The Parlor's YouTube Community Post and Update:
Oh my goodness! Welcome, new subscribers!
The Parlor seems to have had an extraordinary few days! And the timing couldn't have been better, since we're just now beginning to see updates on Season 2 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC. That, and Season 3 of Interview With the Vampire.
Even though the Parlor has always focused on the Lives of the Mayfair Witches series by Anne Rice, the Mayfair Witches do appear in three of the Vampire Chronicles novels. The Mayfairs of the series appear in Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, but are only mentioned in Merrick, which focused on Merrick Mayfair. Merrick Mayfair's story is a very interesting one, and I can see her somehow being woven into the storyline of the AMC series, Interview With the Vampire, at some point.
It looks like Season 3 of Interview With the Vampire will focus on The Vampire Lestat, which is the second book in the Vampire Chronicles. When I read it, I was pretty impressed with how much detail and history there was in the story. Not unlike The Witching Hour, to be honest. The Witching Hour, if I recall, was a novel Anne Rice began writing around the same time period as The Vampire Lestat, but didn't really take off until Rice returned to New Orleans and bought the Brevard-Rice house in the Garden District.
Which brings me back to the Mayfair Witches. In the Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels, Anne Rice did indeed use her own home, the Brevard-Rice house, as the home of Rowan Mayfair. If you look at the thumbnail of the videos of the progress of my 3D model of this historic house, you'll see a book opened to the title page of The Witching Hour. Across the pages is a sketch of the house. This is how the title page appeared when The Witching Hour was first published in hardcover in December 1990 and, after a check of my own copy of the trade paperback, how the title page appeared when the trade edition was first published in November 1991.
The cover of the Mass Market edition, first published in May 1993, has another rendering of the Brevard-Rice house on its cover, showing it illuminated by lightning. This inspired the effect added to the rendering of my 3D model that you see on the banner of this channel.
When the AMC series first premiered in January 2023, it seems there was some uncertainty as to whether or not Anne Rice used her own house in her novels. That was because the house used in the show, the Soria-Creel house, looks so much like Rice's former home. To those very familiar with the novels, that was a bit confusing. The reactions to the series were a mixed bag, with people who had read the novels being not at all pleased at the departures made from the source material to those who were not familiar with the novels enjoying the series for its own sake. I had a few "wut?" moments, myself. Some of it was understandable as storytelling in books and storytelling onscreen can be two very different things, but there were moments when I thought, "Why not include that?" or "Why was this changed?"
It might really come down to what works and what doesn't, what people want to see and what they don't. Those questions are just as applicable to YouTube channels as they are to anything else, so now, instead of endless rounds of "What is this?" and "Where might I find a human to speak with who can explain why this is here?", I'd rather focus on what you'd like to see here and what you would not. Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions, ask questions, express concerns... And again, thank you and welcome, new subscribers!