#RIP to those hannibal ballet costumes

[andrewlloydwebber]

Hanna Ulvan (u/s Christine) and John Martin Bengtsson (u/s Raoul), Stockholm revival. These two would later star as principal Christine and Phantom in the non replica production in Kristianstad, Sweden.

[emptymasks]

Hey! I'd love to hear more about your poto OC! Feel free to take me at @opeletmejustdraw. Very excited for Armand and Lizzy to be buddies

Thank you so much for asking about him!!!

Some facts about Armand Dubois:

24. Half-French, half-English. 5’7”. Can speak both French and English. Tired of getting called short.

Costume designer and sewist.

Sleep? Don’t know her.

Trans-man. Binders didn’t exist back then and he’s not going to bind unsafely (not that there was any safe way to bind) so he wears a stay (corset) under his shirt and has a small enough chest that it works in looking like a flat chest. No one knows Armand is trans, apart from Erik because he’s a creepy stalker man who caught Armand without his shirt on one day and saw the stay he wears underneath. (Armand was working late and alone in the workshop and thought it would be fine to take off the stay so he’d be a little more comfortable.)

Introverted and shy. Finds it hard to instigate conversations, but if someone else comes up and starts talking to him he’ll start to open up more, especially if they get him talking about his work.

Has severe eczema and normally wears long sleeves and high collars to cover up his skin so others can’t see how badly his skin is affected by it. Becomes instantly agitated and anxious if someone sees any of the affected skin and asks about it. He hates how his skin looks. (Because why not so full self-insert and give him my pain too right.)

Originally a ballet dancer. He quit after deciding to life his life as a man and started living under a different name. He still loved the ballet and opera, and always had a love for costumes. He’d been sewing since he was a child, making his own clothes for year, and had previously helped out a family member in their tailor’s shop. He worked in the costume department for a while before his drawings and designs got noticed and he was hired as a designer. Designing and making the ballet costumes, practically those for the men, is his favourite thing to do.

Too often he stays up late working on costumes after everyone has gone home because he wanted to add more detail or got another idea or just thinks he needs to work harder because he’s an insecure perfectionist, or sometimes the ghost’s antics cause costumes to get ripped or go missing and he has to last minute fix it or sew a new one. The managers sort of take advantage of this. Do not even talk to him about when Carlotta quit and he had to make all the costumes again so they’d fit Christine for the next evening because they didn’t want to postpone the show. At least he had the idea to only make the skirt for the ‘Think of Me’ costume and keep her existing bodice because skirts are the quickest thing to make. Perfectly fitted bodices? Not so much.

Doesn’t talk about his family. They wouldn’t be okay with him being trans and he hasn’t told them. He wasn’t very close to his family anyway. His parents died when he was young and he was raised by his uncle who was disinterested in him. His uncle wasn’t bothered about him moving to Paris on his own and Armand writes to him once a year at Christmas. Basically just to let him know he hasn’t died yet.

Sometimes gives the ballet dancers advice when Madam Giry isn’t looking. Everyone knows Armand used to be a dancer. Sometimes Armand gets a pang of jealously when watching the male dancers as he used to wish he’d be allowed to dance those parts. But really he gets along well with the dancers and in particular has a little friendship with the male principal dancer.

Very awkward with children. He tries his best but he has no idea what to do when there’s a child there just panics. He has to stop himself from saying his usual tired, self-deprecating humour.

Loves classical music, in particular Tchaikovsky’s scores for the Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty ballets. With phonographs only just being invented, the only way Armand can listen to the music is to play it himself. When he used to be a ballet dancer he convinced the conductor, who was one of the few good adult figures he had in his early life, to let him borrow the spare conductor’s copy of the score. He then spent every evening, after a full day of dance practice and shows, writing out his own copy by hand (of his favourite pieces since if he’d done the entire score it would have taken forever since there’s almost 300 pages) so he could play them on his piano.

Terrible at sticking up for himself, but if someone talks shit on anyone else than protective-ArmandTM is activated.

Might have a crush on the opera house’s resident ghost because he’s a lonely boy who’s too into gothic romance novels. (I can imagine that’s much to Liz’s confusion). Look, I didn’t say he was smart and made good choices, and it’s not as though he’s had any romantic relationships or any good familial relationships so who knows if he knows what a proper relationship looks like. He just maybe falls for any man who doesn’t treat him like dirt and has either a pretty face or a pretty voice. He’s a gay disaster. To be honest he most likely has a bit of a crush on Raoul.

He’s scared of rats. If he saw one scuttling around on the floor he would immediately, without thinking, pull his feet up onto his stool. He doesn’t know why he’s scared of them, just catching them moving out of the corner of his eye gets his heart racing. It’s fairly easy to make him jump. Erik’s probably going to give this poor boy a heart attack without even meaning to.

Wants boyfriend?? Normally he knows when he’s crushing on someone but somehow it doesn’t click when the male principal dancer at the ballet starts trying to make friends with him that he’s getting a crush but then oh no it hits him suddenly like a train. Now he blushes and gets flustered all the time. The dancer (who I’m basing of Sergei Polunin in the 25th anniversary because I freaked out when I recognised him because he’s one of my favourite dancers, I’d just bought the Royal Ballet’s Alice in Wonderland 2011 DVD with him as the male lead and loved him in it) knows Armand used to be a dancer, as they all do, but didn’t know Armand still practices to keep in shape and also because he loved dancing and is sad sometimes he gave it up. So what if he walks in the studio in the evening and Armand is practising and the dancer (who needs a name so I can stop calling him ‘principal male dancer’) compliments Armand and notices he’s out of practice and before Armand knows it the dancer is behind him and touching his hands and correcting his arm position and oh no.

Oh boy... by making Armand have a big crush on the principal male lead dancer I just realised that means Armand had a moment while designing his costume for Hannibal that he chose for to have no shirt. I mean, there's one other male dancer that is also shirtless, but still... either it was his own idea that he was convinced was purely because I made sense that character wouldn't wear a shirt, or it was someone’s suggestion (possibly to mess with him if they knew about the crush) and Armand was just dying inside as he was designing it and making sure the fit was right once it was finished. “Hey Armand, we’re going to paint his body to make him look more tan, do you want to see?” “NoOo I’M sUrE hE looKs fINe!”

I have even more (as you’ll know if you’re in the poto oc discord) but I don’t want to make this post too long... it’s probably already too long