Tag Archives: on beauty

A Note on #VC Casting

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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. 

Every time I look at your art I get so depressed because I know I will never be that good.

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:

Noooooooooo. 😦

Can I tell you a secret, though? My favorite style of art isn’t mine. It isn’t realism.

I like what I make because it feels the most like me. And I like lots of kinds of art, but my favorite styles that I like looking at the most are probably not what you’d expect from a photorealist. I like things like animated gifs and fan art and street art and vaporwave and amateur comics. I like selfies and cosplay and little kinky cartoons and monsters and cats in space. You know why that stuff is my favorite? Because it’s not about being “good.” Or being realistic or whatever. It’s about being yourself. To me, “good” art is when you can see the artist in the art. My favorite style of art is the artist.

And everyone is already themselves, you know? Everyone has opinions about what is pretty or what inspires them. Everyone has an artist in them. You just gotta figure out how to show it, which you will. All it takes is time and practice.

I already think you’re good. ❤

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copcopter:

brown eyes are wonderful

sometimes they are so deep and so dark you can get lost in them

sometimes when the light shines on them they turn gold and glimmer

some brown eyes have flecks of black or deeper browns

some brown eyes have different shades that make pretty rings

some brown eyes are smooth. just one, constant, dark brown. like stone.

brown eyes are beautiful

You a real body goals

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Aw thank u! I kind of regret bringing it up, but the flesh is always better on the other side of the window… oui?

image

Real talk here, though: I love that they chose a realistic woman for Claudia to want to be, not some stick-figure blonde. Later, the lady killed on stage at the Theatre Des Vampires is more like that ideal, society’s projected perfection, but we’re not talking about her right now. This woman has kind of unusual boobs, as far as what we normally see in film, these are natural boobs, not hiked up in a bra to conform to some kind of perky ideal, and this woman has an actual tummy, maybe she’s had children, maybe she’s pregnant, either way, she appears to have FLESH THAT FUNCTIONS and is natural. “Pure Creole” as Lestat says appreciatively. And she’s kind of humming to herself, doing some kind of treatment to her body, just at peace with herself and the world, it seems. Claudia wants ALL of that.

image

Later, we see Claudia humming (the same tune?!) as she draws from this model trying to achieve that same inner peace. Why do artists art? One reason is they’re trying to capture an ideal and/or something ephemeral, something that brings peace when you can put it down on paper. Writing can achieve that, too, as can making music, as can all the creative arts.

That’s definitely part of why I’m an artist. It’s a burning need to capture and become something through the creative act. An evolution of sorts.

You see why I’m trapped in this fandom? It touches on everything! I can never leave.

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ask-lafayette:

deadbyshawn:

deadbyshawn:

appreciate brown eyes more bc the people with brown eyes are grown up forcing to believe fuckin blue and green and grey are beautiful and either detest or get incredibly happy when someone compliments their eye color stop letting this happen

there are people with brown eyes reblogging this and theyre talking about still being sad with their eye color and this is exactly why we need hype about brown eyes

OKAY LET ME TALK ABOUT BROWN EYES. THEY ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FUCKING THING OKAY. FROM THE LIGHT BROWN ALL THE WAY TO THE BROWN THAT IS SO DARK IT LOOKS LIKE APART OF THE PUPIL. FUCKING GORGEOUS. YOU EVER SEE BROWN EYES IN THE LIGHT? IT SHOWS ALL OF THE BEAUTIFUL SHADES IN IT AND ITS FUCKKKKK ITS SO BEAUTIFUL. PLUS THE DARKER THE MORE SMOLDERY AND JESUS ITS GREAT. I JUST REALLY LOVE BROWN EYES IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT COME FUCK WITH ME.

Why does everyone consider you the more beautiful, I am as young and as pretty as you are!

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amadeo-child-of-the-renaissance:

“I admit there were some mean replies sitting on the tip of my tongue… but I promised Marius I would be good, so: do they?
I can’t recall any description of me that includes the words ‘more beautiful than’ (there was the sentence ‘pretty as a girl’ for which somebody got rightfully punched).
This question sounds like a petulant child’s, so I’m guessing Rose?
On another note: my beauty has to compensate for my character. Why do you think I’m literally getting away with murder? I’m most certainly glad my sadism doesn’t show. So maybe the ‘innocence’ so many seem to see in my face (let’s be honest: I had 5 centuries to perfect that look) is enhanced when they notice what horrors I’m capable of? They see me and they think of a young boy, because my age doesn’t show and then they witness me being cruel and the shock of the discovery makes them wonder how my features don’t reflect it because people still link ‘evil’ to ‘ugly’ (at least now they don’t burn you on the stake for looking like a hag), so the discrepancy enhances certain perceptions?
That was a little philosophical, so let’s get to the ‘being nice’ part. I can feel Marius looking at me… Have you considered that each of us might simply possess their own kind of beauty? Personal preference exists and sometimes has little to do with age or being pretty. However- I advice you to ditch the person that told you to your face they find another more pretty than you are, since it was either them telling you they’re not interested or them being plainly mean. Unhealthy for your self-esteem in both cases, I’d say. If you ended up with that conclusion by yourself you should ask yourself why it is so important to you what others think of you.”

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i-want-my-iwtv:

“How to describe what humans look like to us! … you can’t imagine what it’s like for us to look on living flesh. There are those billions of colors and tiny configurations of movement, yes, that make up a living creature on whom we concentrate.

But the radiance mingles totally with the carnal scent. Beautiful, that’s what any human being is to us, if we stop to consider it, even the old and the diseased, the downtrodden that one doesn’t really “see” in the street. They are all like that, like flowers ever in the process of opening, butterflies ever unfolding out of the cocoon.“ 

– The Vampire Lestat

I love this quote bc it means that just being alive makes us ALL beautiful.

The idea of the dark gift, of becoming a vampire, is that you transcend gender. You don’t have to worry about gender anymore. You sense the worth of every human being regardless of age or gender or how they look; for your vampire eyes they all have a tremendous beauty and a compelling depth […].

Anne Rice (via i-mindtraveller)
Source: i-mindtraveller

Yes, you are alive and that means you can die. And everything I see when I look at you is utterly insubstantial. It is a commingling of tiny movements and indefinable colors as if you haven’t a body at all, but are a collection of heat and light. You are light itself, and what am I now?

Lestat (via jardinsalvaje)

Source: jardinsalvaje