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I don’t know how useful that is as a disguise if people are reading the book and know that Armand’s name is Arun. [...] We don’t know exactly how he spent the two years, but I think there has been a regression. There has been a regression into a past version of himself. [...] Arun is Armand coming back out of his cocoon, his two years of sort of hibernating after this devastation. He’s coming out, he’s showing himself, and he’s like the baby version before coming back into Amadeo and Armand.

Even though he's actively putting himself in high stress situations he's controlling that release valve. He's not allowing himself to do it. Not allowing himself to use a coping mechanism that could help him.

I'm starved of Devil's Minion so I drew them.

If Armand was confused, it allows the harm he suffered to go unacknowledged and be smoothed over. And then Marius doesn't have to feel bad about it because they've agreed! It was all Armand's fault actually and everything is fine.

I don't think Armand has ever experienced a normal apology/forgiveness cycle in his life. Apologies in his world are bargaining chips. They're displays of subjugation. He agrees that he's bad & they're good and when he's grovelled & been punished enough then it's over & he's "earned" forgiveness.

And the way that he talks about forgiveness & making it up to Louis after Paris is that same pattern. He IS the bad guy in this situation, 100%. But his acceptance isn't a true attempt to understand the harm he caused. He's not trying to repair what was broken. He's "crawling an inch forward". Because that's how you earn forgiveness. You subjugate yourself & allow yourself to be punished until the other person feels satisfied.

Okay so once upon a time I said that Armand was going back to cult habits of self-soothing to feel stable after Louis left him. While the particulars of that theory got discarded (I thought he'd be seeing much more along the lines of "self-feeding"), the spirit of "Armand is going back to cult mannerisms" is still VERY true.

The AA is one of the organizations that shares a lot of surface-level control tactics as a cult. By removing a sense of individuality and creating a learned sense of dependance on a group to avoid doubt, relapse, or despair, the AA can function with the wrong group of people as very cultish.

One of the things we're treading water here is that Armand is creating "apologies" (really, he's just painting himself as a lowly "of course I did wrong to you, allmighty" supplicant of worship, which I think is why the AA specifically was used) that read as scripts. He refuses to have an actual conversation, because he has a script to follow. This is what he shows to Daniel and Lestat.

But, considering the implication that he's acting as a substitute for alcohol to help Alex "forget" in exchange for going back to the band is... 😬 Yep, the cycles are cycling. Alex spoke of the implied Armand as a God, which means that sense of dependance that comes from the AA is being transformed through Armand's presence into "treatment." The underlying return of religious fundamentalism motif has been popping up a lot, this season, so it's interesting to see how Armand is using it as a method to regain connection with his loved ones - while the others are using it as a method of oppression. The religious conversation here is delicious, especially with Lestat's sacreligeous ego getting even more intense.

Just like when he invited Louis for the walk to the Louvre. He started that interaction with his flowers & little Romeo & Juliet speech as a comforting segue. How many movies did he watch until he thought he had figured out the steps, the requirements for love? 1 gift + 1 romantic gesture + 2 examples of vulnerability = love?

AA is giving me extreme "teach me to be fascinating" vibes. He wants the cheat code. He wants the formula to follow to get people to love him & tolerate him & let him stay. His entire life has been learning to follow a new set of social expectations & rules to survive. He's had to learn how to be pleasing. How to figure out the role he needs to play to keep everyone happy & himself safe.

Armand is REALLY good at molding himself to the situation. Any time he thinks he's figured it out, he gets kidnapped or bought or otherwise thrust into a new scary role. And he is absolutely using those same maladaptive coping skills to try to get back into his former companions good graces.

I can still feel weight of the one I had as a child in my hands if I think about it hard enough. They aren’t regular dolls. They’re called rag dolls because, traditionally, they were made of leftover material and typically stuffed with rags instead of regular stuffing which makes them heavy. Comparing a person to that, I’d even say corpse-like. I had a really old one and it was the same size as me when I was young, so it was like dragging a body around. I couldn’t lift it on my own for several years.

“Rag doll for sale”

Little Arun is someone who can be manoeuvred into any position, who will not fight back and will be anything you want him to be. He is so perfectly submissive and pliant he may as well be a dead body.

And good news! You can customise him to your liking! You can dress him in different outfits, you can style his hair, you can even rename him! He’s all yours and he can’t do anything to stop you! You bought him, after all.

i wrote a personally reflective thread on it and I would like yall to read it and maybe reblog it especially if you've been witness to the harassment of myself and other black fans and creatives in the fandom.

i get that seeing posts like this repeatedly is probably draining and annoying but if you have ever experienced even a lick of the vile behavior in this fandom, i would hope you can understand that this is not something that is easy to bear over multiple years.

sorry if this is annoying to my followers who are just following me to see art and not the constant backlash i have to endure. i wouldn't have to be so annoying and loud if i didn't feel so fucking alone!

ASSAD ZAMAN as Armand

Because honestly, I've just been taking it for granted in the case of show-Armand. That it doesn't matter that he was turned at 27 in the show instead of 17 like in the book. Because, as he tells Daniel in episode 2x05 the first thing he can ever really remember is being chased down by slavers in Delhi. Like, that is his first memory of anything at the moment -- being chased and captured by slave traders.

And that has been his first memory of anything, from when he was a child, for over 400 years by that point.

And let's be real here, Marius was in no way equipped to help Armand deal with all the trauma he went through after Marius found him and took him from the brothel. As we know from the books, Marius didn't fully understand why Amadeo couldn't paint anymore, as Marius had seen him do in his memories. It was the 15th-16th century Italy. They didn't understand things like PTSD and other trauma responses back then.

So if Marius wasn't equipped to handle Amadeo's trauma after taking him from that brothel in the book, why would Marius in the show be able to, just because Armand in the show spent 12 years with him before Marius turned him, instead of just 3?

And, on top of all of that, now imagine things like the whipping scene from the books happening with an Armand who is, in the show's continuity, slightly older. (Say, 21 or 22). And things like the bloody banquet.

And because of the now extended time between Marius taking Armand from the brothel and Armand's turning, the show has the opportunity to add even more incidents like the two above to Armand's upbringing.

Because yes, those two things were part of Armand's upbringing. Marius said it in Blood and Gold, the night he rescued a dying Armand from the brothel. Armand was alone; there was no one looking for him, no one for him. So Marius could "educate" (groom) him in the ways of The Blood with no one to tell him no and no consequence to it:

And so, in Marius' mind, that is what all of what we saw him do with Armand was -- from the oral sex that night in the bath, to the whipping, to the banquet... it was to "educate" (groom) Armand to be a vampire and his companion in The Blood.

And that means in ways that did not really hold any regard for human morality, never mind anything else.

Now... instead of just 3 years of things like that, as in the book, imagine all that -- and more! -- going on for 12 years. All on top of the trauma Armand experienced before Marius found him.

So, 17-years-old or 27-years-old -- why couldn't Armand have a case of arrested development going on with him on top of everything else?

And yes, knowing this, understanding this, about Armand doesn't absolve him of the things he's done. Even Armand himself, in the books, knows there is no absolution for it. (And I feel his TV show counterpart will get to that realization in the future as well.)

Again, the Vampire Chronicles are not about monsters regaining or seeking to regain their humanity. The older these vampires get, the less human they become.

And any human that comes in contact with these vampires always loses their humanity. Either resulting in them eventually being turned... or going crazy.

And this is why Armand is one of the most vampiric of vampires. The traumas he went through when he was a child were so horrific that most of his memories of his human childhood are now blocked. And then he was raised (goomed) by Marius during the remaining time he was human for the eventual time Marius would turn him into his vampire companion.

37 years later, louis sends a letter to the boy he met in polynesian mary's expecting a 70yr old human man