Work Text:
[#LestatAndSayWeDid | Molloy's book: a million sales and counting, for some reason | Beta requests: ping SamuelJohnson]
Garamond: what the fuck daniel molloy I thought you were a cool dude
Garamond: what the fuckkkkkk
DanceTheFoxtrot: I live under a rock and I don't even know who this guy is and why he thinks he can publish his fic like this
Delta: Daniel Molloy is the person who gave Anne Rice the idea in the first place. It's not his fic. It's their shared worldbuilding in the first place.
AlfalfaRomeo: That's a little... generous. Anne Rice said over and over again that they chatted once over drinks about a dream Molloy had about interviewing a vampire, but that Anne Rice did all the worldbuilding. At most, Molloy came up with some names. At most.
Delta: And the conceit of interviewing a vampire.
AlfalfaRomeo: Sure, but that conceit isn't very much in the grand scheme of the Vampire Chronicles universe.
AlfalfaRomeo: Molloy's in the twilight of his career. Why not burn it all up on publishing his idea of how it should go? It's not like he was going to write the Vampire Chronicles when he was winning pulitzers.
Garamond: okay but AlfalfaRomeo you have not actually read this yet. Please read this yet before you defend it.
AlfalfaRomeo: I'll read it eventually but I have a strong personal policy of reading fic before published books. Published books aren't gonna get taken down by litigious authors.
SierraTango: Anne Rice isn't going to C&D you from beyond the grave. We're free.
Theo: I'll take the bait. Garamond what's so wrong with it?
Garamond: Claudia is a teenager. All she needs to do to pass as an adult is strategically changing her makeup over time and, idek, every so often padding her outfits to act like she's naturally having body changes, but even that's a tossup. Ruins the entire character.
AugustPersonage: Also he racebent Louis and Claudia and changed a bunch about the time period, but my FAVORITE (actual favorite) part is that he treats this like a serious journalist and has footnotes and external documentation. He's like "there was a fire at Vampire Theater in Paris and newspaper articles about it? Awesome, let's toss it in."
AugustPersonage: He took this fandom to work, by god.
AugustPersonage: Love it, honestly.
MoNotCurly: he's taking the kayfabe way too far, though. Someone posted a pic of him with ~~vampiric contact lenses~~
AugustPersonage: Dude has Parkinson's. Let him enjoy himself.
Robin: oh shit really?
AugustPersonage: Yeah someone interviewed one of his daughters and she mentioned it.
Pie: Even if he doesn't, he has every right to have his fun, considering the shit he's had to put up with ever since Fictional Daniel was turned in the books.
LordUnicycle: Can someone please explain to me in tiny words who this guy even is???? Not the "he's the guy who gave Anne Rice the idea in the first place", I mean the "how he got a publisher to go along with publishing his fic and a media circus to give him free publicity, when the rest of us have grown up living in fear of Anne Rice and her lawyers"?
AugustPersonage: Tiny words: he's a co-owner of the intellectual property. He can do what he wants. And what he wants to do is update the timeline and improve the journalistic standards of the interview, making it memoir instead of horror novel.
Kimberley: his European vampires are still shit, though.
Spaghetti: The term is "homages to classic vampire fiction".
Kimberley: everyone in Europe lived in darkness until the sun shone out of Lestat's ass.
Spaghetti: You didn't read the book. The book is _entirely about unreliable narration_. That's why he wrote it as a memoir. I swear only three people in this chat passed freshman English lit. It's supposed to make you say, what the fuck is this and how is this point of view shaping the narrative. That's when Molloy can swoop in with his sources, and contrast narrative changes. There's a reason he put this book within the universe of the Vampire Chronicles instead of writing his own thing; he WANTS to play around with the idea of storytelling and bias.
AugustPersonage: THANK YOU.
Spaghetti: Fuck it's almost as if Molloy is 1) a good writer, 2) a good journalist, and 3) HAS WRITTEN OTHER MEMOIRS BEFORE. So his last book is a fictional memoir to play with everything he spent his life building. It's a tour-de-force and it's a bow at the end of the play before the curtain falls. Let this man live.
Nan: Love how Molloy took this opportunity to come out as bisexual and ship himself with Louis and Armand. King of self-insert fics right here.
Luce: DANIEL MOLLOY DID WHAT?
AugustPersonage: READ THE BOOK
Capulet: My historical fiction chat isn't vampire-focused but they are loving this book. We've spent the last two weeks delving into all the sources and they're all real. All of them! Molloy really has crafted this amazing story out of this basis in reality. This is why you have a prize-winning journalist writing fic. So when they do, yeah, take it work, they _take it to work_.
Capulet: We're all in awe of his research team. This must have taken a decade.
Spaghetti: and LOL that he calls them the Talamasca. Cherry on top.
Delta: Molloy was already out.
Nan: He absolutely was not.
Delta: Yeah-huh, my moms knew him back in SF and have tons of stories.
Nan: There's a difference between being out to people who know him and being out professionally, and Molloy was not out professionally before this.
Delta: Then how do people explain his entire early career?
Nan: My impression is they don't.
Luce: TBF before he had a wikipedia article digging up all his old publications, they were all extraordinarily obscure.
AlfalfaRomeo: "early career" is such a fancy way of saying "sex, drugs, and very little journalism"
Capulet: Doesn't sound like much of an early career, then.
Golfer: It's also extremely good as fic, too.
Garamond: It ruins the entirety of canon.
Golfer: It's not trying to be canon, it's trying to be fic. This isn't some missing scene. This is something that can _only_ work as fic. It takes the existing canon and changes it just enough that it is still recognizable but it's also it's own thing, while commenting on the canon in the first place. It's saying, look, these guys are queer and they're in some kind of fucked up relationships and they're all vampires. It's bold enough to say Louis/Armand established 70+ year relationship and it's bold enough to say, it's better than it was with Lestat but still not great, because they're both pretending they're good for each other and they're both wrong. These dudes are all super fucked up. And it looks at that and says, what is that like when you're writing the book in 2022 and publishing it in 2024.
Psyche: Look if I'm with someone for 70 years and we're murderous vampires, I think my standards for Hashtag Relationship Goals is possibly not at the level of normal folks. I'm just saying.
Autolycus: I loved the parts where Molloy breaks the fourth wall and turns toward the camera and is like "why and how did I end up vampire marriage counselor"
Psyche: The inherent, and human, tragedy of "dude, you knew he was like this when you married him"
Psyche: And having Armand there as part of the interview is inspired. You get this contrast where you really see how much this is Louis deliberately breaking vampire law. Over and over again, he has no respect for it, and now he's making Armand be an accessory to it. How much does Armand respect vampire law? He was the one responsible for upholding it for centuries! And then Louis showed up and Armand started letting it all slide -- or at least, that's how Louis tells it. And Molloy never lets you forget about the constant murdering.
Psyche: Except Louis has supposedly stopped murdering! Armand hasn't.
Horace: okay but does this!Armand _actually care_ about the Great Laws or is it just something to use to maintain his own position and power? Because if he actually cared, he'd've mindwhammied Louis and we'd have no book.... uh....
Indigo: whatever, he was bored of them, he wasn't bored of Louis, they were challenging his authority, so off with their heads. Louis was also challenging his authority but that was hot and kinky, since Armand knew he could always reassert power with no problem. Kinky sex fun > his tired boring coven.
Prospero: let's be real, a theater career with a demanding schedule is killer on everyone, keeping it up for centuries has gotta be exhausting. Something had to give and I guess Armand couldn't admit to being wrong enough to change careers? They should have reorganized themselves a dozen times.
Indigo: and not to be doylistic but Molloy enjoyed the whole "actual place called Vampire Theater" tidbit too much to let it go that easily.
Julius: I love how Molloy interrupts their love story to point out that the coven is right, actually, and Armand letting Louis flout the laws make a mockery of those laws and makes it clear that when he enforced those laws previously on them, it was just because he wanted to; if he doesn't want to, he can't be arsed. Which is why, I suppose, the coven was willing to believe that Armand was actually going to kill Louis at the end of the play; it was just a return to how they expect Armand to behave. But they did not realize how bored Armand was of that life and how he was willing to jump on any excuse to end it. Because let's be real, no one is saying that Armand spared Louis's life _not_ thinking that Louis was then going to murder everyone. Murdering everyone was part of the whole point. Murdering vampires is against the law except if the coven leader does it? Okay, the coven leader has deputized Louis de Pointe du Lac for this purpose. Sucks to be them, the murderous bastards.
Berenice: There is so much murder in this book and that's how you know that Molloy's kayfabe at being a vampire himself is the only way to actually spin this wink-wink is-it-real-memoir-or-is-it-fiction game he's playing, because no way does a human being survive that interview as he wrote it. But if Molloy's a vampire? Yeah, sure, he can probably survive that.
Psyche: He's not a vampire in the book, just in the promotional events.
Berenice: The person he is in the book is the person he is in the promotional events. He wasn't like this during his talking head days.
Pie: Every so often during his talking head days, some anchor would try to get him to put fake fangs on. Damn, the things this man has put up with because Anne Rice decided to try her hand at RPF.
AugustPersonage: He said all the time he was fine with it. I assume the checks paid for at least a nice dinner or two.
Berenice: And I don't think Molloy would have written this book if he wasn't already a fictional character within the universe. It's like, at that point, why _not_ do it?
Capulet: Think he's trying to get another movie made?
Berenice: Wouldn't surprise me. He could even play himself.
Robin: I know I'm probably supposed to be annoyed at all the people taking it seriously For The Lulz but I kind of think it's charming. By god will we revive goth culture, one pulitzer winning journalist at a time.
Epsilon: And he is really bringing the journalism cred to this. I think the most damning part of the book is how he pulls no punches on the question of who killed Claudia and who saved Louis. Everyone killed Claudia. Everyone saved Louis. I wish he'd managed to interview three vampires instead of just two, because I want to hear how Lestat spins the reason why he didn't bother to warn them; if nothing else, he could have mailed them a postcard. It would be hard to juggle even more perspectives, though. I guess that's for the sequel.
Spaghetti: I _love_ how he got a copy of the "original script" and did handwriting comparisons on Armand.
Epsilon: We have no idea who got Louis out of the box! It was probably Armand! Could have been Louis! Could have been anybody! Could also have never happened! Who in this narrative are we supposed to trust, exactly? And Molloy even points out that you can't trust the documentary evidence either! Forgeries exist! Who would have kept the original script in the first place and how would it have survived the fire?
Psyche: He should have revealed at the end that he got all of it from Lestat. Obviously Lestat keeps all his old scripts. Why it has Armand's handwriting on it... who's to say it does?
Psyche: At least we know this whole thing isn't real because if it were real, someone would have put Claudia on a plane train or automobile or even a boat to _literally anywhere else_ and saved her life. Right? Right? As Garamond pointed out, it would not be hard for her to pass as an adult.
Epsilon: Why did they even stay in Paris in the first place?
Psyche: Actually the advantage of unreliable narration is we don't, actually, know Claudia died. Louis's eye witness testimony? Already been fucked with from the mind control, and Molloy's clear that Louis places _himself_ as not actually present when she dies. Molloy draws enough of a picture to indicate that Louis doesn't know for sure where anybody was in that theater at any time; he's not reliable here and even Louis knows it. Armand's eye witness testimony? LOL. Ah, yes, Armand committed the premeditated murder of Claudia and her collaborator girlfriend, rehearsed it with Lestat -- who never stopped it, either in rehearsal or actually on stage performing, when he had many opportunities -- come on, we're supposed to believe Armand?
Psyche: I bet in the sequel, Lestat and Claudia show up, having gone road-tripping for the last seven decades, having bonding time without Louis.
Psyche: The only reason all of us believe that Claudia died is because we've read all the other books. But why should Molloy follow that? He's already changed so much.
Julius: That wouldn't surprise me in a sequel. He could follow the Rice chronology or he could be like, fuck that, this is my vision. And since this book is entirely about Claudia, since it ends with her "death", it would make sense that the next one is "what happens next", and in line with the theme of memory and narration and the lies we tell for publication, it would be great if the next book covered all the post-Claudia life that Louis shrugged off with Molloy, because the interview was only ever about Lestat and Claudia, not about his life with Armand. And so the next book is about his life with Armand, but also Lestat suddenly shows up and then in the last ten pages, Molloy's walking back from Starbucks and bumps into a teenage girl wearing a Tulane sweatshirt and only after you close you the book do you realize that was Claudia.
Sebastian: The greatest "is it fiction or is it not fiction" is that this totally could be a non-fiction memoir and Molloy got wined-and-dined by an exceptional con artist one time and he thought, damn, this would make a great book.
Tybalt: And that also would work within canon, too. Molloy's like "look I saw all this stuff, and here's how stage magicians do the same things, just for the record".
Sebastian: Vampires exist! On the other hand, what does exists mean. On the third hand, I'm a vampire now.
OscarTheGrouch: On the fourth hand, I've been a vampire in the books for decades. Are you keeping up or do I need more hands?
FantasticMrRabbit: This book is such a mindfuck, I love it. I've been recommending it even to people who don't read in this genre.
OscarTheGrouch: Molloy's doing that himself. He's definitely bringing in a whole new audience to vampire books.
Horace: You know what? Good for him. Honestly, good for him. Dude deserves a fucking break.
Horace: Plus he's a vampire now, so even if he goes back to journalism (if they'd take him back after all this circus...), everything he writes is vampire fiction.
Horace: I really see no downside to this at all.