There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.
1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not. Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”
2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.”
Sometimes shipping something does mean that. Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.” Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B. Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.” And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes.
Listen to your parents, kids.
This really should be one of a handful of Public Service Announcements randomly and chronically inserted into one’s dash.
its not always about sex
condoning a ship or actions in a show doesn’t mean that you’re committing to say that’s a healthy relationship?
you cannot/should not petition the writers of a show with your opinion to change the show purely to satisfy your ship.
shipping something doesn’t give you the right to shit on other people’s ships??? if you’re shipping a typical relationship and someone else wants something dark and awful just to explore those mental dimensions then fucking let them
They have a bizarre kind of chemistry, don’t they?! If they weren’t both so obsessed with being alpha, they could really enjoy each other.
This is one of the only fanarts I’ve seen of them in any kind of shippiness, and even then, I think it’s the scene in TVL where Lestat is succumbing to Armand’s illusions.
“You know it was the damnedest luck!” I whispered suddenly. “I am an unwilling devil. I cry like some vagrant child. I want to go home.”
[Source unknown, even reverse-image searched. Tell me the source if you know it!]
Anyhow they have referred to eachother in canon as being brothers of a sort, so I tag them #murder brothers, if you want more Lestat/Armand action.
ooc: But… But I do like romantic and sexual relationships in fandoms. I usually write Armand/Daniel as romantic and sexual. I have many other ships that I love reading or writing in romantic and sexual ways. I have nothing against them at all. I certainly didn’t “blast” anyone for having them or liking them. I merely suggested that people stop holding up romance/sexual encounters over everything else as if they are the only sorts of relationships or encounters that matter.
Romance is important. But not important to all people because some people are aromantic. Sexual relationships are important to a lot of people. But not to all people because some people are asexual and some fall somewhere on the gray-ace scale. (And that doesn’t mean an aromantic asexual can’t enjoy reading or writing those things, as well. Just that romance and sex aren’t a priority for everyone.)
Fandom tends to put romantic ships on pedestal above all others. Probably because fandom on tumblr especially is obsessed with Shipping. People Ship It and if you don’t Ship It, you’re a “hater.” But not everything has to be a romantic ship.
Fandom also tends to take non-romantic and non-sexual canon relationships and turn them into something romantic, and that’s awesome. Fandom is all about taking canon and exploring all of its possibilities. If people want to write Jace Wayland and Simon Lewis as romantic, well, show me the slash fic! I am there.But I don’t want people holding up Jace/Simon as though it’s better as a romantic ship than a bromance or friendship, because platonic friendships and familial relationships and non-romantic love are important, too. And while it’s fun to read and write smut and sexytimes and UST and all forms of sexual tension, it’s also fun to explore other aspects and dynamics and levels of love/friendship/frenemies beyond messing up the sheets.
Lestat: *takes a deep breath*
Lestat: i lo–
anyone who has spent 5 seconds around him, ever: yes, you love Louis. we know. you love Louis so much; he’s the light of your life, you love him so much. you just love Louis. we KNOW. you love Louis. you fucking love Louis, okay. we know, we get it. LOUIS. WE GET IT.
^This is like the only time they hold hands in the movie ;A; not ghey enuf
I think I can say w/ 100% certainty that AR did not set out to write the Vampire Chronicles as we know it now. When her original short story of IWTV was published in 1973, she didn’t plan for a 2014 VC that diverged from canon, sinking several ships in its wake (including Lestat/Rowan).
No, I don’t think the VC relies on Lestat’s romantic relationships specifically to keep the series interesting and keep ppl connecting with him. There are ships in canon other than whoever Lestat is throwing himself at! Armand/Daniel, for example. Marius/Pandora. Marius/Amadeo.
Of course, I’m sure some readers need the romance in VC in order to stay interested/connected to it, and that’s fine, too, but I would ask them to consider looking deeper.
TL;DR: Lestat is all about love, yes, but not necessarily in pursuit of specific ships. He’s filling a void that was made in his childhood and no one seems to be enough to fill it other than simply the pursuit of it. AR does throw in a little fanservice now and then, but I think she writes for deeper reasons, and the romance aspect – or lack thereof – is part of her exploration.
Hit the jump for more. I also address your doggie headcanon 😉
AR wrote the first short story basically to ask why her daughter died of leukemia. She wanted to interview God, the Devil, and/or Death himself. She wanted to know: Was she and/or her husband being punished for being bad Christians, or was their daughter a bad Christian? When a parent loses a child they want to know why. So she made Louis, and he answered her, “There was no reason, that girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t serve Heaven or Hell, I was just hungry, I’m sorry, I feel like shit. Also, blame Lestat.”
Then she had to interview Lestat and find out where the evil comes from. How evil can he be, when he was forced into vampiring, totally against his will?
Everything else that followed in the series stems from that central question. Why do bad things happen? Why do people do bad things? What if the person doing the bad thing did it accidentally? Or they feel terrible about it? What if they are trying to change and be better? Why do they want to be better?
Lestat strives to be good bc he wants love. He is making up for an enormous void, his formative years spent mostly unloved and untouched, a childhood in which the only love he got was from his animals, the teachers in the school he briefly went to, the theatre troupe he ran off with, and a teensy bit from his mother. When he expressed himself, he was often shot down, and with beatings.
He knows the equations he’s been taught:
Be Good —> Get Loved.
Give Love —> Get Loved.
Be in Control —> Take Love.
So I think his huge heart is a hungry one, he can’t get enough, and he can’t seem to get enough from one person. I think he’s afraid of commitment. To commit to one person is to risk that person having too much control.
Having lots of relationships, well, I do think AR was doing a little fanservice when she set him up with women. That was probably a response to so many POTP begging her to set him up with a woman for a change.
But I on the other hand, I feel like alot of his dating record is unsurprising. Who can predict their future lovers? I think we can all learn from our past relationships, and that improves subsequent ones. Lestat does tend to repeat some mistakes and he does have issues with consent in relationships, but he at least is good at confessing these things and presumably working on them.
We all agree Lestat is a dog person!
He had a pack of them as a mortal, and yes, I think he’d love to own a bunch of fluffy dogs that make him happy! But dogs do not like vampires:
“I’d expected to hear from [the dog] before this time, for surely it would pick up my scent, know instinctively that I wasn’t human, and then begin to sound its natural alarm of growls and barks. Dogs had done that enough to me over the centuries, though they don’t always. Sometimes I can entrance them and command them. But I feared the instinctive rejection and it always sent a pain through my heart.” – Lestat, Tale of the Body Thief.
That’s part of what made Mojo so special, that he seemed to override whatever natural dog instinct with love for Lestat ❤
Lestat also has expensive tastes in terms of furniture and fashion, and that’s incompatible with having a pack of dogs. People with even one dog have to dog-proof their home to some extent or risk sacrificing things to a curious doggie.
And plus he’s a wanderlust, he likes to just up and leave for long periods, and he can’t leave a pack of dogs with Louis to babysit. Plus, he knows he can’t be there for all those puppies during the day when they need to be walked and run around, so I would imagine he would have to set them up to be taken care of on someone’s huge farm or wherever so he can play with them occasionally when he needs a good dose of animal therapy ❤
I assume you wanted a fluffy answer (and I answered something similar here in a fluffy way) I mean I have an OTP tag that is dominated with Lestat/Louis and I was all well and prepared to answer you as such, but when I really thought about it… and was talking about it with thelionscrimsonclaws…
I remembered this quote:
“I don’t like myself, you know. I love myself, of course, I’m committed to myself till my dying day. But I don’t like myself.“ – Lestat de Lioncourt, Memnoch the Devil.
And I feel like I doubt whether canon!Lestat can truly trust any of all his lovers to be the ONE TRUE LOVE. I think his one true love is himself, and his mission to find the answers he needs, so really, LIFE ITSELF.
Lestat/Life = OTP!
No one is better than he is at beating himself up and then healing from it; he’s had to rely on himself and his own judgment for most of the big decisions in his life. For better or worse.
Also, I think Lestat requires a lot of different interactions with different lovers, no one individual seems able (or willing) to satisfy all these myriad needs. Everyone who loves Lestat intimately seems to accept that they will have to share him, but he has an enormous amount of love to give, there seems to be a limitless supply for all of them ❤
Spoilers ahead…
Of the ones you mentioned, each one was a unique relationship. He’s never the same exact person, he behaves differently in different pairings.
Louis: If there were a One True Love, it would be Louis. Their relationship, while volatile, even lethal at times, is something they both cleave to. Louis has learned from Lestat’s example and has become stronger over time, emotionally and physically (although he was always somewhat of a BAMF). Lestat has gained the skills of inner peace and patience from Louis’ example. Their chemistry has been the best of any pairing; they’re not two halves of one whole, but two individuals who challenge each other, who strive to surprise each other still, and in my opinion,that’s what the best relationships do.
However,
Louis tried to check out of the series w/out permission at one point, and well… that can’t be ignored.
Nicolas was Lestat’s first real long-term relationship at a time when Lestat desperately needed love and nurturing and wanted to give it back, too. Nicolas is the first person who really listened to him and they both helped each other immensely… but I don’t think that relationship could ever really work, because deep down Nicolas and Lestat always wanted different things out of life.
Akasha used Lestat. She held him in captivity and drugged him on her blood and her mental illusions, keeping him in a disoriented state by screwing with his Deathsleep patterns. She made him believe it was love, but it was really more a form of addiction. She needed him as a pawn in her grand scheme, both bc he’s a total studmuffin and also to win over the vampires that were loyal to him. She said to him that he would be her “instrument:”
“You are my only true companion, my finest instrument…. But as the stars are my witness, you will aid me in my mission. Or you will be no more than the instrument for the commencement, as Judas was to Christ. And I shall destroy you as Christ destroyed Judas once your usefulness is past.” – Akasha, Queen of the Damned.
So I wouldn’t call Lestat/Akasha a loving relationship, but hey, if you like it, that’s fine, too, I’m a #Ship and let ship girl!
Rowan Mayfair – to be honest, I can’t remember much of this pairing except that Lestat seemed captivated by her for no apparent reason other than that she was a strong woman and had a kind of tortured soul, which he recognized as being like his own. He promises her the Dark Gift:
“And the night will come when we’ll share the Blood. I promise you. The Dark Gift will be yours.” – Lestat, Blood Canticle
But AR diverted from canon with Prince Lestat, essentially rendering the Rowan/Lestat ship null and void. AR decided to sink that ship. I couldn’t really envision Rowan as being part of the coven, and it would be painful to see Louis shoved aside YET AGAIN to make way for YET ANOTHER fledgling.
…Fortunately David Talbot hasn’t minded being relegated to the background, and only getting brief moments of (dubcon) intimacy from Lestat. David knows he has to share.
I struggled with this answer, because, while it would be diplomatic to simply apologize, I won’t apologize that it was hurtful, because, as you’ll learn in this post, that group of “more obsessive” people have been and are much crueler to their victims than I was with that one word about them.
~Here is a picture of Our Lady of VC for the more obsessive fans to frame and worship~
Side note, before we go any further: Anon, why do you care who I lump anyone in with? I could say everyone who follows X is “a gullible baby,” and everyone who follows Y is “a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world,” but that doesn’t make either true. Obviously, if you don’t think you follow AR “slavishly,” then you don’t! Take a breath, this is tumblrland, this blog is for VC fandom love and fanworks (and fandom etiquette and education sometimes), it’s meant to be an outlet, an escape from reality, so don’t take things personally.
This is actually a great opportunity to educate you, Anon, and anyone else who might not be aware of the history between Anne Rice, her “People of the Page” (her phrase, not mine. ”POTP”) followers, her fandom outside of POTP, and outside people who have had opinions on her works. I could write a dissertation on this topic but it’s not worth the effort; this post will be TL;DR for most people. I’m doing this so I can tag it and use it again the next time this topic comes up.
The short answer is: In the beginning, all of AR’s FB followers were POTP. No distinction needed to be made, because they were ALL highly obsessive to the point that they were her online army she could rally to attack people/reviewers who dared to have an opinion on her works. There have been many instances in which something critical to AR came along – or something that she INTERPRETED as critical – and AR makes a statement on her FB page about it, which is a thinly veiled order rallying her troops to inundate that source with their “discussion” on that review. Sometimes her POTP simply made so many personal attacks in the comments on the offending critical post that the victim is forced to withdraw/delete their review. This whole cycle has happened too many times. In fact, AR has recognized this pattern and actually said that she will no longer link to negative reviews of her works (½/14):
“Guys, I am always open to publishing negative reviews of my work for consideration, to balance the many positive reviews to which I link. But the negative reviewer must bring the review here and request it. When I’ve linked to negative reviews for discussion, some of the reviewers in question have felt that they were unfairly targeted; and they have objected to some of the comments made on their reviews. It just doesn’t work. So I no longer volunteer any negative review, no matter how well written, for discussion. Again, reviewers are welcome to bring their reviews to the page, and post links and offer them for discussion. Same with blog posts. I might not repost every single one; but I’m happy to see them posted on the page and to read them and consider them for reposting.”
“… if I link to them for discussion, some of these people get very upset. They accuse me of “demonizing” them. They call the People of the Page “hell hounds” for their comments. And admittedly, some people do make very unpleasant comments…”
She has 1.1 million followers as of this posting, and I, myself, am one of them. So, of all 1.1 million, at least one of her followers is not an obsessive “hell hound,” as described above.
I actually think she has moved past much of the drama, and now her POTP (both our kind, Anon, and the “more obsessive” kind) are more focused on news items, poetry, VC adaptations & casting ideas, headcanons/canon requests for AR, and other good things she likes discussion on. I enjoyed her #Fan Questions for Lestat, and the 15 yr old inside me still gets excited when she posts something about “Where are they now?” like Lestat doodling on a napkin, or the whole coven all flopped together on a couch watching Hell on Wheels, that’s good stuff *u*
Hit the jump for links to examples of POTP vs. reviewers clashing, etc.
1. War on Fanfic
So this is before the POTP’s time, but it’s worth noting that Anne Rice waged a War on Fanfic in the 1990′s. She had every right to do so, but it destroyed the fandom. She sicc’d her pack of lawyers on all VC fanfic authors, and forced speculative fiction (old-timey-wimey word for “fanfic”) sites to shut down. The fandom was driven underground; fanfic could only be shared very privately, possibly through email exchanges or carrier pigeons.
This experience taught AR a valuable lesson: Anything that she didn’t approve of could be shut down by forces she could marshal. Lawyers cost money, and take on only legitimate legal cases, and legal battles can get messy (she’s had other legal issues but I won’t go there, you can use your newfangled googley-woogly machine for that).
Here’s where the POTP became AR’s army, and they didn’t cost a penny, and there were no legal ramifications in sending them forth on her behalf.
“Kayleigh Herbertson found Pandora to be a poorly written novel where the vampires didn’t act like vampires… after Herbertson was done writing the review she took the book, which was already falling apart, and turned it into decoupage.”
“[AR] chose to respond by posting a link on her Facebook page (where her 740 thousand Facebook followers could find it) and appended the invitation: “Comments most welcome.”.“
Her POTP left an enormous amount of harassing comments on that page, and eventually, it was taken down. Here are my two favorite POTP comments from that article:
HOW DARE YOU EVEN COMPARE SHITTY ASS STEPHANIE MEYER TO THE QUALITY WORK THAT IS ANNE RICE HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU FUCKING HAG, I HOPE YOU GET HERPES
Aaaaand here’s AR’s call to action discussion on Knights’ review: “… I stumbled on this amazing negative review of my erotica, “Beauty’s Release,” … I would honestly welcome opinions on this review. Please understand: I am not trying to incite “fans” to pile on this reviewer. Not at all. What I welcome here is honest discussion because the review puzzles and baffles me. This is perhaps the longest negative review I’ve ever seen of my erotica, and I’m somewhat, well, stunned, by the tone, intricacy, and length of all this… Your comments are most welcome.”
Hope this helped! I think we’re all coexisting pretty well these days, her People Of The Page and her – what I like to call ourselves – People Off the Page. Let’s just all take a chill pill and enjoy this series together, and if not, let’s just do it in our own way. Live and let live.
I-want-my-IWTV 