#coincidentally this is also how i talk about armand but i also love him in my heart and soul and would tell him that

[mycenaae]

lesmand truly is one of the pairings ever in a way because lestat looks at armand and is like wow he is so so beautiful. and then armand opens his mouth and lestat instantly is like oh my freak has been vastly surpassed [shoving his bf and mom into his purse] i need to leave right now immediately

[rawreeee]

i think it’s a very fair conclusion that a big reason armand stayed w louis/got w louis was out of spite for lestat

this is kinda obvious in the books, but if you apply the same logic to the show (and assume show!armand probably definitely lied about a lot of aspects of his and lestat’s relationship) i think it makes perfect sense

now, don’t get me wrong, i do think armand Wanted louis. but there was definitely more to it.

if you read TVL then you’d know how book!lestat’s side of the trial went- he only came to paris for armand’s healing blood, and then upon telling armand what had happened to him, armand recognized the names he was talking about and drags lestat to the theater, keeps him in a cell, and forced him to act as the conductor of the trial.

obviously, the show will spin it a bit differently, but we already know for certain that there’s a couple truths in this- armand WAS the real conductor behind the trial and he WAS, in some extent, forcing lestat to do this (strongly supported by the evidence of lestat seeming loopy and out of it the whole time, him purposely going off script, him altering the outcome of the trial)

but the important part of this is the deeper, more accurate context of armandstats relationship that TVL provides. when lestat and armand meet, lestat wasn’t the one who came running to armand for companionship, as show!armand so humbly depicts. rather it was the exact opposite! armand was CONSTANTLY begging lestat to love him, to be his companion.

and the last time they had seen each other before the trial was lestats final rejection of him. armand had wanted to be with him and gabrielle, for them to love him, love each other, for them to be a immortal companions, a coven of three, a family. and lestat said no. and left into the night.

…then a near century later, lestat shows up again and gushes to armand about the vampire family he had in new orleans, who he had loved, who he had spent 65 years with.

of course armand was angry. he was spiteful. he was jealous. it was the only thing he had wanted, that lestat had denied him. why couldn’t that have been him?

and in the show, of COURSE he would leave these feelings out of the interview, that he would never tell louis how he had really felt about lestat, what had really gone down between them.

because i think that jealousy is was what drove him to his plan.

and we can see pieces of that jealousy in the show, when armand is ticked off by louis not being over lestat yet, ticked off by him thinking about lestat all the time, ticked off at the mere mention of him.

but with this perspective, he’s not just jealous of louis’ love for lestat, but also lestat’s love for louis. their entire relationship. their family. the thing armand wanted so bad and was denied.

making lestat the villain in louis’ eyes wasn’t JUST to make him get over lestat, wasn’t JUST to make armand less at blame for claudia’s death, wasn’t JUST to have louis all to himself with claudia out of the picture- but it was also to absolutely ruin lestats life. he knew what louis had meant to him. he knew what claudia had meant to him. he wanted to ruin the little family he was denied. he wanted to do the most damage to all three of them, and come out on top.

so in one fell swoop he got the boy he wanted, killed the girl he hated and who was standing between them, passed his boy’s ex off as the big bad villain, and ruined that exe’s (-who was, coincidentally, his ex as well-) life forever by killing his daughter and taking his man and making it seem like HE was the one to blame.

perfectly evil genius. armand, you’re a freak and i love you.

[nicnacsnonsense]

A few days ago @whiteleyfoster did some lovely The Birdcage AU art and @poetic----nonsense decided we needed a full AU figured out, so they tagged me. Because I am now the person who figures out fusion AUs., Which honestly, that’s fantastic; I love it. Unfortunately I hadn’t seen The Birdcage before, but it’s available to watch on Prime, so I just took care of that. The bad news is I didn’t actually like the movie all that much. The good news is my problem was in the execution rather than the premise, so I do think there’s a good Good Omens AU to be had with two adjustments. One, lean into the wacky hijinks more -- this is definitely a wacky hijinks comedy kind of plot, but the tone of the movie was oddly serious a lot of the time. And two, I want to really feel the love between all the members of our little queer family. The movie tells us they’re a happy and healthy family, but what I was seeing was a lot of Val being mean to his parents, a lot of Armand being mean to and dismissive of Albert and a lot of Albert being overly dramatic and sensitive to everything.

Moving on to our characters. In Whiteley’s drawing they had Aziraphale as Albert and Crowley as Armand, which I get that, but I want to switch it. Aziraphale as the small business owner cismale who is obviously gay (I didn’t get any obviously gay vibes from Armand, but the movie told us a couple of times he was giving them off, so *shrugs*). Meanwhile Crowley is amab and typically presents male day-to-day, but also presents female at time and is slightly ambiguous in terms of gender. I also feel Crowley’s dramatic bitch energy is a better match for Albert’s than Aziraphale’s is. 

For Val and Barbara, Whiteley suggested Adam and Warlock respectively, and while I like each of those choices a lot individually, it doesn’t work for me once you put them together. Partially that’s a personal thing -- I know Adam/Warlock is somewhat popular but it squicks me out -- but also unless you want to genderbend one of them female, you have a gay relationship which kind of undermines the whole “gay couple has to pretend to be hetero to fool the super conservative in-laws.” I still think there’s a way you could do it, but it would take a lot of work. So instead I propose Newt as Val and Anathema as Barbara. (which weirdly makes the second time I’ve had Aziraphale as Newt’s dad. I swear I’m not trying to make it a thing).

I realize the immediate impulse there is if you’re going to use those two you should flip them: Newt as Barbara and Anathema as Val. But first of all I think if Anathema was Val she wouldn’t stand for lying about who her parents are; sucks for you Newt, but you’re just going to have to come clean. And if you put aside political views, these are actually really good matches for each of their families in canon. Anathema was a “professional descendant,” her entire life was mapped out for her by her many times great-grandmother, which is something of the ultimate extreme Barbara’s controlling family. Meanwhile’s Newt’s mother seemed very loving and she supported and encouraged his enthusiasm for computers no matter how many power outages he caused. Plus I do think there’s a great parallel in Crowley and Aziraphale having to hide their homosexuality from Anathema’s parents and the idea of Anathema being a liberal, occultist, environmentalist, feminist, general social activist, probably met Newt at an LGBT+ support rally, who goes home to her family and has to hide all of that and pretend to be a good little conservative Christian girl.

For the other major characters Anathema’s parents would be Anathema’s mom (obviously) and Gabriel I think. The idea of him as Anathema’s dad is a little weird, but you can’t deny Gabriel fits the super conservative senator mold really well. You could also use the Dowlings instead if you wanted, but c’mon, Gabriel fawning over femme!Crowley? That’s too funny, guys. For Newt’s biological mother I think Michael. She could definitely pull off high-powered exec who isn’t the least bit maternal, but is willing to show up for her son in this because of a sense of duty. In this version Aziraphale and Michael would have actually been dating because Aziraphale was still in the closet and in deep denial at that point, but they broke up when she got pregnant and Aziraphale wanted to keep the baby and Michael wanted to put it up for adoption the instant that baby slid out of her. (I also totally picture that after they agreed to break up Michael said it was probably for the best, seeing as Aziraphale was just super gay.) And finally for Agador I think Madame Tracy. Admittedly as a character she’s not much like him, but looking at it in terms of the function of the character as a comic relief zany housekeeper type, I think she could do a really good job as her own version of that.

A few other changes. The whole argument about “who’s the white whine for?” still happens, but it’s playful banter, rather than any sort of serious accusation of cheating. Then after the show Crowley and Aziraphale go upstairs together and surprise! Newt’s here for a visit. He tells both of his parents about his engagement at the same time. Then again when the issue of Anathema lying to her parents comes up, Newt approaches both Crowley and Aziraphale together and presents it not as something he’s demanding they do for him, but a problem to be solved together. Then Crowley and Aziraphale are totally extra enough to be like, zany hijinks, we’ll just fake like we’re the very straight cultural attache to Greece and his woman female wife. 

Except after a bit of prep work Crowley suddenly backs out as the wife, claiming he can pull of woman sure, but he can’t pull off housewife. That’s where Michael comes in. Crowley is the one who chooses not to go into her office -- he resents her for what he considers to be her abandonment of Newt -- but when he gets impatient waiting he coincidentally barges in at just the wrong moment to what looks like flirting/cheating (but we the audience know was actually something completely innocent) and storms off. 

Aziraphale goes to talk to Crowley once they both get home and his shocked and even a little hurt that Crowley would ever think Aziraphale would cheat on him. Crowley says, no he knows that’s not what was going on and he knows Aziraphale wouldn’t, especially not with a woman. So Aziraphale is like what’s up then, you’ve been acting weird ever since Newt got home. And Crowley admits that he is jealous, but not over any sort of fictitious other lover, but of Newt. Because Newt is getting married and Crowley and Aziraphale can’t (cause 90′s). And that’s why Crowley backed out of the wife role, because tt was too close to what he wants and can’t have. The two of them have a heart-to-heart about how much they love each other and how committed they are. This also means when Crowley does show up to the dinner dressed up as Newt’s mom, it’s a heart-warming moment where Crowley is silently communicating that Aziraphale is right, that it’s real in their hearts, and that’s what matters.