#armand needs something to love

[deviledminion]

ok but what if the season finale delivers louis & armand’s divorce, louis angry with daniel for pushing too hard, louis waltzing into the night, leaving daniel with armand. daniel is a bit dazed by the vampire dramatics and pyrotechnics, and he really thinks he should be going, only now armand is laser-focused on…him. on daniel alone. “you’re mine, beautiful boy,” armand tells him, and daniel thinks he’s heard those words before. armand holds onto him like he did in the 70s, a visceral shock to daniel’s system. and he closes his eyes and feels like he’s shifting back and forth through time, the only constant being wrapped in armand’s arms. and armand says, “are you ready for our lessons to finally begin?”

[wanderinggoddess]

Judas's Betrayal

[winepresswrath]

Louis being so unbothered about how Lestat could have at any moment hopped off their misery train to run away to Paris and let Armand drink his bath water is perhaps the meanest he's ever been to Armand. He's more threatened by Antoinette. Barely Balthasar for real.

[eyestrain-addict]

Every time I start thinking about how we don't know who louis truly is because he doesn't even know who he truly is, I go a little more insane.

[nashvillethotchicken]

Thinking about Lestat seeing Louis’s eating patterns as a waste of his gift/himself while Armand gives Louis food that he literally can not enjoy or digest just so he has something on his stomach

[dxxtruction]

Not to psychoanalyze (Yes, to do that), but given Armand's history, his only preconception of what love is, is to view it through pure desire. Love - and more broadly accurate, his life purpose for like half a millenia - as only he's ever known it, has only been experienced through transactional wish-fulfillment fantasies, of which he was the one typically sought after to complete such an exchange. And so naturally, in his own seeking, he replicates it. Though to some degree he also replicates the fantastical existence of fictional romances to compensate.

This lack of true experience of love without desire or fantasy, making his always unfilled 'objet petit a' - his object of desire - (a partner he desires a particular love from but does not receive to his fulfillment) - the catalyst for believing there is no other form of love to be had. That he can simply love the person, and be altruistic to their personhood, without them filling a role or desire for him, just would never occur. He's egotistical and overly pragmatic towards others by the fault of formative experiences denying him his own personhood. In being groomed into the object of desire, he no longer sees anyone else but as such. It's equal parts lack of self-awareness, meaning he simply has no way to counter-reflect upon himself the way one should behave, and developed coping mechanism, either consciously or unconsciously, taking on the role of those who inflicted upon him their desires to gain a sense of control over it.

In never escaping this cycle of love as desire, he always denies himself his full person, and simultaneously denies the personhood of others.

[collegeboysam]

jokes about lestat being disgusted at the idea of "even touching armand" are never funny and are always racist

[kindaorangey]

also like i keep reading fics where people try to spin daniel's turning as something he was sort-of into, and that he sort-of consented to it (although with his life being threatened he could never consent fully, yanno) and also it tends to be intermingled with him and armand having sex and like. i know im a killjoy for saying this but i really hope in canon it isn't like that. like the turning is this massively violating and cruel thing and honestly i think it'd be a lot more interesting for it to be one more issue the two of them have to move past before they have any sort of relationship with each other

[beancalzone]

Bf and I got to s2e5 of iwtv

[adamnablelittledevil]

Something something about characters that are so afraid of being alone and will find love wherever they can, accept crumbs of it, including being neglected/mocked/bullied/abused and perceive it as banter or even love. Characters who feel like the only way they can accomplish such thing is with their servitude and/or body because they're not used to being loved just for their personality or for free...

[ladycatofwinterfell]

I should stop making my thoughts on the iwtv episodes posts before I have rewatched the ep of the week at least once because I always end up being like wow I missed so many things when I do rewatch

[nashvillethotchicken]

I'm think about claudia and louis again. 79 dead 1903 injured

[oh-alicent]

so down bad he forgets about his usual run-of-the-mill love of torture (see: sf 1973)

no because its not just armand trying to stop louis from antagonizing daniel (louis, perhaps we should...) despite it being his own suggestion to try and break daniel back down to the boy they knew in san francisco, its not just armand's face being the one daniel sees when louis says "alice", its not just armand saying 'she didn't trust you. you hadn't given her a reason to'. it's louis SMILING at the sight of daniel shaking, near tears, unable to think straight and armand choosing something you could almost consider a small kindness -- she wanted to say yes.

[sunbratz]

i have been rotating something about one alice molloy in my brain for the last few days and i want to write about her but i have not pinned down what exactly i want to say. and that is the first step

[salmoncakepls]

...🦌?

[mymycorrhizae]

Daniel's memories of Alice being memories of Armand

Daniel first mentions Alice in episode 2 of season 1. He's served a dessert that he mentions he ate after asking his first wife Alice to marry him in Paris (a city significant to Armand). Why are Louis and Armand serving him something that would remind him of Alice? Hmm. He goes on to describe a unique physical trait she had:

I remember finding this a weird detail when I first watched this scene. But after the scene of Armand taking off his contacts to reveal his vamp eyes, I feel like it could be a reference to that. This still felt like a stretch but the proposal scene from today's episode convinced me.

Louis asks Daniel what Alice said when he proposed to her and Daniel suddenly has a memory of Armand from the past.

The timing of this memory as he's being asked about Alice can't be a coincidence. He looks at Armand in confusion. And when he finally admits that she said no. It's ARMAND who replies that she wanted to say yes.

Why would Armand know this? Why would he feel the need to tell Daniel this after seeing him looking wrecked by the memory?

And then there's Louis' remark about Daniel feeling more comfortable holding Alice's hand in Paris than in America:

Earlier in the episode, Louis talks about Paris being less racist than America. I think this line is about him thinking Paris is also less homophobic than America.

It's not the first time Louis hinted at Daniel being bi or gay.

I don't think this memory is about Daniel literally asking Armand to marry him. But pretty much the equivalent when you are a human in love with a vampire. He probably asked Armand to turn him so they could spend eternity together and Armand said no.