#and i do love loumand so very much

[ikpwecanfly]

The grateful look on Louis' face when Armand made ghostat disappear

Armand fucked with his mind and Louis was thankful

[kindaorangey]

my most recent rewatch of iwtv s2 i had TVL on the brain which meant that i realised for a lot of armand's relationship with louis, he's not recreating his dynamic with marius, he's recreating the dynamic he had with lestat so he can get it right this time and make louis stay

[gayboymolloy]

IWTV Fic Recs: Part I

You all pinky promised to listen and not judge 🫶🏻

Please mind tags for all of these. This list is certainly not exhaustive, just the ten I could find. As I’ve said before, I’m really bad at keeping track of my favorite fics.

Loustat

Headlock by caxemira - Rated E. 16k words. Human Office Romance AU. Louis works through his internalized homophobia as he develops feelings for what was supposed to be his one time hookup. A little angst, miscommunication. Happy ending.

for years or for hours by dulacourt - Rated E. 29k words. Lestat and Louis work on Louis’ sexual stamina. There’s so much kissing and coming in pants in this one. Like, so much kissing. It’s genuinely very sweet and soft. Lestat and Louis’ religious conflicts are very present.

body of water by peacefrog - Rated E. 19k words. Post-reunion. Getting back together is not as simple as it seems, especially when you’ve been through everything Loustat has. Grief is the backdrop until it’s the foreground. Technically this is a sequel to a reunion fic, you are the moon that breaks the night for which i have to howl, which you should also read, but body of water is my favorite.

Nickistat

only us, in this room by accideadly - Rated E. 3k words. Still human, first time, mutual masturbation, sickeningly in love. I’m a little obsessed with Lestat talking Nicki through it here. So sweet, I love Nickistat, have I mentioned that on this blog before?

Loumand

just the pure virgin light by exsanguinate (transjon) - Rated E. 5k words. Armand experienced genital mutilation as a mortal in the brothel; Louis is determined to find a way to make him feel good regardless. Sounding, prostate orgasm. Emotional + we love to see Loumand actually loving on each other.

Lesmand

two-headed mother by tisiphones - Rated E. 8.6k words. mommy kink mommy kink mommy kink. I cannot stress how much you should not read this fic if you don’t want to experience insane psychosexual pseudoincestual bullshit between Armand and Lestat. If you do, however… this might be the most sad and pathetic I’ve ever seen these two.

Danstat

break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored by SheOfBadIdeas - Rated E. 3k words. Armand is neglecting Daniel. Lestat and Daniel fuck about it. I like this one because Lestat and Daniel aren’t in-love but they do like each other and Lestat is genuinely trying to make him feel better 🥺 Plus, it ends in Armandaniel smut. Which leads us to:

Devil’s Minion

may through december by savorvrymoment - Rated E. 15k words. Ongoing. Human AU, briefly professor/student. Armand and Daniel spend a lot of time being very domestic and even more time not talking about it like they should. I have no words for how good this is. Armand is autistic and traumatized. Daniel is old and navigating his own feelings. Nobody is saying what they really mean. I love how much they love each other. *chef’s kiss 👩🏻‍🍳💋*

Camboy Molloy by GrayGiantess - Rated E. 39k words. Ongoing. Human AU. Old Daniel is a camboy who, in a probably ill-advised move, agrees to an in-person session with his favorite viewer. And as you can guess, they keep meeting. Sweet moments, sad moments, classic Daniel asshole moments. This was recommended to me recently and I’m obsessed!

Morning by CloeLockless - Rated M. 2.5k words. Classic Devil’s Minion era. To Daniel’s surprise, for the first time, Armand stays the night. Unfortunately, the spontaneity of it all means they don’t properly account for the sun… (no major character death… well outside of vampires being dead sort of inherently.) When Daniel cried, I cried, and not for the reason you’d think based on my blurb. Angsty, sweet.

[heliza24]

Thoughts about Domesticity, Carework, and the American Dream in episode 2.5 of Interview with the Vampire

I’ve been mulling over episode 2.5 a lot. There was so much to love in the episode (the incredible writing, the kitchen sink off Broadway play of it all, the chemistry between Luke, Jacob and Assad, the vulnerability in Eric’s performance). But my mind keeps circling a couple of themes, trying to piece them together. So as usual I’m here on tumblr to try to work it out. 

I keep coming back to the way that Armand was gendered in this episode. His big complaint to Louis was that he was “home picking lint off the sofa”. He arrives with “mop and misery” to clean up the mess. Louis insults him by calling him “the good nurse”. All those things are feminized. They’re also extremely of the era; these are Feminine Mystique, mid-century housewife type complaints. The wife’s job is to make the husband’s life smooth and never worry about her own happiness. Obviously in the 1970s we’re seeing this begin to change thanks to second wave feminism. We’re in the process of trying to ratify the ERA, Ms. magazine has just been founded, and things are shifting. The kind of cheery domestic American dream of the 1950s is definitely shifting, and we see this in the episode as well. Betty Hutton selling sewing machines competes with Spiro Agnew resigning on TV. The watergate scandal signified a loss of faith in American authority, a kind of parallel destruction of the country’s father figure (brought down by journalists, no less). The comfortable lie of domesticity, the “prison of empathy” that Armand has created around Louis is crumbling. Armand is boring but he’s also bored, like a housewife taking valium to get by. The whole episode is set in an apartment that reeks of divorce, according to Daniel, and we’re seeing it play out in real time. When Armand lashes out to hurt Louis, he does it not through direct violence, like Lestat, but by holding his failure as a father over him, telling him that Claudia  never loved him. That jab, in combination with the way he’s edited Louis’s memories (gaslighting, another time honored form of domestic abuse) is enough to get Louis to hurt himself. LIke a wife who is always outwardly obedient to her husband but spends her time exacting petty revenge against him for the way he takes her for granted, Armand’s methods are never violent. They are soft and subtle and targeted.

I have to thank @bluedalahorse for first alerting me to the way the crumbling domestic American dream is threaded through this episode. And after she mentioned it I saw it *everywhere*. 

Obviously there is a level of complexity here in the Loumand relationship that this metaphor cannot fully capture. For one thing, Armand is a man. He was turned in a time before modern understanding of gender and sexuality really solidified, so in some way it makes sense that he would be the most gender fluid of our main characters, but his position would be a lot different if he were a woman, even a woman vampire. And Armand is very powerful. His insecurities and crippling fear of being alone keep him from exercising this power and walking away in a way that would perhaps be healthier for both him and Louis. But he is not trapped economically or socially in the way a wife would have been in this era. (That being said, I get the sense that *something* about the way the fire happened in Paris has made Louis and Armand go to ground. Maybe there is an element of being “trapped together because of fear of exposure”. But even then, I think my point still stands.)

To drill down and become more specific, there’s an extra added layer to the way Armand is feminized in this episode. I’ve written a lot about disability in this show and also the way it approaches eugenics, and those things were very on my mind as I rewatched this episode. (To be fair, they are always on my mind when I watch anything. Being disabled will do that to you.) Anyway, the specific way that Armand casts himself in this episode is as a caregiver. He is a beleaguered, bitter caregiver to those weaker to him. I think you hear this especially when he describes to Louis what happened: “you said the worst things you ever said to me, and then you walked into the sun. And now you are a convalescent.” The absolute sneer on the word convalescent.  The absolute disdain for being put in this position again. The way he denies Louis the blood and keeps him out of his coffin for so long. The “final act of service” in calling Lestat. And then the tenderness laced with fear. Will he “be on suicide watch for the next 1000 years?”. 

Armand is fascinating to me because of the way he seems to instinctively reject people who remind him of his own past weaknesses. Those weaknesses are buried down deep in his characterization, but they’re there and they’re important. He was sick and wasting away when he was turned. And before that he was an abused sex worker. You can see the way he dismisses people in similar situations in the way he treats Daniel in this episode. He calls Daniel a “broken boy” when he’s talking to Louis. He casually rejects the idea that there might be any sort of truth captured in Daniel’s tapes. The interviews on those tapes are with a sex worker and gay veteran and his disabled refugee husband. All of these people are so close to Armand in so many ways. I even think this is why Armand comes down so hard on Claudia, and why he cannot abide the true empathy and love Louis has for her. Claudia was turned when her body was weak. Weaker and more disabled, so to speak, than Armand. But they are not dissimilar. But Louis loves Claudia anyway, and respects her strengths. No one ever shown the love Louis shows to Claudia to Armand. No one ever granted him true empathy. The only way he has been able to hold on to any love at all is to grovel, to manage, to care give. The only way he experiences care is to give it. Of course he’s broken, of course he’s bitter.

So now we come to Daniel. The broken boy who has suicidal ideation and a drug problem, things that make him imminently dismissable in Armand’s mind. But Daniel also has a drive, a passion for life, and a love for the people who slip through the cracks. Louis and Daniel definitely share this great affection for humanity, and it’s what allows them to connect in San Francisco and again in Dubai. And it’s what makes him inscrutable, and captivating, to Armand. Because there really is no greater act of service than telling somebody’s story. Daniel describes himself as a therapist ironically in Dubai, but what he’s doing is carework. It’s real empathy. And Armand doesn’t understand that. Armand doesn’t understand what someone is doing recording the stories of people who were just like him. A whole universe of possibilities opens in the moment when Armand almost starts telling Daniel his story. Out of all the ways Daniel tries to save himself, that little life line of empathy is what almost snags Armand. But then Armand clamps back down, realizes he’s staring into a “black hole”. He’s trying to insult Daniel when he says that, but to me it just sounds like he’s describing himself.

When Armand is lulling Daniel into death, the thing he chooses to describe to him is the American domestic fantasy. He describes it as a fate worse than death. He describes it as a boring trap. And he specifically casts Daniel in the masculine, straight role in that fantasy, with a wife “vacuuming on valium” who “counts down his thrusts”. In some ways Armand is painting his own relationship to Louis as the worst possible fate that Daniel could suffer. (And it makes me wonder– did Armand ever wonder if he would amount to anything? Does he think his life has any meaning at all, if you subtract the vampiric powers? Armand has never stopped to introspect like this, but I wonder what would happen if you forced him to.)

But Daniel is stubborn, and his desire to tell stories and empathize with people resists death. I love that he still defends himself, still claims that he’s “a bright young reporter with a point of view” and that that is worth something. Because it is.

When Louis asks Armand to save Daniel, Daniel unwittingly becomes a symbol of Louis and Armand’s continued marriage. He’s a wedding ring, a vows renewal. He’s emblematic of the continuation of failing vampiric domesticity. And when Louis tries to repair the damage Armand has wrought, he isn’t able to offer Daniel soothing words about his ability to find a spouse or raise children or understand love. Louis doesn’t understand those things, so how could he teach Daniel about them? But Louis has always understood stories and humanity, so he is able to gift Daniel his writing and his reporting back. 

I think you can interpret Daniel’s failed marriages and difficult relationship with his children in a lot of ways. We could say that he was always going to fail at these things, regardless of whether or not he met the vampires, because of the discontent that Armand sensed in him. Maybe the trauma that this aborted gay hookup with Louis created was enough to re-closet him, and send him down a dark road of unfulfilled straight relationships. Or maybe Armand’s words really did echo around in his head and pull him down as much as Louis’s lingered and sustained him over the years. Maybe we’ll get more answers about this as the show goes on, or maybe it will live in the ambiguous world of memory and manipulation the show so often plays in.

Regardless, I think this episode was a masterpiece, and the way it firmly established these themes about the failure of domesticity and the burden and joys of carework are going to really matter, I think, as we hit the brutal conclusion of the season. When emotions are at a breaking point, especially between Armand and Louis, they are going to resonate because they were grounded in this little claustrophobic wonder of an episode.

As a little postscript, I’m not quite sure where we’re going with Devil’s Minion after this episode, or if we’re even going there at all. If a DM timeline happened in the past, it would require additional editing of Daniel’s memory, and I’m not quite sure if that reveal would work structurally. (I would love to be proven wrong about this though, because I would love for young Daniel and Armand to have interacted more, for Assad and Luke’s chemistry if nothing else. They were so wonderful together.)  If it were to happen in Dubai, or to happen again Dubai, however… well that’s interesting. Because older Daniel is disabled. He’s even more firmly in this category of people that Armand is apt to dismiss. And if they were to get together, there would probably be some aspect of caregiving on Armand’s part. And there would also be some caregiving on Daniel’s part, in his ability to listen to Armand. So that has the potential to be really fascinating, and maybe mutually beneficial to both characters. But I think we have to cover a lot of ground before we would be able to get there.

[bigevildoeeyes]

Loumand is not and CANNOT be a one to one reimagining of their previous roles as sex slave and brothel owner. louis does not have an equivalent power over armand as he did on emotionally, socially, and/or financially vulnerable women in nola, and armand’s submission is not reflective of a real powerlessness under louis

If we want to look for a marius parallel, it wouldnt be in louis who responds to armands initiations and engages in a consensual dom/sub dynamic. if we want to look for a marius parallel, who is in the predatory position here? Who is controlling information and its access? Who is the one exploiting an experience, knowledge, and vampiric power gap to get the love he wants?

But isn’t that the point? That their relationship is a shallow imitation, a re-enactment of roles which comforts both parties for their familiarity and essentialness while they were mortal? Neither of them were ready to grapple with their own identity in a meaningful way and these roles are something safe to hold onto, which may or may not be productive or accurate but they very well know the performance of this position and it is Still and it is Safe and who cares about absolute truths when you’re one wrong thought away from killing yourself

When hannah says their room is like a brothel and when assad says they revert back to older versions of themselves I think it speaks much more on loumands fear and denial to question and understand themselves than it does being a sexploitation revival. Louis put on the masculine, capitalist decision maker persona to survive his racist heteronormative life, and armand embodied the selfless submissive to survive his oppressive life.

Their brothel bedroom is a reinforcement that they have yet to fully actualize their self identity outside the context of the systems of abuse and oppression they have endured. They are vampires, armand transcends the societies that shaped him but hes still living subject and response to it. Both unwilling to be active players in their own lives, still riddled with the weight of their history that dictate them but will not be unpacked

At the end of the day loumand were two deeply traumatized immortals still struggling to come to terms with the enormity of their self so they repeated the behaviours that made them survive. They cannot stomach themselves so they will keep this up, and together they kept on surviving. Until Louis was ready to do the second interview, ready to reflect, to accept himself and move beyond survival.

Armand u are Next.

[murfpersonalblog]

I wanted to respond to this post & tags by @mdeitrick13, after I saw @fishjellylou's response here.

I HATE book!film!Louis. It's actually a very popular opinion, esp. wrt film!Louis--there's a lot to hate, without ever getting into morality politics--from his plethora of stupid life choices, to his hypocrisy, to his whiny attitude, etc. And wrt to pimps & slavery specifically, we can get into all the ways owning & controlling people's bodies, freedom, & autonomy/agency is effed up. But where exactly does LOUIS exhibit any of that behavior towards Armand--book, film, and esp. on the show??? 🤔

Almighty all-powerful all-gifted uber-privileged vamps can get away with literal murder: Lestat can spitefully beat the hell out of Lou, Armand can sadistically torture HUMAN!Daniel, the coven can gleefully kill Claudia & Madeleine (who literally did nothing), Armand can petulantly drive the mentally ill (Nicki & Louis) to suicide--but disenfranchised weak AF desperate HUMAN!Black Louis is "worse" than all of the vamps, cuz he was a pimp who tried navigating the crap hand he'd been dealt the most effective way he could? 🤨🤨🤨

What did Louis do as a human pimp that makes him so much "worse" as a person than Armand is? Since when does AMC/the show or Lou absolve himself of guilt for being a pimp OR a vampire? In Lou's eyes, evil is evil, and he doesn't give vampires a pass AT ALL--eff all the "biological imperatives" Rashid was simpering about. Since when are demonic serial killing cannibals given a pass in the IWTV Morality Olympics, over prostitution? Cuz prostitution & vampirism BOTH exploit human vulnerability & weakness & bodies, and by the show's logic, one is no better or worse than the other--ALL vampires on this show are COMPLICIT as predators feeding off the lives & miseries of humans. Santiago only used the stupid "vampires are monsters" excuse to justify his personally-motivated vendetta to kill Louis, dismissing Lou's experiences to absolve Lestat's flagrant abuse of power against the man he claimed to love whom he knew was weaker than him and thus intentionally "broke."

The whole point of show!Loumand's dynamic is right here:

ARMAND, the 400+ year old Coven Master, stalked & approached & invited & courted LOUIS. Louis never spoke or utilized his past as a pimp when they met. Armand knew Louis was afraid of him ("I thought he was going to kill me....I sensed his ancient power"), and he promised Louis (who'd suffered from SEVERE PTSD after the last older more powerful vampire broke every bone in his body), that he would never hurt Louis, "and I never have," LOL.

In ANY of Loumand's courtship, where does Louis having formerly been a pimp give him ANY advantage over Armand, or the coven? 🤔

Where does pimp!Louis factor in as the "gross" part of their meeting & courtship--when Lou explicitly told Armand & the whole coven that they were NOT companions, and that he had ZERO interest in Armand tryna RECRUIT Louis to join Armand's coven (*cough* CULT *cough*)? 🤔 Who's pimping whom in this situationship? 🤔

Esp. since Claudia's the one who was actually recruited, to try to lure LOUIS in as the one they REALLY wanted to join, so offended when Lou refused ("[Madeleine] must join or die."). They used the same Charles Manson-style cult tactics on Claudia AND Louis!

Rolin explicitly used Charles Manson music in 1x5, but y'all keep missing the links between Lestat & Armand's treatment of Louis & Claudia to talk about how Armand was groomed & abused--by WHOM?! Certainly not LOUIS! And here the tags go AGAIN tryna link Louis with Marius. 🤦‍♀️ (I cannot WAIT till y'all show-onlies actually see Marius in action, not just picking up crap from hearsay.)

Where is Louis the predator out to harm Armand? How is Armand the one being "grossly" threatened by Lou, pimp or otherwise? When did Louis rape Armand, or pimp him out, or "donate" him to someone else? For all Louis' claims that "he's mine" cuz Lou got to top someone who's not his Maker, how does Louis actually come out on top or benefit, being with Armand? 🤔

For all Armand's simpering about "Are you asking me or making me, Maitre?," where does Louis FORCE Armand to do ANYTHING? Louis states what he wants to do/happen (make Madeleine for Claudia; save Daniel from Armand killing him), and Lou gives Armand the CHOICE to do it it or not. Armand could've had the whole coven descend on Lou the night Lou made Madeleine (as we see in the movie, which clearly noticed the same thing)--instead, we learn that he was actually writing/rehearsing the Trial script the whole time jfc 💀💀💀. He could've snapped Daniel's neck, and what could crispety!Lou have done to stop him, hobbling around all burnt up? But he complies, cuz he'd already sabotaged Loustat's chance to get back together by not telling Lou that Les said he loved him; instead CHOOSING to stay with the man who literally just said he's bored & hates being with Armand & literally just tried to kill himself rather than be with Armand anymore--like WTF???? But ARMAND'S the one who's been in danger from Louis!? 🤣 THIS dude!?

OK, Lou was a pimp, but Armand was running the frikkin vampire MOB in Paris--a literal biker gang of Charles Manson sickos! An effing wet room full of offed "heretics and rule breakers" (inc NICKI, who was NEITHER--SUS!!!) buried in the frikkin walls of his torture-basement, but Lou's "worse" for being a HUMAN!hustler, when Armand's a whole cult-leading mobster his effing self!?

On top of the legit torture we see him do to HUMAN!Daniel, playing with his effing food worse than anything we saw Lestat pull in S1.

(x x x x x)

How does Lou having been a pimp protect him from Armand lying about "Banishment," or having his mind wiped for 77 years, or Armand going behind Lou's back to tear out Claudia's diary pages Lou didn't even know about, or Armand throwing Daniel (& Sam & the Talamasca) under the bus to keep gaslighting Lou about the script?

Where does Louis abuse Armand's trust, lying to control Armand's actions? When has Lou hobbled Armand's bodily autonomy, and the thing Armand can(not) physically do? When did Lou donate Armand to other people? Or act outside of Armand's boundaries/consent?)

The whole point of IWTV is to emphasize LOUIS' vulnerability, and how it's constantly exploited & abused by people more powerful than he is--from humans in NOLA & Romania/Eastern Europe, to vampires in Paris, and especially Lestat.

Armand knew immediately that Louis & Claudia were lying about Bruce being their Maker, cuz he's THE best vampire with the Mind Gift. He knew EVERYTHING, and told Louis to his face in 2x2 that Louis's a terrible liar who can't hide anything or keep secrets from him--just like the last older more powerful vampire read Louis' thoughts & used them to seduce him; "Come to me, Louis."

Armand & the whole coven were Europeans who'd never even met an American vamp before--but they knew Louis was a pimp from New Orleans with a whole failed sugar plantation--cuz they they read his mind; what Claudia explicitly called "invaded their thoughts." Santiago called them BOTH out in 2x3 (more subtly with Claudia but straight up explicitly with Louis, as someone whose mind they could all read way easier than hers).

It especially confuses me when show fans complain all about pimp!Louis being with Armand on the show; but make no noise about slaveowner!Louis being with Armand in the books? (Or they're against pedo!Marius being with Armand, but make no noise about pedo!Lestat being with Armand? Let alone Daniel (who, unlike Marius & Lestat, is NOT an Old World European vamp from a different time period with different morals/ethics), or any adult attracted to a 17 year old's body--including book!Louis?) People have shipped Loumand for decades, yet it's only once Lou's a pimp (amongst other things....) that people suddenly care about poor innocent Armand being abused by the evil thug jezebel who got Armand's daughter killed and lied to Armand about his Maker and allowed Armand to be tortured & humiliated by the public with his ankles slashed open & buried alive for over a MONTH so he couldn't escape? 🙄😒

The Vampire Armand is only ever beaten TWICE: by Santino & the Children of Satan in the books, and by Daniel on the show. That is IT. NO ONE else gets the jump on Armand, or gets the upper hand over him--he's not even one of the ones Rhoshamandes kidnaps! NO ONE effs with TVA, or effs TVA over--HE'S the boogeyman of the vampires preying on his own kind, not the other way around.

The sheer IRONY of Mr. "I Could Not Prevent It" Armand as a character is understanding cycles of violence.

You're missing the whole point of AR/RJ putting the former sex slave Armand in relationships with a slaveowner (book) or a pimp (show). It's about realizing how a former sex slave (kidnapped & trafficked overseas to be tortured so bad that his PTSD gave him amnesia) became a powerful vampire with THEE strongest Mind/Spell Gift powers, leading entire covens/cults purging ALL fledglings in their territories who resisted--thus perpetuating SYSTEMIC & INSTITUTIONALIZED ABUSE.

Armand used & abused Claudia's naivety & Louis' trust in him, cuz he lulls victims into a false sense of security before the trap springs open--"NO PAIN."

AR put Loumand together NOT to make a point about how "gross" it was that slaveowner!Louis was taking advantage of former sex slave Armand. It's about how effing ironic and SAD it is that Armand (the one who IMO experienced THE WORST horrors as a victim of abuse in all of TVC) was now the ONLY one in a position of power to PREVENT things that happened to him from happening to anyone else--and did NOTHING. Or rather: he made already bad situations even WORSE.

Armand weaponizes his past to destroy other peoples' futures, victimizing & harassing & abusing everyone as the Coven Master of that EFFED UP coven. He CLAIMS he cannot prevent bad things from happening, flashing 🥺 all day--only for us to find out that behind the scenes, this mofo was a master manipulator who gaslit & schemed against his lover Louis ("alright, I sold him out"), tricked & abused his frenemy Lestat, mutilated Claudia's body and hid the evidence (I PRAY that ghost!Claudia reveals that the Frankenstein scene from TVA happened), and psychologically tortured his human/fledgling Daniel.

Armand was originally intended to be the main villain of TVC, all the way up until the 3rd book, when AR softened Armand's edges & gave it to Akasha in QotD, and Rhosh in the PL Trilogy. ALL of AR's vamps are sympathetic villains, not cuz one is morally/ethically "better or worse" than the other--arguments have been made even to understand Rhoshamandes & Akasha's perspectives. YES, Armand had horrible things happen to him--but LOUIS is NEVER the one who does those horrible things to him, nor does he EVER benefit from Armand's past. Armand ALWAYS had the advantage over Louis, pimp or no. STOP overestimating the Maitre stupidness! AMC already told y'all what that was about!

But y'all pointedly isolate every other vamp from culpability & accountability under the thinly-veiled guise of caring so much about the freedom/autonomy of people's bodies, when really it only serves to spread hate & vitriol for Louis. All I'm seeing in this fandom is the "GROSS" inequity of how Louis is treated & talked about, versus everyone else, and it's fishy AF.

[nalyra-dreaming]

I keep thinking of the line 'to crush what you cannot own' and how it describes Armand's actions too - if he really did mean for Louis to die in Paris, which seems likely atp. Sacrificing Louis would punish Lestat and stabilize the coven ofc, but do you think it was also Armand ending the relationship on his own terms, once he'd realized Louis couldn't be controlled or 'owned'? Bc killing him was preferable to being abandoned? I know many think it was Loustat's love Madeleine felt in 2.06 (& it probably was!) but IMHO it wouldn't change much even if it was about Loumand. However much Louis theoretically loved Armand, he'd always love Lestat & Claudia more. Armand could never own him completely or be 100% assured of his loyalty & that was the issue. I keep seeing fans ask things like 'why did Armand do X if he loved Louis?' or 'why would they stay together if they weren't in love?' and tbh…I think some got too sucked in by Armand's 'beige pillow' persona lol. Because it's a fully calculated performance designed to disarm & control - there's a grain of truth to it, but it's still v strategic. IMHO 2.05 did a good job of peeling back the romantic facade, and the finale twist further compounded the truth, but maybe I'm off base there. Do you have any thoughts on this? (sorry if you've discussed this before, I can't keep track of the asks you get lol!)

(I don't blame you lol, it's a LOT of asks by now^^)

No, I have not talked about that aspect of it all :).

Sooooo, that "crushed" statement is rather interesting, but let me get to Armand first.

I think wrt Armand betraying Louis and Claudia there (and the show did frame it as the big betrayal, the Judas' Kiss), it has a lot to do with Armand being beyond bitter about Louis not loving him ... as he loved him.

Armand literally says that, in 2x05. Spells it out, when he talks about Claudia's love for Louis - and that it was not the same (level) as Lestat's - or his - love for Louis.

Interesting there is the tense, because it is past tense. "Loved".

I do think, (and that I said before^^), that Armand loved Louis, fell for Louis, in Paris.

Unfortunately though, Louis did not love him back the same way, and thus the betrayal happened (very simplified, but still) - and (Lestat's behavior and) Lestat saving Louis at the trial... changed the game again. Louis became something else to Armand, namely leverage, and a vessel. Something he could own and form, built on history with both Louis and Lestat.

Now the "crushed line".

THAT is a really interesting one. Because "crush" is used thrice in the show. First, when Daniel is served a dish in s1, imho rather unimportantly.

Second, when Santiago describes Louis' kill (the Dreamstat-kiss-kill) in the park:

"A mutilated body found in a park three nights ago. Crushed skull, puncture wounds on neck, chest and shoulder blade."

And third, when Lestat talks about what he did to Louis with the drop.

"I couldn't... persuade... him to return my affections. I couldn't force him to love me and so... I broke him. What is worse than that? Crushing what you cannot own?"

Now.... I always felt this monologue was a bit off, not because Lestat owns up there, or because of the words, but... "forcing Louis to love him"? I don't think it was about that between them. Given we know Armand influenced the tale, this... is one of those things that will be interesting to see IF they were influenced, but that just as a note, because yes - it describes Armand's actions, too. Sam said he left hints and crumbs, and maybe that is one, too.

The word "crush" connects Louis' desire and need for Lestat with Lestat's need and desire for Louis.

It is "crushing" for them both, a strength of emotion that almost cripples them, and makes them behave violently. This is no excuse(!) for any in-story actions, but the writers on this show are playwrights and you can be sure that they know what they're doing :))

There is a quote in the later books, which encapsulates this love for Louis (from that side at least) quite well:

"It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and enslaved Armand. Louis need have no consciousness of his own beauty, of his own obvious and natural charm."

I agree that Armand's beige pillow persona is parts a facade... but then again not, because Armand... is not the hurricane that is Lestat. Armand is old, and jaded, and disciplined. He lives by a strong ruleset, and that little "metronomic, my Rashid" that Louis throws at him in 1x05 makes its comeback in 2x05 when when he spells it out that he finds it boring that everything is so predictable.

Book canonically it is Daniel who changes Armand a bit (at least), who makes him break some rules and principles. And... given what we've seen so far? I think that will stay just the same. Or has already happened in parts^^.

[funtheysaid]

IWTV 2x01 Initial Thoughts (Stream Of Consciousness)

- That title card for Delainey felt very stage play to me (ahhh I adore the theatrical elements for this season)

- Ooh I love the idea that vamps can take on the emotions of whosever blood they’re drinking - it’s like the vampire equivalent of when werewolves can smell ppl’s emotions and fears through chemosignals (a la Teen Wolf iykyk)

- “Disregard” is the funniest shit ever 😂 Oldmaniel they could never make me hate you

- There’s a Real Rashid OMFG ??? Lol imagine he’s not actually Rashid and they pull one over on us again I’d fucking shit myself

- “Your love was in a box” OH MY GOD EAT HIM UP DANNY BOY

- OMG OMG LOUSTAT ITS HAPPENIGN ITS HAPPENING EVERYONE SHUT UP

- I MISS YOU TOO LESTAT

- “Quite fucked” 😏😏😏

- “mon amour” “mon cher” “love” IM GOING TO EXSANGUINATE MYSELF ISTG

- The singular finger on Louis’ chin 🥲 so delicate so soft so bad for my mental health

- I like Emilia

- “They are not used to seeing man with good looks” OKAY I know they’re just racists BUT she also wasn’t lying bc beautiful Louis is canon god bless you Jacob Anderson

- Lol Morgan a little fruity

- OOH memory is a monster! They be redoing scenes as Louis “fixes” his memories !!!! That’s gonna show up again for sure :))))

- “Stupid Halloween costume” Daniel Molloy the brat that you are (is okay, Armand likes brats) *cough cough*

- I’ve never seen someone *elegantly* close an iPad before. Armand, you have bewitched me.

- The fucking sexual tension between DM is stifling 🥵😶‍🌫️ Um if this is us “not getting Devil’s Minion” then I think imma be okay

- Claudia pushing the little racist boy 🤪🥹 we can’t help but to stan

- WTF AMC you can’t just jumpscare me with a Grace photograph :’)))

- “UP YOUR BUM” EXCUSE ME MORGAN I KNEW YOU WERE FRUITY BUT SIRRRR?

- so the makeup department really put their whole sfxussies into that decrepit ass abomination

- Louis: Alexa, play Mr. Steal Your Girl by Trey Songz

- Claudia calling Louis Daddy in S1: ☺️🍭👼 Claudia calling Louis Daddy in S2: 😖🤢😟

- I’m dubbing Louis “The Rat Prince”

- “If he can’t take you ballroom dancing and call you pretty” ICONIC.

- “the motherfucker” it’s on sight Bruce or Killer or whatever the fuck your name was 🤕🥊

- “her hand twitched like yours would” why was that line lowkey out of pocket. My mans has Parkinson’s Louis !!!!

- SHE DREAMS 😭 MY FUCKING GOD STOP MY EYES ARE GONNA BE PUFFY WHEN I WAKE UP TOMORROW

- that wasn’t even acting that was some REAL shit. Get Jacob Anderson his Emmy or Oscar or Tony or whatever the fuck I just need him to be awarded for his talent

- Daniel’s soft compassionate side: rare but that much more meaningful when it makes an appearance

- LOUIS you did not just do Emilia dirty like that TF!?! She helped you dude.

- “Human affairs. Their problem.” Not you listening to Lestat now of all times

- “Catfish with teeth” Louis can really read a bitch to filth can’t he?

- AHHH THERE ARE TWO OF THE FUCKERS 👹👹

- Oh shit he’s a kid okay I’m sorry for calling you an abomination earlier. That was mean.

- Woman vampire, you standing precariously close to that fire 👀

- Delainey’s facial expressions are the perfect blend of innocent and slightly unsettling

- OPP INTO THE FIRE SHE GOES rip 🔥

- What the hell is a bacon triptych am I just stupid don’t answer that

- Armand you ain’t beating the iPad kid allegations

- “It’s his drug” He said that with such malice. Is this a “he needed me but he needed drugs more” plot line???

- So Dubai Loumand is chilly frigid tepid frosty glacial

- Free feet? Okay im sorry

- “We can have him saying what happened next in no time” okay wait hold up why you making it sound like YOU don’t know what happened next and you need him to tell you???

- oh danny boy whistling while the couple he’s counseling walks in… is this a comedy or ?

- Daniel: yeah? 🤓 Armand: yeah 🫦

- “the mother of New Orleans” oh he misses home

- LMFAO Daniel interrupting Armand before he can start soliloquizing

- Louis and Claudia in a truck full of art which they belong in bc they too are pieces of art to me

- hard words. soft words. 🥺

- “a shit life beats no life” god damn this monologue feels like Louis is speaking directly to my soul

- “as long as you walk the earth I’ll never taste the fire” If this is foreshadowing I- I- I don’t know what I’ll do but it’s going to involve a baseball bat and a waffle iron and my head

- “it would be enough” pan to Lestat 💀 you can’t be fucking serious right now you just cannot

- okay it’s over and the teaser for the season just started playing and I just have to shout out the score bc damn if those violins don’t get me every god damn time

(Stutter) That’s all, folks! 🐷👋

[littlestsnicket]

more disparate iwtv thoughts

- the key to understanding loustat is that lestat falls for louis for the following reasons in this order: 1 louis’ capacity for violence, 2 louis being fucking gorgeous, and 3. louis having enough inner conflict and desire for self knowledge to occupy him for at least a dozen human lifetimes. lestat falls for louis because he thinks louis would make an excellent vampire, and nothing that happens over the intervening decades changes his mind. he believes he knows louis better than louis knows himself, and, narratively, on a number of points he is right. while this would be horrifying in real life, it’s extremely compelling in fiction

- i hate hate hate the idea that love isn’t real if it’s destructive. and i actually see that at least as much from entertainment journalists as fandom. lestat loves louis. armand loves louis. louis loves claudia. that doesn’t mean their relationships are good or positive or anything else. louis loves lestat. louis loved armand once, at least. (claudia loves louis but that’s not really relevant here.)

- relatedly cannot stop thinking about assad saying armand just wants to be loved. 100% correct. the fact that this desire is filtered through centuries of maladaptive coping mechanisms does not make it less true.

- louis has never used social media of any kind. he has a desktop computer to access email and databases of property and art. computers are for work. anything time sensitive gets filtered through armand or his staff.

- armand spends a lot of time on twitter and like 8chan searching for victims. this means he can code switch into perfect tech bro. daniel and lestat find this deeply unnerving. louis doesn’t spend enough time online to really understand what armand is doing. armand used to spend a lot of time on reddit, but even he could tell that the arguments he kept getting obsessed over were bad for him so he had to stop.

- lestat is a tumblr girly. he writes questionable sad poetry and posts artsy pictures. he occasionally gets really into fandom. he is a hannigram shipper. he has the worlds most eclectic music side blog.

- daniel is on twitter in a professional capacity, but he spends enough time there, both doing legitimate investigation and doom scrolling, to be relatively up on modern slang and what is trendy with the youth.

- anyway, my point is, even though lestat and especially armand are most comfortable expressing themselves in a way that is vaguely archaic, louis is the one most likely to need technology/modern phrasing explained to him. but also not that often, he does get out of the house and interacts with real people so he stays pretty up to date.

- i think claudia would entirely mirror louis in regard to computer usage. or maybe not. claudia would be an early internet adopter. she misses usenet and refuses to use any web 2.0. she wouldn’t even use google. she runs into armand on the darknet. mostly she and madeline would run an organic farm in the french countryside using corpses as fertilizer.

- louis and armand are both switches and into violent bloody sex. the fact that most of their sex since paris has been mutually unfulfilling is an achievement. (louis just… isn’t very good at stoping armand from turning sex into trauma reenactment time TM. louis doesn’t like it but armand is very insistent and louis is often lowkey angry at him to start with. they’re both at fault here.) (i’m not going to look up the exact quote but ‘half blank half apocalyptic, what’s it going to be this time? are you gonna want to lick my boots or cut my head off?’ says so so much about loumand.) (and ugh louis wanting predictability after lestat and that being his initial impression of armand and getting mr trauma gremlin instead…)

[iwtvdramacd18]

Top 5 loumand moments! ❤️

I've been saving this for some episodes coming out so let's do top 5 loumand moments as of halfway through S2. Rapid fire no actual order:

Hayes Code Dick. Nothing I want to say about this can be accurately put into words

2. Louis walking into his cage bedroom tightening his sash around his waist over his striped pajama bottoms to ask his husband dressed in a striped pajama shirt if he can see the pages they have removed of his daughter's private diary. This whole exchange really, the looks of longing, the eventual "I'll have Rashid reassemble them". The show very openly presenting us this idea of Louis' "soft power" vs Armand's material power right off the bat. And this tying in of love and also great unease.

3. Louis and Armand describing their first meeting. Obvious a lot of this episode is them putting on a performance of a happy married couple for Daniel but I love how there are moments where that genuine love they do have does come through and its so much quieter than walking in holding hands; there's also that always present melancholy at this point. I can't get over Louis staring at Armand like a deer in the headlights fully thinking he was gonna die and doing nothing and Armand saying "I will not harm you." and here in the present "And I never have." Ofc that theme of what it means to harm someone will continue on won't it.

4. He said oh there's room I said OH IM SURE--

5. actually I lied this is the top moment it has everything for me.... what if he showed you how nicely your head fit between his jaws then showed you his tender underbelly and you invited him upstairs to your room!!! and you asked if he was gonna kill you and he didn't answer!!!!!!

[lesbians4armand]

Electra Heart is an Armand album - a thesis

Some of you may remember my preacher's daughter thesis of a very similar nature. Well, I'm back on my bullshit :) Somewhat for @misslovelace who I think will appreciate this

(under a cut as it will be long)

Bubblegum Bitch

Not a song I have ever particularly associated with Armand, If I am honest, so not the strongest of starts, but the more I think, the more it comes together. It's a very Amadeo song, really.

"Got a figure like a pinup, got a figure like a doll, don't care if you think I'm dumb, I don't care at all"

So much of Armand's self worth is so directly tied to his outward appearance and perceived beauty, that he is so used to playing into it, he simply doesn't care as much any more, he stopped caring even when he was mortal.

"I'm the girl you'd die for"

More than you'd know it. Many have.

"I'll chew you up and I'll spit you out, cause that's what young love is all about"

Knowing his beauty and effect on other men, Amadeo played into it, intentionally seeking out men who desired his youth and beauty as a distraction, only to cast them off. Of course this ends badly for him in the books as it eventually leads to his murder.

Primadonna

This song I don't have a lyric breakdown for as I don't think it fits Armand lyric-for-lyric, but more as a whole, his deep desire to be loved, to be adored, to be given everything, then his misery hidden not so far from the surface beneath. And you know he'd do anything for what he wants, even if it ruins him.

Lies

The first of the darker songs of the album, and immediately a deeply Armand song. I find myself debating what period of his life it fits the best, and I keep coming back to book-loumand's relationship.

"You're never gonna love me, so what's the use?"

Armand wants so much to be loved, to be desired more that superficially. Everyone wants him for what they can take, nobody wants him for what he is. When he meets Louis, he thinks maybe he will be, and in a way he is, they do love each other, but still not as Armand wants. louis is cold, distant, yearning for Lestat, who also brushed him off. What's the use in playing this game?

"Why don't we just pretend? Lies, don't wanna know"

Veering back into show loumand, why don't they just pretend? Armand lies and manipulates so they can pretend that they are happy together and that Armand did not kill Louis daughter and push Lois to attempted suicide.

"Can't let you go, can't let you go"

What is says there, the only thing Armand dreads more than not being loved is being entirely alone. He can't let Louis go even through all of this, as he cannot be alone, he can't.

"I just want it to be perfect, to believe it's all been worth the fight"

Again, if Armand crafts it to his perfections, maybe he will convince himself he is alright as he is, that is is worth everything he is done and that was done to him.

Homewrecker

Again, not one I have much lyrical breakdown on I'm afraid, however it does give me a strong vibe of both Armand's last mortal years in Venice as Amadeo, and also his relationship with Lestat. This one I just have to mentally transmit into your mind. Do you get it?

Starring Role

Okayyy I have a lot for this one. One of the loumand songs of all time, to me. Lets go.

"You're hard to hug, tough to talk to, and I never fall asleep / when you're in my bed, all you give me is a heartbeat"

I am not a loumand bed death truther, however I am a loumand zero emotional intimacy truther. There were whips and chains of all sorts on their walls, but in bed they sit so far apart, barely speaking.

"I've turned into a statue, and it makes me feel depressed/ cause the only time you open up is when we get undressed"

Much the same as my previous comment, but the statue lyric reminds me so much of Armand as Rashid, so still and silent in the corner of the room during s1.

"You don't love me, big fucking deal / I'll never tell you how I feel / You don't love me, not a big deal, I'll never tell you how I feel"

Again and again, lack of emotional intimacy, lack of any communication, lack of real desire.

"It almost feels like a joke to play a part, when you are not a starring role in someone else's heart"

From what I have said, you may be surprised by this, but I do believe Louis and Armand loved each other, I do. I think they'll love each other again, this is part of the tragedy, the horror. The love was there. What I don't believe, is that Armand was the love of Louis' life, and he knew that. He was not the "starring role," so to say, as he wanted to be. He may have wanted Louis more than anyone in the world, but Louis didn't feel the same, though he did love Armand, it was not enough for him, it felt like a joke, a cruelty. This is of course what causes Armand betrayal in Paris. Tragedy after tragedy.

"Sometimes I ignore you, so I feel in control / Cause really I adore you, and I can't leave you alone"

Armand patterns of neglect and abuse to find power he wishes for as he feels it is the only way to have any power combined with his consistent ned to never be alone are a horrifying combination. This lyric describes perfectly to me Armand's treatment of Louis after his attempt in 1973, his neglect so Louis stayed weak and under his command because he would not let him leave him, in any way.

"You're like my dad, you'd get on well, I send my best regards from hell"

This is interesting, as I do not believe that Louis actually is like Marius in any way despite the "Maitre" power play the pair had happening. It is at its core, a badly communicated and deeply fucked up projection from Armand to be a victim again, to want Louis to be like Marius so that he feels loved again in the way he sees love, but also to explain why he does what he does to Louis. They would not get on well, but Armand wants them to. It's all projection.

"I wait for you to open up, to give yourself to me / But nothing's ever gonna give, I'll never set you free"

He waits and waits to be the one that Louis wants, truly wants not just out of spite, but realises it won't happen and resolves to simply bearing, and making sure Louis can't leave him anyway, trapping them both in this prison. He'll never set them free, he's thrown the key away. Until Daniel finds it, of course.

The State of Dreaming

I see TSoD as a very TDV-era Armand song, post-Lestat and pre-Louis. Of course, "my life is a play" is a very obvious lyric, but the entire vibe of the song as a dark dreamlike state of performance you cannot escape is so fitting for Armand's years in a theatre cult coven.

Power & Control

Lesmand. I don't have any more to say here. It's lesmand.

Living Dead

This one is too obvious I fear but I'll mention it anyway. He is. Literally.

Teen Idle

Ah, where to start. Every troubled teen's anthem, a very Armand (particularly bookmand) song.

"I wanna be a bottle blonde, I don't know why but I feel conned / I wnna be an idle teen, I wish I hadn't been so clean"

The blondeness here is metaphorical I think, metaphorical for a sort of beauty that is intention, wanted, enhanced, something that you create, not something cursed to you. Armand feels conned by his beauty, something desired and coveted making many things worse for him, more difficult, causing so much pain.

He wants to be an idle teen, to to have been perhaps. Not as he was, as Amadeo was, so... busy, with so much, so many. Or maybe he wished he had been more so, less clean, less quick, messier. Maybe that would have spared him pain too.

"I wanna stay inside all day, I want the world to go away"

Easy thing to say as a vampire, especially an eternally teenage one.

"I want blood, guts and chocolate cake, I want to be a real fake"

He wants indulgent things, vampiric and human, anything he can get.

"Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible"

Armand's religious backstory, what more can I say. His loss of faith and difficulties with it are laid so clear here.

"The pretty lies, the ugly truth"

What more is there to Armand?

"The day has come where I have died, only to find I've come alive"

A teenager, forever. Dead, perfect.

"I wanna be a virgin pure, a 21st Century whore / I want back my virginity, so I can feel infinity"

I've been sitting here for minutes thinking of what I can say about this but its all in the lyrics. You already know.

"I wanna drink until I ache, I wanna make a big mistake, I want blood guts and angel cake"

Drinking until he aches has a double meaning to me, both his desire for blood as a vampire and for alcohol as mortal. The big mistake is either seducing Lord Harlech, or wishing to be a vampire in the first place. Then of course, another desire for blood, this time with angel cake. He was always describes as an angel, not quite human any way anyone looked.

"Adolescence didn't make sense, a little loss of innocence, the ugly years of being a fool, ain't youth meant to be beautiful?"

This just sums up Amadeo. It does.

Valley of the Dolls

This is where I move heavy into HC material, especially the hc that Armand suffers from some form of dissociative disorder, making Armand, Amadeo and Arun/Andrei distinct alters. The lyrics "living with identities that do not belong to me," and "pick a personality for free, when you feel like nobody" fit this extraordinarily well.

Hypocrates

I see this song as a very good explanation of my interpretation of Armand and Marius's relationship. Very good.

"You're the lonely, one and only, body in the world / Who can make me, who can break me down into a young girl"

Marius is, in many ways, the only one who holds any power over Armand on a personal level, for so many reasons, but this just brings up the part where Armand describes himself as being afraid of Marius. He still makes him feel like a mortal boy in his service again.

"I know you only want to own me, and that's the kind of love you show me / You tell me one thing and do another, keep all your secrets undercover"

This just sums it up to me. He does just want to own him, that is the only love being shown.

Fear and Loathing

"I lived a lot of different lives / Been different people many times"

Armand is consistently whoever those around him want him to be, he has never truly been his own person. Every new person, every lover he asks the same thing he asks Louis "who am I?", he creates a new life in his death.

"I lived my life in bitterness / And filled my heart with emptiness"

Armand learned, especially from the Children of Darkness, to not find pleasure or goodness in anything, especially not himself. He does not value himself or others, he is nihilistic quite constantly.

"Not everyone is out to screw you over / Maybe, yeah, just maybe, they just want to get to know you"

One thing I believe is intrinsic to Armand and his relationships with others is his fundamental lack of trust in them. He does not trust that they won't hurt him, they won't leave him, s he hurts them or himself before they can, makes them leave before they can choose to, before they can grow bored or fed up with him. He doesn't trust that anyone has good intentions, that ever actually love him.

"Got different people inside my head / I wonder which one that they like best"

Again, see Valley of the Dolls. I do see Arun, Amadeo and Armand as separate identities fighting to be the "real" one in a bid to keep safe if he can make others like them the most.

"And when the time comes along and the lights run out / I know a light will burn on when they blow me out"

There is one thing that Armand does very well, and it is endure. This is about him enduring. He will always burn on.

"Don't wanna be completely faithless, completely faithless"

Faith and religion are so SO important to Armand as a character, his belief in a higher power either blessing him or cursing him, but he cannot function without. He wants so much to hold some faith in what has happened to him, what continues to happen, that it is supposed to be in some way. It's a guide for him, if nothing else.

(Okay here I am going to skip How To Be A Heartbreaker as I do think it is the one song that does not fit, though at the same time Ithink amadeo would have loved it so shout out)

Radioactive

"My heart is nuclear / Love is all that I fear"

Would Armand know love if he saw it, if he experienced it? Or would he think it another trick, a play to gain something as it has always been to him. He fears love as much as he craves it as I doubt he even understands it. But his heart, his love is a powerful thing, a dangerous thing.

Sex Yeah

"Nothing is provocative anymore, even for kids"

'No one though children innocent of sensuous pleasures' :/

"All my life I've tried to hide what history has given me"

The ideas of history are really really interesting in this sound wrt Armand because of how much of his history is informed by sexuality. It's at every turn, every fight, every moment of his past and it is his legacy in many ways, take the painting. But what if he could fight that, could hide it, be something more, reclaim his personhood without forfeiting his sexuality. Maybe he has the time to, and has seen the culture change in so many ways.

Buy The Stars

I have very similar feelings to Hypocrates with this song, and I think it's similar in meaning when thinking of Armand too. Essentially I see this song as a representation of love as possession, a sort of love Armand had with Marius, and how owning and giving is not loving or knowing someone.

E.V.O.L

Devil's Minion song. So DM. "It only takes two lonely people to fuck love up and make it evil / It only takes a drop of evil to fuck up two beautiful people"

[ghostpaynes]

Hey I love Loumand (not as much as other things but I do) but I think it's fucking weird we just seem to fall people wrong when they say Louis calling Armand Arun was weird.

Like the way it's framed is that Armand told Louis his trauma in a moment of trust and Louis went and used it against him.

There was no consent there.

Like I don't think Armand had that big of a problem with it but also if he did he probably just internalized it. He has been conditioned in certain ways that he just doesn't know how to communicate properly about it and just goes along with it.

It just feels like a lack of consent.

And yeah okay Armand probably started it but at the same time his thing did not directly involved using something from a time Louis was going threw trauma. Like as Arun he was abused and sa'd and that can't bring up good memories.

And this is not to hate on Louis and definitely not loumand because to me the issue is that to a degree they both loved each other but lacked the communication to speak in healthy ways.

Idk though if y'all wanna have a polite discussion feel free too

Edit to add guys yes I am aware Arun is his original name not the name that Marius gave him. I more in mind had the memories of what he went threw before meeting Marius which was also a very traumatic time

And listening to the comments changed what I saw anyways I'm just keeping this up for conversation and so maybe others can see and have their minds changed as well because y'all were polite and appreciated

[loustat-0]

I don't like Loumand either tbh. Probably because I feel that Louis is lying to himself too much when he is with Armand (especially in the show) especially about the righteous aspect of his personality. Also I do prefer Armand with Daniel in the books because given how fucked up Armand is/can be, I think Daniel is the only one who can cope with the shit show. (Also Show!Loumand is so sus to me. Like why are you so lovey dovey in front of Daniel but are at 1m from each other in your bed??)

I think Paris Loumand is gonna be very romantic in total different way . Nothing we saw in loustat we're gonna see in Loumand and that's actually what I was hoping for . I didn't want Louis & Armand have something Lestat and Louis had . The love is different . And I understand that . But yes in Dubai the love is more like an " act " I'm sure they love each other but they're not " in love " together anymore . It's bitter sweet memory when they talk about it . And yes it feel performative . But maybe That's also because their love was different & their love formed differently in all these years . BUT I'M DEFINITELY SURE DUBAI LOUIS ISN'T THE LOUIS OF PARIS HE'S ALSO NOT THE LOUIS OF NEW ORLEANS . He's so different . Almost so far from himself . The only thing he has accepted is his sexuality and his vamparism . His emotions are still so ambiguous to me about many things .

And about Armand and Daniel in the book I truly agree . Daniel was the only one who loved and accepted and wanted Armand for who he really was for his evilness and for many things . Not sure about how AMC version has played with their relationship but I hope at least Armand knows Daniel loved him and he didn't just want him for his blood . But yes If I have to prefer ships in TVC I would be loustat / Armandaniel / lesmand

[rapha-reads]

IWTV rewatch

Season 2 episode 1 [What Can The Damned Really Say to the Damned] - part 4/4

- And now... Mood shift, setting change, back to Dubai, 2022, and the 77 year-long lie. And lord oh lord, we jump right into it with the shot of the bedroom being a cell and Armand selling Louis' art without even telling him the works are up for sale. Greaaaat. This is gonna be fun.

[Louis] "'Could I see the pages we removed? Of Claudia's diaries?'

[Armand] 'We made an agreement.'

[Louis] 'I don't know what else is blurred or misremembered.'

[Armand] 'My name is in some of those pages.'

[Louis] 'I sit across from him and reckon with the knowledge I don't know what other misrememberings made into it. I won't share them with him but I need to read them again.'"

Brb, need to SCREAM. Oh, the control Armand us exercising over Louis... The way he micromanages every aspect of his life. The way Louis has to bargain for everything he wants, and the way he thanks (thanks!!!) Armand for every breadcrumb thrown his way. The way Armand cares more about his image, his reputation, his grip on Louis, than Louis' well-being and peace of soul and mind. And the way the scene is shot and designed, the bars behind the bed and the skyscraper settling, the lack of any colors and any homey furniture, the huge bed with an ocean separating them, contrasting with the comfy house and room of 1132 rue Royale, and how Lestat and Louis used to sleep entwined in each other's embrace... I will go mad.

- BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THE ENTRANCE HAND IN HAND, ARE THEY SERIOUS. Oh, this is too hilarious. And how they drop the hands as soon as they're seated, yeah, real convincing, fellas.

- Oh, Devil's Minion's crumb! Armand responding to Daniel by mimicking his "Yeah" and those big eyes looking so amused and fond at that old man. Couldn't care less about the Loumand, I'm here for the Devil's Minion. What a performance, Louis rubbing Armand's shoulder, lmao.

- Daniel shutting down Armand immediately is hilarious. "Sure, sire, you're on the record, but you still haven't made an appearance in the story so for now stfu and wait for your turn". No wonder Armand goes crazy about Daniel, that guy doesn't know how to be afraid. And second shoulder pat, Lou, hon... You're enjoying this, aren't you. You are enjoying the way Daniel puts Armand back in his place, something you haven't managed to do in years, despite what you both like to pretend.

- Oh, I love that piece of music! That one is "The Whole World Was Ready to Return" and it is gorgeous. It's played here, as Claudia and Louis go to Paris, and at the end, when Louis issues his threat/warning to the vampires in Dubai. Very thematic. The music in s2 is different from the music in s1, by the way. S1 soundtrack had very folk/blues undertones, New Orleans style, while s2 is much more orchestral/symphonic, Paris style. The music adapts itself to the setting, and I adore that. It gives so much more texture to the story.

- [Louis] "The war had turned off the lights, stripped its streets of their beauty, sent its avant-garde into exile. But now, the whole world was ready to return, to remake their lives. Pilgrims, on their hopeful way."

Nah, the avant-garde, at least artistic, was there, just, waaay underground or dangerously flirting with censorship and hidden meanings. In Paris itself during the war, there were several plays written and played against fascism while the Gestapo was patrolling the streets. Notably, though conflictingly, Jean Anouilh's famous "Antigone", in 1944, Josephine Baker singing and spying , as well as Sacha Guitry, who was arrested after the Liberation and accused of collaboration without any evidence, but who managed to save a lot of Jewish artists and personalities by playing double agent, or good ol' Sartre (who hilariously makes a cameo later on in the show) who writes a lot of stuff between '40 and' 44. Anyway. There's more but I ain't have time right now to do serious research. Back to Louis.

- [Louis] "'I wanna say something to you. I don't need to hear anything back I just need you to hear me. Hard words and soft words. The hard. Our life is shit. It's been shit. It is shit. It's gonna be shit again. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. No one's watching, no one cares. A shit life beats no life. But where we're going now we can't be running away again. Doesn't mean we forget what we saw. What she did in front of us. I see you going that way I'm gonna pull you back. I don't need that from you. As long as you walk the Earth, I'll never taste the fire, you understand me? We're going to find others like us. Aind if it ain't here, cos life is shit, or I fuck it up again, or you fuck it up, we'll go to the next place. We can't be the only good ones out there. Soft words. If you were the last vampire on Earth... it would be enough. It's you and me. Me and you. You and me. Me and you. You and me.'"

And my hallucination of your dead father.

Anyway that's his child, that's her parent.

Gotta give it to Louis tho, he doesn't lie. Embellishes, obfuscates, but lying, no. As long as Claudia's alive, he's not gonna try the sun. But if she dies... All bets are off.

Also Louis is right and hey, actually needed to hear that right now, thanks bae. Now someone needs to tell him back his own words, I think he needs to hear it back.

Episode insider:

Jacob talking about the heart full of sugar and how he spent the rest of the night on a sugar high is so adorable and hilarious when the part that comes next is Dreamstat. Also hey, "Dreamstat" was coined by Jacob himself, nice!

[Jacob] "Anne Rice's vampires are so human. This is kind of a departure from these sort of beautified, glamorous vampires. It's just really fun." - yeah, I like the glam vamp, but the monstrous vampire, a bit like Mike Flanagan does in Midnight Mass, is also a thrill.

Love Delainey saying she loved doing her stunts and all the physical stuff!

[Assad] "Armand wants to protect himself, but also wants to protect his relationship with Louis, what they have. He feels he has no choice except to come in, sharing the narrative with Louis." - yep. Protecting himself. Protecting what he has with Louis, even at the expanse of Louis' own will. Because what does Armand fear above all else? To be unloved. Not necessarily alone, like most vampires, but to be considered unlovable and unworthy of people's care. So if he can't be sure that people's feelings for him are genuine, he will orchestrate and manipulate them to tie them to himself. That's Armand's schtick.

season 1 masterpost

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

episode 2 | episode 3 | episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 6 | episode 7 | episode 8

[dreadfuldevotee]

very glad I follow so many loumand enthusiasts like you. there will always be idiots detracting from what they had together but louis & armand liked each other! that is a very important part of the story! they had intelligent conversations and clung together to escape loneliness the way all vampires do and tried their best to take care of each other despite being way, way too fucked up to even care for themselves.

Ha, thank you! It saddens me that I feel like im out here fighting demons over them, but not that much because I love talking about them. If Loumand has no fans, I am dead and there is no afterlife because I would be scratching my feelings out on them on all the walls in Rolin Jones's house.

And, yes! It's really easy to point out all the ways these two didn't mesh that I feel like we don't spend enough time talking about how they fall together in the first place!

Louis is trying to find what it means to be himself, now with Lestat seemingly dead and the growing distance between him and Claudia, and is attracted to Armand's allure. Their courtship is a lot more classically romantic in their long walks along the river and philosophical conversations over smokey Parisian backdrops. It's not really touched upon, but Armand is vastly educated (a grumbling acknowledgement of a rare MDR good move) and willing and capable of engaging with Louis in ways Lestat wasn't (Season 1 conflicts sprouting in no small amount out of Lestats unwillingness and inability to understand Race). Coming off that explosive dynamic of Loustat, Louis finds Armand as a more easeful experience. I think it certainly helps that even Claudia, judgemental of Louis' romanticisms, is unthreatened by Armand's advances on Louis until he quite literally puts his hands on her.

For Armand, Louis is a breath of fresh air. Once again- hating his job and the role he plays, Armand is so attracted to Louis' independence and connection to humanity. He's not only curious about Louis but also feels safe with him. Its easy to misunderstand the bench scene, but that moment is about Louis speaking to that scared child Armand revealed to him and saying "I am staying here with you, you aren't alone", and Armand's metaphorical sigh of relief that he can share this burden with anyone else. If i had to describe their relationship in one word, the answer is easily "Safety"

[nightcolorz]

so funny that people are only simping this hard for Louis because he tells us every single episode he's the saddest most tragic serial killer in the land. Literally seeing people with my own eyes say Louis has experienced trauma and loss Armand can never imagine under gifs of Louis making fun of human trafficking and the palazzo attack.

Like obviously Armand is a deranged bbgirl torturing and manipulating those men for love!! But people treat it like it's a 1v1 pvp whoever has the weakest finishing move is the Objective Innocent Victim, like abusive relationships between two mass murderers aren't more complex than numerically tallying who you think has the most strength points at any given moment. like louis has barely been concealing his disdain for armand since they met. He gives armand NOTHING. all he does is recreate every shitty abusive act he's ever complained about other people doing to him and doing them to armand.

swear the only thing that man thinks about when armand shares his tragic backstory is embarrassment at finding out that the entire time he was bragging about how everyone in the avant-garde movement tooootally like his art more than Picasso, Armand had paintings in the louvre.

Cw iwtv typical sexual abuse talk and spoilers for iwtv s2

ur so right literally say that shit 🙏‼️ I love Louis and I honestly find it so gross ?? How some people act like Louis is only capable of being objectively the exclusive victim in any given situation or relationship. like it’s fucking weird that someone would reduce him so exclusively to victimhood bcus he was in an abusive relationship to point where theyd insist Louis is not capable of causing harm or being a complex flawed person beyond his victim hood. It takes away his agency and reduces everything that is interesting about his character to one dimensional victim which like, why would u die on that hill as someone who loves Louis’s character?? It’s once again, fucking weird. Louis has been presented to us from the beginning as capable of violence cruelty and selfishness, and him being abused by lestat doesn’t take away his capability of being cruel to Armand 💀 I think that some people were so attached to their assumption pre s2 that Armand would be lestat part 2 who is even more abusive that they refuse to accept or embrace the much more complex reality. Loumand is toxic but very much mutually so, there has been thus far nothing to suggest that Armand is forcing Louis to be with him or abusing him in anyway akin to how lestat abused Louis. Jacob Anderson has even spoken about how louis and Armand are mutually toxic and louis mistreats Armand 😭and louis being a fucked up person is like, smth I wouldn’t understand why anybody would want to deny, it’s very overt. And dying on the hill of “Louis is never ever bad” is like, very weird to me especially since Louis is like canonically capable of being sexually exploitative (literally a pimp) and violent and selfish. Like I love Louis!! In all his horribleness 🙏 and you can too believe me 😭

it’s also fucking weird to insist that Armand is always 100% being manipulative and abusive in everything he does towards Louis bcus, especially in the case of him talking about his trauma, it makes some rlly uncomfortable and gross implications?! Like, I’m not here to say that Armand is the most ideal partner of all time who does no wrong 💀 obviously, he’s pretty mf gaslighty and horrible and violent, but suggesting that what is presented non ambiguously as Armand being vulnerable with Louis about his sexual abuse trauma because louis wanted to know the real him is definitely abuse and manipulation is…like fucked up? 😭 like?? The jump to “oh this character I don’t like is talking about being sexually abused to his partner after having a conversation about how they aren’t vulnerable enough with each other, yes this is Manipulative” is genuinely kind of fucking insane I’m sorry 😭🙏 what Armand has been through is incredibly horrific and noticeably difficult for him to talk about and the assumption that since everything is black and white and Armand is bad he must be talking about this with evil intent is dumb and it’s ignorant. Like yes abuse victim talking about his abuse to his partner who explicitly asked for him to share that, wow that is so emotionally manipulative of him. What a hill to die on 🙏I hope u guys who think like this don’t think this way about ur friends when they vent to u cuz omg 😭

I guess my point with this is that I’ve noticed a lot of people in their refusal to interpret Louis as anything but unambiguously in the right all the time r being like unintentionally offensive and ignorant in a way that’s wild to me 😭 Like guuuys, you can love Louis and talk about how his relationship with Armand is bad for him and Armand harms him without insisting that Louis mockingly telling Armand that the man who groomed and raped him as a child “made him into a little bitch” was justified 😭. Also, friendly reminder that Louis’s daughter was raped and abused in a similar way that Armand was, which rlly goes to show imo how fucked up the way he treats Armand’s sexual abuse is. Like if he is so willing to say shit like that to Armand the moment they have an argument I imagine that his empathy for Claudia does not extend so far. He still was a pimp lol 🙏 and it’s been pretty overtly portrayed time and time again that living a good portion of his life having a position of power where he sexually exploits women for money has limited Louis’s perspective and capabilities for empathy for the people who have been sexually abused in his life 🙏 and guess what!! 😋 this is the horrible abusive murderer show, u can still love Louis (I do) while knowing he is horrible 🙏

thanks sm for the ask ‼️