#and then he does but armand doesnt move

[fascinationstreetmp3]

i can see 1980/1981 (around the time daniel turns 27/28) as being the catalyst for his relationship with armand starting to splinter, his resentment over armand withholding the gift coming to a head, the occasional running off and wandering starting before it starts ramping up in frequency. because it's when it really hits him that's where armand is frozen — 27 forever — and daniel's past that now. he's always been younger than armand both physically and mentally but now daniel's the one who's older physically. suddenly it's way more real that one day he'll be turning grey and armand won't and it fucks with him badly

[blueiight]

“Armand as theater director comes up w “My Baby Loves Windows” to break Claudia & drive her to madness/suicide.” Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on this!!

I thought it was the coven being POS and “hazing” her and Armand was too busy with Louis to even stop it. Plus, he probably didn’t give a shit. But the moment I read your post everything started to make sense!

You’re so incredibly smart and I am going to cry about all things Claudia again.

armand promises to spare louis , but does not promise him mercy, and the sparing of louis to armand necessitates the exclusion of both sparing and mercy toward claudia.

She doesn't need looking after. She won't be here very long. You made her at 14. A most turbulent chemistry. Her mind, as fierce as it is now, will not endure. It will break apart in time.

this line being followed by the sequence of events where we see the infant’s dress and claudia being put back on stage in the role she crossed oceans to escape to begin with…armand is with who he wants to be, and moving pawns too.

mblw fails to drive claudia into mad suicide, but drives her into a complex web of self-preservation meets self-doubt. she doesnt want to die, she just wants an out from this role. just watch how layered delainey’s acting + the expressions on her face, the crack in her voice when when claudia tries to tell the coven the truth of why this role reminds her of her biggest prison, only for her to be disciplined into embodying that role constantly by armand + the subsequent convo devolving into an interrogation on louis& armand’s love life. then her seeking out madeleine to make a woman’s dress to both defy that ruling (rightfully so) and find someone who’d simply hear her out: how madeleine offers her such plain and heartfelt reassurance, then how that fortifies claudia when armand drags her out the shop through the street. only does armand pinning her in the alley & telling her he knows about lestat is she stunned into silence…. and isnt it convenient that the coven is now mutinous! armand is powerless to stop them, even as they move to do what he wants.

also compare what armand told louis to what he later tells madeleine. armand even holds some admiration for madeleine’s ruthless survival instinct, to the point of finding her to be a more suitable vampire than claudia is, and in the show-trial, shes offered an ‘out’, but madeleine has chosen claudia to begin with and will not be swayed.

he treats claudia’s death as a such an assured inevitability, constantly spoken in terms of when and not an if, which is why i think ppl miss how cruel it is — to armand, claudia is just the mechanical flea whirling around in his circus-freakshow.

[distinguisheddetectivechild-blog]

I'm only halfway through TVL so maybe i'm jumping the gun here but, i couldnt help but notice that bookstat (as i have come to refer to him in my mind) seems to have a lot more love for humans in the book than he does on the show when we meet him.

To be fair, i havent met NOLA Lestat so maybe some things will have changed by then, but i guess what i'm trying to say is, even when he hunts humans so far in the book it doesnt really seem to involve contempt or disdain. He just seems to have accepted that he moved up on the food chain.

I guess what im curious about is whether this is a result of the different biased narratives as in : the way Lestat writes about himself is different from the way others (Louis or Claudia or even Armand) perceive his actions or in some cases choose to interpret them, or if the show really is taking the character on a different journey wrt his philosophy on the hunt etc especially since Lestat has been a vampire for a much longer period by the time he meets Louis in the show.

I guess i'm just confused about his perception of humanity in the show beyond its connection to his love of Art, and how that perception will be handled on the show once we start getting his own take.

[freakcliff]

if anyone even cares which I doubt you do Assad zaman's characters storyline in hotel portofino is that he met one of the main guys (hotel owners son) during wwi when the son was a soldier and he was an army medic and the son got hurt and he like nursed him back to health and then went to live with his family for like Proper British Education reasons idk not important what I'm saying is there's this situationship between this guy who has huge PTSD from being in wwi and his family doesn't get it and then his boy best friend who's the only person who gets it and get this they don't even kiss. I think the son guy is straight he has a whole plotline with some woman. it's horrible. anyways anish (assads character ) gets involved in the local antifacist movement cos it's Italy in the 1920s and he's a gay man of color and he meets and falls in love with this other guy in the movement who's name is Gianluca and then they move to another city and anish has complex feelings about violent revolt because this show is cowardly and he tries to stop their murder grenade against someone at the last minute and gets hurt and so they bring him back to hotel portofino town to hide him cos now hes like wanted and son guy helps him and i hope that son guy realizes that the worlds most beautiful man is in love with him and does something about it but he doesnt. so anish and his boyfriend get captured and executed in the sort of homophobic move I thought we left in 2016 but I guess this was all for the vampire Armand so whatever

[armandposting]

that moment for daniel is also why (other than the fact that armand doesnt see his abuse this way and isn't really ready/doesn't want someone to do this for him) Daniel revenge fantasies don't really work for me except as the occasional AU treat for me personally. when IM feeling fragile about armand and want to read about this it's cathartic. but if I'm thinking from armands perspective it makes no sense unless a lot of time and character development has elapsed. and something I struggle with when writing armand is that I don't know if he'll ever really want to see marius in a negative way and I kind of think that's fine? I think it would be healthy if he stopped seeing marius and also if lestat made an effort to not idolize him all the time but I don't think armand necessarily needs or would be inclined to see him negatively in order to move on (at least, not until/if the benji and sybelle stuff happens). and I certainly don't think he has any reason to trust Daniel to facilitate that for him. this is all kind of why I landed the way I did on "I am a man." That fic is about armand explaining his amadeo period to Daniel (a Daniel who is several years and a stable relationship removed from s2, work I wasn't interested in doing on page in that particular fic) but never in that fic is armand like "oh yeah I've decided fuck marius now." he's like no actually these were, to me, the best and safest years of my life, and I cannot throw away marius's position in my mind without throwing all of that away too.

i really do love exploring armand being angry at marius and I think he dessrves to be if he wants, but I think it needs to be pretty hard-earned and rest on an overall development of a sense of self strong enough to a) recognize in the first place that marius's conception of armand as his own person has always been shaky and b) recognize that he doesn't deserve that. but its also understandable to me that he could recognize these things and still be I'm a space where marius did ultimately give him the best years of his early life by comparison. and I don't think daniel is really the best outlet for that in any event when, if Daniel does tear marius down, it'll be because daniel just enjoys tearing garbage men and hypocrites down for his own sake.