I'm an Arman fan. What are you gonna do?

[cybrbat]

daily affirmations:

iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was cancelled after two seasons iwtv was

[dmtruther]

I keep getting angry again about the way amc is handling Armand and what that means to Assad.

I’m prepared to accept that maybe Assad doesn’t gaf and I’m projecting my own experiences of the workplace onto this. Only he could say for certain.

To recap:

- Assad was a successful actor but little-known outside of theatre when he auditioned

- he auditioned to play the role of Louis’s servant Rashid, for which he had to break into a theatre at one point

- show runners let him know during the audition process that Rashid was secretly Armand and put him through several more rounds of auditions

- Assad took the initiative to read TVA & other books to become an Armand expert

- he also took the initiative to learn French for the role

- one of his character’s major plot lines (of being the first vampire capitalist/ art dealer/ pilot) was given to another character (Louis) to make that character more interesting and give him more screen time

- amc barely promoted him or his character for S2, despite him being a central character of S2 and having been the plot twist for S1&2

- amc excluded him from promotion again in S3; they did do a “funny” red carpet interview where he had to read a comment from a fan asking where he was in the promo

- showrunner reassured us that Armand was doing a lot behind the scenes and they couldn’t spoil it

- S3 has another character (Lestat) experiencing grooming & parental abuse that just isn’t there in the book, mirroring Armand’s abuse right down to the icy blonde hair Gabriella has (she’s also more Italian in the TV show). Meanwhile, scenes where Armand shares his back story with Lestat & Gabrielle are entirely absent from the show.

- In fact, all of Armand’s canonical scenes are eliminated and instead he is going to AA, stalking Daniel pathetically, starting a new cult, beheading his exes, and doing other total nonsense the show runner invented for no real reason other than to avoid adapting the actual book

- s3 also gave Armand’s charming Halloween moments from QotD to Lestat

- after this baffling season was fully out, amc decides to send the Dubai trio to SDCC (notably absent were the two actors who had the most screentime and had been heavily promoted). This was the first time audiences got to see Jacob & Assad do interviews together.

- new post-season interviews reveal that Assad still doesn’t know how Daniel’s turning will be written, whether Armand and Daniel are doomed, or whether Armand will ever have a story beyond being in love with Daniel and being every season’s plot twist. What’s extra nefarious is that it seems Assad has been told Daniel’s turning will look like David’s turning by Lestat, which means his character has lost his charming and sympathetic plot beats to other characters, but he will be given the heinous and unforgivable actions of a white character to play. Just let that sink in.

- latest interview from TV insider reveals Assad wasn’t even told what Armand’s arc was and what would happen in the finale. He DIDN’T GET TOLD WHAT HIS CHARACTER WOULD BE DOING IN THE FINALE UNTIL RIGHT BEFORE FILMING IT, which means no time to negotiate, just act the scenes. It also means he was unaware during previously filmed scenes where they were going

- post-season interviews with writers have them doubling down on their poor choices and never addressing the “hey, isn’t that racist?” commentary

- In a post-season interview with Men’s Health, Sam Reid reveals the actors are “trapped” in multi-season contracts

- in another interview, the finale director said Assad was doing the best acting he’s ever seen in a single long shot, which the show runner re-cut and broke up to include more shots of Louis’ decapitated head

This show and this role SHOULD BE Assad’s breakthrough moment. He has done everything an actor can do to learn the character, delivered incredible performances, and been gracious about everything.

To see him get robbed of scenes and character lore, and be excluded from promo is bad enough - to know he is trapped in a contract and has to play this racist caricature of the character he signed up to play is horrific.

Even worse is knowing that a lot of Armand fans are so sickened by the show at this point that we might not stick around for another season. Where does it leave Assad if his character just keeps getting less likable and the only fans left are the Armand haters?

[all-fyre]

My favorite thing to ask people who tell me to separate the show vs. the books is "then why was Rolin parading around his battered-up copy if it didn't matter?"

Thus far, every single person has ignored the question.

[sable-a-rose-argent]

Petition...

... to bring Black and Desi writers into the damned room, but also for Daniel to fight Marius in Queen of the Damned. He would lose, but sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

[domarmand]

there is nothing interesting or complex about marius de romanus send tweet

[professional-rat-eater]

I’ve got about ten different TVA posts rotting in my drafts which all say exactly the same things in different words and I can’t post any of them because none of them accurately articulate my frustration. This one is failing too.

But if you’ve read TVA, you probably get it. I am genuinely at a loss for words when it comes to the Venice sections. I want to talk about Marius but I just can’t because all I can think when I read those sections is that it is the most plainly written child abuse I’ve ever seen. I mean everything about it is textbook child sexual abuse. Marius’ behaviour, Amadeo’s responses, the way he negatively he talks about himself versus his pretty words for Marius and how it directly contradicts what he’s actually telling us occurred. The romantic language fighting against the content of what he’s telling us happened to him.

And I just can’t see how it could ever be misconstrued. That’s why I’m at a loss. There’s no way to analyse this that would make it clearer than just reading the book. I feel like I’m stating the blindly obvious and it’s insulting to even try and explain it. There can be no way anyone reads it and comes to any other conclusion because it is so blunt. It’s to the point that if you somehow didn’t even know CSA was something that existed, I think you could google it, click on the first result that pops up, get a very basic rundown of what it can look like and it would be enough to understand this relationship. I think you could successfully read this book just based on that. That is how clear I think it is.

And yet that isn’t what happens. There are people who read this and don’t see what’s wrong with it. Anne writes it really well but so directly and there are people who just don’t see it. I don’t know what to say about any of it. If you haven’t read TVA, you might think maybe Anne didn’t get the abuse across effectively enough and that’s why there are so many doubters but she did. I promise. She really really did and it’s so clear that that’s how you’re meant to interpret it too or Armand would not respond to it like an abused child would. She did her job perfectly in this part of the book and I just do not have the words to explain it any better than she did.

[angstqueenart]

Armand is one of the most devastating characters I've ever seen, what the hell. Reading excerpts from the Vampire Armand after watching the show broke my heart. Assad truly delivered in the scenes when it comes to Armand's backstory and his trauma.

TW// rape, pedophilia, slavery, colonialism, orientalism, grooming, white supremacy

It angers me so much when people don't read into Armand's character by taking into account BOTH the fact that he was a child when he was enslaved and trafficked, AND that so much of his subsequent treatment is related to racism, orientalism and fetishization as a South Asian boy, then man. He was stripped of his agency, his bodily autonomy, his culture, forced to conform to a culture and customs that were not his, all while being subjected to extreme abuse and rape.

This did NOT happen in a vacuum, this is directly related to white supremacy because Marius is a white supremacist, an ancient Roman who idealizes the "white race" and calls any culture that's not western European (even Eastern European, as per Armand's og background as Ukrainian in the books) "barbaric" and "backwards" and beats it into submission and molds it into fitting the "pure European standard".

And yes, Armand idealized Marius for so long, and he served him, and still somewhat idealizes and romanticizes his idea of Marius because he is a victim of him. He is still deeply traumatized and he was groomed by Marius, and as was confirmed by Louis, Marius bought him when he was twelve fifteen. (Edit : As was commented by someone, Armand was sold at twelve, and bought at fifteen by Marius)

He was taught to serve him, because that was what he knew, Marius was all he had, no more parents, Marius would be his father. Father, lover, maker. Everything, he would be everything all at once.

That is exactly what groomers do. They replace what should be the safest figures in your life, your parents, a partner, a companion, and twist it, just enough, just enough to make it innocuous, to make it look normal. But it's not. Marius beats him, whips him, and Armand still pleads for him to forgive him. "Basked in his mercy," and what mercy was there to be had?

And even still, Armand still somewhat knows deep down that he was abused, but nobody can fault him for romanticizing anything that happened to him in an attempt to protect his psyche from shattering. He tries to wrap it up by saying he was loved by Marius, ("knowing what it would do to his beloved Amadeo") even though we as an audience know he was groomed and that Marius didn't care, as he calls him a "rotten boy" in s3 when Lestat meets him. Disgusting man.

Btw, this is not the discussion to bring your grievances about Armand's actions into, I do not justify nor excuse them, however I feel like Armand deserves to be analyzed as a victim of slavery, colonialism/orientalism and child rape without bringing in what he did after becoming a vampire, so just some nuance to be had here.

Also, while I am not South Asian, I am Algerian, and specifically Amazigh (the indigenous people of North Africa), so my people have an uncomfortable history with different waves of colonialism (not only from Europeans, but also Arabs, Ottomans, etc) and similar fetishization, kidnappings, enslavement, trafficking and rape.

But discussions about Armand's treatment also need to include the fact that he is a brown skinned Indian man and I feel like a lot of people gloss over this as well.

This would ABSOLUTELY affect the way he was treated in the brothel and by Marius. Colorism is a direct result of racism in how it ranks Black and Brown people and too few people talk about it nor do they acknowledge bias in how they might perceive him. Anti-Indian hatred and islamophobia have become alarmingly high in the past decade or so, and I see it in this fandom too even though people try to claim otherwise.

Nevertheless, I truly love Armand as a character, even if I'm disappointed at the flattening of his motives in s3 and turning him into a simple one note villain (besides the mention of his past during the torture scene, but it was such an egregious anti-Black scene I can't engage with it). I don't know if I can trust these writers to write Armand's backstory and do it respectfully.

[thelongingknight]

The clock just hit Complain About How Armand Is Treated in IWTVL O’Clock. My complaint today is: why is Armand never called beautiful in the show? I mean that’s his thing in the story, right? Deviation from the books, yes I love it. Haven’t read the other books and only plan to read the one I’m reading at this time. But if Armand’s beauty isn’t to be acknowledged by other characters, why cast someone who looks like wars would be fought in his name and who fits well into the idea that he was a muse for many painters?

Let’s pretend for a minute racism is not a factor. What is the reason now? Louis is called pretty and beautiful often. Lestat is fawned over for his appearance. Yet, Armand is there, he looks ethereal, painfully beautiful, with eyes that burn into your soul, a demeanor that could ensnare you in his trap if he cared to hunt and feed that way. His face is on our screens. We can see that he is stunning. So… why? Why is it that Louis never says a thing about his appearance other than “He looked like a boy masquerading as a gentleman.” While Armand says of Louis “He was alarmingly handsome in the muted lamplight.” Why is Armand not afforded any acknowledgment of his alarmingly good looks? While sexual and aesthetic desires are things Armand as a character may need to work through due to his horrifying history, this does not mean others would look at him without those desires. The only character who physically desired/desires Armand, that we have an indirect confirmation for, is Daniel. Louis enjoying sex with his companion isn’t as clear a confirmation as it would seem. Lestat also has done everything he can to hide his attraction to Armand, up to and including lying about their past and writing a juvenile diss track that includes insults about Armand’s appearance.

There is no reason for this to be absent from the dialogue. We end up back to where we were at the start, and we have to pick up the racism card again and look at it. What does Armand have/do that the others do not? Darker skin, fetishized as a boy from the “subcontinent”, sold and traded as a sex slave, a very old and predatory vampire as his Maker (one of the oldest around if the show keeps close to the book wrt Marius’ age), a culture that was squeezed out of him as he was forced to assimilate to Venice, a preference for receiving anal sex vs being the one to penetrate, a tendency to submit sexually to his partners that at the time they clearly have no problems with, and… is that all? Are these the reasons why he cannot be called beautiful? He hasn’t even been called pretty, for fucks sake. I want to hear it from the mouths of these people who have decided to exclude this fact from Armand’s character. Please, like I’m 5: why is he not allowed to be called beautiful?

[itsaknife]

I don’t know why I keep getting so angry on the behalf of a fictional character but I do. It pisses me off that the majority of the fandom hate Armand so much that they are incapable of seeing nuance in him. I just had someone tell me that he doesn’t get to play “the victim of child sexual abuse” after killing and torturing people especially so many years after what happened. Sure, because of course a person who was sold at the age 12, bought at the age of 15, was raped, prostituted, had his maker and friends burned in front of him, was starved and forced to eat his best friend, was brainwashed by a cult, forced into a position of leadership of a coven could have gone and he worked through his trauma somewhere along the 16th and the 20th century or whatever. Why is his trauma always a source of mockery when other character’s trauma is a source of empathy? What’s the difference between these two characters? And why are people so blind to their own biased?

Like. I know just saying what he has gone through isn’t enough to make people empathize or try to understand him but why doesn’t it make people shiver to think that a character has been through it all and isn’t a perfect victim?

[forbiddenwyvernllama]

Season 4 of The Queen of the Damned

I just saw the teaser for Season 4 of The Queen of the Damned, and I'm literally torn apart by contradictions. On one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled, because Akasha is one of my all-time favorite complex and morally ambiguous characters in The Vampire Chronicles. And Sheila Atim in this role is simply divine. She had only about five minutes of screen time, but she nailed it. It was that rare moment when I actually leaned toward the screen and said, "Wow."

But there's a huge BUT. Because of that underwhelming mess they made with the Vampire Lestat show, I feel like I just can't trust the showrunners with an adaptation of The Queen of the Damned. Akasha is way too layered and multifaceted. You can't force her into some cookie-cutter trope.

If they portray her as just some evil feminist out to destroy all men, I'll shoot myself in the head, rise from my grave, track down those showrunners, and destroy them myself. Because Akasha is not a feminist. Period. That's a fact.

In the book, it was written so brilliantly that, as a feminist, I sometimes found myself falling for her sweet-talking sermons. Like under a spell, I'd catch myself thinking, "Yes, girl, you're right—destroy them." But that's exactly the charm and genius of Anne Rice—leading us into delusion. Akasha actually hates women just as much as she hates men.

All she wants is worship. Let's not forget her past: she was an Egyptian queen, and in Egyptian mythology, rulers were considered literal gods. When Amel entered her, she fully believed in her own divinity. And in the 20th (or already 21st in the show ) century, she just found convenient rhetoric and beautiful sermons to lead people. But she wasn't leading them to a bright future—she was leading them to a world where she's the only god and everyone else is a slave.

She never cared about anyone but herself. She hated sisters Maaret and Mekare for not acknowledging her as a goddess, and she forced Khayman (who was a unwilling concubine just waiting for death) to rape them, then brutally disposed of them. She never turned women into vampires, not even her own daughters, because she saw them as competition. She placed herself above everyone, including Lestat. And yes, she was racist—being from ancient Egypt, she looked down on other nations and committed genocide.

At the same time, she's not just a cardboard villain. She's a very intelligent woman who ruled almost in place of her husband, she was a true queen, and most importantly, she had a childlike charm. Believing in the religion of ancient Egypt, she truly believed in her own divinity, and she didn't just want to rule the world alone. She genuinely believed that she had the right to do so because she was, in a literal sense, a god. It was described so beautifully. After reading these books, I literally ran to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities to admire this culture.

She's so complex, so layered, so insane—a true embodiment of the Gothic novel. I love her so much for that madness. And Sheila was breathtaking in that role—in just five minutes, I saw everything I described above!

But God... after what they did to Lestat, I'm genuinely terrified to watch this. If they don't change the writing team, this season could be a total disaster.

To avoid the failure that the vampire Lestat suffered, the showrunners will have to: 1. Hire a black female screenwriter; 2. Hire a scientific consultant on ancient Egypt; 3. Take literature classes to read between the lines; 4. Listen to what Anne Rice said in an interview about the Akasha; 5. Use your brain and don't treat important topics like "ritual cannibalism" and others as garbage and madness, as was the case with Lestat's incest.

[whooshsoohw]

I think the writers mishandled what they chose to leave ambiguous versus what they chose to clarify. They left genuinely important events ambiguous, events that fundamentally change how you read entire relationships, and then clarified them later in interviews instead of in the show itself. At the same time, they chose to explicitly confirm things that were already easy to infer and whose clarification didn't really change anything.

Things they kept ambiguous that they shouldn't have (and only clarified in interviews):

Lestat's role in the trial. Interviews later established that Lestat participated willingly in the trial, but the show never really grapples with that. Dramatically, that's incredibly underwhelming. If he knowingly took part, that isn't just another one of his many failures; it fundamentally changes how the audience should view his guilt and responsibility. The show needed to address that head-on and give him a much bigger reckoning than it ultimately did.

Armand erasing Louis' memories. Interviews also clarified that Armand only erased Louis' memories once, and that Louis explicitly asked him to do it. None of that is properly addressed in the show. Instead, the series leaves viewers wondering how often it happened and under what circumstances, and assuming Armand did this forcefully, which drastically alters how people interpret their relationship.

Things that didn't need clarification but got one anyway:

Armand putting the Steins with Louis' photographs. We already knew Armand was manipulating and gaslighting Louis about something significant. We didn't need confirmation that he was also lying about relatively trivial things. Leaving the Stein ambiguous worked because it created suspicion and tension around Armand without definitively assigning blame. Once it's confirmed, it doesn't deepen his characterization; it just makes him look worse over something that wasn't the point.

Claudia lying about Lestat threatening her on the train. I understand that this was probably meant to show Claudia could be calculating and manipulative, but I don't think it actually adds much. Whether Lestat explicitly threatened her or not doesn't change the fact that she felt unsafe around him, nor does it change that he forced her to come back for Louis' sake. We already knew Claudia was capable of manipulation. She literally orchestrated Lestat's murder. Revealing that she embellished this particular event doesn't meaningfully change our understanding of her character or the broader story.

Overall, it feels like the writers had their priorities backwards. They left relationship-defining events unresolved inside the actual text of the show, forcing audiences to rely on interviews for crucial context, while spending screen time confirming ambiguities that either the audience had already inferred or that didn't substantially alter anyone's motivations or the themes of the story. That imbalance leaves the audience waiting for major emotional reckonings that are never actually coming, because we naturally assume the show is still building toward them when, in reality it has already moved on.

[forbiddenwyvernllama]

I want to speak out as a devoted fan who's deeply impressed by Assad Zaman's acting, and as a reader of the entire Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice who adores the vampire Armand as a character, about the extremely strange situation surrounding the third season, "The Vampire Lestat."

I see many people trying to justify the erasure of Assad Zaman from the season's promotion by saying "he's not a main character," and I strongly disagree. I understand the series has already gone down the path of "reimagining the books" — they've changed the timeline, appearances, and backstories of the characters — but I will be unbelievably angry if they dare to change the DAMN PLOT OF THE BOOK.

If you read the books, you would never get the impression that the vampire Armand is a secondary character. He never was, not even from the very first book.

The vampire Armand appears in almost every single book, and almost everywhere he is the primary driver of the plot, a central character. The vampire Louis is the one who is absent from many books!

If we talk specifically about book "The Vampire Lestat", there is literally an entire chapter dedicated SOLELY to the vampire Armand. If Armand had never met Lestat, Lestat would never have met Marius, never would have awakened Akasha, and there would have been no apocalypse!

Armand is the engine of the plot. You cannot ignore that. You cannot write him off as a secondary character. In The Vampire Lestat, the secondary character is Louis! He gets literally two lines in that book.

Also, let's not ignore the relationship between Lestat and Armand. It was extremely toxic, but do not forget HOW IMPORTANT Armand was to Lestat — so much so that Akasha did not kill him. She literally told Lestat, "I will not kill only those who are DEAR to you." For that reason, she did not kill Armand, nor Daniel, who was dear to Armand. So does that not prove the colossal importance of this character?

If we follow the subsequent books, Armand literally settles all the vampires in his house, and they constantly hang out there. All gatherings and councils take place there, in ARMAND'S HOUSE. Armand even takes in Antoine (Lestat's vampire fledgling).

So yes, in my opinion — and I stand by it — Armand is one of the main characters of this universe. And what is happening right now with the season three promotion genuinely makes me extremely worried about changes to his storyline. The erasure of Assad Zaman is complete madness and blatant racism.

I've said my piece. You can throw stones at me, but I will only engage in dialogue with those who have read the books.

[forbiddenwyvernllama]

I can't believe I was right about every suspicion and doubt I had about this show. Maybe I should start charging for my tarot readings? 🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮

[forbiddenwyvernllama]

When you thought it couldn't get any worse, but Rolin opens his mouth and spouts absolute nonsense about a voluntary Lestat in court

[forbiddenwyvernllama]

Lestat the book is a rapist, and everyone forgot about it in the show??

In light of this shitty season, Lestat from the book is sad because it seems like they've forgotten about his existence. I find it very amusing that in the show, Lestat is portrayed as the main victim of various rapes, while in the book, Lestat (literally) raped a girl in «The Tale of the Body Thief» and later repented, took responsibility, reflected deeply, and even admitted to himself that when he was human in the past, he may have raped maids without realizing it at the time. It was hard for me to read, but from a psychological point of view, it was really cool. Wow, the series turned everything upside down

[phoebe-apollonia]

These two af asf as fuck

[fay989]

Any TVL cast member being interviewed: yeah so when I first read the script I wanted to murder Rolin with my bare hands :) haha yeah he butchered my character so badly that I threw my laptop across the room :) aha and then I yelled at him for two hours which only resulted in minor tweaks to the script :) yeah I was so shocked and confused :) and he comes up with scenes that don’t make any sense in-universe. :) and I worry for the future of this tv show :) but it’s alright as long as you think about how [5 min in depth analysis of details that the cast member has come up themselves to justify the season despite these justifications not being evident in the actual show at all] aha :)

[callstoyoulikethewildgeese]

Is there an edit of Delainey Hayles and Assad Zaman as Tiana and Prince Naveen fancast or am I just imagining things again :)

[littlemothcreature]

I SEE YOUR VISION!!

GUYS JUST LOOK!!