Blackwood Farm Chapter 44

So, my theory that the vampire's heightened senses making them obsessed with stuff like patterns being a shout-out to the "count all the rice!" type vampire legends? Totally wrong. According to Wikipedia "Rice took a previously written short story and turned it into her first novel, the bestselling Interview with the Vampire. She based her vampires on Gloria Holden's character in Dracula's Daughter: "It established to me what vampires were—these elegant, tragic, sensitive people. I was really just going with that feeling when writing Interview With the Vampire. I didn't do a lot of research."

You know, I want to make fun of that---the "elegant, tragic, sensitive" bit---but ultimately, it is not justified at all for me to do that. Just because it's a cliche in itself at this point doesn't mean it wasn't innovative once, and even when it's been done a million times, it can still be done WELL. It's not a bad idea just because it doesn't appeal to me, and it definitely is a kind of vampire that holds appeal for a lot of other people. It's EXECUTION that's the issue here. I don't think Quinn, for instance, fits any of those descriptors. He's only really "sensitive" in regards to himself, he's not "elegant" so much as just ostentatiously wealthy (remember how he fucking LISTS the brand names of his clothes?) which is really the OPPOSITE of elegant, and while some of the things that happened to him have been sad, that's not the same thing as tragedy. And while I could very much enjoy reading about a tacky callous manchild vampire who gets kicked in the ass by fate, the fact is, that's not what Rice was aiming for, so it ends up unsatisfying both for people who want that AND for people who wanted someone ACTUALLY "tragic, elegant, and sensitive"

I know I've said some variant of this over and over, of course, but I just feels it bears repeating, having found this quote, and recognizing that my own first reaction---to scoff at it, to say "well THERE'S your problem", to be one of the people who thinks "THAT'S not what vampires SHOULD be" just because it doesn't fit their own preferences---is WRONG. I would very much like to avoid being that person. I think it is important, for sporkers especially, to keep that in mind. Of course, our own preferences, beliefs, and biases, ranging from "how we best like our vampires" to our political views to our opinion of how people work, etc. will influence our sporks in one way or another (or at least, it does my own, and those of other sporkers I have read) because sporks are ultimately opinion, but like...you get what I mean? There's a difference between "this idea is bad because it's not what I would want to read" vs "this execution is bad and here is my argument for why", basically.

...and honestly, I don't even know why I'm typing all this out since I feel like all my followers here are of this mind already, but eh.

Anyway, speaking of sporking, I've been having some thoughts on what to do next. I was thinking either Servant of the Bones or The Mummy. Both of them are by Rice as well, but not tied to her vampires/witches verse. They're not well-known, but they are very...Rice.

Fun fact there's a total of three female characters in Servant of the Bones. One is dead before the story begins but we're told consistently how tragic that is because of how good and sweet she was. The other is her mother, who has sex with the MC. And the third is the rando evil witch who made him a sort of genie. I guess you could count the random girl with big boobs who like, goes gaga for him in passing on the street, as a the fourth. When I told a friend this, they noted that these are "exactly the three female characters allowed in stories"

This same friend also suggested I spork a comic, like maybe some of Chuck Austen's X-Men stuff. That's an interesting idea.

So...any of y'all got any thoughts/ideas/preferences?

( BLACKWOOD FARM CHAPTER 44 )