FIC: The Whispering Grass, Tanz der Vampire

[nineveh_uk]

The Whispering Grass by Nineveh_uk
Chapters: 1
Fandom: Tanz der Vampire
Rating: T, CNTW
Characters: Graf von Krolock, Gräfin von Krolock


She didn't know that he was lost: that he still lived, but not as he had before. That she had doomed him to this wandering in the dark, lost in the mountains and forests and the heartbeats of the birds that sang outside his window, and in his soul a lust for unnameable things.

***

Or, if this were a Friends episode, The One where the Count accidentally murders his wife. I suspect that this fic really doesn't work without canon contest. Short version, it's backstory fic about a verse of a song that is basically the sick version of Fields of Gold*, in which the vampire count - who is having a moment of "Being a vampire is terrible, you murder everyone you might feel for, and also you have to spend eternity knowing that you're not a brilliant genius, you're pretty average. It's all a metaphor for capitalism anyway"** - recounts how the first person he killed was an unnamed woman who is generally assumed to be his wife***. It is overwrought, involved some ridiculous googling in the course of which I discover the existence of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, which sounds like a slightly desperate literary novel attempting wry humour, but I enjoyed writing it and the first audience of fanfic is ultimately the author.

* Though having now seen the video, that might also be Fields of Gold itself,. Why exactly is the singer is walking at night through a graveyard while long-ago images of his lover and children are glimpsed through his silhouette?

**It's a good song, if heavy on the manpain. Vampain?

***Though there's a vid of one performance where the tomb he is angsting in front of appears to have a soldier carved on it. I read a Word of God interview with the lyricist that seemed to imply that he's actually making all of it up in order to manipulate a couple of characters who are over-hearing him, which would be a plausible interpretation if any of the actors had ever played it like that ever.

Comments

[azdak]

I have very little time for Count von Krolock and even less time for Die unstillbare Gier (which is, as you say with characteristic understatement, heavy on the manpain - "Woe is me! I kill everyone I love because I want to!"). If anyone could make me feel sympathy for him, it's you, and I greatly admire the literary skill with which you tell us his backstory (why is his first victim generally assumed to be his wfe, by the way? I assumed he seduced her - rather than engaging in respectable marital intercourse - so I'd be interested to know what I'm missing). I did wonder how it fits in with the Count's ancestors also all being vampires - is the portrait gallery something that just has to be discounted because it contradicts everything we see (or hear, in the case of the song) about vampires? Or is there perhaps an argument that the Krolocks are a line of super-vampires that can reproduce and eventually retire from being Count to make way for the next one? In which case there might be a vampiric Countess knocking around somewhere. Perhaps she was off visiting her mother during the events of the musical.

Much as I love the idea that Krolock is laying it on thick for his listeners - it might even rescue the song for me - I can't qite see what he would hope to gain from it. I mean, he's already planning to eat them, and if they were busy escaping they'd hardly turn back just because he whinged about what a hard time he was having.

[moon_custafer]

Not having seen the original, does he know those characters can hear him? I hate characters who fake something for the sole benefit of the fourth wall, even though I suppose one could argue they're just too cautious to drop character even when alone.

[nineveh_uk]

He potentially could know, if he's been keeping an eye on where they are, given that he seems to have a certain amount of magic going on. There's word of God from the lyricist that he does know and is faking it, but I'm not really convinced because none of the singers ever plays it like that. Though I have seen a vid in which the tombstone he's weeping over has an image of a medieval knight on it!

[nineveh_uk]

It really is bucketloads of manpain, but then I was not only a teenage Phantom of the Opera fan but a teenage Anne Rice fan, compared to the abyssal depths of which all other manpain is but a shallow sea.

There seems to be a significant chunk of fandom who assumes victim (1) to be the Countess*, and I think that that was my first assumption, too, on the basis that Herbert has to come from somewhere, and that I read it as "genuine accident" unlike the other two victims. Though to be honest you can read it either way and I just like the one that ups the angst. It doesn't really fit with the portraits, but I'm not sure that the portraits fit with anything much. Should there be hereditary vampirism and the vampiric Countess still around I feel sure that she spends her summers on the vampire equivalent of the Mediterranean complaining about her husband to vampire wives in similar situations. Or possibly she's given up altogether and built a better-kept Schloss of her own on the other side of the mountains.

In theory I'm amused by the idea that he's faking it all anyway, but I agree there's a problem with the timing even if one wants to buy it. He'd have been much better off doing it to Alfred halfway through Act 1: "Oh young philosophy student, come and educate me in ethics and science so I can learn how wrong I have been!" or even just earlier in the evening. Also, the argument seems rather fatally hampered by none of the singers ever seeming to play it like that. Though presumably that's because if you're going to barnstorm through your big number (and that's basically what it's there for, I feel), ladelling on the angst is the obvious way to go.

*Now I want the fic in which he's not a count, it's a fake title he bought at some point in the seventeenth century. He's actually an ex-apothecary or farmer or something unexciting.

[moon_custafer]

Oh lord, what if he’s Major-General Stanley, angsting about the shame he’s brought on his ancestors-by-purchase?

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Why exactly is the singer is walking at night through a graveyard while long-ago images of his lover and children are glimpsed through his silhouette?

Because he's a ghost? I mean, I've always thought it was fairly clear that "Fields of Gold" is from the point of view of someone who is dead, but maybe I'm just weird. (I just found out that apparently there is a large contingent of people who do NOT think "Paint it Black" is about death, so maybe they are the normal ones and I am weird...?)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I had never seen the video until the weekend, and so it had never occurred to me that the singer was dead. I just took it as their being middle-aged/elderly and looking back on a gilded youth! I mean, I can see the death reading, but it wasn't the one that struck me. I have to admit to not being very good on pop music and having never heard "Paint it Black" before. I can't see how that isn't really about death - although I might have assumed that the singer was a psychopath who had murdered her!