I know Daniel is kind of an asshole sometimes but I absolutely reject this idea that he wouldn’t take Armand’s trauma seriously. Especially not when Marius is such a lying asshole.
He’s crass and blunt but he’s also good at his job, and at his core he was, by his own admission, looking for people in the cracks. That’s who he was when he starting out. That’s the purest view of he’s aspirations we’ve seen, and returning to that after struggling so much with Lestat doesn’t feel unrealistic to me. I don’t know if there is someone who has slipped further into the cracks than Armand.
And unlike Lestat, who is intentionally winding Daniel up and has no desire to tell the whole truth, Armand on two separate occasions has demonstrated willingness to volunteer information about his past. He wants to be known more than anything, even if his view of his abuse isn’t super clear to him.
Considering the nature of the things Daniel’s discussed researching before, I find it nearly impossible to believe human trafficking hasn’t come up. He’s interviewed sex workers and frankly it’s not too much of a leap. He’s mentioned being held captive while doing an interview (that wasn’t in San Francisco) and seems to have met some really bad people so it’s not hard to believe that he’s spoken to victims like this before, or at least come across them.
And it’s not like it’s a stranger or someone he knows is trying to deceive him as Armand was during the Dubai interview. This is Armand, the lost love of his life. His maker. Daniel visibly felt bad for him after the concert and he probably doesn’t know why yet. He should still hate him and yet he couldn’t hide the concern on his face. Imagine him when he’s actually trying to help him piece together the many broken pieces of his life. Imagine him when he knows he’s in love with him.
I’m not expecting Gen Z therapy speak from this seventy year old man. He’ll probably be blunt and unhelpful at times and impatient and trigger the hell out of Armand, but he called Magnus Lestat’s abuser and he doesn’t tolerate bullshitters, which was the very reason he was so rude to Armand in Dubai. He ought to see Marius for the manipulative, obfuscating, condescending monster he really is. Armand wants the truth, Marius refuses to tell it. It’s also doubtful the Talamasca has much on Marius regarding his abuse of Armand aside from the basic facts, and Armand has disclosed very little. You’d need Armand’s account for that.
It’s one thing to know the bullet points of what he went through. Hearing the details is something different entirely. You don’t see the look in Armand’s eyes as he tries to recall if he even knows his own name by opening a Talamasca file. Daniel isn’t soulless and you’d have to be in order to feel nothing about Armand’s story. I get about twenty pages into TVA before I already want to be sick and this is the love of his life.
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people in fiction are always making plans like "how about tuesday?" and then leaving without elaborating. what time? where? do you even have each other's numbers? deeply stressful
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As a show only person, I’ve heard that the books don’t have a ton of DM stuff in them, that it’s basically that one chapter in QOTD. Why do you think they’ve been so popular for so long, since they don’t have a lot of source material for fans to go on?
I love the change that the show made in aging up Daniel, and I’m curious as to how book fans feel, too.
Thank you!
Hey Nonny, thanks for the ask! That's such an interesting question!
My answer is super long (and also contains a book DM summary a.k.a. book spoilers), so I'm going to pop it under a break.
RE: Book DM's long-term popularity:
My very short and useless answer is because the DM chapter in QotD is such a banger! As are the rest of their scenes in that book.
The longer answer of why I love book DM is something Assad has touched on in several interviews: Armand has spent his entire life (or at least the years of it he can remember) trying to be what (he thinks) people want him to be.
He was trafficked, groomed and very violently indoctrinated into a cult, and never really 'deprogrammed' out of the ideas that instilled in him. He's never been able to be himself or even to explore what being himself means. Until he's with Daniel.
The DM chapter is very long and covers the entire arc of their relationship from their first meeting to Armand turning him 12 years later, when they have been lovers for years.
DM is very unhealthy in the books. Armand tells Daniel to start running and that he won't kill him as long as Daniel stays interesting to him, and chases him around the world for years. At first Daniel is terrified, but their interactions change over time. They talk, they argue, Armand wakes Daniel up in the middle of the night to demonstrate the miracle of the long-distance phone call to him, bails Daniel out of jail by pretending to be a lawyer and warns him when there's a fire in his hotel. And Daniel starts looking forward to seeing him and missing him when he stays away too long.
Even after Armand confesses that he'll never kill Daniel because he's grown to love him (and they immediately decide that means they're going steady now), their relationship is very unhinged. They're super codependent, Daniel is addicted to Armand’s blood and constantly demands that Armand makes him a vampire (because Daniel learned precisely nothing from interviewing Louis and can't understand how horrible being a vampire is), and Armand often disregards the physical restrictions of Daniel’s human body in terms of him needing rest. Daniel regularly storms out of their shared home because he thinks Armand doesn’t love him enough to give him the Dark Gift when it is in fact love that keeps Armand from giving it to him (Nickistat parallels, anyone?). This is their big conflict/fatal disconnect once they get together. But Daniel can't live without Armand and always ends up begging Armand to come take him home while cursing him for ruining him for a normal life. And Armand does come to take him home, but only after Daniel can't take it anymore and asks him to (dare I say show!Gabristat parallels?).
They are so super star-crossed and Daniel’s mortal lifespan constantly hangs over them like Damocles' sword. (Insert dreamy sigh.)
BUT it's also romantic, and incredibly freeing for Armand.
Armand is disconnected from humanity and doesn't really care if he lives or dies before he meets Daniel (he's been alone for a while by that time, Louis already having left him before the interview took place). Daniel and how clearly Daniel is a child of the times he was born in fascinate Armand. He literally tells Daniel that Daniel is going to teach him about the modern world and human life, and he does (though it's moreso Armand dragging Daniel to every place and activity under the sun).
They go on cute little dates and do domestic and goofy shit together. They take night classes, explore the jungle, debate philosophy, go to plays and art shows and parties, sponsor a dancer's education, watch the same two movies over and over, and Armand tries out a bazillion hobbies like microwaving rats and roaches, concocting unholy smoothies in a blender, interviewing random people on the street and filling a whole apartment with floppy disks full of 'secret writings'. Every weird thing that you assumed was fanon came directly from Anne Rice's typewriter.
With Daniel, Armand gets to do whatever mundane thing he wants and not be judged for it (though Daniel does grumble and grouse like a put-upon sitcom husband). Daniel is also a total monsterfucker who loves Armand 'not in spite of the fact that Armand is a monster but because of it' (literal book quote). For the first time ever, Armand is seen, he is loved not for who he's trying to be but for who he is (despite Daniel wanting something from him that Armand can't bring himself to give him). Being with Daniel brings Armand back to life. It makes him care.
By the end of the DM chapter, the vampocalypse has already started and Armand is terrified of it, because he doesn't feel like he can protect Daniel from it. Daniel is also actively dying from consuming too much drugs and not enough food and Armand is *shocked* by how much he cares. By how much he doesn’t want Daniel to die and how he can’t see himself going on without him.
So he (selfishly, in his mind) breaks his vow and brings Daniel 'into Hell' with him. ("We'll be in hell together after all".)
Anne initially intended for Armand to join Akasha and go fully evil, but then she wrote DM and with it a reason for Armand to want to save the world instead.
Ship of all time for real. Fucked-up gothic romance for the ages.
(I can't find the 'Teletubby falling over' gif on Tumblr so you'll have to imagine it at this point on my TED talk.)
RE: show DM and aging Daniel up:
I literally gasped out loud when the IWTV pilot revealed that the reason why they aged Daniel up was because this was a second interview. It's so brilliant. Not just in terms of framing the theme of memory being a monster/dealing with Anne's complete 180 on how Lestat is portrayed in the TVL book vs in the IWTV book, but (I realised after the Armand reveal) it also makes DM so much juicier.
In the book, their relationship and the ways in which Daniel copes with it are literally killing him. And Armand breaks his vow of never making a vampire by 'dooming' Daniel into immortality because he cannot bear the thought of having to face eternity without him.
The fan theory that was accepted by 98% of the DM fandom immediately after the Armand reveal (and which I believe will be what did happen in the show) is that past DM happened but Daniel doesn’t remember. Instead of turning Daniel because their relationship was killing him, Armand made the decision to remove himself from Daniel’s life completely to save him. He let Daniel go, so Daniel would have a chance to live a normal life. (Of course that didn't happen, which makes it even juicier still.)
Except now that Daniel is old and sick and close to dying of natural causes, Armand finds that he can't let him go after all, and still brings him into Hell with him, because he still loves him half a century later and cannot bear the thought of facing eternity without him.
(Please imagine gifs of screaming cats and people falling to the ground screaming for this.)
I also love the idea of Armand, who for so long was reduced to his looks and his attractiveness, loving old Daniel not despite his visible age but because of it. Because Daniel was allowed to do something that Armand never had a chance to do: to life a full though imperfect human life.
(More screaming crying throwing up gifs of your choosing.)
Yesterday, on 2.07.2026, approximately at 2:20 AM a russian missile exploded right next to my flat.
I woke up with glass shards all around me and a door from another room that collided with mine, almost barricading me inside my bedroom. Every window and door in the apartment was blown out by the explosion. My family's car burned to the crisp. The entrance door of the flat was stuck and people have spent 40 minutes trying to break it open with hammers and axes.
Despite great material damage, miraculously, me and my family wasn't injured. Even my laptop and drawing tablet have somehow survived, despite being left right by the window. And, thankfully, I have another place to go to, where I'll be living full-time from now on.
The only thing I want to tell you guys, remember that Russia is a terrorist state. That night dozens of people have died and even more got injured or lost their every possession. I was lucky to only suffer material losses. Attacks like this one have been happening since 2014 on the east side of Ukraine and for four years now all over the country and will continue. Our UNESCO protected landmarks are being destroyed and whole cities are being wiped out by missiles and drones.
Please, be mindful and avoid supporting russian organisations, and don't spread misinformation about the war. This is very important, because info war is just as much of a real part of the war as physical destruction is. If you have the means to, donate to Ukrainian volunteers. Support those who are dear to you.
But even after that life goes on. I still have to collect all of my paperwork for the graduation and applying for uni. People will be going back to work and meeting with friends.
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For everyone's information, from now on, I'll be defending every action Armand takes more ruthlessly and with less nuance than ever before because he deserves to be as evil as he wants to be and I do not care about his reasons or his excuses. It's all justified.
But he has to let him know in that moment. No, it wasn't that I was manipulating you. I was under your spell. I was under your spell and I didn't even know it. I thought I had messed this up because I was so in love with Louis. But actually, no. It was you.
– Assad Zaman
i just personally dont find sex scenes that actionably different from any other repeated tableau in cinema, like the aforementioned dinner scenes, or driving scenes, or getting ready for bed scenes. a lot of movies tend to be about human life and many humans frequently have sex, among other things
You guys keep talking about the daniel body swap theory as if you're fully expecting ebogo to snap in half like a frail waif in a brisk wind and die badly in the middle of filming season 4. unless he is hiding something he is a healthy sharpwitted 73 yr old who goes to the gym and lifts weights. can you people calm down. he doesn't actually have parkinsons.
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Really loving this whitewashing of the Free Palestine activists who were in the streets celebrating on 10/8. Everyone remembers how y'all were cheering when Israeli men, women, and children were being raped and burned alive, when Thai farm workers were getting the heads chopped off with shovels, when African students were getting their heads plugged with bullets.
You were all out and proud and cheering on 10/8. You were saying "This is what decolonization looks like." Where's that pride now? Why are you suddenly getting shy when your posts and videos are being played back to you?
