I am now imagining a trio of dysfunctional vampires or immortals or something. And 2-300 years later, one of them is still That Fucking Guy.
it’s not technology, buddy, it’s just that no one agrees with your entitlement to their attention
HEYO
roachpatrol nailed it. A lot of people are very bothered by being deprived of a “polite” way to interrupt and demand the attention of people who don’t want to talk to them right then, and dress this up as being concerned that people aren’t interested in the “world around them”, where the “world around them” actually means “engaging with me right this minute.”
(cont’d) (I mean, you could make an argument for Dracula and his Brides, but nothing about their relationship is really shown as positive or romantic. Everything else consists of vampires victimizing unwilling humans, which is definitely not romantic *or* consensual.)
(Dracula *tries* to turn Mina into a pawn, quite literally through mind-control, but it ends up backfiring spectacularly when she turns their psychic connection back around on him to help defeat him.)
^Hmmmm, maybe I’ll give it a try, that’s intriguing. I’ve seen a few of the film adaptations but not watched them with the attention they deserved.
Re: Dracula and his Brides, I like this comparison pic of them from the 1931 “Dracula” v. the ones from the 2004 ”VAN HELSING”, and while I haven’t watched the ‘31 adaptation, from this still one could argue that they look frumpy/dowdy by today’s standards, but maybe they’re MORE scary bc of the no-frills aesthetic. Could be that that way of dressing and hairstyling was sexual and scary for its time. Plus historical context, the Depression, World War I, all that stuff would need to be considered.
The Brides always struck me as being pretty flat, I don’t remember them having distinctive personalities, and maybe the polygamy of it felt like Dracula was collecting a harem rather than really respecting and loving each of them as individuals, but again, I haven’t read the book to know if they do each have their own developed character and/or a more substantive relationship with him. Or maybe the sister-wife aspect was part of the horror of the story, or perhaps the story was ahead of its time in terms of polyamory being more socially accepted today. Again, historical context would be needed for all of that, but it’s all good food for thought.
(I mean, you could make an argument for Dracula and his Brides, but nothing about their relationship is really shown as positive or romantic. Everything else consists of vampires victimizing unwilling humans, which is definitely not romantic *or* consensual.)
I’ll leave this part unaddressed bc I’m not invested enough in Dracula to engage in a discussion about this part, I hope that’s okay with you.
So one of the things in VC is that these vampires are like sappy emotional goofballs and there’s a reoccurring theme of love transcending traditional boundaries. It’s also implied over and over that they experience love on a level that is unfathomable to us as MERE MORTALS because of their big magical vampire brains.
I do think their relationships in general can be looked at on an individual basis and their history dictates the sort of tone there—I think they’re all just super extra and will always refer to companions as lovers even when there are dramatic qualitative differences in their relationship dynamics—like for example Louis & Armand strike me as a more traditional couple model, vs. Marius & Daniel strike me more in a father/son way because Marius takes care of him. Though, it’s a little hard to speculate because we don’t see a lot of them together. But! In this world, with the love transcending boundaries blah blah, it doesn’t mean they aren’t lovers in this universe and this context, because you see the same with Louis & Claudia or Lestat & Gabrielle. And even though there are a lot of areas in the stories where sex is implied through symbolism and coding and whatever there isn’t literal sex, so when you take sex out of the equation it’s a little easier to apply these broader definitions of love to these pairs of characters. And you see it over and over again that they never just like someone, or have a crush on someone. They’re just constantly ~IN LOVE~ with each other and they’re all so obsessed with how beautiful everyone is lol.
But also re: blood/sex !!!
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
Again, I think we have to take individual characters or ships into consideration with some of these questions. Like, were they feeding intimately? Until Louis v.2.0 showed up I don’t think he was. Marius and Daniel feed on each other but Marius is always very generous with his blood with his lovers because he wants them to be strong and safe. I don’t think the vampires can share blood WITHOUT it being intimate but it’s important to decide what you think “intimate” means. Because bloodsharing can be compared to sex, which is intimate in its own way, but i also see it being akin to breastfeeding, and that’s super intimate too. We have ways of knowing that these two things are different versions of intimacy and obviously the vampires would, too. But then, again, there’s the idea that the way they love each other is so much bigger than just being about sex, and their definition of intimacy is something much more infinite than we can comprehend. It’s also worth acknowledging that when they share blood they’re literally opening up a stream of their own thoughts and emotions, which is something that we IRL only experience on an implied or symbolic level when we have intimate moments with real people in our lives. So their version of intimacy is a lot more complex due to the literal mechanics of what happens to them and also that they’re canonically just super emotionally intuitive.
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
Every now and then I see discussions where the blood is reduced to sex on such a literal level and it strikes me as being really crude, and to me it does a huge disservice to one of the things I love the most about this series. And that’s, yknow, like I said, something that can vary to a degree between different people. I’m a very sex-positive person, but I’m also asexual. I don’t like reducing intimacy to meaning sex. So “lovers” to me doesn’t necessarily mean sex partners and it also doesn’t necessarily mean blood sharers, either. Like we know that Louis wouldn’t take blood from the others, which tells me he didn’t try it with Lestat or Armand pre-2000. That doesn’t mean he and Armand weren’t lovers. I think it often just means “I love this person, therefore they are my lover.”
You could take the ~just dudes being bros~ attitude to them or to any set of vampires living together if you really wanted to but I really think they’re such sappy motherfuckers that they wouldn’t spend so much time around each other if they weren’t in love, with or without blood to complicate it. I also think the overuse of the word lover is an expansion on romance and not a reduction of it, so in any case where a romantic pairing is ambiguous because of the language I think it’s always better to err on the side of them being in love.
Having said all that I will also say I’m super dying to know more about what goes on at Trinity Gate with Benji and Sybelle and we just DON’T HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO KNOW. I’m curious to see if the coven/family-like nature of the household diffuses the intensity between them, especially if Louis is around to keep Armand occupied.
So! Anyway.
Kind of a hard question to answer because I think you have to take everyone on a case-by-case basis but I would definitely say that they all feel really big passionate feelings and don’t have casual crushes on each other. If they’re living together they’re probably in love with each other, in some ridiculous vampire way that doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Why the fuck do I talk so much when I answer asks idk but
TLDR I think companion and lover are often used interchangeably in VC because these vampires are clingy dramatic saps and that they have a really liberal definition of “lover” and apply it in ways that we don’t as real people in the real world.
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
…
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
^Now, if anyone wants to define the vampires with human labels and definitions, that’s absolutely fine. You do you!
I’m going to stray slightly from Anon’s ask, and focus more on the larger aspect of categorizing/analyzing//judging/defining, bc looking for concrete differences between (A)“they are considered to be lovers” when (B) “they could be just friends,” and really, I think like all questions directed at clarifying VC ships/characters/plot/etc., it’s in the eye of the beholder/reader’s interpretation of the text and discussing it with others, if they choose to, like in sending an ask to me, @monstersinthecosmos, or anyone else.
On Analysis:
When Anne Rice said, “You’re interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!!! ;A; ” we all laughed. We still do, bc it sounded then, as it does now, at face value, like she’s a child stomping her feet and telling us we were judging her works objectivelyunfairly. That any negative or critical reviews could be labeled altogether as bullying, more or less.
…But really, over time, I’ve come to see this statement more as: “If you interrogate/criticize/analyze the text with a lens/rubric that the author was
(a)
not aware of, (b) not subscribed to, or (c.) was not a consideration during or preceding the time the work was written, you are very likely to find the text disappointing, and it will fail your judgment.” I think that Anne took it personally when fans were disappointed bc of this, but she steadfastly refused to accept guilt for disappointing them, and I admire her for sticking to her guns on that. There are fans who want her to include more POC, there are fans who insist that Lestat is straight, there are fans who want her to denounce all the VC and witch books bc they depict vampires and witches in a favorable light, etc. Since she cannot please everyone, she pleases her biggest fan only: herself.
I found a rubric for grading art (from thevirtualinstructor.com), probably for students in elementary or middle school, probably between 6-13 years old, I assume “S” means “student” and “T” means “teacher” but I can’t find the actual post about it, ANYWAY…
^So this is ONE example of a means of judging a work, and honestly, for a child, I’d say it’s sufficient. I would rearrange and add a lot more it to judge an adult, but it would depend on the adult. Maybe something like Effort, which might seem to only apply to children, would still be a factor for someone recovering from surgery or doing art as therapy.
ANYWAY, so if you reread @monstersinthecosmos‘s post there is so much to consider, especially re: the way we define “lover” and “companion” being very much in line with what I’ve added here, considering the rubric/lens from which we judge VC.
The questions then become:
Are you looking to be disappointed? Are you looking to be impressed? What do you need from a fictional work?
^And I think the answers to these will be different for everyone. In my experience, it’s been more enjoyable for me to take VC for what it is, and take pleasure in the acceptance, corrections, and/or manipulations (like AUs) of canon to fandom through fanworks and respectful discussion.
To my mind, when the word of the author is not even the authority, and there are unreliable narrators, no one’s opinion supercedes anyone else’s, no matter how hard they might try to push you to agree with them. Curate your experience with fandom and your own headcanons.
Re: canon or AU, I’m not sure if you’re looking for fanfic or published fic. As far as published fic, tbh I don’t really read other vampire series than VC 😛 I used to read Christopher Pike and Poppy Z. Brite but I barely remember them now. I never actually read Dracula (the h0Rr0r! I am a terrible vampire fan) but from what I understand, it would have the atmosphere you want but may have characters that turn into passive, thoughtless pawns devoid of personality. I think that may be why I’ve struggled to get myself to read it, that’s not my thing, either.
As far as fanfic I mostly read VC fanfic, and I can’t say that any of the fics I’ve read do that to our characters… in canon we do have some vampires who go into a kind of sleep/vegetative states for periods of time (called “going to ground,” and sometimes involves them actually burying themselves and staying underground for years), and one might say that fledgling!Nicolas was a passive, thoughtless pawn devoid of personality when he was first turned, but he snapped out of it when given the right stimulation. So I think sometimes that state is temporary if it’s incorporated into fic.
I also struggle to pick out authors of fanfic bc I can’t think of one that has both the atmosphere and the vampire romance… I feel like most of my fave authors spend SOME time on atmosphere but more time on the characters’ interaction, dialogue, the plot, etc. Our series is pretty heavy with purple prose so we tend to use it sparingly in fanfic.
IF YOU REALLY WANT THAT ATMOSPHERE YOU’LL HAVE TO GO OUR SOURCE. I’d suggest that you read Interview with the Vampire or The Vampire Lestat and JOoooooOOoooooOIN US! ❤ [Me: attempts to steal a very talented fic writer from their fandom into ours]
^It’s a movie but worth mentioning bc I think you’d like it: Only Lovers Left Aliveis, in my opinion, an example of an atmospheric vampire romance without shoving the romance down your throat; it’s subtle, but it’s there. Also:
Although the characters are pretty sedate most of the time, neither character in the central ship turns into a passive, thoughtless pawn devoid of personality.
I think this would appeal to you bc there’s a lot of tenderness, with a good dose of silliness, too.
It’s got a good mix of spooky + pretty aesthetic, being set in crumbling Detroit, it shows the beauty of things that might look run-down and of little value at first glance.
BONUS: It stars Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as the main ship and they are A++++
^Similarly, there are two adaptations of novel Let the Right One In. I didn’t read the novel, but have heard great things about it, although it is darker and scarier in nature than the adaptations. The first of the 2 adaptaions has the same title as the novel and I think it’s the better of the two. The second one, the American version, is called Let Me In.
While it’s not a romance between ADULTS, it’s got atmospheric vampire action and I would say that it might fall under a YA kind of romance feeling. I’ve read some of your fic and I really think you’d like this bc it has a lot to say about giving/receiving care, being vulnerable, and those first feelings we get about “I love my friend so much and I am afraid of scaring them off by letting them know, I want to be closer to them but not at the cost of hurting them.”
I hope that helps, again, anyone is welcome to comment/reblog with reccs for @radiatorfromspace!
I just had a hilarious conversation with someone on IM who wants to remain anon, I can’t imagine why, regarding the types of magic in Phangs, and allow me to just say without anymore preamble, no, the vampire does not need to use blood magic and or necromancy to sustain an erection 😂
He manages just fine on his own, thank you.
To your tags
If he doesn’t need to feed before it how he get boner and stay boner?
My vampires are human like in their physiology. Just extremely long lived and mildly demonic, particularly before their morning coffee. Which is not to say that they don’t drink blood, it’s just less prevalent in their day to day unlives than popular myth would have most folk believe.
“Really?” Nathan asked, sounding almost a little bit disappointed with his answer. “The whole virgin blood thing is a myth?”
Vlad cleared his throat delicately, gaze rolling up towards the ceiling and making a careful study of the crumbling plaster. “I wouldn’t exactly say it was a myth, not quite...”
When Nathan failed to fill the silence that followed he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, one megalomaniac with a fetish does not an entire species make, all right?”
Nathan held his hands up. “All right.”
“And besides, have you tried finding a virgin in this day and age? Oh I’m kidding, don’t look at me like that.”
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait is this entire book about punny gay idiots who happen to be undead??????????????
That…about sums it up yes. Think Addams family meets Terry Pratchett punnery and rage. Cause that’s what I’ve been told it reads like. And hahaha your tags, I’ve been calling it a satirical romance this whole time :p
Found this on pinterest (actual source is Bloody Vampire Fangs Necklace by Ideationox) just now, very sexy… But? It also looks like? This girl was bitten by a vampire? She turned into one? And then she ripped out her maker’s fangs??? And MADE THEM NECKLACE PENDANTS??!! UNGRATEFUL??!! RUDE???! !! (I’m kidding, it’s a v. cool necklace and a compelling image, but that was what came to mind)(no offense intended)
I-want-my-IWTV 
