ridiculousyou

I think this introduction makes perfect sense. Daniel being resistant at first and then joining Armand in whatever he’s doing tracks with Daniel’s character. He missed his maker, here he is.

When Daniel says he’s seeing someone, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re already deeply in love and we just didn’t see it. They’ve just been working together.

And did it happen off-screen or did it happen in the background? Because those are different things. The implication is that we’re not going to go back and get any additional context behind what’s been happening between them and that just doesn’t add up considering we haven’t seen what Armand is up to. Rolin said numerous times Armand’s arc is incomplete. Specifically, there is more context to the Larry scene. So we are revisiting that, why wouldn’t we revisit anything else? We’re going to learn about what Armand is doing and Daniel has been with Armand for a lot of it.

Waiting till season 4 for past!DM makes sense to me. We bring them back together, we establish what their dynamic looks like now, as tumultuous as it is, and then we build on that. We get the non-book readers used to the idea of them together, because it is a strange concept if you don’t have prior context. They’ve been hammering home Armand turning Daniel in a fit of rage for wrecking his marriages. You need to allow time for that to subside.

Armand is in love with Daniel but we do not know how Daniel feels yet. Having him fall back in love with Armand around the same time as we learn about their real past just makes sense to me. It’ll be season 4 though. Season 5 seems like too long a wait.

It's not him announcing a relationship, it's a calculated move to prompt a response. Armand told him that Louis knew about them/their past, so what does Louis know?

You get it! Thank goodness there are still people that get it, because the amount of people that are taking everyone's words at face value is so baffling to me considering that the framework of this show is that we are never seeing the full objective truth. Events are always being told from someone's inherently biased perspective and we have to piece together what the truth might be based on everything we've been told by each perspective.

We are also seeing duplicitous characters lie and twist the truth when it suits them, so we need to read into what they could be referring to or why they might be saying that instead of taking them at face value. We've been shown that Daniel will do whatever he needs to do to achieve his goals, and that now includes dressing up 'working with Armand' as 'seeing someone.'

Whoever is listening realising they went bankrupt so they could listen to this shit:

‼️SPOILERS AHEAD‼️

If this episode has proven anything about the current status of the fandom, it’s that not nearly enough people have read the books. So let’s talk about it.

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Yes, that whole rant Claudia said was in fact on brand for her and is very much who she truly is and is what she actually thinks. She doesn’t particularly like either of them but Louis was always her pawn because he’s easier to manipulate than Lestat. That has been established in the books for a good while.

Yes, The specific things Claudia said to/about Louis was to hurt him and to get a reaction. Claiming the writers ruined the scene with that and saying Claudia would never is in fact wrong. I’m sorry. Claudia is vicious and brutal when she lets the facade drop and as she is constant pain and filled with anger in death, there’s no reason for her to sugar coat her feelings.

Armand will always be the most vicious vampire when it comes to enforcing the rules. BUT he will turn a blind eye if it’s something he’s doing that’s against them. That’s just who he is.

With The Vampire Chronicle’s, it’s is a known fact if you’ve read the books and paid attention that Vampires can live for a little bit without their heads attached to their body. So as long as it gets put back they will get back up. So, Armand and Daniel doing that was purely to stop Lestat and Louis from doing the concert. Armand wouldn’t actually kill Louis or Lestat, there’s no benefit for him in that, but temporarily making them incapacitated is beneficial for now.

Every single character in The Vampire Chronicles is complicated, trauma driven, and multidimensional. Every. Single. One. Excusing one characters actions by saying “they’re traumatized, it’s not their fault” but then turning around and not allowing the same thing for other characters is wrong. Again, I’m sorry. You can have a favourite character ( I clearly do too) but you still should have a basic understanding of the rest of them and know that they’re all very similar in so many ways.

At the end of the day, the choices made by writers are always intentional and serve a purpose for later seasons with this show. That’s been proven multiple times now. And people need to remember that ALL of these characters are bad. They are vampires, they are monsters, not human. Their emotions and actions are not logical to humans.

*edit because some people clearly are misinterpreting that last sentence:

By “Their emotions and actions are not logical to humans” I mean they feel more intensely and their actions represent that. So, what WE would deem unreasonable, unnecessary, or unforgivable, to them, it is something that could be logical in that moment or something that is more debatable morally.

That encounter is arguably more consensual than the one with the girl and the paper bag mentioned in 2x5, so I’m not sure where the outrage is coming from.

I mean I know where the outrage is coming from. Twitter. So it’s utterly vapid anyway. I don’t think most people over there even like the show they’re watching. Daniel was mean to Lestat and also there’s all the ageism so he gets more criticism as a result.

It’s bad obviously. But the student was there for him. Students are generally in their twenties. Daniel wasn’t the teacher, it was just a reading. So it’s not a student of his (do we know if Daniel is even a teacher at any point in his life?)

It’s definitely framed as consensual to begin with, but sounds like it gets rougher than intended. That’s still wrong but I think it’s there to paint Daniel as more of a dirtbag. Armand is the guy who cleans up messes, so he’d sort things out to keep Daniel’s career on track.

It would be a wild turn of events if the show seriously decided to go down the path of Armand saying to Daniel “I watched as you maliciously and deliberately raped someone and I, a victim of being raped probably hundreds of times, did not hesitate to cover it up.” Not with the Magnus and Bruce shit this season. Not when they’re setting up a romantic relationship between Daniel and Armand.

As with anything in this show, emotional reactions are valid. But in conversation about these details, flattening them out like that really serves no one. In fact, fiction is probably the place to have these nuanced discussions because no one is actually getting hurt by the actions.

R.I.P. Larry