saw a post that said anne rice would watch heated rivalry and in the next book lestat would be playing hockey for no reason but that's only sort of how she copy-pastes her inspirations. she didn't make lestat a rock star because she was obsessed with david bowie; she got stuck on the *concept* of Rock Stars & What They Represent In Society Vis-a-Vis The Zeitgeist. when she absorbs or fixates on a media property, she will reference it directly. if she really imprints on it, she'll do a direct reference AND a thematic echo, e.g., armand watching blade runner one million times and armand having his own "i want more life, fucker/father" scene plus a narrative arc he sees reflected in the film. so if she really got into heated rivalry she wouldn't have lestat become a hockey player, she'd have armand watch the show and go really still when ilya's orthodox cross caught the light and have some sort of flashback with the russian, or she'd draw some parallel between shane's head injury and amadeo's stab wound, idk, i haven't seen the show. but it would be about armand and she'd make the hockey framing device about the renaissance palazzo somehow, its combination of opportunity and suffocating restriction on expression, its peculiar situational homosociality, whatever. i wish i thought less about anne rice
