Blackwood Farm Chapter 44
Mar. 20th, 2018 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratSo, 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
Quinn estimates there is two hours left til dawn. Lestat notes that Quinn hasn't said what's become of Mona. Quinn says he doesn't speak to her directly, but does check via phone call with Rowan and Michael. He worried that, being powerful witches, they might be able to detect his vampirism even through this, but they don't seem to. He is told she is in isolation and on dialysis, but is not in pain.
Six months ago, he received a letter from Mona that said "Beloved Abelard, I release you from any and all promises." In response, he send loads and loads of flowers, and dictated "undying love" notes over the phone. He did not want to send any flowers or letters his own hands had touched, thinking Mona would know the "evil in me" just from touching anything he had. He still sends flowers almost daily, and "now and then I break down and call" and is told that "Mona is holding her own". He dreads the day that Rowan and Michael tell him "come see her" because he doesn't think he'll be able to resist, and so Mona's last moments will be clouded with fear over what he has become, while he will seem "cold and passionless through my heart's breaking"
Not sure why he thinks he would seem like that; Anne Rice vampires are NOT passionless by any stretch. In fact, I think it might be canon that their emotions are actually deeper and more intense than those of humans? In execution, they're actually pretty shallow, sure, but they make quite a display of them.
He says that, more than that though, he dreads the call that will tell him Mona has died.
Lestat asks him "What do you think is the point of the tale you've told? Aside from the fact we must protect Aunt Queen from all harmful knowledge of what's happened to you, and we must destroy Goblin?"
DAMN GOOD QUESTION, LESTAT, WHAT WAS THE POINT?! It sure as hell couldn't just be context for Goblin, because THAT could have been done a WHOLE lot faster and wouldn't need half the details Quinn included.
Quinn replies , "That I had a rich life" and that Petronia didn't care about it, that she took it "viciously and capriciously"
1) Ok, but why did you think Lestat would CARE? What's your reason for wanting him to know it? I guess get him to like you so he won't kill you, which is admittedly a pretty good reason so I guess I'll be generous and give it a pass. But it was still unbearable, as I've gone over before, and would have worked better if it wasn't set in the "telling my life story" framing device.
2) I don't think Quinn's life has actually been that rich at all. He's had a few interesting experiences, to say the last, but his life involving sex with ghosts just makes it weird, not rich. But I don't think he's really had a rich life in the way the term is usually used. He's just a sheltered, spoiled, shallow boy with few connections to anyone who didn't raise him, who doesn't really seem to have changed or learned anything in this saga. That said, I can see him THINKING he had a rich life. It's the fact that Lestat does not at all contest this that I take issue with.
3) Yes, how awful of Petronia to take away your rich life without giving a shit! I'm sure none of your victims had rich lives themselves. And if they didn't, well...then it's no tragedy, right? People who don't have rich lives are no big deal, they can just die. Unlike with Quinn, who is very special and important because reasons!
...honestly, I could TOTALLY get into this "I am entitled and exceptional" mindset if I thought it was intentional, because it is SUCH a good mindset for a creature who, by continuing their existence at the expense of others, have decided their own life is innately just worth more than that of all their victims combined. Like that's totally a way that I would expect a vampire to think. And it definitely makes sense for Quinn's upbringing. It's just not how I think Rice is wanting to portray her "tragic, elegant, sensitive" superheroes-with-fangs who only kill Bad People that Deserve It.
Lestat says that immortality is a gift however you come by it, so he must lose this hatred of Petronia because it poisons him. Quinn says it's like his hatred for Patsy, and that he wants to lose his hatred for both of them, that he wants to lose all hatred, but Goblin needs to be destroyed right now. "And I've tried, out of fairness to him, to make it plain to you how much I'm responsible for what he is, and even for the vengeance he wishes on me."
...huh. I thought Quinn was a bit of jerk to Goblin at some points, definitely, but didn't realize I was supposed to. Lestat, however, says that this was "clear" but that he alone can't stop Goblin and needs help. He proposes Merrick Mayfair, a vampire who is also a Mayfair witch, though not one that knows Mona. She has great powers with spirits, and according to Lestat, the story that spirits don't come to Blood Drinkers is in fact a lie. In fact, Lestat says he himself is a "seer of spirits".
He says Merrick is almost as young a vampire as Quinn, and "suffering" but that Lestat can get her here by 1 or 2 AM. Lestat gives him his "firm pledge" and Quinn says "I thank you with all my heart."
Lestat then confesses that he's in love with Quinn.
YUP
Keep in mind, while we've been enduring Quinn's life story for like 500 pages, Lestat and Quinn have still only known each other a single night. Not even a full night yet! But, as a friend of mine pointed out, Lestat has still taken more time to fall in love with Quinn than Quinn took to fall in love with Mona. And as far as I know, these emotional bonds are both meant to be sincere.
Remember how I said the Toreador in VtM are like the Rice vampires in that they will Embrace for beauty or love? But that it always goes sour, because their love ISN'T eternal at all, and in fact, though Toreador feel intensely, they are also notoriously shallow and flighty? This is why I love the Toreador---on the surface, they seem like Rice vampires, but they're actually more like realistic subversions of Rice vampires, who are SUPPOSED to be as dramatic and shallow as much as they are attractive and elegant. And they seem like a joke, but their emotional hollowness, and how they prey on others to fill it, and the lives they'll leave ruined in their wake, and their entitlement and vanity, makes them actually very scary on a level much more real-world and personal than, say, the fleshcrafting Tzimisce or shadow-summoning Lasombra. You can't really meet a real Tzimisce, but there are a lot of real Toreadors...likewise, a lot of real Quinns. But VtM acknowledges the reality, and makes it more horrible by adding the lifespan and power of a vampire. Rice, well...not so much. Indeed, for someone supposedly a writer of horror and tragedy, her books are very "safe" in the same way the Anita Blake books are? Romances are instantly formed and last forever, no one the author loves will die, etc. The main exception, of course, being Interview, but this was written DECADES after that.
"I was so amazed I was speechless"
Same, Quinn
"To say he looked exquisite to me was an understatement. He was savory and elegant and all night as I had talked to him I had been so locked to him that I had felt myself under his spell, opening up, as if there were no boundary between us."
In case anyone is hopeful that Lestat is manipulating Quinn and this is all him preying upon Quinn's fanboying and desire to feel special, I apologize for disappointing you, but...no. No, he's not. He's for real.
I would also remark on how this is another instance of Rice showing rather than telling, but...to be honest, I'm glad that she DIDN'T show us Quinn obsessing over Lestat through this whole spiel, it was long and boring enough.
Also...savory? Is he a cheesy snack, perhaps? Actually...yeah, accurate.
Lestat the cheesy snack is about to leave to go get Merrick, when suddenly there is a scream. It's Jasmine, and she yells "Quinn, Quinn, it's Goblin!" and she says she saw him.
Saw him what?
Well, Aunt Queen is lying dead beside the marble table. She fell and hit her head on it.
Okay, admittedly, this is something that LKH would NOT do---kill off a character that both she and her protagonist clearly love very much. Aunt Queen was close to Quinn, I think Rice loved her as well, and she was genuinely interesting and endearing so the reader cared for her as well. At least, I did. And so rather than yelling at Rice for killing off one of the few characters I find engaging, I am actually giving it props here. I guess if I wanted to dig a bit deeper, there's the issue of a woman dying to further the story of a man, but...I don't know, it doesn't have the same feel that fridging usually does to me? At least not yet; if it's turned to be all about how sad it is for QUINN to love Aunt Queen, rather than her loss being about HER, then okay, but for now, I actually am happy with this.
Especially since firstly, it shows Goblin as a threat to someone OTHER than Quinn (because really, I don't care that sucks blood out of a vampire who sucked it out of other people first, especially not one as unlikable and dull as Quinn) which gives more solid justification as to why he should be destroyed (though it might have been better for this to be the REASON he decided that, rather than after the fact) and secondly because...ABOUT DAMN TIME SOMETHING HAPPENED! The last thing close to any kind of action was 50 pages ago when Petronia turned him, and everything since then has just been dullsville. Which wouldn't be so bad if the entire book wasn't largely dullsville; I actually prefer books with LESS action, but something worthwhile still needs to be happening, even if only for the character internally. There's an attempt at that in these 50 pages, sure, I actually though Rice did a good job with her brief but effective description of Quinn's furious anxiety in the hotel room after being turned, but it's ultimately not enough, and made even less by being couched in so much purple fluff.
Speaking of purple fluff, the scene of Aunt Queen's body takes an entire page. I'm sorry, it doesn't. That would actually be excusable since it's so major, I guess? No, what takes the whole page is Quinn's melodramatic language and reflections about it, which I am going to spare you. The one good detail in there is that he notes she's in her stocking feet, and that must be why no one was there holding her arm and helping her down the stairs---she was not wearing her "treacherous" and "evil" high heels. I really, really love this detail. And what I also love is that Quinn actually doesn't TELL the reader how ironic it is that all this time everyone thought it was falling in her heels that would killer, he just lets the audience recognize that for themselves. I very, very much appreciate it; I always hate when that kind of thing is spoon-fed to readers/viewers, like in "Enchanted" where the villain points out "Oh, here's a twist on our story, it's the brave PRINCESS coming to the rescue!" Like, we can figure that out, thanks.
So yeah, I like that this happened, I like how it was done (Quinn's overabundance of words aside), I'm actually really good with all of this. Let it not be said that I am unfairly just determined to hate everything.
When the Sherriff and cops arrive, Cindy and Jasmine both tell them how they saw Goblin as a "commotion in the air" and Aunt Queen cry out his name before she fell. This goes over about as well as you'd expect.
Jasmine asks Quinn what he's going to do about Goblin. Quinn says he's going to destroy him (again I think this would have worked better as a decision he made AFTER Aunt Queen's death) but it will take a little time so "beware of him" until Quinn can get it done because he is "swollen with power" She tells him he can't leave now but he tells her he has to, and will meet her at the funeral tomorrow at 7 PM. Jasmine is crying, Lestat warns her to keep Jerome close because Goblin wants to hurt everyone Quinn loves, then kisses her forehead.
...he met her just this evening too, and SHE didn't spend five hours or so telling him her life story, so this seems more than a bit inappropriate to me, but I also don't see Lestat caring. I just also wish Jasmine had slapped him and asked who he thinks he is and who IS he for that matter?
When Lestat and Quinn are alone on Sugar Devil Island, Quinn goes on what he admits is a rave of how he can't live without her, how he hates Goblin, how she was too old and fragile, how did Goblin get that power, how to make him suffer?
Hopefully, we'll find out soon! I say "hopefully" because I actually don't think we do in the chapter.
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
Quinn estimates there is two hours left til dawn. Lestat notes that Quinn hasn't said what's become of Mona. Quinn says he doesn't speak to her directly, but does check via phone call with Rowan and Michael. He worried that, being powerful witches, they might be able to detect his vampirism even through this, but they don't seem to. He is told she is in isolation and on dialysis, but is not in pain.
Six months ago, he received a letter from Mona that said "Beloved Abelard, I release you from any and all promises." In response, he send loads and loads of flowers, and dictated "undying love" notes over the phone. He did not want to send any flowers or letters his own hands had touched, thinking Mona would know the "evil in me" just from touching anything he had. He still sends flowers almost daily, and "now and then I break down and call" and is told that "Mona is holding her own". He dreads the day that Rowan and Michael tell him "come see her" because he doesn't think he'll be able to resist, and so Mona's last moments will be clouded with fear over what he has become, while he will seem "cold and passionless through my heart's breaking"
Not sure why he thinks he would seem like that; Anne Rice vampires are NOT passionless by any stretch. In fact, I think it might be canon that their emotions are actually deeper and more intense than those of humans? In execution, they're actually pretty shallow, sure, but they make quite a display of them.
He says that, more than that though, he dreads the call that will tell him Mona has died.
Lestat asks him "What do you think is the point of the tale you've told? Aside from the fact we must protect Aunt Queen from all harmful knowledge of what's happened to you, and we must destroy Goblin?"
DAMN GOOD QUESTION, LESTAT, WHAT WAS THE POINT?! It sure as hell couldn't just be context for Goblin, because THAT could have been done a WHOLE lot faster and wouldn't need half the details Quinn included.
Quinn replies , "That I had a rich life" and that Petronia didn't care about it, that she took it "viciously and capriciously"
1) Ok, but why did you think Lestat would CARE? What's your reason for wanting him to know it? I guess get him to like you so he won't kill you, which is admittedly a pretty good reason so I guess I'll be generous and give it a pass. But it was still unbearable, as I've gone over before, and would have worked better if it wasn't set in the "telling my life story" framing device.
2) I don't think Quinn's life has actually been that rich at all. He's had a few interesting experiences, to say the last, but his life involving sex with ghosts just makes it weird, not rich. But I don't think he's really had a rich life in the way the term is usually used. He's just a sheltered, spoiled, shallow boy with few connections to anyone who didn't raise him, who doesn't really seem to have changed or learned anything in this saga. That said, I can see him THINKING he had a rich life. It's the fact that Lestat does not at all contest this that I take issue with.
3) Yes, how awful of Petronia to take away your rich life without giving a shit! I'm sure none of your victims had rich lives themselves. And if they didn't, well...then it's no tragedy, right? People who don't have rich lives are no big deal, they can just die. Unlike with Quinn, who is very special and important because reasons!
...honestly, I could TOTALLY get into this "I am entitled and exceptional" mindset if I thought it was intentional, because it is SUCH a good mindset for a creature who, by continuing their existence at the expense of others, have decided their own life is innately just worth more than that of all their victims combined. Like that's totally a way that I would expect a vampire to think. And it definitely makes sense for Quinn's upbringing. It's just not how I think Rice is wanting to portray her "tragic, elegant, sensitive" superheroes-with-fangs who only kill Bad People that Deserve It.
Lestat says that immortality is a gift however you come by it, so he must lose this hatred of Petronia because it poisons him. Quinn says it's like his hatred for Patsy, and that he wants to lose his hatred for both of them, that he wants to lose all hatred, but Goblin needs to be destroyed right now. "And I've tried, out of fairness to him, to make it plain to you how much I'm responsible for what he is, and even for the vengeance he wishes on me."
...huh. I thought Quinn was a bit of jerk to Goblin at some points, definitely, but didn't realize I was supposed to. Lestat, however, says that this was "clear" but that he alone can't stop Goblin and needs help. He proposes Merrick Mayfair, a vampire who is also a Mayfair witch, though not one that knows Mona. She has great powers with spirits, and according to Lestat, the story that spirits don't come to Blood Drinkers is in fact a lie. In fact, Lestat says he himself is a "seer of spirits".
He says Merrick is almost as young a vampire as Quinn, and "suffering" but that Lestat can get her here by 1 or 2 AM. Lestat gives him his "firm pledge" and Quinn says "I thank you with all my heart."
Lestat then confesses that he's in love with Quinn.
YUP
Keep in mind, while we've been enduring Quinn's life story for like 500 pages, Lestat and Quinn have still only known each other a single night. Not even a full night yet! But, as a friend of mine pointed out, Lestat has still taken more time to fall in love with Quinn than Quinn took to fall in love with Mona. And as far as I know, these emotional bonds are both meant to be sincere.
Remember how I said the Toreador in VtM are like the Rice vampires in that they will Embrace for beauty or love? But that it always goes sour, because their love ISN'T eternal at all, and in fact, though Toreador feel intensely, they are also notoriously shallow and flighty? This is why I love the Toreador---on the surface, they seem like Rice vampires, but they're actually more like realistic subversions of Rice vampires, who are SUPPOSED to be as dramatic and shallow as much as they are attractive and elegant. And they seem like a joke, but their emotional hollowness, and how they prey on others to fill it, and the lives they'll leave ruined in their wake, and their entitlement and vanity, makes them actually very scary on a level much more real-world and personal than, say, the fleshcrafting Tzimisce or shadow-summoning Lasombra. You can't really meet a real Tzimisce, but there are a lot of real Toreadors...likewise, a lot of real Quinns. But VtM acknowledges the reality, and makes it more horrible by adding the lifespan and power of a vampire. Rice, well...not so much. Indeed, for someone supposedly a writer of horror and tragedy, her books are very "safe" in the same way the Anita Blake books are? Romances are instantly formed and last forever, no one the author loves will die, etc. The main exception, of course, being Interview, but this was written DECADES after that.
"I was so amazed I was speechless"
Same, Quinn
"To say he looked exquisite to me was an understatement. He was savory and elegant and all night as I had talked to him I had been so locked to him that I had felt myself under his spell, opening up, as if there were no boundary between us."
In case anyone is hopeful that Lestat is manipulating Quinn and this is all him preying upon Quinn's fanboying and desire to feel special, I apologize for disappointing you, but...no. No, he's not. He's for real.
I would also remark on how this is another instance of Rice showing rather than telling, but...to be honest, I'm glad that she DIDN'T show us Quinn obsessing over Lestat through this whole spiel, it was long and boring enough.
Also...savory? Is he a cheesy snack, perhaps? Actually...yeah, accurate.
Lestat the cheesy snack is about to leave to go get Merrick, when suddenly there is a scream. It's Jasmine, and she yells "Quinn, Quinn, it's Goblin!" and she says she saw him.
Saw him what?
Well, Aunt Queen is lying dead beside the marble table. She fell and hit her head on it.
Okay, admittedly, this is something that LKH would NOT do---kill off a character that both she and her protagonist clearly love very much. Aunt Queen was close to Quinn, I think Rice loved her as well, and she was genuinely interesting and endearing so the reader cared for her as well. At least, I did. And so rather than yelling at Rice for killing off one of the few characters I find engaging, I am actually giving it props here. I guess if I wanted to dig a bit deeper, there's the issue of a woman dying to further the story of a man, but...I don't know, it doesn't have the same feel that fridging usually does to me? At least not yet; if it's turned to be all about how sad it is for QUINN to love Aunt Queen, rather than her loss being about HER, then okay, but for now, I actually am happy with this.
Especially since firstly, it shows Goblin as a threat to someone OTHER than Quinn (because really, I don't care that sucks blood out of a vampire who sucked it out of other people first, especially not one as unlikable and dull as Quinn) which gives more solid justification as to why he should be destroyed (though it might have been better for this to be the REASON he decided that, rather than after the fact) and secondly because...ABOUT DAMN TIME SOMETHING HAPPENED! The last thing close to any kind of action was 50 pages ago when Petronia turned him, and everything since then has just been dullsville. Which wouldn't be so bad if the entire book wasn't largely dullsville; I actually prefer books with LESS action, but something worthwhile still needs to be happening, even if only for the character internally. There's an attempt at that in these 50 pages, sure, I actually though Rice did a good job with her brief but effective description of Quinn's furious anxiety in the hotel room after being turned, but it's ultimately not enough, and made even less by being couched in so much purple fluff.
Speaking of purple fluff, the scene of Aunt Queen's body takes an entire page. I'm sorry, it doesn't. That would actually be excusable since it's so major, I guess? No, what takes the whole page is Quinn's melodramatic language and reflections about it, which I am going to spare you. The one good detail in there is that he notes she's in her stocking feet, and that must be why no one was there holding her arm and helping her down the stairs---she was not wearing her "treacherous" and "evil" high heels. I really, really love this detail. And what I also love is that Quinn actually doesn't TELL the reader how ironic it is that all this time everyone thought it was falling in her heels that would killer, he just lets the audience recognize that for themselves. I very, very much appreciate it; I always hate when that kind of thing is spoon-fed to readers/viewers, like in "Enchanted" where the villain points out "Oh, here's a twist on our story, it's the brave PRINCESS coming to the rescue!" Like, we can figure that out, thanks.
So yeah, I like that this happened, I like how it was done (Quinn's overabundance of words aside), I'm actually really good with all of this. Let it not be said that I am unfairly just determined to hate everything.
When the Sherriff and cops arrive, Cindy and Jasmine both tell them how they saw Goblin as a "commotion in the air" and Aunt Queen cry out his name before she fell. This goes over about as well as you'd expect.
Jasmine asks Quinn what he's going to do about Goblin. Quinn says he's going to destroy him (again I think this would have worked better as a decision he made AFTER Aunt Queen's death) but it will take a little time so "beware of him" until Quinn can get it done because he is "swollen with power" She tells him he can't leave now but he tells her he has to, and will meet her at the funeral tomorrow at 7 PM. Jasmine is crying, Lestat warns her to keep Jerome close because Goblin wants to hurt everyone Quinn loves, then kisses her forehead.
...he met her just this evening too, and SHE didn't spend five hours or so telling him her life story, so this seems more than a bit inappropriate to me, but I also don't see Lestat caring. I just also wish Jasmine had slapped him and asked who he thinks he is and who IS he for that matter?
When Lestat and Quinn are alone on Sugar Devil Island, Quinn goes on what he admits is a rave of how he can't live without her, how he hates Goblin, how she was too old and fragile, how did Goblin get that power, how to make him suffer?
Hopefully, we'll find out soon! I say "hopefully" because I actually don't think we do in the chapter.
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Date: 2018-03-21 11:33 am (UTC)I actually do think Rice's take on vampires is objectively bad. Not because vampires should never be "elegant, tragic, sensitive" -- usually I don't like that, but Robin McKinley got me with it in Sunshine. In that book, one vampire character is elegant and sensitive (actually sensitive rather than whiny and self-absorbed), and the others are brutal enemies. This gives the impression that vampires are extraordinarily powerful PEOPLE, and like most powerful people, most of them are assholes but some are not. And the reader gathers that even the bad ones have individual personalities which we just can't see because if the viewpoint character got close enough, they'd eat her.
On the other hand, Rice's vampires are a planet of hats. All the pretty boy vampires are the same with the possible exception of Lestat. You can have a magical race that's all the same if you're writing a different kind of work, like Pratchett with fairies, but that's not at all what Rice is going for. Laurell K. Hamilton actually does this better, or at least did, because she had vampires who were different from each other rather than infinite copies of JC.
(Are all Rice's pretty bi boys turned by evil women? Besides Louis?)
I AGREE WITH LESTAT. Why did he sit there listening to this? Eesh. And yeah, Quinn's life is "rich" only in the literal sense of having way too much money for his own good, but otherwise it's a big nothing. He didn't even seem to like it very much.
I can't remember why Quinn wants to kill Goblin before Goblin kills his aunt. Which other people tell him about, rather than him seeing or feeling it himself. This is such a bad book.
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Date: 2018-03-21 02:39 pm (UTC)No, most of Rice's vampires are pretty bi boys turned by other pretty bi boys, though the sire is generally the more "masc" one from what I can tell. Hell, even Petronia is portrayed as the more "dominant" one than Quinn; I almost wonder if that's why Rice decided she must be intersex.