tbh one of the more compelling things about daniel falling in love with armand for me is the way it forces him into this fundamental internal conflict.
we know that daniel is a skilled journalist, as well as that, by the beginning of the show, he has more or less driven everyone in his life away—in no small part because he can't put that down. that relentless pursuit of honesty is central to who he is; as armand says, it's his drug. at the same time, as much as he pretends otherwise, he's incredibly lonely. at times it's harder to see, but he's just as desperate for connection as the other vampires are. in other words, the two things that daniel craves most are love and truth, and he has historically been compelled toward the latter even to the detriment of the former.
armand, on the other hand, is a liar and a manipulator who erased over a decade of daniel's life. his own memories have been erased or overwritten by his trauma, and he also actively resists understanding his own past. he has obstructed daniel's ability to understand himself and will resist any attempt daniel makes to understand him. in a narrative sense, armand is positioned in diametric opposition to the concepts of truth and clarity. by loving armand, daniel's biggest desires are placed in opposition. his narrative purpose is to clarify where armand's is to obfuscate, and he's torn between that chase—which he has effectively formed his identity around in the absence of connection—and connection itself.
even better than that though is the fact that the devil's minion storyline ultimately undermines this framing. there is no perfect truth, there is only its approximation. armand is not incompatible with the concept of truth, it has simply never served him, and he has become too afraid to try to access it at all. the two aren't all that opposed in the end. armand himself might not understand that anything true of him has any value—if it even still exists at all—but daniel's love is predicated on a desire to understand who armand really is, and that's where his pursuit of honesty and his pursuit of companionship converge.
romaincrisis
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
