#and lestat is NOT obsessed w armand. but that's about it

[oldwitchsleep]

i think they should bring back the "22 episode series with multiple stupid filler episodes" tv format specifically for iwtv

[kanjichris]

"why don't you want him to know how much you love him?" "that's a little personal. he knows." "uh-huh."

[bl0rbohandbag]

so i am confusion

i never read the books but people have said lestat rejected armand, so was this entire thing of armand telling daniel of his love affair with lestat an actual change they made to the story or was it just unreliable narrator armand narrating his original lestat x armand uwu angsty!! be nice!! no flame!! fanfiction that he has also told louis???

[manmilkers]

We are supposed to believe, Armand, capable of controlling a theatre of +100 people without breaking a sweat or any visible strain, stopping time, mind wiping other vamps, able to withstand sunlight, wasn't capable of stopping Santiago, who is removing what Armand's perceives as his one obstacle to Louis, Claudia, and Madeline, a vampire Armand did not want made? But Lestat, who goes off script to align himself with the accused and speak in the defendants favor and who cannot control a dozen inebriated soldiers without bursting blood vessels and bleeding from the ears and not being able to stand upright after and is +2 centuries younger/less powerful than their leader had the more active role in the orchestrating/controlling the lynch mob- trial? There is an obvious difference in power here that belies the narrative being spun as well as onscreen actions being taken by each of them, that Lestat showed up for vengeance and Armand “could not prevent it” 🙄, as well as a disparity in what we know these characters motivations are. Both of these people have an obvious pattern of taking fairly extreme measures when they perceive Louis as spurning them for someone/thing else or being more taken with another. Only one of them has ever forcibly forbade Claudia from leaving Louis and the other had control of the coven that killed her.

[frigidwife]

when u said 'they want armand to be lestat' it floored me tbh, i never thought of it that way. bc armand stans are obsessed w/ framing him as lestat's morally superior narrative counterpart & i didn't twig that they were ironically upset bc the writers gave him a brand of bullshit distinct from lestat's, but there u go! obviously lestans are just as bad wrt peddling idiotic 'lesser of evils' rhetoric, but w/ armand some folks latched onto him specifically bc he was Not lestat & crafted a fantasy version of him from the ground up on the basis of how very Not-lestat he was (which made him being an abuser extra awkward bc they had to willfully unlearn critical thinking before our eyes & resort to textbook lioncourt abuse apologia to justify themselves w/out a hint of irony.) & sure…most of us cooked up self-indulgent theories ahead of s2 that got proven wrong, i did it too, but some got so drunk on headcanon they couldn't engage w/ the text anymore, so i figured that's why they perceived the ep8 reveal as more of a rug-pull than it actually was. ngl i still kinda think that. but ur right, they'd probably be cool abt armand lynching claudia if was a grand scheme to 'keep louis all to himself' bc the scale of his abuse matters less to them than the motive behind it. louis being flat-out disposable to him was a dealbreaker bc it couldn't be romanticized. & that's why they felt so inordinately cheated when lestat saved louis, complaining it was a cheap redemptive act on the writers' part, when it was actually so clear that he & armand were both acting in line w/ their own selfish needs as ever. as u said, neither one is more noble or moral than the other, they just have different priorities & their choices reflect that. anyways i'll stop ranting now, sorry for the lengthiness, this one really ran away w/ me!

No exactly exactly!!! agree w everything u said here Love how u put that last bit about neither of them being more noble or moral just having different selfish needs. and armand's are not particular to louis. and same i was coping hard until ep 4 like i literally . can find the texts of me being like "i think louis does like him though..." 12 hours later "nevermind you were right." bc i .. processed the show...and it is actually moree interesting like if BOTH lestat and armand had the same motives and priorities it would be a little repetitive. but armand is his own unique horror. which is also a very blasé horror!! and structuring it this way where the "love triangle" is not actually be a meaningful triangle at all is so Gothic Romance like Linton is not seriously on the same plane as heathcliff in cathy's mind. St john is not on par w rochester. and rochester is not the more benevolent lovely option but st john. IS BORING.

[claudiablogger]

i love your takes on armand,he gives the ick but it’s fascinating at the same time lol what is your take on loumand from armand side? do you think he genuinely liked louis at some point?! it was all about his obsession with lestat? why he wanted to keep him so bad,again,only bc of lestat(i hope not tbh)? did he love him? idk after the last two episodes i bounce so much with this!!

thank youuu everyone loves an evil man until they get one and suddenly he's their canceled wife. or a doe eyed twink. or an overgrown teenager. anything but the actually interesting version of himself presented in the source material. but i digress imo armand absolutely loves louis he's so. his hunger is bottomless and he pours all of it into louis and by god will he ensure louis takes it. without complaint too we wouldn't want to get hysterical now would we dear not in this already fragile state. anyway i do think the choices armand makes in no pain are incredible (scarily straightforward) foreshadowing for the latter half of s2. like base conditions and consequences 1. he wants a relationship with louis on his own terms (on coven terms he set) or not at all; 2. he expects louis to make the necessary unquestioning sacrifices for acceptance and for their romance--first his freedom, then claudia; 3. and in the absence of this sacrifice he kills him/possesses him completely when that fails--e3 ends with armand deciding not to kill him but instead have sex with him. and the trial's ordeal ends with their eternal companionship built on armand's lie . othello had to kill desdemona bc if she could betray her father to marry him she could betray him to sleep w someone else etc it's all about making sure the wife knows her place

in dubai he's definitely a hundred percent in love w louis + having been shown their bedroom i don't subscribe to the bed death theories. but imo louis doesn't have the breadth of choice to ever meaningfully reciprocate. his love is a small box....it's all carefully curated to ensure he appears louis' only option and his best chance at enduring vampirism + the sickness of living without claudia. in his mind he keeps louis because he loves louis. he keeps louis because he wants complete control over his own illusion of servitude. he keeps louis bc he's earned the right to louis + his companionship

i do genuinely think his obsession w lestat is different entirely; armand respects lestat too much to ever love him the way he loves louis. man to man lmao.....he knows lestat can't be possessed the way louis can and his envy is only amplified by louis' love for him. i also do think in his eyes he just vibes w louis better (while in her eyes well. armand voice your wife is counting down your thrusts) while his relationship with lestat 1. was primarily antagonistic 2. was edited to fit the narrative of his powerlessness + being wronged by him in order to appeal to louis' sympathies 3. eventually became about louis' love and louis' choices . yay

[vincentpriceofficial]

My interpretation of Lestat and Armand’s relationship is that they are foils who, on some semi-conscious level, are aware of being foils — experience some level of “recognition of self through the other” whenever they encounter each other and act accordingly. Particularly they’re both people who NEED to be in relationship with others, need attention and recognition from people around them to understand themselves. To some degree, need to be the center of attention, need someone else to be obsessed with them to feel like they have any worth. And that’s the problem right? We can’t BOTH be the recipient of everybody’s love and adoration! This coven isn’t big enough for the both of us etc

And I actually have kind of a different read on Armand’s desire to make Lestat love him than a lot of people I see talking about it. I don’t really think that is rooted in like, organic infatuation and desire for Lestat on Armand’s part. I think Armand experiences the same “kill your double” impulse that Lestat does when they first meet, it’s just that Armand’s weapons of choice and of necessity are manipulation and seduction. He literally can’t settle things w brute force like Lestat can because he’s physically small. So I think Armand’s attempts to make Lestat fall in love with him, catastrophic failures that they are, are Armand’s attempts to neutralize a threat and get control over the situation. It’s the only method of wresting control and power out of an interpersonal dynamic that has EVER worked for him

[llycaons]

welp. onwards to ep4. claudia is going to go bonkers huh. p1

oh my god someone put her out of her misery. save her or kill her or something idk

this doesn't seem like the aesthetics the show is going for tho? have her do a murder child thing man idk. it's supposed to be a horror show innit

OH I see

oh this BITCH. can't even admit how much it fucked with her head even now

oh my god I thought this was an evil nightmare but this is LITERALLY what people were dressing up as

GOOD FOR YOU, CLAUDIA! TELL HIM

this is literally psychological abuse. fuck armand for this for REAL. why is he so obsessed w the theater and WHY was louis so lax about standing up for her!!!

HA!

wow ben daniel's is such a good actor. he really got louis's voice down so well.

GET HIM LOUIS!!!!!!

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!! okay I take back what I said about armand not being too bad like he's not as bad as lestat obviously but SOME fuckery is going on here and we just saw how he mentally torments people so??? wtf??? did he question daniel or torture him and then kill someone??? or something???? tf????

aww this is a little gay. I want so badly for claudia to have a little genuine romance and not have it end badly

he's actually quite funny here. EATING it???

yeah like when he's harmless this kind of arrogance can be kind of funny and even charming. usually he's not harmless tho

oof madeline fucked a nazi...like sure the circumstances were what they were but. girl fucked a nazi

[blueiight]

Fiery ass ask about Armand

it grinds my gears when ppl infantilize & expect him to have a very cut and dry relationship w his maker w/ not nearly of the same sorts of emotional beats and torment that louis or any other vampire experiences [or is ever in pursuit of from] their progenitor. like..

[my book epubs old as shit thats why theyre so variant, soz.]

armand does not have the convenient view of his maker that people want him to have. hes terrified yet he craves his adoration. i think some of armand’s earlier obsession + the foundation of his fixation w lestat has to do tce w/ the belief he had that marius was dead/TKOed for hundreds of years. lestat was the closest who he’d met that understood marius, or offered some of the same answers marius offered him. u can see him in tvl so cloying, haunting, begging lestat for answers to the point that gabrielle even has to step in and say lestat is not marius + cannot provide these answers ur looking for. idk how much unpop or pop this is but i just find the fan response to armand’s trauma so uniquely condescending… catharsis and ‘surviving’ /making do with the incredibly tragic lot u have been dealt looks different for every vampire, and armand shouldnt be an exception or have the merits of his arc be simplified on screen.. i think they could extrapolate a lot from armand’s arc: why he fixates so on louis[+ lestat] his relationships with bianca, benjamin, sybelle , santino + what they all once represented to armand in his past long gone, especially considering show armand is older. if a teenage armand lived such a robust inner life, who knows what a 20 something armand got up to before being turned? theres a lot to get up to that ppl r quite unwilling to tackle bc they just want armand’s catharsis, his arc to go one way [or revolve around charas theyre more familiar with? idk..]

+ another opinion(tm) is that making show armand operate under fundamentalist religious precepts that were created 400 years into his existence is some sort of ism somehow.. he played Operation and Human Centipede w claudia’s body & eating humans left n right alone gotta violate every religious code out there.. all of these vc vamps r hypocrites& have complex relationships to the faith they were raised in i dont think show armand should lose those conflicts he had with god or seeing himself as the devil [perhaps as a djinn now] just bc hes muslim+ not familiar to christian / christian raised fans. i think part of the motivation for making show armand muslim + a man of color outside of zaman himself or the reality of child labor laws was also bc book armand comes from this undefined, rather western conception of a ‘foreign east’ land, and tryna shoehorn him back into this modern western conception of the ‘foreign east’ by making him such a fundamentalist w his faith just bc hes muslim is just as regressive? i have more trust in the showrunners than the fans lol

[askaniritual]

fully losing it at lestat breaking up w louis and immediately running to armand talking about how hot his ex is begging for a single crumb of rebound pussy and armand proceeds to

kill lestats daughter

steal his boyfriend

throw him off a cliff and break every bone in his body

and when lestat like crawls back to new orleans to go live in his depression cave for a million years armand STILL needs to show up and be like “i did all this because you showed up and you wanted my body but you didn’t want ME”. literally obsessed. go off king. lestat thinks he’s the craziest bitch in the room and that’s because he keeps forgetting about you

[elovessomanythings]

i really do not want some cameo to drop for couple of episodes treated as loml then dissappear forever, never to be mentioned, let's go back to our old flame thing. Feels lazy to me. Bonding characters through attraction and feelings are so easy, there can be many different sides to emotional conflicts and relationships then flaming flings.

Lesmand's relationship is so interesting for example it has so many aspects, push and pull to itself. Well written and always intriguing.

Considering how they developed Louis & Armand's relationship in different decades w different feelings and motives, already hinted Armand's endless obsession w Lestat I don't think there is anything to worry about relationships that do have depth and flavors of their own. Show seems to be handling them well.

i'm a loustat enjoyer myself, but i need to see lestat being passed around like a blunt by his love interests in the forthcoming season

[claudiablogger]

hi so what do you think about people wanting claudia to return as a similar hallucination-ish type of a thing as dreamstat on s2?

hi laura i think it's so interesting and well ghost! claudia is real to me.

on a personal level she appeals to me in a way dreamstat never will bc she's just so much more INTERESTING + her life was cruelly short even for a mortal.

there's so much more that can be done for her character as opposed to dreamstat who was clearly a ticking time bomb thematically, for all that the reveal he's stayed w louis all these years even in the penthouse took my breath away. dreamstat was an ending that louis had to let linger bc he never got closure. claudia is the opposite--a character whose self chosen independent vampire beginning w her companion met a horrific death. she'd barely gotten the ball of life rolling on her own

narratively i do feel like it was hinted at with her saying she's going to haunt them all even if there isnt an afterlife + how vamps are notoriously hard to kill + the way she's the cornerstone of louis' journey and interview !! the show so far was about him coming to terms with imo not her death but her life and how she saw it--putting his failure in perspective and extending to their relationship the grace he needed to heal. embracing life, embracing the rage and injustice of her murder instead of trying to quell how he feels and sitting only in guilt without truly finding a spot in his heart for the heaviness of grief. only possible without armand, of course; in the same vein of acceptance, this time of the choice of death, paul's portrait could only be hung up after closure w lestat

given s2 ends with loustat reunion solidifying their bond over claudia forever and the way they jointly cannot get her out of their minds--it only follows that the inciting incident of the book spotlights the ever deepening hollow of claudia's place in the present that never was filled with her death. perfect timing for ghost claudia

delainey hayles hasn't been listed as a member of the s3 cast (yet?) but given it's an ensemble cast again it would totally make sense for her to return and i'm hoping praying she does please god

also ghost claudia brings to mind this fic (made myself mythical, tried to be real) centering that very concept; i've been obsessed

[monstersinthecosmos]

Hi. I hope you're having a good day! So quick question. I'm making a list of objects a vampire would have in their bedroom. It's for a sort of project. Could help by giving me some more ideas of objects, furniture, etc?

I THINK THIS HEAVILY DEPENDS ON THE VAMPIRE ITSELF, AND YOU MIGHT NEED TO TAKE IT ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS. Like, using VC dudes as an example? Lestat strikes me as a person who would have a hodgepodge of different time periods and art styles because he’s sentimental and fascinated by dumb shit. So I imagine a basic foundation/primer to the room as being set in his chosen time period or favorite style at any given moment (ie: late 18th Century ornate heavy antique w/ Victorian patterns everywhere vs. clean chic modern minimal), but with the most random bullshit sprinkled in over the years after countless trips to Walmart and IKEA. He does go on at length about how he redid the Rue Royale flat, and he talks a lot about his desk and stuff, but that strikes me as a singular project that he threw money at (also that he did to impress Louis anyway), and that was like 20 years ago. So I just always picture weird little shit sneaking in over the course of time to muddle the vibe, like:

I imagine any time he gets a new place that he makes it really pristine and beautiful and stylish but over the years he’s constantly seduced by random garbage and winds up totally cluttering his space because needs to have All the Things. 

Louis says to him in IWTV “But you must have all the things you never had of life and make of immortality a junk shop in which both of us become grotesque” which heavily weighs on my opinion here LOL. As well as this. And this.

Whereas someone like Marius strikes me as being obsessed with order and aesthetic and would go out of his way for his room to be visually pleasing and perfect at any time, and would just redesign the whole room if he was feeling a new style. Like

Then Louis probably only needs a bedroom as a reading room and between Lestat and Armand I’m sure they’ve both, at various points, tried to impress him with super beautiful rooms that fell to ruin because he isn’t interested in that stuff. If it was up to him he’d probably just be like

But in reality there’s probably SOME semblance of order if he’s gonna be around others like

As far as objects go. Most of the VC vampires sleep in a separate lair, so bedrooms are kinda like quiet chillout spaces. I mostly think of them as being reading rooms. They’re also totally into creature comforts so. Basically you’re gonna need

Super comfy fluffy bed to read in

Probably a little sitting area

TV and stuff

Bookshelves

Dressers/Wardrobes whatever. Lestat probably just uses an entire adjoining room as a closet. 

Writing desk cause these motherfuckers are obsessed with talking about themselves 

Of course, if they’re vampires who actually sleep in their beds you’d have to be sure the rooms are light-tight during the daytime, so you’d also have to have heavy drapes/shutters. 

And just, lots of artwork! Vampires love that shit. 

BUT YEAH I think this depends a lot on the vampire lore (I went to VC as a go-to cause it’s most familiar to me) and depends on the vampire itself. Like some vampires (Lestat) want to be all fancy and decadent and throw themselves dramatically across the velvet coverlet, other vampires are happy to have a more spartan reading/writing space (David or Louis), others are gonna just dig themselves holes in the ground and probably don’t even have a bedroom (Gabrielle and probably Mael lol). 

Anyway lmao I saw a lot of hilarious potential vampire bedrooms during my google searching just now, it was wild. This might be a topic we need to return to. 

[blueiight]

🔥 the vc books

the racist tropes in them is my #1 biggest issue & the most poorly wrote aspects of them all.. unresolved plot threads, freudian creepy incestuous undertones is part & parcel for the genre. and anne rice’s absurdity is almost enjoyable / self aware at times. & i think the incestuous / gendered dynamics r actually handled w a bit more nuance than any of wdf this series posits on race. i am slogging thru a reread bc hearing about how lestat “didnt trust human slaves” & lewis pontificating on the nature of black ppl in captivity he declares his property v. free black ppl makes me want to gouge my eyes out. by the time i get to poor benji i will self immolate and this blog will no longer exist. + the pseudohistorical interest in the roman empire& egyptology 101 knowledge off 99 cent bookstores is cutenall but placed in the wider context of this fangirling over the antebellum period it becomes troubling…seriously need a close study on rice’s obsession w ‘bloods’ of races or w/e ‘mixing’ and the ‘african’ being ‘cleansed’ by euro/other ‘admixture’ it gets weird + tiring to read. the fandom’s greater refusal to even acknowledge, much less subvert these racialist aspects [in fact, even reinforcing them in the fanon perception of armand’s backstory] before during & even after the amc series by n large is why i could never bring myself to engage w them until the show came out, not sorry. n its not cuz i think u can be a ‘good’ owner i want a vc rewrite where the european investor in slavery creates the american slave owner + theyre parasites to black flesh. cuz being this regressive about race even in the 70s knowing all the advances around the world at the time w race is just inexcusable. im forever grateful for the modern show adaptation for being unafraid to tackle this tho.

[blueiight]

So scenarios:

One of the iwtv vampires becomes absolutely psychosexually obsessed with you. Which one do you think would it be?

One of the iwtv HAS to turn you. You will be turned. Which one would you prefer to turn you?

One of the iwtv HAS to kill you. You will be bitten and drained. Which one would you prefer to drain you of your lifeblood?

I think I know my answer for these but I wanna know yours first. (Sorry if you’ve been asked this or talked about this already before)

ive never actually been asked or talked about this before awww this is cute. thank u! im curious to think what u would say or thought id say? well if im constraining this to only characters shown in the modern show so far well. [got an ask saying u limited this to lou mand or les! sorry. broke ur rules here a bit but ill cover ur name np]

1) i dont think im that cool enough to be psychosexually obsessed w/ but what ppl like about me & based on the types of crazies i attracted in the past im afraid itd be armand lol. but if we’re talking whole vc world i want pandora or gabi even tho thats impossible. 🤗 love a sexy evil old bitty.

2) considering louis’s fledglings were flops [tho dubious/almost no fault of his own in maddy’s case] and armand’s [outside of dan maybe] was flops too [idgaf bout no rhosmanansjdjde wdf.] id want lestat to turn me. id hop in the sun the next day nmw turned me cuz #hellnaw. talamasca or witch me 👆🏾 i have relatives who mess w the witch doctor / were witch doctors themselves so better that than vampire for me

3) Louissss pls come eat me😉😘😫 ik jacob anderson said lou dont eat off black ppl but can he make an exemption for this one pls? ik he a good eater. i wouldnt mind any 3 eating me cuz im a whore.

[blueiight]

Do you think they're combining some aspects of devils minion into louis/armand too? iirc armand monitoring/controlling louis's life [w/ or w/o consent who knows] the way he does in the show is not anywhere in book canon right, like he just follows louis around for decades waiting for a response like sad puppy, but it is very similar to what he does to daniel.

id argue that what armand does to louis in the books [controls louis's mind & makes him turn madeline, kills both claudia & madeline, lets louis burn down the theater & has louis live under the horror/ambiguity of believing or not ever truly getting an answer if to armand, louis is just as disposable to him as the theatres des vampires, supplemented more by the fact that armand didnt even want really to have the theater, he had the theater so he could find some semblance of connection to his maker's love for art. so armand isnt rly pathetically following louis so much as he is a looming presence over him, demanding that louis gives him the 'past louis' or w/e in louis armand once saw that drove him to fall so quickly in love. i think armand's obsession w lestat has more to do w how much lestat reminds him of marius than it does w/ louis , where what armand loves about louis as he admits in later books is how human his emotionality was, and how easy to adore/abandon louis was but thats for another time] is terrifying enough and controlling as is but i do think some of armand's obsessive ways shown in the devil's minion chap of qotd could be supplemented into his dynamic w/ lou and daniel. cuz again much of what armand loves of daniel is that daniel is his glimpse in the present, to mortality, his 'mentor' of sorts to the present age as armand is daniel's mentor to vampirism. maybe amc armand could be louis's mentor into vampirism, and as we see the arrangement in dubai relies on these similar power plays as armandaniel did in qotd w/ louis playing the role of the granmere of the house& armand playing the role of the dutiful rashid before shedding his skin , but idt louis can offer the specific glimpse into mortality, so close to death and life that dan offers armand... so i do think w/ lou n dan's relationships w armand there may be elements syncretized w/ qotd/og iwtv that dont shaft lou chara , which could play a part into why AxL is still together in the modern age & offer an elaboration on what exactly happened in sanfran in the show vers lol.