Moonlight Vampire Gaffes

[wpgrace]

I did NOT know he was prehistoric...

Tho I must say I took Mick's medieval line to be merely hyperbole... simply to signify a verrrry old, old-fashioned, and violence-prone vamp.

[wollstonecraft61]

eris, where do you get all this background info???

[Lilly]

I did NOT know he was prehistoric...

Tho I must say I took Mick's medieval line to be merely hyperbole... simply to signify a verrrry old, old-fashioned, and violence-prone vamp.

I must say -- I never heard "prehistoric," although I did hear that he was originally supposed to be about 500 years old.

And, I agree, grace -- I definitely took Mick's use of the term "medieval" as hyperbole, like one might use "Neanderthal" as an insult.

[eris]

eris, where do you get all this background info???

Stray info swimming around from the different fanboards when they used to post the script sides and discuss every detail of every character. I remember the weirdest bits of information.

Incidentally, there was a ML-writer who used to lurk on MLL, but didn't post. He read a good bit of the fanfic and offered up some inside info off the board. One of the bits I can't remember is his name

[MoonMad]

...That's why it doesn't matter that Mick says Coraline was from the French Revolution when the closed captioning on the series (when it aired, not sure about the DVD's) said she was 500 years old.

But did he ever say she was turned during the French Revolution? Couldn't she and her brothers have been vampires for hundreds of years before the Revolution, but only needed to find The Cure during the Revolution to avoid the vampire culling that was going on?

In Fleur de Lis, when Beth asks how Coraline became a vampire, Mick replies, "Coraline was turned in the early 1700's, in France."

Oh thanks, I didn't remember that. Yep, it sounds like a case of Moonlight Math strikes again.

I remember it said that the writers didn't have a 'bible' they could refer to, which is pretty poor planning if you ask me, when your show has creatures hundreds of years old. There was a LOT of inconsistency and unexplained things in ML, especilly when it came to Coraline.

BTW, I also thought Mick was just exaggerating when he said "medieval". I didn't take him literally.

[jen]

When I heard that, I just took it as hyperbole, too, but I must say that it makes a great deal of sense.

The solid black eye hinted at an injury that a vampire could not heal.

However, in view of the prevalence of half truths and innuendos, anything is possible.

[diane31]

The Acne covered vampire in Arrested Development bugged me. Acne is a bacterial infection, so it shouldn't have affected a vampire.

That's probably one of those that bugs me most too! I dunno... maybe the bacteria got mutated with the rest of him when he was turned Grasping at straws here!

I actually take Mick's medieval comment pretty literally, like a guestimate on his part due to Lance's scent being so strong. And then again I take the siblings relationship to mean they had the same sire, too.

Now since we are on the subject, one thing that is not so much an internal inconsistency, apparent or not, but really bugs me is the whole french revolution = vamp genocide thing. There is just no way that an event involving so many people in a society where writing was so prevalent could have gone so badly unrecorded. Unless they mean that it was orchastred by very few power-hungry humans who happened to know about the vamps and checked who was of what (sub)species behind everybody else's back before sending them off to the guillotine? But The guy they show being guillotined vamps out in panic in the process for everyone to see, so... another of Coraline's lies ??? I just want to slap Mick back to consciousness for not being more sceptical everytime I watch it. But then again I want to slap Mick back to consciousness throughout the entire scene

-edited to add more!

[wpgrace]

That's probably one of those that bugged me most too! I dunno... maybe the bacteria got mutated with the rest of him when he was turned Grasping at straws here!

More likely just a sloppy shortcut to indicate that this vamp had a hard time as a human and didn't fit in or succeed any better as a vamp...

And LORD! He was in 21st century America! If he had worked... like Josef... and put a good deal of money away or gotten into producing in show biz... he coulda had allllll kinds of girls. Just look at Phil Spector for crying out loud. If women flocked to that weird little gun-happy psycho, a youngish albeit facially challenged vamp shoulda been covered in blondes, brunettes and redheads.

He was apparently grumpy, hasty, and a bit lazy.

[Phoenix]

I did NOT know he was prehistoric...

Tho I must say I took Mick's medieval line to be merely hyperbole... simply to signify a verrrry old, old-fashioned, and violence-prone vamp.

Ah, but Grace, when we were writing our Mick & Lance fic *insert shameless self-promo here* we did agree that Lance had nice manners, and a certain code of ethics.

[eris]

I agree Lance had his own code of ethics. Most of his "personality" seemed to be bravado because when he and Cora got into it at the end he was scared her tinkering would cost them all the cure they had. That "what if there's another reign of terror?!" line. I like making him the "good" guy in fics.

Having said that, I think the "bloodline" storyline was one of the biggest mistakes that the show ever made, and evidence of just how bad things had gotten behind the scenes. It was a storyline that, IIRC, A O'L came up with and they just ran with it because they didn't really have anything else in place. (Think of how much "infodumping" that episode required just to explain what was going on.)

Really, the audience was never shown Cora's actual past. We got a daydream of Beth's where Coraline was branded and a moment in Mick's imagination where he assigned Coraline a place at the table with the brothers and Cynthia as a servant. (Seriously - "Cynthia Davis" as a French name?? Seriously?)

I also think that the Reign of Terror storyline was highly offensive. It turned all that bloodshed into a shrug - "oh well, they were looking for vampires". There were some serious issues that led up to the guillotine; far too many to pretend it was a vampire hunt where only those who burned like paper were executed. Revisionist history or setting an event during a past time period is one thing, but that sloppy, lazy, and insulting. Not to mention stupid - we're talking less than 300 years. Something would have survived in that short period of time and vamps couldn't have gone back in the freezer so efficiently.

[librarian_7]

Really, the audience was never shown Cora's actual past. We got a daydream of Beth's where Coraline was branded and a moment in Mick's imagination where he assigned Coraline a place at the table with the brothers and Cynthia as a servant. (Seriously - "Cynthia Davis" as a French name?? Seriously?)

Got to agree with most of that (although *cough, cough* I take a stab at explaining the "Cynthia Davis" name in one of my fics...). I can explain "Cynthia" a durn sight more easily than "Lance" as a French name. Or "Coraline" for that matter. I know, I know...we don't know that they hadn't changed names a dozen times over the years, but I don't see snotty, aristocratic, French Lance changing his name to something so...American sounding. And there are so many good French names to choose from. I remember the first time I saw something in a fic about Coraline's brother, Lance, and my reaction was, yeah, no way. What a dumb choice of names. Why not Guillaume, Etienne, Francois, Jacques, Henri, Jean-Phillippe, Jean-Luc, Jean-Michel, Jean-almost anything...? But LANCE? Talk about failure of imagination. And don't tell me, yeah, Lancelot was French. If Lance's name was Lancelot, he probably would have used his full first name, not a very modern short version.

And...welcome to my morning rant.

Lucky

[wpgrace]

Really, the audience was never shown Cora's actual past. We got a daydream of Beth's where Coraline was branded and a moment in Mick's imagination where he assigned Coraline a place at the table with the brothers and Cynthia as a servant. (Seriously - "Cynthia Davis" as a French name?? Seriously?)

Got to agree with most of that (although *cough, cough* I take a stab at explaining the "Cynthia Davis" name in one of my fics...). I can explain "Cynthia" a durn sight more easily than "Lance" as a French name. Or "Coraline" for that matter. I know, I know...we don't know that they hadn't changed names a dozen times over the years, but I don't see snotty, aristocratic, French Lance changing his name to something so...American sounding. And there are so many good French names to choose from. I remember the first time I saw something in a fic about Coraline's brother, Lance, and my reaction was, yeah, no way. What a dumb choice of names. Why not Guillaume, Etienne, Francois, Jacques, Henri, Jean-Phillippe, Jean-Luc, Jean-Michel, Jean-almost anything...? But LANCE? Talk about failure of imagination. And don't tell me, yeah, Lancelot was French. If Lance's name was Lancelot, he probably would have used his full first name, not a very modern short version.

And...welcome to my morning rant.

Lucky

I don't have a problem with the names so much... they could change their names as you said. Lance, tho, did not speak English with a French accent. THAT was more bothersome to moi. And Coraline SOUNDS French...

But agree with Eris that reducing the French Revolution to a vamp-hunt was offensive and, to an historian, sacrilege. They COULD have used the concept, I guess, had they done so a little less ham-fisted and indicated it was more a quiet, side campaign that only a few knew about. And yeah, there are records from that era. If they knew about vamps, then we would too. Stoopid.

However, I LIKED the concept of the bloodline story. I LIKED the idea that Mick was now in the family, like it or not. And that some vamps have even more powers than others. I have heard rumors that Beth was gonna be included in bloodline crappola tho, and that didn't interest me. She's a human and that shoulda been that. But that "welcome to the family" line of Lance's was both thrilling and chilling for me. Big, bad-ass vamp family that even JOSEF avoids?? Oh I'm in!

And my darling partner-in-crime Phee... Yeah... WE saw and appreciated Lance's personal code, his ethics, his etiquette. And I LOVE the juxtaposition of his courtly manners with his more cold-blooded nature. Mick did not. Not after that first meeting. And I'm guessing not so much after the meeting that YOU wrote for them either. Mick was on the losing end of EVERY meeting with Lance. Not gonna endear him to his BIL. But I LOVED that there was a vamp that COULD get the best of Mick. Again, paired with Lance's parting line... intrigue galore there. That was never explored.

[eris]

I figured Lance was a nickname; that's why I usually had his name be Laurent in fics.

[wpgrace]

I figured Lance was a nickname; that's why I usually had his name be Laurent in fics.

Perhaps he got his nickname from his weapon of choice back in the Middle Ages...
Perhaps he enjoyed the tournaments.

[allegrita]

Laurent the Impaler, AKA "Lance."