Writer’s notes...
“Art exists for itself,” Whistler apparently stated. And this? For me. For you. I don’t know. It calls itself into being. The unnamed intangible giving itself form. I started this some time ago, as you can see, and it has evolved somewhat (I hope). The key? Someone else (I can’t recall who, if you can fill the blank, go ahead) said that the best writing is also revealing. It comes from within, so in unveiling it, we expose ourselves. Strength from telling the tale, vulnerability from what you put into it… I have to say that I find the writing most powerful in expression and flow when the source is…the core of self. Disguised, more truth than you will find in Reality. Draw what you will from this, but don’t try to second-guess too far. I try to write in character as much as I write in self. Part of the defensive blur, shall we say?
You’ll find the specs listed in chronological order. Not according to their place in the history set out by the books, or alphabetically (that much should be immediately obvious), or any such sensible pattern, but when they were begun. Which is not parallel to their date of completion, as you’ll find if you compare the dates scribed at the ends… Some of them (you’ll know which ones shortly) have taken so long between start and end that they’ve survived better than some television series. In the midst of the epics, I often find a need to step back and re-evaluate where they’re heading. Either that, or getting from one scene to the next becomes too hard. When it becomes tedious, when the writing is forced, I know that it’s not right. As I reread it, it sounds awkward, choppily contrived… The call then, is for time away. Either I stop writing completely, or I move on to something fresh. I rarely abandon my work completely though. Eventually it finds its way…
Another thing you may notice is that the later writings have a…noir feel. Well, all of them do, to some extent, but the later ones more so. What does it mean? That I’m getting more psychotic. *grin* No (I don’t think…), I’m just getting more used to this sublimation. I strike harder. I rip less cautiously. You have been warned.
Go forth and see for yourself now. Below, I reflect further on the creation of the individual stories, but I advise you to read the stories themselves first, because my comments on them may give away their endings, twists as they progress, or take away the pleasure of discovering their meaning for yourself. So don’t look just yet. I’ll provide a link at the end of each spec, so you don’t have to worry about finding your way back. Alors, begin your journey, and we shall speak again. For comments or contact anytime, it’s levante_x@lycos.com.
Have a good day/night.
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
Stretched impossibly to four years in its production… Perhaps you felt the shifting of pace? This was the first spec I began, and I completed three others before I felt able to return to it and bring it to its end. It was becoming too flighty, too frittered, and I needed to figure out how to regather the straying threads. *grin* It was a wonder that anyone recalled it when I finally found direction and took it up again.
The title, as you know by now, comes from the Bon Jovi song of the same name. Born to be my Baby… There’s no denying that Louis was made to be Lestat’s companion. It was why Lestat brought him across, and it seems their inescapable fate to be together. From the first moment Lestat laid eyes on Louis, the bond was sealed. But love is not a final answer. Other issues still remain, and are not so easily glossed over. Inequality of power, for one thing. “Slavery”, Lestat called the maker-fledgling relationship in IWV, and his dominant position and stance calls the question; is their bond now love or ownership? Compare it with the relationships between the other vampires… Theirs is still uniquely their own.
Shocked, stunned by the end? It seemed…the only sufficient way to close it. The issue couldn’t be magically made to disappear or be mended overnight, and it simply couldn’t happen in time. This was as close to Happily Ever After as they could get. In the end, love remained, the purest thing still, in life and in death. Love can be everything, yet not enough.
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
The first short spec. Rather brief, and admittedly not my best work… Still, it has things to say, mouthed through the form of Armand, the fallen angel, fragile creature… Change, loss of innocence, guilt, despair, self-loathing… And the knowledge of the futility of it all, the sense that the one you need most is forever lost to you… Where’s that line from, “I can’t cry hard enough for you to hear me now”? Right. A song by the Williams Brothers.
The confession doesn’t matter, because it will never be read, never be heard. Burn it, it’s how we send things on to the next world. Hope and hopelessness coupled together…
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
My pride and joy for a long time. Still is special to me. My second epic (*grin*), begun and completed in between Born to be my Baby. The filling in of Santino’s never-mentioned past, the great hurt hidden beneath the shiny black carapace, done with a whole host of characters you’ve never met before… Very heavy, very morbid, the first truly dark work I think I’ve done. Harsh, dismal, at times violent… Did you see what I saw?
Discovery of the first person. We’re talking.
Done rather sympathetically, it lives by that statement, “Evil is a point of view”. Everyone has their reasons, their motivations for what they do. For their choices, for their actions, they suffer. As they deserve, more than they deserve… Can’t decide who to punish? Condemn them all. This is as bleak as it gets. Cynicism takes a jolly good romp. But it’s just presenting reality, isn’t it? Life isn’t fair. There’s no Happily, and there’s no Ever After. Insert the line from the Blur song: “All you wanted will always fade away”.
On the slightly less dismal side, there’s the strength of hope and love, their sheer ability to empower you, to overwhelm you… You can almost forget the final result.
Ah yes, on the title… From Dante’s Inferno, it’s the sign above the gates to Hell. “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”—abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Speaking of the entry into the catacombs? The coven? Or Life itself? Go figure…
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
They'll Forgive You If You're Pretty...
Well, to list it as a Silly would have taken the effect away from the end… *grin* And the rest of it doesn’t really qualify as a silly. This is an examination of the portrayal of them as breathtakingly beautiful creatures, as beauty being so essential to what they are that it seems integral to the definition of them as them… Louis, in particular, whose entire being is grace and gorgeousness. Let’s not kid ourselves, looks matter. They affect the way the world perceives you, and it’s not necessarily all for the better.
Louis under the microscope… Victim or manipulator? What we make of the situation can transform it into something else entirely. Here’s a shift away from the traditional picture of Louis as passive sufferer. He can’t be that ignorant of his power…
*grin* By this point, I have a well-earned fear of epic specs, so you’ll find me keeping them short and sweet (sort of) for a while…
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
The themes should be easily clear to you, and the reason for the title… Questioning beliefs, I’m being at least slightly cynical again. You should have an idea of my stand, hmm? “Beliefs are a dangerous thing,” someone said. “At least you can change an idea.” What is unreasonable faith, and what is clear sense? Who decides? Who has the right to decide?
These two standing are of the same era, share common experiences, and are similar even in outward experiences, and are similar even in outward appearance… So how is it that their opinions are so divergent?
The writing style, as I said, was dabbling in something new. You were there where it happened, the voyeur-observer, one of the crowds on scene, no more omniscient-informed than anyone else as the scene unfolded… So what was it like?
Another point I wanted to make, brief but not minor, is that every death, no matter who it is, is a loss of something forever. No one is any less important in this. I wanted you to find that for yourself. So my pointing it out here kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Sometimes I wonder if adding these after-words is such a good idea…
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
The sound of music. The sound of silence. The sound of agonised wails from the unjustly punished. The sound of whispering voices that no one else can hear. The sound of your own voice and nothing else. Welcome to the throes of insanity. Follow the descent to terrifying madness, watch depression and frustration swirl in their poison… Finally the fatal lifting leaving a different animal, or has it simply quelled resistance and taken hold completely? This was done during a dark period. I think it’s left me, but rereading it, I wonder that I wrote it. It’s a spec done in the first person, with doomed night child Nicolas de Lenfant as ranter, yes? But the words for it came from somewhere… Don’t ask where, because it takes too much to answer the question. Let’s just say that Nicki’s despair is as powerful as it is passionate, and to know it…is dangerous indeed. “I saw a bird soaring out of a cave above the open sea. And there was something terrifying about the bird and the endless waves above which it flew. Higher and higher it went and the sky turned to silver and then gradually the silver faded and the sky went dark. The darkness of evening, nothing to fear, really, nothing. Blessed darkness. But it was falling gradually and inexorably over nothing save this one tiny creature cawing in the wind above a great wasteland that was the world. Empty caves, empty sand, empty sea.”—TVL
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the two gazing at each other from opposite shores are Eric and Santino. This spec initially consisted just of that one part. Part two came later, from a different feeling, with a different point to make, but I found that they linked… Two quite distinct frames, when connected, make a figure-8 form of a mobius strip, separate, yet melding into each other…
A look at desire, and the desire for desire. Part one, Eric’s reflection. To want to feel, and yet not be able to, to have to stand mutely by while the rest of the world sings “Looooove is a many spleeeendoured thing”… But you can’t just snap your fingers and make it so. All that remains then is to somehow deal with it… Part two, Santino ponders. While Eric is helpless to desire’s dearth, Santino is at its mercy. And what cure for this? Beyond logicalizing away, when it strikes, it holds fast. Hearts break before giving it up. A study of other things here as well… The weight of the past on present conscience, and tampering with the anonymity of Eric… Alright, I did that last in part one as well. What’s been said of him before this leaves him rather…bland as a character. So I’ve taken the liberty of adding on…
I may add more to this one day, but I have no solid plans for it yet, and I don’t feel the pull, so I’ll label it complete for now.
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
This one was written after a good break of not being productive spec-wise. Well, actually, that’s not exactly true. Fragments of story ideas and other half-done works (other than the ones languishing here) littered my mind and papers. This, however, was the one that managed to find its way to completion.
It should be easily discernible that this touches on the significance of love, its importance, its meaning, and its consequences. No, it has nothing to do with the proximity of Valentine’s Day. Anytime, really, is a good time to feel cynical. Or romantically idealistic, as the case may be.
Who better to provide the dark side of it than Armand? (the sinister “child”.. Who else could it be?) After all that he’s experienced, the numerous times his affections were betrayed and his heart used against him when he allowed himself to make a connection to anyone.. Even in the first, almost obsessive devotion to Marius, his saviour, his Master, were the seeds of the concept of love as involving power roles, and the capacity for it to cause great hurt with the loss of someone you love too much.
Perhaps I shall take that up another time.. Is it possible to love someone too much? I will admit that it does look like I am developing a taste for these tales revolving around the highlight of certain issues. Point, counterpoint (now, where else has that come up?). In trying to keep it balanced, I leave out some of the more cynical thoughts that I harbour, which perhaps makes it slightly less complete than it could be as an argument, but slightly better off as a story. I don’t mean to be preachy, but perhaps I hope it prods you to think and question along the lines I have. Yes, I want others in this curious madness..
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
My first silly, not fantastic, it’s amateur work, but to rewrite it is to be rather dishonest and hide the rough bits of the progression. You’ve come this far… “I want to give the world the truest picture of myself”, or something to that effect, Rousseau wrote on the Confessions. I know, I’m making excuses for shoddy work, aren’t I? *sigh*
Well, you know where the title for this came for as well. It’s the second line of the song…
It’s over the top. It’s meant to be. Excuse me. Move on.
Don't look yet...
I gave fair warning...
This was somewhat less painful, hmm? Just a little… I’m poking fun at my own work again. I can’t help it… *grin* Read the title as being courtesy of the cherub child, Armand, or the soul-heavy paramour of Buffy. “Touched in the head”, a reader offered… I’m just letting rip. *grin* Ridiculousness and a romp through the dramatic scene I set up before. If I can’t laugh at me, who can?
And that end note is fang-baring at the twits who brought down TVC. I still mean it. All good things must come to an end, I know, but it shouldn’t have been at their hands.
