I know Daniel is kind of an asshole sometimes but I absolutely reject this idea that he wouldn’t take Armand’s trauma seriously. Especially not when Marius is such a lying asshole.
He’s crass and blunt but he’s also good at his job, and at his core he was, by his own admission, looking for people in the cracks. That’s who he was when he starting out. That’s the purest view of he’s aspirations we’ve seen, and returning to that after struggling so much with Lestat doesn’t feel unrealistic to me. I don’t know if there is someone who has slipped further into the cracks than Armand.
And unlike Lestat, who is intentionally winding Daniel up and has no desire to tell the whole truth, Armand on two separate occasions has demonstrated willingness to volunteer information about his past. He wants to be known more than anything, even if his view of his abuse isn’t super clear to him.
Considering the nature of the things Daniel’s discussed researching before, I find it nearly impossible to believe human trafficking hasn’t come up. He’s interviewed sex workers and frankly it’s not too much of a leap. He’s mentioned being held captive while doing an interview (that wasn’t in San Francisco) and seems to have met some really bad people so it’s not hard to believe that he’s spoken to victims like this before, or at least come across them.
And it’s not like it’s a stranger or someone he knows is trying to deceive him as Armand was during the Dubai interview. This is Armand, the lost love of his life. His maker. Daniel visibly felt bad for him after the concert and he probably doesn’t know why yet. He should still hate him and yet he couldn’t hide the concern on his face. Imagine him when he’s actually trying to help him piece together the many broken pieces of his life. Imagine him when he knows he’s in love with him.
I’m not expecting Gen Z therapy speak from this seventy year old man. He’ll probably be blunt and unhelpful at times and impatient and trigger the hell out of Armand, but he called Magnus Lestat’s abuser and he doesn’t tolerate bullshitters, which was the very reason he was so rude to Armand in Dubai. He ought to see Marius for the manipulative, obfuscating, condescending monster he really is. Armand wants the truth, Marius refuses to tell it. It’s also doubtful the Talamasca has much on Marius regarding his abuse of Armand aside from the basic facts, and Armand has disclosed very little. You’d need Armand’s account for that.
It’s one thing to know the bullet points of what he went through. Hearing the details is something different entirely. You don’t see the look in Armand’s eyes as he tries to recall if he even knows his own name by opening a Talamasca file. Daniel isn’t soulless and you’d have to be in order to feel nothing about Armand’s story. I get about twenty pages into TVA before I already want to be sick and this is the love of his life.
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