I’m already seeing people complain about about the 2019 Addams Family movie having ugly designs. Guys you do know that original designs where supposed to be kinda ugly?
The whole point of The Addams Family is they go against societies expectations, they’re not going to care what people say is supposed to be cute or attractive. They’re happy as they are, and they’re considered weird for not caring what people think how they look. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE COMICS.
Sure they’re even more exaggerated towards looking gruesome now, but I think that’s kind of needed to drive in the point.
I know in the fandom Gomez and Mortica are mostly seen as a hot attractive goth couple nowadays, which is probably why so many people are disappointed. But I for one would really love to see a married couple who don’t live up to the impossible standards of hollywood beauty, be madly in love with each other and aren’t shy about expressing it.
i’m super excited about this and also the voice cast
“It was previously revealed that Oscar Isaac would be filling the role of Gomez Addams, and now he’ll be joined by Charlize Theron as Morticia, Chloe Grace Moretz as Wednesday, Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) as Pugsley, Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester, Bette Midler as Grandmama, and Allison Janney as the family’s arch nemesis Margaux Needler.”
💖💖💖) and was super flattered! Selfies are haaard bc IDK ~Beauty Standards~ and all, so you get a dump of them and probably no more for a long long time:
(1) overly brightened version of me wearing my hoodie up a la Children of Satan style, (2) bathroom selfie bc y’know (btw I made that necklace I’m wearing in top right), (3) a TINY smile, bc St. Patrick’s cathedral is in the bg and classing things up, (4) blue-filtered nonsense in front of another church to look like a frame from an indie movie about whether or not the Manic Pixie Dream girl will accept Loser Dude and the church message is encouraging a yes? IDK. (5) Felt like posing with this model showing her my hand modeling game is better than hers so there, (6) Got a pic with Gaspard Ulliel and NO the fact that he’s 5 times bigger than me won’t be a problem for us we are in LOVE. (7) #45 in fact is a neighbor of mine, not next door thank goodness, but a walkable number of avenue blocks away OH WELL.
Bonus:
Yes that is 100% real plastic diamond I’m wearing.
Tagging ppl who have tagged me in a get-to-know-me-meme recently (I’m flattered that you tagged me, not sure if I’ll answer)(I’m sorry sometimes I get shy and don’t want to #be social #on a social network) or in the past, or just been in my activity feed recently, but please, consider yourself tagged, I’d love to see more of your faces!
No pressure if you are tagged, you can post a selfie or give me 5 things that make you happy. If you’re an RP blog, you can do it in character ;}
(I struggle to describe it to ppl, I usually cater the length and depth of my description based on my audience, for example, to describe it to my 7 yr old cousin (who loves vampires and was a vampire princess fairy for Halloween): “It’s mostly about a happy vampire family with 2 dads, and they don’t always get along with eachother or the world.”)
As Tom Cruise put it so eloquently, “The movie is not for everyone.” No value judgement there; it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea, so I don’t try to sell it.
I will try to describe the story in the language of tumblrland:
“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book…?”
“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”
“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”
“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”
“How would you describe IWTV to someone who has not read the book or seen the movie?”
You can also try my vc synopsis tag, but there be spoilers there!
….That last gif is also tribute to antoineandthepiano who loves that gif! And it’s appropriate here, bc if I think the person might actually like it, I do tell them to #READ THE BOOK in the hopes that I can make them one of us ❤
Oh man, that is a lot to ask, and you’re correct in that I have not consumed a wide range of vampire media, especially in terms of historical/geographical/etc.
“A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.”
Vampire fiction is so varied and has so many different rules compared to its first inception that I think it’s pretty free of ideas/elements that have “become overused to the point of losing their original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating.”
One cliché is the “I vaaant to suck your blooood!” line that a vampire might say to a victim, originating in vampire movies from decades ago, but it’s more of a comical thing now. It can also be modified slightly to increase the comedy:
I will say that some of my fave vampire media takes existing clichés and/or rules/conventions about vampires, and interprets it in a different way or ignores it completely.
I think it’s more important to consider existing conventions/rules, and how your vampires will operate within them, if at all. I have some stuff mixed into my #vampire physiology tag, but not a complete list.
A few conventions/rules are already widely varied in different vampire media:
Vampires can’t walk around in sunlight –
In most vampire media, vampires exposing themselves to sunlight will get them severely burned or killed immediately.
In Byzantium, I think they can walk around in sunlight with no problems at all.
In Twilight, the vampires are physically able to do so, but they’re dazzling in the sunlight, so they stand out as non-human when they do (and that’s bad bc revealing themselves as non-human could risk harm from mortals).
Vampires require blood to survive, but they are immortal, so “survive” is more like, “a healthy vampire is one that is feeding on a regular basis, but it’s not a requirement.” – I can’t think of an example of vampires that die from not drinking blood regularly… but I think the What We Do in the Shadows and Only Lovers Left Alive vampires will rapidly weaken if they don’t feed often.
Vampires don’t have reflections in mirrors – the Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), What We Do in the Shadows, and
Only Lovers Left Alive
vampires
don’t have reflections, but the Interview with the Vampire ones definitely do.
Vampires have to be invited into their victim’s home – Only seen this being an issue in the two adaptations of Let the Right One In.
Vampires are harmed by crosses/crucifixes – Saw this as an issue in the What We Do in the Shadows vampires, that it frightens Deacon that he might be in close proximity to a cross, but it’s unclear what would happen if he touched it. In Fright Night, a vampire touching a cross ignites it in flames but it doesn’t seem to stop him from continuing to attack.
So what I’m saying is that you can explore different conventions/rules of vampires and then pick and choose which you’ll incorporate into your vampires, or invent whole new rules!
UPDATE: Got an anon message adding to the this post, here’s their info: (I reformatted their answer into nicer formatting than asks allow)
Regarding sunlight: In the original Dracula novel, sunlight actually didn’t hurt vampires, but it neutralized their powers. Dracula couldn’t transform while the sun was up, except at dawn, exact noon, and sunset, but as I recall, he still had his superhuman strength/speed/etc and was able to flee our team of heroes.
Regarding needing blood but being immortal: In Dracula and some other media, the vampires not only weaken, but age if they don’t feed. In the novel, Dracula looks like an old man when Harker first meets him, but turns young as he feeds regularly.
Regarding crucifixes: I’ve seen a instances with twists on this relating to faith. In one, the crucifix was harmless because the person using it had weak faith in God. In another, crosses and such only hurt the vampire if the vampire feared them, and faith was considered truly frightening. Two of the vampires went to church regularly to keep up their human guise, and one of them holds a cross in his hand with no issue, but a younger vampire is too scared of a cross to pick it up.
It seems like you have sort of made up your mind about him, Anon, listing those crimes 😦 If you don’t like him for those reasons, or any reasons, you are under no obligation to change your mind, but I appreciate that you want to understand why ppl do like him.
If you’re on Memnoch then you know most of Armand’s story, and you know that Armand’s book follows MtD. His book goes into his story more deeply, and from his own perspective, and I think that’s part of what ppl like about him. His narration is different than Lestat’s (most of the books are Lestat’s POV or his recording of what others tell him), and I think some Armand fans are just glad to get out of Lestat’s head!! lol.
In TVA, you get more detail and scenes from Armand’s mortal life and fledgling life, and some of what follows. You get how he feels about seeing Lestat in MtD and a moment of intimacy between these two alpha personalities who have had a simmering competition between them since they met.
Some ppl find that Anne Rice has done Armand a disservice in his own book by having him claim any amount of agency in what happened between him and Marius. That’s up to the individual reader to decide, what they think of that relationship, regardless of what the author’s agenda was when she wrote it.
I do think some of the things Armand says in TVA are
somewhat
exaggerated because he is telling the story to David, who was flirting at him really hard in the beginning of that book, and I think Armand wanted to remind David that he’s not the cute bb 17 year old he appears to be, and not to mistake him as such. So the scene describing Claudia, I’m not sure I trust Armand that he really did anything to her other than do nothing when the other vampires of the theatre put her in that sun-well-thingie.
I wouldn’t say that most of the fandom likes Armand. I think that certain characters have waves of popularity, and some are talked about more than others at any given time… there was a period about two years ago, I think, that ppl were all over Nicolas, discussing him, theorizing that he might have survived, etc.
Tom Hiddleston is talking about Loki here, I think, but the concept is captivating, and it applies to Nicki and Armand:
Nicki seemed to be one of the only canon characters that explicitly had a mental illness, and that was during a time on tumblr that ppl were being more open about having mental illness and identifying with fictional characters who also had mental illness.
We are drawn to characters who have traits like ourselves, and/or those that survive, and overcome obstacles when they are faced with challenges like our own.
I think Nicki also represented some of the disillusionment ppl were feeling about the world at large at the time.
It might be that Armand has taken on more of that role, some fans also headcanon that Armand has mental illness(es) and he can also represent fans who feel disillusioned about the world at large, since the world has been so cruel to him.
More on all that later*, so I can address the other part of your statement now.
He (1) cut off Nicolas’s hands, (2) killed Claudia, and (3) kills suicidal people. (I’m not trying to shame anyone, I just want to understand why.)
^Ok, I’m going to address each of these things, since you want to understand. I’ll take it at face value that you’re not trying to shame anyone for liking a fictional character who does those things.
Whether you want to agree with my explanations is entirely up to you. If you judge him by human, real-world standards, yes, each of these things is maniacal and horrible. So my explanations are for FICTION.
NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN.
^I have to stop doing that I’m going to get in trouble.
First off, I would like to point out that I don’t think canon indicates that he takes pleasure in any of those things individually, except for the normal pleasure of that last one, vampires love feeding, there’s no getting around that 😉
(1) He cut off Nicolas’s hands,
This seems like fairly standard vampire punishment from a coven master. @damnitarmand, an Armand RPer, responded very well to this question, I’ll reblog it momentarily.
Armand may have been trying to help Nicki in the ways he knew how. Armand had been a coven master for hundreds of years, dealt with madness from many ages of vampires, maybe this was something that helped in other cases. It could be seen as cruel from our mortal standards, but maybe that was considered a reasonable form of treatment for vampires.
Eleni writes to Lestat in TVL:
“[Nicolas] must be watched constantly so that he does not enlarge our ranks. His dining habits are extremely sloppy. And on occasion he says most shocking things to strangers, which fortunately they are too sensible to believe.“ In other words, he tried to make other vampires. And he didn’t hunt in stealth. “In the main it is Our Oldest Friend [Armand, obviously] who is relied upon to restrain him. And that he does with the most caustic threats. But I must say that these do not have an enduring effect upon our Violinist.”
“…I tell you these things not to haunt you but to let you know that we do our utmost to protect this child who should never have been Born to Darkness. He is overwhelmed by his powers, dazzled and maddened by his vision. We have seen it all and its sorry finish before.”
^So clearly, Armand does everything he can before punishing him so viscerally, and Nicolas really was getting out of control. Eleni even notes that Nicolas is not taking to vampirism very well and would never have been turned by the coven, they’ve had hundreds of years to learn about who can handle it and who can’t, and they have their own system of psychological care, such as it is.
When Armand does take his hands, yes, it’s bc
Armand
has been pushed to being “maddened by the excesses” of Nicki! Not maddened for nothing. There is no indication that Armand takes pleasure in it. Further proof that it’s a standard punishment is when Eleni explains to Lestat that it’s temporary:
“It has come to the worst, as I feared. Our Oldest Friend, maddened by the excesses of Our Violinist, finally imprisoned him in your old residence. And though his violin was given him in his cell, his hands were taken away. But understand that with us, such appendages can always be restored.”
^So for all of the above, I don’t consider Armand’s cutting off of Nicki’s hands as a crime but as a merciful thing that’s standard procedure, albeit probably a last resort, for restoring vampire sanity.
(2) killed Claudia,
^Armand tried to get Claudia a new adult vampire companion when he pressured Louis into turning Madeleine. Armand even admits to Louis that he himself takes the responsibility for Madeleine:
“ `But if it’s any consolation to you … surely you realize I had a
hand in it.’
” [Armand said]
`That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you …
yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!’ [Louis] said.
“`No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn’t you know this?’ Woe.
I bowed my head.
‘I would have made this woman a vampire,’ [Armand] said softly. `But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it…
“ `I loathe what I did!’ I said. ” `Then loathe me, not yourself.’
^To me, Armand’s plan was to have Madeleine take Claudia off of Louis’ hands, so that Louis could still communicate with Claudia but not be responsible for her anymore.
I do think that the theatre vampires, led by Santiago, had other plans in mind, and that Armand had to cut his losses and let them kill Claudia since they were bloodthirsty for it. It’s exciting to kill vampires, as Santiago has said. Armand probably knew also, as a coven master, that it was a crime to turn a child anyway, and that she would have died at some point anyway (she might have even taken her own life).
(3) and kills suicidal people.
^In canon, yes, it’s described as Armand calling to those who wanted to die. Whether they could have been saved by actual medical care, or psychological therapy, I don’t think that’s addressed in canon. So here you might have an actual crime, of him killing innocent ppl who are consenting to death but not really capable of consenting to death.
This is his approach to the dilemma of being a vampire and needing to kill ppl on a regular basis, there’s a few options for doing it in canon:
Take lots of Little Drinks, if you’re capable of that, and not kill anyone,but spend like 3x the amount of time every night having to find that many more ppl to feed from. For awhile, it seemed like Louis wasn’t capable of this, since he gets so caught up in the swoon that he can’t stop. He might be able to now, tho.
Kill evildoers – bc “they deserve it anyway!” and you’re “protecting the innocents!”, but you still have to struggle to find the ones that deserve the death penalty, do drug dealers deserve to die for selling pot? In TOBT, Lestat kills someone who’s a serial elderly rapist/murderer, one would think that evildoer is evil enough to deserve the death penalty, but everyone is entitled to a defense attorney under U.S. law.
Kill indiscriminately, anyone who crosses your path, and don’t judge, bc they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time – Louis’ method bc he won’t judge evilness, lacking the Mind Gift but also, he doesn’t think he should be making that choice.
Kill innocent ppl – not very nice but some vampires do that. Claudia did.
Kill ppl who want to die as a form of assisted suicide; they are consenting to death – Armand is doing this, at least mentioning it in TVL and again in TVA. Medically assisted suicide is a very controversial thing but it is legal in some countries, and it reduces the prolonged suffering of terminally ill ppl. From wiki: “The three most frequently mentioned end‐of‐life concerns reported by Oregon residents who took advantage of the Death With Dignity Act in 2015 were: decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (96.2%), loss of autonomy (92.4%), and loss of dignity (75.4%).”
Armand’s killing method described in TVL:
[Armand] had perfected the act of
killing beyond the abilities of all the Children of Darkness that he knew. He
had learned to summon those who truly wished to die. He had but to stand near
the dwellings of mortals and call silently to see his victim appear. Old,
young, wretched, diseased, the ugly or the beautiful, it did not matter because
he did not choose. Dazzling visions he gave, if they should want to receive,
but he did not move towards them nor even close his arms around them.
Drawn inexorably towards him, it was they who embraced him. And when their warm
living flesh touched him, when he opened his lips and felt the blood spill, he
knew the only surcease from misery that he could know. It seemed to him in the
best of these moments that his way was profoundly spiritual, uncontaminated by
the appetites and confusions that made up the world, despite the carnal rapture
of the kill. In that act the spiritual and the carnal came together, and it was
the spiritual, he was convinced, that survived. Holy Communion it seemed to
him, the Blood of the Children of Christ serving only to bring the essence of life
itself into his understanding for the split second in which death occurred.
I think Armand’s assisted-suicides were mostly emotionally-driven, I don’t think canon goes into much further detail about it. I would think that Armand is killing ppl who are truly beyond saving, and the time period in which he’s doing it is not one that handled mental healthcare the way we do now. So at that time, that was probably not considered a crime, but a mercy killing.
Currently, his decision to kill “those who wish to die” (and possibly, he influences that on them), yes, he might be killing innocent ppl who might have had a chance at living otherwise.
Armand in TVA, more modern-era, is now killing an evildoer/drug addict:
Now I had to have blood. There was no time for the old game, the game of drawing out those who wanted to die, those who truly craved my embrace, those in love already with the far country of death of which they knew nothing.
…The next [victim] was a common desperate youth, full of festering sores, who had killed twice before for the heroin he needed so badly as I needed the doomed blood inside him.”
We don’t have as much information on whether he’s more of a “kill the suicidal” or “kill the evildoer” in current canon. In the TVA example above, the victim has killed “for the heroin,” so he’s an evildoer anyway.
*SO WHY DO PPL LIKE ARMAND??? O____O
Why do ppl like peanut butter? Or not like it? Some ppl are allergic to peanut butter. There are so many reasons to like a character!
We’re drawn to characters for any number of reasons!
I think this current crop of tumblr VC fans is talking about Armand more bc he is also a victim of CSA, has undergone an enormous amount of trauma in canon, and survived it, even becoming a coven master in the cult that brainwashed him for centuries. It’s inspiring to see a character carry the weight of all that damage and seem to overcome it and, even, become strong and confident, and even happy, at least sometimes. There’s no denying there’s a lot of sass in Armand.
Maybe fandom wants to embrace him and comfort him and give him all the happiness they would want themselves to have. It’s easier to project it onto a fictional character, and see it reflected back when you imagine him, in fanart or fanfic.
Imagining Armand enjoying himself, exploring technology with Daniel or playing videogames and elbowing Lestat to try to mess him up on coven game night, all of his past is still inside him but he’s trying to make the best of things, trying to have a family, such as it is, trying to find his purpose in life. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? A home. And I think we like to see characters like ourselves find home and feel wanted, at least some of the time.
We have *~several~* redheaded characters to choose from, anon! Age is relative tho, there’s youngest in actual years, then there’s youngest in appearance.
****Opening my overcoat to reveal the gingers****
The Vampire Armand
He’s probs your best bet, being the youngest in appearance, he was turned into a vampire when he was 17. He’s one of the main characters and pretty easily recognizable even to ppl outside VC fandom. He’s over 400 yrs old now. Other characters often compare him to the youths in Botticelli’s paintings; so pretty, he mentions that he’s mistaken for being a girl at least once in his mortal life.
[^Portrait of a Young Man 3., Botticelli, and I think the expression is very Armand, he’s pretty much the sassy teen of the series but as grumpy as an old man]
I would never be anything but the seventeen-year-old boy you see now… [but] I am not a waif and never have been. I am a strong child. – Armand, The Vampire Armand
^X@amadeo-child-of-the-renaissance found this, another Botticelli angel Armand, with a face that’s more canon-compliant IMO 😉 AR bases Armand off these Botticelli angels and they have varying straight and curly hair, usually wavy at least.
Armand’s hair is described as curly when he was mortal and when he was a fledgling, so I think that’s the natural state of it.
Armand can be dapper or grungey depending on his mood, so the crucial aspect is really his hair, and if you want extra credit, you may want to carry a blender around, that’s sort of the fandom joke about him and Daniel going nuts over blending stuff in QOTD.
Here’s some Armand cosplayers (they’re mixed into that link) you might wanna check out 😉
Other redheads in the series… bc I don’t wanna hide the rare VC ladies under a cut! NO CUTS WE LONG POST LIKE MEN
^I’m not wild about her portrayal in the QOTD movie but anyways… she’s a little over 30 when she’s turned, and it was 1985, so she is technically younger in age than Armand. He will always look younger than her, tho.
Cosplaying Jesse Reeve would involve smtg about her being a Talamascan, maybe, or carrying Claudia’s diary? She finds it in QOTD.
^The redhaired twins. You might go to @redhairedtwin, a Maharet RPer, for descriptions of the twins.
^X Maharet (left) and kid!Jesse (right) in the QOTD movie. I headcanon Maharet and Mekare as being younger in appearance than we see Maharet in the movie, but idk right now how old they were when they were turned (I don’t have my books to check either). Early 20′s, early adulthood, I think. Maharet and Mekare are technically the oldest on this list but they might look the same age or younger than Jesse.
Cosplaying one of the twins means a bloody mouth or bloody eyes.
^poor Madeleine in the the IWTV movie barely had any screentime, she got a little more in the book, but she’s rarely mentioned in later canon. Louis’ first fledgling, made to take care of Claudia so he can go bang Armand move on with his afterlife. She’s a more obscure character, but she’s A REDHEAD SO SHE COUNTS!
If you want to cosplay her, carrying a doll that looks like Claudia, or wearing a locket with a portrait of a Claudia look-alike, that’d be a good accessory 😉
I think that’s all the relevant redheads in VC, but if anyone can think of more, feel free to reblog and add!
Mona Mayfair
@sheepskeleton said: Do we keep pretending that Mona doesn’t exist? xD Because I’m on board with that tbh, but I think she is also a young redhead 😉
RIGHT So Mona Mayfair is from the Mayfair Witch series and appears in the crossover Mayfair/VC books that AR refers to as “hybrids,” but since AR said that those books “haven’t worn well over time,” she has asked us to disregard them as part of VC canon.
!!!But Mona Mayfair is technically a cosplayable VC character, should you choose to accept those books as canon.!!!
~ SPOILER ALERT ~ <– wow, a real warning, and not a sarcastic one tossed on to add salt to a rant, what a thing.
^RPer @opheliaximmortal used to use Kate Mara as a face claim and I think that’s perfection. That RPer might give you a better description of the character, bc I just barely remember her, aside from her being Young, Pretty, and a Redhead, but just a warning, there’s NSFW text and images on her blog.
Mona is 18 when turned. In her early/mid teens, she favors tartan skirts and blouses and hair ribbons – she thinks of it as her disguise because she’s obvs doing a lot of things not expected of a schoolgirl. Once she transforms in Blood Canticle she dresses up in Aunt Queen’s high heels (she’s 18 here, so again, a late teen/early 20s fan could cosplay this well) and some kind of fancy dress; basically she goes out on the town all glammed up so that could be fun as well.
Mona was so awesomely sassy in Blood Canticle:
Lestat: “I told her to change clothes. That short sequined dress was just too damned distracting. And we had some heavy matters to address immediately.”
[argument ensues]
Mona: “ ‘And I know why you’re so fired up over Rowan, she’s the first adult female other than your own mother who’s ever caught your attention for more than five minutes, and Hello! Lestat Discovers The Opposite Sex! Yeah, females do come in grown-up sizes! And I happen to be one of them, and this is not the Garden of Eden, and I am not taking off this dress!’ ”
Sarcastic Spoiler alert: she doesn’t change her dress.
Also, re: Jesse:
Jesse’s 35 when turned, Jesse’s chapter in QotD has some descriptions of what she typically wears – I THINK she goes with flowy skirts when she’s in London “or jeans when she was in the States”, because Anne Rice thinks jeans haven’t arrived in Merrie Olde Englande yet, lol.
Also, a really cool cosplay detail for Jesse would be a silver Celtic bracelet, because Mael gives one to her as a gift.
Also, re: Maharet & Mekare:
…bizarrely Maharet and Mekare could be as young as 16!! So a late teen could pull them off.
I-want-my-IWTV 