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.
The Mayfair House: Anne Rice’s former New Orleans home is back on the market again, as per this Curbed.com article, from which I’ve selected some photos. This is the house that inspired the Mayfair witches’ haunted family home…
I always recommend reading the earlier books before the later ones bc that’s the order in which AR explored the characters. #READ THE BOOK.gif
The crossover books will spoil things or may leave some things confusing/unexplained which happened in the original Mayfair series, so if you don’t want to be spoiled that way, y’know, start at the original books.
I’m not as familiar with the Mayfair series* bc I read them a long time ago and didn’t reread them… but you’ll probably see the witches as richer characters when you know what they’ve been through before the hybrid novels (AR calls the crossover books “hybrid novels”). IIRC, sometimes past events are referenced in the hybrid novels, but not fully revisited from other POVs as happens in VC.
*One exception is Merrick Mayfair, who isn’t mentioned in the original Mayfair trilogy, she’s in Merrick.
For example, Mona Mayfair is no ordinary witch, and so when we see her in Blood Canticle (Mona was so awesomely sassy in BC!), it feels like she gains back an inner strength about herself (from the earlier Mayfair books) that may have been lost.
Also relevant: at the booksigning last night (11/30/16), someone asked AR if we’d see more of Rowan or the other Mayfairs in future books, and AR basically said she doesn’t think so, bc the hybrid novels haven’t worn well over time, and that she feels the original Mayfair trilogy is good as it is (also, she wrote it in a house in NOLA she no longer owns; it’s harder to get back into that universe from another location). We do have some Mayfair mention in PLROA tho, so clearly AR is keeping some things from the hybrid novels and tossing others so i d e k.
More seriously, since I saw the movie before reading the books, I pronounce the final “T” of Lestat, while it’s usually not the case in French. So, theoretically, in modern French, the pronunciation would be something like “lesta”. But it sounds kinda silly, and there is an awful lot of exceptions to the “t” rule. Furthermore, “Lestat” hugely looks like the Occitan word “estat”, prononced “S-taT”. And guess where Occitan, an old language still used nowadays, is spoken? In south France, which include Auvergne. So, in a very twisted way, “LestaT” as an old french name is making sense. At least if you accept the idea that “the state” is a decent name for a person.
OuO very informative.
AR says it was a typo of Lestan, “Le,” French for “The,” + “Stan” for her husband, Stan Rice, and the typo with the “T” stuck. In a way, Uncle Lestan is actually how AR intended his name to be.
In canon, Lestat explains in Blackwood Farm that his name is just the first letters of his siblings’ names:
“What an unusual name, Lestat,” she returned. “Does it have a meaning?”
“None whatsoever, Madam,” Lestat answered. “If memory serves me right, and it does less and less, the name’s compounded of the first letter of each of my six older brothers’ names, all of whom – the brothers and their names – I grew up to cheerfully and vigorously despise.”
^This could work, but we only know one of his brother’s names, Augustin.
Discussing this with viaticumforthemarquise-archive… maybe Augustin (or one of Lestat’s brothers) told him that just to hurt his feelings, like “YOU ARE SO WORTHLESS THAT AT BIRTH OUR PARENTS COULD ONLY MUSTER THE CREATIVITY TO TAKE A LETTER FROM EACH OF OUR NAMES” *SLAPS*
Lestat: *screaming internally*
They told him this at a young age … and he never questioned it ;A;
tbh sassy lestat and mona being involved is the only thing i enjoyed about those two books
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!’ ”
It’s intriguing as a concept, not just for torture, but for BDSM. Which is smtg that takes alot of trust from those participating in it, and usually followed by good aftercare (cuddling, healing, loving assurances).
tbh i absolutely cannot stand either quinn or mona but the ONE TIME where i was completely behind mona was when lestat told her to change her dress because she was ‘distracting him’ and she told him to go fuck himself and stormed out. of course later she ruined it by being all OH I’M SORRY FOR HAVING TITS TOTALLY ALL MY FAULT REALLY, but still, for awhile i was like you go girl.
merciful-death: #ooc #[ yes i agree ] #[ it was two seconds of ‘hell yeah hell yes you tell him mona’ and then two seconds of ‘ugh mona i was beginning to like you for a paragraph how could you betray me like this’ ]
^Agreed.
Mona Mayfair: “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!”
Such shots fired! I’m not a big fan of Mona Mayfair but WOW who else has the balls to talk to him like that?!
here is this old drawing I found of teenaged vampires from books which I quite like. And there was some other stuff but that’s probs all you need right now, huh?
gorgeous-fiend: #NO #NO WAY DID MATER JUST SAY LESTAT LISTENS TO JON BON JOVI #NOPE NOPE NOPE
Of course he does! Consider the following:
1) Lestat has pretty scholcky taste in music, all things considered. Yes he is a musician and a rock star but basically he likes anything you can dance to;
2) Bon Jovi are tbh pretty cool. I’m not saying rush out and buy all their albums, but Slippery When Wet is a good time with a gross title.
Hard to disagree w/ liquorandptsdvarietyshow. Headcanon accepted. Although my gut reaction to things AR claims he likes, in general, is to disagree. See: Lestat’s papal desires.
My fave bit in Blood Canticle is when he has that extended fantasy about explaining to Pope JP that capitalism is actually, in fact, totes great. I just love that. It’s so fucking awful and yet it’s weirdly in character.
It’s true though that there is this thing AR has where basically all the vampires, indiscriminate of their differences, enjoy all the same art, and that art suspiciously, somehow, is basically just everything AR likes. It’s like those fanfics I wrote when I was younger where all the characters had my exact taste, meaning I got to insert music and books and that that I liked.*
Examples include: the Baz Luhrmann Romeo & Juliet, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, whichever Baroque violinist AR is listening to at the time…
*I don’t do that anymore – nowadays character’s preferences are strongly informed by character. E.g., how Lestat thinks W. Bush is charming and bumbly, and likes Judy Blume (whom I do like, but… not like he does). Or in AmCap, even, how Steve likes LOTR (I super don’t). Or Tony is weird about Steve Albini (which is because Albini is aggressively committed to analogue recording technology, at the same time as being a similar model of belligerent middle-aged asshole to Tony. It’s a joke, guys, I’m very funny).
I have to reread Blood Canticle, forgot about the defense of capitalism mixed with papal awe… there are definitely some good things in BC. Like Mona not taking Lestat’s chauvinism AT ALL.
“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!”
//Shots fired! I’m not a big fan of Mona Mayfair but WOW who else has the balls to talk to him like that?!
It makes the story so much richer to have the characters have their own interests and not share them with each other. Example: Louis’s distaste but understanding of Lestat’s need of regular installments of retail therapy. Those gas-station sunglasses!
Side note: I think your Lestat is amused at the performance of W. as a character, whether W. intended it consciously or it came naturally. Perhaps Lestat sees it (and politics in general) as a form of modern Commedia dell’arte, watching W. perform, watching newsmen bark at each other about W…. might be a similar kind of show!
How adorable that your Lestat went into such analysis about Judy Blume, how refreshing for him to cite specific reasons why he adores her thinking process, and her advice, how he relates it to different situations, whether he agrees with it or not and even questioning those judgements… rather than canon!Lestat who seemed to drool over the Pope for no more than his proximity to God and the kind of worship he experiences as middle man between the believers and the Creator.
Ahhh tangent… I shouldn’t have continued this, shouldn’t try to bite off more than I can chew with you, liquorandptsdvarietyshow… but we are in agreement, is the bottom line ;]
I-want-my-IWTV 