hii love @dictee i wanted to reply but this got so long & didn't want to add it to an already massive post, hope this is ok!

i 100% agree on the coercive element which is fully a textual layer and the reason why their relationship is only 'equal' in appearance but not materially. louis i think needs to believe in this kind of equal footing to stay sane and armand plays into it to keep him. power imbalance is an intrinsic part of their relationship same as it was in lestat's and louis' relationship, which brings it back to the meta-textual level of domination and submission.

as for the boredness we see that in dubai for sure - 'the vampire is bored'. they have been in the same circulation for 70 years now. as for paris era, and this is in the end of course a matter of interpretation and i hope i'm catching ur meaning here, for me personally ghost lestat and his slights against the romantic nature of armand's 'courtship' mostly represent the holdbacks of someone not wanting to give himself fully into a romantic relationship with someone so obviously dangerous, with that many very familiar red flags and as we've said just now representing a coercive situation that seems very close to louis' turning and subsequent housewife imprisonment. lestat's voice to me personally reads almost like self-sabotage that accompanies an (if extremely founded) fear of committment. he represents louis' old life, his fears, his relational trauma, his self-hate and to a certain extent his hold onto a smidge of humanity (lestat being the last person alive who has known him as human).

armand is of course not wholly the suave lover from the book, he fumbles and uses basic stereotypes of love because it's not something he ever learned and louis does get tired of that (light his fucking cigarette!). while not at all dismissing the play louis is making here (he did learn, after all, the hard way a woman's tricks on how to appease a violent man) i do still believe there is a genuine need in louis to make this relationship work as well as a genuine love for and attraction to armand. as in his relationship with lestat love and resentment go hand in hand. i don't believe it to be only calculated manipulation because why else is he doing this now when he could have just done it directly after the threat was made to claudia's and his life. and this is why, as i've tried to explicate in the og post, it's not coincidental that this version of lestat fades at the point he does.

it's both, to me. it an ensuring safety for claudia and himself, a learned survival tactic. but i think it is uncharitable to say that there is no desire or love from louis towards armand. claudia did not say 'two blood fat cocks clapping together' for nothing. the love is what makes it a tragedy.

Dp x dc idea 25

Danny is forced to flee when pariah is released. The armor didn’t get done before pariah unleashed his terror. Pariah destroyed everything in his way. Danny was not able to save or protect his family and friends. He is all alone now.

Pariah takes to earth to conquer it. Danny was prepared to keep fighting a lost cause when clockwork appeared. He tells Danny that this isn’t the timeline that was meant to be. As it was the ghost king he was unable to rewind time.

To secure a better future tells Danny he needs to flee and when the time came fight pariah once more. Danny was not gonna listen to this man? Elder?? Child….. whatever it was.

He just gets pushed into a portal. Now he is in the dc universe. He had been forced through as human.

Here he does get questioned by the heros. I mean he did fall out of a green portal and land on earth. All Danny reveals is that he was fighting a tyrant who killed his friends and family and was set in destroying his planet. That some random dude pushed him through the portal.

Danny decided not to reveal he was half ghost or the words the nutjob left him. Danny being able to use his powers as human slowly gets used to them and better at using them. Learning the ghostly wail by watching canary. When his ice core forms he mimics Superman’s ice breath. Watching Martian manhunter helps him with his shapeshifting, invisibility and intangibility.

The heroes definitely think that he has some form of mimicking power. Danny can’t fly as a human tho. So no late night flights. Danny does slip info on who he fought so they have basic anti ecto weapons. Not that they realize it’s specific for ghost.

He’d probs end up with the teen titans given his age. Or maybe a hero snags him 🤷‍♀️.

One day giant hands rip open a portal in the sky and out comes fright knight and a horde of skeletons. Nothing they have works on pariah but keeps the skeletons at bay.

Danny decides this must be what the man was talking about. And for the first time since being here transforms.

JLD is here at this point and just is like you didn’t think it was important to tell us it was the fricken ghost king or the fact your a halfa. Danny just says nope.

Will Danny get a lecture. Most likely. Does he win. Yes. Did he become ghost king. Also yes.