From: @proffbon/ProfessorBonca
To: @xxhellonursexx
Merry Christmas, Nurse!!! You asked for Lestat, Louis, and the gang decorating Louis’ library at Chateau de Lioncourt, so I hope this lighthearted little story will make you smile this holiday season and that we’ll get to see more of your beautiful art in the coming year!
Summary: Christmas is about to come to Chateau de Lioncourt and preparations are in full swing. But it seems Louis doesn’t have any plans on adding a bit of Christmas cheer to the humble library he so often occupies. Lestat intends to rectify this in any way he can.
Rating: General Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Vampire Chronicles Series - Anne Rice
Relationship: Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac
Characters: Lestat de Lioncourt, Louis de Pointe du Lac
Additional Tags: Other Vampire Chronicles Characters Mentioned and present but they don’t have speaking lines, Post-Canon, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Decorations
Language: English
Collections: Vampire Chronicles Secret Gift Exchange 2025
Words: 4,117
Freckles was started for Vampride but my work has been kicking my butt so I haven't managed to finish it yet. It's Daniel during the Chase Years noticing that Armand has freckles... tiny and hard to see but there. I'm still a little in microfic mode so this is just a series of vignettes of Daniel pestering him with questions and admiring this small little indication that Armand was in fact human once upon a time.
Short snippet:
It’s in the garish fluorescent light of a twenty-four hour drug store that Daniel first notices Armand’s freckles.
They’re hard to see. The preternatural sheen of immortality seems to mask them and make the ivory of his skin appear perfect and smooth. Statuesque is a word that often comes to mind when the vampire is around.
But something about this garish, harsh light hits Armand’s face in a way that alights small freckles that dust his cheeks and nose. They’re barely there, like the ghosts of freckles, but Daniel is so taken by them, he can only stare. He stares for so long that he loses his grip on the jar of orange juice he’d pulled from the fridge and hadn’t yet put into his hand basket. It falls to the floor and shatters, juice splattering his jeans.
Anything that catches Daniel off guard is my cat nip, especially in the chase years! Thank you for the ask!
Apple, hi! I am currently working on something and I wanted to know if you could help. I am looking into Wilbur's view on armor and his decision of not wearing it, as in what it symbolizes to him, why he instilled such a policy in the first place and if his reasons change during Pogtopia. I'd really appreciate it if you could share your thoughts on the matter or maybe link some good analyses you came across!
Hello! Oh boy I love talking about L'Manburg's policies. /gen
The "no armor" policy is an extension of the "words over weapons" policy.
The first time "words over weapons" comes up is actually in the drugs monopoly stream.
19:35
TOMMY: I think the biggest thing is we’re not too po- y’know… strength-wise? We are not gonna be able to take them out.
WILBUR: No, I don’t even know what netherite is. I have no idea what netherite is.
TOMMY: With our words Wilbur, you see, you could just convince this skeleton not to kill you! And it would stop shooting!
Wilbur and Tommy acknowledge that they're weak physically and have to rely on words to get what they want.
At 52:50 we have Wilbur acknowledging his great charisma and how it can be used to trick people.
WILBUR: I’ll be the distraction. I have the charisma, I will go up front and distract them while you break in and sneak him out of there.
So "words over weapons" wasn't Tommy and Wilbur saying they want to be peaceful as much as it was them acknowledging that others' PvP ability is superior to theirs and as such them having weapons doesn't make much of a difference. They're better off using charisma and trickery to get what they want instead of violence.
And when building L'Manburg, Wilbur twists that into a virtuous policy signaling L'Manburg's intent to be peaceful. It goes hand in hand with "no armor inside the borders".
The country is small enough to easily light it to avoid mob spawning, and even if they wore armor it was inferior to the Dream SMP's and would hardly make a difference in PvP combat. Those policies brought very little change to L'Manburgians' lifestyles but they did serve to make them seem like harmless people.
There's this post talking about how although L'Manburg claimed that their intent was to be pacifistic, they weren't entirely opposed to using violence, just with less conventional weapons.
In the "the Wall" VOD we see that Wilbur is selective about when his policies are applicable when he tells his men to kill Alyssa for "burning down their forest" (a forest that was outside the walls, may I note, in territory Wilbur claimed to not need). Eret directly points out his hypocrisy:
1:37:44
ERET: I thought we used our words! I thought we used our words!
WILBUR: Not in this case. They’ve tried to burn down our forest.
Later, in the revolution, we get Wilbur admitting that the policy's intended use is leading L'Manburg's opponents into a false sense of security and then backstabbing them. [X]
TL:DR: L'Manburg's "words over weapons" and "no armor" policies weren't a display of virtue or peaceful intent, rather they were an acknowledgement of one's weaknesses and strengths and served to allow L'Manburgians to backstab their opponents when they weren't looking, convinced of their harmlessness.
When it comes to what it symbolized for Wilbur, I think it symbolized his belief that he doesn't need armor and weapons to get his way and can use his silver tongue to achieve his goals instead.
I can't say much about Pogtopia but we actually see Wilbur himself not wearing armor and using ranged weapons in the war for Manburg. The former likely due to his self-destructive mindset, the latter because he's bad at PvP and a bow allows him to help in battle without seriously endangering himself and being a nuisance for his better skilled allies in the process.
Perhaps his decision to give up on the no armor rule is a consequence of him giving up on L'Manburg itself.
