painting of St. Sebastian by Guido Reni used for the cover of Violin.* And I know not every dude-w/-his-hands-tied-above-his-head counts as a St. Sebastian reference but still, it’s interesting to consider whether it might be.
“St Sebastian (feast day January 20th)has become something of a gay icon, as saints go. Partly, perhaps, because it’s an opportunity to depict a curly-haired semi-nude youth in light bondage. It has to be said this isn’t how Sebastian died, or how he was originally depicted. Sebastian miraculously survived being shot with arrows and was healed by Irene of Rome. He continued to denounce the emperor Diocletian, who had him clubbed to death in the year 288.
The tendency to depict Sebastian as a handsome youth pierced with arrows began in the 14th Century when Europe was being ravaged by the plague of the Black Death.
See how the two ‘Sebastians’ in the modern version above look entirely unperturbed by the arrows protruding from their torsos?There is a long tradition of Sebastian looking unaffected by his plight: corruption fails to touch him and that made him proof against plague. Sebastian occupied an important place in medieval religion as a protector against plague. He was seen as a saint whose prayers would work.”[X]
*The lighting on the cover may be distorting the colors and contrast of the original painting, and I’m not even sure that’s the original painting, got that from here [X]… but these changes seem obvious:
changed the trees in the BG,
blended the nips in a little more by changing their color,
rounded his face somewhat (tho, that O could be just making it look rounder)
moved the armpit arrow,
added a tummy arrow,
changed the angle of Left Ribcage Arrow a little bit,
lengthened his hair a little,
reduced the shadows in the Adonis muscle area, too sexy?
(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.
There is so much discussion of this packed into VC that there is no simple answer, this is up to every reader to decide for every character. It fluctuates over time, too.
I headcanon that currently none of the VC vampires we’re familiar with (not including PL) believe in a God/Gods, but I would say that they’re all open to proof, should there be a higher power(s). Most, if not all of them, have a healthy respect for voo doo, witchcraft, and other supernatural practices/beliefs.
Louis was Catholic as a mortal and he did struggle w/ whether, by nature of being a creature that exists by killing ppl (in direct violation of the commandment specifically about not killing ppl) he was therefore from Satan, and Lestat didn’t give him any answers on that:
“Because, you see, though Lestat had never said anything about devils or hell to me, I believed I was damned when I went over to him, just as Judas must have believed it when he put the noose around his neck.”
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
Armand doesn’t have answers for Louis either, except to say that if Louis is from Satan, then he’s from God by default, too. Armand says: “all Satan’s power comes from God and that Satan is simply God’s child, and that we are God’s children also.”). Armand goes on to give what became the monologue in movie!IWTV about God not existing:
” `Then God does not exist … you have no knowledge of His existence?’ “‘None,’ [Armand] said. ” `No knowledge!’ I said it again, unafraid of my simplicity, my miserable human pain. “ `None.’ ” `And no vampire here has discourse with God or with the devil!’ “ `No vampire that I’ve ever known,’ he said, musing, the fire dancing in his eyes. `And as far as I know today, after four hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world.’
IIRC, Louis doesn’t talk about religion after that exchange, and AR doesn’t have him talk about it in later books, so we really don’t know what he thinks except that he goes on killing ppl so he must have reconciled it within himself. He and Lestat both like to hang out in churches, tho, so there’s that!
Armand and Lestat go through different phases of believing in God, and neither Lestat nor the others are really 100% sure about what he experienced in MtD (aka “Lestat Goes to Heaven and Hell for an Intense Job Interview, All He Gets Is This Crappy T-Shirt Veronica’s Veil”). But he does try to follow Marius’ example in slaying the evildoer, since they need to kill anyway.
Louis is indiscriminate, it’s whoever crosses his path, he doesn’t want the responsibility of judging someone’s goodness/badness, it’s more of a Savage Garden approach.
Claudia went to Europe looking for other vampires, but she was probably also hoping they had some magic/treatment that could make her body into an adult’s, Lestat dreams about it in TVL:
I dreamed of Louis and Claudia and that we were together. Claudia had grown miraculously into a beautiful woman, and she said, laughing, “You see this is what I came to Europe to discover, how to do this!”
The Question of the Hour was “do peaches look like butts or do butts look like peaches” and i was making up all this shit about how The Lord™ ~obviously~ modeled the delicious fruit after his most delicious masterpiece (the ass) when my sister, without looking up from her phone, shut me up with “ACTUALLY god created the heavens and the earth before he created man… so, in conclusion, butts look like peaches” and i just. cannot believe my shitpost just got shot down with scripture
I read Memnoch the Devil as a kind of fanfic of the bible, in which Lestat takes a tour of heaven and hell, gets the behind-the-scenes story for God’s reasons for creating the world, and why he runs it the way he does (he’s a very hands-off kinda parent). The hell portion of the tour Lestat goes on, well, it’s pretty intense. I think we all preferred the heaven part! Lestat sneakily shoplifting parts of the experience bc of course he does; there was no ‘exit through the Gift Shop’ and he needed SOUVENIRS!
This was my face for alot of that book the first time through, IIRC:
You had the same expression, it seems, haha. I can understand your turmoil.
More spoilers ahead.
I think the first time through, I was right behind Lestat’s shoulder, hanging onto him piggy-back-style maybe, peeking over and hoping at every turn of the page NOT to see Nicki, or Claudia, worried that either of them -or both!- could be in hell and angrier -or in more pain- then they ever were in life ;A; That would have been so awful. Lestat might really have lost ALL of his marbles. It was bad enough when he was faced with an avalanche of his own victims!
“And who stands behind those doors,” said a sombre Helpful Ghost, her beautiful hair shimmering around her in ethereal whiteness, her soft hand on my face. “See there—” … “Your dead, my beloved, your dead, all those you’ve killed!”
“Not my dead,” I cried. I turned and ran… "HELP ME!“ I cried and cried. I never knew such release in screaming, such pure and abandoned cowardice, to shout to High Heaven in this Godforsaken place where cries were the very air itself, and no one heard, no one but the smiling Helpful Dead.
His dead were supposed to be Evildoers, tho, so they should be in hell, right? So he’s been doing a good job if they’re mostly there, rather than innocents in heaven ;]
He does call for Claudia and Nicolas, “Claudia, where are you? Where are you, the one I wronged! Claudia! Nicolas, help me!“ But apparently Memnoch has a way for the dead to achieve absolution, so hopefully, they did.
I’ve only reread that book a few times, and each time I do, obviously I know what’s going to happen, but hmmm… how different would things be if Lestat had gotten another chance at confronting those two? Whether it was real or all a big cosmic trick… would he apologize more? Probably yes. Would they have accepted anything he might say? Probably not.
AND THEN, back with the coven, and his fave murder brother:
It’s comforting that, as he tells the fam the whole story, Lestat himself isn’t 100% sure that he really went on that whole trip. When Armand asks permission to “check” via blood sample, Lestat flatly refuses: “No, all you’ll know is that I believe what I saw, that’s all.” Why is that so comforting? If it was all a lie, then God and the devil may not be real after all, and an eternity of suffering might not await every single one of the vampires that shuffle off their immortal coil! That’s good ;D
But really, if it was all real, who better for God and the devil to have a glorious tug-of-war over than our own Lestat “His Royal Highness Crybaby Awesomesauce Homicidal Hamburger-Brained Moron” de Lioncourt? Pffffft.
Le génie du mal [The genius of evil, aka; Lucifer]; Guillaume Geefs
“The statue was originally a commission for Geefs’ younger brother Joseph, who completed it in 1842 and installed it the following year. It generated controversy at once and was criticized for not representing a Christian ideal.The cathedral administration declared that “this devil is too sublime.” The local press intimated that the work was distracting the “pretty penitent girls” who should have been listening to the sermons.” [x]
[The original ‘sublime’ version shown below, and the ‘revised’ one in the photoset above]
I-want-my-IWTV 