Oh this is that guy from the Donāt Stay in School vid, I remember him! What a powerful vid this is. Still gives me chills.
I do really like his look, but idk about him as Louis. Iād still screentest him for another role, a different vampire maybe. One of the Fang Gang maybe, or a theatre vampire.Ā
There is a lot of debate about Louisās hair, and Iāve done it publicly and privately (recently w/ my fanfic co-writer/collaborator @wicked-felina!) this dudeās hairā¦ itās more of a fanon thing for him to have long silky straight hair, canonically, Louis hasĀ āwavy, curlyā andĀ āblackā orĀ āravenā hair ācurling just under his ear.āĀ
^X by @i-see-light, probably more canonically accurate for Louis.
We all picture him differently, I think thatās part of what will make it so hard to cast an actor for this role. Some ppl headcanon his hair as long and more of a chestnut-color (like in movie!IWTV), or shorter and curlier (like in Lestat the Musical), or dark, longish and silky (which I think is influenced by
movie!IWTV but trying to pay some homage to canon), or something else entirely!Ā
We all apply our own ideals of beauty (which are influenced by our own cultures, art, families, romantic partners, and/or friends, etc.) onto these fictional characters.
I enjoy the different interpretations in
VC cosplay and fanart, for the adaptation(s), itās more important to me if he can act like Louis, so Iāll accept hairstylings I wouldnāt normally like for the sake of good script writing from the writers, and strong ic acting from the actors Ā ^_____^
This quickly became a video I cannot scroll past. š
You are the only person who is in charge of how you feel about yourself. Nobody else can possibly do that. You get to decide if you believe you are beautiful or not, and nobody can take it away from you. If someone suggests that you arenāt beautiful, you can consider how sad it is that they have such a limited view of beauty. You can consider how unfortunate it is that they have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that they think you should care about what they think. You can also choose to realize that it has nothing at all to do with your beauty and everything to do with their limitations.
I understand, and I sympathize, weād all love to have someone whoās closer to our headcanon for Armand *hugs* (I also appreciated Banderasā Armand*, and @vraik had a postĀ worth checking out re: the casting of Banderas instead of someone who fit the canon description better).
That said, an āaccurate representationā 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, etcā¦ 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 āaged outā of the role, extra sad if they had built up good chemistry with the other actors!
What we need is someone whoās a little older than necessary who has that elusive *~forever-young gene~* (you know, like Keanu Reeves, someone who doesnāt age), and there are such ppl! I have it. Iām 33 and people still think Iām 17:
^This was before I got my haircut, but itās pretty recent, no airbrushing, the mirrorās a little dirty tho OH WELL. Iām also posting it w/ this response bc really, the only VC character I could cosplay would be Armand, itās just the face shape I have, being half Russian and all.
You can dig around in my #VC Casting tag for more ideas but hereās a few, under the cut.Ā
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 donāt all agree 100% on what these characters look like, weāre all influenced by our own cultureās ideals of beauty, our own aesthetic tastes, etc. So my choice of Botticelli angel might not even be yours.
But letās assume we all agree on THIS angel for the sake of argument, and we hand this over to a casting agent:
^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 heās a working model so I assume heās 21+?Ā
^Thomas Brodie-Sangster is 26 and could pass for 15. Idk how old he is in this gif.
^Kirill Nikolini, also a model.Ā @faceofabotticelliangelās FC for Armand for awhile. Idk how old he is in the pic or now butā¦ 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). Iām 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.Ā
āMerci, Armand. It is magnificent, isnāt it? It is genetic and unattainable.Ā
*laughs* ok, youāre probably not Armand. I donāt know what your hair type is, and Iām not a specialist in this. My hair is naturally easy to maintain and style. My only rule is to learn how to bleach your hair very carefully or leave it to the professionals, it tends to be harsh on mortal hair. Poor Tough Cookie bleached hers too powerfully and too many times and it all fell out!Ā
Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.
Do you ever see people whose faces echo another era?
Iāve seen women with the round faces, sparse brows and high foreheads of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
Men with dark brows that meet in the middle, olive skin, strong noses and jawsāByzantine men, ghosts of Constantine, reanimated faces from the Fayum Mummy Portraits.
Women with soft figures and the large eyes and prim, petaled mouths of the 19th century.
Grizzled men whose brows predicate their gaze, whose wrinkles track into their thick beards and read like topographical maps of hardship and intensityāthe wanderer, the poet; Whitman, Tolstoy, Carlyle.Ā
Faces sculpted into the perfect, deified symmetry of the pharaohsāalmond eyes, full lips, self-assurance 3,000 years in the making staring at you at a stoplight. Ā
Plump, curved white wrists curled over purse handles in the waiting room and you think Versailles, Madame Pompadour, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great. Wide cheek bones, courage and sorrow in the scrunched face of the old man in line behind you and itās Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh. Reddened skin, thick forearms, hair and beard and brows burned by the cold into a reddish corn silk and you think Odin,Ā the forge and the hammer and skin stinging from the salt of the ocean.
Virginia Woolfās quiet brand of gaunt frankness surveys you in passing in the parking lot. Queen Victoriaās heavy-lidded stare and beaked nose are firmly, uncannily fixed on a sixth-grade classmateās face.
Renaissance voluptuousness on the boardwalk by the beach. Boticelliās caramel androgyny in a youth smoking on a bench outside the mall.
Jazz age looseness spurs the tripping gait of the man who watches you paint with his hands in his pockets, and he smiles a Sammy Davis Jr. smile and tells you that you look familiar, that heās sure heās seen you somewhere before, but he doesnāt know where or when.
JCB was a somewhat popular FC for Lestat RPers at one time, so your opinion is/was shared by others!
^He already played a vampire in Twilight, but I didnāt see thatā¦ Idk if heād be willing to play another vampire. He looks good in period costume, Iāll admit that, and the makeup/hair team really transformed him. This is 100% better vampiry appearance than QOTD!Lestat (but thatās setting the bar preeeetty low, ROFL).
Personally, I find JCB too thin, so bony, such angular featuresā¦ but I havenāt seen his acting so itās unfair to judge him just superficially. He has a lot of theatre experience and he seems quite charming from his quotes on his IMDB page. He might be great! I would definitely screen-test him if I was in charge of things.
[^XĀ I will say that these are some excellent silly faces and our Lestat has to be able to pull of his easy sense of humor, too!]Ā
The fact is, we all have our own ideals of beauty and our own headcanon of these characters. Itās highly unlikely that one actor will satisfy all of our expectations, andĀ @cdf-archive (now @coeur-de-feu) was a Lestat RPer who used JCB as a FC, and they wrote up a great post about JCB as Lestat [X], excerpt below:Ā
āThere will always be inconsistencies, everywhere you look. But itās not really even whether or not I find him perfect. Itās his imperfections that make him perfect, to me. And perhaps thatās what Magnus found in Lestat – his imperfections gave him an indescribable yet authentic beauty and Magnus wanted to immortalize those features by turning Lestat into a vampire, even though Lestat did not want it. It was okay with Magnus that Lestat had a few things here and there that werenāt completely perfect; he found him extraordinarily beautiful, regardless.ā
#Eloquent eloquence
Also, check out @cdf-archiveās actual archive to see more pics of JCB, some of them are good promos in a VC-aesthetic which you might like!Ā
You donāt have to get groomed before youāre turned, AR doesnāt always specify if ppl do. I doubt Frida Kahlo would have! To pluck or not, to cut oneās hair or not, depends partly on the culture youāre from and what you personally consider beautiful.
Me, Iād LOVE to never have to bother with it again, but Iād probably let it be somewhat natural under the brow, like Brooke Shields had in the 80ā²s, so that Iād have that option if I wanted it, bc I am a child of theĀ ā80ā²s and this is still beautiful to me:
Itās part of the package. The women who were turned before shaving oneās legs was expected (presumably it was a sneaky way to sell more razors :P) probably have natural legs. Louis doesnāt mention shaving his face before he was turned, we donāt know if Lestat has scruff.
āI could hear Lestat in his room, the sound of water splashing from his pitcher. The faint smell of his cologne came and went like the sound of music from the cafe two doors down from us.ā – IWTV
^Is he shaving? Is he brushing his fangs? Maybe he does have some scruff! He didnāt mention being freshly shaven before Magnus turns him.
It definitely creeped Jesse out in QOTD, but partly bc she didnāt really know what was going on did they shave her legs, too?:
āā¦Was this a funeral parlor?
It came again, the fear that she was dead, locked in the flesh yet disconnected. She
heard a curious sound; what was it? A scissors cutting. It was trimming the edges of
her hair; the feel of it traveled to her scalp. She felt it even in her intestines.Ā
A tiny vagrant hair was plucked suddenly from her face; one of those annoying hairs,
quite out of place, which women so hate. She was being groomed for the coffin,
wasnāt she? Who else would take such care, lifting her hand now, and inspecting her
fingernails so carefully.ā
There was a similar sort of question before but I donāt mind revisiting questions, sometimes my headcanons have changed, sometimes I consider a different angle on things, as Iām doing now ;]
Short answer:for Ricean vampires, in my opinion, a fat person would not lose their weight and become a thin person. Vampirism might tighten them up a little, but they will have the same body they had before. For ETERNITY.
There are non-Ricean fat vampires, tho!Ā Hereās Deacon from What We Do in the Shadows, and while I wouldnāt call him FAT, I wouldnāt call him SLIM either. Nor is he attractive to everyone even tho he thinks he is.Ā
So the factors involved with making *~chubby~* vampires are:
1. Who the maker chooses. This is based on different factors, but Beauty is typically one of them. In some societies, bigger is beautiful! An āunhealthyā weight by one societyās standards during one time period is desirable in others: [X]
^Personally, I prefer Tizianoās āVenere di Urbinoā in its original form, which is clearly the point Italian artist/actress Anna Utopia Giordano was making when sheĀ āshopped a whole bunch of these classical paintings ;D
Hit the jump for moar.
2. The vampiric parasiteās prime directive is to make its host into an efficient and attractive killing machine for the sake of its own survival. The parasite doesnāt know what societyās current ideal weight is, but it learns everything about the host body it goes into, and tries to enhance that body to suit its own goal (*1).
Itās hard to explain why Gabrielle and Monaās bodies were inflated up to a āhealthyā weight (so to speak). Iād say itās bc the vampiric parasite transforms the insides of its host to more of a spongey material to increase the liquid capacity (*2). That spongey material could end up slightly inflating areas that had withered due to age or malnutrition.
3. Post-turning, the vampire body cannot exercise off any poundage, or gain any weight in the manner that mortals do.Ā They CAN overfeed, and there is one example of that in canon. I canāt think of anywhere that post-turning weight gain is mentioned. Overfeeding will still not create fat as we understand it:
āGlutted with the feast he was, plump and heated with it as she had seldom ever seen an immortal become.ā Pandora describing Azim, Queen of the Damned
*1.Ā I think the vampiric parasite (Amel) analyzes the blueprint of the hostās body when itās installed and it then immediately uninstalls the features it doesnāt need (e.g. internal reproductive organs). It then starts converting all the organic matter of the host body into its own substance to āperfect itā into the pure supernatural killing machine that it wants to be. In that sense, that initial blueprint probably indicates length of hair, beard growth, muscle shape and position, etc., at time of death, and those are elements that the vampiric parasite program respects and wants to maintain as it continues to āupdateā its host body. The external appearance of the host body will affect its ability to hunt, and thus, preserve itself. Itās in the parasiteās interest for the host to continue to survive so that it can, too.
*2. The human body can only hold a limited amount of liquid, and the volume of blood they drink as fledglings (according to Lestatās math, and Iām working on another post about that) would far exceed that limit. The fact is that there would be a lot of blood (like at least 2 gallons) that would have nowhere to go unless the insides of the body were more like a sponge and could store more of it than a mortal body can.
I-want-my-IWTV 