I snort sugar

I truly think the reason Armand is being presented the way that he has this season is because:

It's largely from Lestat's POV, so he doesn't know what Armand's been up to in the present day and assumes it's either pitiful yearning or something sinister.

Everybody projects this season, and 19th century Lestat projected his need for a loving parent hard onto the cultured and informed vampire adult who entered his life after Gabriella disappeared.

Show Lestat does not know nearly as much about Marius as his book counterpart (he thinks Marius is dead!), so he takes everything at face value and doesn't doubt Marius's opinion that Armand was a failure.

He doesn't want to admit to himself that his mother is hurting him, so he doesn't want to believe Armand, the one remaining character who has learned from personal experience how to recognize parental abuse when he sees it. Of course he's angry at Armand and says things like he'd do more harm than the Queen ever did! If Armand points out that Gabriella is doing to Lestat what Marius did to him, it would shatter the delusion that Lestat has clung to all this time.

Armand will be to Lestat what Daniel was to Louis in s1 and s2, a needling reminder of uncomfortable truths.

That's why Armand has not heard about "Sofia" yet, because the second he finds out that Gabriella is near, he's throwing his self-searching journey to the curb, and it's going to feel like the old Coven master is back at trying to control everyone's lives again.

In the cast and crew interviews last year and earlier this year, multiple writers and actors said they had a newfound empathy for Armand this season. Assad has stressed in interviews that Armand is trying to be good. To the casual viewer, these comments would seem to come from left field, so we can assume something in this season is going to reveal more about him than simply The Gremlin or The Failure.

Rolin has said repeatedly that episode 7 has a big plot for Armand. It's such a secret plot, the early screeners have not seen the episode and have not been able to talk about it, which leads me to believe he's involved in a big reveal that recontextualizes all the previous episodes.

Im not sure whether I will have to go through one (its a weird situation) but the prospect is giving me immense dread and it would be my first. No clue how to prepare myself :(

Some breakups you'll shrug off, some will always ache, less and less with time but never zero. The worst ones are breakups with friends. Pride is a worse teacher than humility. Sometimes deep love and affection can wind up becoming really bitter enmity and it'll be confusing how the same person could mean opposite things to you at different times in your life. Falling in love and wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone changes you forever. It changes you even more if they leave you, and even more if it happens to you more than once. But change can't be avoided and you can't control other people. Some of your mistakes will be forgiven, but some never will be and you'll have to live with being the villain in someone else's story. Sometimes you won't make any mistakes but things still won't work out, and you'll have to live with the unfairness of that too. Making the same mistakes again and again and learning slowly to be better is part of being a person. Everyone else is trying their best, just like you. But the absolute best breakup advice I ever got was this: