#like abandoning armand for example

[desertfangs]

Since there's been a lot of discussion of Marius lately, I wanted to highlight one of my absolute favorite scenes with him. It's at the end of the Queen of the Damned, and Marius wants Lestat to actually obey the new rules the Coven has come up but also he knows Lestat probably won't:

"You will obey the rules, won't you?" he asked suddenly. Mixture of menace and sarcasm. And maybe a little affection, too.

"Of course!" Again I shrugged. "What are they, by the way? I've forgotten. Oh, we don't make any new vampires; we do not wander off without a trace; we cover up the kill."

"You are an imp, Lestat, you know it? A brat."

"Let me ask you a question," I said. I made my hand into a fist and touched him lightly on the arm. "That painting of yours, The Temptation of Amadeo, the one in the Talamasca crypt . . ."

"Yes?"

"Wouldn't you like to have it back?"

"Ye gods, no. It's a dreary thing, really. My black period, you might say. But I do wish they'd take it out of the damned cellar. You know, hang it in the front hall? Some decent place."

I laughed. Suddenly he became serious. Suspicious. "Lestat!" he said sharply.

"Yes, Marius."

"You leave the Talamasca alone!"

What I really love about this is it shows Marius' sense of humor. His reaction to the painting especially cracks me up. He's like "It's not really my best work... but I do wish they'd display it somewhere it would be seen!" I don't know, I find that super relatable.

But also it's funny because Marius often gets perceived as this humorless paternal figure but he's not really that stuffy and uptight. He's exasperated by Lestat, but honestly, who isn't?

[winepresswrath]

what louis did to lestat and what louis did to armand are connected and that's important to the story but also. it is simply not the same. nothing louis did excuses armand's behaviour, that's not how anything works, but he did not "cross a line" or "poke at armand," he weaponized armand's history of abuse to belittle and demean him. nothing armand said to louis came close- the equivalent would have been "oooh, i'm such a stupid bitch that my husband can beat me half to death and i'll keep crawling back for more even when it endangers my daughter!" it's retraumatizing and deeply destabilizing to hear that shit from your partner. and in response armand should have been like "well this man sucks when he's high and he's high all the time, so i'm bouncing" but if he'd done that we wouldn't have a story, would we?

edit: i've come back to give armand credit for "claudia didn't love you like we did/do. ps. u used her to distract from your own hurt feelings" that shit does hit in a similar way. however "the ways someone hurt you have left you contemptible and weak. they scrawled 'dirty and annoying' all over your soul in red ink and it's never coming off" is just outstanding work. timeless

[geekgirles]

"The Flower that Blooms in Adveristy Is the Most Rare and Beautiful of Them All": A Brief Amalia Analysis

I've been meaning to talk about this scene since the episode premiered, as I find it perfectly encapsulates Amalia's character and her development.

On the one hand, we have the fact that she's long outgrown the pampered, sheltered princess archetype she was introduced as and become far more mature and multi-faceted.

Over the course of the show, we've seen how Amalia evolved from a girl who ran away from her responsibilities because she felt stifled in her own home after her mother's passing, to a girl whose reason to break the rules was the sake of her kingdom, determined to save it from Nox. To the point she eventually grew into the Sadida Queen mantle and was ready to do whatever it took to ensure her kingdom's safety and well-being, from accepting to marry a stranger, to finally stepping up to the challenge and ascending to the throne to guide her troops to victory despite having just lost her brother and such heavy burden thrusted upon her.

All the while dealing with her own trauma, heartbreak and desires as she watched her father wither away, her best friend since childhood was far away living her own life, Armand and Aurora tried to pressure her into marrying, she was manipulated by Oropo into almost abandoning Yugo, and she likewise suffered because she couldn't be with the man she loved despite both of them wanting nothing more.

And on the other hand, that scene also shows how, while not necessarily the most powerful member of the Brotherhood of the Tofu, Amalia's versatility is second only to Yugo and maybe Adamaï's, as well as it once again shows how despite her powers' development not being as flashy as Yugo's, it's still notable and impressive.

In a way, you could say Amalia's character and power development are both subtle, yet a constant of the show.

Amalia's gone from summoning vines and using her doll to being able to overpower a Xelor demigod without help, use her powers to light up dark spaces (seriously, girlie can create literal light out of plants, how?!?!?), growing cotton plants from stone to keep her and her friends in touch, and season 4 has her become the team's weapons provider against the Nécromes; an ability that, as far as I'm concerned, only King Oakheart was able to do back in season 1 when he created a new bow for Evangelyne.

And it that weren't enough to prove how layered and multi-talented she is, there's her fight against the Sadida Nécrome itself.

Up until that point, except for a few punches here and there, Amalia's been mostly a long-ranged combatant, much like Eva, relying on her plants to fight. However, her summoning that wooden staff and using it to fight against the Nécrome shows that she's actually quite adept at hand-to-hand combat, too, especially when she moves with such grace and her strikes hold that much precision. Which at the same time means that not only Armand received training from the best masters around, so did Amalia.

This all comes to show Amalia is an example of the hardships she's endured slowly molding her into the person she was always meant to be, into the queen she was always meant to be. Grougal already said back in season 1 she had the heart of a Sadida Queen, her adventures were always meant to get her to that point.

Much like his adventures eventually turned Yugo both into the king his people longed for, and the one Amalia needed by her side. Everything they have been through together have led them to this moment, to the chance to stand together as king and queen, as husband and wife.

To stand together as one.

This is what Amalia had been preparing for her entire life. And I, for one, am proud to say, "All hail Queen Amalia."

[danlous]

I've probably said this before but when considering the unreliable narration in iwtv i think what we don't see is much more important than what we see. Like i think people have been since the beginning focusing too much on what is a 'fake' memory or narrative or lie. Especially Lestat fans have a tendency to do that when trying to explain away things he does saying that isn't 'real Lestat'. But there is actually very little in these first two seasons that contradicts Lestat's established characterization; what we lack is Lestat's point of view and more information. It's not about the existence of all the negative things and memories, but the absence of positive ones. We know there were good things in Louis and Claudia's relationship with Lestat but we see very little of it. There is nothing in Lestat's abusive and cruel treatment of them that contradicts that he loved them and that good things existed too. Even if he had been a hundred times more abusive it wouldn't have dimmed the reality of his love in the slightest. But that love, especially the love he has for Cladia, isn't necessarily clear for viewers or characters other than Lestat in the show because it's not shown.

When we get Lestat's version of the story in s3 it's going to be different than Louis' or Claudia's or Armand's version - but i think probably less so than most people assume. In 2.07 we already see that Lestat's version of the revisited scenes is more like an extended version and doesn't really even contradict Louis' and Claudia's story. In Lestat's version of Claudia's night of turning Louis begged him more desperately and he warned Louis more strongly, but it's actually very similar - we just didn't see everything they said. In ep5 flashback he's vague and doesn't tell everything he did (if we only got Lestat's version you'd have an impression that the assault was less violent than it was) but doesn't deny anything either and openly admits that he 'broke' Louis to hurt him. The additional scene is just what Claudia didn't see because she wasn't in the same room and it doesn't change anything, it just tells us more about what Lestat was feeling. In the same way i think Lestat's narration later is going to give his perspective and clarify his motivations and emotions, but it's not going to erase anything we've seen before. You can already guess that Lestat felt extremely lonely and abandoned and paranoid, and that he was worried and protective of Louis and Claudia and tried to control his fears and insecurities by controlling his fledglings. We'll see much more of him being vulnerable and loving and learn a lot about his past and trauma. But none of that means that everything we've seen didn't happen, and likely Lestat isn't going to claim it didn't happen either. And it most certainly doesn't excuse anything.

For example in 1.06 when Lestat forced Claudia to return, in addition to dragging her home so that Louis would stay with him i think he was also genuinely trying to protect her because he knew that other vampires in Europe would likely kill her quickly if and when she found them. But that doesn't make the way he treated her in that scene any less horrendous and abusive. The depiction of Lestat and Claudia's relationship in the show has actually been in line with their book relationship, where in Interview Lestat is often cruel to her, threatens to kill her, and indicates that he only made her to keep Louis with him. We only learn later from Lestat's own narration that he actually always loved her. The scene at the end of Interview where he's crying while clutching Claudia's dress after her death is arguably the first time we see proof of him loving her. I think it's pretty likely they're going to include that in the show, with Claudia wearing a similar yellow dress and Santiago pointedly snatching it from her ashes, and that is going to be a reveal to viewers that Lestat's feelings for Claudia were much more complex than shown so far.

I think Lestat's love for Claudia, which i'd argue is a core part of his character in the same way his love for Louis is, is the most significant part of the story that has been erased, and that erasure makes sense since Armand's narrative relies on the presumption that Lestat hated Claudia and wanted to kill her. But it's Lestat's own doing that narrative is so believable that even Louis believes his husband wanted their daughter dead. This is a tragedy that Lestat created himself. The greatest horror of the story is the continuous coexistence of deepest love and deepest cruelty. The most upsetting thing isn't that Lestat was a victim of some false narrative and didn't actually do the things he was shown to do, or that he didn't really love Louis and Claudia, but that he loved them, both of them, and still did those things

[cuntylestat]

i just personally did not understand what Armand’s motivations were the whole time. Why did he let Louis leave so easily without using his powers, if the whole point is that he does monstrous things just to not be lonely? Did he ever love Louis or was he just trying to spite Lestat like Louis was? If the plan was to kill Louis why not just, like, do it afterwards anyway? He’s so much more powerful. Maybe these all have obvious answers and it’s just me

i don't have all the answers either, just my interpretations with what we know. i also think that we don't need to have all the answers yet and that some of this may be explored in s3.

i think by the time louis shoved armand into the wall he had already tried every desperate excuse he could think of and had to realize it was over, there was no going back. and i don't think armand is as much about blunt force as lestat is when he feels abandoned. his monstrosity lies more in his manipulations, his lies, than using his powers to physically control louis. even in san francisco, he punished louis by letting him suffer his injuries, by hurting daniel and threatening him with lestat, not by physically attacking or restraining louis himself. maybe, to some extent, he also wants the illusion that he's chosen. for example, when louis picks armand in front of lestat, he probably knows it's not really about him and louis really wanting him, but he's desperate enough to be loved that he can at least pretend. that's what he seems to come to with louis all the time; let's just pile all the hurt and the lies under the carpet, i'll do whatever i need to in order for you to be happy so you will stay with me.

i do think armand loved louis, just like he also loved lestat, just like louis and lestat loved each other. and yet they all hurt each other in different ways, it's just how these vampires work. we don't know yet if armand was actually planning to kill louis or if he was also gonna swoop in and save louis at some point - the trial works out differently in the book, so who knows, they may pick up on this later. i think, either way, once louis is still alive, armand sees a chance for them to maybe still work it out; maybe he knows his future with the coven is not sustainable after the trial and he doesn't want to be alone, or he really does regret his role in the trial and wants to be with louis after all. there are many options and maybe we'll get his story at some point

[nalyra-dreaming]

Wow. I totally forgot about Louis the Pimp that I was like what is this out of character thing Louis is doing at the bench? Where is this dominant energy coming from? My mouth was open the entire time. (Not gonna lie - found it kinda sexy) He was moping around this season and his art hobby wasn't going well. He put himself under Claudia's care then Armand in a way. Now it's like he found a purpose. And what a shitty situation he feels he has to put himself in. He found Armand's weakness and exploited it. He couldn't do that with Lestat in the same way, maybe indirectly. He doesn't do it on purpose with Claudia with her journals but he still does. Man has a talent.

Did you notice how she gave her diaries willingly to Santiago? Ugh. Now Santiago is gonna use them... Ugh. So much happened this episode.

So... for me it seems as if Louis is reverting into the "known persona of Louis pre Lestat" - which was business man Louis... Louis the pimp.

He locked a part of himself up - let Lestat "go"... and it hardened him.

And yes, as Jacob said in the Episode Insider Louis himself has quite a few toxic traits as well. And he uses them, and not only in this.

I disagree that he didn't do it with Lestat - he very much did. He withheld affection, and withheld telling Lestat that he loved him, for example. He exploited Lestat's fear of abandonment, and he knows it, which was that comment in episode 2x03 was about after all.

And Claudia... gave ONE diary to Santiago. She did not give him the black ones. And for good reason, too.

Because those will be used against her in the trial, I bet.

[loustat-0]

I agree with most of your perspective on things , your blog sounds fun . Okay my question is I'm interested to know your thoughts on why are Louis and Armand still together in 2023 ?

Okay this is gonna be a long theory so please bear with me . ☺️ This might contain some spoilers 🔴

My honest opinion is that , they both have been rejected by Lestat again . Not just in the past but also in the 70s or 2000 too .

I suspect that Louis and Armand both know Lestat survived the burning of the theater , but bc of Louis's hatred of Lestat about what happened to Claudia he's still reluctant to go to new Orleans to see him , but young Daniel might challenge his memories and deeper feelings again and that's when Louis decides to go to see Lestat again . To visit almost ruined Lestat .

Lestat in that state probably can't really for sure tell what's real what's not he might think he's seeing Louis's hallucination or that Armand who was being around was making him think it's Louis so he doesn't believe him , Lestat might even think it's Armand projecting himself to be like Louis so he can make Lestat want him again . 😬 And Lestat believing that it's not really Louis or it's his imagination of Louis will reject Louis .

Lestat probably tells Louis something about how Armand and Santiago made him do all of that stuff in the trial . And then Louis feeling rejected by Lestat and suspicious of his beliefs about Armand's story goes back to Armand , but finds him and Daniel being together and Armand keeping him alive makes him assume some stuff about them . And Louis is probably very angry but also cold and he wants to either hurt himself or Daniel . And then Armand steps in and do something to Louis's and Daniel's memories , making Daniel believe he was with someone else giving hims some false memories , and making Louis thinks they never separated .

But he probably didn't completely erase everything he probably replaced and mislead them too . For example make Louis still hold grudges against Lestat but leaving the memory of Lestat rejecting him there leading to Louis's sad and also sadistic reaction to remembering all thoes loving words about Lestat still waiting for him longing for him while he actually found him it probably wasn't so , it's also probably because he feels Lestat leaves and abandoned everyone and everything because he believes Lestat's rejection as him abandoning Louis . Or making Daniel think he never asked for Armand's blood and he doesn't remember their relationship . Or making Louis believe that although there was a relationship between Daniel and himself he still chose Louis .

[savagewildnerness]

Very split opinion at the moment! Please note I am *only* talking about the meeting at the end of IWTV here. I am not taking about every detail of it (for example I can’t see a world in which Lestat was capable of making fledglings at this time! But that was surely only an assumption on Louis’ part anyway! Lestat himself did say young vampires would sometimes seek him out! And Louis is always a massive assumer, for example assuming he knows other’s thoughts & motivations when they haven’t told him what they’re actually thinking or feeling & so Louis - therefore you don’t *know*!!)

I mean Armand (as he would!) is literally giving Lestat visions at this time. I’m just particularly curious about this moment as most moments in the books it’s pretty clear the general vibe of how things truly were.

However I’d say this visit from Louis to Lestat is not clear if it happened at all, or, if it happened how similar it was to how Louis describes it. And certainly (as this poll attests to!) not all readers agree on the matter! Which makes me wonder what Rolin & everyone think about the truth of it!!?! Which makes me wonder what will be on TV!!?! ?! What do the writers think about this? What do Sam & Jacob think?!

Either way, I don’t fully understand why *this* is the moment Lestat is bothered about in the future! And to be noted he *isn’t* bothered about specifically & overtly discrediting it in the first book he writes.

Louis often paints Lestat as an awful caricature of himself in IWTV for literally hundreds of pages, not seeing or at least not conveying if he felt something of them any of the true thoughts or feelings in Lestat’s mind.

Yet it’s this moment where Louis actually humanises Lestat, yet also makes him pitiable & vulnerable Lestat takes objection to? What is it Lestat hates so? It can’t be his vulnerability as he describes himself this exact same vulnerable way in this time with Armand EXCEPT that in Lestat’s version he never begs Armand. In Lestat’s version he’d never beg anyone for any thing.

But we know from his self-descriptions that Lestat does have a deep desperation within him. He often feels utterly lost. He often feels utterly alone. He (with good reason) fears abandonment & feels abandoned & indeed he often is abandoned or at least emotionally abandoned. He describes this terrifying need & loneliness within himself even as a mortal child. So it’s NO stretch at all to imagine Lestat begging Louis as Louis describes it.

I personally don’t think the meeting having happened takes anything away from the later Loustat reunion. It only adds poignancy to me. I think it’s much stranger if Louis does indeed go to New Orleans but doesn’t see Lestat & I’d have to ask how on Earth that could happen!?!

And definitely the most strange scenario would be how Lestat describes it - that Louis sees him through a window & that’s all, but Armand visits him over & over such that he’s unclear how often it was…!!?!?!?! That’s way odder & also would be way colder of Louis in my opinion!!?!

The only way I can wrangle Louis being in New Orleans but never seeing Lestat at all in my mind is by something like Armand using his powers to not let Louis find Lestat. Which could absolutely be the case on TV. But I feel it’d be more explicit were that the case in the books…??? At least it would be alluded to some way, when it isn’t.

A final note: On Louis saying he’s never seen Lestat weep. If Lestat isn’t weeping over some thing every 5 minutes (as Lestat uses supposedly to discredit Louis), what on Earth can we believe of Lestat’s words! No! I believe Lestat *is* emotional, is always weeping (metaphorically sometimes, but often also literally!) I think the TOTBT argument is just a petty little spat in which Louis is trying to stop Lestat from doing something really stupid rather than being about them delving into the Absolute Truth of this past moment & I believe that encounter happened & I believe Lestat doesn’t like it being told because it makes him so pitiable AND I believe he doesn’t like it being told because it’s totally triggering that Louis, his love, abandoned him in this moment of Lestat’s desperation, just like everyone else in his life. In Lestat’s mind, Louis is a perfect: beautiful version of himself. For all their struggles, Louis is a Romanticised ideal Lestat could at any time return home to (Lestat Romanticised Nicki in a similar way once upon a time. But Louis is that times a million - Lestat’s Romantic Totem to All Eternity!)

If Louis visited a broken Lestat as he describes in IWTV & abandoned him, it shatters the Romantic ideal of Louis, Lestat needs. Usually if there’s drama, Lestat can (with full reason 😂) blame himself 😂🤣😅🤣… or he can blame someone else (not that he’s one for blaming others for any thing), but if Louis just left Lestat here, it’s Louis abandoning Lestat’s gaping, dying heart & that pain is surely too much for Lestat?

As I see it, there’s way more reason for Lestat to block the idea this ever happened from his mind (and Lestat wasn’t in his right mind for certain at that time on top of this! So it’s easy to imagine his memory being not entirely accurate too) than there is for Louis to have invented the literal resolution of his book…?? And to have somehow invented this resolution that never happened while simultaneously actually describing Lestat completely accurately according to how Lestat describes he was in this time too!!?! If it never happened, how does Louis know!?! He wouldn’t imagine Lestat this way from how he’s described him in the rest of his recollection..!

[jaggedjot]

if they dropped ep 1&2 on may 12, would you be happy or annoyed?

Personally, I would find this not only disappointing but would see this as something that would likely undermine the show. As I have mentioned previously, I think that the story's many layers means that it is often best appreciated in as drawn out a sitting as possible. Watching the show is also an extremely emotionally intense experience, which does not lend itself to marathoning. Most importantly to me though, I think Interview with the Vampire is a series that is almost uniquely suited to an episodic format.

Each episode of season one was structured around a single interview session, with a significant break occurring before the next one took place. These periods of almost entirely unaccounted for time allowed the characters to rest, consider what was discussed, assess their own performance, and prepare for upcoming revelations and questions. The subsequent adjustments are more overtly done by Louis, but Daniel also has differs in his approach and attitude in each session. Structuring the format of the show then to parallel the events taking place simulates that experience for the audience. This is particularly true for people who are more than casual viewers, with the greater time lapse between episodes compared to the interview sessions (aka, a week compared to several hours) being balanced by fans' ability to speculate with others in the meantime, rewatch scenes, research references, etc. While I expect the format to develop in season two (for example, we know that there are going to be scenes of Armand and Louis between interview sessions), I don't believe it will be abandoned entirely.

[lehdenlaulu]

lestat and armand for the ship meme if you havent gotten em already because OBVIOUSLY!

Yasssss. I counted on you. 😆

Okay, these might be a little obvious, but here goes:

who’s the cuddler: 

I feel like both of them are. And while Louis and Daniel for example accept their clinginess without complaint, I feel like with each other – once they got over themselves – it would be like... limbs tangled, fingers entwined or threaded into hair, faces nuzzled into crooks of necks, as close as physically possible. A whole-ass vampire Gordian knot. You know?

who makes the bed:

Armand. Lestat, bless his black little heart, is 100% a slob.

who wakes up first:

Hmm. Armand. He probably stays snuggled into Lestat for a good while, though.

who has the weird taste in music:

C'mon, anything weird is Armand's domain. Lestat loves music and gamely tries to be as adventurous as possible, but Armand still manages to hyperfixate on some obscure Peruvian doom metal that is played almost entirely on pan flutes or something and Lestat has to admit defeat.

who is more protective:

ARMAND. I mean, it's not that Lestat doesn't have sometimes even somewhat patronizingly protective feelings towards Armand, but... Canonically, not only is he Lestat's own personal guardian devil (come on, he even met Daniel because he trespassed on Lestat's resting place), he'll happily tear the head off anyone who even looks at any of his loved ones wrong, and probably use their skulls as decoration as well. Maybe eat their soul for good measure, you never know with him.

who sings in the shower:

Lestat. Obviously.

who cries during movies:

Lestat is a world-famous champion weeper, but I bet there's something completely unexpected that will get Armand misty-eyed. Or not so unexpected. Maybe he has cried once or twice while watching Blade Runner. Maybe he can relate.

who spends the most while out shopping:

Hmm. I feel like Lestat, an extravagant extrovert, enjoys the act of shopping more, but Armand is just as good if not better at burning money on things (and then abandoning them or forgetting they exist).

who kisses more roughly:

Huh. I don't think there's a clear-cut answer to this one. Their canonical kisses are all, IIRC, rather tender, sweet, or casual. I think Armand might get a bit more bitey, but not exactly rough, not with Lestat. 🤔

who is more dominate:

Again, there's no simple answer because their power dynamic is overall particularly complicated, nor do I think you can really separate the (semi-)sexual power dynamics from their overall power dynamics.

I mean, Armand is canonically a switch, and I always got the vibe from Lestat that he's probably too when it comes down to it. And then there's that whole aspect of odd mutual... deference, I could say, that has elements of worship. And I mean... Lestat looks a lot like Marius, which I'm sure initially absolutely messed with Armand's head, especially in those circumstances, so there's that. And Lestat on the other hand will probably always be a little bit in awe of Armand, in all meanings of the word. So I'll just say that it would probably take some time for them to find a balance that works for both of them.

my rating of the ship from 1-10: 

Honestly, can I even give them anything but 10? I don't know if they were originally my 'favourite ship', as I think my teenage self sort of went "right, these guys don't operate by any traditional human relationship conventions so 'shipping' something would be a bit silly" (okay I did have a soft spot for Marius and Pandora, but I digress). But I'm sure I always found them fascinating. Because... come on. All hyperbole aside, who is doing it like them?? Two centuries plus of drama, devotion, and... defenestrations? I could say so much more and pull so many quotes, but let's just leave it with: "Does anyone else know the size of your soul?"

[cosmicjoke]

Oh, Armand is a crazy bastard, lol.  That scene when he rips that guy’s scalp off, holllly, haha.  Don’t mess with this dude.

Okay, but, just the first chapter in to “The Vampire Armand”, but already, I’m really loving it, and particularly I find the stark difference between Armand and Lestat super fascinating.  These two are like polar opposites to one another, which I already knew, but seeing the tonal difference in their respective narratives drives it home all the more.

Lestat very much comes across as an at times overactive child, lol.  He’s very energetic and hyper and make big, grand and emotional declarations.  And Armand is so different.  There’s a very somber, reserved and isolated feel to his narrative thus far, and also what strikes me is how almost fragmented and wandering his thoughts are.  He jumps from thought to thought and feeling to feeling from one instant to the next.  With Armand, there’s very much a sense of a lack of foundation in who he is, or what he’s supposed to be, and your heart has to break for him on that count alone. 

Like this part, when he’s talking to David (who, I’m starting to see why people find this dude so annoying, like, bro, leave Armand alone!)

Armand is annoyed at David’s intrusion, and he goes on a bit of a tangent about him

“A handsome gent,” I went on, “the color of caramel, moving with such catlike ease and gilded glances that he makes me think of all things once delectable, and now a potpourri of scent: cinnamon, clove, mild peppers and other spices golden, brown or red, whose fragrances can spike my brain and plunge me into erotic yearnings that live now, more than ever, to play themselves out.  His skin must smell like cashew nuts and thick almond creams.  It does.”

He laughed.  “I get your point.”

I had shocked myself.  I was wretched for a moment.  “I’m not sure I get myself,” I said apologetically.”

Like, damn, poor Armand.  He’s an emotional mess, you can tell.  It feels like he just sort of loses control of his emotions at times, and then he’s ashamed of himself for it. 

His whole interaction with Marius is also a killer in terms of making you feel for Armand.  When he says to him, after Marius asks him to come stay with him in his house

“Master, I love you, but now I must be alone,” I said.  “You don’t need me now, do you, Sir?  How can you?  You never really did.”  Instantly I regretted it.  The words, not the tone, were impudent.  And our minds being so divided by intimate blood, I was afraid he’s misunderstand.”

I mean, this kind of encapsulates the whole tragedy between Armand and Marius, and Armand’s entire sense of abandonment too.  He doesn’t mean it as an accusation against Marius.  He just means it as a statement of fact.  He thinks Marius never needed him.  He probably feels that way about everyone he’s ever loved.  Lestat of course being the prime example.  And it’s really fascinating too, because as different as Lestat and Armand are, they both suffer from the same fear.  This idea in their heads that they aren’t lovable, that they aren’t worthy of love, that others will always leave them, that those they love will never return that love.  They come at the insecurity in two totally different ways.  Lestat tries to hold on to what love he finds harder, he tries to make it work, sometimes to force it, and Armand is much more resigning, almost more wilting in the face of it.  That’s the difference in their personalities.  Lestat is someone who refuses to yield or accept defeat.  Armand is someone who accepts and takes it.  But there’s this deep similarity between them too, beneath their personalities.  The same fears and insecurities and self-loathing drives them, I think, which also in a way explains why the two of them are always so at odds with each other, why they can’t ever really, truly be together.  For as different as they are, they’re also very strangely similar.  They maybe see too much of themselves in each other, and it scares them. 

This exchange between Armand and David also speaks volumes about Armand’s mindset regarding Lestat, and how it plays on his own insecurities.  He says

“Oh, I see, so that excuses it, that you followed me here?”

“I didn’t follow you, Armand,” he said.  “I live here.”

“Ah, I’m sorry then,” I admitted.  “I hadn’t known.  I suppose I’m glad of it.  You guard him.  He’s never alone.”  I meant Lestat of course.

From Armand’s perspective, Lestat is always surrounded by people (and, well, yeah, Lestat is.  That light in him which Nicki talked about once, that draws people to him.).  But you can see how it hurts Armand, because for him it must seem the opposite, that there’s a darkness in him which repels.  Just being near Lestat, seeing the way people are drawn to him, has to work at his insecurities in the worst way.  Again, it sheds light then on why he and Lestat are so often at odds.  It doesn’t help when David says to him

“Everyone’s afraid of you,”

But then there’s the contradiction to that, the way people lust after him, and this is why people are complaining too about Armand’s casting in the show, because it’s basically vital to the character that he have the appearance of a boy.  His entire psychology is wrapped up in the fact that he was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, that he was turned when he was only 17 and still had the appearance of a child.

This exchange between him and David

“You make me hungry,” I whispered.  “Not for you but for one who is doomed and yet alive.  I want to hunt.  Stop it.  Why do you touch me?  Why be so gentle?”

“Everyone wants you,” he said.

“Oh, I know.  Everyone would ravage a guilty cunning child!  Everyone would have a laughing boy who knows his way around the block.  Kids make better food than women, and girls are all too much like women, but young boys?  They’re not like men, are they?”

“Don’t mock me.  I meant I wanted only to touch you, to feel how soft you are, how eternally young.”

“Oh, that’s me, eternally young,” I said.  “You speak nonsense words for one so pretty yourself.”

Again, I find this really revealing, also about Armand’s relationship with Lestat in particular.  Everyone wants Armand, David tells him, and Armand is aware it’s largely because of the allure of his young, boyish appearance.  There’s an inherent perversion, then, in most people’s attraction to Armand.  They want him because he’s like a child.  That in itself is such a major tragedy.  There’s exceptions of course.  Like Daniel and Louis, both of whom are lovers of Armand’s, and who’s love is genuine.  But then there’s Lestat, who’s the only one who’s never lusted after Armand that way, and that kind of tells you a lot about who Lestat is too.  He loves Armand, but he doesn’t want him in the same way everyone else seems to.  He doesn’t lust after him.  You can see in its own way why this would serve to mess with Armand’s head.  He’s used to people going after him, to wanting him on account of his boyish beauty.  And then comes along Lestat, who looks very much like Marius, who Armand himself falls in love with, and yet Lestat shows no interest or desire to be with him in that way.  He doesn’t want to go after him, he doesn’t want to make him his.  It’s almost like Lestat is the first person Armand’s ever loved who didn’t actually treat him like meat, and that’s heartbreaking that it took 300 years of life before Armand came across someone who actually treated him like a real person, but also makes the dynamic and relationship between him and Lestat very special. As at each others throats as they are, as antagonistic as their exchanges often are, I feel like there’s a purity to their love that simply doesn’t really exist for Armand anywhere else. 

This part too, tells you plenty about the damage wrought in Armand by the trauma’s he’s experienced, another exchange with David, and Armand thinks

“I wondered idly and viciously if I could attack him, take him, bring him down under my greater craft and cunning and taste his blood without his consent.”

“I’m much too far along the road for that,” he said, “and why would you chance such a thing?”

“What self-possession.  The older man in him did indeed command the sturdier younger flesh, the wise mortal with an iron authority over all things eternal and supernaturally powerful.  What a blend of energies!  Nice to drink his blood, to take him against his will.  There is no such fun on Earth like the raping of an equal.

“I don’t know,” I said, ashamed.  Rape is unmanly.  “I don’t know why I insult you...”

It gives some pretty powerful insight into why Armand attacked Lestat the way he did, back when they first met.  Lestat was already pretty much equal to Armand in strength then, and Armand, because of the horrible things he’s gone through in his life, displays those kinds of symptoms of trauma common to victims of sexual abuse, thinking about sex and violence as almost one in the same.  Having invasive thoughts circling around those two things, etc...  He’s been taught the two go hand in hand, and then being a vampire sort of affirms that perception, a vampire’s very nature being of a violent and sexual nature.  Armand, while logically, knowing rape is bad and ugly and something one should be ashamed of, has still also had the concept of it almost normalized to him. 

[thedamnedhq]

CHARACTER NAME: lestat de lioncourt CHARACTER FACECLAIM: sam reid CHARACTER AGE/DOB (if relevant/they're not old af): november 7th, 1760. changed in 1790 at almost 29 years old. 263 years old now technically. CHARACTER PRONOUNS/GENDER IDENTITY/SEXUALITY ETC: he/they, genderfluid, bisexual/biromantic/polyam CHARACTER FANDOM (if relevant): the vampire chronicles OC OR CANON: canon CHARACTER TYPE (for example: vampire, witch, human, etc): vampire ARE THEY ASSOCIATED WITH ANY GROUPS/COVENS/ETC: it's been a long time really since lestat has been to overly associated with anyone. isolation has been his Thing for,,, a while. but now though, he's curious about the people hes held close over the years. he wants to reconnect. hes loyal to his band, of course, and there's no denying that louis will always, really, be his home. WHERE ARE THEY PRIMARILY LOCATED NOW: mostly in london, england! it's where he discovered the band, its a place he'd never been to before and came to instantly fall in love with. he has an insanely lavish penthouse apartment in london, high above it all.

IMPORTANT CHARACTER INFORMATION TO NOTE AND SHARE (this could be important headcanons for initial plotting, bios etc, supporting docs):

being the youngest in his family, born at the time he was, lestat de lioncourt had very little guidance in life. there would be no inheritance, no lands or fortunes for the youngest child. and so, he set about trying to find his own path. from early education with a monastery, to attempting to run off with a group of travelling actors, most of lestat's pursuits, explorations into freedom, at stunted by his father and brothers who continuously crush his dreams and pull him back home. it isn't, in fact, until an event of killing wolves to protect his village, that lestat meets someone who will help change his like. nicolas de lenfent. the two become quickly enamored with one another and, with lestat's mother's permission, the two run away to paris together.

here, lestat comes to work at a theatre, eventually becoming adored by many for his artistic talents and ways of charming the audience members. however, it is during these performances that lestat catches the eye of someone else-- someone who changes his life in a much different way to nicolas.

magnus, an ancient vampire, kidnaps lestat and he is held for a long while. all around him, dead bodies of boys that looks exactly like him. the same hair, the same eyes. only of course, these lack all life. and in truth, lestat fears he will eventually become one of them. but when instead, he is given the dark gift and transformed into a vampire, lestat is perhaps only more lost and confused. even more so when his maker, soon after changing him, abandons him, throwing himself into the fire and committing suicide-- barely a few words of his vampiric nature exchanged, and a mere gesture toward a hoard of money and gold and such, all given to lestat, magnus' sole fledgling.

lestat's time adjusting to immortality, to his new taste for blood is… well. precisely that. one hell of an adjustment. and at first, admittedly, lestat isolates himself from the likes of nicki. he keeps close by, buying the theatre out for example, but in general, keeps his distance. until that is, when his mother comes to paris to seek him out.

lestat's time in paris is highlighted with a mixture of chaos and pain. from giving his mother and nicki the dark gifts, to colliding with the paris coven and armand, things are never truly easy and eventually, after much pain, lestat parts and buries himself deep in the ground as a way to cope with the things he had been through in his time since becoming a vampire.

when he is awakened by the vampire marius, things grow complicated once again. from consuming marius' blood, to learning the truth of the vampiric origins-- to meeting Those Who Must Be Kept, the rulers of the vampiric world and being offered to drink the queen akasha's blood… things are, as always for lestat, rather messy and chaotic. and when he is nearly killed by akasha's husband in a jealous rage, marius instructs lestat to leave.

and this… this is when lestat travels to america. this, is when he meets louis de pointe du lac. his saint louis, his destiny. their story is one of love and joy, of tragedy and blood. lestat loves louis with all his heart, but as always, lestat is terrified at the idea of being left and abandoned. it makes him intense, volatile. his relationship with louis, and then later, with the addition of claudia, is never smooth. and in fact, it wraps up with lestat being assumed dead, killed by the pair.

it isn't until years later, in paris again, that the truth comes out. lestat had survived. only… to return and be a part of the reason claudia is killed and louis is trapped… it sends lestat spiralling. and when he leaves paris again, he spends a long, long time grieving. eaten alive by his guilt and heart break.

it isn't until 2022 in fact, that he perhaps feels life flicker inside of him again…

after reuniting with louis, after spending a good couple of months with one another-- lost in one another, reclaiming stolen time-- the two agree to part ways for a bit. they have things they need to figure out, things to come to terms with. and lestat-- he throws himself back into the world, finds his passion again, his beating heart. and where better to pour himself, than into the creative arts-- into music.

it is in london, that lestat finds a true calling: a certain band, as well as a certain writer and newly turned vampire to help tell his story…

AESTHETICS/VIBES THAT REMIND YOU OF YOUR CHARACTER:

blood dripping across white roses, the flicker of a hundred candles in an empty room, the sound of a piano being played in another room in the dead of the night, chipped black nail polish.

ONE SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF YOUR CHARACTER:

gasoline by måneskin

ADMIN ANDY APP.

[uozlulu]

Some moar potential thoughts on the desire fic that I might write

Some answers to quandaries from last night:

Daniel turns 30 in 1982 and has a kind of moment of clarity. He’s a vampire’s boy toy, he’s still wasted, he hasn’t done anything of worth with his life, etc...etc...so he leaves for good. He gets sober. He starts writing and manages to excel at it. He gets a wife, some kids, everything starts falling into place. The 70′s and early 80′s become a kind of haze to him. He doesn’t think about it, 

Meanwhile, Armand has been abandoned yet again, this time mostly through his own doing. Yet, he doesn’t want to turn Daniel and he’s not content per se to watch from afar but it’s better than Daniel dying. This might play into the potential multiple forms of desire theme

How this all plays out is still a mystery. An argument? Something Daniel concluded while they were on a break? Did they actually even talk about this or did they just part?

Definitely should expand the concept of desire in the fic beyond just romantic and/or sexual. Desire for companionship, understanding, romance, sex, the desire for whatever it is that they have between them, the desire to reconnect, the juxtaposition of that desire with knowing it will end in death. What kind of death is also up for grabs

Leaning towards making it leap back and forth between the present and the past maybe not as 1:1 ratio as Dream a Memory, but definitely not chronological like Mortal

Some more things to consider:

How to start the fic without making it sound like a thesis statement, how to make it about desire without being like “Desire is blah blah blah” or “What is desire?” Or even just how to carry the whole fic without it sounding too literal or blatant

For each form of desire there could be four scenes minimum, two for the past and two for the present, half from Daniel’s perception, half from Armand’s because both fo them are going to have different ideas on some of these, and frankly in any relationship there’d be multiple examples anyway. This might be the key to unlocking how to write the fic because if I come up with each potential mini prompt, then that gives me quite a few scene to work with. The trick will be figuring out how to fit them together so it’s not like “and here’s the chunk of companionship and after that comes the chunk of romantic, etc....”

Still need to figure out the scope of the present timeline. Is it all contained in Dubai? Does Daniel go home and Armand appears?

What do I do with Louis? Hopefully something more logical than what happened in Dream, but I did better with him in Mortal so I’m not too worried

Or do I pull Loustat in on this and have them reconnect? That would make for a pretty long fic, and I’m not sure I want to get in on all that after all the dramaz the show’s choices have created

Also if I bring Loustat in on this then I start wading into Dream territory, and I don’t really want to feel like I’m repeating myself. However, Dream started out as vaguely an exploration of desire, which means I have to be a bit extra careful. I don’t want to bore everyone by getting repetitive. Though it’s tempting to bring them in on this because I think I can write them better this time through, but again, the dramaz...idek. We’ll see how it goes.

If I do bring Loustat in on this then Lestat has to show up in a different way, maybe he’s living in the building. Maybe the building is completely inhabited by vampires, but again, much to think about. Nothing is solid so far.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hello, I have been reading the books that follow after Interview with the Vampire, and I wanted to ask and comment on the character of Lestat. Although I like the character, but It seems to me that he is a very Mary Sue character, that causes me conflict, that personally I would like the TV series to modify that aspect of him.

Do you think changes will be made regarding how powerful and perfect he is, without taking away his power but at the same time without becoming a Mary Sue type character?

... Mary Sue?

This... Mary Sue????

I'm sorry nonny, but... let's.. recap.

Lestat calls his own accomplishment of killing the wolves a "cosmic error" in the books, he should not have managed that. He did though, and that is what wakes Magnus' interest in him.

He is raped into darkness because of the wolves and his looks. Immediately abandoned after. Yes he got powerful blood, but other vampires (including Armand for example) get that, too.

He has to discover everything by himself, fight off satanic cults and Armand who tries to force-feed on him and then tries to track down the one source he heard of who can give him reason, only to find that source and realize... there is no reason. The source, Marius, sends him away again, after he managed to wake Akasha by sheer luck.

He tries to live a mortal life with Louis and Claudia, which ends with them trying to kill him and almost succeeding. He goes after them to try to save them because he knows Armand and is afraid for them and gets locked in a dungeon and then gets used for the farce of a trial, half mad and starved. Armand throws him off a tower, breaking every bone, and making him literally crawl back to NOLA.

He lives alone, scarred, lives off of rats and other smaller things for decades. Armand tells him Louis is dead, btw, then later, when Lestat has gone to earth comes by to whine about Louis.

And that is only what is in "The Vampire Lestat", in the broadest way.

Lestat has anger and severe abandonment issues, because he was abused severely as a child. He was beaten, locked up, starved, dragged back when he tried to run away. His mother ignored him in favor of her books, which makes his relationship to her and books rather difficult. He wasn't taught to read and write, only learned so later.

He has a temper, and bursts into inappropriate laughter at times. His guilt eats him up from the inside, but he suppresses it most of the time. He is prone to depression, and tries to kill himself, and when that fails, takes to wandering alone for years at a time.

His various "power ups" leave him with body dysmorphia at times, because he hates what they do to him.

He still has PTSD from the rape into darkness in the last fucking book.

If you want to call that Mary Sue I guess I cannot stop you.

I definitely wouldn't call him that.

[glowyjellyfish]

I started writing down an updated collection of thoughts and plans about my Megakingdom project, but they got very rambly and so I am beginning anew.

And no, I have not forgotten about Grimwood Abbey, but for my undiagnosed but likely adhd brain I gotta follow the fixations where they lead. It’s actually quite helpful to have several different Medieval Sims 2 concepts I want to play with while working on the excruciatingly long CC Sorting portion of the project, because I can bounce around from one to the other to find fresh things to think about without abandoning the CC project. I got through all the Teen and Child clothing, and everything in Buy Mode! I am halfway through Walls in Build Mode! I have some broken things to identify, some Star Factory stuff to check on updating (accidentally overwrote my fresh install of all those with some older duplicates and could not actually undo, Mia culpa), and a bunch of empty folders to check and remove. Then comes the real sorting. And a backup.

But today I am here to talk about the Megakingdom. I have realized I can’t just play it as a straight MCC, because I already have a king. And yet the Warwickshire rules are wayyyy too complicated for somebody who has yet to complete an MCC. So I am going to play mostly MCC, with a few Warwickshire rules incorporated early, using the advancements to replace unthematic community lots and make sure the community gets well-rounded. I’ll also be using the social advancement rules to earn sims the right to fill in a few empty class spots (for example, Pleasantview currently has no Gentry). I will probably start using some of the Warwickshire title guidelines once each subhood has a reasonable amount of sims in each class and sims start purchasing titles outside the basic ones. And I am thinking I might roll a THS for babies born in-game, but avoid randomized health hits and pregnancy health concerns until I get used to the system and/or those babies grow into adults.

The big difference I am planning from both rule systems is… frankly, I want to use the colleges and the college sims. The college sims are going to be a flexible marriage pool, but also, three is too many for just a couple of social classes to attend, and it really bugs me that college sims get more lifespan than non-college sims. So each college is open to a different selection of social classes. Academie Le Tour is the upper class university, and only royalty, nobility, and heir/firstborn gentry may attend. La Fiesta Tech is for non-heir gentry and merchants, and Sim State University is the trade school for yeomen and peasants who are sponsored by a noble. I’m not sure yet about the other two colleges, but SSU will for sure have a strong tuition fee, which peasants may request from a noble in exchange for becoming their serf. There will absolutely be many sims who still cannot afford to attend, and for those I’ll get some YA mods, but this plan will ease me into that play method AND will prep up some serfs for the megahood.

(I… will have to reread up on the lower classes and determine exactly how and who I want to set up as serfs, if I feel I need to start with any. For some reasons, I am constantly assuming that the lowest classes in these challenges do not automatically equal serfs and I might also just be wrong on that, and if I am I’ll figure it out.)

Some story plans and concepts:

Faith and Herbert Goodie are going to be church sims, with the Newsons moving in as a collection of orphans being raised by the church. Coral Oldie, meanwhile, is going to be a midwife (probably not the only one, but I haven’t identified anyone else for the role yet); I have set the Oldies as Merchant class, and so I might have Herb run a small business that complements her midwifery, perhaps selling herbs they grow or something.

I’m trying to figure out what’s to be done with Jessica Peterson; without the game lore she’s just an obvious peasant, but with it she’s divorced from Armand DeBateau, a duke, and therefore must be at least Gentry. I feel like the thematic way to handle this would be having her join the church or become an outcast, but I haven’t decided yet. By a similar token, I really want to keep Alexandra Teatherton nee O’Mackey’s “left family to become a pirate” story, but then I’d have to set up pirates and junk. Otherwise, she’s in the same position as Jessica.

Cassandra Goth is betrothed to King Malcolm Landgraab IV. I think that Don Lothario, a yeoman at best, has been trying to seduce her and making all kinds of promises in his efforts to bed her, but he never intended to actually try to marry her and is shocked at how seriously she took all his talk of running away together. That is way too permanent for Don Lothario, he just wanted to WooHoo her.

I did this same basic setup for a Steampunk Strangetown I played a while back, but I think the quickest and most interesting way to set up a kingdom in Strangetown is a. Olive Specter is the ruler, b. Ophelia has been raised as her heir, but c. Nervous is the true heir, kept secret because of his parentage but Olive plans to officially recognize him before she dies, and d. Loki learned the secret a while back and has been holding Nervous hostage in an attempt to either marry Nervous to Loki’s sister Erin or otherwise gain power. So that’s essentially what is happening here, Olive is the Duchess, Nervous is her heir, Loki is a mere Gentry trying some ruthless means of acquiring power and advancing his family’s status. Erin is a viable match for Nervous, but in my experience they usually don’t like one another; I think generally speaking I’m not going to force sims with X attraction to marry just because they’re a good match. Maybe for story purposes or if the pickings are too slim, but not in round one.

Oh, and I have designated a few ladies to be Duchesses of their subhoods, and a Gentry lady heiress here and there, but for the most part I will be sticking to full classic primogeniture. This is mainly for setup; I just picked the best/most interesting choices to rule each subhood. I.E., I’m not gonna make the Roths be the Ducal family of Riverblossom Hills when the Goths are right there ruling over Pleasantview, that is dumb, and Catherine Viejo makes a very interesting setup. Is Betty Goldstein her secret lover and/or lady in waiting? Is Andrew Martin her secret lover and/or gardener/serving man/serf? ...so Cleo Shikibu, heiress to the Duchy of Riverblossom Hills, and Florence Delarosa, Lady of Bluewater Village, will both have to find second sons or college sims to marry in order to preserve their respective inheritances (meaning, basically, they can marry Kent Capp or a college boy, because maxis families are really light on siblings generally). Olive Specter is technically another example, but since she has a male heir in Nervous, Ophelia is not being treated as an heiress and will just get married off wherever. (...not to Johnny, unfortunately for them. Johnny is a merchant. And thanks to Johnny’s heritage, it will be Difficult to cheat discretely. Sounds like Fun!) But I will be avoiding situations like this in the future, and will only allow heiresses if there is no possible male heir, and even then her duty is to marry a hapless guy and produce a male heir as soon as she can to preserve her family line.

I’m also pretty excited about my spreadsheet for the Megakingdom, making pages for simple round info, a full resident census, individual families and family trees, records of deceased sims and events, the neighborhood and treasury, maybe one day including full economic notes on sensible pricing for SMSF goods. And charts on viable marriage prospects for each class, which I am pretty proud of. They’re sorted by rank, red means not allowed, bright green is preferred, and light green is allowed. Generally speaking, sims get bright green within the same age group and light green outside it, making it easy to prioritize same age marriages over, say, adult-teen marriages or teen-child betrothals. Both of those are allowed but not preferred. And these charts will change as sims age, and sims will be removed when they get married and added when new sims are born or rolled.

I am very excited. The spreadsheets also give me something I can work on during down time at work!

[crimethinc]

Love, Anarchy, and Drama: The Classical Anarchists’ Adventures and Misadventures in Polyamory

Like many contemporary anarchists, many anarchists of the 19th and 20th centuries maintained relationships with multiple romantic partners, or were involved with partners who did so. Just as it does today, this often precipitated gossip, heartache, jealousy, and interminable emotional processing. A complete history of anarchist polyamory drama would be nearly as ambitious as a comprehensive history of the anarchist movement itself. Here, we’ve limited ourselves to a few poignant anecdotes from the lives of a handful of classical anarchists. There is a great deal more to be told—for example, the love triangle involving Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Johann Most, or Voltairine de Cleyre’s writing about ownership and possessiveness in relationships.

Why revisit all this, you ask? Certainly not just for the salacious thrill of letting the skeletons out of the closet to dance a little on holidays. No, we return to these stories because our antecedents were just like us, flawed and fallible yet capable of greatness. They were responsible for both heroic acts and gross stupidities (let’s not forget Bakunin’s anti-Semitism). In studying their lives, we might recognize some ways to improve ourselves.

A membership card for Emile Armand’s “International Association of Combat against Jealousy and Exclusivity in Love.”

“We want freedom; we want men and women to love and unite freely for no other reason than love, without any legal, economic, or physical violence. But freedom, even though it is the only solution that we can and must offer, does not radically solve the problem, since love, to be satisfied, requires two freedoms that agree, and often they do not agree in any way; and also, the freedom to do what one wants is a phrase devoid of meaning when one does not know how to want something.”

-Errico Malatesta, “Love and Anarchy”

Mikhail and Antonia Bakunin and Carlo Gambuzzi

One of the most influential anarchists of the 19th century, Mikhail Bakunin famously asserted “I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free.” In his Revolutionary Catechism,1 he devoted a section to the abolition of compulsory relationships, marital or otherwise:

Religious and civil marriage to be replaced by free marriage. Adult men and women have the right to unite and separate as they please, nor has society the right to hinder their union or to force them to maintain it. With the abolition of the right of inheritance and the education of children assured by society, all the legal reasons for the irrevocability of marriage will disappear. The union of a man and a woman must be free, for a free choice is the indispensable condition for moral sincerity. In marriage, man and woman must enjoy absolute liberty. Neither violence nor passion nor rights surrendered in the past can justify an invasion by one of the liberty of another, and every such invasion shall be considered a crime.

There was a 24-year age difference between Mikhail’s father and mother; they had become engaged when his mother was 18 and his father was nearly 42. This was not particularly unusual in Russia at the time. Mikhail grew up surrounded by four sisters, from whom he learned a variety of intellectual pursuits and, above all, the importance of women’s autonomy and self-determination. He came of age fighting alongside them against pressure from their parents to get married to men who did not share their philosophical or artistic interests.

When Mikhail was living in exile in Siberia after being sentenced to death in three countries for participating in the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, he met Antonia Kwiatkowki, the daughter of an exiled Polish teacher. When they married, she was 18 and he was 44.

A few years later, Mikhail pulled off a daring escape from Siberia, circumnavigating the globe to arrive in Western Europe, where there was not yet a price on his head. Antonia joined him, and the two lived together in Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland.

At this point, Antonia was in her twenties, while Bakunin was in his fifties, prematurely aged by years chained up in solitary confinement. Antonia began a tempestuous relationship with one of Bakunin’s young Italian comrades. In the following letter to his Russian friend Nikolaj Ogarev, Bakunin describes the considerable challenges that ensued. His complicated feelings will be familiar to anyone who has struggled to set boundaries regarding a partner’s volatile relationship or struggled to balance the demands of two very different relationships.

Mikhail Bakunin.

December 16, 1869 Locarno, Switzerland

Antosja arrived. I went to meet her in Arona, the first Italian city at the end of Lake Maggiore, and I spent two and a half days in great anxiety, expecting her at any moment. Contrary to date on the telegram I had received from Naples, she arrived two whole days late, as a result of the storm in the Mediterranean. She traveled by sea, on account of the low price. The poor woman was quite shaken. Imagine yourself in this situation: alone at sea with an eighteen-month-old child, eight months pregnant and of an ideal disposition for seasickness. She spent days without moving on the boat until Gaeto, despite terrible sea turbulence. She arrived to me exhausted and sick. The child is also sick. I took them to Arona with great difficulty. Antosja took a little rest, the little one as well. But in four, three, or perhaps two weeks, she will deliver. You understand that in these conditions, my head is spinning.

Dear friend, I want once and for all to explain to you my relationship with Antosja and her veritable husband. I did a terribly stupid thing, even more than that, I committed a crime by marrying a young girl almost two and a half times younger than me. I could, to justify myself, invoke many extenuating circumstances, tell you that I pulled her out of a vulgar provincial dump, that if she had not married me, she would have become the wife of a monster, of a Siberian police chief. But a fact is a fact, a mistake a mistake and a crime a crime. Antosja is a kind person and a beautiful soul, I love her as much as a father can love his daughter. I managed to wrest her away from the world of trivial ideas, to help her human development and save her from many vulgar temptations and loves. But when she met true love, I did not believe myself to have the right to enter into a struggle with her, that is to say, against this love. She loved a man who is completely worthy of her, my friend and my son in social-revolutionary doctrine, Carlo Gambuzzi. Two and a half years ago, Antosja came to tell me that she loved him and I gave her my blessing, begging her to see me as a friend and remember that she had no better nor more sure friend than I.

A few months later, at the Congress of Geneva, after a long struggle not only on her part, but also on the part of Gambuzzi, a struggle in which furthermore I did not interfere in any way, that I deliberately ignored, Antosja found herself pregnant. Due to lack of confidence, she hid her pregnancy from me, she endured terrible torments, deceived everyone and, under the pretext of going on a trip, went to give birth in a village near Vevey, exposing herself, as well as the child, to great danger. Informed of this without my knowledge, Gambuzzi arrived and took the child with him to Naples. Antosja recovered; as for me, I still suspected nothing.

One year ago, in October 1868, an incident revealed everything to me. The fact that I did not learn this earlier is not the fault of Antosja but of Gambuzzi. From the beginning, she wanted to tell me everything, but he demanded of her and pleaded with her not to talk to me about anything. In this respect, as in many others, he showed himself to be below her. Raised in the bourgeois world of Italy, he still can’t free himself from the cult of propriety and from the point of honor, and often prefers small winding paths to the long straight road. I will say in his defense that the thought of aggrieving and offending me actually terrified him. He has a filial attachment for me and an undeniably warm friendship.

Anyway, having learned the essence of things, I repeated to Antosja she was entirely free and asked her to decide her own fate, without any consideration of me, in the manner that she believed best: to stay with me as a wife—a wife of course only insofar as the public is concerned—or to separate from me and live in Naples openly as the wife of Gambuzzi. She decided on the first option for the following reasons: above all, she is accustomed to me, and the idea of living apart seemed unbearable to her; second, she feared being a burden for Gambuzzi, feared to put him in a situation that he would not know how to extract himself from with honor, given his social prejudices.

So all three of us decided that everything would remain the same as before. The child would spend the winter in Naples (this decision was made in October 1868) and, in autumn, Antosja would travel to Italy, supposedly with a sick Polish friend who would “die” in the summer and entrust her son to Antosja. This fall, Antosja traveled to Naples with the child, and what happened was what was to be expected and what I had predicted: once again, she became pregnant.

She was in despair. So Gambuzzi proposed that she come to give birth in Naples and leave the new child entirely to his guardianship; renouncing him completely, she would return with me after the birth, with the son, our adopted child of the deceased Polish friend (of course a myth). Antosja rebelled against this proposal and stated categorically that for nothing in the world nor for any consideration whatsoever would she abandon her child. A fight began between her and Gambuzzi. They appealed to me as judge. I took the side of Antosja, of course, and wrote to Gambuzzi that his plan was monstrous, that a mother capable of abandoning her child simply for social considerations would be a monster in my eyes.

So Antosja addressed this entreaty to me: leave Geneva, come to Italy and recognize the two children as my own. I did not reflect on it for long and agreed. I felt obliged to accept, because I could see no other way to save Antosja; and having committed a crime against her, it was my duty to assist her. That took place in July or August of this year, precisely at the moment when I announced to you that I had to leave Geneva.

After the Congress of Basel, Antosja pressured me. I hastened to leave and, as agreed, I went down to Locarno, began looking for a home, a nursemaid, and telegraphed Antosja that she could come, that I was waiting for her. For over two weeks, I received no word of reply to my telegram, nor to letters sent after it. I realized that the struggle was continuing between them; I wrote them a synodic letter in which, while describing our mutual situation to them in its true light, I indicated two options for them and demanded that they choose one or the other, namely: either Antosja, renouncing once and for all the love of Gambuzzi and contenting herself merely with his friendship, return immediately to me with my son and my future child, or else she should remain in Naples as the wife, known to all the world, of Gambuzzi, with the two children of their relationship also recognized by him. I offered my stamp of approval for either decision, but I demanded they choose one or the other without delay and stated that I would only agree again to do the first provided that it come into effect immediately.

Antosja arrived. Gambuzzi offered to stay, but she declined the offer.

Friendly relations on my part, as well as on the part of Antosja, continue with Gambuzzi. Their romantic relationship is over. I adopted the children of Gambuzzi, without denying his incontestable right to take charge of and lead their education alongside Antosja. Life here is inexpensive. He will pay 150 francs per month into the common fund and I will do the same. We will stay together, Antosja and I, as long as the revolution hasn’t called me. Then I will belong only to the revolution and myself.

In fact, after this letter was sent, Antonia maintained a romantic relationship with Carlo Gaumbuzzi and gave birth to a third child with him. Mikhail and Antonia continued to live together, and Mikhail participated in raising all three children as if they were his own. Antonia stood by Mikhail even when political conflicts and financial mismanagement alienated him from many of his other comrades and created considerable difficulties for their household. After his death, she finally moved in with Gambuzzi, and the two had one more daughter together.

Errico Malatesta, Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli, and Giovanni Defendi

While still a teenager, Malatesta met Mikhail Bakunin and joined him in helping to organize the First International and other early anarchist efforts, including armed uprisings in 1874 and 1877. Targeted by the Italian police forever afterwards, he was compelled to spend a great part of his life in hiding or in exile, especially in London.

Around the same time that he met Bakunin, Malatesta had begun a romantic relationship with the anarchist Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli. Little is known about their relationship, but they likely began seeing each other as early as 1871,2 as Malatesta was involved alongside her brother in the Mazzinist student movement and then the Neapolitan section of the First International. Emilia followed her brother to London in 1879 and began working as a seamstress.

A comrade of theirs, Giovanni Defendi, had gone to France in 1871 to participate in the defense of the Paris Commune, for which he was imprisoned for eight years. After his release, in 1880, he moved to London. That year, he and Emilia announced that they were entering into a union libre:

The undersigned make it a point to announce to you that, on May 8, 1880, they will enter into a free union, in the presence of some socialist friends invited and gathered simply to receive communication.

The reasons that determined them to dispense with legal marriage, as well as religious marriage, are that they view them as bourgeois institutions created for the sole purpose of settling questions of property and inheritance, not offering any serious guarantee to proletarians of either sex, consecrating the subjugation of women, committing wills and consciences for the future, without taking into account the characters involved, and opposing the dissolubility which is the basis of any contract.

The question of children will be settled later in the manner most in accordance with justice and according to the situation that bourgeois society imposes upon them.

Fraternal greetings.

-Giovanni Defendi, Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli

Malatesta had already been living with Emilia before this; he joined the couple at their residence in London in 1881. He lived with the Defendis for much of the next four decades. The British police, scandalized, reported that there were rumors that Malatesta was sleeping with Emilia despite her relationship with Giovanni.

Errico Malatesta.

The house and the business of the Defendi couple, where Malatesta lived, 112 High Street in Islington, was a convergence point for everyone that arrived in London. How many stormy and brotherly discussions were had in the little kitchen through the grocery store of the good Defendi family, which served as an Athenaeum!

-Luigi Fabbri’s Life of Malatesta

Emilia had six children, some of whom she may have conceived with Malatesta—including her son Enrico, born in 1883, who accompanied Malatesta when he went to Italy in 1897, and her daughter Adele, born in 1892. When Emilia fell ill in the aftermath of the First World War, Malatesta stayed by her bedside for months, nursing her until she passed away.

In contrast to the dramatic difficulties that beset Mikhail and Antonia Bakunin and Carlo Gambuzzi, the relationships of Errico Malatesta, Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli, and Giovanni Defendi appear to have been healthy and stable, providing a solid foundation for their decades of political activity. Knowing that Mikhail Bakunin mentored the young Malatesta, we can’t help wondering if the two ever discussed affairs of the heart. Could Malatesta’s graceful conduct in relation to his partner’s marriage have been informed by advice or anecdotes from Bakunin? We know they discussed the political and martial aspects of liberation, but we know less about their discussions regarding its personal aspects, which are just as fundamental to the anarchist project.

Likewise, though Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli was an important participant in the Italian anarchist movement in diaspora across several decades, we have little documentation with which to understand the substance of her contributions. On the basis of what we do know about her role in organizing, though, we know they were considerable.

“Let’s eliminate the exploitation of man by man, let’s fight the brutal pretention of the male who thinks he owns the female, let’s fight religious, social, and sexual prejudice. In any case, [in the anarchist future] the ones with bad luck in love will procure themselves other pleasures, since it will not be as it is today, when love and alcohol are the only consolations for the majority of humanity.”

-Errico Malatesta, “Love and Anarchy”

América Scarfó, Severino di Giovanni, and Émile Armand

If we don’t know as much as we might wish to about the perspectives of Antonia Bakunin and Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli, we have a full record of the thoughts of América Scarfó, an Argentine anarchist who began a romantic relationship with a married man while she was still a teenager.

Born in a middle-class immigrant family, América already shared anarchist ideas with her brothers Paulino and Alejandro by the end of her adolescence. Their family rented out a room to an Italian anarchist who had fled with his wife and three children to Argentina on account of the rise of Mussolini. He and América began a vibrant intellectual exchange that blossomed into romance. But then a police raid forced him to go into hiding along with Paulino and Alejandro.

Frustrated by the interference of the state, her parents’ opposition and, worst of all, the criticism of other anarchists, América wrote the following letter across the Atlantic Ocean to Émile Armand, an interanationally known anarchist proponent of “revolutionary sexualism” and camaraderie amoureuse. Armand had revived Zo d’Axa’s individualist anarchist publication L’En-Dehors, largely as a vehicle to promote what today we might call relationship anarchy.

In sending this letter, América was publicly declaring the legitimacy of a relationship not sanctioned by the church, the state, or her parents, just as Giovanni Defendi and Emilia Tronzio-Zanardelli had done before her. But more than that, she was taking revolutionary measures on the terrain that was available to her as a young woman in Buenos Aires: challenging the norms around intimacy, gender, and affective relations in society at large, in her birth family, and in the social circles of her fellow anarchists.

Revolution is not something that the party implements in the parliament or the workers carry out in the factories—it is a project that concerns every single aspect of life, and therefore, every single person, wherever she is situated.

América Scarfó.

Buenos Aires, December 3, 1928 To comrade E. Armand

Dear Comrade,

The purpose of this letter is, first of all, to ask your advice. We have to act, in all moments of our lives, in accord with our own manner of seeing and thinking, in such a way that the reproaches and criticisms of other people find our individuality protected by the healthiest concepts of responsibility and liberty, which form a solid wall weakening their attacks. For this reason, we should act consistently with our ideas.

My case, comrade, is of the amorous order. I am a young student who believes in the new life. I believe that, thanks to our free actions, individual or collective, we can arrive at a future of love, fraternity, and equality. I desire for all just what I desire for myself: the freedom to act, to love, to think. That is, I desire anarchy for all humanity. I believe that in order to achieve this, we should make a social revolution. But I am also of the opinion that in order to arrive at this revolution, it is necessary to free ourselves from all kinds of prejudices, conventionalisms, false moralities, and absurd codes. And, while we wait for this great revolution to break out, we have to carry out this work in all the actions of our existence. And indeed, in order to make this revolution come about, we can’t just content ourselves with waiting, but need to take action in our daily lives. Wherever possible, we should act from the point of view of an anarchist, that is, of a human being.

In love, for example, we will not wait for the revolution, we will unite ourselves freely, paying no regard to the prejudices, barriers, and innumerable lies that oppose us as obstacles. I have come to know a man, a comrade of ideas. According to the laws of the bourgeoisie, he is married. He united himself with a woman as a consequence of a childish circumstance, without love. At that time, he didn’t know our ideas. However, he lived with this woman for a number of years, and they had children. He didn’t experience the satisfaction that he should have felt with a loved one. Life became tedious, the only thing that united these two beings were the children. Still an adolescent, this man came to know our ideas, and a new consciousness was born in him. He turned into a brave militant. He devoted himself to propaganda with ardor and intelligence. All the love that he hadn’t directed to a person, he offered instead to an ideal. In the home, meanwhile, life continued with its monotony relieved only by the happiness of their small children. It happened that circumstances brought us together, at first as companions of ideas. We talked, we sympathized with each other, and we learned to know each other. Thus our love was born. We believed, in the beginning, that it would be impossible. He, who had loved only in dreams, and I, making my entrance into life. Each one of us continued living between doubt and love. Destiny—or, better, love—did the rest. We opened our hearts and our love and our happiness began to intone its song, even in the middle of the struggle, the ideal, which in fact gave us an even greater impulse. And our eyes, our lips, our hearts expressed themselves in the magic conjuring of a first kiss. We idealized love, but we were carrying it into reality. Free love, that knows no barriers, nor obstacles. The creative force that transports two beings through a flowery field, carpeted with roses—and sometimes thorns—but where we find happiness always.

Is it not the case that the whole universe is converted into an Eden when two beings love each other?

América Scarfó in 1929.

His wife also—despite her relative knowledge—sympathizes with our ideas. When it came to it, she gave proofs of her contempt for the hired killers of the bourgeois order as the police began to pursue my friend. That was how the wife of my comrade and I have become friends. She is fully aware of what the man who lived at her side represents to me. The feeling of fraternal affection that existed between them permitted him to confide in her. And he gave her freedom to act as she desired, in the manner of any conscientious anarchist. Until this moment, to tell the truth, we have lived really like in a novel. Our love became every day more intense. We cannot live altogether in common, given the political situation of my friend, and the fact that I have still not finished my studies. We meet, when we can, in different places. Isn’t that perhaps the best way to sublimate love, distancing it from the preoccupations of domestic life? Although I am sure that when it is true love, the most beautiful thing is to live together.

This is what I wanted to explain. Some people here have turned into judges. And these are not to be found so much among common people but in fact among comrades of ideas who see themselves as free of prejudices but who, at bottom, are intolerant. One of these says that our love is a madness; another indicates that the wife of my friend is playing the role of “martyr,” despite the fact that she is aware of everything that concerns us, is the ruler of her own person, and enjoys her freedom. A third raises the ridiculous economic obstacle. I am independent, just as is my friend. In all probability, I will create a personal economic situation for myself that will free me from all worries in this sense.

Also, the question of the children. What do the children have to do with the feelings of our hearts? Why can’t a man who has children love? It is as if to say that the father of a family cannot work for the idea, do propaganda, etc. What makes them believe that those little beings will be forgotten because their father loves me? If the father were to forget his children, he would deserve my contempt and there would exist no more love between us.

Here, in Buenos Aires, certain comrades have a truly meager idea of free love. They imagine that it consists only in cohabiting without being legally married and, meanwhile, in their own homes they carry on practicing all the stupidities and prejudices of ignorant people. This type of union that ignores the civil registrar and the priest also exists in bourgeois society. Is that free love?

Finally, they criticize our difference in age. Just because I am 16 and my friend is 26. Some accuse me of running a commercial operation; others describe me as unwitting. Ah, these pontiffs of anarchism! Making the question of age interfere with love! As if the fact that a brain reasons is not enough for a person to be responsible for their actions! On the other hand, it is my own problem, and if the difference in age means nothing to me, why should it matter to anyone else? That which I cherish and love is youth of the spirit, which is eternal.

There are also those who treat us as degenerates or sick people and other labels of this kind. To all these I say: why? Because we live life in its true sense, because we recognize a free cult of love? Because, just like the birds that bring joy to walkways and gardens, we love without paying any attention to codes or false morals? Because we are faithful to our ideas? I disdain all those who cannot understand what it is to know how to love.

True love is pure. It is the sun whose rays stretch to those who cannot climb to the heights. Life is something we have to live freely. We accord to beauty, to the pleasures of the spirit, to love, the veneration that they deserve.

This is all, comrade. I would like to have your opinion on my case. I know very well what I am doing and I don’t need to be approved or applauded. Just that, having read many of your articles and agreeing with various points of view, it would make me content to know your opinion.

Her letter was printed in L’en dehors on January 20, 1929 under the title “An Experience.” Émile Armand printed his answer alongside it:

“Comrade: My opinion matters little in this matter you send me about what you are doing. Are you or are you not intimately in accord with your personal conception of the anarchist life? If you are, then ignore the comments and insults of others and carry on following your own path. No one has the right to judge your way of conducting yourself, even if it were the case that your friend’s wife be hostile to these relations. Every person united to an anarchist (or vice versa), knows very well that she should not exercise on him, or accept from him, domination of any kind.”

Severino di Giovanni.

The lover that the 16-year-old América Scarfó refers to in this letter was, of course, the anarchist Severino di Giovanni, Argentina’s most wanted criminal. When she sent this letter, he was living underground, accused of carrying out a string of bombings targeting the Italian Consulate, the US embassy, the Ford Motor Company, and a monument to George Washington, among other targets. By the time he was captured in January 1931—along with América and her brother Paulino—he was also accused of the most dramatic robbery in contemporary Argentine history and the shootings of various police officers.

At that point, a military coup had taken place in Argentina, Hitler was headed for power in Germany, and the whole world seemed to be sliding rapidly towards fascism. In such a context, we can understand Severino’s actions as a rational attempt to carry out much-needed revolutionary measures on the terrain that was available to him, just as he and América were doing in their romantic relationship.

When the police captured Severino, they rushed him to a doctor to treat his wounds, so as to be sure he would die at precisely the hour they decreed, after the proper show trial. The police reportedly tortured Severino, but none of the arrestees cooperated with the state by informing against their fellows. After the trial, Severino’s lawyer was arrested, dismissed from his post in the armed forces, imprisoned, and deported.

The novelist Roberto Arlt witnessed the scene of Severino’s execution:

He looks stiffly at his executors. He emanates will. Whether he suffers or not, it is a secret. But he remains like this, static, proud.

Only after the execution did they call over a blacksmith to unfasten his fetters—and another doctor, this time to make sure he was dead. Then they executed Paulino Scarfó, too, for good measure.

They had released América, deeming her unfit to stand trial on account of her age.

Severino di Giovanni under arrest.

On July 28, 1999, after 68 years, the Argentine government finally returned Severino di Giovanni’s letters to América Scarfó. América passed away on August 26, 2006 at the age of 93. Her ashes were buried in the garden beside the headquarters of the Argentine Libertarian Federation in Buenos Aires.

There are many different risks to loving fiercely and outside the prescribed lines. Perhaps the only thing worse than these terrifying risks is the deadly certainty that comes of not daring to love.

“For us, love is a passion that engenders tragedies for itself.”

-Errico Malatesta, “Love and Anarchy”

Further Reading and Viewing

Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Comradeship, Émile Armand

The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (1880-1917), Pietro di Paola

Anarchism and Violence: Severino di Giovanni in Argentina, 1923-1931, Osvaldo Bayer

Daiana Rosenfeld and Anibal Garisto have produced a documentary about América Scarfó’s relationship with Severino di Giovanni entitled Los ojos de América (“The Eyes of América”).

Thomas Nast cartoon attacking Victoria Woodhull, advocate of free love, member of the First International, associate of anarchists, and, incidentally, the first woman to run for president of the United States.

Bakunin’s Revolutionary Catechism is distinct from Sergey Nechayev’s Catechism of a Revolutionary, which is often mistakenly attributed to Bakunin. In fact, there were serious differences between the politics of the two Russian revolutionists, as Bakunin set forth in this letter to Nechayev. ↩

See Errico Malatesta da Mazzini a Bakunin, la sua formazione giovanile nell’ambiente napoletano (1868-1873) by Misato Toda. ↩