♛*hugs anon* Darling, not to worry at all, I can handle a little clothes-rumpling. I destroy most of my clothes anyway, sadly, it’s part of the job *winks*
Be strong, ma petite. Remember to hug yourself, too. Sometimes we have to be our own head cheerleaders.
//ooc; Thanks for coming back and telling us this,
Ableism!anon! It was a difficult topic to address and I’m really glad Lestat and I were able to help you.
If you have to remind yourself every day, then do it: F*ck the haters.
♛”Ma petite!” *pets anon* “You know, I wish I could fight off every one of the bullies out there, but there are just too damn many of them and only one of me. There’s also the scheduling issue; my days are sacrosanct.”
//ooc; my Lestat is very out of touch with these issues, and he tried to continue with this answer, but it kept coming off as insensitive or flippant, so I decided not to let him finish.
He’s more often insensitive and cruel, even when he’s trying to be good.
He
intentionally AND unintentionally bullies Louis,
the person he loves most in the whole world, through his first and very difficult years as a vampire, and Lestat continues to bully him, even now. Lestat bullies a lot of other characters. My Lestat has a somewhat short fuse and really not enough patience for anything that’s delicate, he’s not very good at thinking before he acts/speaks, especially to people who deserve more consideration. Introspection is more for when he’s talking about himself or someone he knows very well, and even then, he has a lot of trouble truly understanding other people outside of what he wants them to be.
So I’m going to answer for him. TL;DR: Lestat’s general motto would probably be:F*ck the haters.
Ignorance and pity well… Sometimes people make these statements without meaning to hurt you. I’ve mistakenly made ignorant or pitying statements about people and I’m glad when someone corrects me. Some of your antagonists may not be trying to make you feel insecure.
HOWEVER, some of them really are trolls/bullies/whatever and they DO want to belittle you to make themselves feel bigger. The thing with bullies is that they will bully anyone for any reason. If not for your physical appearance or capabilities, then for your name or where you live, there are endless things for them to criticize, you’ll never scrub yourself free of something to be commented on. Even Mother Theresa had haters!
While we can’t change others opinions of us, as much as we’d like to, we can decide how we react to it. Basically: Don’t.
You wrote, “people that have been making me feel insecure recently…” No. NO. Stop. Don’t let them. Don’t give them permission to make you feel anything. Comments about you that seem pitying or ignorant? To adapt a quote Lestat from TOBT: They are like many silk banners unfurled around you. That weak. (He was referring to smtg else but still it’s applicable here)
Lestat has a partner and it doesn’t stop the bullies from attacking them separately or together, I think it makes them more of a target when they purposely go out hunting for homophobes. One of the benefits of having a partner is that Lestat can just wrap his arm around Louis a little tighter and they pick up the pace and go where they can enjoy each other together without any bullies trying to interfere *winks*
♛Did he break your heart? I assume you didn’t break his and are asking about putting him out of his misery, but if you did break his heart physically beyond repair, by all means finish the job. It won’t cure him, but it will make him dead. I prefer not to extend physical suffering in my victims unless they’re truly evil and I’m really offended… or really bored that night.
It’s terrible when we trust people with our hearts and they fail us so badly. It’s happened to me. And I’ve broken hearts, too. Love is truly a battlefield, but it’s worth the fight.
Be glad he did it now rather than string you along for any longer, wasting more of your precious time. There are worse punishments than death, and ignoring him, just cutting him right out of your life, should be a living punishment for him. You’re not his plaything to break when he feels like it.
You’re free. Pick up the pieces and mend them yourself, don’t rush into having someone else take his place. You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else. At least, that’s how it’s been for me. I still don’t have that first part down completely, but I break all the rules, even my own…
Cure for a broken heart – what they call “self-care” these days, which is specific to each person, do whatever gives you life again, and confidence in yourself.
I wish you the best, but as you know, this could happen again. Emotionally, hearts can break and heal, over and over again, I know from experience. It’s a durable little thing! The love I’ve shared with others has been worth the heartbreak. If it’s worth it to you, don’t be afraid to put your heart out there again, when you’re ready *hugs*
(1) First of all, I would encourage you to post your own interpretations, share with us how you see these characters, we have an insatiable hunger for more fanart ;]
If your headcanon is different, that’s great! Variety is the spice of life.
(2) In my experience, having been in VC fandom for 20+ years and on tumblr for about 3.5 yrs, yes, I’ve seen a lot of IWTV-era fanart depicting the male characters with feminine features, you may be right about that. But not all of it is.
[^X Louis, Claudia and Lestat, IWTV-era, by @superhiki, who often uses Daniel Tighe as a reference for Louis, and fandom favorite Danila Kovalev for Lestat (and, not pictured here but worth mentioning, Hiki uses fandom favorite Bjorn Andresen for Armand)]
(3) I get the impression from your message that you consider that “fanart of IWTV makes the boys look like girls” is bad/wrong/incorrect. If that’s not your point, I apologize, and you can skip to (4), but if it is your point, please see this post about fandom policing, here’s an excerpt from @spiderladyceo:
“And no matter how well-meaning you are, you don’t get to tell other fans what they can and cannot write, or draw, or enjoy.
When you start telling people what they can create or enjoy, you invalidate the purpose of fandom, and create a situation where instead of free exploration, we have something similar to mainstream media in which certain tropes or topics are not allowed. This limits the free expression, exploration and innovation so highly prized in fandom.
…You don’t get to tell fans how to enjoy fandom. You mind your own path, your write your own fic, you write meta on why x trope is offensive/problematic/bad but you do not tell other fans how to enjoy fandom.”
(4) I don’t quite understand your distinction between “feminine” and *female* features, except that I consider “female features” specifically to mean female genitalia and secondary sex characteristics (breasts). So I’m only going to address “feminine” features.
On that point, “smaller jaws, bigger eyes, softer features, bigger lips, small/arched eyebrows” are not exclusive to female characters. Jason Momoa is a man with
BIG EYES, thick lashes, arched brows, big lips, soft jaw, round face,… and I think he is a cis man.
(5) I don’t speak for all the fanartists, but I sent your ask out privately to several fanartists, fic writers, etc., and the general consensus was that if you want to know why a fanartist or writer has made certain artistic choices, you should ask them directly about it and they will answer if they choose to do so.
Some reasons they gave for drawing characters the way they do:
Some fanartists have a different idea of what is “masculine” than you do. It just varies, even in people who express their assigned gender, features differ wildly.
Anne Rice often describes the characters in feminine and androgynous ways.
Many of her vampires were turned young,before developing your idea of “masculine” features, or they never did. Armand was “perhaps seventeen” (TVA) when he was turned and had stopped growing, had not developed masculine features by that time. “My hands are as delicate as those of a young woman, and I was beardless,” (TVA)
It was more fashionable for men during the IWTV-era to be fashionable and cultured, the style of which might be considered a little more feminine by today’s standards. See Dandy.
Their own aesthetic taste may be inspired by anime/manga. One example is Dany&Dany.
Fanartists often use models and actors as references. Many male models and actors have feminine features. One of them, Andreja Pejić, was a fan favorite as Lestat for many years, and she transitioned MTF in 2013.
[X] this picture of Andreja Pejic (left) and Erika Linder (right).
Fanartists may have been inspired by movie!IWTV. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt already had somewhat feminine features in the early 90′s, which were enhanced in movie!IWTV. This is one of my fave fanarts of Lestat, and it’s based on Tom’s Lestat:
^X Lestat by *HRFleur is so lovely. And someone commented on it that they think he is handsome w/o looking feminine.
“I don’t think he looks like Tom Cruise. I think he looks better! it’s as if you took the essence of Lestat from Tom and pulled the real Lestat out. He looks as though he’s about to say something sarcastic or perhaps become peevish over something. I like that you made him handsome without looking feminine.”
Feminine Jesus Christ:
The idea of drawing men with female or feminine features predates fanart. People depict Jesus Christ with feminine features when there is plenty of controversy about what he actually might have looked like:
^Not my comparison pic, I took it from Janet Carr @ THIS BUG’S LIFE’s post about the Jesus depiction issue. Carr writes that the more feminine Jesus depictions are “actually pictures of Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, and brother of Lucrezia Borgia… Pope Alexander VI had all previous depictions of Jesus destroyed in about 1492, and replaced with images of his son. Henceforth, these have been the images used to depict Christ.”
^Here’s our feminized Jesus and early 90′s Brad Pitt, for comparison. I remember Brad being criticized
in the early 90′s
by men for looking too feminine. The pic above is from a magazine, the Italian caption is “Blond, blue eyes, beautiful in spite of himself, and with a smile <<capable of reversing feminism 25 years>>.”
//end. Sorry for the long post, everyone.
I didn’t put any of that under a cut bc I spent a lot of time on this response and I have found that people will reblog, trying to make a post into a discussion, without reading what’s under the cut. People may still want to try to do that, as this is a social network that encourages discussion, but I’m probably not going to engage any further in this topic. I think I’ve made my point, which is that fanartists draw what they want to draw.
I understand, and I sympathize, we’d all love to have someone who’s closer to our headcanon for Armand *hugs* (I also appreciated Banderas’ Armand*, and @vraik had a post worth checking out re: the casting of Banderas instead of someone who fit the canon description better).
That said, an “accurate representation” is pretty tough to ask for bc actors are all human, and there will always be room for improvement. This is especially true re: a character like Armand who may be one of the furthest from being human than any of the other VC characters. Angel, demon, coven leader, youth, imp, etc… he is many things. And AR is not totally wrong, people do age, and it would be unfortunate to have to recast a character bc their actor “aged out” of the role, extra sad if they had built up good chemistry with the other actors!
What we need is someone who’s a little older than necessary who has that elusive *~forever-young gene~* (you know, like Keanu Reeves, someone who doesn’t age), and there are such ppl! I have it. I’m 33 and people still think I’m 17:
^This was before I got my haircut, but it’s pretty recent, no airbrushing, the mirror’s a little dirty tho OH WELL. I’m also posting it w/ this response bc really, the only VC character I could cosplay would be Armand, it’s just the face shape I have, being half Russian and all.
You can dig around in my #VC Casting tag for more ideas but here’s a few, under the cut.
Casting Armand is gonna be tough, bc not only does he need to look that young and stay that young, he also needs to look like a painted portrait, I mean who really looks like a Botticelli angel?! And even then, we don’t all agree 100% on what these characters look like, we’re all influenced by our own culture’s ideals of beauty, our own aesthetic tastes, etc. So my choice of Botticelli angel might not even be yours.
But let’s assume we all agree on THIS angel for the sake of argument, and we hand this over to a casting agent:
Fortunately, there are ppl out there who refuse to age, who look younger than they are already, and that’s the kind of actor I’d want ;3 so…
Hit the jump for some options, cut for length.
Levi Miller – AR’s choice at one point.
Jaco Van Den Hoven
Matthew Clavane
Thomas Brodie-Sangster
Kirill Nikolini
(leaving out the fan fave, Bjorn Andresen, bc he is not an option, too old now!)
^Levi Miller,AR’s choice at one point, not sure if she still wants him. I think he’s 15 now, but that face, very childlike. Too childlike? idk.
^XJaco Van Den Hoven, model, is 26 now, but looks like he could pass for ten years younger.
^X Armand by @teambratprince (hit the X for larger version!) which is really one of my fave fanarts of him ever, and it was based on Jaco Van Den Hoven.
^XMatthew Clavane, a current fandom fave, idk how old he is. Could pass for 15 but he’s a working model so I assume he’s 21+?
^Thomas Brodie-Sangster is 26 and could pass for 15. Idk how old he is in this gif.
^Kirill Nikolini, also a model. @faceofabotticelliangel‘s FC for Armand for awhile. Idk how old he is in the pic or now but… an option? Maybe.
*The book version of Armand, IIRC, was not really developed as much in IWTV, yet another reason they could cast Banderas (preeeetty sure you know by now that I have a place in my heart for his Armand, too <3). I’m pretty sure that his physical appearance is sketched out (auburn hair and brown eyes) in IWTV, the focus is more on his attitude and what he says. His description is clarified in TVL and the later books.
Guys, I know everyone loves reblogging that Spencer gif of him getting punched in the face, but we shouldn’t be spreading the idea that it’s okay to punch Nazis.
I know whoever punched him had good intentions, but he could have seriously, seriously hurt his own hand. Punching someone in the face is probably the quickest way to break your fingers, so if you’re inclined to remind greasy, cowardly white supremacists that they’re not safe in your city, might I suggest forearm smashes, palms, and elbow strikes instead? They tend to hit just as hard/harder and don’t carry as much of a risk of injury. Maybe take some yoga classes so you can limber up and put your foot in their hate spewing teeth?
It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, but let’s be smart going forward folks.
The elbow and knee are the hardest parts of the body. Now, knee will give you more power, but an elbow has more versatility. Given the choice of a suckerpunch or an elbow strike, go with an elbow strike.
Remember kids: it’s not “fight smarter, not harder” it’s “fight smarter AND harder!”
Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.
I-want-my-IWTV 