#but like my armand fics generally take place in one HEADCANON UNIVERSE

[monstersinthecosmos]

hello! i love your fic a ton, jsyk, but could you please explain armand's powers? i understand the basic gist of the different gifts, but i read somewhere that armand is extra good at telepathy, basically, but i'm not sure what that actually means? and the wiki is tbh not very helpful :/

Hi! Thank you! :D

I’m gonna be completely honest with you: I’m feeling like, pretty fucking lazy right now and I’m kickin back in my PJs drinking Vitamin Water and stuff so if anyone else wants to hop in with some quotes and stuff from the books that would be cool! But this is what I have to say about Armand’s Powers just off the top of my head LOL

Armand IS extra good at telepathy and it crops up here and there in the books, and Anne has talked about it on FB and stuff too. (I recall her talking about it on one of her RP threads when she was answering questions as Lestat? (Yeah I said it, that’s an RP thread, Anne.) ) 

Mostly the thing is that he’s just really good at Mind Gift stuff, especially when it comes to communicating and influencing people. He can also see spirits and auras, which is really rare for vampires. He’s able to cast powerful illusions, notably like in The Vampire Armand when he’s all fucked up and burnt and he creates an illusion for Benji & Sybelle so that they don’t have to see him like that. And there’s the question of how he saved them, if he really was astrally projecting himself and using telekinesis to physically hurt someone. 

Those are the things that come to my mind first as far as like objective proof that he’s just really deft, but I’ll bring up a couple other points that are sort of a gray area/headcanon territory. 

When we meet him in Interview with the Vampire Louis basically instantly obsessed and in love and keeps talking about how calm and easy Armand feels and in some ways it’s just, so not the Armand that we actually know. Armand even admits to trying to influence him later, to get Louis to come speak to him and probably to leave Claudia. There’s also the way Claudia is all zonked out and quiet when they’re talking to Armand, like he did that to do her, and she mentions to Louis that he was communicating to her directly. 

These things in and of themselves may or may not be extraordinary with the Mind Gift. Lestat usually discusses it in a context of “and then I found out I could pop lightbulbs, holy shit!” and he’s not getting into the mechanics of whether or not it’s difficult to maintain varying channels with different people all at once, like how Armand would’ve been doing with Louis and Claudia. So really like, that may or may not be a very average skill to have but I imagine it takes a certain degree of focus and I like to think that Armand is special because he’s my son.

And the same happens in TVL when Lestat meets him and Armand is telling him backstory using mostly Mind Gifting and like, that again is not necessarily an extraordinary feat because a lot of vampires can do it I guess, but Lestat is still a baby fledgling at the time so he’s like OMG DO YOU BELIEVE THIS!!! I also suspect that to be a coven leader you’d need to be fairly adept at Mind Gifting and influencing people when you need to. That seems important. I’m convinced that he used a lot of telepathic manipulation to keep everything in order, and while I love the idea that Armand maybe fell into the same cycle of cruelty from the way he was indoctrinated, I could see a version where he relied on Mind Gifting to break people as a way to keep some tiny last shred of his own dignity. LIKE YKNOW, VERSUS THE METHOD OF STARVING SOMEONE AND FEEDING THEM THEIR BEST FRIEND? YKNOW? 

Like don’t get me wrong cause I’m a slut for Armand being cruel but I could also hurt myself with angst and empathy if I entertain that idea. Fuck I’m sad lol.AND THEN! YKNOW LIKE IN QUEEN OF THE DAMNED. It’s like, whose version do we believe if we have Daniel roving around all paranoid and wondering if Armand is DOING this to him? Was he really? Both of them are such messes it’s hard to really say–Daniel was in the throes of addiction to regular substances as well as to Armand’s blood so we can’t 100% trust him not to be paranoid, but who’s to say Armand WASN’T doing it to him? 

I know other vampires can spellbind and stuff like that so this is again not to say that Armand’s gifts are necessarily unique, but I think there’s wiggle room here to exaggerate his skill if we want to. Like, for example, I personally got the impression that the whole CALLING SOMEONE FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE is reserved for the extra powerful, like the ancients or like yknow Lestat bcuz he’s a Mary Sue he drank so much of Akasha’s blood, but Armand seems to be able to do it with Daniel, and pinpoint his location or call to him from anywhere. 

It’s just weird cause like of the POV characters we get in canon like, we get Lestat and he’s an anomaly, we get Marius who’s like 8 million years old, and then David and Quinn are both like witchy Talamasca bros so they don’t count, and Louis didn’t have the Mind Gift, so… I think there’s not really a good control to look at when we try to figure out like, what does run-of-the-mill Mind Gifting look like? And that leaves me a lot of space to pretend that Armand is extra good.

Anyway my boy is really talented and smart and withdrawn and those are a fantastic combination to let him sulk inside his head for 500 years and practice. ;.;