#armand's trauma hole
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okay so i just finished IWTV....... oh my god!!! oh my god. it's embarrassing how insane this book made me. for the last 50 pages or so i was regularly taking breaks to run laps around my apartment like a lunatic because i physically could not handle all the pain and angst and despair coursing through my body LOL. i got so immersed in the story i forgot pretty much all of the background for armand you'd given me (and i can't remember most of it even now!!! my mind is in shambles) and still, very organically...... he became my favorite. even despite all of the. you know. and maybe even more so BECAUSE of it. i've just never witnessed an evil so heartbreaking!!!!!!!!!!? THE ABSOLUTE DEVOTION?????? DERANGED AND UGLY AND UTTERLY BEYOND REASON????!!!! FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!! i'm sorry for vomiting all over your inbox i genuinely cannot conjure up any resemblance of coherence atm!!! THANK YOU FOR POINTING ME TOWARDS SUCH LUXURIOUS PAIN i LOVE it i want MORE! <3 <3 <3
oh my god OH MY GOd ,... omg... 🥹🥹
WELCOME WELCOME YES THIS HOW I FEEL EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE I WISH I KNEW WHERE TO EVEN START
(I really feel like just answering with this meme and not subjecting you to a wall of text but I'LL TRY !!!)
GOD LIKE WHAT THIS BOOK DOES SO SO WELL AS LIKE IMMEDIATELY GROUND FLOOR OF THE SERIES LETS US ALL KNOW THAT ALL CHARACTERS COMMIT EVILS AND ARE NOT GREAT PEOPLE BUT THEY ALL WANT TO BE LOVED AND ARE TRYING LOL.
LIKE LOUIS MOVES FROM ABUSIVE PARTNER TO ABUSIVE PARTNER UNTIL HE’S FINALLY SO DEAD INSIDE THAT HE CAN BE BY HIMSELF AND WALK AWAY.
AND LIKE IT’S SO HARD BECAUSE YOU SEE HOW CLAUDIA FREED HIM FROM LESTAT, AND THEN ARMAND FREES HIM FROM CLAUDIA. AND SOMETHING THAT ALWAYS FUCKS ME UP SO BAD IS THAT ARMAND HAS SUCH A SKEWED MAP OF APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR BUT HE’S NOT EVIL. HE’S TRYING HIS BEST, IN THE BEST WAY HE KNOWS HOW.
Wait hang on I’ll take caps off I’m so sorry lmfao I’m just really worked up.
I think there’s a sort of meme-ier version of this like Armand going “hi 🙂 I killed your daughter 🙂 you can kill all my friends if you want 🙂 I won’t stop you 🙂 do you like me? 🙂"
But it’s actually SO TRAGIC god. Like I read IWTV as a story about domestic abuse and the family cycle, personally, and I see Claudia as an Oedipal figure. Louis is unable to get away from Lestat until Claudia makes it happen, and Claudia winds up being so cold and cruel and he’s stuck with her until Armand frees him. And there’s a lot of conversation about like, Armand being manipulative or what he did to CREATE this, how did he push them both where he wanted them, etc, but the thing that gets me is that when Louis wants to break up, Armand lets him leave.
And like SKIP WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY IF YOU DONT WANT A SPOILER BUT LIKE I DID MENTION THIS IN MY OTHER POST —— but if you read Lestat’s book and get the background on how he and Armand met, it’s sort of the opposite where Lestat destroys Armand’s coven and Armand is so devastated about it, vs 100 years later he ALLOWS Louis to destroy a coven. AND HE GETS THE GUY!!!! In TVL he like BEGS Lestat to be with him and Lestat isn’t interested lol but he gets to keep Louis this time.
IDK IDK IM JUST REAL EMOTIONAL.
And like !!!!!!!! God idk. If you read more of the books you get so many indications about how people in Armand’s life don’t respect him, and a lot of times people write him off because he looks like a teenager. They don’t take the danger of him seriously, which makes him even more dangerous. But it’s so heartbreaking reading IWTV and seeing how Louis respects him so much, and sees him as wise and calm, and needs him!
And like maybe Louis is uniquely qualified to not judge people for looking like children because he has spent the last 90 years with a vampire child and respects her as an adult, you know?
If you keep reading you’ll see how much Anne Rice like retcons or how much the continuity flops around so like EVERY book will have a Doylist vs Watsonian conversation like, she never comes out and says that Armand looks like he’s 17 in IWTV and in the later books it’s a huge point every time he’s on the page just HE’S SHORT HE’S 17 HE LOOKS LIKE A CHERUB etc and maybe that’s because she hadn’t decided that yet but also maybe Louis is the only person who fucking respects him. :)
#im DEVASTATED HELLO#i'm sad about armand again good morning!#armand's trauma hole#trauma hole theory#vampire chronicles#interview with the vampire#armand/louis#deep ass thoughts about vampires
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Every time I remember Armand has synesthesia, I lose my mind.
"Look," I whispered quickly. "I'm deranged," I whispered. "My senses cross, like so many threads to make a knot: taste, see, smell, feel. I'm rampant." ~ Armand, TVA
The phenomenon--its name derives from the Greek, meaning "to perceive together"--comes in many varieties. Some synesthetes hear, smell, taste or feel pain in color. Others taste shapes, and still others perceive written digits, letters and words in color. Some, who possess what researchers call "conceptual synesthesia," see abstract concepts, such as units of time or mathematical operations, as shapes projected either internally or in the space around them. And many synesthetes experience more than one form of the condition.
The most common form of synesthesia, researchers believe, is colored hearing: sounds, music or voices seen as colors. Most synesthetes report that they see such sounds internally, in "the mind's eye." Only a minority, [...] see visions as if projected outside the body, usually within arm's reach.
Some synesthetes report experiencing sensory overload, becoming exhausted from so much stimulation. x
The information is from 2001, but the definition hasn't changed and I like how the APA summarizes it. This is another thing I wish AR had explored/emphasized more, because having this sort of neurological condition is something that would've impacted so many of Armand's experiences!
Is this why he's able to create such powerful illusions and projections? What did the already crazy Devil's Minion years look like to him through this lens? Could this in any way have informed what draws him to people -- i.e., did Lestat's voice register to him in the same color as Marius's did? On top of all his trauma, Armand has to deal with sensory burn-out at the vampire level as well? Maybe that's another reason why he prefers to hole up with just himself and his family. This isn't your typical garden-variety vampiric enhanced senses, this is something else Armand has to process and live with.
#poor guy lol like this is a lot to add in addition to being a vampire#armand#the vampire chronicles#vc#mildly meta
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Untitled Loumand -> PRACTICE
Was driving home yesterday, which is a super long commute. So I use that time to beat myself up about how I behaved during the day, mostly obsessing over my socials skills and lack thereof. Anyway, a student died in a fire so I was deployed as a crisis team coordinator to respond. Anyway, I got through the shitty day and wanted nothing more than to think about my comfort gays.
So of course, I thought about Louis and Armand and the trouble I'm having with that previously untitled Loumand fic that I've now decided to call PRACTICE.
About Louis. I think of him similarly to a functioning alcoholic. He has his vices and addictions, namely scary, powerful men who should love him more than they love their desire for him. But they don't. In their pursuit of him, they destroy him. Will I characterize that in the fic? Probably not because I'm ultimately a fluff writer that accepts I'm not writing about fluff characters. But that's in my spirit. I don't know what to do with it but it's there.
What I am focusing on in this fic is an analysis of Louis as someone I can never see going to therapy. But I think, or I imagine, his relationship with Armand is the closest thing to therapy he'll ever get. And here's why. In the book, Louis is seeking information from Armand about who he is and how he should approach the world given the implications of self (psycho-education). He also highly values Armand's ability and willingness to listen to him. (affective expression and regulation). Not to just hear him but to listen, which are different. Related, in the show, he was impressed with (among other things) Lestat's ability to see him. Anyway, clearly that wasn't enough to heal him (see again; not loving him more than desiring him).
This all led me to do some research into trauma-informed counseling, which is something I already have to know for my job and I've already had some training. But I've paid more attention to it for this fic than I ever have for work and that's CRAZY AF. Like I wanna submit this fic as my DP (Deliberate Practice - a competency I have to demonstrate for my annual evaluation, which leads to MORE MONEY. A bish is getting a 9.7% raise omg like I NEED it. But my bosses are not about to rate me as highly effective over this snark and smut [hopefully]).
Anyway, I don't know how the fic will end but Armand is about to make Louis do that Donald Trump face:
It's going to be my modern adaptation of the second season 2 trailer conversation they have outside of the murder mansion. I've transcribed it, I have all the points I need them to hit, everything Armand says and Louis' reaction.
While Louis was thinking with his HOLE, Armand was thinking about how Louis has something to hide. Some ... trauma? And he's like well, I'm gonna HELP you. And I'm thinking I can work something out along those lines. I know it's gonna satisfy me but I have no idea if anyone else will enjoy it. Since this is my 2nd post about it, even from this account, I think it's too late to post it anonymously and never think about it again.
#punctuation panic meta#punctuation panic on ao3#trying to write and have a plan but also what is writing and why do i do it#not to mention the abject fear of sharing creations because i can't predict its reception#and why try if ppl may hate it and be mean#but a bitch has never been scared or has and never let it stop me#still i rise
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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.
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Armand/Lestat
I think this may have been my first ship in the series, either that or Lestat/Nicki (though the latter was a mortal only thing) so I'm very biased.
I love them because they mirror and contrast each other in such interesting ways. They both come from humble backgrounds and become little princes in their own right, although for Armand, he was still human when it happened. Lestat was driven to find some sort of meaning in his life through performing, through trying to make a sense of community with his theatre folk and the first thing he does with Magnus' is try to make sure the people he loves are well looked after.
Armand is pushed away from seeking out meaning because there's a lot of trauma there that he's not ready to deal with and dives into hedonism and joy to try to get away from that but it's framed later that what happened to him, to Marius, to the boys, that was the price paid for his frolicking. Lestat doesn't experience a 'price' till everyone leaves him and then wakes up and goes fuck it, we ball where Armand is still struggling to come to terms with himself because he's so shut down. Lestat feels everything, it's all heart on his sleeve and Armand...isn't, from experience he knows that's dangerous.
So what happens when you get these two together? Sexually, has to be explosive, knock down drag out and furniture destroyed. They don't know how to be sweet with each other really, or rather, Lestat wants to be sweet and THEN wreck him because that's the fun part and Armand has tried giving him his heart so many times that it's become guarded.
As a relationship, the differences are fascinating and going to be troublesome. Communication is a big issue with Armand in relation to Lestat, he let him into his mind and all he did was come away with a desire to go find Marius and since then, I think he has trouble letting anyone poke around in his head that's not under his terms and control. Learning to trust people to do that, especially Lestat, is difficult and a very personal journey. They both need so much reassurance that they're wanted, that they're loved, that finding ways to communicate that - as with armand/daniel, though that's a forever block - is tough.
I don't think they'll ever be each others happily ever afters, but if they let themselves, they'd have a great decade every now and then. They love each other, there's no doubt about that, and they want each other to be happy. There is a great amount of respect there, which is a kind of trust in each others abilities. They just have trouble trusting each other with their hearts and need a way to bridge the gap. Or just...add him into the rotation, honestly I think he brings something different to the table than any other lover so it would work well and fill a hole.
Probably literally and repeatedly, given Armand's drive and Lestat's need to show off.
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ANNABELLE LOCKWOOD
Age & Birthdate: January 28th, 1991 (25) Birthplace: New York City, New York Location: LaSalle Occupation: Owner of the Four Seasons hotel chain Gender: Female Sexuality: Bisexual Length of Time in Montreal: 3 years Faceclaim: Blake Lively
trigger warnings: – car crash, death
Annabelle Armand became Annabelle Grace Lockwood at the age of seven. Her biological mother, a french woman who ran away from home at eighteen, simply couldn’t take care of the little girl and as cliche as it was, she left her daughter on the doorstep of one of the wealthiest families of New York City. Some would say that the fact that Mrs. Lockwood wasn’t able to conceive could have been just a coincidence, but was it really? We’d normally imagine this scene with a baby in a basket but Annabelle was no baby. She was, in fact one of the smartest little girls in her class but who would pay any attention to the kid with holes in her shoes and who’d often wear dresses or clothes made out of old curtains or worn out sheets her mother, a poor laundress, would steal from work. For months, Annabelle wouldn’t utter a word unless forced to. Her new parents blamed it on the trauma that was losing a mother at such a young age and so, they would instead send her to therapy. Truth was, Annabelle didn’t have anything to say. What do you say when you’ve lived a miserable life, have been abandoned on a doorstep by your own mother and lost everyone you’ve ever known in a matter of days only, all of that by the age of seven? Absolutely nothing.
After a few months, Annabelle was sent back to school only this time, it was a private school where she learned about etiquette, rules and everything a girl of her new status would need later in life. Who knew there was a proper way to greet guests or hold a fork? Some things seemed useless to her but forcing herself, she excelled in all her classes. After all, it was the only way she could make her new parents proud. To say that boarding school had changed Anna would have been an understatement. She first started by actually getting to know the kind couple who had changed her life and they soon became the most important people in the world to her. She then became friends with a bunch of girls at school and slowly but surely, the little blonde was one of the most charismatic and eloquent young woman of her entourage.
At the age of eighteen, Annabelle was offered a job as an assistant to her father. Nothing very complex, it was mostly just for observation. After all, she’d be the one taking up the position if something ever happened to her father and in order to do so, the blonde needed to know what exactly it implied. Needless to say that her father was a very powerful man, being the owner of every Four Seasons hotel around the world. Of course, he didn’t do it all on his own and always needed the help of his dear colleagues but as the years went by, Charles Lockwood started treating his daughter as one of them, much to the others dismay. Annabelle liked to tell herself it was because they were jealous of her being the heir of such a big company but she couldn’t help but wonder if they would have acted the same way if she had been a boy.
Annabelle was on a humanitarian trip when it all happened. Her mother had suggested she’d take some time off of her studies at NYU to go around and explore the world and the young woman had decided to go to Cambodia and help build some houses for those in need. She went with a bunch of friends and for about a month, everything couldn’t have been better. Until Annabelle received a phone call, urging her to come back to the States as quickly as she could. They didn’t want to tell her anything over the phone but it was all over the news. Denise and Charles Lockwood had passed in a car crash on the night of Valentine’s day as they were heading back home after a romantic date night.
It was happening all over again. Annabelle was left alone and there was nothing she could do. It took her about six months to finally get back on her feet. She realized that self-pity was a slow killer and so the first thing she did was head to her father’s office and claim her position as CEO of the entreprise. Of course they didn’t let her do so, instead the board gave her the north-american branch and promised she’d have full control over the company if, and only if, she would be able to manage said branch during a four year contract. She was a woman and women weren’t CEOs, not in their business but Annabelle was determined to prove them wrong.
She moved to Montreal about three years ago because she was missing her french roots but sadly couldn’t move out of America, not definitively. Now, Annabelle works very hard every day to achieve her dream and make both her parents proud. Sometimes, she thinks about her biological mother and wonders if she would be proud of her too. She manages all the Four Seasons hotels across North-America and she has many connections all around. Annabelle currently lives in LaSalle but spends most of her time in her office which could might as well be her second home because she crashes there more often than not.
❝ raise your words, not your voice. it is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Annabelle is a very passionate girl. She pours her heart and soul into everything she does, even if it’s the most insignificant little thing. She’s very ambitious and determined and once she knows what she wants, she’ll do anything to get it. She believes that you can do something bad in order to do something good and manipulation is an art that she masters which sadly can make her seem untrustworthy or mean but she would never hurt anyone on purpose. She’s a powerful woman and tries her best to not let that get to her head as she has witnessed what money and success can turn people into. Annabelle tries to stay as humble as she can but she also likes to treat herself, especially if she’s worked hard for something. She wants to make sure that people around her understand that being a girl doesn’t make her any less capable than her male colleagues which is the main reason why she’s working so hard to obtain that position.
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SESSION 8
Bodies remaining around us: kid, two other bodies, one Herald corpse, one mook corpse, one undryad corpse. Bodies dragged into forest: sneak, two Heralds.
Brianne examines the Herald corpse. Lots of places where it’s shifted, transformed. Happened after death; not wounds, but its flesh struggling to keep up with its metamorphosis. Torso hollowed, less internal organs; ribcage grotesquely grown to accomodate muscles. Along spine and forelimbs, rows of metallic spikes growing out of it. These spikes are similar to the smaller spikes used for the dryad, but NOT the larger one, which was more intricate, shaped, gold inlay. Abyssal runes on them. (Note: the corpses in Ulthar’s tower did not have a big spike, only the Herald spikes.) Brianne reads the script: an abyssal prayer “We purify the weak, and rise in glory.” They all say the same thing. No discernable tool marks.
Brianne gets Ghorza to rip one of the spikes out, dripping with ichor. She then cuts it open to discover its bones are now the same metallic substance as the spikes. The bones are ALSO etched with Abyssal; it appears to say something else, but the ribs appear to be in the middle of something. She recruits ghorza again to help flay the flesh from its bones; Brianne fucks up during the autopsy and something bursts, releasing a nauseating scent of decay. She pukes (away from the body).
We eventually manage to peel off enough flesh from bone to get the gist. It reads like a religious text - mentions of Galaias, [her return from… entrapment? Somewhere.] The Herald is a walking unholy text, with prophecies etched into its bones. [With Primeval Awareness, Brianne detects more undead are in Mielikki’s Arbor, and six more suddenly appear there.]
Finally we go back inside to reunite with the cuddlepile.
Meanwhile, inside: Cadence is tending to Apphia’s near-mortal wounds, cleaning her etc. Kelsey anxiously asks if Apphia’s titties will be okay.
Megs, the only one who’s not preoccupied, talks to Juna alone. It turns out she knows the living bruiser, Valden Bray. (Gwen: “Can I roll insight to see if they fucked?” - Megs actually does but gets a 6 :P ). When she realizes he was one of the ones snooping in the barn, she charges in, grabs him by the collar, and demands an explanation while dangling him in the air.
He says he got mixed up in some bad shit, he needs food for his family and can’t lumberjack, so he signed up with the castle, but then it got ‘weird.’ He repeats that he was looking for the lens, sent on behalf of ‘someone above Brandt’.
Juna: “And so what, you were going to kill my family?! My parents, my siblings? Give me one good reason I shouldn’t burn you from the inside out!” (Kelsey: “Roll insight to see if they fucked!”) There’s another couple of the Vardanes, tall teenage boy and shorter girl, and Apphia and Cadence coming down now. Apphia DOES roll, and determines that they have made out but not fucked. Ghorza and Brianne come in now too. “I can’t believe this sniveling bastard sold out my family!”
He agrees to talk more; Juna lets him down, then decks him in the face again. He mentions the sneak was all about the ‘cause’ - says the people ‘holed up in Castle Aldessein’ are all weirdos. Mentions Martin, the bruiser we killed in the barn - Ghorza interjects “I think if you search your memory you’ll find he was killed by the zombies.” He mentions the margravine was more or less forced to leave by Brandt et al. The weirdos are part of some kind of cult, “Harbingers of the Dark Sun.”
Some of the group know of this cult - the cult of Cyric, triple-crowned king, god of lies and murder, whose followers are sometimes known for controlling the undead, binding them under their will. (Gwen: “Do you think someone would really do that? Just put on hats and tell lies?”)
Valden says there were services held in the dungeons at night. Carm was really into it. Carm and Nemeth run the show there. Brandt is a pawn they installed; Nemeth tells him what her superior wants and he makes it happen. The cult is everywhere - in all the marches and Isvanir - communicating with each other, keeping tabs on our movements, etc. The Margravine is being poisoned to keep her weak but alive.
Nemeth is apparently a tiefling too. Gold eyes, red hair, dark skin, horns, tail. Quiet, keeps to herself; doesn’t interact with the grunts much (Brandt does that). Looks like a warrior? Talks mostly to Brandt, Carm, the lieutenants sometimes.
Carm - the worst of all of them. Extremely creepy. Human. Keeps tabs on everyone. REAL into Cyric. Slight, pale, sandy brown hair, blue eyes. Coldest stare. Carm overheard another grunt talking about not being into Cyric; he disappeared and the altar got more bone decorations.
Cassath and Dresna - lieutenants. “Mostly just into each other” - no insight check needed, they’re fucking all the time; they’re probably fucking right now.
Cassath is a high elf, from Isvanir. Light, short, messy brown hair. And she’s a witch? Scarred, burned hands (from acid). Cruel, but not really into Cyric.
Dresna - half-orc, short black hair. She’s sneaky and creepy. Not as cruel as Carm, not really into Cyric; just there for Cassath.
Apphia knows of Cassath - an exiled criminal, from the slums where the Tarjanir refugees were. Ran a illicit alchemist shop, made acids. Made a lot of mayhem, was sentenced to be executed many years ago.
Ghorza knew of Dresna - she was in Vassarein’s army. Perennial bad example for the troops; didn’t play well with others. Robbed the armory and vanished.
Only one other person of importance, who Owen told us about, was the greasy, light-figured, shifty-looking guy who would swing by occasionally to deliver reports and talk to Nemeth and Brandt. No one who matched the description of Gulden, or the one Ulthor fought at the ruins.
Correspondence to Isvanir - maybe upstairs in the keep?
Albrecht - former castle guard. Erik knows him, recommends we talk to him. Dancing Dryad inn. Left when the cult took over.
Helene wants to get the family out of here, to safety. We decide that - after we burn the bodies - we’ll take the Vardanes into town and get them room in the inn. And Valden, we guess. Then we’ll rest up for the night.
We burn the Mortens (neighbors) and the herald and Martin (the bruiser). (Burned body count is up to 19).
We can now read some more of the remaining bones of the Herald, now that the flesh is burned up. [Brianne has heard some of these prophecies in her dream. Galaias returns under a sky of blood, upon a road of bone. She was sealed away on the Material Plane millenia ago. ‘From the ranks of her enemies, a spiteful soul will draw her forth.’]
Juna has a gift for Ghorza and Apphia, before we leave - she gives them a Ring of Necrotic Resistance and a Ring of Protection, and heartfelt hugs. It’s really gay!
We go into town - Cadence has shifted into a horse, and Megs and the kid ride her. Apphia is in the cart, being held in Juna’s strong arms. She gets the Cloak of Comforting.
Brianne, Apphia, Helene, Juna, and the kids check into the inn. Meanwhile, Eric takes Ghorza and Valden with to go find Albrecht. We’re rounding up a posse to save the people in the outskirts! Cadence stays a horse. She takes off on a run with Megs on her back.
The cost of putting up the Vardanes is 114. We split that five ways.
We find a stoic elven man with dark skin nursing a drink. Albrecht is Erik’s ex bf for sure. He perks up slightly when he sees Erik. He explains the situation with the undead attack. Albrecht toys with a dagger while looking at Valden, who admits he’s shit. Albrecht says he’ll round up his men. He also says he’ll put Valden to work helping to fix things once.
We discuss tactics on how to fight the things, that they should run away from the undryads if they see one. Ghorza tells Albrecht they’ll try to rescue the Margravine and reinstate her, which he fervently hopes they do.
Meanwhile, Cadence and Megs are out looking for flowers. They… find some weeds. They then try to go to Ghorza’s moms’ bakery, but forget it’s in a different city. Luckily, Megs has fantastic Investigation and finds an awesome bakery, and they get lots of pastries. They also get nice meals and wine to bring back to the party? So cute!
Imp: “And you brought us weed! Can I roll for how dank it is?”
Kelsey: “She needs to ride back in on me, looking dashing as fuck on the noble steed-”
Lin: “Roll Charisma.”
(Cadence rolls an 8, but at least Megs manages to roll a 22).
Lin: “Peasant girls look out their windows, sighing, a merchant woman leans out of her booth and gives Megs the nod.”
Cadence fucks up and turns back before Meg dismounts, which spoils the effect a bit. Cadence druidcrafts the weeds into lovely flowers.
Ghorza gives Cadence a big hug and spins her around, and Cadence smiles for the first time that day. They share with the Vardanes too, and Juna hugs them as well. Megs redemption arc complete!
Lise and Armand - the Vardane kids. Lisse is like 7, Armande is 14.
We prepare to rest for the night. (Brianne buys our rooms. (It’s gay).) Tomorrow we storm the castle dungeons! Valden’s gonna be leading us in; we’ll put up the ruse that we’re on their side and Megs is bringing in the lens. Apphia will have the actual lens, and will show Valden the real lens as proof that we’ve had it all along. Then she’ll hide it on her person, and make an illusory copy.
Apphia and Brianne go out to get Apphia a new top, although Juna had Mending’d her shirt. Shopping episode~! After Brianne helps her find one, Apphia decides to get her a super soft nice cloak… OF BILLOWING! It’s all super gay. As they walk back, Brianne brushes her hand against hers, and Apphia takes her hand and swings their arms as they walk back.
Cadence, with a few drinks in her, finally shares her nightmares (or, trauma flashbacks) - a unicorn which was an Exarch(?) of Mielikki was corrupted into a undryad-like beast, and chased her out of the arbor. We have a big group hug.
Brianne: “If I’m super gay for Apphia, does that make me an Apphiest?”
Megan: “If Brianne wants to have the gay panic long rest, she can bunk with apphia.”
End of session, and day 3.
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I'm really upset thinking about how Armand grew up in a cave monastery and then accepted living beneath a cemetery with a cult and then Louis left and he just haunted Lestat's disgusting derelict house; he relapses into physical discomfort and filth when he's distressed bye!
#deep ass thoughts about vampires#armand#the vampire armand#vampire chronicles#trauma hole theory#armand + lestat b4fl
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LMAO THANKS FOR RIPPING MY HEART OUT WITH THE POST ABOUT WHAT A BLIP IN TIME VENICE ERA ACTUALLY WAS I GUESS?!?! im at workkkk i cant deal with this!!!!! ! 😫😫😫 WELL EVEN SO, how do you think armand views/deals with this difference in how formative those yrs were for him vs what they meant to marius? they were extremely significant for both of them but i feel like for very distinct reasons / in very distinct ways.... 😭!
i think he deals with it exactly like this:
✨ I fear him. I don't know why. Perhaps I fear him because I could love him again, and loving him, I would come to need him, and needing him, I would come to learn from him, and learning from him, I would be again his faithful pupil in all things, only to discover that his patience for me is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in his eyes. ✨
I feel like there's a huge fucking mother wound maker wound going on with Armand and I think a LOT of his behavior can be tracked to his abandonment issues. Making himself useful to people or trying to Spell Gift manipulate people into loving him back, or seeing a version of him that he wants them to see, etc.
Making a fledgling is his biggest fear and he sees it as a curse! He knows that once you turn them, they stop seeing you as special, you can never communicate the same way, and you lose your lustre, you become boring to them, there is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in their eyes!!
I'm gonna die on the hill defending why Marius didn't rescue Armand -- I GET IT -- but Armand doesn't know any of that. All he knows is that his Maker never rescued him. Even when he was out of the cult, running the TDV, easily track-downable, Marius never came to him.
In the way I think Marius declined to rescue Armand for fear of rejection, Armand also can't bridge this gap back to Marius for a fear of rejection. He wants it! He wants what they had! But he knows they're too different now and it's never going to be the way it was, and they both have to do a lot of work to build a new relationship that could work for who they each are now.
But to answer your question I think it probably just really compounds the feelings of inferiority and the fear that he doesn't deserve love! 🤗
#deep ass thoughts about vampires#tva quotes#the vampire armand#marius/armand#marius de romanus#armand#trauma hole theory#vampire chronicles#vc quotes
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Hi!! I would love to hear your thoughts about Marius' experience of captivity and how this affects his relationship with Armand. You alluded to this in Gallows Bird and I think that's a super interesting thread to pull
[ Let me drop these two fics real quick to get it out of the way for reference sorry if this is obnoxious LOL but Gallows Bird (Marius/Armand) and The Lotus Eater (Armand/Daniel) !! ]
Asdgahsdk oh boy
I have so many deep nuanced feelings about Marius de Romanus so be patient with me while I try to sketch this all out, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START!
So one thing I want to mention off the bat, which is not necessarily canon VC but is relevant to my fics and how I write, is that I process a lot of ND/ADHD stuff when I write, and this goes way back before I even knew I had ADHD. So even going back to like my earlier VC fics from like 5-6 years ago, I think I was constantly inserting traits of myself into my fics and trying to process them in the way that I thought they were just character flaws at the time. AND LIKE this is also relevant because I wrote Gallows Bird to be directly correlating to my Devil’s Minion fics. For example, in The Lotus Eater, one of my huge emotional cornerstones in that fic/me talking about my own perceived character flaws, was the “he had been careless with this boy” theme. And I repeated that in Gallows Bird on purpose to link them lol. So that example is like, I was really inspired by like how ADHD can ruin things on accident; like you don’t take care of something, miss a deadline, break something by being careless even though you DO CARE. At the time when I wrote The Lotus Eater I had no idea about ADHD so I just thought it was like this bad part of my personality that I was really struggling with. I am more forgiving of that now.
And I connect this also to Marius in Gallows Bird because like, something I really struggled with as a person is like the ND/ADHD impulse to like RELATE TO PEOPLE when they’re trying to talk, like bringing up my own experience as a way to say “Something like this happened to me too so I can empathize with you”, which is always well intentioned! And I’ve seen so much convo from ND folks that struggle with this because NT folks tend to misunderstand it as changing the subject/being narcissistic/whatever.
Anyway!!!!!!!!! Sorry for that preamble but I’m saying that like, I kind of approach writing Marius as a mix of canon & projection, because yknow it’s my fuckin story and I feel like it lol but I think like the fun of fanfic and what makes people’s styles unique and interesting is our mix of perspectives and personalities and like how we choose to fill in the blanks in canon or interpret characters, right?
Canon Marius makes a few comments when he meets Armand about how like, this is someone who is as bruised and damaged as he is, and someone who can heal him, and he feels their souls understand each other. And Canon Marius is like, arrogant enough (by his own admission!) to see the absolute HORRIFIC trauma the Armand went through and go “Oh yeah I had horrific trauma too.”
How do we compare Armand’s trauma to Marius’s trauma? Idk. No one can answer that because we all respond to trauma differently. So I think to some extent there’s some headcanon territory here of how everyone interprets Marius, and do we believe him that his trauma was SO SEVERE that it IS on par with what’s happened to Armand? Or do we believe what he went through isn’t so bad/was 1500 years ago and he’s being obnoxious by comparing the two because he should be healed by now?
I’d also ask like, to what extent is neither true/is it not that fucking deep, like is Marius simply saying “wow this looks really bad, I want to know him for centuries so he has time to grow and heal”; like perhaps Marius at this point sees his captivity & murder as this awful thing that happened to him 1500 years ago and maybe it feels sort of disconnected.
BUT I DON’T KNOW, the thing about Marius is that he’s so fucking stoic! Like I know I’ve brought it up a couple times recently but it’s because I was reading some Marcus Aurelius to put in Gallows Bird lol so using that to like fill in some blanks with Marius, he reads like someone who is constantly trying to rationalize away his own emotions. And like! IDK! Maybe beliefs about psychology are always a phases or temporary until we learn more, but reading him in 2023 I just call bullshit on that! It doesn’t work that way! So who’s to say that his 1500 year old trauma isn’t actually still very close to the surface, and who’s to say he can’t be easily retraumatized whenever it comes up because he’s never meaningfully recovered?
AND LIKE FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED TRAUMA THE AFTERMATH IS SO OFTEN ABOUT JUST FINDING CONTROL OVER WHATEVER YOU CAN, NO MATTER HOW USELESS OR UNHEALTHY IT IS. And that's also the sort of central thesis of Gallows Bird; giving Armand a space to process his trauma where he's in control. And for Marius it's just really sad how often he tries to control his own personality, his own feelings, his own mask, the way people perceive him, and it's such a struggle for him that it always eventually collapses.
I want to pause here for a second too and bring up a couple old posts I’ve written so I’m not repeating myself too much LOL but let’s also consider:
Trauma Hole Theory and if vampires are stuck forever within the trauma of their turning
Marius & Armand’s equal-opposite religious trauma
Marius’s struggle with feeling emotion
I think if we start dissecting ANY vampire in VC we’ll see thematic ways that their turning has traumatized them forever, between the violence/trauma around the act itself but also whatever ways they’ve been frozen as their mortal selves. Lestat is a perpetually insecure 20 year old who can’t emotionally regulate and must prove himself to everybody, Louis is someone who didn’t want to live at all and was given eternal life rather than death, Armand is deeply wounded and fucked up but is having like 2 years of relative peace and safety. And Marius is like, older, has lived life, knows what he’s losing and gaining, and has his entire worldview shattered after spending a year resenting religious zealots only to find out that everything they believed was true.
So I bring all these points up because I don’t think there’s a simple answer or a direct correlation here. Marius recognizes that they’ve each suffered a trauma, but he hasn’t really dealt with his own in a meaningful way, therefore he is not equipped to help Armand deal with his either.
I constantly go back to when Marius hits him after they come back from Kiev and I think this really hammers it home for me—Marius is someone who wants to strangle all of his emotions into submission, and he’s really trying to believe that it’s a matter of willpower to simply NOT FEEL THINGS. So much of Marcus Aurelius is about this! AND IN SOME WAYS LIKE, YEAH THIS IS MAYBE AN ANCIENT VERSION OF CBT??? Like we do CBT to patiently teach ourselves to think differently, but it’s obviously not as easy as simply shutting your emotions off or bullying yourself out of feeling any. And he’s trying SO SO hard to be this way, and it doesn’t work, so it’s not going to work on Armand either!
And like it’s not Marius simply being a dickhead, simply being abusive; I do think he’s really trying, but he’s fucking lost! HE HAS LIVED LIES! And god it just really hurts to see him as someone who struggles with this shit and who lies to himself about it, LIKE WHO HASN’T BEEN THERE? How many of us who struggle with mental health haven’t had those moments like, those tiny glimpses seeing behind the veil and being honest with yourself, but being so fucking powerless and not knowing what to do with it.
I know I’ve personally had moments of realization like “I am going to be like this forever” and it’s SO defeating, and imagining that sentiment for someone who will LIVE FOREVER just hurts me so bad!
We see this trope in media sometimes—certainly it’s based in real life!—of parents projecting onto children, trying to correct mistakes by breaking a cycle, but which only serves to treat their child like an extension of themselves and not a whole individual. So I think of that, too—Marius seeing himself in someone who was also abducted, and even though he also plans to turn Armand, he wants it to be beautiful and gentle! (He even changes his mind about it several times before he does it in a panic because Armand is dying! {this is heavily referenced in Gallows Bird because he realizes he's fucked Armand up to much to let him live anyway.} ) He also is sorta trying to fake it till he makes it with all this emotional stuff; like even though he KNOWS he can’t simply shut emotions off, he’s still trying to teach Armand to. And going back to Marius being a lil arrogant, I think sometimes he does project himself onto other people, or treat people better if they remind him of himself. So like, projecting some wounded version of himself onto Armand to try to rescue, vs risking it all for Lestat a few centuries later because someone who reminds him of himself actually WANTS to be rescued.
The IRONY too that like he spends his whole time in captivity as a skeptic, not believing that there is a God in the Grove, and for that entity to turn out to be a vampire!!! Marius presenting HIMSELF as a god-figure to Armand, but trying to be safe and friendly about it! I don’t know man I’m really fucking hsdkjgladsghkjl upset right now lol
And after all that like, not really knowing what exactly happened to Armand to indoctrinate him into the cult, just knowing that he’s thriving with them, that he gave it all up to be their leader, is such a betrayal of everything and so traumatizing!
Gosh.
Anyway.
I DON’T’ KNOW WHERE TO START I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO END, THINKING ABOUT THIS FUCKS ME UP I HOPE THIS ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION LOL
#deep ass thoughts about vampires#marius de romanus#armand#marius/armand#vampire chronicles#trauma hole theory#stuff i wrote#gallows bird
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My Armand Pain™ thought of the week has been circling around his fear of making fledglings and his general skepticism towards it and how most of the time I tend to relate it to his cult experience but this week I’m also giving credit to how bad Marius fucked him up haha. 🤗
Like idk if this outs me either as a weak reader or as a FAKE ARMAND FAN but I think, because of the way he talks about it that to me it registers as quantity over quality; ie saying it NEVER works or that it’s happened again and again makes me feel like he’s referring to his centuries as a cult leader and the experience he would’ve had navigating everyone’s relationships and interpersonal drama and generally being vampire HR and having to approve/deny requests to bring people in. Saying that it always fails/never works implies to me that it’s something that he’s seen many many times. And like, obviously it’s about Marius as well, but, I’m just thinking a lot about the Marius angle this week.
Because I think a lot about like, the parallels between Venice & the Devil’s Minion, like the way Marius treated Armand and the way Armand treated Daniel. I think also as a bonus that getting Marius’s POV in B&G adds a lot of depth to their relationship and I sort of extrapolate a lot out of it, for both relationships.
But thinking about Armand not wanting to turn Daniel, there’s the usual “You don’t want it, it’s actually a curse” stuff but the “Our relationship will never be the same if I do this.”
He’s seen it how many times in the cult--the barrier comes between them and it’s never the same. It’s another irony about immortality and the price you pay to live forever, or the price you pay to keep someone forever.
But I’m thinking a lot about how his relationship with Marius influenced it, too. And in both directions! Like, to Armand, Marius was this like majestic creature, a magician!, otherworldly and maybe saintly! Maybe demonic! Who knows, he’s a mystery! And he can’t read Marius’s thoughts anyway, so when he turns he doesn’t lose that. What he does lose, maybe, is the mystery of it. Marius changes from an ethereal mystery to Some Guy. And Armand is never his peer; he is not brought over and ever treated like an equal. Marius’s power over him shifts from simply being a preternatural creature to that fact that he’s old and strong, and he makes the choice to wield that over Armand and position himself as the master.
I don’t think Armand had an interest in treating Daniel that way, even if he entertained turning him. In fact, I think Armand yearns for an equal.
BUT THEN I wonder this all the time, I wonder if Armand actually believed Marius was dead, or how often he changed is mind about it, or how often he forced himself not to acknowledge it. Because Marius being alive means Marius didn’t save him, and when he starts meeting more vampires and seeing how they lose the magic & connection when they get turned, I wonder if he thinks Marius got bored with him. Especially with the narrative that he only turned Armand because he was mortally injured; I could see that festering to “he didn’t actually want to turn me.” (Put a pin in this for the family cycle that he does the same to Daniel 😦)
So it’s like devastating to read this towards his relationship with Daniel. And in both directions again. Worrying that he’ll be sick of Daniel, and worrying that Daniel won’t think he’s special anymore. The grief in turning Daniel isn’t just about him losing his life & mortality, it’s also that they lose their relationship as they know it. In some ways it’s like a breakup.
Armand is a person who’s lost his love ones and been rejected over and over lol. I can’t imagine that it hasn’t sculpted his sense of self worth. So even if he took the approach “I do not wield my power over Daniel, I will treat him as an equal, I will not be bored with him” I don’t think he can shake the idea that Daniel won't stay in love with him because the love is conditional.
There’s sort of an absent father cycle trope here, too, in that Armand didn’t have a good maker (for a long time) and doesn’t know how to be a good maker, and in the end it’s too frightening for him to even try. Their failure might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the end like, I think this is very much part of VC lore that this happens to a lot of couples, but there are cases where they overcome it, too. I think even Marius & Pandora are a case of a couple that overcame it, even though the barrier became a logistical problem when they got lost.
But there’s this space I like to think about, post-canon, modern world, wondering how much they can learn and teach each other and heal and overcome it. There’s something about the series being OVER now that makes my imagination run wild about where else they would’ve gone, or how they might have evolved.
So maybe it’s not too late for them!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#i'm sad about armand again good morning!#armand#vampire chronicles#daniel molloy#ar#marius de romanus#armand/daniel#marius/armand#deep ass thoughts about vampires#trauma hole theory#anne rice
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Can you elaborate onthe "lack of childhood" though? Sure he had the trauma from when he was abducted, then abducted again by the cult, but him growing up with his mortal family + those years with Marius (and especially since he remembers his early memories), I wouldn't say that's a -complete- lack of childhood lol. I'd say more of having to care for others from an early age (I'm including Marius here too, affectionately, the man was a mess back then)?
These are great points!!!!!!!!!
I have three basic concepts I want to submit here, and your mileage may vary! Some of this goes into headcanon territory so we might land in different places. My questions are:
If you had a good childhood that you can’t really remember, does it count?
Can a young person sincerely be that pious without it being manipulative?
What age does Armand’s “childhood” end when he’s abducted at 14, at the oldest?
We don’t get a ton of information about his life before he was abducted and part of that is because he’s so traumatized that he doesn’t remember—a mega Capital T Trauma happening as a young teen I think informs “childhood”. I cede your point because I think a lot of people think of “childhood” as more early childhood, and especially in the historical context of kids growing up faster, we don’t know that much about his early childhood. When he goes back to visit with Marius he talks a bit about remembering his uncle’s singing and stuff, so we have that clue that his family did things together.
But we also have stuff like
I stood with my head bowed. I let my temple rest against the mud. I wished to find the boy, so pure of soul, who had opened these cells to bring the hermits just enough food and drink to keep them alive. But I couldn't find the boy. I couldn't. And I felt only a raging pity for him that he had ever suffered here, thin and miserable, and desperate, and ignorant, oh, so terribly ignorant, having but one sensuous joy in life and that was to see the colors of the ikon catch fire.
He also immediately shows up and refers to his family as “filthy peasants”.
And it seemed I understood more viscerally than ever the atmosphere of purposeful gloom which had overhung my childhood in far-off Kiev. I saw again the muddy catacombs, and the half-buried monks who had cheered me on to become one of them.
So I’m admittedly really skeptical about most religions LOL but this entire book is Armand struggling with his religious trauma and like, when you think about it, cave monks aren’t like. Very typical?
When he says stuff like “purposeful gloom” and “cheered me on to become one of them” I can’t imagine a situation where this isn’t coercive on their part, that he wasn't being manipulated and groomed into a cult. And his father didn’t want him to join them; the cult was pulling Armand away from his family and life. And he mentions that the monks are all starving and cold like, it’s not like this was some glamourous life he could’ve lived where they were saving him.
He says:
I looked back at my scholarly brethren.
All were emaciated, dressed in cheap black wool, reeking of old sweat and dirt, and their heads were all but shaved. Their long beards were thin and uncombed. I thought I knew one of them, had loved him somewhat even, but this seemed remote and not worth considering anymore.
To Marius, who stood beside me as faithfully as a shadow, I confided that I could not have endured it, but we both knew this was a lie. In all likelihood I would have endured it, and I would have died without ever knowing any other world.
And like fandom can debate all day and night about like the historical context of Armand’s age, and whether or not he was a child when he lived with Marius, but I think a lot about how his indoctrination into the Children of Darkness wasn’t simply him being brainwashed, it was his relapse. So when you look at the timeline of his life, if you think of like, say 300ish years with a cult, does he fold that tiny blip of time with Marius into his “childhood” ? idk.
But yeah I think like, to put a finer point on it aside from “lack of childhood” what we really mean when we say that is like, some kids go through traumas that force them to grow up quickly, and for a lot of kids it comes with parentification. Like, it’s enough that Armand was a hungry peasant in a cold climate, was (possibly) groomed by a cult, and then abducted and trafficked. But I wonder what Marius did to him too when it comes to like, the emotional support he needed and how he used Armand as balm to his own loneliness, all the while not allowing Armand to have his own emotional needs.
People kept stealing him and it makes sense that he might find a place in that world, and become a leader. It feels like the end result of a long series of events of having to put others’ needs ahead of his own, and also a way for him to have some semblance of control in the situation he’s been thrust into. So I think I when I say “lack of childhood” I’m really just gesturing wildly at All This Stuff and how it connects and relates to itself in the end.
His time with the Children of Darkness is a coming home of sorts; he still winds up pious and underground, and it’s like his whole life he keeps trying to climb his way out of it and always gets dragged back down. Like I think even his suicide attempt fits this as a relapse into religious crisis. He was doing so good!!!!!!!! ☹ Sigh.
And the thing about it, and reaching out more broadly to this concept of VAMPIRE THERAPY LOL is like, a lot of times children grow up thinking their world is normal, or a default, and the work we put in as adults is unlearning that idea and coming to terms with that fact that something was wrong. Armand might not have been traumatized by being cold and hungry and ready to bury himself in a cave but when it's time to dismantle all that stuff I think it's important to make space for it. And even saying like, the concept of Armand going to therapy is silly hahaha so maybe it's not literal, but, I think it's still reaching the same idea if you ask him to grow as a person, to connect with Daniel and reevaluate his feelings about mortality and humanity, to care for Benji & Sybelle, to create Trinity Gate and get back together with Louis in a new way. All of this marks growth that he got to have.
So returning to my original point LOL, I always look at the way he’s built Trinity Gate as a safe haven, landing spot, and how trauma can be so deeply tangled in us that it’s like, how much of this is me and how much is the trauma, when does the trauma end and my personality begin, etc, and like. The truth is that sometimes you have to be patient and accept that it IS part of you, and you can try to be healthy and productive and kind to yourself without simply exorcising all the bad parts. For Armand it can be: "I created Trinity Gate as a safe haven for my friends & family out of love and it also feels like a burden sometimes."
#armand pain#vampire chronicles#the vampire armand#armand#deep ass thoughts about vampires#anne rice#i'm sad about armand again good morning!#vampire therapy thoughts#trauma hole theory#ARMANDS TRAUMA HOLE
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I think what makes this whole situation even worse for Armand is that he only has one (1) fledging. There is literally no point of reference about anything when it comes to him and Daniel except for Armand’s past experiences with Marius which in SOME ways are similar to what Armand and Daniel went through but in other ways they’re completely different experiences. Lestat, Marius and pretty much all of the other main vampires in the series (even Louis even though RIP to both those cuties) have a whole roaster of fledglings to develop different types of relationships with and over the series, they allow them to grow and change and feed off each other, but Armand *only* has Daniel, so it must be legitimately maddening because all the good and the bad and the crazy is just… one relationship for Armand. And it’s obviously a position he put himself in by obsessing over and falling in love with Daniel so hopelessly to the point where he couldn’t even consider continuing existing without him. And then he cursed them both. But I think that in finding himself and regaining his will to live and to have meaningful connections in late canon, he was also able to accept Daniel’s love again, and maybe to start having important conversations about the trauma they both went through when Daniel was turned and after they separated. I’d like to think they didn’t just reunite in PL and immediately jumped right back into a relationship like two stupid teenagers but actually had Important Conversations about what they’d gone through before Daniel moved into Trinity Gate and they decided to give it another go. NYC has great therapists and they’re rich so, please? 🙏
[ dgajksdg I waited too long to answer this bc I was too sad but just for reference icymi I got this ask after posting this devastating shit ]
fuck man!!!!!!
yes! YES.
(I feel like I don’t have a lot to add except that I’m bawling my fuckin eyes out so hear me out for a sec)
It’s just like, man Armand is so fuckin tragic you know? There’s so much nature/nurture to think about when you look at the others but it’s like, he was SO deeply traumatized for his early years I’m not surprised he couldn’t even try. I bring this up from time to time but it’s like, his time with Marius was so brief in the scheme of things, and even if his turning itself or the small amount of time he had with Marius wasn’t traumatic, the fallout was ENOUGH. And like, to relapse back into a cult after being with Marius makes me wonder if he convinced himself that those years were like, an abomination or a mistake, even if his actual turning itself wasn’t awful.
Then you look at someone like Lestat, who was also super traumatized by the way he was turned, and simply will not fucking stop making fledglings because he’s so lonely and has no impulse control and can’t cope with the concept of losing people. I think the two of them are both so desperate for companionship and still approach it so differently because of their personalities.
And even without turning people I just think like, Armand has dealt with so much rejection? It's hard enough to get people to stick around when they're already vampires, like, why would he invest in a human at this point.
So yeah it’s just, it fucks me up every day of my life that Daniel is the only one for him.
I think a lot about the “Remember then that it was love” convo with Marius and how like, Armand seems to have made steady progress in his relationships over the years. Like, acting like less of an animal, being more present with people, etc. And it finally settles on Daniel and repeats some of the Venice stuff.
The irony too of how he GOT Daniel there by being a fucking predator at first; same with how Marius chose Armand because he had no innate value anymore as a person, no one would miss him, every day Marius gave him was a bonus and he was living on borrowed time. Daniel’s life sort of ends the night he meets Louis and Armand harasses him to the point of completely isolating him and fucking up his whole life. In that way he’s at rock bottom with nothing else to lose, also on borrowed time, nowhere to go but up.
Anyway sdhgkjlasg boy yeah they have so much to talk about and like. I think there’s enough anecdotes about vampires who go mad and don’t recover, and it’s promising to me that Daniel DOES recover. And I want them to speak and heal and I hope they both respect how fucking special it is that Daniel is The One.
#i'm sad about armand again good morning!#armand pain#vampire chronicles#devil's minion#armand#daniel molloy#armand/daniel#deep ass thoughts about vampires#trauma hole theory#anne rice
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mother wounds & maker wounds !
So I’ve talked before about generational trauma with vampires and the nature vs nurture aspect of how some of it is behavior, but how maybe the Blood can create an epigenetic thing too that’s just gonna be baked in forever.
BUT LATELY I’ve been daydreaming a lot about the concept of The Mother Wound and how it applies to vampires!!!! And like when you read about Mother Wounds it’s described as generational trauma and it gets brought up a lot that it can be part of family cycles, ie: I raised my child this way because my mom raised me this way, ad infinitum. So I’m interested in looking at like, how the behavior of makers influences their fledglings and what types of assumptions we can make about what it does to you.
And I think if you take any vampire from the books you can kinda ask how it applies, how was their turning traumatic, how did the combination of their deadbeat maker + inherent personality influence their lives and their OWN fledglings. Like, Lestat and Armand for example have extremely different personalities and handled Maker Trauma differently. Lestat continues to breed because he is so desperate for love and afraid of losing people, vs Armand is convinced he’ll be a terrible maker and that it isn’t worth it to hurt your child, so he doesn’t bother. (Except that one time where it became a self-fulfilling prophecy bc he didn’t know how to deal with it after.) Armand is completely cynical about the entire concept that you could have a healthy relationship with your maker because he’s seen it fall apart at every level, from down in the dregs of existence in the cult beneath the cemetery, the meaningless decadent vampires of the Théâtre who barely understand immortality, and all way the up to the absolute ideal of civility and domestic mainstreaming that he got to experience with Marius.
I just find it wild how like, within VC where we are working with Big Brained Vampire Feelings and relationships that exist outside social constructs because of it, which makes the lines between parent/maker/lover very blurry. The love the vampires have for each other is so all encompassing and bigger than human labels & social roles (ie YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING), and yet as a maker you still have a responsibility to usher your fledgling into immortality in a way that doesn’t COMPLETELY TRAUMATIZE THEM and so few of them actually know how to do it.
There’s something hopeful about human relationships in the way we (at least my aro-ace ND ass does, don’t @ me) see the permanence of relationships and the way we measure the hierarchy of loss. Like the way we respect the pain of a romantic breakup and don’t talk about the pain of a friend breakup. It kind of tells us that friendships or romantic relationships can be fleeting, but family bonds are supposed to be permanent. It’s the same way people leaving abusive families or refusing to respect older relatives are shamed for harming the sacred family unit. So it makes me wonder like, when you think of a Maker/Fledgling relationship, especially in a universe where they might live forever, where do we put the permanence of this relationship and how to we romanticize its longevity? The solution in the later books of turning fledglings as a favor to each other seems to be a huge progression for them and a way to avoid some of this. It puts more boundaries between Maker and Lover, where the Maker is providing your life and immortality and doesn’t need to be there for the rest of it.
And especially because of the barrier, it’s like, you CANT be here for the rest of it. You lose the ability to ever truly know each other again. You have to actually develop your verbal communication for this to work and so many of these characters are too fucked up and not ready to do that hhaha. I think there’s a lot of substance in here about like, relating to parents as adults and how that relationship shifts when you grow up. Something similar happens when you turn someone, maybe, like you’ve given them life and now you don’t know each other anymore. And yet something very antithetical to being a mother when you’ve taken their life in the same moment. HMM.
I just really like the way the universe presents these relationships and how complicated they are. Or maybe they’re decidedly uncomplicated because everyone is just “everything” to you. Your maker is your parent and your lover and your companion, they are your everything. It’s only complicated when you try think about it like a human.
Still, anyway, for funsies. Thinking a lot about Maker Wounds today and how it affected Armand, and how it affected his future relationships and sense of self worth. 😊
I was reading this article on PsychologyToday.com about mother wounds if you wanna read it and learn more about what they are and what they do to you and how you fix them haha. BUT FOR FUNSIES, WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU CTRL+F AND REPLACE TO VAMPIRE WORDS??
The best way to think of the maker wound is a loss or a lack of makering. This is typically a deficit in the maker-fledgling relationship that is passed down through generations, and it is a reflection on how we have experienced parenting and how we parent. While not a specific diagnosis, it is a way of looking at how current codependency behaviors may be linked to missing elements in the past.
(Lol MAKERING good word)
So anyway I’m thinking about this concept a lot regarding Armand and I’m sure you could really take any set in the series and look for some of these patterns. But my main thing about Armand that I think harmed him the most was that
- Marius was very rigid with the person he expected Armand to be
- Marius never rescued him.
When you look back at some of the times Marius was especially cruel to him (I always think about when he hits Armand for crying about his dad or whatever lol) and like all of Marius’s bullshit about I WANT YOU TO CHALLENGE ME … but wait not like that ! it’s like, was Armand just floundering with the cult and wondering what he did wrong? (See also: Armand’s defectiveness schema haha)
It’s a loss he can experience twice—on one hand, if he didn’t think Marius survived the fire, there’s no reason to think that he would worry about this aside from dealing with the grief of losing his maker. But if he believed Marius was strong enough to make it, or if he had any indication that Marius survived, that gives him a few hundred years to feel bad about himself and wonder if he’s not worth saving. Then of course, when he learns that Marius is alive (from Lestat’s book?) he can go through it again.
Like there’s always going to be two sides to a reunion like that. Half might be: I’m so happy that you’re alive, and the other half is: Wait you were alive that whole time and never came to get me wtf
I feel like Armand’s early life and even his centuries in the cult are so rich with trauma and grief, though. He loses and loses and loses. He was devout as a human, ready to dedicate himself to living in caves, and it makes me wonder if the cult felt right to him, like he got there anyway. Maybe he looked at his time with Marius as a brief period of sin. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t know how to fuckin behave haha.
But you look back at what happened with Marius and it makes sense that some of his wounds and insecurities show up the way they do.
These types of feelings reduce self-esteem, feelings of self-worth, and feelings of worthiness to have a positive relationship. Individuals with a maker wound always feel incomplete and lacking in their ability to connect with others, while also having deeply rooted feelings about the need for perfection and control.
It feels kinda similar to the way Louis is like GUY WHO IS TURNED WHILE SUICIDAL, like they all have something that kinda sticks with them, I think. Like something about their mortal lives that gets written into their personality. Armand was not rescued!
Here’s some other fun stuff from the article:
Signs of the Maker Wound
· Never feeling they had their maker's approval or acceptance
· Concerns about not being loved by their maker or not being loved as much as other siblings or family members
· Difficulties in relating to the maker on an emotional level
· Uncertainty about the relationship with the maker and if it could be lost with a mistake or an accident
· Always trying to do better or to be perfect, to attempt to gain your maker's attention and acceptance
· Feelings of having to protect, care for, or shelter your maker rather than them protecting, caring for and sheltering you
It’s funny like most of what we know about Armand’s relationships and how he behaves in them is from everyone’s POV except his own. So it’s almost like unfair to try to figure out how he is, how he feels, what last effect abandonment has on him when we’re not hearing it FROM HIM. But it’s like oscillates between being a needy baby or being a weird monster. I’m thinking of like, the “Love me” and pathetic way he threw himself at Lestat & Gabrielle, also the way he takes charge as a cult leader, also the way he introduced himself to Daniel. I just think there’s such a deep need for acceptance, but when that fails or when he’s too afraid to be vulnerable he’s gotta just be rigidly in control to cope with it.
Anyway I don’t have a graceful offramp here, I just wanted to yell about this a little LOL. Also I wanna share one more bit from the article because it feels really potent to me:
These are makers who may provide for the physical needs of the fledglings, and even interact with the fledglings in a positive way, but simply do not provide the deep love and attention that all fledglings require. They may not have been abusive or neglectful, and they may never have engaged in negativity in their relationships with the fledglings, but they were also always distant and less tuned-into the emotional needs of their fledglings.
This one sums them up the most to me, I think. Like the way Marius provided for him even when it’s maybe not exactly what he needed. Giving him every material luxury he could need but slapping him because he’s sad. It’s such an enormous pressure to live up to.
Rewinding back it’s so interesting because when you look at it as a family pattern like, Marius was abandoned by his maker too, even if it was a different circumstance. Marius would have also had to go through that loss more than once; if he ever imagined Teskhamen survived and couldn’t find him, or if he ever wondered why Teskhamen didn’t come to him sooner. Especially a vampire like Marius who was so known in the vampire world, and someone like Teskhamen who had connections to the Talamasca. But there’s sort of a thing here of like, my maker didn’t teach me how to vampire, I had to figure it out myself. But then he fucks up with Armand so bad that Armand falls into the “my dad sucks so I wouldn’t be a good dad” space.
It kills me that we don’t know more about what happened with Daniel, when they drifted apart, how he wound up with Marius, etc. I tend to wonder if Armand fulfilled his own destiny by convincing himself he’d be a bad maker to the point where he barely tried.
And where does that leave Daniel with all of this? Idk.
The thing ultimately that makes these stories so fantastical is that they have all the time in the world to heal, to grow, to get past grudges. This is what the article lists as solutions on how to heal this wound:
· Exploring the feelings of the inner child and allowing those feelings of being ignored, unloved, unwanted, or not valued to be expressed in a safe, therapeutic environment.
· Learning to validate and love ourselves creates a positive emotional and mental picture of our lives as they are in the present time, letting go of the past concept of self-developed by our interactions with our maker.
· Setting boundaries—creating a relationship with the maker that is based on your needs and the ability of the maker to change and contribute to your emotional needs in a healthy, positive, and fulfilling way.
I wonder if Daniel has a hand in that, in bringing the two of them together.
Personally I’ve always felt like, I don’t “””ship””” Armand & Marius because I think they’re awful for each other lol but there’s just so much unhealed baggage here. But, like I was saying, vampire relationships are so different from the real world. I would love if they could simply coexist, be there for each other as needed, love each other safely. I’ve talked enough so I don’t want to get distracted with like all the work they’d have to do to fix it and how they’d have to build a new version of their relationship that exists in the present but it’s nice to see that there’s a way through and I hope Daniel can help them.
I WONDER WHAT DANIEL’S FLEDGLINGS WILL BE LIKE — !! 🥸
#vampire chronicles#trauma hole theory#armand#marius de romanus#daniel molloy#deep ass thoughts about vampires#anne rice#i talk a lot sorry#im having an exciting saturday night#i just watched martyrs with my cats and now i cry about armand
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When you rbed my vampire psych post, you tagged something about Armand’s “trauma hole.” I must know - what is Armand’s Trauma Hole? Devastate me, Kacy.
I WANNA SAY BEFORE I START btw if I had money and wasn’t in the US I’d go to college for psychology strictly to write vampire meta lmfao but yknow what, I don’t have a formal education and I just listen to a lot of psych podcasts and I AM, MYSELF, SOMEONE WITH A TRAUMA HOLE so that’s my qualifications here LOL.
So I have sort of a running headcanon called The Trauma Hole Theory and like it’s not completely solid so don’t take my word on this but it’s a fun thought experiment.
It comes down to two questions: Do vampires have neuroplasticity? and: Does The Blood know to fix neurological differences? *
*(This point in particular is a whole separate topic because I’d said that the vampires’ neurobiology IN ITSELF makes them neurodivergent, as in, operating differently from the average human. But neurodivergence isn’t a thing that needs to be healed or cured, simply a difference in structure, but I wonder if The Blood categorizes differences in brain structure due to trauma as an injury?)
And the thing is like, we’re never going to have an answer because it’s not something Anne planned around. Even like starting with the Mayfair books and going into all her weird cosmic questions in her later life she always talked about biology & medicine like it was magic LOL so who knows. I wish I’d had the chance to ask her this!
But to be more specific, I need to know: Is the Blood able to cure what’s wrong with your brain, or does it freeze your brain exactly how it is?
I can make arguments for both because there isn’t an answer in canon and if you start fine combing you’re going to find a lot of conflicting evidence. We can also handwave this away as “the Dark Gift is different for everyone!”
Claudia is one of my favorite examples to look at, because we have to ask: Is she a monster because she doesn’t remember being human or is it because her brain development got frozen where she wasn’t awesome at empathy yet? A lot of studies say children have empathy by the time they’re 4, so maybe she’s in the clear! But how much of her early life and development were stunted by malnourishment?
This also gets into the canon that some of the vampires who were turned younger are a bit wilder, less impulse control, etc. Lestat, as an example of a permanent 20 year old with poor decision making faculties, vs. Marius who although sometimes cruel, has the patience to play the long game. In canon it often gets framed that it’s about the deeper experience of being human but I wonder a lot about how it interacts with brain structure. I’d also ask how much of this is simple behavior that they can learn to correct if they want to. Like, is CBT effective for vampires if there’s nothing physically wrong with their brains?
(Anyway I need a psych degree to understand more about how brains work and like, the nuances of how undead vampire brains work where they still clearly FUNCTION but like, I need to know which parts are frozen, how their emotions work, why do they have super photographic memories and telepathy and new powers but we assume their prefrontal cortex is stuck at their mortal age of development how does that affect the overall brain function!?!?! I'm making shit up to fit my angst headcanon needs to don't @ me LOL.) ((Hekate you in particular should weigh in with your headcanons bc you're smarter about this stuff than me!!!!!! I'm just a lowly angst headcanon troll!!!))
So anyway like, trauma causes neurological damage/structural changes to the brain. It reshapes your ability to see logic. I’m sure if you’re having sort of acute panic in the moment of being turned, and your amygdala is poppin and your brain is full of cortisol, maybe the Blood takes care of that because it’s temporary. But when you look at someone like Armand, who had endured years of trauma before he was turned, I wonder how much of that more complex/long term trauma is just wired into his brain.
SO THE TRAUMA HOLE AND THE QUESTION ABOUT NEUROPLASTICITY IS:
If the Blood fixed Armand’s brain where it was, can he ever truly heal from it?
There’s a thing in real life with HUMANS recovering from trauma that sometimes we are so unable to accept that Things Are Okay that we’re constantly on guard or create problems. If Armand permanently has that space in his head telling him that it’s dangerous, that something is wrong, that people are using him; is he always going to find ways to fill that hole and create drama?
Living in squalor for 300 years in a cult felt like a way to stay with this feeling, to not allow himself to even try for safety and happiness. In the Theatre, even trying to be better, he still allowed himself to partake in atrocities.
And with Daniel? Gradually allowing himself to feel things even though he’d been reckless with his pet? But really trying?
Even after finally turning Daniel it became a self-fulfilling prophecy; he believed he wouldn’t be a good maker and I have to wonder if he actually tried or if he just allowed that anxiety to dictate his behavior.
In Trinity Gate it’s like he’s doing his best to be domestic but still takes this role of running the household and keeping everyone safe. He’s got these crazy secure crypts in the basement. He’s the only one who wants to kill the replimoids.
Marius tells him that he has the ✨savage & ignorant soul of a child✨ AND ?????? HE’S NOT WRONG? EXCEPT IT’S SUCH A SHITTY WAY TO PUT IT. He’s just still very much his wounded inner child trying to navigate danger at all times.
CBT could still work on vampires, I think, in terms of teaching them a set of rules to follow. It wouldn’t be unlike teaching them to mask. But if it’s not something that can be healed, we can always assume that if Armand is behaving, he’s just going through the motions for the benefit of the people he loves, and not that he’s less hurt and uncomfortable on the inside.
:)
#trauma hole theory#vampire chronicles#armand#i'm sad about armand again good morning!#deep ass thoughts about vampires#anne rice#vampire brain science
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but now the cosmos crawls with monsters
KACY. 30s. She/They.
This blog contains adult content, please do not follow if you are a minor.
hi friends! I'm Kacy, I write fanfiction! I like ducks and heavy metal! I mostly use this space to talk about The Vampire Chronicles, but I also like Sheith, and horror films, and kink theory! I am an asexual porn writer and I'm obsessed with Marius!
LINKS
AO3 - I am monstersinthecosmos on AO3, I write porn about VC, Sheith, and sometimes YOI!
Bsky - kacycarr on bsky - you will find mostly Sheithing here!
Ko-Fi - feel free to buy me a coffee if you like my fics! I have some fics available for purchase in digital download and paperback!
I will also invite you to check out projects I created & co-mod called @vamptember (vampire prompts during the month of September!) and @priapus-at-the-gate (the VC Kink Meme!)
VC STUFF!
I mostly use this space to talk about VC since the fandom is either dead or toxic as fuck on other platforms. I've been into VC since like THE YEAR 2000 LOL. I had fics that got taken down in the FFnet purge! Ancient!
Marius is my favorite character and I'm more partial to Marius subplots/timelines. I'm also really into the Devil's Minion and Trinity Gate! I'm super into whatever the fuck was going on with Marius & Daniel! I could talk about Armand all fucking day! Pandora is my hero! Please expect posts about these things!
I didn't love the AMC adaptation so I don't talk about it very often, because I try to focus on stuff I enjoy. ♡
TAGS
#stuff i wrote - IT'S FOR STUFF I WROTE. contains fics and discussion of fics. if they're very short they might only be on Tumblr and not on AO3.
#deep ass thoughts about vampires - my meta tag, sorry I came up with the name while I was stoned back in 2016 and I'm too lazy to change it :)
#trauma hole theory - if you want even DEEPER ass thoughts about vampires, this is where I park thoughts related to "do vampires have neuroplasticity?" and "would therapy even work on them?"
#asexual vc - I don't really shut the fuck up about vampires being asexual so if you wanna hear about it CLICK HERE
#simple italian perv - MISC SMUTTY THOUGHTS to keep the rent low lol if you're new here I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me
#the skateboard of shakespeare - I visited Tulane last year and documented a ton of info from the Anne Rice collection! I use this tag when I share!
#vampire chronicles- for book stuff!
#vampire pajama party on amc - this is my tag for the AMC show; I'm not a big fan of it so please feel free to mute if you don't want to see salt posts. (I have a second, even saltier tag called #the rolin jonestown massacre if you want to mute that one as well!)
#devils minion girlies - STILL WORKING HARD TO POPULATE THIS TAG but if you like thinking about Armand & Daniel as lesbians please see this tag.
#unethical marius - I've been really obsessed lately with thinking about an AU where Marius is an unethical therapist LOLLL please feel free to peruse or mute as needed.
#vampire music - I have like a ND relationship to music and I love sharing it even if no one else cares and taste is subjective but if you ever want vampirey music recs they will be here :D
#fandom lolitics - I try not to share too much discourse & drama but it's here if you want to mute it!
#vcficfriday - when I have time & remember to I like to share fics I've read on Fridays!!!! Please feel free to use this tag in your own blog as well, to build up fic writers!
I THINK THAT COVERS IT, FELLAS, please be kind to each other and don't be shy to send me asks if you have any questions!
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