#horror books about vampires

[fascinationstreetmp3]

i guess that last post is also one of the reasons i find armand/daniel compelling (referring to the books mostly right now but it also applies to the show in a way) because daniel never really seems 'seduced' right away just by armand's looks like so many others are. he's afraid of him, but drawn to him. and it's the horror of him that he becomes attracted to, it's the first thing he sees. he does still find him physically attractive and i suppose he's still 'seduced', but the way it happens is very different; it's not his innocence or vulnerability or sweet face that makes daniel drop his guard. armand purposefully acts as terrifying and strange as he can for four years, constantly following him, being off putting and haunting and demanding and oddly caring at times and excited and annoying and confusing and scary, and that's who daniel falls in love with, who he stops running to be with. it's an unconventional kind of seduction and one armand is an active participant in. daniel is someone who comes to love him because of his nature, not in spite of it; who knows armand may look like a gentle, thoughtful young man, but to daniel, that's hardly relevant.

[arc-tu-rus]

🦇 Today marks the english release of:

Set in Hungary, during the years of World War I, we follow Mina, a young woman who finds herself faced with a dilemma that will cause a major chain reaction in her life. Between hiding her gender and dealing with a threat she never believed was real, the girl must make a choice between abandoning who she was or embracing every part of herself - all while the world crumbles around her.

I finally finished translating my VtM story! I'm well aware of how much I babble about my guys, but now I can finally share this complete work with the tumblr community! Allow me a moment of sentimentality saying that this is one of the things I'm most proud of in my life :')

Buying options: Gumroad 𓋹 Amazon 𓋹 Or simply via DMs! I'll send you a link with the files after payment :)

Oh! And if you use Goodreads, feel free to log your reading progress.

I assure you that I studied a lot of the subject (from Remarque's work to real documents) so as to not be insensitive with the real event; while I publish the translation today, this project started in 2022.

I still plan on writing two more, with each being simultaneously a complete narrative and a piece of their story! But, being 100% an independent work, it won't be here for a while.

Misc. Stuff: Art 𓋹 Board 𓋹 Playlists ♪ ♫ ♪

(Since my "drawing drive" is not necessarily linear with the plot, I didn't add illustrations to the e-book file)

Extra Disclaimers: • I priced it based on a poll I made, not only on bookstore costs, but if it sounds too much feel free to haggle! My intention is simply to share this story, not to become the next Bezos- • I removed all mentions of VtM/WoD creations so as to not have any legal troubles, since this is an official publication (with ISBN and all!). The rights of this work of fiction are also already registered and protected. • No A I was used in any part of this creation! It was all my sweat and tears work. I'm usually not the proudest person, quite the contrary, but it's kinda cool to be able to say that all this, the story, illustrations, translation, graphical project and physical production of the original portuguese release were all made by me :) • Not only this is a vampire story, it's also set in war; I recommend this book for an 18+ audience.

[therefugeofbooks]

Currently rereading The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[officiallordvetinari]

The funniest thing in the Silmarillion is when Sauron is described as "lord of werewolves" and names his stronghold the Isle of Werewolves, and you just have to be like "Ok. I guess they have those." And then in the next chapter you hear about how Beren was tormented by wolves in Sauron's dungeon, and how his lover Lúthien came to free him with a great wolfhound, and how Sauron sent greater and greater wolves to stop them, and you start to think "Oh, so these are just big evil wolves? Likely thing for Sauron to have actually." And then Sauron takes the form of a werewolf himself, and you get so caught up in the drama of this great battle between wolf and dog that you forget the initial incongruity of the term "werewolf" entirely. So finally the dog has Sauron pinned and Lúthien forces him to surrender the island, and then...

Sauron flies away in the form of a vampire.

[dreadfuldevotee]

I want to put together a IWTV reading list outside of the books, but ik that if I begin that list with The Delectable Negro and Orientalism white people will run for hills screaming

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT,

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I absolutely love the recs you've given (you've introduced me to tomione, and I love it!) and I was wondering if it's possible to give you some recs in return? There are some books and fics that definitely have dramione / got vibes, and I was wondering if I could share them with you!

So glad you've enjoyed them! Feel free to rec me anything you want. I've read most of the classic recs in terms of fic and adjacent content (Cruel Prince et al), but I'll try anything that's well-written. My tastes run towards weird and/or audaciously creative stuff, and I can forgive a lot of weaknesses in plot on the grounds of (1) ambition or (2) character work. My turnoffs are instalove, protagonists who can't fail, and most Y/A (I'm not a hater, I swear, I just need characters who can say "fuck" when their leg gets chopped off.)

I'm also a fan of weird and fucked-up dynamics.(Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for a while, and as a teenager I wrote an AU in which the book ends on a long sex scene where Heathcliff fucks Cathy's ghost and then immediately gets murdered by Catherine 2.) Obviously, I am very normal.

[harbingerofsoup]

i will say that about 80% of the discourse (and im talking the idiotic social media style discourse) in the iwtv fandom is perpetrated by people who don’t know how to safely and responsibly engage with the gothic horror genre and i don’t care if that comes across as pretentious because it’s true

[lovesealedletters]

about the blogger °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

hi, everyone! my name is bailee, and this is my blog. i first started lovesealedletters a couple years ago to have a space where i can freely express my love for all things coquette, girly, spooky, etc., but i’ve been part of tumblr since middle school. at 21, i feel more comfortable with sharing these parts of myself than i ever have been. here are a few fun things about me, the blogger!

fun facts about me °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

— i’m 21 + she/her

— i have three cats that i love with all my heart

— i hope to someday be a published author

hobbies & interests °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

— i enjoy reading, writing, crafting, and watching horror movies! my favorite genres are horror, thriller, fantasy, and romance, but i have a really broad taste. i also love rock music, pop, electronic/dance music, alternative, and even classical on occasion.

favorite book: bram stoker’s dracula

favorite movies: dallas buyers club, interstellar, wicked, nosferatu (2024), dracula (1931), bram stoker’s dracula (1992), anything tim burton

favorite series: game of thrones, the vampire diaries, true detective (s1), american horror story, and bridgerton

favorite artists: melanie martinez, halsey, charli xcx, sabrina carpenter, lana del rey, the beatles

— one of my greatest interests is vampire media. (bela lugosi, gary oldman, and bill skarsgård’s depictions of dracula/nosferatu are my favorites.) i love modern vampires, but i also adore the history and folklore of what vampires represent within deeper contexts. i’m super girly but i loveeee the goth aesthetic. american goth, southern goth, classic goth, gothic architecture, gothic literature, i love it all. pls where my girly goths at 🙏

side blog °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

my blog is largely dedicated to femininity and the nostalgia of girlhood, but i’ve also included my love for vampires and vampire media on my page. i’ve recently started a side blog which you can find here: @vamprincessss which is reserved for vampire content. rn i’m focusing on creating a series of vampy aesthetic image boards, so check it out if you’re interested :)

my pinterest °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

@lovesealedletters

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ i hope to build a lovely community of fellow beautiful weird girls, so my asks and inbox are open! thank u for reading this :’) °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

[marzipanandminutiae]

I finished House of hunger, and honestly, I have never felt so judged by a book for finding some thing it clearly set up to be sexy… Well, sexy

“oh, you thought the countess we we wrote to be a hot brooding anti-villain was a hot brooding anti-villain? Well maybe you should consider that VAMPIRES BAD aCTUALLY. You mistook it for something with both a dark love story and a capitalism metaphor, when in fact it is JUST CAPITALISM METAPHOR!!!!”

Hmph. I am going to bed

[dyrewrites]

@the-mindless wants me to yammer about vampires some more, so here's some yammering. I mean that too, I don't think I got to a point in this, but I am also tired and the vampires I write rarely seem to fit the established molds.

--

Vampires are often portrayed as alluring or enchanting. Something too human, uncanny you could say, impossible to ignore. I maintain this is an important part of them, that the ease in which they blend while remaining just strange enough to unsettle is what makes them monstrous.

This wasn't always the case though. Earliest portrayals had them in shrouds to hide their monstrous appearance. They were bloated and ruddy with devoured blood or gore.

We've simply modernized them over the...centuries. A shroud wouldn't be enough to hide a monster from even Victorian prey, but a beautiful face and bright eyes in the shadows, speaking only to them? That's going to get a monster some food real fast.

So they became alluring things, enchanting things, who twist minds and lead people to their death. What a death it is, too, usually described as a pleasurable experience. Up until it isn't.

Even the ones remaining monstrous, those taking more inspiration from Nosferatu than the Dracula he's...I'm going to say inspired but it's a well documented knockoff (and aren't we luck to have it), have a heady bite and a mesmerizing gaze.

Personally, I enjoy focusing on the word alluring, which is not necessarily pretty. Everyone's pretty is different, after all, but you'll find most stories of vampires include everything within viewing distance wanting a piece of that corpse.

Regardless of what 'abilities' or 'powers' the vampire has, they're always alluring. They draw their prey in, sometimes without wanting to (these are a favorite of mine).

There's a presence there, one impossible to resist, and that in itself is frightening. Or should be, but you wouldn't have the wherewithal to notice it while enthralled now, would you.

It's fun to play with monsters so easily mistaken for human.

You have so many options, should you wish to impart some lesson. Class struggles, wealth disparity, otherness, loss, grief, hunger, the terrifying reality an eternity could be under the right circumstances.

They're a delight to write.

The fact you can make them into ethereal beauties or scrungly little guys and get about the same effect is icing, really.

[pynkhues]

You write such great Louis meta that I was curious about your opinion on something. I’m not sure if you’ve written something about this before or not so if you have please disregard!

The show is very clear with us since the first episode that Louis is capable of violence against those he loves most obviously including Paul and Lestat. But I also see a connecting thread with Louis conflating/connecting sex and violence as well. The scene at Antoinette’s is the most obvious but when I started thinking about it, it seems like this is a common thing for him. The murders in the park in Paris, where he’s seeing dreamstat. The 128 boys in SF. Maybe his relationship with Armand, even. Maybe with Jonah, where he was biting his own arm to keep from killing him (probably also because of hunger so I’m less sure about that one, or maybe that’s part of it too).

I started thinking about this reading analyses of the long face lyrics and people’s confusion about Lestat calling himself piano and Louis forte. And on the one hand I’m like *shrug* maybe it’s not that deep or it’s meant to irritate Louis- and on the other I’m like welllll Louis does kind of come at him aggressively sometimes, so maybe this is Lestat’s actual pov.

Thank you for your kind words, anon! And yeah, I definitely see what you mean and agree. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the conflation of violence and sex themselves, but I do think an enormous part of Louis’ character is about the repression of self until that self explodes violently out of him. To me, it’s ultimately that that feeds into Louis’ complex relationship with power and control which is often reflected in exertions of physical autonomy, both over his own body and the bodies of other people (and not even just sexually – a huge part of his relationship with Claudia is in his platonic dominion over her body, from having Lestat make her for him in the first place, to trying to control what she eats, what she wears and, most significantly, her role within the family unit [her transition to sister is, after all, just a placation. Dreamstat proves that, just as the coven calling her a feminine denouement of his name ‘Baby Lulu’ is. She is always her father’s daughter]).

Louis’ repression vs Louis’ oppression

One of the most interesting changes that the show has made is in changing Louis’ race, and while there has plenty said about that, the shift from the book as a purely repressed character, to one who’s repression is fueled by racial and societal oppression has elevated not just the character, but the show. Louis’ limitations aren’t just the ones he internalizes anymore, they’re externalized – when we meet him, he hasn’t picked a role as he has in the book, it’s been a role forced upon him by the era, the city and the systemic structures in place around him. He has to play the tough pimp down in the Black brothels he himself runs to cement his social power there, but he also has to play subservient, placating, and second-class to white society to gain any social power there.

The result is Louis represses different parts of himself as a result of oppression twice over – he’s repressing the softer, loving parts of himself working the part of Storyville he has power in, while repressing the harder, more ruthless parts of himself working the part of Storyville he doesn’t, to say nothing of having to repress his queerness in a religious household and a homophobic society. I think this makes him a melting pot in more ways than one, because it makes his authentic self hard even for him to identify within himself. He spends so much of his time code switching and repressing different parts of himself, yes, to survive, but also to advance which I think is a less talked about part of his character.

Like, Louis’ not just a survivor of his situation, he’s an ambitious man who seeks to elevate his social position and gain social power. I do think that’s partially borne out of the implied fall from grace his father had, and being pushed into the role of family patriarch at a pretty young age, and his singular rage at being locked out of NOLA’s upper echelons in the 1910s through 40s, but I also think it’s just a vital part of his character. Louis’ a social climber first, and a capitalist second! It’s one of the things that I find most interesting about him, and I love that the show leant into it with Louis actually gaining social power through his relationship with Lestat, even if it doesn’t always look like it (i.e. him having to play Black employee to his white husband at the opera).

Louis leverages that social power (and Lestat’s whiteness) to allow first professional advancement through the acquisition of The Fair Play Saloon – both his biggest competitor and a symbol of the white society he was locked out of, and turning it into The Azaelia, but also I’d argue the perception of personal advancement through having Lestat make him a child, something he also believed that he was locked out of as a gay man. Claudia's not just self-affirmant to Louis, but a symbol of achievement over society in the same way The Azaelia was, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she was born out of the death of it.

Okay, but what’s that got to do with body autonomy, sex and violence?

Yes! Right! Get back on track, Sophie, haha. Look, both Louis’ survival and advancement are really determined by his ability to control himself and choose what to be and when. Like I said above, he has to repress different parts of himself to be able to work different parts of society, and I do think there’s a resentment of the fact that he has to do that at all. He can’t float through life authentically because he’s not granted the same privilege of straight, white men, and even when he has someone who passes for that on his arm, he’s still limited in how he’s able to wield Lestat’s social power out of the house in that particular era.

That – understandably! – stokes an enormous amount of feeling. Yes, rage is a big one, but I also think grief and hurt and sheer weight, and Louis as a character tends to repress all of that too. He struggles to self-manage his emotions because he’s never been allowed the space to, and even when Lestat tries to give him that space, Lestat has exactly 0% capacity to understand him. Louis and Lestat are very, very different characters from very, very different eras and countries, and I think fundamentally don’t understand each other, despite loving each other deeply, and in a lot of ways, that’s probably part of the appeal for them.

Louis though I think does view managing his emotions as intrinsically linked to controlling himself / his body, which comes to this point that Louis presents himself as a very cerebral character, but he’s not really. He might talk a lot, read a lot, enjoy art a lot, but Louis’ always been both practical and physical. How he handles himself, how he processes trauma, how he hides from himself and others, hell, how he enjoys himself isn’t necessarily something he thinks about, it’s something he does, and usually does with his or somebody else’s body.

He hides his sexuality using Miss Lily's body, he represses his vampirism with an animal diet, he combats feelings of powerlessness, boredom, malaise with exertions of power, pleasure, comfort over and with other people’s bodies, whether that’s making Lestat turn Claudia (an exertion of power not just over Claudia, but Lestat too), the scene at Antoinette’s (significantly being after an enormous loss of power with Lestat’s act of abuse), murdering Lestat at the Mardi Gras Ball (and saving him / grabbing Claudia too), depending on Claudia for his own happiness in Europe, grabbing Santiago’s tongue at the restaurant, his D/s relationship with Armand and using Armand’s body to perform power over the Coven, the murder of the coven and Alderman Fenwick to process trauma and oppression, the 128 boys in San Francisco with Armand waiting at home, the rocks in his ankles, the comfort of the embrace in the reunion with Lestat. Hell, even the interview becomes a physical act given the way he flies Daniel out and then weaponises his Parkinson's against him.

We spend so much time with Louis playing passive as he narrates the events of his life in Dubai that I think it can be easy to overlook how physical he actually is as a character, and the importance bodily autonomy plays in his connection to himself and his connection to others. The fact that that can and does manifest aggressively / violently sometimes (particularly after periods of feeling powerless, traumatised or overwhelmed) is absolutely a part of that, but even beyond that, I think he does have a real physical vocabulary that he often tries to depict as more cerebral because I think it makes him feel more in control of himself.  

So yeah, I think you're right in that Lestat thinking Louis' forte probably is pretty accurate to how Lestat sees him.

[leitereads]

⋆✮↪ ReIntroduction

-emia, meaning presence in blood.

┏━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┓

The crime scene

⇒ Multifandom blog ➣ (series/films) (books) (anime) ⇒ Writeblr, langblr and studyblr ⇒ My visual arts ⇒ Literature, classical art and philosophy ⇒ Music ➣ classical, classic rock, goth, metal and indie ⇒ Dark Academia ⇒ TTRPGs and videogames ⇒ Horror, true crime and oddities ⇒ Medicine and science ⇒ Travelling and lifestyle ⇒ Further info: linktree

The Murderer

⇒ Name: Leite (they/them) ⇒ Age: 21+ ⇒ Blood type: [confidential] ⇒ Murder weapon: blood, sweat and tears ⇒ Profession: medical student ⇒ Location: Portugal ⇒ Languages: Portuguese, English, Spanish, French ⇒ Other details ➣ (linktree) ⇒ Hobbies ➣ TTRPGs (DnD, CoC, VtM, BitD, etc.) | writing | reading | drawing/painting | horse riding | swimming | HEMA | sportive fencing

Note: I am on holidays, therefore I won't be that active till the 26th July

Confidential Information

This blog may contain sensitive content. Everything potentially concerning is tagged under the tag "cw". Still, user discretion is advised.

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Modus Operandi

✏ WIP: The Apocryphal Truth

Set in the late 1890s-early 1900s, this novel is about a young doctor who doesn't believe in God, just to realise that he is part of what he doesn't believe in.

⇒ Gnostic, cosmic and psychological horror, sci-fi (steampunk and biopunk), historical fiction (speculative history) ⇒ 1st draft - longest WIP till date ⇒ 3rd person POV, likely unreliable narrator

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✏ WIP: The Immortal Emperor's Regicide

Inspired by the tabletop roleplaying game "Blades in the Dark", by John Harper, this WIP started as a collaborative creative writing project, being now a personal WIP. The steampunk city of Doskvol hides away all sorts of scoundrels, aristocracy and insane cults to Eldritch gods. While some criminals don't have any other choice besides a life of crime, some of them have higher ambitions, and the highest of them all is to finish the reign of terror of The Immortal Emperor.

⇒ Horror in general, sci-fi (steampunk, biopunk), mystery, thriller ⇒ 1st draft - adapting the lore and worldbuilding created for the collaborative writing project ⇒ 3rd person omniscient narrator.

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In order to understand, I destroyed myself.

- Fernando Pessoa

This Introduction post is also a WIP. Soon to be added:

Spotify playlist addressing all my favourite music genres.

The link to the content warning tag.

The links to important/personal tags.

Links to an info page about my OCs

[clarasghosts]

yes, vampires are about the biting and the blood and the sexuality and the longing for home and community, but i love that claudia in particular is also about feeling like your life has come to a standstill and no one takes you seriously and everyone else has moved onto other life milestones, while you're trapped in some hellhole of eternal adolescence, getting older but never moving forward and never finding the place where you belong

[cowboycannibalism]

cleaning my storage and I need yall to see my poor original copy of The Vampire Lestat that was gifted to me in 4th grade and I carried everywhere

[hanzajesthanza]

combining (one of my) favorite short story with (some of my) favorite characters ❤️