I just feel like you’d love knowing this but my best purchase ever has been my dvd copy of IWTV
Awww, that’s correct, I do love knowing this! Your bio says you’re a Criminology major, that’s so cool! Now I know who to go to for planning the perfect crime(s).
You didn’t ask for this but here it goes: I was under 17 when movie!IWTV first came out on VHS (yes I’m that old), I was around 11. I’d read several of the first books, and I wanted that movie BADLY. I coordinated a school friend to get it for me, like contraband, I had to sneak that VHS tape into my house, immediately stripped it of its labels, saved them with my little binder of articles I collected at the time about the movie, and relabeled the tape “Forrest Gump” so that my parents wouldn’t know I had it. Thankfully they never asked to borrow my copy of that movie! That was probably what I considered my best purchase ever, at the time. I watched it when I was home alone now and then, and I’d bring it over to a few friends’ houses, where we’d try to say the lines along with the movie, so that battered old tape really meant a lot to me. It’s where my nostalgia for the movie was born, so as problematic as it is, I have so much affection for it.
Obviously, there was a Forbidden Fruit quality to that, hiding it like I did, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to watch it, made me want it that much more!
Lestat probably doesn’t like that movie!IWTV is so popular, he’d rather ppl moved on to his book… [digging up an oldie from the archive for ya:]
How do I introduce The Vampire Chronicles to someone? (And how to I do that to someone whose not reading vampire literature because of Twilight. I’m trying to have more than one fledgling.)
That’s great that you want to bring someone(s) into this with you! We can always use fresh blood ;D
TBH, tho, it’s not for everyone. Ppl who deliberately don’t read vampire lit bc of Twilight are not totally wrong. They might have valid personal reasons, maybe they don’t like blood/gore, maybe they don’t like the idea of biting or being bitten as erotic IRL, there are plenty of reasons before we even get anywhere NEAR the Problematic things that generally come up with vampire lit.
Don’t be disappoint if they won’t turn, the Dark Trick is not an exact science, and don’t look at it as a failure on your part.
I’ve been where you are many times, Anon, and in fact I lent the IWTV DVD to a mortal VERY recently, and he keeps RESISTING WATCHING IT but apparently he will TONIGHT “It’s gonna be an Interview with the Vampire night!” he said, without a trace of trepidation, but WE’LL SEE, WON’T WE, MR. EXCESSIVELY TALL PERSON!?
I think the best you can do to try to make new VC fledglings is to ask them to watch IWTV bc as far as adaptations go, yes it changes some things but it was intended to appeal to a wider audience than just the existing fans, and I think it was successful in that regard.
If you want your friend to read the books instead, give them the capsule reviews, which set this series so far from the other vampire lit. @high-fructose-lesbianism‘s capsule VC reviews are pretty gr9 [X]:
Lestat’s Adventures with a Progressive Family
Lestat’s Bisexual Adventures in 18th Century France
Lestat’s Adventures with the Queen of the Vampires
Lestat’s Adventures as a Human
Lestat’s Adventures with Satan
Lestat’s Adventures in a Coma
Lestat’s Adventures with Polyamory
Lestat’s Adventures in the Deep South
Lestat’s Adventures with Not Being There At All
Lestat’s Adventures with Witches and Other Weird Shit
Lestat’s adventures with Being the Vampire Head of State
Lestat’s Adventures with Literal Fucking Aliens
(Note, Pandora and Vittorio are technically stand-alone “New Tales of the Vampires” books, but Pandora would be No. 6 of the 13 book series).
You can check my #VC Synopsis tag, which has more capsule humorous summaries.
I've been trying to read the whole vc series, but school and work just keep preventing me from getting really far! Is it ok to ask you to write a little summary for each book so I can catch up with the fandom until I have the time to read them all thoroughly?
Yeah, I understand, time is limited :P
I don’t know that summarizing VC will allow you to “catch up” with the fandom, you really only need to read the first 3 books and the Vampire Armand to get most of the jokes on tumblr, bc most of the jokes seem to center around:
Louis being a pyromaniac,
Lestat being an obnoxious but somehow lovable glittery murder machine,
Lestat and Louis being awesome and shitty murder dads,
Claudia being an ungrateful spoiled brat,
Armand being a little brat, or a slut, or an evul coven master, or all of the above,
Daniel Molloy just wanting to vampire plz!!!11!,
Marius being a pedo, or too bossy, or both,
Gabrielle is a bad mom and an ice queen,
Nicolas is spelled NICOLAS and he is NOT DEAD!,
Secondary characters not getting enough love from anyone!!
There are often spoilers in summaries tho, do you really want to be spoiled? I LOVE being spoiled.
We have these unreliable narrators, there is a lot of disagreement as to what canon really is, and some fans choose to ignore parts of (or entire books) in the series. We bring our own experiences to the reading, and we choose what to connect with, so I think we can agree on some things about each book, but you will probably get a different summary from any given reader. Even AR has told us to disregard the hybrid Mayfair/VC books (Blood Canticle, possibly Merrick and Blackwood Farm) when moving onto the more recent VC additions (PL and PLROA). So, for example, I have a friend who has only read the first 3 books. She doesn’t even know what happens after that bc she prefers to think it ended after QOTD. So any new vampires made after QOTD do not exist to her. #Your headcanon may vary.
Anyway, you want summaries.
http://vampirechronicles.wikia.com has a pretty good write-up for each of the books (they don’t have PL and PLROA currently, maybe they will eventually). It contains spoilers.
@vraik has thorough VC analysis in their series called The Consulting Analyst over on vraikaiser.com. Spoilers there, too.
@hyperbeeb‘s capsule reviews are pretty gr9 [X]:
Lestat’s Adventures with a Progressive Family
Lestat’s Bisexual Adventures in 18th Century France
Lestat’s Adventures with the Queen of the Vampires
Lestat’s Adventures as a Human
Lestat’s Adventures with Satan
Lestat’s Adventures in a Coma
Lestat’s Adventures with Polyamory
Lestat’s Adventures in the Deep South
Lestat’s Adventures with Not Being There At All
Lestat’s Adventures with Witches and Other Weird Shit
Lestat’s adventures with Being the Vampire Head of State
Lestat’s Adventures with Literal Fucking Aliens
(Note, Pandora and Vittorio are technically stand-alone “New Tales of the Vampires” books, but Pandora would be No. 6 of the 13 book series).
You can check my #VC Synopsis tag, which has more capsule humorous summaries.
Gonna try to do a little summary for each VC under the cut as a personal challenge.
Spoilers ahead! I’ll try to do this with as few spoilers as possible, as factually as possible.
1. Interview with the Vampire - Louis tells the story of his life and unlife to Daniel Molloy. Louis starts at the point in his mortal life just before he meets Lestat, and how his life up until that meeting influenced the unlife that followed after he became a vampire. Lestat’s reasons for choosing Louis are unclear to Louis, but he wants Louis to choose to be a vampire. Louis is under so much duress (failing health, still in emotional distress over his guilt re: a close family member’s death) that the choice is not 100% legit, Lestat can’t wait for a more opportune time and proceeds to turn Louis anyway.
The whole story could be seen as Anne Rice’s exploration of the role of religion and the reasons why terrible things happen to innocent people, the concept of punishment.
For me, it was also eye-opening bc I was 11 when I read it and it introduced the possibility of love between a same-sex couple, even if that was in more of a read-between-the-lines way.
It also has a child vampire and I hadn’t seen any media even attempt to tell a story with a child vampire before. Few media that attempt it seem to have captured the beauty and tragedy of such a creature as in this story, and she reappears in a few of the other VC. <— bc IWTV is from Louis’s POV, as told to Daniel, and then written out and possibly revised by his editors, this is the beginning of the Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series.
^ok that was too long, I’m going for shorter.
2. The Vampire Lestat - Lestat seeks to “correct the record” that Louis laid out in IWTV by giving us his own backstory, starting at his mortal youth and how that influenced the unlife that followed when he became a vampire, against his will (hence the “I’m going to give you the choice I never had,” line from movie!IWTV). There is more exploration in the role of religion and reasons why bad things happen to basically innocent people, and whether you really can make the best of a shitty situation or just give up. More about punishment. A very unique take on the origin of the vampires as a species is revealed. And the reasons why Lestat behaved the way he did (basically all secretive) in IWTV. <— This is more of the Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series, who are we to believe? Lestat or Louis? And the author’s retconning which is perceived as “making excuses later in canon for behavior that’s already happened.” Some readers really despise this. Personally, I like having the options and trusting one version of events, or none of them.
3. The Queen of the Damned - Lestat’s modern-era rock career wakes the Queen of the Vampires and she has this awesome Radical Feminist idea for world peace. She’s already gotten started on it! She upgrades Lestat physically so that he can help her accomplish her goals, but he’s not really on board. They meet with the vampires she has allowed to survive her purge and it doesn’t go very well. Also in this book, we have different narrators, more about the vampire origin story, and the Armand/Daniel ship is sailing at its best here.
4. The Tale of the Body Thief - Having suffered so much through the past 3 books, Lestat is a suicidal hamburger-brained moron and makes some very bad choices. Despite everyone advising him NOT to, Lestat makes a terrible trade with a body thief and learns quickly that he had idealized being human. He does some horrendous stuff, and wants off the Being Human ride. He has one friend who helps him set things back to the way they should be, and then he betrays that friend in a spectacularly cruel way. More importantly, Lestat also gets a wonderful cuddly doggo.
5. Memnoch the Devil - Lestat Goes to Heaven and Hell, meets Jesus Christ, meets God, meets Satan (who prefers to go by “Memnoch”) it’s all a huge interview process to decide if Lestat might work for God or Satan and it’s basically fanfic of the Bible. Some people hated it for those reasons. I found it really intriguing, bc it presents a reason why God created the earth, and why there’s suffering, why God allows suffering to go on, and where religion comes from. Like Lestat, Memnoch says he’s not the antagonist, but really the good guy in all this. When Dorothy gets back to Kansas Lestat returns to earth, there is disagreement about whether he went on a real trip or he was just fooled by a really talented spirit. Lestat is so confused that he throws a huge tantrum and then gets solitary confinement, then slips into a coma.
6. The Vampire Armand - Armand gets his spotlight and gets to really tell his story, do we believe everything he tells us? Lots of good Italy times stuff. Armand visits Lestat in his coma-state, and talks about that, too.
7. Merrick - Merrick is a Mayfair witch in NOLA who bewitches Louis in pursuit of his request for closure with Claudia, and hilarity ensues. Louis gets the most screentime he’s had since IWTV, but the whole book is told from a 3rd wheel’s POV, it would have been so much better from Louis’ or Merrick’s POV. Major fatal thing happens but fortunately Lestat wakes up from his coma in time to save the day.
8. Blood and Gold - Marius tells his story, as does the vampire Thorne tell his own story. Marius talks about his artistic influences and his experience with the early Talamasca and Santino and the Children of Satan. We see Daniel (now living with Marius) under a kind of spell, which Marius says is temporary.
9. Blackwood Farm - Lestat goes to the Deep South and hears the story of vampire Quinn (his story defies summary) and, with Merrick’s help, saves the day.
10. Blood Canticle - More vampire and Mayfair mixing. And Taltos. It’s a very big WTF book. But it has some very funny scenes and lines in it. It ends with Lestat promising the Dark Gift to someone.
11. Prince Lestat - Vampire scientists. A clone. Someone gets kidnapped. Ultimate Vampire Coven Gathering. Lestat is cranky, saves the day anyway. Ghosts apparently can linger on earth after death and make bodies for themselves. Characters from past books reappear. New characters are introduced. Louis writes a chapter about how OK fine, he does love Lestat. FINE.
12. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis - I haven’t finished this but basically… the REAL vampire origin story, and it involves bird-like aliens, who were sent to earth bc the aliens feed on the suffering of mortals. The bird-like aliens didnt want to create Atlantis. in fact they were pissed because this one creature of theirs, Amel, made Atlantis with the Luracastria (i dunno i think thats how it’s spelled) and their viewing tech couldn’t see through the material. Amel made Atlantis to spite the bird-like aliens omg i cant believe im typing this. Louis and Lestat finally have some legit canon cuddletimes.
- Pandora - the story of the vampire Pandora, and why Marius is bad at relationships. Lots of good Roman times stuff.
- Vittorio - is not a VC vampire, and wants nothing to do with that dysfunctional pile of fanged crazies. @monstersinthecosmos and @vittoriathevampire could give you a better summary of that one, since I didn’t absorb it too well :P
Did AR ever give a reason as to why they were no longer interested in making a VC film? I assume she didn't like the direction the studio/director wanted to take the film.
Nope! Not that I’ve been made aware of. AR didn’t give us a reason why Universal was no longer involved. She just announced to us 11/26/16 that she had the rights back [X] and was developing a VC TV series. So I would assume that Universal rights expired, and they didn’t choose to renew. AR might have raised the renewal cost, too.
I hope we do get the backstory on that someday, but my guess is we never will. Probably the same kind of development hell that happened w/ movie!IWTV from ‘94, the rights were jostled around for almost 20 yrs bc, from what I understand:
the material was/is very difficult to adapt with all the problematic and taboo stuff in it.*
the filmmakers wanted to please the VC fans, but they also wanted to make something that people who had not read the books would want to go see! That’s probably one of the reasons for Banderas!Armand, btw. I’m sure the filmmakers had to choose between satisfying the VC fans and reducing the taboo stuff enough to make it more palatable for non-VC fans (Louis, an adult vampire, being seduced by a teenage-looking vampire, might have been too much to ask for in 1994 it might still be too taboo now).
casting was tough,several first choice actors declined.
*@moral-cipher and I were talking about this, and the way ppl criticize canon, and that’s fine, I encourage it! But it is a very problematic series and just about every character is dysfunctional, every character has suffered or has caused suffering in others. The new motto for VC fandom might as well be:
~VC: If you’re looking for a perfect cinnamon roll, you’ve come to the wrong fandom.~
Oh lord help me lestat is as helpless as a newborn after body switching, tripping on carpets, messing his pants, binging on chocolate and already half dead from a sickness. Just wanna squish his cheeks and feed him hot soup abububu
“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.”
- Lestat, Tale of the Body Thief
[fanart by sheepskeleton] <– Edit! I had the credit wrong! Sorries!
