Feel free to send me rants about this mournful-yet-will-cut-a-bitch-while-looking-like-an-angel angel (<— NICE), bc #we appreciate and love louis in this house, as @13bels so eloquently tagged that post ❤
To my knowledge, we don’t really have a name, like the Potterheads for HP or the Hiddlestoners for Tom Hiddleston 😦
We’re just “VC fans.” If I’m differentiating between different vampire media, I’ll say “Ricean vampires” or “VC vampires.”
It’s an old fandom, so old that I’m pretty sure it predates fandom being the recognized thing it is today. We were also strongly discouraged from creating fanfic, so maybe that’s why we don’t have a name. VC fanfic was underground, the fandom was in hiding, we didn’t want to draw unwanted attention by having a name. The Talamasca slogan might as well be our fandom’s slogan, too: We watch and we are always here.
Sometimes I refer to us as “People Off the Page,” to differentiate us from the VC Facebook fans who Anne Rice calls her “People of the Page.” More on that here. They used to be a formidable army she could sic on other fans/reviewers/etc., but things have been peaceful for awhile now, thankfully.
I used to refer to us tumblr fans as “fanged little trash kittens” or “fanged little trash monsters” more frequently than I do now. Probably had to do with the fandom trend at one point of saying “I’m such X-trash!/I’m trash for X!” meaning that you loved X thing/character. Seemed only natural that we would be fanged trash creatures. And it’s gender-neutral.
Any variation on the words Vampire and Chronicles doesn’t wholly work for us, since there are so many other Vampire series and Chronicles series.
Indeed, we have Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (PLROA). It’s the most recent book. We’re expecting at least one more installment after this one, no date has been given yet.
@bluestockingcouture — Ok I can’t phrase this very well, but tumblr won’t let me tag them, so I made a link to my reblog of their post in which they share that they wrote a 1,800 word review of PLROA that quotes Rousseau, so you might want to check that out on goodreads. (spoiler cut is there)
Here’s another by Kirkus Reviews2016-10-19. (spoilers in full view)
To be honest, near the end of PLROA I had to put it down bc it was about to launch into a monologue from a new character who I don’t really feel much affection for, and so I still haven’t finished it, but I am thoroughly spoiled as to what happens bc I love being spoiled.
There were many moments where I smiled bc it reminded me of the way the characters behaved in earlier books, there’s some development as to their current status, there’s some great little moments between them, and I think it’s worth reading for those gems.
I’ve always been able to read VC and cherry pick the things that I like (a good chunk of dialogue here or there, or something that seems to give more clarification to the established world/characters, etc.) and I have a flexible headcanon, so I can accept or not accept things based on the fanfic I’m reading, too, depending on what canon it relies on.
Having said that, PLROA feels very much like what would happen if one novel you were working on needed life support and you added your much more popular character(s) into it as a means of rescuing it.
“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.”
^Anne Rice, Entertainment Weekly (August 5, 2016) [X] I’m glad that she shared that with us, because it explains why she brought these things together. Even if she hadn’t admitted as such, I think we would have been able to piece that together.
Some things are good on their own, some ideas can be brought together and the result is wonderful alchemy! But I think in this case, it felt like someone had dumped a river of ketchup on an icecream sundae. PLROA might count as what the fandom used to lovingly call the Vampire Crackicles.
Back then, we could have a good time, even when canon was wild. We could make fun of Lestat being a huge baby about his foot size in Blood Canticle:
Seldom did I see my feet in black socks. I knew almost nothing personally about my feet. They looked rather small for the twenty-first century. Bad luck. But six feet was still a good height.
Or, also in Blood Canticle, Lestat fixated by ice cubes:
…the sparkle in the ice cubes, the Miracle of the Ice Cubes.
^Our old familiar canon Rice Caps! Why can’t these things be funny anymore?
Or are the wacky things in PLROA too wacky to even find endearing? We do tentatively joke about PLROA, but not as robustly as we did over those older Vampire Crackicles. Maybe in a few years we’ll be more vocal about it, bc there will be even crazier canon. Lestat goes to Mars! Lestat ages backwards like Benjamin Button! Lestat accidentally destroys Alaska!
So IDK, I always recommend that ppl read the books before they judge them, but I think it’s easier to enjoy the wackiness if you can take it less seriously.
Lestat: I’m really sorry about last night. It’s just that I’m really mean and loud. It probably will happen again.
Lestat (to Louis): This is an on-fire garbage can…could be a nursery.
Lestat(about Gabrielle): Gabrielle is my best friend in the world, and I give her a million kisses a day. She does not like me and barks at me and bites me all day long.
Gabrielle: Sometimes babies will point at me, and I don’t care for that shit at all.
Louis: I was raised Catholic. I’m not sure if you can tell that from the EVERYTHING about me.
Daniel: Eat ass, suck a dick, and sell drugs.
Armand: *pointing to chest* I’ll keep all my emotions right here and then one day I’ll die.
Marius: You have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair.
David: Everybody get out of my way! I just wanna sit here and feed my birds.
Nicolas: I like when things are crazy. Something good comes out of that exhaustion.
Claudia: I am very small, and I have no money. You can imagine the kind of stress I’m under.
Santino: We go into the church and I was like “I got this under control.” And then I got schooled because they introduced a bunch of new shit.
Khayman: Too old to be a duckling! Quack quack!
I can’t find it rn and so I can’t remember if it was an ask directly sent to me or just a post I reblogged… 😛 sorries… but someone had reported that they and their friend (significant other maybe?) were in a funeral parlor, owned by a relative I think, and were allowed to climb into a few coffins to test that question, and YES, two full-grown adults were able to fit comfortably in a standard-size coffin. Louis and Lestat are both 6 ft tall with Lestat being slightly taller, so yeah, that’s a lot of person when doubled. It was also unnaturally tall for that time period.
^IDK if the coffins in the movie were accurate to the time period, probably yes. That one looked plenty big enough for them to both get in and why didn’t they!!! but I didn’t see any cushions at all, that might have made the fit a little tighter.
Currently, ppl can have custom coffins made, it would be easy enough to order one of any size 😉
♛Spandex-clad muscled men running back and forth on a field, wearing some protective gear, and slamming into each other at full speed? I love it. It’s like modern-day jousting!
(^//ooc: oooh I got to dig an oldie up from the archive, I made this for @gairid / @vampchronfic ages ago!)
//ooc: Louis loves Drew Brees from the NOLA Saints bc of course he does.
Don’t gamble on anything with Louis. Even sports. He keeps up w/ stats, but more importantly, he can size up a team pretty quickly and estimate their odds with a lot of accuracy.
I-want-my-IWTV 