likehandlingroses

[likehandlingroses]

"On vampires, they are the most powerful metaphor for the outsider I ever encountered. I, a woman with no clear gender identity, strong erotic drives, great ambition, and a fractured cultural background, felt "normal" when I wrote about vampires --- intelligent outcasts who refused to accept the world's contempt as their story. I didn't inject philosophy into my vampire novels; it was just there; Lestat, Louis, Claudia, Armand...they were living breathing allegories, all crying for the right to live, to have a place in the universe. If you give all you have to your writing, if you tell all you know in every novel, you can't escape the deeper philosophical questions, meanings, possibilities. When I came of age, nobody thought "a vampire novel" was worth that kind of commitment and depth. Genre fiction was presumed to be shallow. Same with the historical novel. I saw "Feast of All Saints" panned because it wasn't a simplistic melodrama. Nobody even knew how to classify "Cry to Heaven." But I kept giving all I had to my strange books, ignoring the denigrating labels and frankly getting downright angry about them. Today, you don't hear those complaints so much. Seems the whole world knows you can learn a great deal about "everything" from a good episode of "Game of Thrones" and that there are profound truths in "Gone Girl." Daniel Silva packs his beautiful spy novels with deep moral concerns. Any type of novel can be a great novel. — What a wonderful thing to have lived long enough to see the power of labels broken, the "rules" of genre thrown to the winds, the bias of high culture ignored or stood on its head. Of course the science fiction readers always knew these truths. In the 50's they were looking to their great writers for poetry, heart wrenching reflection on alienation — the use of plot and setting for lofty and undeniable truths. I love being a novelist. — I love being the producer, director, set designer and star of my weird, unclassifiable stories. I've grown to love being laughed at, sneered at, ridiculed, questioned as to how I, of all people, dare to write about Jesus! And you know why I love it? Because I've been lucky enough to have many, many readers over the years, readers who give each new book a chance, readers who say simply that they enjoy my books, readers who quietly "get it," wonderful readers from all walks of life --- They are priceless to me, and they are my real critics, reviewers, judges, etc. I long ago left it up to them to decide whether I was any good, or just a crackpot or a trash writer. And I just go on writing about vampires, witches, telepaths, ghosts, angels, werewolves, and yes, even Jesus — for them and for me."

Anne Rice from her Facebook Page

[likehandlingroses]

Downton Abbey: Season 1, Episode 4 "She must resent me so bitterly. I don't blame her."

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Armand agreeing to having his story put into a book because he wants his children to be able to read it…

[likehandlingroses]

Collapsing two art forms into one. Coming up with new ones. Meanwhile, everyone's fawning over Picasso, but out there on the Left Bank in shabby hotel rooms and cold water walk-ups, a new generation's ripping apart the old modes. Bursting into new ones.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE | 2.04

[likehandlingroses]

nickistat 💔💔💔

[likehandlingroses]

there are no real losers bc they are such a denouement couple. But Louis and Lestat at the end of Memnoch…

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Armanddddd 💖

[likehandlingroses]

Memnoch is not really Great as a novel, but I do appreciate its use of the theme that carries through much of the Vampire Chronicles—the suspicion of suffering and punitive justice as being Useful for achieving Goodness or Knowledge. What is constantly revisited in the series is that suffering and the alienation it brings destroys goodness—suffering does nothing to refine the badness out of people, to improve the human condition (or the vampiric one). It just breeds more suffering.

And while the theology element of the book is probably super niche and beside the point for most people looking for a vampire book…the critique of Christianity being based on a celebration of suffering is very cool to me

[likehandlingroses]

Lestat telling God and the Devil to make it make sense is a top tier moment for me

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Imagine doing something so monumentally stupid that the parent who went no contact with you and the entire human race over 200 years ago has to pick you up from a concert.

This happened to my friend Lestat de Lioncourt…

[likehandlingroses]

Sophie Thatcher as Iris COMPANION 2025 — dir. Drew Hancock

[likehandlingroses]

anyway, I was talking to my mom about The Vampire Lestat, and she was all nostalgic like “I don’t think I was even twenty when I read that book…” amazing. I might have known!

[likehandlingroses]

Jacob Anderson’s delivery of “hello, Lestat” in 2x08 gets meeee. I love how the catharsis of that scene comes from a somewhat different place than the novel, and a big part of that is how the show has more intimately engaged with the relationship between Louis and Lestat—and pushed Louis to a more truthful acknowledgement of the nuances of it. So on a story level, it absolutely makes sense that the catharsis comes from us feeling that Louis is encountering a person he knows and understands.

But I also think, on a meta level: it’s an acknowledgement of the understanding the larger culture has re: Lestat. He is the primary hero of the Vampire Chronicles, he is one of the most iconic vampires of the last fifty years…some of the audience will definitely encounter Daniel’s revelation and Lestat’s disposition in New Orleans with surprise/shock, but many won’t! Many have been waiting for this person. And I think providing space for the catharsis of an *expected* revelation is really clever.

[likehandlingroses]

Thomas Barrow’s movie love interests. It’s all about that Gay Lean™

[likehandlingroses]

"I can't have that." THE GILDED AGE (2022–)

[likehandlingroses]

he’s so everything

[likehandlingroses]

the story about Lestat as a little kid seeing the crucifix and yelling out “what a horrible way to die!” in the middle of church…💖