What is birth story? And other Qs no one is asking that F The short version: birth story is an Interview with the Vampire (2022)/Vampire Le
You asked for a birth story timeline (8 million years ago), and @queerofcups and I answered.
If you read one co-written 200k (and counting) drag queen Lestat nonlinear human AU, surely it should be this one. Here's a review from someone on reddit:
criminally underrated ... I cannot stress how beautifully written and touching it is
They forgot to say it is extremely horny! But this person also compared it to the work of flashindie and ohofcourse so like, you know what, that's fine.
Anyway, we hope ths timeline is useful, either to readers who want to quickly consult where in the story a specific fic or chapter takes place, or new readers who aren't sure how to go about reading this pretty long AU series.
We are both very happy to answer questions about birth story here or add to the FAQ. We love concrit!
3.5 reaction below the cut, I have not done it for every episode even though I have loved every episode. This one just gave me a lot to think about. Spoilers.
Okay so first things first, some people may know (and others probably don't) that I have been DYING to know what they do with the ancient Egypt aspect of Akasha and Enkil. And from this episode it seems like, maybe, the answer is ... nothing? Or maybe that's not it, maybe we'll find out more in a future episode or another season. But I'd be really pleased if they dropped it entirely. There was a reference to a woman with her tongue cut out when Akasha was babbling, so I might presume they are going in the general direction of the twins/some component of the storyline. But how they play it across the ancient history origin myth is yet to be seen. I'm fascinated by how Anne Rice treated all of this (which I would summarize as, about how you'd expect, could have been worse) in terms of like lavishing detail on Egyptian art and cosmological beliefs, and I'll feel such a sense of relief if the show just ... doesn't touch this. Think about the Queen of the Damned movie, where the Egyptiany details are preserved even with how much they pared back the actual plot and lore from the source: the statues are explicitly Egyptian-looking, and Aaliyah is -- and, I mean this in the most critiquing Orientalism way -- pretty much in sexy Cleopatra Halloween cosplay. (It's not a good movie.) We'll see what they do with it, and I support it if they do nothing.
Anyway, yeah, this version of Akasha is really good. Magnetic performance. I appreciate how far they went away from that movie. Also, interestingly, she delivers the most classically vampiric gesture I think we've ever seen on the show in biting Lestat. Just like, actually terrifying (if you're terrified by TV vampires).
You know what, I feel bad for Larry. RIP to a guy who should have been in a different bio pic.
Okay, on that note -- I do think there is some fault for his death to be laid at Lestat's feet for just being so unrelentingly ass to this guy. I mean, is this the worst thing Lestat ever did? No. Didn't Armand actually kill him? Well, yeah, sure. But per Louis in 2.5, Armand's MO is to find someone "half in love with an easeful death," which is to say, already kind of primed for it. It doesn't seem like he's going up to totally okay people and getting them from 0 to suicide. And I think you have to put some of this on Lestat. Lestat butted into his band (at Larry's invitation, seemingly), displaced his role in it, kept telling him what to do (play the tambourine -- he's a guitarist?), made him rerecord things many times, clearly gave him a hard time. Anyway, the beats of the conversation Lestat has with Sam Barclay about Larry's part are:
lestat: bury it
sam: that's a deep grave
lestat: pretend i'm armand
The "pretend I'm Armand" bit is about Sam's employment at the Theatre des Vampires, right, where the work was finding humans to lull into an easeful death, and then subsequently executing Claudia (which is the thing that Lestat is mostly pissed off about). Obviously this isn't literal, but I think Lestat is a bit culpable. Who fucking knows what Armand is doing, of course, but at least in the context of this episode it seems clear to me that this is part of a pattern for Lestat and his feelings about what happens to the people he's loved and not always treated well and Armand's triangulation.
As with the Nicki and Louis parallels, like, Armand was the person most immediately responsible for these men's suicidal gestures, and they both seemingly had depressive tendencies, but to say that Lestat's role is irrelevant to the outcome would be wrong I think? And so I wonder if Lestat will be grappling with this on some level.
My repeatedly listening to the seasons 1 and 2 soundtracks sure is paying off.
A big thing I keep thinking about is how much of what's onscreen is just Lestat's narrative showing through. Would Marius really call Armand a "rotten boy"?
Free space for all the insane things Louis is getting up to (have you seen this fic about it?) and the Lestat intercession in that and the Claudia of it all, but I don't have anything strikingly original to say about it other than that I am into it.
And down here at the bottom, of course nobody cares, but I've got Madeleine and Claudia having Lestat meet them at the Cubbyhole here and in the fic I am currently writing she is staying at the Gansevoort. Nobody cares, and they shouldn't.
fic: dancing in the streetlight, my baby and me
E
2.3k
[link to ao3]
āItās not the accent. I told you. The accent isnātāā Itās not that the accent isnāt good, though how could it be good when Reginaās furthest journey into the interior of the US was Trenton because of a bus mix-up. āYou make it tooāIt gets a little. Uncomfortable. Adult. Sexual.ā
---
a brief look, bad boundaries
a/n: thanks as always to @skrtomg for the quick beta read
You know how I'm always saying that discourse is generative? Nobody really gets Louis like queerofcups gets Louis: his triumphs and his nadirs, and the sick and twisted little things that make him tick and the lovely little virtues that make everyone fall helplessly in love with him. This fic is mostly his nadirs. It's also very funny! Ironies turning around in Louis' hands as he fumbles his way to glory.
I am not that into reading episodic reactions, I find, like, the plot of "what if Louis were actually there" about The Vampire Lestat on tour in 2025 doesn't stir me. (I'm not sure I could have predicted this, and I also don't mean this genre is bad and no one should like it -- I'm just not finding myself that motivated to click on these fics.) I say all of this because of course Dann would do one that works for me by ratcheting up the impropriety ushered into Louis' storyline by episode 3.4. It does a good job predicting some of the turns in 3.5; others were seemingly picked up naturally. But I think the natural fluidity of the premise is rooted in pure character.
Also, this fic is a mirror, and spiritual successor, to my favorite of their non-birth story works: rubbing ghost on ghost, a prime work of Southern gothic inasmuch as the source material, and an exploration of the strain in the center of the du Lac family and how Louis gropes his way toward a release. These are pendant fics, although they don't have to be read together; I think you will enjoy the fullness of them, however, and even more so back-to-back, with their generously described worlds and neat, mildly jolting endings. Really elegiac.
Here is Hamilton Nolan, writing on Nick Biltonās appointment to run 60 Minutes, a premier source of US television investigative journalism that has recently become an apparatchik of the Trump administration:
Journalismāreal journalismāis, above everything else, allergic to bullshit. Bullshit is the mortal enemy of journalism. Real journalism aspires to be the opposite of bullshit. You can be a great journalist without being attractive, friendly, likeable, charismatic, as long as you possess a determination to root out and expose bullshit wherever it is found. Indeed, many journalists are unlikeable because they have this quality. The ideal leader of a hard-hitting investigative journalism operation is someone who is smart, driven, and virtually unemployable in any other context due to their pathological hatred of the corporate niceties used to obscure the lies of the rich and powerful.
This is about Daniel Molloy. (Not literally.)
Journalists are not vampires, or at least, it's unlikely there were any vampire journalists until Armand turned Daniel at the end of season 2. Journalism is a public service and an essential component of a healthy society. The problems with journalism, such as they are, are the same as in every profession, including other public goods like education and healthcare: unregulated capitalism has contorted the profession beyond its most righteous iteration. Tabloid journalism is predatory and sensationalist -- but that's not the kind Daniel is producing. An ever-smaller number of media conglomerates are laying off their newsrooms and leaving local news consolidated in the hands of right-leaning monopolies. Social media allows misinformation to spread more rapidly than traditional news can be published, and your random Twitterer isn't subjected to the same ethical and legal standards as someone employed by a news organization, or who wants to be taken seriously as a journalist, and so on.Ā
(On that note -- at several points in this essay I note that I have seen certain kinds of posts in the fandom. If I haven't linked to one it's because the posts have been deleted. Don't worry, though, I messaged them to my friends in Discord at the time and we discussed them with big quotes, so like, don't worry, I fact checked.)
The US concept of journalism as being practiced without bias is absurd on its face, in the sense that all people are biased; pretending to be "fair and balanced" etc. doesn't change that, only creates an unrealistic expectation. There are many fair critiques to be made of how journalism is practiced now in the Anglo-European media market, and yet journalism remains an unabashed public good. Speaking truth to power is incredibly important. I can't believe this even needs to be clarified, but I am disturbed by the number of takes I've seen in this fandom suggesting that merely wanting to interview a person is in some way predatory, or that publishing a person's life story is predatory, or that merely being a journalist is predatory. I don't know what kind of right-wing nonsense people are buying to have this position.
I have made this point, but to reiterate, it is not incidental that dictators shut down the free press, or stifle access, or interfere in access, or withdraw funding from independent news outlets. It is not incidental that billionaires continue buying up news outlets and platforms where journalists operate when media is a deeply economically troubled industry. Thereās no profit reason to do this. Very few media outlets are super lucrative right now. It is fully about controlling narratives, spreading influence, and seizing the free press. Iām emphasizing this because I want people to understand that journalism at its core exposes where money and power lie and how itās fucking things up for almost everyone, and this is a neat summation of what Daniel Molloy has been working for his entire career.Ā
Itās inconvenient and uncomfortable in life and in art that sometimes people whose work is very good, righteous and valuable even, are just not very good people. Before I go any further I want to make clear that I donāt think Daniel is some kind of serial rapist or whatever. He seems to be a fairly garden-variety asshole. He commits some microaggressions. We donāt know all that much about how he comports himself in relationships, exactly, but between the paper bag and the two divorces and the estranged daughters, it seems like heās not interpersonally that great. Heās obnoxious and full of himself, pretty convinced of his own talent. (Of course, his talent is extremely convincing.) I think IWTV fandom (maybe all fandom) has a problem differentiating between moral offense and the much more banal condition of being a jerk. Again, a wonderful contradiction of reality is that someone whose contribution to society is great may be just kind of an asshole. This makes Daniel an interesting character, but I also think it makes him a fully felt person.Ā
IWTV does not offer didactic character interpretations. Every single character on the show is pitiable and horrifying in equal measure. They are all charismatic and charming and beautiful and sensitive, and selfish and cruel and monstrous. All of them are, at one point or another, the most and the least powerful person in the room they occupy. I have also said this before, but that was the influential stroke of genius in Interview with the Vampire. Anne Rice said, what if the vampire was a person and not a trope? What if the vampire had subjectivity instead of being a hollow monster? Wouldnāt it be interesting if monsters were complex and had thoughts and feelings and insights? By 2026 this insight, that monsters have feelings too, seems itself a trope, or tired, or perhaps in light of our collective social weariness, there isnāt much patience for finding the humanity in the monster, given that we are ruled by monsters. Yet there is an appetite for stories about this condition: every memorable TV antihero of the past three decades has followed a similar model, to say nothing of the more direct heirs of the vampire franchises tilling this soil.Ā
All of this to say, it would be an interesting irony, wouldnāt it, if Daniel the human being were the only character the viewer was meant to read as a total monster, lacking depth and pathos. But I donāt think that is what the show is doing. I donāt think the writers show you this man trembling fitfully, and asking for a session for himself, and whimpering as a scared youth about the blood running down his torso because you are supposed to find him an uncomplicated monster without virtue. Undeserving of pity.
Rice was writing this turn in the late 1960s and early 1970s, amid the birth of postmodernism. This is a really annoying term that forty different people will yell at you for using incorrectly while they all have a different definition in mind, so Iāll define my engagement with it here as, very broadly, intentionally thinking or creating against the dominant mode in the postwar context. I have for some reason watched about eight thousand video interviews with Anne Rice since late December, often conducted by her regrettably hot former twink son. One thing she keeps circling back to is that the dominant mode of fiction in the period when she was writing Interview was modern-life realism, probably thinking of figures like Updike and Cheever. She saw herself as doing something that was not the dominant mode at the time. I guess Interview might be said to be a postmodern book, because it interrogates the psyche and position of the monster. Itās doing this in the postmodern era, grappling with the aftermath of global monstrosity that felt like the world was spinning off of its axis.Ā
At roughly the same time as Interview was being written, New Journalism was flowering. This is a style marked by whatās often called a ānovelisticā approach: writing stories and books that had narrative, dialogue, and literary flourish. The best-known practitioners are Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer. Maybe you would cite Truman Capoteās In Cold Blood here. In 1972 Wolfe wrote a piece for New York codifying New Journalism, an essay that is itself a work of New Journalism. You might put Hunter S. Thompson in this camp, too. Before this, the prevailing journalistic style was hard, straight factual reportage. I was once in a journalism class where we had to pull stories in old newspapers from 1951. I remember finding a story about who-can-remember set that year, and it gave so much contextless information that the address of the events in the story was given. Like, āThe incident happened at 123 Whatever Streetā was part of the story. The concept of āwhatās the pointā didnāt breach the piece.
The final attribute of New Journalism that Wolfe identified was something like third-person subjectivity. The writer of the piece is a part of the story. This is where we sync back up with Daniel Molloy: although a limp character in Rice's book, the "boy" in that novel could be working in that mode, and his Interview with the Vampire as depicted on the show is clearly in the vein of this style of journalism. From what weāve seen, the book recounts not Louisā story, but the story of Louis telling the story to Daniel. Daniel is a character in the story. The journalist is there. It is a vampire-themed Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ā72.Ā
Danielās nascent career in 1973 fits in with these trends. He is going around the Bay Area interviewing people on the outside of society. He mentions a single mother working as a stripper, and a Vietnam vet living with an amputee refugee boyfriend. I have, again, seen it commented that Daniel is somehow preying on these people, stealing their stories. It seems like what heās doing is more or less something in the vein of the as-told-to, that is, interviewing them to get their words down and then editing the accounts into stories that can stand on their own.Ā (The as-told-to is a very common and widely accepted format.)
The idea that it is somehow unethical or predatory is a severe misunderstanding of Daniel as a journalist, or maybe just journalism. Both times he interviews Louis, in 1973 and 2022, he starts the interview by clarifying that the interview is being recorded and that he has consent to the interview. Itās sloppier in 1973 ā because heās younger and less professionalized, because heās high, because heās terrified ā but heās not doing anything Louis doesnāt want. In each instance itās extremely clear why they are there. The phrasing of ādonāt be afraid, just start the tapeā is Louis literally telling Daniel, yes, record this interview. He is fully consenting. The start to their first session in 2022 has a more formal journalistic beginning, with Daniel saying when and where the interview is being recorded, and then prompting Louis to speak his own name, signaling on the transcript that Louis is, again, consenting to the interview. I would presume, from this context, that Danielās non-vampire interview subjects are also willing, or rather, that sources consenting to be interviewed is an ethical standard Daniel upholds. According to his fake LinkedIn profile, heās won two different awards for ethical journalism. His Masterclass rip-off course contains the topics āOff The Record Is An Agreement,ā āDonāt Do Clickbait,ā and āHot Takes Are Hot Trash.ā Iāve seen some people presume that when he says āhonesty is not a tacticā he means, donāt be honest. Of course thatās not what he means. He means that honesty is not merely a strategy to get what you need, but the entire fucking point.
Moreover, simply wanting to tell someoneās story, or conduct an interview, is not in any way predatory or vampiric. The interviewees we hear about in 1973 are telling, because US journalism had historically centered on stories about great men, and electoral politics, and other matters of perceived import. What Daniel is doing here is turning instead to the periphery, indeed, making the point that the real story is on the periphery. Maybe it should not be peripheral. Maybe the effects of, in this instance, the Vietnam War on actual people, rather than the politicians and generals, is the thing that should be news? That readers need to hear?
Daniel goes with Louis in 1973 out of a combination of drugs, horny, and wanting to know what this dudeās deal is. Here is a Black man in a gay bar in 1973 San Francisco who is claiming roots in nineteenth-century Louisiana and, also, to be a vampire. Whatās this guyās story? This is also peripheral. This is not the dominant mode. This is a big weirdo. Daniel goes back in 2022 for truth and reconciliation as much as Louis is seeking it when he invites Daniel. I donāt know that heās looking to expose the location of power in that instance, at the beginning, but at the very least, Louis initiates this second round. The invitation is on his letterhead and itās got his signature on it. This is a lead, and Daniel is a journalist.
I do think race is important to this conversation. I think it is worth asking, why is Daniel white? I would posit that itās because itās been projected by the writers that, to viewers of the show, journalists are white. That if the viewer imagines the archetypal journalist, they conjure up someone more or less like Daniel, a crotchety and dogged truth-seeking white man. That if most viewers were asked to name a journalist, they would conjure up Woodward and Bernstein, or Thompson, or maybe Ronan Farrow, especially in 2022. Black journalists exist, obviously, as much as I feel stupid even writing that I also want to emphasize that this isnāt about who is a journalist; it is about what kind of person this journalist character is being drawn as for the sake of the TV show.
Of course, journalism is a very expansive field. The things that fall under the category of ājournalismā encompass a wide array of styles, media, practitioners. But Daniel is an investigative journalist, a type thatās seen as brawny and heroic. Again, this has nothing to do with who is an investigative journalist, in actuality. (Ida B. Wells, for example, was an investigative journalist.) Itās about what the show is trying to get across in drawing a portrait of this character. We need a type of person who is willing to go to extremes, to risk bodily harm, in order to get the story. Danielās drug problem is part of this too: think, again, of Thompson, or of Anthony Bourdain, or of David Carr. (There is some evidence that the association between journalism and substance abuse is more than incidental.) This is the media narrative, the collective memory, of a type: the person whose brilliance in investigation and boldness in truth-telling is coupled with a self-destructive edge. You need someone like this to walk into that flat in San Francisco and tell Louis that he doesnāt even understand the meaning of his own life. Again, Daniel is right, of course, from a certain point of view. Surely Louis needs to unload about his traumatic past, but also, why canāt Louis see that all humanity longs for more life? Why is he hung up on some figure from his past when he has what every mortal on the planet wants, endless room to move forward? The dramatic irony of this show is that the charactersā insights are curdled by their faults. Daniel is self-destructive, even hubristic, but he isnāt wrong.
Importantly, he is a good journalist. In Dubai in 2022, he makes fun of his tactic of asking, āand then what?ā But even in 1973 he was a good journalist, or had the makings of one. Was a good journalist in the making. He is clearly very confident in his abilities, but then, he is not wrong. About the journalism, he is not wrong. As much as he is looking to score, in whatever sense of that word, he also knows there is a story. He is also 20 (Lestatās season 3 voiceover gives his birthyear as 1953), seemingly in college at Berkeley, and writing for the Berkeley Barb, āone of the earliest underground newspapers to serve the civil rights, anti-war, and countercultural movements in the Sixties,ā but also āburgeoning fights for disability rights, gay rights, and environmental awareness.ā This is an unabashedly leftist project. Does being part of it make Daniel not an asshole? No, but being on the right side of history, or simply being right, has never precluded that. And a lot of counterculture ideas that were needfully pushing on the status quo in 1973 would look regressive now.
In terms of misunderstanding Daniel, I think itās often assumed that, actually, he is a bad journalist, or not as good as he thinks he is. I really donāt get this from the show up to this point. For one thing, itās memetic (even in canon), but having two Pulitzers is not nothing. Like, saying itās not nothing is a monumental understatement. There are many different credentials and bona fides this show could have given us if its game were to doubt Danielās reportage skills. It could have given him one Pulitzer. It could have given him a Polk, or an ASME. It didnāt have to give him any awards at all, actually. The awful twist on Danielās skills as an investigative journalist isnāt that actually, he is a bad journalist. Itās that heās bad at the rest of his life. The show even says as much, in 2.5. This is like having two Oscars. Maybe one is a fluke. Two is irrefutable.
He's confident in his abilities and he should be.
After 3.3 aired, I saw some posts indicating that Danielās failure to capture Lestatās comments on Nicki indicated that he is actually no longer a good journalist, now that heās a vampire, or overly confident, or something to that effect. I think this disregards that Daniel got exactly what he was looking for. His line of questioning is totally successful. Likewise, his approach to the interview in Dubai is successful.Ā
Something I find really compelling about the showās depiction of Daniel is that being an investigative journalist who is reliant on sources requires an immense amount of emotional labor. Sources are people (or people in the way that vampires are people) and their emotions can be unregulated. Something thatās striking to me about the Louis-Daniel interview and how itās interpreted in the fandom is that people accuse Daniel of being, like, unduly an asshole. Again, a big theme of this entire essay is that he is an asshole. But Louis also knows this. For one thing, he already met Daniel in 1973 and knows what happened at the end of that interview. (Itās everything after thatās been confounded.) For another, heās been following Danielās entire career. I think itās actually undermining Louis to presume he did not know what this was going to be like. (This doesnāt mean he has to like it.)
Moreover, Louis is an asshole right back to him. In some senses, Louis withdrawing his consent to publish the interview ā we donāt see him do this, by the way, just suggest it when he passively-aggressively sets the computer on fire ā is the cruelest thing he does. Heās flown this man to the other side of the world for two weeks in the middle of a pandemic, at the end of his life, to basically participate in a vanity project. Itās only midway through that Daniel insists Louis pay him; that wasnāt part of the initial bargain. (To Louisā credit and also problematically, you donāt get to be 500th-richest rich by offering to fairly compensate peopleās labor.) Danielās in it purely for the pursuit of the story, at first. The sense of danger heās always chasing along with the story. Between Louis and Armand, someone tries to kill him three times; the last attempt was successful. Over a week in San Francisco he was subjected to incredible torture. The two weeks in Dubai, as much as Daniel is rude and a dick, see the torture less physically intense and more heavily psychological, but still, theyāre both in his brain without consent. Louis causes him to have spasms. They make him an unwilling participant in drawn-out master/servant roleplay. That Louis knows all of this and thinks the $10 million is a fair exchange says very much about Louis. Of course he doesnāt have to give Daniel his consent to publish the book. Of course it would have been nice if Daniel asked. But these characters are so far away from the condition of niceness being part of the equation. None of them are nice. Louis isnāt nice. Why did any of this happen, if not for the fucking story? Louis doesnāt give a shit. He got what he was seeking. Was it journalistically ethical? At what point are we allowed to ask why human ethics should apply to the characters who are eating people? If Louis wanted to see his desires through he could have hashed it out with Daniel on the plane to New Orleans. He threatened Armand with death if he harmed Daniel. Do we think Louis is going to circle back to that?
Writing this essay in the lead-up to season 3, and as the season is airing, Iām hyperaware that the show itself might joss (thereās an old fandom term for you) some of my suppositions. As Iām finishing this essay, Iāve just seen 3.4. I think there are a couple of differences between the Daniel-Louis interview and the Daniel-Lestat documentary project that are instructive, and worth discussing. One is that weāre getting Lestatās version of events, whereas the scenes in Dubai were objective, that is, meant to be understood as something that actually happened. I donāt think weāre meant to call into question the broad strokes of these scenes, but itās important to consider that Lestat doesnāt seem overly interested in journalism, or truth and reconciliation, even as he claims theyāre ādoing a rewrite.ā He calls his songs āmy storyā and the documentary the āliner notes.ā The positions of the subjects to Daniel as the interviewer, as sources, is very different. Louis explicitly wanted his story told (until he didnāt).Ā
On the other hand, I would describe Lestat as a hostile source, by which I mean, he is purposely a difficult subject, almost as if he doesnāt want this documentary to work out at all, despite supposedly initiating it himself and requesting that Daniel participate. Maybe weāll find out this is untrue; interestingly, there are several contradictions in Lestatās account of this tour. He makes it seem like Louis requested to meet with him, and then it sounds like he requested the meeting. He tells Gabrielle/a that he told Louis she died a mortal in the 1790s, and then tells Daniel she died a vampire who couldnāt hack it. Louis, even in admitting that there were things he didnāt entirely remember, seemed genuine in his desire to strive toward the truth of what actually happened. Lestat doesnāt seem too bothered by these discrepancies. How did this documentary project get initiated, even? Itās not totally clear, but itās also not unbelievable that Lestat brought Daniel on tour to basically fuck with him. Even if he didnāt, relaying his history via telepathy so that it doesnāt get put on film is a hostile gesture. You could say that Lestat doesnāt owe Daniel this testimony, but ā at the point when you invite a documentarian or journalist onto your tour bus and agree to make a documentary about your life, I mean, you kind of do?
Now, if Daniel were in an earlier decade of his life ā well, okay, looking at Danielās output, about acid rain and for-profit prisons, itās possible he wouldnāt be interviewing a rock star in an earlier phase of his life. (Then again, according to his LinkedIn, he wrote a story for the LA Times at one point called āHas Anyone Seen Bob? A weekend in Malibu looking for a Rock icon,ā I guess about Bob Dylan probably. So you know what, maybe.) In any case, if Daniel were in an earlier decade of his life, with many stories ahead of him and another project to jump to, you can imagine he might just quit this. If Lestat isnāt going to helpfully participate, why bother?
I have seen some gif sets that imply that Danielās reaction to the emotional climax of Lestatās story is like heās getting a drug fix. It could be. Or maybe he just wants to get the story. Maybe heās been following this vain, unhelpful vampire who says he wants to be documented around for a month and a half, wondering what he is doing. Parkinsonās and the changing media landscape were slowly pecking away at Danielās sense of self. Serious journalism, given its stakes and its social and political utility, is a higher calling. You donāt go into it to get rich. (That $10 million is Danielās āwhore numberā also suggests he is not wealthy; in comparison, again, Louis is the 556th wealthiest person in the world; the US itself has about 1,000 billionaires.) You donāt go into it to become famous. You go into it for some combination of desire to serve the public in this profession that strives toward a greater good, compulsion to do the actual work, and sense of self-destruction. It is like academia: If you felt like you could do anything else, for your own sanity, you would. You trade wealth and stability for your sense of self. This is more or less what Hamilton Nolan was getting at. I guess you could argue this is like drug addiction. Why not? I donāt know that I would take Armandās word for it.
But, Daniel is a vampire now. What kind of journalist is he supposed to be? How can he investigate if heās confined to nighttime hours? How can sources trust him if heās not even human?
What else does he have but this?
So he stays. Of course he stays. Daniel is not nice, not easy to get along with, not overly concerned with whether his crass flippancy is racist or disrespectful or patronizing. But heās an incredible journalist, and heās allergic to bullshit. And Lestat, like Louis and Armand before him, is a veritable fount of incredible bullshit.
I'm truly enjoying seeing everyone lose their shit. It's so good. The show has three episodes left to convince me it's bad and I'm really looking forward to watching them try.
Also every time I get a notif for that terrible fanfic with mpreg Louis and transgender baby Claudia I remember u talking shit about it. It has somehow gotten worse and the plot is literally going nowhere but I can't let it go... I want to see where the author is taking it
oh I know I should not answer this but the anonymous author already blocked me so like, whatever. Whoever tattled on me and @queerofcups to an anonymous author, great work.
The reason this fic sticks out to me as notable is because there is a lot of potential. The first two or three chapters were pure drawing room comedy about Louis stumbling back into his family amid a crisis and sidestepping questions about the inexplicable things he went off and did while he wasn't speaking to them. Then he left and it was like, oh, okay, the fic is not about this? There's a lot of material to mine in Louis' family dynamic so if you're writing a modern human AU where Paul hasn't died and the family doesn't fracture due to that and vampirism, I mean, fertile territory to reap. It's good on a line level. Even the choices around Claudia's transness are interesting in a kind of experimental way.
But I think the lack of resolution on these things, the fic hopping from thing to thing, exists in a grand tradition of fanfics just spinning their wheels to go on in serialization forever. I think some people are into this. It's definitely not unique, by which I mean, this is no original sin of the anonymous author's.
Still, I do wonder, what's the resolution to all this? Where is it going? What does anyone in this story want at all?
I also find the Claudia trans thing ... not handled well, regardless of how interesting or not it could have been. First of all, if this is a story about Claudia, actually, I somehow missed it. Claudia has been a newborn and an infant so far. She is not really a character, or an actor in the story. That she is trans means very little. Of course she is slowly being gendered even this early in her life, but as a baby this young she's not able to engage with that as a person with interiority. She can't express it. She can't understand it. It's only when she's older, and socialized, that this would be meaningful.
But the larger issue, I think, is that babies ... can't and don't come out and transition, lol. The thing that makes a trans experience meaningful is the process of understanding this about onself. You fundamentally have to start at one place on the gender spectrum and then decide you're truly at a different place on it. Erasing this part of it feels cheap to me.
Now, I do understand that I'm asserting a political position. We all have our own life and how we relate to gender will vary, person by person. How we relate to gender nonconformity or transition varies. But the dominant mode of trans coming-out narrative is one where the person was always trans, and would go back and erase the pre-transition part of their life entirely if they could, or re-do it as their "true" gender. But ... not everyone feels this way? And in some senses this narrative can be harmful -- not in that it's true to some people's reality, but in the way that it's enforced socially and medically. To be seen as legitimate you really have to assert that your transness is inherent and has always been evident. And that's just not true! It isn't always. Not for everyone.
I think what I'm trying to say is, within the text of the story, Claudia is treated as if she has already transitioned. But with this authorial sleight of hand, that aspect of her identity is essentially erased. It's extremely interesting from a literary standpoint, but we only know this information from author's notes. Louis and Lestat (et al) are acting as if she is a cis female baby, but the reader is supposed to be aware that they weren't actually. Like okay??? WHY
So like, I appreciate the trick of the narrative framing device.
You know what has a beginning middle and end AND is way better than I remember? that South Park fanfic I wrote 10 to 15 years ago in a fever dream after taking a medieval history class. That should be the story, honestly. Kyle is basically trans in it, sure. Also Butters.
Anyway,
Important! What I am NOT saying is, the fic is trans wong and the author should feel bad. People should experiment with writing everyone trans, especially vampires. More trans is great by me. I'm just not sure this one fic cracked it eactly, and I think it's fair to like, muse on why. Oh god I'm gonna kicked out of the fandom for this.
Also the sheer volume of baby talk in this fic, either you're into it OR you're not. Just try and guess about me.
I'm deeply interested in why people think Daniel is doing a bad job, like, he literally got a scoop. He got exactly what he was looking for. His skills are fine. The issue isn't Daniel. The issue is Lestat sucks.
@queerofcups tagged me!!! none of these answers will surprise them.
LAST SONG - I finally found "The Loneliness" on Spotify and am listening to it right now.
CURRENTLY WATCHING - The Vampire Lestat, but I guess that's boring to say so uh I just watched this YouTube video about blue eyeshadow. Also I watched this TVL analysis video which I enjoyed because the presenter is just so incredibly giddy and enthusiastic about her argument that Lestat is going to seize the means of production or whatever.
CURRENT OBSESSION - well, the vampires, you know. My/our fanfic about them.
CURRENTLY READING - Edmund White's sex memoir The Loves of My Life. He talks about Anne Rice in the BDSM chapter, just so you know. I'm going to be done with this probably tonight, and I ordered a copy of Merrick to pick up after it.
Ugh, can I say something? The used bookstore where I was buying copies of Anne Rice books has closed, which sucks. Also it seems like Merrick is the first book that doesn't have an attractive paperback edition. I find this distressing.
I'm also always reading like newspapers and shit for work and fanfic, you know how it is. The 17 email newsletters I pay for.
CURRENTLY WORKING ON - in re: fanfic, I'm working on a birth story fic called "nose to tail" that gives some Lestat backstory. I'm also tooling away on a couple of mpreg things, and I keep opening my Daniel/journalism post, thinking "wow this is good, I'm so smart and so right," then I look at this fandom and just think, I can never write meta again.
Actual work stuff etc etc etc
CURRENTLY WEARING - Free sweatshirt from my job. This is not a cool shirt. If I'd known I'd be doing this meme I would have worn something better.
LAST GOOGLE SEARCH - cecile mclorin salvant
FAVORITE FLOWER - I don't have one and I can't imagine how I could possibly pick one. What I like to do around this time of year is buy a few bunches of garlic scapes in a jar and let them bolt. Looks crazy.
I would like to tag my dear sweet @dinnerdog (who will not do this) and uh omg who do i even know, @sheherlestat? @mister-saavik messaged me today and you have to respect a bitch who changes her hair but it's still regulation, admiral. @zolusbian?? @bicuspidcupid? I don't even know you guys, do this meme or don't, it's a big hot crisis out there.
y'all i think its ok for lestat to talk about serving cunt. if he is talking about fucking labubus and tiktok dances its pretty safe to assume that he has encountered and understands the concept of serving cunt. i think anyone who has been online for more than 24 hours has pretty much absorbed that context.
I REALIZE it's Louis' memory and all so who's to say anything happened in that townhouse, actually, but when we see Lestat in the early twentieth century he's playing pop songs and recording them in the "music of the hour" and buying the latest cars and continually updating his wardrobe and his house is decorated in a pretty current style with contemporary artworks to the period. I don't know why it's audience pandering to think that in the 2020s he'd get online and adopt the deep cryptic slang of "serving cunt." You don't think he has to sound cool doing it or whatever but that's in-character for him.
I feel like my job in this fandom is to point out important details about the show that no one is talking about. Who's loving that Nicki stuck his hands into a chamber pot full of bloody vampire pee
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
baratheonpilled
snowghoul