#i haven't done any research i haven't tried to outline anything i haven't even finished the books

[rapha-reads]

So I've decided to ignore sleep tonight (though it's already 6am so whatever), because several reasons I won't get into. Anyway I'm reading Prince Lestat and I am LOVING it. There is just so much lore?! So many new characters, fascinating characters?! A whole world of vampires whose stories are connected or totally not to the Coven of the Articulate?! There's just so much.

In my last post, about how I skipped quickly Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, I wrote that I was finding it academically fascinating to read several decades worth of an entire literature world in the span of a month only. To continue in this vein (pun intended), reading PL after having binge-read the original VC books is a deep dive into how history has sped up since the 80s.

I'm not just thinking about because I'm reading Gregory's chapter and that's what he's observing, and also because the changed world and what it means for vampire society ("the tribe", and how I adore that terminology) is the big main theme of this final trilogy. It's something I've been thinking about since TVL at least. How for how these novels pertain to the horror and the fantastic genres, they are also a mirror of the society and time during which AR was writing. And because she kept writing decade after decade, and kept observing the world around here, each new book is its own little observation about the early 80s, then late 80s, then first half of the 90s, second half of the 90s, and now we're right smack in the middle 2010s and these immortal characters are feeling the weight of this rapidly changing world.

And it makes me think of actual human beings born in the 40s or 50s, or even 60s, or my own grandfather born in 1931, and how, just like a lot of these vampires recounted in PL, they sometimes can't follow all the changes brought in the last three decades (the biggest thing is technology, intradiegetically Lestat himself saying he keeps forgetting how to use his smartphone, but extradiegetically, it's how AR writes "to go on the computer" and other phrases like that, that sounds weird to the ear of someone who's grown up with this tech). And AR was over 70yo when she wrote PL, so I'm imagining that she was also writing her own impressions of this 21st century world that she saw developing under her eyes.

And in light of all the historic events we live week after week these past handful of years only (the 2020s want to bury us), it's quite interesting to apply that way of thinking to our generation too (millenials and younger, the 80s-90s-early 00s kids). Saw a post earlier saying "do you think one day we'll get to live in precedented times", in answer to the classic "we're living in unprecedented times", and I think of how the VC are the stories of one handful of characters in a world full of other characters who are not or relatively not concerned by these big stories. And how the Coven of the Articulate is considered as legendary amongst the rest of vampiredom, while they themselves don't really realise their fame, or when they do, they reject it. And how in the actual world, there are still a huge percentage of the world population that's not concerned at all by things that here make us all go frothing at the mouth because "omg we're witnessing history". Yes, "we" are witnessing something that will appear in the history books, but it is so because we have decided to put ourselves in the narrative. So many people are not even caring a little bit about big news that seem so important to us, because their lives have other matters to care for. And it's not that they're wrong or we're wrong, it's not about that, it's mostly about how the rapid changes of the world in the 21st century has made a category of people (all ages all nationalities alike) the Main Character, concerned by the narrative and trying to control it or change it (voting, protesting, activism) while so many others are still going on about their lives as usual, maybe seeing the same things as the first category, using the same tools, but not seeing the connection between it and them (the "mavericks" as AR calls them), or others starting to realise and not knowing how to join the narrative (Antoine, Gregory), while yet others have picked up a whole other way of being part of the narrative while not being part of it (Fareed).

I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe I do need to go lay down for a couple of hours after all.