it is what it is

i'm trying to hold off on talking much more about tvl before i can rewatch it but i've been thinking about this hazy, mostly off-screen devil's minion we're given and it just feels so achingly hollow, though not necessary in a bad way.

im not here to talk about authorial intent; i don't really feel prepared to do that right now. this is purely my emotional reaction to my first watch.

armand is monstrous and fragile and lonely. he's been spinning out this season, having given up on being truly loved or seen. at nycc, assad said the best word for him this season is hungry—hungry for connection, for safety, for comfort. we know he's hit a kind of rock bottom following the loumand divorce and turning daniel. i also can't help but read him as deeply dissociated this season. he's trying to fix this mess he's in, but it doesn't seem like he has enough of an actual belief that it's possible to really put his heart in it.

enter daniel. eric spoke about things having surely become "intense" between the two of them in order for daniel to help him cut off louis and lestat's heads, and there's clearly a spoken commitment between them for daniel to say he's "seeing someone" and armand to call daniel his companion. i think they're almost certainly fucking. at the same time, the way armand broke down in front of louis doesn't particularly suggest that he has someone whose love he can count on back home. armand is also a deeply distrustful person. i say this all the time, but i personally think his belief that daniel loved him when they were together in the past is tenuous at best, and i think daniel is facing a steep uphill battle when it comes to convincing armand he loves him in the present. and, while i think daniel absolutely *is* in love with armand, i think he's still missing his memories and thus the context that informs that feeling. until daniel gets those memories back, armand is also going to be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, terrified once again that, at any moment, his partner could find out about this massive lie in the very center of their relationship and hate him for it. armand already puts so little stock in other people's words. in conditions like these, companionship can't possibly bear any weight to him.

at the same time, it's not like armand isn't willing to cling to the hollowest possible approximations of companionship. on the contrary, we've always seen him scrabbling to be Loved and Kept, no matter how farcical or inauthentic that love may be. yet now, despite by all appearances being very close to that ultimate goal, he's just... totally shut down. he may have gained some form of companionship and devotion from the man he loves easier than ever before, but he's acting like he's never been further from what he wants. and you know what? i get it. he's sleepwalking through his greatest fantasy, irrepressibly aware that its just another play that will end and leave him with even less than before.

this is such a familiar dance to armand at this point. he knows there's nothing worth having inside him, and he's both constantly resentful of his partner's ignorance of that fact and constantly terrified that they're going to find out. no matter what daniel thinks or feels, armand knows it's all transactional and temporary, just like always. and just like always, it's only daniel's fleeting ignorance of that fact that keeps him around. armand is so well practiced at keeping the secret of his partner's inevitable resentment and disgust from them, but doing so is so terribly exhausting and lonely and alienating. why keep trying to hide it from himself too? it only ever ends up hurting more in the end.