#mael

[animunee-ee]

the fact that we never got a 1 on 1 Ludociel vs Estarossa fight just saddens me every time I think about it. The rampant anger turning into slow realization then chilling despair would have been so cool to see. For all the shit Ludo has done I think nakaba should have hurt him some more. Lost potential if anything.

also colors suck.

[bubblegum-blackwood]

Just for fun

[manstike]

The goods

[winterlogysblog]

Random Headcanons

- Fairies smoke. They get high, oh they get so high. (Thanks @sydns for putting this idea in my head lol) The Fairy King's Forest has a spot where one can find the highest quality of herbs, one of the reasons why humans try to enter the forest in the first place. There are also far more crazier things that can be found in the Fairy Realm. None of the Sins know that King smokes because he didn't during his time with the Sins, his argument being that humans don't sell the good stuff. The first time anyone has actually seen King and Elaine smoke is at Gilthunder and Margaret's wedding.

- Goddess shed their feathers as they grow. It's kind of a weird sight to see

- Goddess and Fairies are known to have beautiful voices. The question of whose better is very subjective depends on who you ask. When a Goddess sings they bring a heavenly and ethereal feel. When a Fairy sings it's more enchanting and whimsical.

- Lancelot slept on Chastiefol once. Best nap ever.

- Lancelot became a bit overprotective over the Percy Platoon after the incident because he doesn't want anyone getting hurt again

- Lancelot didn't speak to Sixtus for months after Sixtus received Magliastira. Lance is just upset he didn't get a cool weapon

- Mael cried when he found out that Tristan named his swords after him

- Meliodas would sometimes talk to the horses in the castle stables, sometimes Ban would join in. King apologizes to the horses on their behalf

- Lancelot and Sixtus would use birds to carry messages to each other.

- Gowther taught Tristan how to curse in Demon language

- Gowther is Sixtus' favorite Uncle. "His weirdness is endearing." Sixtus said.

- Zeldris and Mael would sometimes have their own little tea parties in the Demon Realm. Meliodas found out about it and got upset he wasn't invited. "You don't even like tea." Zeldris argued. "That's not the point! It's the thought that matters, it's about a get together between brothers" after that they invited Meliodas, he really didn't last long.

[pellegarde]

you give death a bad name

[kaelio]

Regina - such a villain-- maybe I need that. A real villain --someone challenging Lestat. A "Regina" in his life. That's what I need. (Watching "A Place to Call Home.") Imagine if this "Regina" plots -- actually finds Gundesanth. Eleni? Could it be her? Allesandra? Who would want to become the Lord? Armand?

Can't make Armand a villain.

What about Mael?

Avicus?

Mael?

Armand will warn him. I try to despise you. I even tried to plot against you, but I can't do it.

Anne Rice journals - Tulane University Special Collections

(lmao at Mael twice. Mael? Avicus? Mael? Daniel? Mael? Eleni? Mael? Mael?)

[treeosusume]

Happy birthday 💕

[nostalgicbookworm]

[fenicenera83]

Pencil sketches on rough paper of my otp and two favorites♡

[monstersinthecosmos]

yeah yeah, loustat has stuff like, i wanted him filled to the brim, it only took these few minutes to renew its momentum, loved him so much it was humiliating, I have no other god and never will, you shall be my god

but do they have stuff like THIS

I pictured him in his white robes. There might have been an earthquake then in Massilia, and I doubt I would have noticed it.

and After all, he was fine to look at, but I didn't really want to talk to him.

and Right out of the woods this character looked, 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵

[animunee-ee]

Happy birthday babygirl, thankfully i didn't forget this time (I totally did)

[helblis]

The cover design for Blasphemy yes I'll fulfill my doujinshi dream!!

[toriangeli]

One of my favorite things about how Anne Rice writes historical fiction: she doesn't sugar-coat her characters.

As in, there was never going to be any way all these vampires going back 6000 years were going to align with modern sensibilities. They're not savory. They suck.

First off, any male of status from before the Great Depression probably did, in fact, look at an underage girl and think, "she LOOKS like she could grow up cute and interesting, but do I want to wait to ask her dad and risk someone else calling dibs in the meantime?"

Lestat: Killed majestic, beautiful animals that were only trying to feed themselves. To save the lives of people who were counting on him, yeah, but still.

Marius: Literally from ancient Rome, lots of ideals from that time, pederastic relationship with Armand, see above disclaimer about males from prior to the Great Depression.

Armand, Santino, most of the de Landens: I do feel like the Children of Darkness/Satan wouldn't have been founded in our time, as evidenced by Lestat so easily disbanding them with basic Enlightenment talking points, so I think it counts.

Louis: LITERALLY OWNED SLAVES. And not in a bullshit "but I treat them so nice and they'd just be owned by someone mean if not for me!" way, he legit believed this was what black people were for. Until he became a vampire and all humans looked equal(ly foodlike) to him.

Gabrielle: Let other people raise her kids while she became a library hermit.

Maharet and Mekare: Cannibals. Oh, sorry. Respectful cannibals.

Khayman: Nnnot even gonna be sarcastic about this one. He was as much a victim of it as Maharet and Mekare, hence them not blaming him in the slightest. But people today would be put on trial for following an order like that one, so I figure it belongs here.

Daniel: idk probably unprotected gay sex. It was the 70's.

Claudia: Gets a pass. She was five. All the bad shit she does is unrelated to her time.

Mael: Helped keep a vampire captive for years, then proceeded to kidnap someone and force them to become a vampire, all because "idk we're kooky druids and it's our religion."

Everard: Laughs at Benedict for being kidnapped and having his blood stolen. Victim-blaming at its finest.

Akasha and Enkil: I mean, we know what they did, but everyone hated them in their own time, too, so.

Eudoxia: Jesus Christ.

Davis: HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG EVER IN HIS LIFE. /protects him forever #theonlyinnocentvampireprobably

And you know what? I'd take the worst of these over Bill Compton, Damon Salvatore, or Whassisface Cullen fighting for the Confederacy because "the greater good." Like bro. At least the dickheads above are being honest about it and we can judge those parts of them appropriately. You're trying to make us think you were doing something honorable by being vague. We know what you were really fighting for, and so do you.

Moral of the story: If you're gonna be evil, trying to be sneaky about it only makes it worse.

[inexplicablepeas]

So I realized that I never shared my Blood & Gold re-read thoughts due to shadow-ban issues on the old blog, thoughts under the cut! It's long!

It was interesting to read this immediately after TVA, it really highlighted Anne's talent for developing distinct voices for her characters as the two books are so different in structure and voice. Where TVA is fevered and rambling with tonnes of evocative metaphor this is logically ordered and somewhat detached. This has none of Lestat's conspiratorial chumminess interspersed with catastrophic existential crises, none of Louis' melancholy poeticism, we're just getting straight facts from Mr Marius . So Marius' voice is a bit drier than a lot of the other narrators in the chronicles but that does feel correct and it gives the book a bit of a cosier and more chill vibe than most of the other entries. It's like story time with Marius. 

It's interesting that this one isn't framed as a book being written for publication but as a quiet and private conversation between a lonely guy and a stranger who showed up on his door step happy to listen to him. I think that makes sense for Marius, he doesn't seem like he would publish his life story, he's too private and he would probably have been more tactful land less honest about certain things if it was for publication - less interesting for us!

You do still have to read a lot of his inner journey between the lines nonetheless. He's not really telling you how he was doing day to day after he abandoned Pandora entirely (following an argument about how to deal with the emerging cult of satan worshippers) then spent centuries in Rome pretending he wasn't dying for Avicus' (and Mael's?) company while letting partying mortals have run of his house as he painted the walls subconsciously with dozens of Pandora faces... but you can imagine, he's probably not feeling great!

It was fascinating to get more detail on how he was recruited to be keeper of the parents and to see his tense arms-length relationship with Mael play out over the years. Eudoxia is a great addition to the story as brief as her time in it is and getting his version of Armand's story is very welcome (and of course interesting to contrast with Armand's telling). Getting more Bianca was also welcome, she's such a big presence in TVA, I liked getting Marius' perspective there. 

I've got some of the same kind of complaints I had with TVA about what was left out. I guess that structuring a life story that spans millenia is no easy task and it's inevitable that some stuff is gonna get left out. Anne probably didn't want to rehash the same events form different perspectives over and over again but I really was disappointed that the narrative doesn't touch on his thoughts on his reunion with Armand in QotD, the brief Night Island coven times, how Daniel came to be in his care (???), his reaction to Armand's suicide attempt (!?), how was it that he and Santino ended up being the team on clean up duty together for that anyway (???), his reaction to learning that Armand was in fact alive(!) and his subsequent turning of Benji and Sybelle.

Marius:

And Pandora of course, I hadn't read her book at the time of reading this so I was disappointed about how little detail we get on the centuries they spent together. You can imagine his motivations for leaving a lot of this stuff out, it seems that some things are still too painful to talk about and he is also telling a specific story to a specific audience here (to influence a particular outcome, perhaps? *squints suspiciously at Marius*) so it makes sense for him to brush over or leave some things out entirely but it's not always the most satisfying result for a reader that's already invested in these characters and their stories.

The framing device with Thorne is great, I can't emphasize enough how immediately I fell in love with this guy, this stoic but sensitive viking titan of a vampire. I found the final chapter to be the most exciting really, I guess because where most of the story is Marius explaining from his perspective why he's alone (apart from Daniel who doesn't count because he's too obsessed with his model cities, sorry Daniel!), it's all a foregone conclusion where we're heading and we know what happens to most of the major characters but once we get back to Thorne's contemporary POV hey, anything can happen! And thanks to Thorne, stuff does happen! He's kind of the MVP of this book. We also get a teeny bit of Daniel in the framing chapters at the start of the book and hey, it's nice to see him alive and still sassy, if a little worse for wear.

Overall I find it a pretty enjoyable vampire chronicle. I do love the lore of Anne's vampire universe, how rich it is both with historical details and with her own world building and Marius is, of course, very key to it as guardian of the parents for millennia, so I do want to know everything about him and I'm glad this book was written to give us more of his story. His chronicle of his very lonely life, caused in no small part by his own stubbornness and terror of losing control is sad and often frustrating but I did find all of it a compelling read. He's a very strange guy and it really is fascinating to get more of his perspective, even if he doesn't quite have the zazz of a Lestat or the poetry of a Louis.

[moonsbijou]

kind of obsessed with the idea of tristan meeting mael someway,somehow probably the only person in the world that might be able to understand his struggles having been a part of the goddess and demon clans, need it