#louis / merciful death

[jaggedjot]

Foreshadowing is opening the season with the tale of a child vampire whose physical otherness causes it to be rejected by its kin, before being killed when they deem it unable to live independently, and how their parent, who is as culpable for their fate as they are grief stricken by it, decides to follow them into death.

[librarygf]

something about armand choosing to kill those who are already suicidal, easing them into a pain-free death, an easeful death, rest. armand stating that nicholas and claudia are too fragile to survive vampiric life, so aware that their life is mostly endurance. and yet, armand trying so hard to make louis live, even when he tries to walk out into the sun. “will i be on suicide watch for the next 1000 years” “you are chronicling a suicide” “no no no”

[thevamplelio]

Murder family is here, and intensely queer, btw.

Tagging: @dxlac & @journalsinblood (bonus points to me cause these are all now canonical in the show).

Plain icons underneath the cut.

[sangcreole]

happy pride :)

[jelliclekitty]

[nalyra-dreaming]

Since we had Lestat on multiple occasions refer to Claudia as infant death we are totally going to have him refer to Louis is Merciful death next season, right? I just love how they fully delved into that nickname for Louis with the way they portrayed lestat’s murder

Oh god yes, and can you IMAGINE him using that nickname?

In what context will we get it? (And yes, I also agree that they set it up beautifully, we will get it...) Will Lestat spit it in Louis' face? Will Lestat call him that softly, thankfully? Will it be vicious? Accusatory? Grateful?

Ugh. 😅

I loved what the movie did with it, too, and I honestly cannot wait to see what the show makes of that!!!

[andessence]

armand tag drop!

[pirateshelly]

As much as nearly every character she meets tends to act like there's something uniquely broken and wrong with Claudia, at no point does it truly seem to me like there actually really is? I mean, obviously she is extremely fucked up, she straight up went through a serial killer collecting trophies phase, but there's a level of fucked up that's sort of the baseline for every character in the show, and obviously being turned into a vampire as a child puts her at a unique disadvantage. But for all that everyone around her spends their time bemoaning how dreadful and doomed her life is, even Louis who genuinely loves her but also builds so much of his identity around feeling responsible for her Terrible Fate™, I really don't think she's like, fundamentally damaged any more than any of the other vampires are.

But Lestat is so unwilling to be wrong that every time her life hits an inevitable road bump instead of helping her through it he points and says "look! see! she IS a monster, I was right Louis, making her was a mistake!" (and I think he sees his own monstrousness in her but fails to also see her humanity)

And then Armand meets her and sees only someone who will inevitably lose her mind, so of course speeding up the "inevitable" and siding with the coven to plan her death is just a mercy, absolving himself of any blame. (and he projects his own frailty and desire for death onto her, failing to see her strength and her desire for life)

Which makes it so cathartic when she meets Madeleine, admits to her how broken she feels sometimes, and Madeleine's response is just. Well that's normal. Who isn't a little broken these days. Let yourself feel it, move on, let yourself feel it again if you need to. After spending her life having others act as if her emotions are something uniquely dark and worrying, Madeleine's incredibly blase attitude must have been such an incredible breath of fresh air for Claudia!

To spend her whole life being made to feel like something is Wrong™ with her, and then meet someone who's just like, "yeah, and?? Who isn't? Join the club I guess"

Which makes her death so incredibly tragic and frustrating because like. She was fine! She was making a life for herself! She wasn't doomed by her nature, she wasn't "doomed by the narrative" (whatever the fuck that even means), she was doomed for no reason other than that everyone around her (except for Madeleine) preemptively DECIDED she was doomed and never gave her a chance to prove them wrong.

[fluentisonus]

imagining les mis from louis xviii's pov. really funny. napoleon is defeated & you are restored to the throne. fast forward four years & they tell you a successful businessman has come into public eye in montreuil-sur-mer so you have him appointed mayor. the guy refuses it. that same year you try to appoint a winner (?) of the industrial exhibition a chevalier of the legion of honor but he turns it down. it's the same guy. you have him appointed mayor again & he finally accepts. fast forward another four years. they tell you the same guy again confessed to being a former convict & a recidivist & has been sentenced to death. well okay you're a merciful king so you get out your pen or whatever & commute his sentence. less than a year later he's reported drowned & you're in your carriage in paris feeling sick & miserable & they point out to you a guy on the street in a horrible yellow coat. little do you know it's the same guy. you die before the rest of the book

[gallierhouse]

Some thoughts on Armand’s relationship with love, control, and his trauma. Armand’s relationship with Marius is the template for all his subsequent relationships. I know we haven’t met Marius yet, but of course Armand loves and loathes and worships and fears Marius in equal measure. Anything else would be surprising. Of course he loves the man who saved him, sold him, donated him, raised him, loved him, in whatever way Marius was capable of (“Amadeo” wouldn’t be in the painting if Marius didn’t), eventually tossed him aside, and then turned him (“the ones we turn always resent us for it”). I’m guessing that Armand half wants to go back to Marius (or whatever it was like with Marius, back in Venice) and half never wants to see him again. If he ever does see Marius again he’s probably going to shut down and try to avoid him, and the moment Marius is gone, he’s going to miss him and wish he’d acted differently. Marius, as far as I can tell, seems to be something between a master, father, and god for Armand. You see it leak through when he goes to Lestat’s play and in the way Louis comforts him. He treats Lestat like a child, he’s trying to seduce Lestat into joining the coven, Louis cups his face the way you’d comfort a child. His relationship with Marius is probably ultimately familial on some level, all the comfort and authority of a father, along with the abuse that comes with it. And we know that Marius sexually abused Armand and trafficked him to his friends, but that’s not incompatible with being a fatherly figure, it just means that the result it produced in Armand is probably a fundamental blurring of familial, romantic, and sexual boundaries, which does explain a lot of his behavior. When Armand reflects on what Marius was like, he says he “basked in his worshipful mercy,” and it makes sense. Marius saved him from the brothel, Marius held his life in his hands, Marius eventually gave him eternal life to save him from his illness. For Armand, he’s a god. And the thing about gods is that as much as you worship and revere and love them, they’re also objects of fear. That’s why you worship them. Fear and love go hand in hand. I think that mixture of fear and love, and the blurring of familial/romantic/sexual boundaries is essentially what explains all of Armand’s relationships post-Marius.

Armand is both tyrannical and loving towards the coven, but it’s the same thing. What he does to and for them is love. We know he’s abusing Louis in episode 5, but it is love. It’s punishment, it’s resentment, it’s hurt, and it’s love. When he talks about the “prison of empathy” he’s not being facetious. That’s genuinely how he sees it. All of this, Louis half-burnt to death, screaming for him to stop torturing Daniel, is love. Because if he didn’t love Louis he would’ve let him burn to death on the roof, if he didn’t love Louis he would’ve left him instead of taking care of him, and when Louis finally evokes their relationship to stop Armand from eating Daniel, Armand is genuinely hurt. How could you deny him this one thing? When all he’s done is love you? All he does is clean up after Louis, pick up the pieces of these broken and battered young men, pick up the pieces of Louis’ addiction. It’s love. And it’s not healthy and it’s not kind, and it’s selfish and it’s abusive, but it is love. I think, for Armand, punishment and abuse and servitude aren’t antithetical to love, but a necessary part of it. That’s the shape love takes for him. And when he asks Louis, “are you asking or making me?” I don’t necessarily think he’s trying to skirt responsibility or trap Louis by retreating into the safety of their BDSM dynamic. Louis obviously wants Armand there because he wants to share something beautiful with Armand. He’s asking Armand because he loves Armand and he wants to share something important and beautiful with him, Louis wants to be a family. But Armand’s obviously conflicted, he doesn’t believe in turning vampires, he doesn’t want to be there because he’s still caught between the coven and Louis’ love (if the story we’ve been told is accurate). I don’t think he retreats into the dynamic because he’s guilt tripping Louis or attempting to use the power of his sad amber eyes, he’s really just asking. Is this what you require of me? Is this what you want? To love someone is to obey them, to submit, even when it’s unpleasant, especially when it’s unpleasant. That’s how you show the value of your love. Louis detects this and immediately comforts him, and the way Armand responds is childlike. Louis is cupping his face, telling him it’s okay, Armand looks at him with a genuine expression of vulnerability. I think this is just the shape of love for Armand. Yeah, it’s fucked up, but that’s how he loves, and in turn, how he expects to be loved. So when he punishes Louis it’s not because he doesn’t love him, but because if Louis loved him, he’d take it. That’s just part and parcel of what love is for him. It’s why he doesn’t see the way he treats Claudia (or the coven) as abusive, that’s just love. You wouldn’t bother punishing someone if you didn’t love them, and their tolerance and acceptance of the punishment is proof of their love for you. It’s deeply masochistic. But he was trafficked and then raised by a man who continued to abuse and save him all at once. So it’s really only expected.

Ultimately, the reasons for his issues with sex and control and his inability to express agency are rooted in his abuse. It’s frozen his development and rendered him unable to express agency or even want without the comfort of submission. It’s also rendered him terrified of abandonment — which is probably related to being kidnapped by the Children of Darkness and taken away from Marius — which leads him to engage in self-defeating behavior. He desires submission, but he can’t truly submit, because he can’t let anyone leave him, so he must control them, but he can’t submit to them if he controls them. That’s the core of his power play with Louis. He’s the dominant figure (he’s older, stronger, in San Francisco and Dubai he essentially controls Louis’ life) but he plays at submission (their D/S dynamic) in an attempt to have his cake and eat it. He’s emotionally stuck being that scared child who worships this terrifying, loving, abusive father-master-god figure, and he alternates between trying to find the security of familiarity in being that scared child, and trying to emulate Marius when he’s projecting power. He’s a father, master and god to the coven, and the scared child to Louis. It’s all the same.

[nightcolorz]

Armand could definitely 100% have prevented Claudia and Madeline’s death like obviously he is so full of shit 😭😭 he just chose not to. I dont think he was lying about being held captive, though. It seems more likely to me that he allowed himself to be imprisoned bcus the ultimate outcome would be desirable, rather then like, he was secretly orchestrating it all like a devious Master mind and was only pretending to be a prisoner to trick Louis. I think Armand was genuinely being imprisoned, but he could have easily escaped (as if the vampire Armand couldn’t win in a fight against Sam The Twink), and chose not to because it’s in his best interest for Claudia and Madeline to die 😭. While part of his betrayal I think comes from a comfort Armand takes in learned helplessness, where taking action feels less safe then leaning into victimhood, so armand chooses to accept helplessness rather then play the hero bcus helplessness is comforting, it was also definitely part “I want these two people to be gone from my life and this seems like a sure fire way to let it happen while I get to remain mostly blameless” 😭. Armand finds Claudia’s whole existence horrific and cruel. I don’t think he particularly likes or dislikes her as a person, he doesn’t seem to know her very well nor care to know her (he actually says this in tva lol), so I don’t think he considered letting her a die an act of spite.

Armand thought of Claudia as a suffering, rabid, sick and diseased animal that needed to be put down for its own well being. He considered her death an inevitable tragedy that “could not be prevented”, and bcus of his perspective on vampirism as a horrible curse that can only be spared through very specific very calculated and clean cut means, he wanted her death to come as quick and painlessly as possible. From Armand’s perspective, if he saved Claudia from death by execution, he’d only end up watching her excruciatingly loose her mind and self until she eventually killed herself or got put down by Armand or someone else Nicki style so that she wouldnt need to live in agony anymore.

Which, his whole perspective there is flawed, and fucked up, and dehumanizing of Claudia, but it makes sense why he would think that way. Armand considers vampirism to be always bad, regardless of the subject turned, and always smth he would hate to inflict on someone. So claudias turning, is not only cruel to Armand, but unforgivable and unsalvageable. He’s seen a lot of fucked up vampires in his time, a lot of botched turnings, and he knows from his experience how much of a toll vampirism takes on anyone, let alone someone in the body of a child. His whole “I will never turn someone into a vampire ever in my life” thing comes from this. So, of course he won’t save claudia from such a clean cut, blameless death 😭. He considers it an act of mercy, when he pictures the alternative as “Claudia clings to Madeline as she painfully looses her mind and eventually dies”. Which, comes into why he didn’t save Madeline either lol

Armand doesn’t particularly value life as smth to be worth preserving, he is very willing to view other ppl as commodities when it helps him. But he does value preserving peace and limiting other’s suffering (which is why he kills so gently). Armand is so horrified by Madeline being turned, partly bcus I think he saw himself in her. He sees a fledgling who he believes will inevitably loose her maker, the only person she rlly cares about, to horrible gruesome death, and he knows that once she experiences that her life as an immortal will be cruel and unbearable. So once she is turned, Armand sees another lost cause who will be better off if she is killed before it can get bad. What Armand misses when it comes to Claudia and Madeline, obviously, is that they r more resilient and self sufficient then he sees, and taking away their agency by deciding they have no hope and must die isn’t the mercy he sees it as but is actually like, fucked up and horrible. Armand is so blinded by his trauma fueled dog eat dog view of life as a vampire that he can’t see that.

I think the reason armand considers the perks of Claudia and Madeline’s death a priority over Louis’s happiness (and horrible grief that will ensue when his loved ones die), is bcus Armand considers Claudia and Madeline’s death an inevitable consequence of Louis’s unforgivably cruel actions. He doesn’t resent Louis for it I don’t think, but he definitely thinks that Louis will need to atone for what he’s done whether Armand wants him to or not. So, Armand is ok with Louis grieving (as long as it doesn’t turn to resentment of Armand), bcus it was ultimately inevitable, and comparatively less cruel then what he would have to witness alternatively. It’s a rip the Band aid off type of thing 😭😭

in conclusion uh Armand is bad but Armand has his reasons and Armand isn’t one dimensionally villainous, he has a ton of complex trauma induced reasons for the way he thinks, and his actions r more often then not coming from a warped view of “the kind thing to do” that comes from his lack of understanding of how kind the world actually is and can be (dog eat dog mindest etc), bcus of how horribly traumatized he is. thank u good night

[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.

[reality-detective]

There will be no mercy given for those that brought harms to the children! Death Penalty for Treason & Crimes Against Humanity.

The voice without a face is Lin Wood and I'll tell you a lot has already been completed. We're in a mop-up situation now. Is there underground tunnel warfare happening? Yes, but it's not deep underground tunnels. There are 1.5-2 million national guardsmen as well as special forces and navy seals spread across the United States right now poised to move to make mass arrest, there are over 200,000 pending sealed indictments. I can't say anymore than that.

Just know the shit is gonna hit the fan in the coming months and it's going to get real ugly before it gets better.

Be prepared, do what you have to do to protect your home and your family, if you need ammo I would be getting it.

I'm here to do what I can for you and humanity, but I do have to watch what I say so I do not compromise the mission.

Stock up on food, water, and personal hygiene items you need to last at least 1 month. After that you'll be ready.

There are other cities that could be affected by the madness coming. Tampa Bay, Orlando, Cleveland, Minneapolis and St. Louis to name a few? 🤔

THIS IS NOT A GAME, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. ⚠️

[thevamplelio]

Hey google, how did it take me this long to wander far enough into this hellsite to discover Hannibal (all media) and Hannibal NBC? Cause like…

Same energy, different font.

Also, Abigail/Will and Louis/Claudia have the same energy, neither of which is healthy, or straight, and I’m here… at least for Abigail/Will.

Oops?

The Queer appeal of toxic love.

Vampire Reviews: IWTV 1994.

[sangcreole]

No but the thing about Louis is that he has such a wild range that I feel like I need to constantly over-explain in all my threads whether you're getting Cool Louis or Grandpa Louis

[toriangeli]

Thoughts about Lesmand next season

I maintain that one of the most important relationships of s3 is going to be Lestat/Armand, not because of shipping, but because it's very central to TVL and the series as a whole. Their complicated feelings about each other are fascinating. And they're complicating them even further.

One clear change made is that Lestat now blames Armand for Nicki's death. For those who haven't read the books, Lestat never blamed Armand for Nicki's suicide. This is because one of book!Lestat's most infuriating flaws is that he forgives immediately. This isn't because he's a sweetheart or virtuous or any of that shit, it's because he doesn't like feeling negatively. It's a trait that gets him into a lot of trouble.

But on a television show, something visual and far more concrete than the contents of a book, I can see how this attitude could lead an audience to believe Lestat didn't really care about Nicki. I think that's a good enough reason to make the change already. But there's another important reason to change this.

People talk about how much Lestat's characterization changes between the first two books, but seldom do we get into how vastly Armand changes. Not as a result of character development--as a result of Anne Rice not quite knowing who he is. He was the villain of the first two books, and she expected him to remain a villain until she wrote QOTD and realized he isn't evil.

But by the time she'd figured that out about him, TVL was already out there, and the conflicted nature of Lesmand was very much one-sided. Lestat thought they were besties, while Armand had basically no redeeming characteristics. In this light, Marius' abandonment of Armand is more understandable than it is later on, because as of the writing of TVL, Armand really was meant to be beyond hope.

So at the start, Lestat and Armand really just had a hero-villain relationship. Straight-up. With mutual pining. Some of the major beats of their dynamic, like Armand's sincere belief that Lestat led him on, or Lestat's strange trust in a very unstable Armand, came out of nowhere. It seemed like some of Lestat's attitude towards him was only there to make the betrayals even crueler. Lestat was a total martyr. Hell, at one point (in Memnoch I think) he even asked how Armand could still love him "after everything I've done to you." Lestat didn't do shit to Armand.

Conversely, it can also feel like their later closeness comes out of nowhere. A lot of grudges are let go during QOTD in the face of bigger problems, and the Lesmand conflict is one of them. But what did they do to earn the closeness they have as of Memnoch? What bonded them so much that Armand was the only one who could safely approach a coma'd Lestat?

The show has the opportunity to make these beats feel earned. It has the opportunity to make the conflict something they both contribute to, rather than just Armand. Just like with Lestat, they are drawing characterization of Armand from later books where Anne had his personality down more solidly. They've ironed out some of the big conflicting things, like him spell-gifting Louis into turning Madeleine when turning people is later established to be utterly against his moral code.

More than anything, I hope to see what made them so important to each other right away. I want to see Lestat's pity and mercy as he realizes how very unwell Armand is, and how that is the reason he lashes out. I do think it should still fall apart because Armand bites the hand that feeds him. I do still want the unhinged gremlin we saw in 2.05. But I think if the audience is going to empathize with him--something Rolin has said is important to them--Lestat shouldn't be quite so much of a saint. I think there should be a crumb of a reason Armand thinks Lestat led him on, albeit a small enough one that it's still not a conclusion a rational person would come to. Like the blood-sharing and casual (for Lestat) sex in Armand's little story. Ideally even smaller. I'd like there to be some trigger. Otherwise, the audience will wonder if they missed something (as I did).

I'll probably ramble more as thoughts come up, but that's it for now.