ok, in the spirit of what forum posts are supposed to be i'm going to try not to rant too much about anne rice but i feel like something must be said. the knowledge i have now will, unfortunately (or fortunately), inform many of my thoughts about her works going forward.

i was aware of rice's narcissism, her response to critique, and her outlandish ban on fanfiction but i was not aware of the content of her work post-QoTD. she fired her editor, permanently, and would not allow anyone to touch a single word she'd written. she glorified domestic violence, pedophilia, incest, and sexual assault in many of her books even more garishly than some of these themes already were in IWTV. it got to a point where most of the fans of TVC actively regard QoTD as the last "good" book in the series. she also defended a known and convicted pedophile, and stated that 14 and 15 year olds are not children, but adults. it goes without saying, but i think anne rice was a morally reprehensible human being that held an inordinate amount of contempt for her own fans because they deigned to engage with and interpret her characters in ways she did not like.

i suppose that contempt is partly why i feel like i can continue with the TVC, until QoTD, because at least i know anne rice would positively hate me and the thoughts i'm going to conjure up about these sad gay vampires.

ANYWAYS, on to TVL.

so far i'm obsessed with this version of Lestat, and it's such a nice change of pace from the endlessly tortured monologues of Louis.

"Pure evil has no real place. And that means, doesn't it, that I have no place. Except, perhaps, the art that repudiates evil-the vampire comics, the horror novels, the old gothic tales-or in the roaring chants of the rock stars who dramatize the battles against evil that each mortal fights within himself. It was enough to make an old world monster go back into the earth [...] Or enough to make him become a rock singer, when you think about it"

already we have such an interesting look into Lestat's inner sense of humanity, and the rather funny outcome modernity has had on his sensibilities.