it's been weeks since the s3 finale aired and i still can't believe they turned armand into a queer coded villain. like old school "you're supposed to be afraid of how crazy and unpredictable and emotionally volatile and sexually predatory and, frankly, gay this character is" which is almost impressive considering this is textually a show where almost every character is bisexual and the characters who aren't bisexual are gay
i fucking love a queer coded villain, that describes like 90 percent of all characters i love, but i'm not unaware of how homophobic it is the vast majority of the time, and in tvl they were REALLY doubling down on the fact that we're supposed to view armand as both an irrationally spiteful sadist whose preferred method of control is to violate you bodily ("mind cock," which may as well be "mind rape") AND as impotent and emasculated. i mean they literally have daniel call him a "friendless bottom twink sociopath" this isn't even speculation on my part this is just what's in the fucking show.
assad is a PHENOMENAL actor who's proven he can sell even the shittiest script but every time i've gone back to watch ep7 i've been floored by what they've done to armand as a character. he's become a batman villain! he has goons who do his bidding! he takes hostages! he spouts off quippy one liners that sound nothing like how he's spoken in any other episode of this series!
obviously so much of this is specially racist writing, too, it can't be divorced from that context. just...never in a million years did i think the queer vampire show could ever be capable of doing this to one of its characters. it's shocking how regressive the writing for this series has become in every conceivable way.
^^
