I think Interview is the only Rice book I kept when I did some big book purge, but now I think I should re-read it.

I am watching White Collar--I am a couple weeks behind the US-- and I think they were filming the scene at the restaurant across from Grand Central Station when I was in NY. I didn't see any of the actors when I went by, but I didn't really stand around and gawk.

I think for the most part, they talk the long view -- they know they're around forever, so why fuck around with the short term of humans. Like Claudia (that's her name, right?) -- they wanted a little girl to play with, but the year or whatever they could get out of a real girl was bullshit.

That's pretty much it. Lestat always regarded humans as toys. Louis was all mopey and I AM A MONSTER!, but didn't pine after humans. Marius did keep Armand as some sort of twisted combo of pet/snack bar, but always intended to vamp him.

(Of course I know this stuff. I even re-read Interview and Lestat once a year or so.)

So Twilight and Moonlight are all Joss's fault?

I would guess more Anne Rice + Laurell K. Hamilton x premarital chastity = Twilight. It doesn't seem similar to Joss as much, since no one's really killing the vampires.

It doesn't seem similar to Joss as much, since no one's really killing the vampires.

I'm reading a popular (yet scholarly) book about the history of Faery in English culture, and most of it maps over very well to how vampires are used lately, especially in the Y&A explosion.

Anyway, I was trying to think of why and when it does or doesn't map to the Jossverse and I realized it only maps when you posit a Vampire Society. If Vampires are largely lone predators (Dracula, Angel) then it doesn't work. It doesn't work even if you have a pack of vampires (Angel, Spike, Dru, Darla) - you have to have some sort of hierachy and culture and families like in Kindred, or True Blood or Being Human. Then it maps very much to the way the Faery Courts etc. are used.

Anyway, in the Jossverse the vampires were originally intended to be a return to the monstrous (hence, the facial appliances) and they resisted romanticizing the vamps. But then it was just too juicy narratively.

What's the LKH timeline? Vampires have had the erotic going on for a long time, but I'm curious about the gelded romantic angst turning point. I haven't read any of her.

but I'm curious about the gelded romantic angst turning point.

They do get into that with Angel. He can't make love to Buffy, and does protest later that he's not a eunuch.

I realized it only maps when you posit a Vampire Society

Yep, which leads me to blaming a lot of the current trend of vampire fiction on White Wolf Games and Vampire: The Masquerade. Which, at least in my experience with both tabletop games and LARPs, had a LOT of plots that hinged on some vampire pining over/brooding about a mortal. Until one of the rest of us got bored and killed or vamped the mortal a terrible accident happened to the human sweetie.

Der. I've watched a couple episodes of Angel. He kept his legs crossed for a hundred years.

Julian (that was the lead on Kindred, right?) was still fully integrated into vampire culture when he fell for a human. For broadcast purposes I'm assuming he'd renounced killing, but I don't remember the details.

The Master made it seem like there were at least vampire families that hung together, and that was season 1. He never seemed to run out of minions. The Anointed One inherited his pack, and I'n not sure if Spike took that over or made his own. But not very lonerlike, even if not as familial as some of the other works.