Nothin' Special

Armand was Andrei. Marius renamed him Amadeo, "beloved by God." Not because Marius saw himself as Amadeo's God, but to return to him the very little Marius knew of him, that Andrei (at the time) had a relationship with his God and to communicate that God's love for him was not to be proven through starvation & monkhood but through experience and love of life and what existence has to offer.

That's what Marius gifts to Amadeo.

To say otherwise is backwards thinking all over that stupid fucking painting donorship slander Rolin threw out there.

Marimand is not sunshine and rainbows but it's not where everything bad that has ever happened to Armand comes from, either. I encourage you to separate the show from the novels and think for yourself without the influence of others' perspectives.

If you want a dynamic where Armand is renamed for ownership, where his individuality, selfhood, and dignity are stripped from him, look no further than literally everything Santino inflicts. Allesandra, too, if you want some flavor.

The name Amadeo is beloved, a gift. "Armand" is given to him to force him into the identity of being God's warrior, God's executioner.

Marius does not do that.

Marius tried to set him free.

Because yeah what a nasty mean thing to say, it definitely is an insult, but also, not really?? I mean it’s more than that. That one line functions fundamentally as a substitute for what amounts to paragraphs in the vampire lestat of Marius and Lestat talking about Armand. this one line in the show has so much subtext doing the heavy lifting. Here’s a telling bit from the book that I feel is relevant:

“Rotten” as an insult is so so specific. “Rotten” infers that something that is now decayed and putrid was formerly fresh, pure, unspoiled, ripe, gleaming with potential. but it was left out to spoil, abandoned, or ruined, and now it’s gone bad, moldering, sour, repulsive. there’s no coming back from rot. a rotten fruit is tainted beyond redemption, it would’ve been delicious once, but now it’s sickening, it’s foul, it’s rot.

And not just rotten, Rotten boy. boy. “boy” that is a 27 year old man that has been alive for over 300 years. It’s belittling, but it’s belittling in the way parents are towards their children. I would go so far as to say there’s an undercurrent of affection in it. Oh Armand, that rotten boy, that grimy little devil. Rotten because Marius left him to rot, rotten because it's too late, the food has already gone bad. Marius made a horrible mistake, making Armand, and now he’s gone bad, he’s no good, he’s to be thrown out for the rats and the flies. But he’s a boy. He’s his boy, was his boy, his fruit, his seed that he grew and flowered and would have eaten if he hadn’t let it go rotten.

Armand is the one who uses this word

Armand is the one who in present times recognises what he'd done

Armand knows very well what the act and the word meant and he uses it in the right moment, knowing what he has done

Armand is over 400 years old, he is not a clueless child, he is aware of what he is talking about

He was raped, he tells about it, he talks about his trauma regarding this and he explains very well who helped him overcome it: not a man, not a human, but a vampire

Amadeo was a human man when he forces himself on Bianca, who surrounded at his mercy. Even though the narrator, Armand, seems to make us understand she doesn't seem to care at the end, he still uses rape as a term because he knows he wouldn't stop anyway if she didn't enjoy it

No, it's not Marius' fault if Amadeo rapes Bianca. It's very likely not even his past trauma at fault. Rape was normalised. Nowhere there was something or someone saying: taking someone (most of all women) with force is bad.

If Marius and Amadeo would't have been in a relationship is very likely that Amadeo would have done something like that anyway, but I don't like to talk about "what ifs" with stories. Characters are not indipendent and what they do and live is useful to the narrative.

Then there is the rape Armand commits as a vampire, he takes Lestat's blood without consent and, at the beginning of TVA he has the same thought towards David, but he has chaged:

And at the moment I put aside what he did to poor Daniel, something that conveniently is spread like a happy fairytale than a real and well written horror, made of violence, pain and addiction

I know that right now I'm in this situation

But I wanted to say it, maybe because sometimes I need to remember this, because I didn't during my re-reading and it hasn't been cool. I was like: Armand wtf??? (With humor)

Has Armand stopped to be my favorite character? Not at all, I'm an adult with a functioning brain.

But it amazes me how people can't stomach something written with a clear positive intent with all the important tools the narrative gives them, but forget or not even blink when something is written with another clear intent, which is bad and really uncomfortable and much more close to reality with two humans involed. Not that I want that the only discussion brought about Armand is this, it would be boring and annoying.

You choose what makes you uncomfortable in fiction but this is only about YOU, not ME. Going around spitting big words like a know it all makes you appear stupid and illiterate. You think that Marius/Armand is bad? Ok, but don't get angry with people who read them like they should be read and not get angry at the narrative as well, because why are you consuming this and inventing stuff to console yourself?

(Don’t answer, it's rethorical)

Let's remember The Vampire Armand is the sixth book. A normal reader should arrive at this book after they read the others before. By the sixith book you know what the author is writing about and you learnt about her universe.

You read about Louis and Claudia, about Lestat and Gabrielle, you have received explanations on how love works for vampires, about how they are not humans (duh?) and don't partecipate in human social structures.

If you think the author is at fault and if you need to twist the narrative to make youself more comfortable, why are you reading TVC and taking part on fandom discussions and throwing a tantrum, stomping your foot like an hysterical child if someone just sticks to what the story is meant to be???

(Again, rethorical, but maybe not to you, but don't answer)

Here some of us wants to talk about a a character we like and there is always someone coming and saying: do you know he is...

GOD it's exhausting and I know you feel so powerful because you know that using some specific terms ends any possible kind of discussion because we are always just like me now:

There are so little discussions in this fandom that aren't about made up abuses and traumas. Where are the vampires????

interview with the VAMPIRE

the VAMPIRE Lestat

the VAMPIRE Armand

the VAMPIRE Chronicles

Is it clear? V.A.M.P.I.R.E not human. V A M P I R E: those silly former humans, awake by night and sleeping like the dead (AH DEAD) during daylight, sucking blood, immortal, with zero clue about how it was being a human, with zero sexual attraction and sexual organs functioning, queer, etc...etc...

Ok, end of the rant. If you just have to do the thing I've just described above, please, don't. Try to understand that you are going to sound stupid.

God:  Where’s the Sheepkeeper?

Cain:

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what's your opinion on banning books, etc.

But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: "Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?"

Here's the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It's a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I'm sure most of you reading this can guess which one I'm talking about (I won't name it or go into specifics because I don't want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the "I read banned books" badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no" from the forums, and that I'd maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.

I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either "not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children" or "yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ", but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it's been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the "why do you think it should be banned" question, they only said, "No. I'm not explaining it. It's too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book."

I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my "favorite" official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was "a real downer", the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was "pornographic", the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it "might be hurtful to children without parents", and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying "I don't like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn't have to explain why." I also pointed out that if you can't give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:

All books can be indecent books, Though recent books are bolder, For filth, I'm glad to say, Is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I can tell you things about Peter Pan And the Wizard of Oz - THERE'S a dirty old man...

Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don't recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don't think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.

But I still won't advocate for banning them.

It's so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being "pornographic". One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with "Did they read the same play I did?" At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying "it's pornographic" was enough. Obviously you're not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That's pornography! And they're teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!

A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn't study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she's just received a very large insurance payment from her husband's death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house...in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner's association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn't officially a thing and they can't legally stop them from moving in, but they don't want them there. There's a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who's Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she's already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she's pregnant, she's planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.

It's not pornographic. But someone didn't want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.

It's so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don't want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!