them: why do you have so many gay ships?
me: because the female characters are so poorly and/or problematically written, because there sometimes aren’t any female characters at all, and because while female emotional fluency is seen as an expected norm, society has taught me to romanticize male emotional fluency as exceptional and special and rare. now pls leave me alone so that I can live in my imaginary world where men actually talk about feelings
Hey, everyone! Today, we’re going to be talking about feeling shame and guilt in fandom.
A few quick points:
No, actually, you don’t have to hide liking certain ships from your friends. You can if you want, but that feeling of guilt and shame that you feel when someone mocks something you like, or worse, calls it problematic, isn’t something that you have to feel. You don’t have to break things off with your current friends, but please know that you CAN find friends that won’t judge you for liking things they don’t.
We all ship ships because we read fics/metas/hcs for those ships and see reflections of what we need, want, crave, envy, hate, and fear at that moment in our lives. Celebrate your connection to that ship! Celebrate your connection to others who ship the same things! When you find fellow shippers, you’ve found so many other people who might also be going through a lot of similar things as you in their lives right now. That’s rare, out there in the real world! And it’s actually one of the coolest things about fandom.
The same goes for kinks. You don’t owe it to anyone to feel bad, guilty, ashamed, mortified, or self-conscious about your kinks. YES, you shouldn’t rub your kinks in the faces of people who are uncomfortable with them bc that’s a matter of mutual respect, but if someone makes you feel like you’re not allowed to post or talk about it in your own space (your blog), that’s not healthy. It’s unfair to you.
I understand wanting to hide certain things about yourself (liking Sheith, liking noncon, etc.) because you’re afraid of retaliation from antis. Yup. They’re unpredictable and scary little buggers. And controlling your happiness through feelings of fear and shame is every bit a part of their plan. But please remember that antis’ intimidating behavior says everything about the sort of people they are. It doesn’t mean their victims are bad people who deserve vitriol and punishment. If you’ve had scary interactions with them, you’re not a bad person, and I’m sorry you were made to feel that way. If you don’t want to attract their ire, I understand. But that doesn’t mean that the fandom content you like has to become “guilty pleasures” that you’re ashamed for even when you’re indulging in it privately. Resist treating your heart the way an anti would treat your heart.
Life is short. Indulge in what you like. Avoid what you don’t like. Listen to outside opinions when you want to learn and grow, and close yourself off when those opinions are trying to hurt you. There’s obviously more shades of grey to everything than just that, but you’re not hurting anyone by liking the ships you like, reading the fics you read, and making your blog a space that’s perfectly tailored to your happiness.
I think that’s all I have for now. I hope you’re having a good day. 🙂
As @shippingisnotactivism put it so succinctly: Often times people aren’t actually interested in a debate, they are interested in making you do intellectual/emotional labour for no reason at all. [X]
I wrote this huge Wall of Text despite the above quote. If you’re a sealion, Anon, you’ve accomplished your mission to some extent, you’ve managed to get me to spend more time and effort on this response than I ever wanted to.
I didn’t write it for you, though. I wrote it for my 15 year old self who was able to read and enjoy all the fictional problematic content I wanted. My 15 year old self loved black comedy, dark humor. I was never criticized for it. I was bullied for other things, like my wonky teeth, my hair style, my (lack of) fashion sense, which, looking at pics of myself, I can see why I was an easy target!
Now, we have bullies who do it in a much more insidious way. They tell you that your interest in problematic content means that you endorse it in real life. I’d rather be bullied for my teeth again.
I actually did spend time crowdsourcing privately to respond to this ask, I got some good answers, but you know what? I don’t need to write a full dissertation on horror/gothic lit and/or Marius/Armand’s relationship and/or Ricean vampire sex/intimacy and/or Anne Rice’s motivations for writing what she writes and/or VC fandom’s reactions to VC ships, etc., for an anonymous person(s) on the internet. You said you’ve seen posts about it already. Being in the middle is an acceptable place to be. I’m not here to force you to one side or the other.
You’re looking for easy answers to complicated questions. It’s not my responsibility to feed you those answers. And I would hope that you would take anyone else’s response to your questions with a grain of salt, and not simply accept opinions as truth because they sound good and righteous.
These are issues with so much nuance, so many facets, and to write Marius/Armand off as simply “abusive” and “pedophilia” is extremely narrow-minded to me. To write off people who attempt to discuss these things in fiction as “abuse-apologists” and “pedophilia-apologists” is a form of bullying. If we cannot discuss problematic things in fiction in a civilized way, it won’t make these things A) disappear from fiction or B) stop happening in real life.
If you’ve been watching/following my blog for even a few weeks, or you check out my archive, you know that I’ve reblogged plenty of Marius/Armand fanart, some of it NSFW. So I think you can do the math on what my stance is on that.
I confess that I was never wildly into that ship, but I have always loved talent and skill in the fanart/fanfic of both of these characters, separately and together, and now my interest in it is A) to have some variety in my blog rather than always reblogging fanworks about L/L (my main ship and, arguably, the VC juggernaut ship), and B) to support anyone who loves those characters separately or ships them together, and let them know that I support them. They can like whatever fictional content they like.
There is no debate when it comes to my own permission to like whatever I like in fiction, and I extend that permission to everyone. It’s fictional. Period.
^Marge Simpson is against pro wrestling here. It was an actual debate, you can google it. I’m not interested in arguing with her. I’m not even interested in calling her “a Killjoy,” even though she’s asked the viewer to do so. Unlike Marge, I’m not interested in forcing anyone to agree with any of my opinions.
More importantly, why is she standing up there next to the TV? She wants to divert attention from it and onto herself. Marge wants the attention.
She is riding on it as a topic, and it’s an easy target, bc it is VIOLENCE. Scripted or not, we all generally agree that violence is bad. So she stands there concerned, but does she really think it’s so awful? I don’t remember the episode well enough to know if she says that pro wrestling is definitively a bad influence on its viewers. Her caption says enough: “BC THIS IS NOT TO MY TASTE, NO ONE ELSE SHOULD BE ABLE TO ENJOY IT.”
Would she take into account that it’s cathartic for fans of pro wrestling to watch the scripted violence played out? Would she care that we love rooting for our faves and we love watching them appear to beat the crap out of the other wrestlers for dominance? Would she care that we can watch it and know the difference between violence in media and in real life? I’m thinking that if she is truly committed to her crusade against violence in pro wrestling, she would be unable to cede an inch of ground, even a molecule of nuance could topple her from her soapbox. Acknowledging that her opinion is opinion and not fact would be acknowledging that she could be wrong, and that’s unacceptable to Marge.
It’s not enough for Marge to respect the old fandom rule of #Don’t Like, Don’t Read. When there is something as juicy as a topic with a buzzword that invokes an immediate reaction to get righteous about, the argument becomes: #I Don’t Like This Thing; No One Should Read/Write This Thing (Unless they Write it the Way I Want it Written).
The points I would make, if I were making points, would be these, listed below. You can do your own further research, bc I’m not being paid for this, and have no obligation to provide sources that will most likely fall on the deaf ears of the “Marges” of fandom who are unable to cede any ground. I am not obligated to respond to arguments against this post.
These points are for the Marius/Armand shippers and Marius fans to show my support for them by sharing some of my own thoughts.
“Vampires operate on a different moral code than human beings.” Anon, you wrote this yourself, and I think it’s a good point. An essay could be written on it.
^Some of the vampires may want to abide by human moral codes, but thosemay be codes from the era they were turned. I wouldn’t even say that moral codes have evolved, I would say that moral codes are on a pendulum swinging from moral to immoral, back and forth.
^Attitudes towards sex/intimacy also change during different eras. This includes the time periods during which the novels were written, what was expected in fiction then, what the cultural landscape was like, etc.
The ship itself occurred during a time period in history when underage/adult relationships mlm were socially acceptable. You can argue that she should not have chosen that time period, but she’s a writer, she can choose whatever time period she wants.
Given the content, I would suggest that these books were written for adults who know the difference between fiction and reality.
These books are fiction, they are not self-help manuals.
^If you use them as a self-help manual and are harmed, it is your misuse of them, not the author’s fault, and not the books’ fault. Like alcoholism. It’s not the alcohol’s fault if you drink it irresponsibly.
Shipping is not just for wish fulfillment/idealization, but it can be. Maybe Marius/Armand is wish fulfillment/idealization for Anne Rice.
^While it is a possibility, I highly doubt she’s intentionally trying to injure any of her readers, especially if she sees
Marius/Armand
and Marius himself as good and desirable.
I absolutely do not condone pedophilia, abuse, or grooming in real life, and in my 20+ years of fandom I have never met a Marius/Armand shipper or Marius fan who condones any of those things in real life, either.
I do not believe that an author is required to condemn problematic elements within the text.
^Which she definitely wouldn’t do anyway, if she sees Marius/Armand and Marius himself as good and desirable.
Anne Rice has similar ships with the underage/adult dynamic that don’t get the hate Marius/Armand does, oddly enough. Furthermore, she didn’t invent it, this is a fantasy that’s been around since before she was even born.
There are a bunch of other kinks mixed into that ship that I don’t need to list out here for you. Anne Rice/the fans/anyone is allowed to have/explore their kinks in fiction or in consensual spaces online/in real life with other adults.
It is my belief that underage people (including Anne Rice) can be curious about sex/intimacy before reaching the Age of Consent.
^Are we only allowed to be curious about it on the stroke of the first minute of our 18th birthday?? I believe Anne writes these ships setting herself as the underage character, spending decades rebelling against what she perceived was an overly repressive religious upbringing in which the adults in her life tried to convince her that her curiosity was EVIL and a disgusting form of Sinning. Making it the “forbidden fruit” just made it that much more desirable for underage!Anne. IMO, her underage/adult ships are a coping mechanism she does for her younger self.
I am not knowledgeable enough about horror/gothic lit to say how Marius/Armand compares to other ships in those stories, but as I understand it, the exploration of monsters of all kinds has been problematic since monster stories were invented.
^Horror/goth lit elevated these stories to a higher intellectual level, so they were criticized on a higher intellectual level than the older monster stories. However, the criticism of exploring these concepts has always been harsher to women writers bc PATRIARCHY and how dare women explore sexual fantasies without permission?!
Shippers of Marius/Armand are easy targets for bullying and harassment as that ship and character tick off plenty of boxes of things we know are wrong in real life.But as I’ve said in the past, creating/consuming problematic things =/= endorsement of them in real life. Thoughtcrimes are not crimes.
It’s easier to attack
Marius/Armand
shippers and Marius fans than attempting to attack Anne Rice. Anne Rice is a published author, insulated from anything she doesn’t want to hear/read. The shippers, like me, are humans behind their screens, and we all just want to get along with each other, so getting accused of endorsing real life problematic things bc of their ship preference is something shippers are very likely to respond to. Shipper attention, while not as juicy as attention from Anne Rice herself, is a reasonable substitute for the “Marges” feed on.
Ultimately I am a #Ship and let ship person and I support the shippers of problematic fictional ships and the fans of problematic fictional characters.
oh god I’m done I’m fucking. I’m done I’m sick and I’m exhausted and I’m done
Nobody here supports real life pedophilia and abuse.
Antis support bullying creators for depicting it in fiction in ways they don’t approve of. They harbor bullies because they would have no power otherwise.
What are you – I assume an anti – missing in your life that you need so badly to feel righteous about the fiction you consume? Why do you need to feel you have power over people? Antis openly admit that they go after smaller creators because they know that smaller creators will “listen” to them – except that what they’re doing is intimidation and bullying, so what they really mean is that smaller creators are afraid of them.
And you know what? It worked. It fucking worked. Small creators are terrified. Multiple artists have been driven into depression and suicide attempts by harassment that came from antis. Creators who never hurt anyone had their careers ruined over false accusations of pedophilia over a cartoon drawing. Someone got fed needles. Three artists that I know of at conventions have had their merch and displays damaged by people calling them pedophiles or abuse apologists or whatthefuckever because of the completely safe for work art they were displaying.
You’re bullies. You’re fucking bullies and you need to feel powerful so you gang up on fandom creators, who are almost all already marginalized young people, so that you can feel like you’re doing something. But you’re not. You’re fucking not. You can tear down all the queer artists you want, it won’t make a single goddamn bit of difference. YOU ARE NOT HELPING ANYONE.
You’re not. Helping. Anyone.
But you did it, I guess. Artists are scared. People are scared. Small, queer creators are more scared to release content now than they were 5 years ago, because their own community will almost certainly tear them apart like wild dogs.
This is extremely true. Everyone that goes through abuse is different and has their mental health impacted differently, and your feelings on x are not necessarily correct for everyone despite being valid.
Different people can handle different things, and if you can’t handle/enjoy something, that does not mean that those who can and do have to cater to you beyond tagging things properly. This is especially important now that Tumblr has finally added the blacklisting feature. It is imperative that YOU take the initiative to make yourself feel comfortable and safe, because this is a SHARED SPACE.
my fave thing is when when women in fandom are like UGH BUT I CANT RELATE TO F/F PAIRINGS BC IM NOT A LESBIAN
funnily enough you’re not a gay man either yet here we are
this tea is fucking SCALDING
actually this tea is cold af because hmmmm I’ll tell you a secret
I’m a cishet woman, therefore I find *men* attractive, same as all cis*het* women
a *gay* man finds *men* attractive
therefore since I’m not a gay man but I like the same things a gay man likes I find it way easier to write fic about a dude who likes a dude because I can imagine *why* he’d be into a dude and with a bit of that thing named *empathy/trying to imagine how it feels to be your character* I can work out the rest and I can relate and also I suppose I’d imagine how things work in the bedroom since both me and my character like having men inside it
meanwhile I absolutely am not romantically or sexually attracted to women and therefore to me it’s a lot harder to write f/f unless it’s a ship I like or it’s canon and I have material to work on because I really *cannot relate* to the concept of finding women attractive *and* since fanfic is for *fun* and I’m not writing a book I am in no way shape or form obligated to write f/f fanfic just because it’s about women and I’m a woman, and I’d find it way harder to imagine why a lesbian would be into another woman physically (because I’m not one) (not because it’s WRONG obviously)
therefore sorry but a heterosexual woman, when *shipping things* or writing *fanfic* in which A is attracted to B will find m/m or f/m *always* more relatable than f/f. a bisexual man would most probably relate to a lesbian on that level more than *I* would, because a bisexual dude would definitely want to fuck women and I wouldn’t and he’d definitely know how to make love to one woman better than I could imagine since I doubt I’ll ever have the chance or the inclination
I mean, it’d be nice if y’all actually thought about fairly obvious things before *always* somehow making fun of *women in fandom* who in 95% of the time happen to be straight because of course it’s the only typology of woman that is *always* good to laugh at (except for bi women in m/f rships who then aren’t bi anymore), but what do I even ask out of this website? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(ps: not wanting to fuck women doesn’t mean that you will NEVER want to write f/f or I wouldn’t have written the only literal explicit fic on ao3 for a canon ff ship in a show no one on tumblr ever heard of THANKFULLY because y’all would hate it, but putting it like this is really fucking dumb because you’re mixing up same-sex attraction with *the sex you’re actually attracted to* I mean ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )
hey shut up, your hetero opinion actually isn’t relevant here
So what about the opinion of a woman in a relationship with another woman? Relevant enough? Because hey, everything @janiedean said is true. But actually thinking about what she said would require you to examine your own motivations and biases, and that…well. You seem unwilling.
(Screeching about how I’m not queer enough, have internalised homophobia, or some other reason why my opinion is still not relevant in 3, 2, 1…)
a lot of young people say that fanfic made them think abuse was okay, and I think it’s disingenuous to say they’re all lying. but why is this suddenly a problem? this is my theory as to why it’s no longer an understood thing that fandom is about fiction & fantasy.
really good stuff
I’ve said it before– if young people are getting their primary education on consent and sexual relationships from fandom they have already been failed.
And I say this as someone who got my primary education on consent and sexual relationships from fandom, and for whom it worked out pretty well. I mined a ton of good stuff out of fandom and discussions around fandom. But the fact that there was a void of education in my life that I had to fill on my own is not on fandom. That’s on society and rape culture and our puritanical education system.
[First post is screenshots of a twitter thread; here’s the text of it.]
something I think about a lot is how fandom talks to each other.
i suppose that’s obvious, but not just the antagonistic vitriol. the hyper-ramps of joy feedback can produce similarly hyperbolic language.
almost a year ago I got a multi-comment ask from an anti who told me that ‘bad ships’ almost led them into some real life abusive situations in her dating life. I didn’t respond because I wanted to think about it. and while the framework of my feelings was formed 1 month later–
–I’ve been fleshing that out ever since. because she’s not alone in saying this happened – she read smutfic and later felt her impressions were screwed up by them – but why? why is this suddenly a complaint?
and i think it has a lot to do with evolving internet culture interacting poorly with fandom culture and young people looking for easy answers to complicated questions. for instance:
-young women&/or afab people grow up with specific toxic messages targeted at them about sex/purity
a lot of shit mixes together & it’s not weird for afab people to be disgusted by their body &/or come away with dark sex/violence mishmashes brewing in the hindbrain. may or may not be kinks later, but like. USians, think about how sex & violence (towards afab/women) is tied together.
(transphobia adding a WHOLE NEW FUN LEVEL to this, too. trans (&nb) people 10,000% included in this, in case it’s not clear to anyone.) -all the taboo around expressing sexual ideas, esp if you’re not a cis man, makes it hard to express yourself. -then fandom: mostly afab, full of kink
-majority afab and/or women, kink-friendly fandom functions like a release valve for a lot of people. & though it was never explicitly said by anyone I remember, there was always a kind of understanding this was the case: a safe place for women/afab people to be crass and sexual–
–objectifying fictional characters instead of being objectified, exploring sexual fantasies in safe spaces, etc etc. people in fandom would express filthy ideas & wants! it was afab people &/or women being as frank & open about their fantasy lives as cis men could be everywhere else.
but it was also understood that everything in fandom was fictional. like: of course rape is bad, nobody wants rape to happen, but fantasies are fantasies. live it out on a fictional character who can’t be hurt! good way to blow off some steam.
& because this was understood, people talked about kinks – some really taboo, some things that would be very harmful or abusive or illegal irl – without restraint or qualifications. they weren’t needed! fandom was for fiction. say the gross thing, nobody’s judging!
and that was all well and good as long as we were all working off the same context: fandom is for fiction. this is where we put stuff that’s not safe irl. but.
but.
tumblr.
tumblr is a viral sharing platform. every post you make can be boosted independent of its original context. & when you remove all this frank, salacious, unqualified talk about fictional characters from the context of ‘it’s fiction’ and ‘it’s not for rl for good reason’: well.
fandom got visible on tumblr in a new way. tumblr dropped the barriers to entering fandom. and starting in 2012/2013, tumblr entrants had grown up in a world where the internet had been around *their whole lives*. 9/11 happened when they were a /fetus/.
and 2011-2013 fandom tumblr is an unholy, indistinct mix of real life activism, awareness, and …. posts about how sexy Dave Strider is. in exactly the same kinds of tones we used on lj, in fandom-only – fiction-only – spaces.
I can see how baby fans got the wrong idea.
without necessarily knowing it was happening, fandom – in moving to tumblr – went from a delineated safe space for non-cis-male sexual fantasy indulgence to being – for newcomers at least – indistinguishable from the sexual noise they grew up with, except probably more appealing.
losing shared context by being diluted on tumblr means young people could encounter fandom fantasy content independent of the ‘we let it hang out here b/c we’re not allowed to otherwise’ subtext. Mixed well with the much nastier toxic messages of rl & mass media & get a nasty mess.
i don’t want to spoil the punchline, but the reason non-cis-men are more in need of a safe space retreat than cis men is b/c of misogyny. so you’ll never guess what happened when fandom’s version of that space got diluted into pop culture!
(radfems! also misogyny.)
2012/13 tumblr gets a 1-2 punch: structural patriarchy: women who openly like sex are dirty sluts! they raise & teach kids how to be good adults! they’re pure! radfems: women who openly like kinks are feeding into female oppression! women teach women to be good adults! they’re pure!
2012/12 tumblr recognizes the structural punch, kinda, but disguised as Girl Power, they don’t see the second one coming. Bam! fandom – mostly made up of afab people and/or women – is suddenly awful for letting itself be sexually expressive! it abandoned the teaching post!
softened up by structural oppression of non-cis-(straight-white)-male sexuality, young fandom went down like a stone to the idea that women should be teaching other women how to be good women and Good Women Don’t Do Kinks Or Men (add heaping tablespoons of transphobia/racism/etc)
this got out of hand like always, god. but long story short: young fandom didn’t – doesn’t – see how society sets them up for abusive relationships, sexual disasters, and toxic predation. so they look back at fandom – in dialogue with all that grossness – and conclude:
‘the people in fandom failed me.’ – fandom was supposed to teach them how to be safe – society tells them that’s the job of ‘women’. but fandom wasn’t being a mom, and therefore if they weren’t safe it was fandom’s fault.
these people who were abused using fandom as a tool, or feel like they were vulnerable because of fanworks: fanfic didn’t make them that way. it just feels natural to blame it because it’s hard to see the power structure you live in, and it’s hard to admit to being helpless.
the fanworks are easy to point to and blame because they’re fiction. It’s the same reason video games were easy to blame for violence. it feels so clean and straightforward, and it doesn’t require dismantling a whole power system – a whole culture – to get rid of.
but it’s not the fiction.
(here’s the hard part.)
if fandom contributed to the toxic messages about sexuality absorbed by younger members, it’s because of continuing to talk about fictional characters like we were in those old, delineated ‘fantasy only/it’s just fiction’ spaces–
– after the shift to tumblr. and frankly, tumblr is not that kind of delineated space: it’s also an activist space (or was one), and an awareness space.
non-cis-male sexual fantasies about fictional characters & rl social activism/awareness do not mix well, as we’ve seen.
and that contribution was a small, small part, probably: fandom is so queer, so non-cis, so non-straight, so disabled and neurodivergent that our influence on everything but tumblr is really small.
but because we’re not a power structure, we’re easy to point to & tear down.
and we’ve been trained by society to blame our troubles on those we can get at and hurt instead of blaming the very way our cultures are built. hurting other vulnerable people is easy. dismantling the earth under our feet is hard. (why do u think radfems focus on fixing women?)
to wrap up: fandom isn’t perfect by a long shot, and one thing we can do to protect ourselves from harm is assume the best of others and try to put things we see into context.
we can also fuck up white cis male patriarchy instead of each other. (screw the system.) /end
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.
While digging through my drafts just now to clear some posts out I was reminded of my habit of seeing something stupid on Tumblr and writing a vicious text post in response to roast all the idiots and douchebags and then drafting it instead of publishing it because ultimately my blog is my own space and I have the control of the tone I set, and it’s my general goal to keep it relaxed and breezy in here. (Despite what my penchant for angst might say LOL).
Common themes include:
That I am a Grown Ass Adult and I hate all forms of censorship.
I don’t have children and don’t give a fuck about other people’s children. And when I say that I am generally speaking about the purity police on tunglr dot com who are worried about all the 14 year olds lurking around. And, whoops, they’re definitely not my problem.
Making me responsible for other people’s children is a step above telling me that my only use as a biological female is to make babies.
I especially dislike being censored and restricted for the sake of the children who do not occupy my house. (Including lists where this manifests in the Real World, outside of Tumblr, ie: rules about pot edibles, cable television, childproof drug bottles.)
Ranting about the cognitive dissonance of people who would typically be on the SJW side of things and don’t realize how their bullshit plays exactly into real world conservatism and how that’s uhhhhhh not good lmao. (See previous point about censorships and safeguards in the Real World, often put into place by the religious right.)
If one more person tries to re-victimize me by telling me which of my childhood experiences traumatized me and forbidding me to interact with them I s2g I’m gonna start breaking some jaws. (Which is funny considering that one of said experiences involved getting punched in the face so hard that it damaged the ligaments in my face and my jaw still clicks but that’s beside the point.)
Not to be a dick (well, only a little) but honestly like 99% of the bullshit on this site is so ideological and nonsensical and hypothetical and doesn’t fucking happen outside in the real world and a lot of your anguish would be solved if you’d just go outside and interact with real human beings who do not live in your dashboard echochamber.
Anyway. I SAY ALL THAT TO SAY. Just imagine a day I rant and rave about any of these topics and just go fuckin wild. Just imagine. Pretend it happened.
^AGREED WITH ALL OF THE ABOVE. I also hate all forms of censorship, especially the more recent wave of censorship under the flags of “This is Problematic” and “Romanticizes/Normalizes X.”
I’ve been ramping up my defense of Dark Fiction, as you may have noticed. I’m not thrilled about it, but it’s a recent development. I do it because there was an attempt to shame me for Liking Bad Things and I felt that my silence was acceptance of this, and so, for those who may be too shy to defend their right to consume/create whatever tf they want, I want them to see that this blog is a citadel of support for fans who choose to like what they want to like and make/enjoy the fanworks they want to see in the world.
I try to promote civility in the fandom and encourage the creation and sharing of fanworks. IMO, that’s the lifeblood of the fandom. It is trampling other fans when someone demands that a fan interact a certain way on the fan’s own blog, tries to shame them for liking specific characters, or tries to get that fan to leave a fandom altogether. That, to me, is one of the worst crimes in a fandom. Attempting to crush someone’s love for a fictional character or ship is divisive and unnecessary. No, we do not need to critique or examine or do anything we don’t want to.
No one can tell you how to fandom. Please don’t let them bully you. Please don’t self-censor for them. Everyone with internet access is responsible for their own experience here, common courtesy would be tagging your posts so that they can avoid certain characters/ships/etc. If someone cannot handle your liking a fictional character, it is on them to deal with it accordingly.
As I wrote on this post (OP: @pazithigallifreya), and it bears repeating: Please don’t feel like you have to literally ask anyone for permission to hold certain opinions. I’m happy to share my ideas, but they are only my ideas. I’m a random stranger on the internet! I love my followers, the interactions we’ve had, the messages you’ve sent me publicly and privately over the past few years have kept my blog alive, and I can’t thank you enough for that ❤
But! If I can just paraphrase from that post, Do not give some random stranger on the internet that much power over your mind! Don’t be so afraid of forming your own opinions that you have to ask someone else to give you opinions to hold!
Please do not become part of some random stranger on the internet’s rabble ready to crucify anyone who doesn’t do as they are told!
I-want-my-IWTV 
