#VC Rereading Commentary

[thevampireforthesetimes]

I'm rereading QOTD and I'm living for the Lestat/Marius/Akasha tension.

Specifically, Marius being equally pissed and likely grateful for Lestat both loving him enough (and likely Akasha too) that Akasha at least uses Lestat as a plausible excuse for not putting Marius in his place, while Marius patiently tries to put her in hers. ALSO, that Marius glare had to have made Lestat shit himself emotionally. That shit scared me.

Also, those Louis/Gabrielle looks at their loveable, blonde idiot that both want to likely hit and hug at the same fucking time.

Not to mention, Gabrielle straight eyeing Lestat and Akasha back and forth through the whole beginning of that meeting. 👀 It has me dying.

Also does this mom-o-phile have some damn nerve obsessing and having a blood orgy with another mother figure he's sexually attracted to, while leaving his OG independent milf with his bf?!?! Like she doesn't have other badass things to do! It's a tale as old as time itself.

[galarglory]

"Well it's horrible but at least love is still alive." Wow two of the worst people she's met who totally aren't dating just ran off into the sunset together. What a truly lovely and horrible ending... Now how is she gonna get down from this tree?

[butchybats]

hey it's me again i am the lesbian devil's minion=hot anon and I've chosen to come out of anon because you don't seem so scary ahahah

Went to your tags and love your commentary on TVA on Tumblr lmao

Yay I’m glad I’m not scary!! ^_^ I try to be friendly hghg and again I’m happy that you enjoyed my fic!!!

And yeah I was surprised to see those silly posts in my notes again lol but it’s awesome that you like them!! I’m due for a tva reread sometime soon but like I started that tag because this time last year I didn’t really have anyone to talk about vc with!! But now I have a lot of vc friends and mutuals and it’s really nice 🥹

[yvtro]

it's so evident that rice she was one of these westerners absolutely enamoured with dostoevsky, and you don't even have to look at how she incorporated her take on "grand inquisitor" into one of the books to notice it. she took so much from him in terms of the literary tradition and themes such as endurance, she crafts her characters in a way that is so strikingly similar, she has this weird obsession with religion that makes some of her novels absolutely unbearable. her style is so similar to certain translations of his novels, you just can't tell me he wasn't her main inspiration. but i think it's really important to get that she also inherited his narrow and imperialist influenced view on the rest of eastern europe, and that she took everything he said about russia at face value.

[spkyscry-a]

“. . .”

They’re both going to be here awhile, huh?

[literaphobe]

I reread the rest of sadf and don't have any more intelligent commentary sadly. However!!

//

He throws up peace signs and sticks his tongue out quirkily and everything.

//

“That’s not going to work on me,” he says, determined. “Sorry, Dream. But you’re not getting kissed. Cry about it.”

“Not even a smooch?” He complains, laying it on thick

Dream puckers his lips at him to tease him, to mess with him.

//

George randomly goes back and forth between two different groups on VC across different streams just to see if Dream would follow him like a loyal lost pet. He does.

//

The things you knew...

OH UR KIDDING……. OH FUCK HOW DID I KNOW…

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi! Sorry to bother you, but you seem the VC expert, so. I'm in the process of reading the books (I read IWTV many years ago and loved it, but I never picked up the others) and so far I've read the first four; I finished Totbt yesterday. Since I'm pretty spoiled and, judging from the plot summary, I don't think I'd enjoy Memnoch, do you think I could read Merrick without losing the thread? And after that and TVA, I was thinking of skipping ahead to the PL trilogy... does it make sense? Ty ❤️

Hey dear!

(I really wouldn't call myself that I'm just obsessed but no expert *laughs*)

And never a bother! 💕

Ok, so, no, you do not need to read Memnoch. It was a very heavy book to read (and devastating back then when I thought it would be the last), but I would still recommend going over the gist of it, for example by reading through cosmicjoke's commentary. Memnoch is definitely relevant for the later setup (TVA and Merrick), it would confuse you if you don't at least know why Lestat is where he is.

After that I would skip ahead to the last three books, yes, the ones in-between link the Mayfair Witches and are standalone, you can read them later if you want to. But the "story" continues then in the last three books, yes. (In fact, rereading Merrick I realized just how much Anne set up already for the last books, but that just as a note.)

Both Merrick and TVA are told from someone else though (David, and Armand respectively), which is... different. *laughs* Hope you have fun though!!! If you like, tell me what you thought of them after? 💕

[licncourt]

Just wanted to say how glad I am to have found you on Tumblr! I've commented on Begin Again iver on AO3, but your commentary here on Louis and the series in general has been really enjoyable to read. I've recently started reading thr series again, taking my time and really diving into the story, "reading between the lines" as Lestat tells us to do. I love finding other fans who love this stuff as much as I do! 🖤🖤🖤

Hello!! Welcome to the void I scream into! I'm so glad you like my fic and my endless stream of Louis thoughts, I have a lot of them 😭

I finished a reread of VC in quarantine and it reminded me how much I'd always wanted to write a post-QOTD fic to spite 90s canon 😂 Even so, a reread of IWTV and TVL is sooo worth it for the sheer amount of subtle characterization and little details in the story, both explicit and implied. I will certainly be writing more meta as I have the time and you totally should too as you read!! There's so much there to explore.

[thecloserkin]

something that I’ve always thought in regard to the writing style of flowers in the attic is that, isn’t it implied that these are books written by Cathy about her life experiences? If it is, it kinda makes sense that Cathy’s writing would be more juvenile in the beginning and become more sophisticated as she gets older and matures in her writing (something which I personally think, the later books don’t seem as clunky imo)

Yes! That’s a deliberate choice on VC Andrews’s part to inject older!Cathy’s commentary (which consists mostly of “oh you sweet summer child who believed in true love and happy endings”). It has been a long time since I’ve read any of the FITA sequels so I don’t trust my own recollection, but while I agree that they’re less clunky, I also think they’re less....purposeful? I feel like the first book is just driven by this one emotion and it’s...probably anger but I am not wedded to that, it’s something very strong and I feel like the later books don’t have that binding purpose and it makes them feel less coherent. I reread Jane Eyre recently and that book is definitely 110% anger, but a simmering repressed kind. Cathy otoh doesn’t initially look like she’s repressing anything --she’ll fly into a rage at the slightest provocation--but the more I think about it the more I’m coming around to the view that being “sophisticated” just means that you understand all the stuff you were repressing as  “juvenile.”