“And how could I ever explain how I had reached this moment, I who had been Born to Darkness of rape, and sought for redemption in a borrowed mortal body, and followed spirits yet unexplained to realms of inexplicable Heaven and nightmarish Hell, only to fall back again to the brutal Earth, broken, and battered, and defeated? How to explain why this, this alone, was the bold and terrifying alliance that would give me the passion to travel the road of the centuries, of the millennia, of the aeons of uncharted and unimagined time?”
Lestat’s a hot shot, and would probably bet everything all at once, but doesn’t even care when he ends up sitting in his birthday suit.
Benji had to beg to join since he’s technically a minor, but when Marius said “NO” Armand just looked at him like he was a camera on the office. Marius sucks at poker and ends up naked next; then Benji because he hasn’t been alive as long to perfect his poker face.
Sybelle is playing piano in the corner and no one thinks she notices but there’s a mirror above her on the wall and she really like’s tonight’s entertainment.
Louis was literally dragged into the room to play by Lestat and Armand, and it happened to be the only thing that the two of them worked together on that entire year.
Armand’s done next, and shoots death glares at the others, even though he’s not the least bit embarrassed.
And then there’s Louis, where there, on the final set of turns, when he’s the last one in, they look at him with nothing off but his shoes.
“Louis when did you lose them?”
“I didn’t, I just felt like taking them off and relaxing.”
Because of the Ebooks-tree pillage of AO3, I know of several fanfic authors who will be taking down all of their fic, so get over there and dL what you want to save.
Sign ups for the 2015 VC Secret Rose Gift Exchange are open! Why Secret Rose? Because the birth flower of the month of June (when gifts are due) is a rose, that’s why. -so witty-
A few things that were added to the rules page since the last exchange:
We’re not going to demand you do it, but if you would pretty please open your submit box the day we send out assignment (May 9), it would be really, really nice of you. It’s so much easier for us to send them via the submit box, and the submit box is generally more reliable than ask boxes.
Please confirm you received your assignment. (This will be mentioned again in the assignment message, if you forget.)
Try to be creative with your prompts! It’ll help the person gifting to you if you throw a few ideas at them. “Louis, Lestat, and Claudia doing some fun things when she was still a kid, maybe involving flowers and spring,” tends to be more helpful than just “something with Louis, Lestat, and Claudia.”
You have until May 8th at 11:59PM CDT to join the exchange. As always, the day after, on May 9th, you will receive your assignment. This is like a Secret Santa, so don’t tell anyone who you’re gifting to, especially not the person you’re making a gift for! You’ll have until June 6th at 11:59PM CDT to submit your gifts to this page, and then they’ll post on June 9th.
Feel free to reblog this around, even if you can’t participate! All of the fanworks that come from these gift exchanges are truly a gift to the whole fandom.
(ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ *~TVL~* is my favorite bc of reasons:
it’s undiluted Lestat,
from his POV,
his backstory,
his midstory,
his modus operandi…
it answers alot of the questions and corrects the record somewhat from IWTV (both have unreliable narrators but STILL)
…while bringing in a wholly new vampire origin mythology!!
and sets us up for more stories.
Listing the rest from most to least fave under the cut.
I’ll try not to spoil but consider yourself WARNED. ＼(^ω^＼)
You know this fluctuates ok? Sometimes I’m in the mood for crackiness, but the top 5 are generally constants.
SPOILER ALERT MAYBE
TVL – bc of reasons
IWTV – bc it was the gateway drug to all this, and bc of Louis’ voice being so strong, very classical gothic novel. There was alot of existential crisis here, and mixed right in were some of the best insults and humor I’d ever read up until that time. (Louis: “There’s nothing left for you to tell me about life. I haveno need of you and no use for you. It’s you who need me, and if you
touch but one of the Freniere slaves, I’ll get rid of you. It will be a
battle between us, and I needn’t point out to you I have more wit to
fare better in my little finger than you in your entire frame. Do as I
say.‘” OH SNAP.
ToBT – Truly a “Lestat Don’t Do the Thing” “I Did the Thing” “GDI Lestat” book, in which he gets the chance to be mortal again, and this sums up his opinion of that experience: “I’ve watched two-year-old humans with interest for centuries. They’re miserable. They rush about, fall down, and scream almost constantly. They hate being human! They know already that it’s some sort of dirty trick.” I feel ya.
MtD – Yes okay I love Memnoch the Devil bc of alot of reasons, but mostly for the ideas it presents about why God created man and the world and what the deal was with sending Jesus down to mingle among people, and of course Lestat is asked to be the Prince of Hell, bc why not? It’s got alot going for it, the settings are amazing, the amount of Lestat being overwhelmed by his sensory input is like a rollercoaster ride, it’s some intense stuff.
QotD – there are alot more characters in here and it’s fun to jump around among the different POVs as the story progresses. The Queen herself has a wildly innovative concept for bringing Peace on Earth and it has a major flaw in that it does not include Bette Midler singing “From a Distance.”
Merrick – Louis returns as a more central character in several books, and it’s not for the faint of heart. It rekindles the L/L intimacy in a whole new way.
TVA – I am not a huge lover of Armand but in this book I feel like I got to know him better, it’s sumptuous, I would like a graphic novel plzkthanx, and it has an edginess as he is telling his story to someone who hasn’t yet earned his full trust and respect.
BaG – Marius’ story, follows Armand’s in my list bc I like Armand just 12% more than Marius. Partially bc of what Marius does in the later canon ugh. He lost alot of points for me. I can explain his reasons but I don’t have to LIKE THE OUTCOME all the same.
PL – Not sure if canon but… there are a few scenes in here that could stand alone and are worth reading the book for, plus I definitely approve of the last few major plot points. I think those were handled very well and would reread them. Yes I can start at 25% from the end of a book and reread from there WHY NOT?
BW – Quinn has grown more tolerable to me over time, and his story is very rural NOLA IIRC, with alot of spiritual stuff happening.
Pandora – I never really “got” her when I tried to read this when I was 15, probably bc her ship with Marius was so impossible for both of them, and her sadness was too much but I should give this book another try alllllll these number of years later.
BC – one of the crackiest for sure. I can’t remember most of it but it was intended to be the last VC, so it has a bunch of things happening as if it were the last opportunity to have them happen. Also the crossover… um… yeah, no.
Long answer: SAAAAAAAAME HEEEEEEERE. It wasn’t always this way. I had a mother once wtf self? I still do. And movie!Louis, he had a wife. He was mortal, the same as she, and SO WAS I.
AR made us what we are, didn’t she? *sobs*
I digress… lol…
I answered this a little differently awhile back, when sonicdreamworld asked me who my fave was in IWTV alone. I think Claudia drew me into the whole series, I identified with her first bc I was 11, and felt mature for my age, and wanted to be taken seriously, and all that frustration that goes along with that. I was obsessed with antagonists at that point in my reading life, so I of course loved the friction between Lestat and everyone Claudia.
In TVL Lestat had me at Hello, the little bastard. So many of his character traits were in line with mine (tactlessness, infallible optimism, hawtness, etc.), I felt I’d found my spirit animal. So much the better that other people feel this way about him, too! I feel a definite connection with others who have, for better or worse, laid their affections with him ❤
Like Louis, for example, you know Lestat is his fave, too!
yES of course I would! But if it’s not in league with Anne Rice, you have the possibility of getting slapped with a copyright infringement suit 😛
Now, I reblog tons of VC fanart, and fanworks, bc I love it, and there is some difference between the artists sharing it for free vs. charging money for it, but it seems that AR must be aware of fanart made for commission (paintings, prints, etc.) and she hasn’t made any negative statements about it. In fact, she’s complimented more than one fanartist (for example, garama) and at least one cosplayer (for example sheepskeleton)(it’s a form of art so it totally counts)… so I think we’re somewhat safe so long as we keep it small-scale and don’t poke the bear by throwing it directly in her face.
I actually do intend to commission some VC fanartists at some point, just need a good enough idea to ask for.
How can we be lovers, if we can’t be friends? How can we start over when the fighting never ends? Baby, how can we make love, if we can’t make amends? How can we be lovers, if we can’t be, can’t be friends?
First of all I have to say the entire series is sort of jokingly – and endearingly – called the Vampire Crackicles. The crazy is a big part of why we enjoy it. Dysfunctional vampires! The first 3-4 books in the series seem to be the more highly regarded, VC-fandom-wide, maybe bc the crazy was better woven in. We all have our differences in opinion as to what we consider to be canon after that.
Do I think you’ll like the rest of the series? I don’t know what you liked specifically about the first 2 books, but if you did like them enough to reread them, you must also enjoy the sense of humor that’s mixed in with the angst, the love, the overall crazy!
Short answer is give it all a chance, read it in order, and decide for yourself, it’s meant to be fun, it’s not a religion ;]
For more on Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, clickez ici:
The books you mentioned have earned a negative reputation partly because they are involved with the crossover of the Mayfair Witches series, and introduced a whole bunch of new characters, when the fandom craved more about the already established characters (like Daniel Molloy!) and that the plots of those stories didn’t seem as engaging as in the first 3-4 books (at least for me, because they were maybe too ambitious or not structured in a more believable way).
Blackwood Farm focuses on a new set of characters (including a few of AR’s Mayfair Witches, it’s one of the 3 books that makes the crossover of the two series) than in IWTV, TVL, or QotD. It’s got some very interesting mythology and you do have Lestat being Lestat, but he’s been through alot at this point in canon and is not the same throw-caution-to-the-wind lovable moron that he was previously. He’s got a gentleness and a snappiness about him.
Blood Canticle is very cracky bc it’s further down the Mayfair Witches crossover story. Now Lestat has very strange religious grappling. It was meant to be the very last VC and you can see Anne Rice tried to pack in as much excitement and fireworks as possible. Sometimes this ended up making the story jump the shark.
I-want-my-IWTV 