baby strange.

⌗SERAFINOMOSTRO.     an  independent   &   semi-selective   portrayal  of  the   vampire   armand  of  anne   rice’s   vampire   chronicles   /   amc’s   interview   with   the   vampire   ———   as  cherished  by  john seraf,   est.   2017.  writer  is  over  twenty-one,   minors   do   not   interact.   expect   canon-typical   triggering/dead dove   content.   read rules before following!

rules.    ༊·˚    muse.    ༊·˚    pinterest.    ༊·˚    ooc.

i know this space is intended for dramatic writing & that lately it has been not quite that, but i hope if you’ve taken the time to find yourself here that you’ll continue to bear with me and understand that to love and appreciate a thing like armand is to become a sort of slave to theories & the never-ending creeping rootstalks of his almost-indescribable condition. lately i have been working very hard and feeling very exhausted, so i apologize in advance if all of this here turns out to be complete gibberish. i cannot seem to stop thinking about the path from armand to simone weil and it seems i will not rest till i do something about it. so: armand can, i think, be read through simone weil’s notion of decreation, particularly in the extent to which suffering ceases, for him, to function as experience, and instead becomes a mode of organizing subjectivity itself… that is to say, not only in the banal sense of “religious suffering” that is so frequently attributed to him. after all, suffering alone explains very little in anne rice’s universe; all of her vampires suffer, most of them extremely so. armand’s peculiarity lives someplace else, in the sense that he does not just endure or tolerate “affliction” but that he embraces and searches for it, along with renunciation & repression. psychoanalytically speaking, an ascetic is not someone “without desire,” but someone in an obsessively-structured relationship with desire: this includes mastering, fearing, transforming & ritualizing the notion of desire through the long, complicated practice of weilian decreation. freud, lacan, and plenty of classic stoicism (askesis) are also obviously at play here, but the main takeaway at this point is that armand’s asceticism is less a simple “self-discipline” and more an in-depth psychological strategy. he is managing centuries of inner conflict in a strikingly decreative manner: the denial and/or control of desire & pleasure prevents shame and loss of control, and becomes a way of avoiding emotional attachment, and in many armand-specific cases, satisfaction is refused because it actually becomes intensified through extreme deprivation. renunciation becomes meaningful & pleasurable in itself. 

perhaps more precisely: armand experiences the self as something that must either be mastered completely, or surrendered entirely. no stable middle position has ever appeared, & likely will not ever appear, psychologically available to him. to me this is where decreation becomes extremely useful: madame weil described decreation as the gradual undoing of the “i” before god. she wrote, “we possess nothing in this world other than the power to say ‘i’.” the spiritual task therefore becomes subtraction. i think the knee-jerk instinct is towards self-fulfillment, but in this case, it’s self-reduction. (you can imagine armand’s simone weil to lestat’s simone de beauvoir, if it helps.) 

what’s striking too about armand is the extent to which an almost identical logic informs both his spirituality & his erotic life. from the beginning, his identity exists through dispossession. arun is trafficked, of course renamed, aestheticized, transformed into amadeo long, long before he becomes armand. the body appears in these early formations as occupied territory. selfhood almost does not even enter the equation. immediately the collapse (or the blurring? the “sublimation”?) of several categories that typically remain rigid is abundantly obvious: we have beauty and violation, reverence and possession, spiritual elevation and erotic use. marius obviously does not just feed, house & educate amadeo in exchange for his “services”. amadeo is forced to become an object (or a mastercomputer… iykyk) through this bizarre staged transcendence, but the consequence is actually not chaos. not on the surface, anyway. armand isn’t psychologically disordered in the conventional sense. if anything, kind of the opposite problem is introduced in an extraordinary over-organization or hyper-analysis of the psyche. philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, ritual, aesthetic perfection, sexual deviance, archives, surveillance, diagrams, etc etc, everything a compulsive system. but these things really do not ground him in reality so much as they produce an increasingly abstract distance from it. his asceticism is so obsessive it becomes like a never-ending erotic fantasy. 

in my last long and meandering armandysis, i turned to anne carson (who, in 2005, actually borrowed simone weil’s decreation concept) and her rather perfect line “two hundred and ten million years of desire wash through me”, which again to me approaches this particular psychic experience with just flabbergasting precision. desire is not an interior truth; it is something transpersonal, and it is as ancient as armand is. so i find it pretty plain to understand, then, why asceticism & eroticism become so incredibly difficult to separate in armand. they’re not opposites! they are technologies for managing engulfment. the apparent contradiction governing him (absolute self-possession vs. a longing for absolute dissolution) is therefore not contradictory at all. it’s just the same impulse working in different syntactic positions. even armand’s masochism reflects this structure: submission offers not so much the “pleasures” of passivity than the possibility of controlled disappearance. for instance, if decreation can be chosen, perhaps even ritualized, then ideally it will cease to be annihilation, or literal de-creation, in the traumatic sense. this is old news. of course it is. but the alter-egos of “rashid” & “arun” are tell-tale signs of long-term decreation, and they are inherently linked to sexual and/or violent submission. 

the question “am i my history i have endured?” becomes especially revealing at this point, because it isn’t just a semi-rhetorical question about armand’s trauma. it’s a question about whether affliction (malheur in weilspeak) eventually abolishes the distinction between subject & wound. weil visits this particular terror repeatedly in gravity and grace: that suffering destroys the self’s sense of meaning & identity, forcing objecthood. armand’s literal entire psychic structure can almost be read as a defense against precisely this reduction, although one that paradoxically reproduces more or less the same conditions, voluntarily. (i know “decreation yes/affliction no” can be confusing so, to me, the key distinction regarding armand is: decreation is a consent to diminish the ego; affliction is the destruction of the conditions under which consent is even meaningful.)

this is why the underground religiosity of the children of darkness eventually digs such a tough hook in him. starvation, mutilation, deprivation, and namely ritualized shame are being used to punish desire, for one thing, but through this elaborate self-harming, affliction has become legible and sacred. & perhaps this is the deepest affinity between armand and weil: they both treat selfhood, itself, as the root of the eternal problem. and it’s not because the self is inherently sinful in a simple moral sense, but because the self remains almost intolerably vulnerable to possession, dependency, humiliation, desire, history, time, etc etc etc. decreation thus feels less like transcendence than it does like a fantasy of invulnerability through self-erasure.

armand does differ from dear madame weil, however, in one crucial respect & i think i would be remiss not to touch on that here too. weil’s decreation still moves, of course, toward god. however severe and thankless her asceticism becomes, her “annihilation” clings to metaphysical orientation. armand possesses no such optimism i fear. every transcendent structure that has claimed him, whether it comes to him in spheres of religion, beauty, love, and/or authority, has also violated him, & promises to do it again. the result is a form of decreation void of redemption, one fragmented self endlessly & frantically attempting to reduce itself, without ever arriving at peace.

“have i crawled an inch forward?” … the inherent despair of this question is in its suspicion that centuries of transformation may amount only to more of the same. just this repetition of erotic insanity, forever & forever, punishment without reward, always. to me it is one of the few moments where we catch a glimpse of the “real” armand, in a brief second where he realizes exactly how impossible his personal quest to decreate actually is.

# of spoken languages: 1 /2 / 3+. as far back as he can recall, ottoman turkish, venetian, greek, & french came first, with english, arabic, and hindi being learned much later. he demonstrates at least passing proficiency with just about any tongue, though, on account of his prodigious understanding of the mind gift.

tone of voice: high / average / deep

accent: yes / soft / no. a strange, ever-evolving thing. it might be best described as a gentle & refined english accent, these days.

demeanour: confident / shy / approachable / hostile / other. quiet, bored. you would think it best not to approach him, probably; not because he’s always frightening, but because he tends to have this look on his face that suggests he’s … in the middle of something, deep in his own head. that is, of course, if you aren’t already running in the opposite direction because you know who he is & what he’s capable of.

posture: slumped / straight / stiff / relaxed

habits: head tilting / swaying / fidgeting / stuttering / gesturing / arm crossing / strokes chin / ah, er, um, or other interjections / plays with hair or clothing / hands at hips / inconsistent eye contact / maintains eye contact / frequent pausing / stands close / stands at distance. the thumb-rubbing fidget is a big one. more often than not, he would be absolutely, perfectly still, if it weren’t for that fidgety little thumb.

complexity:

vocabulary: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

emotion: ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

sentence structure: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

profanity:

frequency:   ★ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

creativity: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

watchfulness: ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

bold all that apply: arse. ass. asshole. bastard. bitch. bugger. bollocks. chicken shit. crap. cunt. dick. frick. fuck. horseshit. motherfucker. piss. prick. screw. shit. shitass. son of a bitch. twat. wanker. coward. pussy.

this or that?

contractions or enunciation? straightforward or cryptic? jargon or toned? complexity or simplicity? finding the right word or using the first word that comes to mind? masculinity, neutrality, or femininity? formalities or abrasiveness? praise or equivocation? frankness or lies? excessive or minimal hand gestures? name-calling or magnanimity?  friendly or blunt nicknames?

important questions:

do people have a hard time understanding/hearing your character? almost always / frequently / sometimes / rarely / almost never

does your character’s point come across easily when they speak? almost always / frequently / sometimes / rarely / almost never

would your character initiate conversations? almost always / frequently / sometimes / rarely / almost never

would your character be the one to end conversation? almost always / frequently / sometimes / rarely / almost never

would your character use ‘whom’ in a sentence? yes / no / only ironically

your character wants to make a counterpoint. what word do they use? but / though / although / however / perhaps / mayhaps

how does your character end conversations? walk away / ask if that’s everything / say that that’s everything / give a proper goodbye / tell their company they’re done here / remain quiet / they don’t

how does your character address others? titles / first names / surnames / full names / nicknames

what social class would others assume your character belongs to, hearing them speak? upper / middle / working / lower

in what ways does the way your character speak stand out to others? accent / vocabulary / tone / level / politeness / brusqueness / it doesn’t.

tagged by: @divineviclinist grazie!

so those of you who interact with my armand frequently probably already know this, but psychoanalytic theory is huge for my portrayal of him & i have this pinterest board that probably seems chaotic but is actually, to me, more like a gallery of latent symptoms & symbolism that i’m constantly referring to in some way or another. i ended up stumbling upon a very long post discussing armand’s mental state, more or less trying to “diagnose” him with something, which is all quite fine and good! personally, however, i think that psychoanalysis emerges here where psychology, as we understand it, doesn’t necessarily; that is to say, i don’t think what afflicts armand is written down in the dsm. so in an attempt to “map out” what makes my armand “the way that he is”, using my little board as a big collective of references, here is just a little bit about the structure of his psychoanalytic profile.

I. THE SPINE

armand is a creature existing just to the side of “personhood”, operating around a single contradiction: “i must be completely self-possessed” versus “i want to be overtaken and undone by something greater”. 

i look at this contradiction as the sort of duality that would befit a vampire of his age & power, but also as an elaborate defensive system. “control”, and all these varying ideas & illusions of control, is compensating for a deep, unavoidable terror of being absorbed. the only comforts in this existence manifest in forms of private affirmations of total control, genius, self-authorship, (“i am as terrifyingly powerful as i secretly suspect myself of being, and even more”, etc), but these things coexist with themes of surrender, consumption, erotic dissolution, and unabashed violence. 

II. THE STRUCTURE (OBSESSIVE MASOCHISTIC-MYSTICISM)

armand’s very nature resists psychoanalytic mapping on account of his age & the vastness of his trauma. but in trying to do just that, i’ve come around to the notion that it isn’t the chaos that makes him so impossible to define neatly but the lack thereof; it’s the fact that he himself has meticulously over-structured himself:

A. THE OBSESSIVE / “INTELLECTUAL” LEVEL

thinking of all his diagrams, systems, philosophy charts, lacanian graphs here. attached for example is lacan’s “che vuoi?”, which he utilized to confront the mystery of human desire. 

with this in mind: armand tries to diagram reality so it can’t destabilize him, literally & metaphorically. everything is contained in some way or another. his archives, his feelings, his home. that’s what knowledge is to him: containment. if he can name it and systematize it, then maybe, with luck, it won’t be able to swallow him.

there is a sort of “tell” here, though, as there often is when dealing with armand, and it’s easy to locate if you know who/what you’re working with. the “systems” he gravitates towards and makes use of are not “tidy”, so to speak, even though they very well might look like it on the surface. he borrows from all sorts of different ideologies and theories (metaphysical stuff from plato/general ontology, the psychoanalytic worlds of lacan/freud/etc, and then even esoteric & theological arguments pertaining to angels). and so armand is not grounding himself in reality by any means. he is actually building an increasingly abstract reality of his own to contain something.

B. THE BODY / “EROTIC” LEVEL

this sort of thing is everywhere with armand. some bits from my psych board that are relevant here: “i own my body but i share”, barthes’ erotic theory, anne carson on desire as something “alien”, violence/penetration/consumption, cephalophorous imagery (the carrying of one’s own severed head), etc. 

so, this is not someone comfortable in a body. more precisely, he experiences the body as something that can be invaded or used, never simply inhabited. so what does he do? 

armand has become exceptionally skilled at the splitting of mind vs body (a figurative spin on decapitation imagery here) in a way that insists that the body is still this beautiful, exploitable vessel while the mind is conversely “protected” because it has been split off from the invaded body. (this, i think it ought to go without saying, is fundamentally untrue.) armand then eroticizes loss of control instead of experiencing it passively. that is where the masochistic edge comes in: “if i have chosen the loss, i may still control it.”

these “split selves” are not literally separate entities. they could be neatly packed into two different categories, like public versus private, or rational versus emotional, but when you really get down to the armand of it, it’s more like: the MIND is controlled, intellectual, ascetic, self-possessed, whereas the BODY is ecstatic, erotic, destructive, hungry. 

truthfully, armand does not believe these states of being can be reconciled, so he oscillates. 

C. THE DESIRING LEVEL

desire is something armand experiences but feels notably absent from: the thought process is something like, this desire is not mine, it moves through me, it colonizes & consumes. 

this anne carson here is more or less a thesis statement:

so armand fears desire, but also thinks of it as something deeply transformative that he wants to be consumed by. this is why we end up with religious conflict/trauma as well as fascination with erotic theory and violent tendencies. sexual intercourse, religious ecstasy, and complete annihilation are structurally occurring at the same time. they might even be the same exact thing. 

D. THE SHAME / “EXHIBITION” LEVEL

there’s a really specific emotional tone in the way armand chooses to present himself over the years, for example, when he poses as rashid: he has become small and is “hiding”, but now more than ever he is also being seen, exposed, even scrutinized. he feels deep shame & disgust simply for having ever existed at all (thinking of lines such as, “i disgust you, don’t i?” and “i am the maker of my own evil”) which is, you know, classic armand. he is anticipating judgment and repulsion, so that he can perform it himself. this keeps him in control of the narrative and transforms his lifelong shame into something that verges on powerful. 

III. THE EMOTIONAL CORE

beneath all of the philosophy & aesthetics, we are left with an entity that speaks of terror more than he speaks of chaos. the question is: what is armand feeling, genuinely? the core fears are almost identical to the core desires: being consumed/overtaken, being known too fully, being reduced to the physical body, being ordinary/finite, or “boring”. his “longings” are what? to be transformed completely, or to escape the self? isn’t that also more of the same? his desire to merge with something absolute, whether it’s another person, god, desire, or death, exists in all of this.