#or had *his* editors be like lol we cannot print this human getting vampire fucked five times in ten pages

[apoptoses]

One of the many things Anne said over the years that has always haunted me is how Daniel deliberately left out a lof of things about Armand from IWTV. Specifically about his looks. He's described as being simple, beautiful and having dark eyes but not much else, and at first I thought that maybe Anne hadn't gone into detail because she hadn't fleshed out the character that much, but the fact that she rationalized it as Daniel very intentionally leaving that type of information about Armand out of the audience's reach is SO fascinating to me because... at that point they'd already begun their cat and mouse game and were beginning to fall for each other, so Daniel getting all possessive (and protective dare I say???) about Armand is just so sdjfhjsfjskhdsjk. In his mind, the world was ready for the goriest, most horrific aspects of Louis' tale, but it wasn't ready to know just how beautiful Armand was.

What a timely ask, anon. I've been having a lot of (literal and metaphorical) death of the author thoughts lately.

I think it's really hard to say what Anne intended to do at any given time. She was very open about the fact that she outlined little, just tended to sit down at the keyboard and see what happened, and so I think people can go around and around with these continuity issues until kingdom come. But the truth of it is like...she wrote about these vampires for nearly 50 years, she probably forgot some stuff and made up some other stuff to try to bridge those gaps.

I personally assume the Daniel keeping these details to himself thing was something she said to cover why this info was coming out in playboy vs an actual book but it is a really fun think to think about, isn't it?

(being completely honest, when I wrote that line in my fic about Daniel hoarding the details of Armand's appearance for himself I was just making shit up, I didn't even realize Anne had said anything like that until after lol So nice to know she and I shared a braincell for that one brief moment)

My personal head canon is that some he left out because his editors were like 'dude, this book is getting way too long and frankly this is gratuitous' (like that story that ended up in playboy? Daniel was desperate for some cash to travel on and so he dragged that sordid bit of smut out of his drafts and tossed it in the mail). The rest- god, he just really couldn't believe anyone could be that good looking. Maybe he assumed Louis had idealized him in his mind, maybe he decided no reader would find someone so beautiful palatable (especially in light of some of the things Armand let happen).

And then also a secret third thing, where Daniel has always kinda had a thing for redheads with big brown eyes and shit, did Louis know that about him and describe Armand like that just to mess with him or is there really some hot little blood sucking guy running around out there, being the smoke show of his dreams?

It's fun to wonder about, like it's fun to wonder about what all Lestat and Daniel left out of that chapter in queen of the damned. I hate that we don't have more content from them but I do love how many gaps we can fill in ourselves.

#like how many smut scenes were in devil's minion that lestat either mentally blocked out #or kept for vampire spank bank material #or had *his* editors be like lol we cannot print this human getting vampire fucked five times in ten pages #thoughts that haunt me at night #and keep me typing fic #apoptoses answers