as i live and breathe – 𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙣?

– louis's kidnapping and torture had me in a squint, but my ultimate reception of it was: this man has the most delayed reckoning of things he was made to suffer and things he allowed himself to suffer. when you're in that position for so long, it's easy to become the gremlin who will do before he's done to. he went after lestat, trying to cut him away from what he saw as doomed and impermanent (nicki), making an antagonist of lestat in the process.

he pursued lestat's affections in the first théâtre des vampires and stayed where he was ridiculed and dismissed by the two people who actually held lestat's affection without effort (nicki and gabi). then he put an end to the doomed and permanent and made an outright enemy in the process. and somewhere in there, he gave up his blood (more intimate than sex) and was left with a lucrative, shining idea not his own, an institution that revered the object of his desperation.

– then he meets another person who held lestat's affections to such a degree that he broke one of the laws (evidence standing beside said person). and he knew what happened and allowed himself to be lied to, then allowed himself to enter a relationship with a man who sold flesh as his own flesh had been sold, one who immediately interpreted their relationship as a "master" commanding a servant to hold his umbrella, light his cigarette, get face-down in his coffin so that he could be fucked. we know louis was scrambling back into the only old coat he possessed, filthy as it was, because he'd murdered someone he loved and been pulped by the very same, because society hated the queerness they could see all over him. but armand slipping back into a traumatic role as if it was easy and even likeable was a misjudgment. armand was capable of bitterness and it was such that he was ready to see louis (and claudia and madeleine) die slowly and painfully.

– but then louis didn't, thanks to the first object of armand's affections. and when lestat refused to set the record straight, armand punished himself with louis, hearing and erasing louis's contempt for him for over 70 years of his life. the keeper of the contempt and the longing for lestat and the begging for absolution was armand. anything like pure love had to be curated, pruned, and fabricated by him for over 70 years, and the result was still so unnatural that a human who was about the same age as his internment noticed immediately.

– looking back on that and looking forward at the frequency with which thousands loudly throw up the pain of your human years (which seems to be the emotional ur for every vampire), i figure that building a pain construct seems like the only thing to climb out from in between the colliding two and say "you can't fuck with me without consequence, and it doesn't matter if i care how you feel about me – the consequence matters more"