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Hello, I was wondering if Anne Rice has ever addressed why her female characters are more peripheral to the story than her male characters, and why she seems to avoid depicting wlw relationships. This has always bothered me; I don’t want to jump to labeling her as misogynistic, but it seems like her female characters are coded as female, while the males are just characters, if that makes sense. It seems like the men are bi and the women straight. Thank you, hope you don’t mind answering!

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Hello! This was a really tough ask, and very intellectually stimulating, and opening it further, I ended up considering the larger topic of What is an author’s obligation to their readers? What is an artist’s obligation to their viewers/audience? I don’t know. 

In that line of consideration, I don’t recall AR ever bringing up these specific issues in (or out) of canon, or whether she’s been asked about it. I don’t think she’s ever said anything about avoiding depicting wlw relationships… these seem like questions you could ask her directly on FB, but my prediction is that she would be unwilling to address them. My impression of her is that she enjoys praise but does not feel obligated to write anything for anyone but herself, for better or worse.

To use the word “avoiding” implies she’s aware of it as a failure on her part, and I don’t think she is aware of it.

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[^Fanart by @garama, mommy!Louis w/ his parenting guide,

this looks, like a good mom, he’s forcing the other two into some kind of parent-child bonding exercise!]

Re: Coding characters as male or female, that discussion is kind of confusing to me. I’ve seen fandom discourse refer to Louis as the “mommy” in the Lestat, Louis, and Claudia family in IWTV (a little more on that under the cut). Louis is only one example of a male character who may have been intentionally written as being more of the stereotypically female role than a male; he is more protective and nurturing to Claudia like a mother would be, and Lestat seems to “wear the pants” in that household. IDK if that is sufficient as “coding a male character as female.”

  • why her female characters are more peripheral to the story than her male characters, 
  • why she seems to avoid depicting wlw relationships. 
  • I don’t want to jump to labeling her as misogynistic, but it seems like her female characters are coded as female, while the males are just characters, if that makes sense. 
  • It seems like the men are bi and the women straight. 

^This is a lot to consider, any one of which could be a whole essay of response. Anyone who has opinions on this is welcome to reblog/comment, as this is not an area of expertise for me. And, IMO, it’s not an area of expertise for Anne Rice, either.

TL;DR: I don’t think AR intended to “avoid” the topics you bring up, I believe she was more focused on her own topics (I list some under the cut). AR had posted “On My Method of Writing:” as part of a message on her page, 8/20/2003, which I found informative. A few excerpts are under the cut.

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[^May 10, 2016- X] AR has said many times that she writes the books she wants to see in the world, no other intentions.

What is an author’s obligation to their readers? What is an artist’s obligation to their viewers/audience? I don’t know. We are all entitled to our own answers to that question.

Hit the jump for more, cut for length and QOTD spoiler.

To my knowledge, there isn’t any Universal Fiction Supreme Court (<– Tumblrland Hyperbole, just trying to add a little levity!) which require authors to satisfy certain demands in their writing. Just as I was recently called out both for sharing negative opinions/critical analysis

and for not sharing

negative opinions/critical analysis, it is hard, if not impossible, to please everyone, even if that’s a blogger/author’s goal. I try to compromise when I can, but that’s my own prerogative. AR seems to provide a little fanservice now and then and will write more of X, Y, Z when the POTP ask her to write more of X, Y, Z, but that’s her own prerogative.

Perhaps the misogyny some people perceive in her books is real, perhaps it’s internalized for her. She might deserve that label. I don’t know how I feel about that. 

From all that I’ve absorbed over the years, she wrote about what intrigued her. This is just the first few things that come to mind of things I’ve seen in canon, in different variations, things she may have discussed outside the novels, things she has always seemed to want to explore:

  • Her own retail and geographical interests/fetishes (classical painting, jewelry (cameos!!), high fashion (VELVET!), low fashion, literature, Shakespeare, music and culture of the 80′s (BLADE RUNNER & BON JOVI), SCIENCE and technology (iPHONES!), interior decorating, New Orleans, Miami, Ancient Rome, Paris, etc.);
  • Sexuality & power;
  • Religion and its role in terms of meting out punishment to those who deserve it and misapplied to innocent people, punishments as fitting a crime and punishments for no crime, varying forms of punishment;
  • Revenge and whether it is justified;
  • World peace and how to achieve it;
  • Whether there is a God who will embrace us when we die, whether we will meet our loved ones who died before/after us, whether there is an eternal heaven and hell, etc. Whether we will get the answers to all of life’s questions;
  • Religion and its setup as a social group and whether it requires genuine belief in order to be part of that group;
  • Very hot guys and what they do w/ their dicks;
  • Childlike, adorable women;
  • Precocious young adults/teens who are interested in sex before coming of legal age;
  • Consent, dubious consent, and lack of consent across many different categories;
  • etc.

^I feel like all of her writing can be summed up as speculation on these topics (and others), exploring them to find out “what would happen if…” and presenting results which she does NOT promote, results which she DOES promote, and results she offers up to the reader’s interpretations. Misogyny can be easily woven into many of those topics w/ or w/o intention on the author’s part.  

As an example of a speculative situation, involving a possible misandrist character: in QOTD, radical feminist Akasha believed she could guarantee world peace by killing off 90% of the men. She starts doing it but is thwarted before making much progress. If she could have continued, would it have been a successful plan? I believe AR is suggesting that it would not, that as enticing as the idea was, radical feminism is too extreme and would have failed. And further, that the misandrist proponent of radical feminism may have been missing a few marbles even as a mortal, in addition to being out of touch with reality as a nearly omnipotent immortal.

So my answer is that I don’t think AR intended to “avoid” the topics you bring up, I believe she was more focused on her own topics.

Re: Coding characters as male or female, that discussion is kind of confusing to me. I’ve seen fandom discourse refer to Louis as the “mommy” in the Lestat, Louis, and Claudia family in IWTV. AR has said Louis was basically written as herself (she famously said, and I can’t find the source rn but I remember it distinctly: “I’m the only woman ever played by Brad Pitt in film!”), evidence that she did see that character as female? Possibly.

“On My Method of Writing:” 8/20/2003, excerpts (my emphasis added):

“I have been writing most of my adult life, of course, but very steadily since about 1970.”

^Idk if coding gender into characters was a thing then. 

“My method of writing is to develop the novel sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph and page by page with heavy rewriting and reshaping and editing as I go along,… until I had the perfected page in order to proceed to the next page.”

^I seem to recall her saying that some of her novels are planned out w/ plot points first, others just flow in the order she writes them, w/o pre-planning.

“After the publication of the The Queen of the Damned, I requested of my editor that she not give me anymore comments. I resolved to hand in the manuscripts when they were finished. And asked that she accept them as they were. She was very reluctant, feeling that her input had value, but she agreed to my wishes. I asked this due to my highly critical relationship with my work and my intense evolutionary work on every sentence in the work, my feeling for the rhythm of the phrase and the unfolding of the plot and the character development. I felt that I could not bring to perfection what I saw unless I did it alone. In othe words, what I had to offer had to be offered in isolation. So all novels published after The Queen of the Damned were written by me in this pure fashion, my editor thereafter functioning as my mentor and guardian.”

^Her editor was demoted to copyeditor

mentor and guardian

.

“…

the writing you are reading is quite deliberate, that it is informed and it is conscious, as well as being the result of intuition. It is the result of all that I am – my education, my mystic sensibilities, and the student in me. It is poured out fearlessly, and then edited, and re-edited, and subjected to merciless scrutiny. It represents, and always has, my finest efforts.”

^Her writing is all intentional and her focus is intentional.

Akasha trying to “justify” her genocide attempt makes me so angry. Like, yeah, wars are started by men but that’s bc historically men have had the power exclusively. If we do a quick review over the few female leaders in history they have always been part of wars as much as any male leader would have been. She herself is an example that women can do terrible things too and I feel like the others characters don’t try enough to make her understand this when they’re trying to convice her to stop.

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That’s good then! Be angry. Fiction is not always out there to make you feel good. Sometimes it’s meant to push buttons, and in this case, it may have been smtg AR intended to explore, that some ppl really think/thought that Akasha’s idea could be a good path to peace.

Side note, this is so relevant right now bc in the Real World:

Unfortunately we are again faced with ppl who are consumed by their own ideology, with this new political regime and those that voted it in.

How are we going to deal with it? Are we going to let them steamroll everyone who opposes? How active can/should we be? We all have to ask that of ourselves bc fiction has very much become reality. And it’s nowhere near as pretty as Akasha.

So anyway, back to Akasha… Not all characters introduced by an author are ENDORSED by the author, the author is telling a story, maybe suggesting what might happen if we/the readers assumed, for example, that “all wars are started by men and therefore they should be removed from the equation for peace on earth.” AR shows us the narrow-mindedness of such an idea and that YES, Akasha is “herself is an example that women can do terrible things too.” Akasha probably knows that but bc it doesn’t fit with her own ideology, she is most likely ignoring it. If she doesn’t know that, she is refusing to learn it, which is just as bad, if not worse.

(Now we have a US President-Elect who’s saying that “it’s X, Y, Z group of ppl who start all the wars and have to be stopped.” SOUND FAMILIAR?)

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[^X Lestat and his awesome girlfriend Akasha by @devmin-art]

BTW tho, did Akasha really believe in this or did she just want to be righteous and have a place in the world? When this initially happened, the Twins told her there was no way to undo it, and that she should kill herself to rid the world of the accident that she was, but like many living (unliving?) things, she didn’t want to die. She wanted to find a way to be righteous and have a purpose, and don’t we all? She constructed a religion around herself back when she was first turned, and she felt that it worked out really well for her. Of course, it was easier to manipulate ppl back when religion seemed to have more of the answers to all of our questions than science did.

and I feel like the others characters don’t try enough to make her understand this when they’re trying to convice her to stop. 

^Keep in mind that the coven were all pretty frustrated at their failed attempts to reason with her, most of their arguments were met with personal attacks or just slippery gaslighting… and they were just on the edge of freaking out bc she can explode most of them with her mind ;A;

Lestat:  

Dazed, she looked at me. I could feel death breathing on my face, death close as it had been years and
years ago when the wolves tracked me into the frozen forest, and I couldn’t reach up high enough for the
limbs of the barren trees.

The other characters did try to make her understand, but when someone is consumed by their own ideology, sometimes the only tactic that will work is backing off the issue itself and asking them to take more time to consider their chosen course of action, which may have given the coven more time to educate her or find some common ground on which to build some dialogue… which is what they were all doing. 

Maharet says:  

“Time,” Maharet said. “Maybe that is what we are asking for. Time. And that is what you have to give.”

…“You have meditated in silence for centuries upon your solutions. What is another hundred years? Surely
you will not dispute that the last century on this earth was beyond all prediction or imagining-and that the
technological advances of that century can conceivably bring food and shelter and health to all the peoples
of the earth.“ 

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theclassykindoftrasy:

sparrf:

i keep thinking about that tribe of baboons where all the alpha males died from eating poison garbage and then the baby boy monkeys were taken care of by the lady monkeys and never got socialized to be aggressive so they all just live peacefully and groom eachother instead of fighting and killing eachother and its been generations of that, it only took 1 wipeout of the aggressive males to change the whole social order of the species i am crying they must be so much happier

……….I have an idea.

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[^X @anneboleyns]

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phoebe-tonkin:

“For a while she was quiet, then Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes were flickering and she said: ‘They spat on me in Rome.’ Who did?  ‘Ordinary people, on the streets. They crossed over and spat. It was during le scandale, when the Vatican newspaper thoughtfully said I was morally unfit to be a mother and that my request to adopt Maria should be denied. They also announced that my natural children should be taken away from me.’ But it didn’t happen. You survived. ‘Damn right I survived,’ she said with resignation. ‘I’ve been through it all. I’m Mother Courage. I’ll be dragging my sable coat behind me into old age.‘” -Life Magazine, 1969.

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xtoxictears:

xtoxictears:

When someone tries to tell you that you have to be pale to be goth, just remember this picture.😘

Bringing this back! Someone actually stole this post (as in with my quote, I didn’t make the picture) but took the time to cut my username out and now its being shared all over facebook, ruuude~ So here is the original.:P

Source: xtoxictears
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@hellyeah-theoffice:

When the deposed queen of Egypt emails you directly asking for help, you help! 

#the real story behind #Queen of the Damned #he’s not proud of how he handled that ex girlfriend situation #live n learn amirite? #or not #OH WELL

When people are African American and they are turned what color is there skin?

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What you’re really asking is “When people of color are turned, does their skin color change?” because not all African-Americans are people of color, and there are many people of color who are not African-Americans.

I have seen other vampires of color (”VoC”) in other media like Blade (1998), Blacula (1972), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Vamp (1986), Twilight Saga, True Blood (2008-2010), Vampire Diaries (2009-2010). The vampires I’m familiar with in those examples have retained their skin color.

You would probably get a better answer from @askavampirologist-blog​, because I think they have a wider spectrum of vampire media knowledge than I do, since this blog is mostly about Ricean vampires.

For Ricean vampires, they retain their original skin color, and over a very long period of time, their skin does become lighter. You would have to ask AR directly why she wrote her novels this way, I’m not going to guess at her intentions on that.

Here’s a VoC in QOTD:

“Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy,… His skin had a gold glow to it, the Dead glow which in the case of white Dead guys made them look like they were standing in a fluorescent light all the time.”

^We don’t know how old this vampire is, but it appears that his own skin color acquired a “gold glow” when he was turned.

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[^X] Akasha is an Egyptian VoC played in movie!QOTD by Aaliyah. According to Wiki, Aaliyah “was African American, and had Native American (Oneida) heritage from a grandmother.” Even though Aaliyah was not the same ethnicity of the fictional character, I was pleased that the filmmakers chose a person of color to play this vampire of color character. She was one of the best parts of the movie.

Akasha is described in the novels as having porcelain white skin because she is very old, and Ricean vampire physiology involves the lightening of the skin over time. This is a point of contention in the VC fandom, that AR has whitewashed her. I don’t have a stand on this partly because there is a debate as to what color the Ancient Egyptians’ skin really was. I have links to 2 articles about that, and some thoughts on the skin lightening issue, in a post from awhile back [X].

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^This was from Vampires Suck (2010), a parody vampire movie, and aesthetically, I didn’t like the way they did the makeup for this vampire of color. He looks like someone assaulted him with baby powder! But that was probably intentional, to make him look unattractive? IDK maybe someone digs this look!

I just started reading this book series and I want your opinion on something (I hope the topic of sex doesn’t make you uncomfortable). According to Lestat vampires don’t feel sex drive, in The Tale of the Body Thief one of the things he wants to expierence when he has a human body is sex because he says this is something he can’t do with his vampire body. But in his book Armand mentions that he had sex with Marius several times. P.S. I love your blog, you seem really nice and cool!!!

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Thanks for the compliments on my blargh! *u* I try to answer asks thoughtfully and respectfully and expect the same consideration back from whoever reads my answers ^_____^ 

As always, #your headcanon may vary, bc we’re talking about fictional vampires, they are not people. Whether you consider them to be people in their own world is up to you. For me, I see them as ex-people. They share a supernatural parasite that gradually eats away at their mortal parts, replacing it with its own immortal substance, perfecting their host bodies to its own design. So they exist beyond the definitions of sex and gender for me.

I do not believe the vampires are canonically capable of penetrative sex but do I love fanart/fanfic/RP where they have penetrative sex? YES, YES I DO, MORE PLZ. Have I commissioned such fanart of it for myself? Y E S. Will I commission more of it or write my own in the future? YOU’RE GOTDAMN RIGHT I WILL. I love the creativity of the fanon interpretations and I will support these ideas forever.

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[^Louis + Lestat by @danyanddany

♥♥♥]

According to Lestat vampires don’t feel sex drive, 

I don’t recall anywhere in canon where Lestat says that vampires do not feel a sex drive. He has described himself as a sensualist, and we know he falls in love easily. I think that they do feel a sex drive, just not in the genitally-penetrative sex way (not the most eloquent phrasing there but I can’t think of another way to put it; “PIV/penis-in-vagina” just doesn’t apply to most of our gay ships). 

Turning vampires seems to be their ultimate “sexual” act that they can perform, bc it is equivalent to pregnancy (a fledgling is being “born to darkness”), and it is always described primarily as the sharing of the Blood between maker and fledgling. I headcanon that Lestat loves the act of performing this, and that’s partly why he has had SO MANY FLEDGLINGS. So I believe that they still do feel sexual lust, it’s channeled through the experience of taking/sharing blood, and other sensually physical things.

In fanon there is a wide spectrum of whether they can have genitally-penetrative sex, some even speculate that their um… output… would be very bloody. There is fanart/fanfics/RP/etc. in which they can have that kind of sex, and ones in which they cannot. 

in The Tale of the Body Thief one of the things he wants to expierence when he has a human body is sex because he says this is something he can’t do with his vampire body. 

^This is up to every reader’s interpretation, and yes, in my opinion, Ricean vampires in canon cannot have penetrative sex. My main evidence for them as being unable to have genitally-penetrative sex comes from [hit the jump for spoilers]. 

AR has written alot of other novels with genitally-penetrative sex being an important factor, so I doubt it was an oversight in denying it to her vampires. If you want to go by her as the authority on her novels, and many ppl do, she posted definitively about it when asked about Daniel and Marius in PL:

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AR does not go into much further detail than that, even in canon, other than the fact that the sharing of blood is more intimate for them than than simple mortal penetrative sex. Part of why she chose this may be to avoid the issue of pregnancy the way mortals do it; a baby cannot grow in undead flesh, y’know?

TL;DR: Personally, I headcanon them as unable to have genitally-penetrative sex. There are human couples who are unable (or do not want) to experience genitally-penetrative sex, and they can still be sexually intimate with each other in other ways. So it’s partly in how you define sex and intimacy. 

For more on this, I have these tags: #asexuality, #asexual, #sex, #sexuality, #lets talk about sex.

Hit the jump for spoilers.

But in his book Armand mentions that he had sex with Marius several times.

Armand was mortal for some of that book, and Marius did sexual things with him, but not genitally-penetrative sex. After Armand is turned, Marius and Armand have an intimate moment with a mortal woman together, but again, it is not genitally-penetrative sex for them. 

My main evidence for them as being unable to have genitally-penetrative sex comes from:

  • Louis’s description of sex in IWTV:

Claudia asks Louis about sex in IWTV, and he replies that it “‘…was something hurried…And… it was seldom savored… something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.’”

^He’s talking about it as occurring in the past, I think he means when he was mortal. Here he says it’s not equivalent to the act of taking blood from a victim, sex is a lesser experience for him.

  • Lestat’s description of his non-functioning Priapus in QOTD:

“I studied my reflection … and the organ, the organ we don’t need, poised as if ready for what it would never again know how to do or want to do, marble, a Priapus at a gate” – Lestat, Queen of the Damned

^This quote has been interpreted over and over again as meaning many things, one of which being that the vampires have a permanent boner, which I disagree with. I highly doubt Louis, someone with a lot of dignity, would be fine with walking around for eternity with a permanent boner. I blame this misunderstanding on the translators who translated “poised” to “erect” in various other languages.

I interpret that quote as meaning that his Priapus is just “waiting.” 

  • and Pandora’s description of Marius’ non-functioning (but very hard) dick in her book. Pandora wants Marius to sex her up on their ‘wedding night’ and he can’t do it, but they try, awkwardly:

He covered me and kissed my cheek. “Drink from me,” he said, “drink until the pain goes away. It’s only the body dying, drink Pandora, you are immortal.“
“Fill me, take me,” I said. I reached down between his legs.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
But it was hard, this organ I sought, the organ forever lost to the god Osiris. I guided it, hard and cold as it was, into my body. Then I drank and drank, and when I felt his teeth again on my neck, when he began to draw from me the new mixture that filled my veins, it was sweet suckling, and I knew him and loved him and knew all his secrets in one flash which meant nothing.  He was right. The lower organs meant nothing. He fed on me. I fed on him. This was our marriage. –Pandora

I think AR is telling us that in order to be immortal, a great sacrifice must be made. Not just outliving your loved ones, food and drink, sunlight, and your appearance being altered. For many people, sex is as necessary to life as eating and breathing. To give that up for eternity is a huge sacrifice, but, you do get super powers an immortality. Fair trade?