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.
Hell man sometimes it means “these two are TERRIBLE and I want to watch them burn like a catastrophic forest fire as a proxy for all the shit I don’t actually want in real life (like to light my own apartment on fire and scream) and then laugh at the destruction at the end.”
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.
Hell man sometimes it means “these two are TERRIBLE and I want to watch them burn like a catastrophic forest fire as a proxy for all the shit I don’t actually want in real life (like to light my own apartment on fire and scream) and then laugh at the destruction at the end.”
Anon, your message sat in my inbox for over a week because I don’t remember enough about their relationship to answer this question.
I’ll open it up to anyone to answer!
I love Marius & Pandora together, they give me life and when they’re getting along it’s like the closest thing to a healthy relationship Marius has ever had in this series. Anne said she based their penchant for bickering with each other on how she and her husband Stan used to be, so I think it’s really easy to read Pandora as Marius being a Complete Dick as usual but it’s another situation where you have to take AR context into it a little bit and I think in a lot of ways she was making the point about how sometimes people can genuinely love each other while clashing during everyday domestic life.
For me personally there’s an IDEA of Marius/Pandora that has never really had a chance to happen, because they were still relatively young (in comparison to how old they are now) when they were together, and I think they were still very volatile and emotional as baby vampires at the time, and I think there’s a lot of potential for them to have a really fulfilling relationship now if they decide to. But Pandora has a really important role in Marius’s life because he’s a person who like HATES BEING DISOBEYED and one of the reasons they clash so much is that she AINT ABOUT MARIUS’S BULLSHIT and she’s always been able to call him on his garbage and refuse him and argue with him and challenge him.
And like, despite the mountain of evidence that points to Marius being a Complete Dick, I do think that within the Riceverse he truly loves the people he involves himself with, even though his version of love is often unhealthy and dangerous. And I think it’s important that even though they got on each other’s nerves and she was a pain in his ass, he loved her so desperately and pined after her for centuries.
I think in the scope of VC (and this is speaking towards like a hypothetical eternity that none of us will ever see because it would hypothetically stretch past any our lives haha) that if Marius can ever redeem himself as a person, Pandora might be the one to challenge him and drive him to change. She’s sort of a key to Marius’s past that no one else in this world can be and I think that would be invaluable when it comes to knocking him off his pedestal.
I have a lot of headcanon fantasy about how good they could maybe be for each other and it would be really satisfying for me if Marius could like, stop being a douche because I really like so much else about him as a character. And it would also be satisfying for Anne to utilize Pandora as a character because I think she has a lot of potential but she’s turned into like a ~sad vampire lady~ background accessory and I’m not a fan. And knowing AR and how these books go, she’s not gonna take advantage of this because she doesn’t seem to feel the need to challenge Marius anyway.
VC PROTIP: I know a lot of people skip Pandora but HONESTLY LIKE THERE’S SO MUCH DIRT ON MARIUS IN IT LOL like he’s such an asshole in it and I think it’s really good contextual evidence about him that’s worth reading. It’s enjoyable as a Marius fan but I imagine it’s also validating to get more material on hating him, too, if you’re on that side.
That’s so sweet of you! You’ve made my day, telling @wicked-felina and me this *u*
VC has few F/F (are we supposed to call them w|w now?) ships, there is plenty of room for more. It would be such an honor if Yvette and Jesse became a new ship thanks to our little AU!
Jesse/Yvette was something we didn’t predict, and it’s not a real ship (yet!). Btw, that’s Hattie Watson as Jesse on the right, from her IG. I’m using a pic of Yvette from movie!IWTV bc our Yvette was originally inspired by movie!IWTV’s Yvette, who some of us headcanon grew up with Louis and was more of a sister to him than his own sister. That they genuinely cared about eachother. In our fic,
Yvette is a baker par excellence, grew up with Louis, and they even were a couple at one point. That’s long over now, but they’re very good friends.
[X] Lookit this cutie, Hattie Watson! She has tatts, she could be a modern AU Jesse w/ tatts.
I’ll 👏 ship 👏 whatever 👏 the 👏 fuck 👏 I 👏 want 👏 thanks
Actually 👏 many 👏 postal 👏 services👏 have 👏 rules 👏 and 👏 regulations 👏 on 👏 what 👏 you 👏 can 👏 and 👏 cannot 👏 ship 👏 many 👏 regulations 👏 depend 👏 on 👏 the 👏 destination 👏 weight 👏 and 👏 content 👏
-My poor baby didn’t have the oportunity to leave her own life and be genuinely happy-
Actually, in the first version of IWTV, Claudia wasn’t killed off by the Parisian coven (from the Vampire Companion):
“In the first version of [IWTV], Claudia eventually goes off with three vampire brothers whom she meets in Paris. She does not die. As such, it was as if Rice had attempted to give her daughter a form of immortality. Rice, however, experienced psychological problems that cleared up only after she had rewritten the ending – by killing off Claudia and taking Louis through an experience of intense grieving. This version was much more cathartic for Rice.”
One could say that killing her off for the sake of Louis’ development was harsh, and it is known as the Stuffed into the Fridge trope. Just bc it’s a trope doesn’t make it any less effective, tho!
“A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and sidekicks.”
-What if Claudia wasn’t killed by the Parisian coven. Would Louis leave her for Armand anyways?-
That was his intention, that she was satisfied with her new companion and that he would still see them, still communicate with her. You don’t go through that kind of relationship (I think the word “beloved” in movie!IWTV was perfect, bc they’re closer to eachother than those in a brother-sister or father-daughter relationship).
Louis always wanted to see Claudia happy and satisfied, and he beat himself up a lot for his failures in that. When it became clear that he was torn between her and Armand, it was Claudia who brought Madeleine into the picture and it was only after a lot of argument (and Armand’s influence, which Armand admitted to later) that Louis gave in to Claudia’s request to turn Madeleine for Claudia.
Louis and Claudia’s last real conversation in IWTV together was about this (under the cut, for length, abbreviated here), and you can see that they’re both not thrilled with the separation but that it has to happen.
Claudia: But do you
truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?
Louis: It’s meant to be. It’s almost
that sort of direction… He alone can give me the strength to be
what I am. I can’t continue to live divided and consumed with misery.
Either I go with him, or I die. And it’s something else, which is
irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me…
Claudia: Which is?
Louis: That I love him
Claudia: No doubt you do, but then, you could love even me.
Louis: Claudia, Claudia.
Claudia: I only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me… That I can get back to you…I’ve hurt you so often,
I’ve caused you so much pain.‘
Possibly a very unpopular opinionbut: I don’t think Madeleine and Claudia were sexual w/ each other in the mortal sense, but there was more to them than a mother-daughter relationship. So Yes, I think she and Madeleine could have been happy together in a way that was impossible for Claudia and Louis.
I don’t think Claudia’s pursuit of Madeleine was purely for a platonic mother-daughter relationship. That may have been part of it, and it was how she sold it to Louis because he couldn’t perceive Claudia as more than his daughter or as an adult trapped in a little body who would be capable of being involved in a romantic way with anyone, and she needed him to actually do the work for her since she was unable to perform the Dark Gift herself (and I do think she tried before asking him).
While it may not have been a relationship in a more conventionally romantic sense (I don’t believe they had anything sexual, in the mortal sense, going on), I do think Claudia/Madeleine was a ship of sorts, more of an emotional relationship. Claudia was the one in control, she was comparatively older and stronger in personality.
Hit the jump, cut for length.
-Bc I feel like her searching for answers was her equivalent of teenage years, she was angry with the world.-
She had every right to be angry! Not their intention, but her “parents” condemned her to an eternity of body dysmorphia and being perceived as smtg she was not, potentially worse than death. Similar things happen in real life, too, ppl are born with syndromes that cause them to appear “disfigured” or “underdeveloped” to society at large, and they too, may be angry with the world or their own parents for that. Teenagers going through puberty AND adults long past that phase can have body horror and be frustrated that their external physical vessels do not match who they are inside. From what I understand of it, there are many forms of body dysphoria.
Even w/o the body issues, she still would have sought answers to the questions Louis had asked. He didn’t seem to have any body dysphoria but he had plenty of questions beyond any equivalent of a teenage phase. They were both extremely frustrated at the lack of answers.
-But towards the end she has accepted that not all her questions have answers and she seems less frustrated with her condition, for me this is when she reaches adulthood.-
That’s life! Not all of our questions will be answered, but she at least seemed to have achieved some inner peace with not having the answers.
She may have reached adulthood long before that, when she decided to assassinate Lestat for his treatment of her. She wanted revenge on the world, so she took it out on the one who seemed most responsible for her existence. That seems like an adult decision to me, to kill the person who gave you life. But then, she may not have been physiologically capable of ever “reaching adulthood” since the human brain doesn’t finish development until around 20-25 yrs old [X].
Louis and Claudia’s
last real conversation in IWTV together:
“`But do you truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?’ [Claudia said.] I turned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious in her dislike of [Armand], in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he wished her death, which I did not believe. She didn’t realize what I realized: he could not want her death, because I didn’t want it. But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him. `It’s meant to be. It’s almost that sort of direction,’ I said, as if it were just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts. `He alone can give me the strength to be what I am. I can’t continue to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I go with him, or I die,’ I said. `And it’s something else, which is irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me… ‘ “
`Which is?’ she asked.
`That I love him,’ I said.
`No doubt you do,’ she mused. `But then, you could love even me.’ ”
`Claudia, Claudia.’ I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. She drew up close to my chest. “
`I only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me …’ she whispered. `That I can get back to you … I’ve hurt you so often, I’ve caused you so much pain.’ Her words trailed off. She was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, In a little while, I won’t have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her. There has always been such pleasure in that simple thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
Can someone make Garrett Borns a vampire? Please? He’s so beautiful, and has the voice of an angel. I think he’d make a gorgeous Louis.
#VC casting #YES
@annabellioncourt pointed this out to me and I have to agree that he’d make a a great vampire, and specifically, a gorgeous Louis
♥u♥
Also, as a side note, he’s 24 yrs old in 2016, so we’d have an actor playing really close to the canon age of the character!!! which is always good, bc he’s actually living that point in his life now, might be a little more authentic than reflecting back on it.
So he’s a singer and a model, and I looked up a few vids and couldn’t choose just one as an example. You can do the youtube and check him out there, but here’s a few things I had thoughts on:
[X] ^LOOKIT THIS SMILE. He has dimples which I think is a huge plus. Louis is, in fact, capable of smiling. I imagine Lestat made him wear the shades bc of reasons.
Lestat: “Oh, big Beatles fan? You like John Lennon so very much? Why don’t you wear shades like his, here- ”
Louis: “Those are more ELTON John than John Lennon, Lestat.”
Lestat: “Put them on or I’ll put them on for you.”
^His little smile, in this dreamy lighting, he’s got that ethereal quality we require in a Louis.
^”Oh god Lestat, what fresh hell have you caused?” He’s got the right build, too, that muscular but spare body.
Hit the jump for a fewww moar.
^”That sounds awful deal with it YOURSELF” Louis is actually COLD AS ICE.
^Someone is gonna get yelled at for unauthorized haircut.
Based off of the Le Mort Joyeux plot, in which Louis and Nicolas meet in 1970s San Francisco.
Louis’ hand followed the wooden banister as he ascended the steps behind the other vampire. He moved slowly, reaching the third floor a few paces after this “Nicolas.” He could hear music playing in an occupied apartment down the hall, a recording of The Beatle’s Hey Jude. It smelled of incense here too; bohemian indeed.
“Take me to heaven or hell.” They were the first words he’d spoken since they’d left the bridge. – The other man’s voice had a soft, beautiful cadence to it, slipping into Nicolas’ ears like a secret. He turned around to face him, his face gentle, playfully inquisitive. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, breathing in the vampire’s scent, the sound and smell of the blood pumping underneath his flesh. He shrugged, gracefully, his eyes finding those shocking green ones. “How about a little of both, hm?”
I-want-my-IWTV 