Sure, skip over to TVA! No probs on that. Don’t suffer through the body swap episode or the Bible/VC crossover if you don’t want to! Life’s too short.
^Kitty by @berrym [X]
We’re all selective as to what canon we’re willing to accept anyway so even those who have read TOBT and/or MTD don’t necessarily accept one or both as canon. Some ppl insist that everything published is canon. But here’s the thing, there’s “the two crossover novels Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, which Rice herself has now disavowed,” (X @sanguinivora) so like, even AR doesn’t demand that we accept everything as canon. At least that’s my own take on it.
TOBT: No spoilers. I don’t think Armand or Daniel are even mentioned in TOBT (I don’t have a copy nearby to check). But in their absence, it would appear that they were either A) unaware of what was happening w/ Lestat, or B) unwilling to help him. I don’t remember that ever being really developed, but Lestat does mention sometimes how it seemed like no one was WILLING to help, that they all were aware and left him to fend for himself.
HUGE SPOILER IN MTD under the cut, you have been warned.
MTD has alot of baggage bc there were those negative reviews that came out about it, and tbh I didn’t read them bc there was an avalanche of them, so I don’t know if any of them were fair or not, but I remember that AR made alot of fiery public response about it (to put it lightly) and was using her FB POTP army against any critical reviewers, it was a dark time, so that may have soured the fandom on that book a lot.
MTD was published in 1995 and it was supposed to be the LAST book in the series. 3 years later we got The Vampire Armand, because…………….
*****HUGE SPOILER*****
*****YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*****
At the end of MTD, Armand believes that Lestat really went to Heaven and Hell when shown a particular piece of evidence, and Armand chooses to go out into the sunlight, and die:
“I will bear witness. I will stand here with my arms outstretched,” [Armand] cried, “and when
the sun rises, my death shall confirm the miracle.”
Apparently that caused such an uproar that fans were showing up to MTD booksignings wearing homemade “Armand Lives” t-shirts, and AR acquiesced and brought him back! Here’s one I designed wayyy after the fact, like two months ago:
I-want-my-IWTV 