That feel when you’d rather answer questions all day in a state of weird and pleasurable natural – albeit caffeinated – high rather than attempt to do any real productive Work for your Job. 

I just want to mention, and please take this completely w/o attitude bc I do not intend any attitude here: I get a number of VC Casting ideas on a regular basis, and I do enjoy them a lot! But if you don’t see an answer for yours it’s either bc:

1. I haven’t had a chance to research the actor yet; 
2. I researched the actor and they don’t reeeally work for me and I’m trying to come up with another role for them so I can still answer publicly; or,

3. I researched the actor and they don’t work for me and I can’t think of another role for them, so I might have to let it go unanswered or just delete it. 

If you haven’t seen your Ask answered, and it’s been a long time, it may have been a #3 sacrifice. Not every male violinist can be the illustrious Nicolas de Lenfent! But you are more than welcome to post your own casting ideas, and tag them #VC Casting, and I will be tracking that tag so I might reblog from your blog ;D

(I’m only talking about casting in terms of the physical attributes of the actors and their acting abilities, not their personal lives.)

As we all know, casting is highly subjective, and “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What a terribly boring world it would be if we all fell for the exact same faces! 

The whole thing stirs up beauty as a concept. We argue whether Louis’s hair is long and straight, and chestnut in color, like in movie!IWTV, or that it’s shoulder-length, wavy and raven black as described in canon. In some fanart it’s drawn just long and black and silky straight, in some, it’s short and curly! 

In considering VC Casting, we will have to make compromises, it’s unlikely that whoever is cast will look or be styled sufficiently to please everyone. I have my own subjective ideals for beauty and how the characters should look, don’t take any of my opinions personally (unless you want to agree with me!), I would never want to cause anyone discomfort simply because I disagree with their choice.

Whoever is finally cast, let’s try to give the actors a chance to do their jobs and try to keep in mind that these are fictional characters, and the movie people want us to enjoy their product, and buy the BluRay of it, and make a cult classic out of it, and all that jazz.

More on beauty under the cut.

My 8 year old cousin just told me on Saturday night, right in the middle of a lovely collage session in which we were cutting up models from Seventeen and making fashion plates, that she wished she had “straight blonde hair.” She said curly hair was ugly. Her hair is perfect Louis de Pointe du Lac hair to me, brunette and maybe a little lighter than his, but silky and slightly wavy to her shoulders, then descending like a little bubbling waterfall into the most perfect little shining curls for about 4 inches. Oooh purple prose! But I had to paint a picture since I can’t post one here, so let me be briefly flowery just for the sake of description, ok?

I knew I didn’t have a satisfactory answer for her concern, because telling her “But you have beautiful French girl hair!” “But mine is just like yours! Is mine ugly?” would have meant nothing in the face of a culture that forces certain ideals of beauty at us from such an early age. She said “I wish my hair was straight and blonde,” as if that would solve all her major problems, so that she could then go on to tackle the important ones. 

She then followed it up with “- like my dance teacher Lilly.” Ah! Now it was clear! She wanted to look like someone she deeply respects and appreciates! Hopefully that’s really where it’s coming from and not the mass media trying to convince us all from an early age that our inadequacies are many and can only be overcome with dye, paint, etc. I admit that I wear makeup, but for me, it’s more like war paint, and bc I enjoy the art of it.

I told her anyway, “My best friend has straight black hair, and she told me that many girls like her get their hair professionally curled, they pay a lot of money to try to get their hair curly like yours.”

“Really?” said my 8 year old cousin.

“Really.” I said.

She seemed somewhat pleased with this factoid and we went back to our art project, but still… It just brought up this whole beauty topic. It’s not resolved, the conversation is far from over, but at least we started it.