the way that people are really doing the “oh i dont believe he would do that he seems like such a loving partner you must be exaggerating” thing about. a fictional character. who we SEE be possessive and controlling and sadistic for five episodes. in a story where the victim is ALREADY actively trying to downplay the abuse on his own. like i’m sorry it is actually unbelievable how gullible and stupid you are.

Hiya! This is a weird thing to kind of talk about because it’s such a gruesome thing but so important to the characters but do you see the show adapting the Armand Claudia decapitation plotpoint? They have said they ARE adapting The Vampire Armand book as part of the season so that’s suggests they could and it would be weird if they invented the assault she suffered in season 1 and ignore the ‘canon’ circumstance of her death like that.. however the show has taken a step back from showing girls/women being victimised as much on screen (like the change with the Tenor/babette scene and I have a suspicion the victim in the theatre performance will maybe be a man too) so maybe they will just choose to do their own thing. Do you think it’s a smart thing to include? Part of me thinks they will because of how they did ep5, but would that actually be a step too far to see armand do? Like, we saw lestat brutalise Louis but he was able to recover from that (as horrible as it was), what armand does is another league. Guess we will have to see how bold they will be with it all and perhaps there’s just not a logical way that information to be divulged in season and it will be a later season reveal. What do you think?

Well.

Given they are pulling in some of the experts in the industry for horror I think it is safe to say we will get to see it. And I, personally, want to see it, too, and I don't think they will push it to season 3 or 4 to reveal later, simply because the impact would fall "flat" for the general audience then (by then Claudia would have been dead for two years, the emotional impact would simply not be the same). What is to be gained, then, on a recount, later on...? No, it needs to come with the total 180 of the "nice coven master" Louis fell for... and who then kills Claudia because killing young vampires is nothing to him, and it serves as such a nice little jab to the one who rejected him... and he wants Louis to himself. And Claudia is simply in the way.

I agree though, Armand's little Frankenstein moment... will definitely be a make or break for quite a few fans I would think, and the discussions will probably be wild. Still, it is a pivotal moment, for his thinking, too. Others have theorized, but what if we see it (or the trial) on stage? As a performance? I could see that, too.

Episode 5 is its own thing, there will be parallels to it I'm sure, as are in the books as well. I fully expect a callback to episode 5 after the theater trial, as in the books, whether they really revisit it or not is almost irrelevant here, imho, because there will be enough that will be thrown into doubt. Daniel has already started to unravel the tale.

Claudia's SA had a lot of reasons in the show and was not something they threw in mindlessly, imho, here is a good post about that. That said you are of course correct in the very deliberate way they show sexuality, nudity and victims - it could be that the stage performance will be totally different. However, the casting agencies were looking for actresses to go topless/nude so we'll see (but of course those could be part of the other Paris bars, too).

IWTV did change the victimization display, and I love them for it. But... I have said this before... season 1 was the easy one. The family one. The Louis, Claudia, Lestat unholy family one. That part is over now, the actual vampire and horror aspects will only increase from hereon. Memory is a monster and some of these monsters will still come to haunt them (and us).

Tl;dr: Yes, I do think they will show it and it will be gruesome.

If season 1 is any indication they will not pull their punches.

thoughts regarding the coven under les innocents & lestat / nicolas

CLAIRE, BE CAREFUL. don't think about reading until after the episode. also ily.

( everyone else too if you don't want show spoilers or if you don't want to hear me rant on about book canon vs show canon vs my personal headcanons all surrounding the latest episode. )

so prior to the season, i was sure that armand's version of events was going to be essentially "armand's fanfiction" about lestat / paris. in book canon, lestat gives us the story first, but here, armand gets the first shot and there's no good reason for him to be honest about it. ( the fact that we have an interview from assad where he hints at armand lying to paint himself in a better light is honestly revealing on its own )

armand is going to paint lestat in the worst way possible because he's still salty af about him rejecting him. armand begs and begs lestat to take him with him, to love him. i don't see a version where armand is honest about that to louis or honest about it to daniel unless forced to bc the truth is already out. the real story makes him look weak and it makes him look cruel ( because he is fucking cruel ).

from a visual standpoint, it looks like someone telling a tale of romance when lestat and armand have their moments together. their confessions of love. all of that feels like what armand would have wanted the most. it's a fantasy and he's selling it. even the music in the bg... it's a romantic fantasy.

i see what armand did as simplifying the story and taking huge liberties with what actually happened. why mention what actually happened with lestat, gabrielle (that she even exists), or even the true tragedy of nicki? that doesn't fit his narrative.

i don't think armand stopped believing in the coven prior to lestat. i will always say that i think that for armand to give up the children of satan's values, he had to unpack a hell of a lot of his own trauma and stare too much into the past for his own liking. for the children of satan to be wrong about their beliefs, it means that their attack in venice was senseless. it means what happened to him, what happened to the boys that died, was wrong and that there was another way to live. i think there were always holes in his beliefs, but it was easy to believe in ritual, it was routine, it made sense. (i'll probably write headcanons about that later, rather than ranting more about it here)

i feel like there's some parallel with the louis/armand storyline throughout the episode. like there was something to be said about louis & claudia lying about their "maker" throwing himself into the fire and armand mentioning that the coven threw themselves into the fire. i don't know if the show will say otherwise ( i trust it will eventually ) but i absolutely maintain that armand killed most of his original coven, aside from the survivors who joined the theatre. we get kind of a common thread of "it looks better when they kill themselves," kind of thing.

i think armand tried to make himself seem like more of an active participant along with lestat in what the theatre became. i think he willfully reduced nicki's role and also wasn't going to talk about what he'd done to him within the theatre. or that it was lestat who pushed him to go to the theatre bc he refused to let him come with him.

i will stand by the fact that armand said he'd rather go into the fire than go to the theatre initially.

armand's not going to say lestat beat the shit out of him for biting him, that lestat felt enough sympathy to take him back to the tower, only to have armand beg him to take him with him. also, he's not going to explain the shit they did to nicki when he did go back to the theatre.

do i think the show's changing the book canon? no, not to that extreme. do i think armand is lying? absolutely. s2 is still very much within the boundaries of iwtv and i don't think we're going to get much in the way of what really went down until s3. i'm pretty confident that we'll get lestat's version of events, and frankly, it needs to be concise in s2 or else it'll feel repetitive when we get there.