#(and there's such a different commitment level that comes into romance vs. like. idk being a kid-parent to a kitsune)

[spiinsparks]

         ||. it’s 3am and all i can freakin think about is that any person who wants to romance this idiot is gonna have to deal with whatever the equivalent of an emotional one-night-stand is (we’re not here for the actual thing in this house) bc he’s a dumb teenager who’s too independent to consider yknow maybe a proper commitment to someone doesn’t actually mean ... getting shackled down

[sofipitch]

It is interesting that Lestat was committed to Louis in IWTV for 70 years I believe? And didn’t stray until Antoine (which even then was about Louis), to only then be incredibly elusive and flighty with Louis. Why do you think that is? I’m delusional enough that I’m choosing to believe their endgame is a monogamous remarriage lol

I'm guessing you are talking about their relationship after book 3? I think Lestat is just struggling with the idea of commitment because of his past like when you look at his track record

Nicki - said he hated him and had actually hated him the whole time he knew him (regardless of if that is true youch that is cruel) and then killed himself

Gabrielle - distant throughout his whole childhood and eventually leaves him when he is at his lowest

Louis and Claudia - eventually tried to kill him, Lestat's actions result in the death of Claudia which he never forgives himself for, he asks Louis to come back to him multiple times and he says no

Akasha - idk how much of this is actual love vs coercion but he did want to try and redeem her, find a way to settle things without anyone he loved dying, and Akasha gets her head cut off and Lestat feels he could have helped her but didn't and blames himself

So yeah that I think is enough to make anyone crazy. I also think one thing of important is how many of these relationships start with crazy infatuation before ending terribly. Nicki and what Lestat called their golden moment. Running through the streets with Gabrielle after he turned her. Despite their fighting Lestat says he had decades of happiness with Louis and Claudia. And Lestat VERY SLOWLY realizing Akasha is bad. It doesn't surprise me Lestat hops from relationship to relationship, he is craving the honeymoon phase, and then has moved onto the next person BEFORE things can go sour. Lestat "falls in love" with everyone immediately, I don't think he genuinely is in love with everyone equally, I think he is in love with the potential that they could love him l, as long as they never know too much, they never peel back Lestat's mask to see what is actually underneath (Lestat repeatedly refers to himself as a monster and I don't think just bc of vampirism)

I'm now gonna combine this answer with the answer to an ask about the TV show bc I think they are really similar:

I know the whole cheating thing has been driven to ground but there’s all these differing takes of Lestat’s affair so as a book reader what’re your thoughts on the matter? Is Lestat simply poly? Is he just a cheater? Is it circumstancial? And how do you think Louis and Lestat would navigate their second ‘marriage’ in that context? Does Louis take on a simple ‘I do not see it’ approach or maybe he’s just a ‘cool girl’ and doesn’t care? Vampires live forever so monogamy must seem ridiculous but if you remove reality from fiction that leaves it open to different outcomes (especially when you take into consideration how gothic romances usually play out). Sorry it’s probably a loaded question but it’s one of those things that seems up to interpretation so I’m curious as to what your thoughts are on it :)

So I personally don't think Lestat is poly. I personally have no experience with the matter but he often interacted with "other lovers" (basically anyone who isn't Louis or Nicki, Gabrielle and Claudia I'm refusing to consider his lovers but I do think they also count as his fee actually close/genuine relationships) on a very surface level basis. He meets some random person and is kissing them, but that is before they ever actually KNOW him.

I dislike Lestat's relationship with Amel because in a lot of ways it's just insane but Lestat's love for Amel once he is inside him makes a lot of sense, Lestat sees Amel as someone who has seen ALL of him (I'm assuming he has access to Lestat's thoughts and memories) and is not horrified. Amel also can't leave him which I'm sure Lestat sees as a plus 😂

Antoinette in the show being around for a really long time just never made much sense to me just bc based on the books, it doesn't match Lestat's patterns.

None of this is to excuse Lestat or say that what he does doesn't hurt others. Louis says he is hurt by Lestat's distance and affairs in both TOTBT and the TV show. I just think the cause is out of some deep rooted insecurity rather than just uncontrollable lust

As the books go on Lestat becomes Anne Rice's self insert, and I think Lestat's many lovers and everyone in love with him (especially in the PL books) is her own desire for ppl to love her to the level of worship, AR is known for her enormous ego

[violetemerald]

For the shipping one, 30, 26, and 10. :)

Lol this is some reverse order kinda thing... I see what you’re doing...

OK. http://luvtheheaven.tumblr.com/post/157356117182/40-questions-meme-for-shippers

30. Name a couple of fandoms in which you have no ships. 

Well then we have to define “fandom” and “having a ship” so I can know just how to answer. Southland is a show I adored and had no ships in, from what I can remember, but while I watched it loyally and adored it I didn’t feel like it was a fandom I was engaging with. White Collar is a show where I support multiple canon romances somewhat but don’t feel major shipping feelings? Some people would say if you like Elizabeth/Peter’s marriage you ship them but idk if everyone would. I did support Neal/Alex probably the most of his canon romances and could rank each of Neal’s romances, and I felt a lot of feelings about Neal&Peter and vidded them in a platonic way and read “Gen” fics about them and stuff but like, to me that’s not shipping, when it’s not rooting for them to be anything other than the platonic loving bond that is basically already canon... I also don’t ship but really love the idea of Mozzie&Neal actually being the real committed queerplatonic partners throughout the show’s run... I could talk on that some more.

Ok fandoms in which I have no ships... thinking harder... A Series of Unfortunate Events, Heroes probably could count in this category, Criminal Minds when you squint right? Because ultimately I support all the ships in a platonic way? I don’t think BBC Sherlock counts here, because I do basically feel like I ship Johnlock even though it’s queerplatonic in my mind. I don’t know. But I don’t ship anyone in any romantic way on Sherlock either. Oh The Fosters is a huge one for me in this category, I really try to like the ships more sometimes so I can be more in the fandom but its hard, I adore the show and the characters and the family relationships and yet I have like no shipping feelings. I might’ve shipped Wyatt/Callie fairly hard but it was probably in large part because they’re just better than the main alternative ship who I consider a rare NOTP... like idk I can rank some ships as better than others but I don’t really have ships when it comes to The Fosters. Breaking Bad I have no ships. And then there are shows like Arrow or DC’s Legends of Tomorrow or The 100 where I mainly have completely AU ships and/or my only ship was killed off, so for long stretches I kinda feel like I don’t really ship on those shows.

Harry Potter is definitely a fandom where I have no ships, so I lean toward canon ones.

26. Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to? 

I’ve noticed a few patterns I think. My ships don’t all just follow the same single pattern, I have too many varied ships for that, but yeah I’ve thought about these things.

First of all there’s the cerebral/friendship leads to romance/it’s not explicitly about sexual attraction or aesthetic attraction at all ships, the kind of really chaste, slow burn, easy to fall for ships that you can explain why they are good together in terms of like, detailed explanations of which ways they complement each other, how they both are good for each other, etc. Ships that have been appealing to me as an asexual person since long before I even knew I was ace or that asexuality itself was an option. Maybe the guy clearly finds the girl beautiful but he doesn’t actually talk about wanting to date her or kiss her, doesn’t claim he’s in love until after he knows her well, he just wants to talk to her at first or something, and usually in these ships the girl is oblivious that dating could be on the horizon, or she’s completely focused on something else like an important mission, she’s in another relationship, that kind of thing while all this slow development of a friendship and slowly falling in love happens.

I’ve noticed for the vast majority of my favorite ships, I care deeply about both characters, both are main characters or you get to know a lot about both of them, you see them on their own outside of the ship, it makes the ship easier to root for and fuller and I fall harder faster if I’ve become completely invested in both characters in and of themselves.

There’s, on television and film fandoms, some degree of chemistry or how they act around each other that MATTERS. If whenever they kiss or have a sexual scene they pause for breath with enormous, uncontrollable grins on their faces, that can go a long way. If they are cute with shy smirks and they touch each other in ways that seem intimate and probably not platonic, if the way eye contact happens or something just makes me believe they really want to be together, that goes such a long way. I don’t think ships have to have eye contact, I’ve shipped blind characters like Auggie/Annie on Covert Affairs and it’s just, everything in the way Auggie expresses emotion does it just as well of course... But like... idk there can be a big component of do I believe that the characters feel truly happier in each other’s presence, etc. And usually the difference between like shipping levels of happier in each other’s presence vs platonic they’re better as friends level of happier is about the like, kind of happiness, is it too giddy or is it steady and safe? Is it connected to anything sexual or close to kissing or is it mostly connected to things that could be platonic?

There’s not a clear formula really but I think all of this is part of it, for me.

10. Do you ship any characters that have never met?

Tommy & Sara on Arrow, maybe, not super hard but I like the idea of what their interaction might be? I certainly ship Tommy with her sister Laurel, but Sara and Laurel have had the same taste in men before... (*cough*Oliver*cough*) and with Sara “dying” (or so he thought) before season 1, and then Tommy dying in the season 1 finale, and then Sara returning in season 2, we never got a chance to see what it could’ve been like. I’d like to see how Tommy handled Sara being bisexual. I assume Tommy has met her in my headcanon, before the gambit, and they have potential to still meet because of Sara being on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and traveling through time on a regular basis. But this is one ship I’ve thought a fair amount about and kind of “ship” despite them never having met. To be fair my main motivation for this particular shipping combination is just that Tommy was my favorite character and they killed him off. And then Sara entered the show and became my new favorite character. I like it when my favorite characters interact? XD

Kara (Supergirl) and Iris from The Flash have now met but barely, and I started shipping them when they hadn’t. This femslash ship is a pretty huge one for me on my mind for the past like, over a year... I really like the idea of them for a lot of reasons, especially since Iris is a reporter and so is James (albeit a photojournalist in this case), and Kara was canonically hugely crushing on James, meanwhile Iris canonically was captivated and supporting The Flash before she knew he was Barry, and eventually does love Barry, and Kara is also a superhero with a similar personality to Barry? And idk I just really love the idea of exploring them as a femslash ship.

Chloe (Smallville)/Peter (Heroes) was a ship that a few people besides me actually had. They got better and better as more seasons of each show aired. Total crazy crossover, characters never met, but Chloe loves the Superman/Clark Kent personality that Peter Petrelli in so many ways has, and Peter is an empath and would be so caring to the emotional Chloe, and the actors had good chemistry together in the show canceled after 8 episodes back in the year 2000, Opposite Sex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzjFTLGCJMs

So like I’ve actually made 2 Peter/Chloe fanvideos... let me know if anyone wants to see them lol.

In Harry Potter I kinda ship some weird combinations if I think on the hard enough, with so many characters and even generations there are some characters who have never met that might be fun to ship but no, I don’t really ship them hard or anything.

I think that’s probably it? I don’t really ship too many characters who have never met...