Luce

She/her | 37 | 🖤💜🤍 | Purveyor of IWTV Armandaniel fics | also @GrayGiantess on Ao3 & Twitter

[graygiantess]

Hi! Tumblr makes me feel like I'm Armand who's trying to call Paris but doesn't know how to use a phone. But if you want you can ask me things. 🤗

PSA RE: LOCKING MY FICS AFTER AI SCRAPING

Permission statement RE: my fanfic

List of my S1 canon-adjacent Armandaniel fics in chronological order

[louis-love-fest]

Louis Love Fest

-This is an event to celebrate the lovely vampire Louis De Pointe Du Lac.

The rules are as follows

-Must be Louis-focused

-any ship/pairing is allowed

-angst is allowed but there must be a happy ending

-be kind to your fellow participants

-Absolutely no AI

-Art, Moodboards and Writing are welcome (NSFW Included)

This will be open on July 20th and Ending August 11th at 11 pm EST

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[xroub]

The Vampire Lestat S03E07 | "The Failures"

[graygiantess]

TVL Ja Ja Ding Dong cover when?

[tcsformerbandmate]

So are Daniel and Jasper cell mates now?

[graygiantess]

I'm not saying I started an imaginary WIP about this within an hour of finishing the episode, but Jasper is definitely also invited when I write about Armand busting Daniel out of the Talamasca prison.

[lukelemon-art]

☀️Touching the sun☀️

I would imagine it starts with small things and tiny steps… And drinking buckets of your maker's blood, but that's a matter for some art in the future.

[rocktheholygrail]

The Vampire Lestat (2026)

[mevilsdinion]

You need a love that will cradle you

[graygiantess]

So... How do you feel after watching the last episode? Have your feelings and hopes about DM changed?

Well, that sure was an episode of television. 💀

There goes years of us, the creators and Assad saying Armand isn't an evil mastermind.

I liked Lestat’s mind palace long table business lunch? Him finally really realising Gabriella was never good to/for him and calling her a monster to her face was good. Stellar performances from everyone at the table, too.

Also liked DM being canon companions. And Assad is a phenomenal actor.

I don't know why anyone would ever think we needed to see Armand torturing Louis and fucking cutting his initial into him. Fuck that. I'm sure other people have already written at length about all the reasons why that shouldn't have happened.

And Armand doing All That NOT to stop the Great Conversion but because he's pissed off about his divorce? And Daniel going along with it just because he's also pissy? Yeah, no, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Fuck that, too.

Absolutely baffling use of half an episode/75% of our main guys.

Also not a fan of them pulling a Schrödingers Jon Snow on us with regards to Daniel. Is he dead (he's not)? Is he fine? Did the Talamasca roll him into a carpet and stick him in a puppy mill like they did my man Jasper?

At least them not giving us any answers when it comes to DM leaves lots of room for fic.

I'll always be a DM girlie, and I can write, so write I will.

[steelart]

yesterday? blorbo stuff. today? blorbo stuff. tomorrow? you'll never guess

[graygiantess]

I was so behind on replying to comments but I just went from 61 unread/unreplied to comments to 0 in an hour! 💀

[lexdelioncourt]

From his vampire loneliness face in the first few episodes to this?

"I'm seeing someone." Yeah I bet.

Who's the bottom now, Daniel?

[graygiantess]

Armand finally came to pick up his child! 😭😭😭

[hansoeii]

bathroom break

Uncensored on my Patreon!

[graygiantess]

Do you have any advice for coming up with fanfic ideas? I really want to write a DM fic but this season didn't give me any ideas, and I am racking my brain trying to come up with something

Hi Nonny, thanks for asking!

I'm not sure if I'm the right person to ask, though. I think how and when ideas come to you varies greatly from person to person. I've been so deep in the DM sauce for so long, my brain will make everything about them whether I want it to or not. 🫣 (I'll put a silly example of this at the end of my reply.) I have more ideas than I'll ever be able to fully hatch.

I'll put some things that help me under the break, though!

I do find it harder to come up with canon-adjacent things while a season is airing and the show's actual canon is changing every week. If there's a new episode coming out in a week that might 'disprove' the assumptions I'm basing my fic on, that'll feel like a deadline to me and that can stress me out like you wouldn't believe. I'll be happy when this season is over and we'll know what new canon we'll have to work with and which blanks are left for us to fill in to our heart's content.

If you're looking for a new idea, I think it starts with asking yourself questions about what type of fic you'd like to write. You can approach this in many ways. You can start with a genre or vibe you want to go for. A topic you want to explore. Whose POV you want the fic to be from. Or, for example, when you want the fic to set. 1973, 1990, 2026? Or, in other words: during the 6-night torture session, during the following chase/stalking, during a past DM after that, after Armand potentially wiped past DM from Daniel’s memory, during the Dubai interview, Daniel’s turning, the period between his turning and them reconnecting, etc. This will all inform where these characters are in terms of their own motivations but also their relationship.

Where we are now in the show canon, there are a lot of blanks that haven't been filled in yet by the show, the big ones being:

Just how involved was Armand in Daniel’s life? Did they have a fully-fledged affair (book-style 1970s and 1980s DM) that Armand then erased from Daniel’s memory, or was it just stalking and 'interceding from a distance'? Was Armand ever 'forced' to reveal himself to Daniel during these interceptions? How did that play out?

What has Armand been up to off-screen?

Including: what happened between them in the present-day that made Daniel team up with Armand and (it looks like) get (back) together with him romantically?

The few DM conversations we have had this season have also given us loads of things to expand upon in fic. Daniel went to rehab 5 times. What led to him deciding to go there? Did Armand guide him? What's with the year Daniel listened to Phish? What other situations can we put Daniel in that Armand then had to get him out of? What were the fascinating things Daniel did that made Armand fall for him/decide not to kill him but to protect him?

If you've read the DM chapter, you can draw from that for inspiration. Armand and Daniel get up to all kinds of random shit during their relationship in the book. Armand does intercede on Daniel’s behalf a few times, but they do things that are less angsty as well. Travelling, parties, night classes, going to plays and movies, hobbies, some light piracy. Most of these are only briefly mentioned but you could turn those into entire fics. And you can literally take any activity or film or play and ask yourself "Would Armand like this? How would he approach this? How would Daniel respond to any of it?"

What can really help me is asking fandom friends for prompts. Sometimes none of my 'active' WIPs want to cooperate and I just need something to shake me out of that funk. You can even specify what type of prompts you'd like to receive: silly, smutty, horror, angsty, domestic, young Daniel, old human Daniel, vampire Daniel. Some of my best fics were based on prompts from friends. (Always be sure to credit them for that initial spark!)

I also really love what I call baking a second cake. Putting your own twist on a *type* of fic that's already been done by other people. And I’m not talking copying or plagiarising. This is more like writing a coffee shop AU or a 5 + 1. You can still be incredibly creative and original when writing within a preset framework. There are types of fics specific to DM that have been done so often they've sort of become subgenres.

Examples of this off the top of my head are:

Daniel/Fake Rashid. Dubai. Past DM happened, Daniel doesn’t remember, Armand does and still loves and wants his boy. Often includes Daniel feeling like a dirty old man because he has no idea 'Rashid' is actually a 514yo vampire and the perceived power imbalance/age gap is not the actual power imbalance/age gap.

Outsider POV: Daniel’s daughters find out their dad is dating a guy (who looks) younger than them. (I had a lot of fun with this one.)

Middle-aged Daniel hooks up with a mysterious stranger he doesn't know but the audience does know is Armand. (We can either know this because the fic is Armand POV or because Daniel notices that the stranger is oddly familiar and/or the stranger is more into it/him than you'd expect from a random one-night stand.) Often includes but doesn't have to include Daniel remembering/recognising Armand halfway through and/or Armand doing another mindwipe at the end.

Related to that one: Armand poses as a student in one of Daniel’s classes.

This season has actually given us Daniel canonically hooking up with students. I already had this 'trope' on my to-be-written list, but ep5 definitely bumped it closer to the top of that list.

My main tip would be: immerse yourself in the ship. What do you like about them and what would you like to see more of? And definitely don't let objections like "That’s too self-indulgent" or "This character would never do this" stop you. You can do whatever the fuck you want in fic, and, if you have a strong understanding of the characters and their motivations, you can make anything work for them.

I hope this helps! It's hard to be concise about this topic because there's so many ways in which you can approach it.

The dumb example of a fic idea that literally jumped me on the street:

Last night I was walking to the bus stop with my kid after having dinner in town, randomly thought 'liar liar plants for hire' Patrick Star-style, then went 'OMG crack fic where Armand hasn't been intoxicated since he was a human and he drinks from someone who is drunk or on drugs (probably Daniel but can also be a random human, depending on whether it's past DM or Daniel is also a vampire in this) and he is a silly drunk who literally fire gifts someone's pants on fire and does other small vamp power things to bystanders and Daniel has to be the relatively sober friend and get him home to sleep it off while trying to do damage control'.

[secret-oktober]

«Mais c'était de l'amour.»

It took me an entire afternoon and half my eyesight, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. I've also planned Daniel and Lestat, but let me know if you guys think it's worth it ❤️‍🩹

The inspiration, of course, is this illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for Oscar Wilde's Salomé.

[maggie44paint]

Got obsessed with these photos of Assad and Eric and came up with this weird 80s 'Little shop of Horrors' esque human Devil's Minion AU

[userarmand]

welcome back cuntress and somebody's bi grandpa

[graygiantess]

He's so horny for his lobster-colored old man baby, I can't 😂💀

[speakfriendaandenter]

matching Halloween costumes w the bf 🤎