What happens when you take strong subtext, immortal beings, and over forty years of writing? It's not fanfic, but it is a fascinating history of the Vampire Chronicles fandom!
**History and Origins:**
> The Vampire Chronicles is a series of novels by American writer Anne Rice that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century.
>
> — [Wikipedia - The Vampire Chronicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Chronicles)
The book series encompasses 16 separate novels (including crossovers) from 1976 to 2018, and has been adapted into films—Interview with the Vampire in 1994, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, and Kirsten Dunst; and The Queen of the Damned in 2002—and as of July 2018, it was announced that a TV series adaptation of the novels is in development by Hulu.
**Search Data:**
Interest in _The Vampire Chronicles_ [has been on a slow decline since 2004](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F02f5gv,%2Fm%2F02p76f9,%2Fm%2F0mb0). The series enjoyed a small lift in interest around November 2009 which buoyed interest in the series for several years afterwards until July 2018 where interest spiked again (most likely due to the Hulu's announcement).
The top ten countries differ slightly depending on whether or not you're looking at the entire series, or _Interview with the Vampire_:
- _The Vampire Chronicles_: Spain, Romania, Hungary, Mexico, Chile, Philippines, Uruguay, United States, Poland, Venezuela (Canada is 13th).
- _Interview with the Vampire_: Mexico, Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Chile, China, Latvia (United States is 20th, Canada is 23rd).
[//2005 Anne Rice Spike - Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt]: #
**Fanac Fast Facts:**
- Archive of our own has [almost 1000 works related to the Vampire Chronicles](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Vampire%20Chronicles%20-%20All%20Media%20Types/works)
- Top 3 Categories: M/M (657), Gen (215), F/M (103)
- Top 3 Characters: Lestat de Lioncourt (566), Louis de Pointe du Lac (485), Armand (Vampire Chronicles) (243)
- Top 3 Relationships: Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac (429), Armand/Daniel Molloy (119), Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac (56)
[// Small number of fics should be apparent]: #
### [Last Episode's](https://fanthropological.com/halo) Famous Last Words
What did we have to say before doing the preparation for this week's episode?
**T:** How much is Vampire Chronicles responsible for the vampire trend in movies, tv, etc.?
[//A better question might be, why vampires ever? Looking back, it’s hard to think of a period when we weren’t in the middle of a vampire craze. In the late 1970s, Anne Rice started raking in the money with Interview With the Vampire, and movies like Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre and the comedy Love at First Bite were critical hits. Then came The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Innocent Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie), four more Anne Rice books, and Interview With the Vampire (the movie)—which could all be lumped into a rage for vampires that lasted clear through from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Vampires were back again in the mid-1990s, with Buffy (the TV show), the Blade movies, Southern Vampire Mysteries (the book series), and From Dusk Till Dawn. And now we’ve arrived at the highly touted mid- to late-2000s vogue of Underworld, Twilight (books and movies), True Blood (based on Southern Vampire Mysteries), and The Vampire Diaries.]: #
[// and compiled a list of the most important vampire-related books, films, and TV shows of the last half-century. In total, we included 169 movies, 106 books, and 62 seasons’ worth of TV.]: #
[//1960-65; 1975-76; 1980-84: 1997]: #
**G:** How much actual history is threaded through the Vampire Chronicles?
**Z:** The fandom seems fairly curative... is there any fanfic? Is fanfic forbidden? What is the attitude?
**Krysta:** How did the interview go?
**Greg:** Is Anne Rice a Christian again, or isn't she?
### Main Discussion
**Topics covered in this episode:** TBD
### Spotlight: [Organization for Transformative Works](http://www.transformativeworks.org/)
> The OTW believes that fanworks are creative and transformative, core fair uses, and will therefore be proactive in protecting and defending fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. This help will not be limited to those fans or projects directly connected with OTW.
>
> — [Organization for Transformative Works](http://www.transformativeworks.org/legal/)
Of course, that's _just_ the legal advocacy that they do. They also run Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, run a peer-reviewed academic journal (_Transformative Works and Cultures_) and do a bunch more! You can help them out by visiting https://transformativeworks.org/donate
### Famous Last Words
Our chance (and yours, if you're watching on [twitch.tv/thenickscast](https://twitch.tv/thenickscast)) to have some (in)famous last words about next week's topic before we've done any prep work! Next week, we'll be talking about the fans and fandom of _Pinball_!
**T:** Why has there been a revival of pinball in the last decade?
**G:** Is there another pop culture touchstone apart from Tommy? Was there a Fonz of pinball?
**Z:** How do these pinball fans feel about digital pinball?
**Vrai:** How did the connection between pinball places and bars happen?
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## What is "Fanthropological"?
Every week, Fanthropological delivers over an hour of fandom-related "fanalysis" covering a different fandom every week and giving you hard data, history, special guests, and, of course, speculation!
We cover topics spanning the gamut of anime, manga, comics, video games, comics, movies, books, television, and, in general, geek culture.
## Credits
- _Ending_: [ReMix: Akumajo Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight "Where's the Wall Chicken At?"](https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03178) by [Tetrimino](https://ocremix.org/artist/14134/tetrimino) from [http://ocremix.org](http://ocremix.org/) used under [ocremix.org content policy](http://ocremix.org/info/Content_Policy#If_you.27re_using_our_content_elsewhere_.28.22Terms_of_Use.22.29...)
- All other music and sound for this week's episode were provided by Nick Green!
