite moments in the series is when the Queen of the Damned herself calls him out and says: “Yet you yourself are the most predatory of all the immortals here. You kill without regard for age or sex or will to live.” So how can someone so full of emotion and empathy kill so carelessly? I think the answer lies in the fact that he does not have the mind gift, and has never willingly accepted or used it, so he cannot pick out the “evildoers” like the others, and therefore must kill indiscriminately. But one thing that I also headcanon is that because Louis is so constantly tormented by guilt and overwhelmed by emotions, he could never sustain himself if he didn’t have some way to switch the emotions off; he’d be too drained to do anything (in fact, we even see this scenario play out in his first few years when he’s feeding on chickens and rats). So he eventually learns how to switch those emotions off when he hunts. It’s a defense mechanism. And while it ensures his survival, it also makes him dangerous as fuck, because that means he can switch of his empathy and love for mankind like a fucking light switch.
ANYWAY, I think my main love for Louis can be summed up in this description of him by Lestat:
“Just a little blood, and Louis might be stronger, true, but then he might lose the human tenderness, the human wisdom … the gift of knowing others’ suffering with which Louis had probably been born”
TL;DR: I love Louis because he is so complex and though he is the most human-like vampire who possesses an aching tenderness and erudite nature that speaks to my very soul, he is also a dangerous badass whose moral stance is highly debatable. I love all sides of him!!
//ooc: This is another fairly old ask, from November, 2017. I think anon was trying to rile Lestat by calling Louis “a sad sack of a man and doesn’t really seem to be worth loving.” Limiting him to just being “beautiful.” And while it is fun to rile Lestat and see how he reacts, idk… I was kind of taken aback by this and I had too many thoughts about it to have Lestat respond flippantly, which he would have. I think Lestat either gets defensive about loving Louis, or just dismisses these kinds of comments, one less person for him to compete with for Louis’ attention, lol.
TL;DR: I think when ppl ask that, part of where they may be coming from is that THEY feel like a “sad sack” who’s maybe not worth being loved, especially by the main character in a series, a flashy glittery murder machine. They worry that even if they’re loved for being “beautiful” that that really isn’t enough for a relationship, and that’s absolutely true, if we’re defining beauty as superficial characteristics. The beauty of Louis, to me, is in his character, and the emotions of the scene.
I’ve written a lot about what draws me, as a reader, to love Louis, probably the best stuff is in my #we appreciate and love louis in this house tag. But I’ll try not to go overboard and answer you here, anyway!
I think the deal with describing Louis as *~SO beautiful~* is partly that, hey, it’s fun to do, like having a favorite flower, and AR takes the opportunity to remind us of it, and put the camera on him in a scene, so we know he’s present. It also serves a purpose, we usually get at least a scrap of context about him and/or the scene:
“I glared at him, at the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, […] his wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation of his upper lip.”-Lestat, The Tale of the Body Thief
^Let’s take this line and unpack it a little:
Lestat glares at Louis. –> Lestat is clearly pissed.
Louis’ imperturbable face –> Louis is not scared of Lestat being pissed.
And then Lestat lavishes this extra description on him, appreciatively. Attention on the lip area, now we’re picturing him pointedly staring there, which might precede a kiss, so we can infer that Lestat desperately wants to kiss him, probably. What I get from all that is the exquisite tension of Lestat wanting someone he can’t have, someone he treasures and wants even MORE bc of the difficulty.
It’s the tension of Lestat and other characters pining for Louis that AR wrings every drop out for us, she’s showing us how helpless these other characters are that they can only try to capture Louis with descriptions since he defies being owned by anyone. Unrequited love is a powerful thing.
Bringing these back, in case anyone else missed them and want to indulge in some Louis praise/discussion:
We can find ourselves slipping into the characters we love and identify with. Some ppl find Lestat relatable in his lust for life, self-centeredness, refusal to quit, constantly screwing up and berating himself in the narrative (but rarely being able to outright apologize to those he hurts)… a flawed character for sure but an inspiring one.
I think some ppl who relate to Louis and feel less flashy, less glamorous, there’s smtg very appealing about how such a character could be so idolized by the more flashy and glamorous one. What could such a *rockstar* like Lestat find attractive in Louis?? You said yourself Louis is a sad sack. And yes, beauty is not enough to keep a relationship going. But, as I mentioned above, Louis’ beauty is often described in a context that charges it with the emotions of the scene. At least to my reading, there’s more conveyed than just eye color.
Still, why wouldn’t Lestat demand someone who was more like himself?
But here’s the thing I think a lot of ppl miss when they’ve only seen movie!IWTV, or only read a few of the books.
I personally believe that Lestat sees in Louis a similarly wounded soul with a lust for life. At their core, neither really want to die. Louis kept getting into fights with ppl bc he couldn’t kill himself as a mortal. Lestat has stubbornly refused to die his entire life and has had plenty of reason to want death. They’ve both almost killed themselves and been brought back. There’s a similar torment in them dealing with their natures.
As an anon put it so eloquently: “I think ppl forget that Louis is just as passionate and vengeful as Lestat, it’s just that he isn’t as vocal or showy about it. He’s more intimate and intense.”
The way they communicate/express themselves, and the way they practice self-care is vastly different. Lestat builds up his beautiful shell with retail therapy, redecorating and refurbishing his dwellings, and attending all kinds of shows and making elaborate plans with his kills, just spoiling himself silly. Always down for indulging his senses. He’s chasing new experiences, learning the new slang, trying to keep himself in the latest fashions. Novelty.
Louis prefers his nights at home, low-drama, in his own creature comforts, with his books and poetry to escape into. We don’t know much of what he’s read but he seems to want to spend eternity reading. What is reading? Even if it’s nonfiction, it’s learning, being told a story, being more informed. It’s novelty, too. Escapism through the imagination.
And their personalities seem to complement each other. Lestat’s lust for adventure spices up Louis’ otherwise too-calm existence. Louis’ calm and dignified manner brings Lestat back down to earth when he gets too untethered. Their bickering is bc they care for each other, can see beneath each other’s disguises. Louis sees the frightened boy inside the frustration that makes Lestat lash out and attack first. Lestat sees the potential in Louis of someone who, if he could get over his inhibitions, could experience so much more in his life.
“…but if I did have to choose, the companion would be Louis. My longest most enduring friendship and love affair in this world was with Louis. And though his limitations can be maddening, they can also be as inspiring to me as his virtues… the best choices we make are not always the wise choices. Sometimes they are intensely emotional choices. And I’ve always had a deep Romantic respect for emotion. My love for Louis transcends wisdom. And I may need the pain as much as the consolation that an eternal relationship with Louis would involve.“
^This is one of those moments I talk about where I feel like she recaptures the old magic, taps into the vein (pun intended) that got us all addicted to this series in the first place. Why I can’t just discard the crackier later books. She’s not all that specific here, but it’s believable. At least, to me. Lestat admits that Louis’ limitations (and this can be so many things, things Lestat disagrees with him about as well as things Louis refuses to do) can be maddening, and inspiring.
And he admits that his love for Louis transcends wisdom. That may be a cop-out answer, but I’ve felt that kind of love in my life. Inexplicably bound to someone, despite the math of the personalities not seeming to mesh.
Love works in mysterious ways. Even for beautiful sad sacks and the arrogant bastards who love them ❤
Define “bad”? Problematic for sure. Squicky for some ppl. Cracky as heck.
I wanted to delete this ask bc an objective “bad” is so hard to define, especially with regard to fiction in this current wave of scrutiny about it. I think we can all agree on things that are bad in Real Life, but what we’re not agreeing on these days is the role of fiction and Real Life, that consumption/depiction of problematic things =/= endorsement of those things in Real Life.
(This is all aside from the criticism dealing with the writing itself on its own merits, which, I am pretty forgiving about. I don’t consider my palette as a reader to be all that refined, I’m more interested in the ideas, and I don’t mind as much about the skills of the writer, even one who may have been very good and then devolved over the years. So you’ll have to ask someone else if the writing style is your concern.)
Some books will be loved by some ppl and praised to high heaven, those same books despised by others and cursed for existing, and everything in between.
IDK we used to call the later books “the Vampire Crackicles,” and I for one, would love to bring that back!
At its core, it is my belief that VC as a whole is a means of demon exorcism and of wish-fulfillment for their author. Sure they have some higher value, if they didn’t, I don’t think the fandom would be as large and as loyal. But VC also has a ton of various kinds of porn, let’s be honest. As a mix of those elements I just described, they do not have to be that deep, they are whatever each individual reader wants them to be. Personally, I really enjoyed the first few, and have found enjoyable stuff even in the crackiest of later canon. If you don’t take them too seriously, it’s worth the effort. But then, I am pretty forgiving and I can do headcanon gymnastics for fun to explain stuff I don’t like, or treat it as AU.
So they can be considered shallow escapism with problematic dysfunctional hipster vampires:
Or, you can dive in and look for deeper meaning, and make richer analysis out of it. It could be that deep, if you want it to be!
When I got this ask ~6 months ago, it was close to Thanksgiving, I had more pressing real-life things going on like traveling and visiting with family. I also didn’t want to answer it bc I was thinking it might be from a troll. Might be someone asking this in order to trick me into some kind of response that could be a launching pad for Discourse.
Now, time has passed, and having absorbed plenty of fiction =/= reality, anti-anti-shipping, and pro-shipping blog posts, I’m not afraid. Of the two possible approaches above (and there are others, of course), you don’t need to pick a side. Sometimes it can be deep, and sometimes not. You don’t have to defend liking it one way or the other, it’s fiction. It’s whatever any individual reader wants it to be, and keep that in mind when you read. Your reading is your own. Your headcanon is your own. Don’t let ppl concern-troll you, policing what you enjoy in fiction. I’m being a little forceful here bc I want to give you the confidence to know and believe: You. Can. Read. AND. Write. Whatever. You. Want.
Anon, you might be a troll, but this is also an honest question ppl have had about this series over the years. I want to believe you’re coming to this honestly and not trying to start something.
I feel like I’m going to get redundant… to wrap up, the most recent and I would say, the Crackiest of the Crackicles, advertised as:
“There is always room for one more vampire novel.”
I think that’s definitely possible, in the context of the movie version of the story.* “[Lestat] knew me, he knew I would love her more than the waking world.” Very poetic *u*
Expecting a child doesn’t necessarily mean you love kids, BUT, Lestat could read minds, and perhaps he knew just how much being a father meant to Louis. Louis doesn’t speak much of his own father, when he died, Louis had to take over the family business at a relatively young age, so maybe Louis was really looking forward to being a better and more loving a father than the one he had grown up with ;A;
PLUS, it seems like it would have been Louis’s first child, making him a father for the first time. I can’t imagine what that must feel like, expecting to have your wife back in your arms, and a new baby to love and raise, and then get neither back, knowing your wife died in pain?? ;A;
Even if Louis wasn’t a kid person, I mean, how can you not love a super cute 5 yr old angel like Claudia was originally? Scooped out of abject poverty and sickness, someone you could lavish with gifts and who would be grateful for it, having known only the barest no-frills of a life before? Lestat knew Louis would feel protective of her, she could be something to inspire him to learn to live again. You can experience the world anew with them as they learn about it ❤
*In the book version, it’s a younger brother that Louis had lost recently, Paul, a brother Louis was very close to. The death sends Louis spiraling into guilt and depression bc he feels responsible for it (and others, including his own family, blame him for it directly).
When Paul died, Louis says: “my mother told everyone in the parish that something horrible had happened in my room which I would not reveal; and even the police questioned me, on the word of my own mother.”
That feeling of blame in the situation is part of what made that loss so devastating to him, the death was preventable, if only he had had more patience with his brother ;A;
But with the loss of a child and wife in childbirth, I can imagine the husband feeling responsible for that, too. After all, if not for him, well, she wouldn’t have been pregnant (we’re assuming it was definitely his baby!) 😛
The quality isn’t that hot but this here’s the entire show (pssst download them just in case they gets taken down!):
Opening night on Broadway, NYC, version:
San Francisco version:
MOST PPL I’ve talked to say they prefer the SF version. I gotta watch the SF version bc I saw the NYC version and it was apparently stripped of alot of the awesome that the SF version had, sadly, and that’s one of the reasons ppl suggest for why it was so short-lived ;A; It was painful to watch. I remember one joke, Gabrielle to Lestat, smtg about childbirth.
@rookhart suggested I add this video “which has the actor who played Armand taking over the role of Lestat. He doesn’t look the part as much, but I’d suggest it if only for the fact that it’s later in the run, and they have Lestat’s transformation scene (and some other things) down much better, some really awesome stuff :)”
If anyone out there has a better quality vid, plz reblog and share w/ the class ^,….,^
Ya might also like my #Lestat the Musical tag, which has costume designs and fanart and stuff specific to the musical.
I-want-my-IWTV 