Concept: an immortal who doesn’t shy away from photos or paintings. Draws self portraits on cave walls. Photobombs everything with a pout and a suave pose. Commissions numerous portraits of themself as a literary Romantic before faking their death. Tries to be at least slightly famous every time they have a new identity. Creates a conspiracy blog linking all their past photos together before mysteriously disappearing in mysterious circumstances. Mysteriously. Usually only disappears for 10 to 20 years after “"dying”“ before making another appearance. Everyone else in the immortal community lowkey hates them. “Ah, fuck. You’ll never guess who’s resurfaced again.” “Fucking… Dave?” “Fucking Dave.”
vampires getting super invested in nutrition so they know how to take care of their humans, and then being horrified at what humans will actually consume:
three-day-old coffee
twenty piece chicken nuggets
one (1) granola bar as a meal
their own fingernails
humans lying about what they eat:
“How do pop rocks even work?” “They’re made of tiny larvae that explode when they come into contact with human saliva.” “… That can’t be real.”
the constant exasperated repitions of “human stuff” or “vampire stuff” whenever they don’t understand each other
humans dabbing garlic on their pulse points when they’re pissed
“C’mon, I’m starving, why are you like this?” “Are you sorry?” “Yes” “What’s the magic word, Clarence?” “Please?”
vampires that forget humans are delicate and accidentally hurt them
humans that act like wounded dogs over minor injuries just to watch vampires fall over themselves apologizing
vampires exaggerating time for comedic effect:
“I haven’t heard this song in forty years” “This came out in 2004″ “It’s been forty years. I have aged.” “You literally have not.”
“When was the last time you did any laundry?” “1965″ “Fuck you.”
telling vampires to “go back to your coffin” when they’re grumpy
humans constantly asking “how did they do this in your day?” about every single daily task
vampires who hoard tools and appliances from the time period they most enjoyed
young vampires flipping off the sun and screaming at it about evolution
old vampires who pull their collars up and frown behind their sunglasses
erroneous threats based on abilities no vampire actually has:
“I’m gonna show up to your wedding as a swarm of bats and shit on the cake”
It’s tough for me to answer bc I think it depends on every individual reader’s sense of humor,… even within “humorous/ dark tone as VC” there is a range*. So I can’t say definitively that these reccs are in line with what you’re looking for necessarily, but you can use this list as a starting point.
*Lestat dancing w/ Claudia’s mom’s corpse: Some ppl find this moment dark and hilarious and other ppl think it’s just disgusting, so… there is a range. Personally I find it pretty amusing.
(There are some duplicates on this list, sorry about that, but I wanted to list them by recc’er.) (And I added ** next to those that @gothiccharmschool just recc’d in two recent posts which I will reblog momentarily for you.)
In no special order:
(Okay this is the first one bc it IS special, and the closest to the humor of VC I’ve seen in awhile) This is a mockumentary/movie but it sneaks onto the top of the list bc it is just SO good, courtesy of @theamazingdrunk for reminding me in a comment on an older rec post: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
**Salem’s Lot – Stephen King, personally, I find several Stephen King books to be darkly humorous, this one is a good one. I find humor in the Shining and Firestarter, too, but less so.
Vittorio – don’t forget Vittorio. Not sure if you read this one. It’s also by Anne Rice and technically not a VC book, he has a different origin story and is not part of the VC vampire group.
@riverofwhispers said: Carmilla is good Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse books, but only the early ones. the Rachel Morgan series but again starts out good gets weird later and it’s not about vampires so much as there are vampires in it.
@bluestockingcouture said: ‘The Angel’s Cut’, sequel to ‘The Vintner’s Luck’, is very atmospheric and well worth reading. Not quite as moving and intense, but there are some excellent new characters.
@sanguinivora said: Also, as to voice: IWTV opens in the late 1700’s/early 1800’s. Don’t know about either a southern American or French hinterlands-with-a-gloss-of-Parisian dialect, but for the grammar and vocabulary, one cannot go too far wrong looking to the novels of Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian.
@dragontrainerdaenerys said: I just read Fevre Dream, George R.R Martin’s own vampire novel, and while I didn’t liked much his vampire mythology the main characters are charming! Besides, it’s set on the late 18XX and goes on the Mississipi River, so it has similar scenarios to IWTV!
@baroquebat said: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, while futuristic, has a loooot of lovely gothic set pieces in the anime movie, plus its just gorgeous and has the rare treat of having a dhampir lead!
@annabellioncourt’s Recs, and these are mostly her descriptions, too, compiled from other recc posts:
The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories – Angela Carter
A Taste of Blood Wine – Freda Warrinton, for romance and decadence.
**Blood Opera Sequence (or “Trilogy”?) – Tanith Lee’s vampire series was out when Lestat was playing rockstar
Historian – Elizabeth Kostova, for its worldliness
**Fevre Dream (yes its spelled fevre) by George R. R. Martin (yes, its THAT Martin, and his take on vampires is Very Good.)
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
**The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot, also for romance and decadence. (the recently-published edition from Valancourt Books has a foreword by @gothiccharmschool!)
The Hunger by Whitley Scriber
**Dracula – Bram Stoker, for its stereotype-setting content
Lord Ruthven – Byronic vampire, Lestat doesn’t catch the irony of John Polidori’s mockery of the foppish, arrogant, and well…Lord-Byron-y vampire
2) But suddenly there come books as MTD, TOTBT or even the last one, where it’s not about them being a vampire. It could have even happened to a mortal. It is an adventure of its own, right? In a way at least. (I hope you understand what I mean). For me this was hard to accept and sort in. In a way it was not what I read the VC for. I was very confused at the beginning.
3) But now I think about it like that: Anne Rice’s vampires write the books themselves. They don’t think “I am a vampire so I have to act like one and can only write about my vampiric aspects.” No, they simply write about whatever happens to them or whatever fascinates them at the moment. As we are used to it when it comes to books about mortals. When we read those books we don’t think “wait, but why is this not about how they were born and what they eat and when they sleep?”
4) We accept the adventure they tell us. But vampires are supposed to just write about them being vampires. But those not. They talk simply about themselves. So theoretically Lestat could publish one day a book about tigers that he studied in Asia. I don’t know if I would read it, but what I love about the children of darkness is that they are simply themselves. Not vampires in a drawer. They take us beyond the vampiric life.
(Anon’s reading of canon is here, and anyone is welcome to comment/reblog with their ideas about it!)
I-want-my-IWTV 