normal isn't

it/its . dm sideblog

[normalisnt]

Got around to making a sideblog specifically for DM (go me).

A couple of first thoughts: I am one of those dm fans who has not actually read the books, and only did some background research into the DM chapter itself and some other contextual things, so I knew what was going on. I watched the bootleg of the finale on TikTok, and I need to, like, blow out a whoooole bunch of steam, so these are my copyrighted thoughts on what just happened. Spoilers are all under the cut.

I don't understand how or why they felt the need to make a DM reunion happen in 3 episodes, while the two of them had a combined total of probably 30 minutes or less of screen time. And we, the audience, still do not actually know how, why, or when any of that came about. Optimistically, we can hope that the plan is to sort of work backward with Season 4, which will allegedly be focused largely on Armand and his story (known to be deeply interconnected with Daniel's), and explain how everything came to be once we aren't stuck in Lestat's perspective. I have more thoughts on the whole Lestat's POV thing.

Armand referring to Daniel as his "companion" is initially kind of shallow because Armand tends to do that to people long before the other person is ever willing to commit. Until we move on to a few scenes with Daniel. Daniel, for some reason FAR BEYOND my comprehension, leaving me to assume that whoever was writing for him at the time must have suffered a catastrophic fucking stroke, uttered the words "yaoi manther era" with complete, genuine confidence.

The framing of these two scenes happens side by side. Armand says that Lestat's head is "with his companion." Cut to Daniel, carrying Lestat's head in a bowling bag. Naturally, this is direct confirmation that, at this point, Armand is referring to Daniel as his companion. Daniel, who could very easily tell the employee that he isn't married and is just here to bowl, goes along with the idea that he has a wife, a wife who specifically told him to take "his head" (Lestat's, in Daniel's possession) as far away from "her body" (Lestat's body, in Armand's possession) as possible. Armand calls Daniel his companion -> Daniel does not object and rather runs with the notion that Armand is his wife -> Daniel then announces to Lestat that he is in his "yaoi manther era," whatever the fuck that even means. There is no real way to interpret this other than a direct confirmation that at some point between Episode 5 and Episode 7, Daniel and Armand are now in a relationship.

I, too, take issue with the fact that we don't really have any context for this happening. I don't think it would have been outrageous to have a small scene interjected somewhere that makes some mention or insinuation that Daniel and Armand have been talking at any length. As it is right now? While it makes sense that Armand would be 100% down for it if Daniel was willing to put it on the table, what doesn't make any sense is why Daniel would put it on the table in the first place.

An optimistic meta reading of this is that something did happen there, something very significant and emotionally driven, but Lestat has no idea what it is and would (reasonably) think that the whole thing is a little bit silly, so his interpretation of events is Daniel and Armand talk after Armand walks out of his show -> They behead him -> They get together. There's no reason for Lestat to have any information about the details of how, when, or why that happened, and it being confusing for the audience may very well be a reflection of it being confusing for Lestat. I think he would be blindsided by it and also not really care, because he has no reason to be very invested. Hence, the assumption is that they will have to work backward to tell this story. By the end of Lestat's retelling of events leading up to whatever apocalypse he causes, Daniel and Armand are companions, but he's not privy to the details. Sure, fine.

I do feel as though the prospect of DM in this season has been severely overhyped and that they either cut a lot of content that the cast was expecting to be in the final cut of the show, or they were trying to drum up engagement and getting a little overexcited about things that hadn't actually happened yet. Perhaps that is where this collective sense of disappointment comes from; we all had expectations, and none of them were met. Even some of the more interesting theories I've read on here were not resolved in the way many people were hoping for them to be. I get the sense that everyone had a lot of things that they wanted; there just was no feasible way to integrate them into the story they were trying to tell.

We could have definitely had less Gabriella, though. She had way too much screen time, and Lestat finally standing up to her took an unnecessarily long time. We did not really need to see that much of her. Again, another meta reading of this is that she is significant to the way Lestat remembers these events, and therefore is taking up a huge chunk of screen time because he is the one telling the story. Yet, at the end of the day, Lestat isn't real, and these are writers making these decisions. The writers chose to include the gratuitous amount of on-screen incest instead of just cutting back and letting other things take the forefront. The writers chose to mischaracterize some of the most interesting characters on the show. Lestat might be a known asshole, but he doesn't have to be such a ludicrously unreliable narrator that everybody is acting weird as hell. Might be cheap to say in the Unreliable Narrator Tutorial Series, but you know, my thoughts.

I'm tired of talking about DM now, and I'm going to talk about other important things.

Much more thoughtful takes on this have been posted that outweigh my own by a lot, but the racism is also really, really bad, actually. Why, exactly, do Louis and Regina need a prolonged torture sequence? Why does Louis need to give Armand a heartfelt apology while Armand is threatening to kill a frankly innocent woman (while his head is severed from his body and his own lover is dying, mind you) without actually receiving anything half as meaningful from Armand? He, too, has a whole lot of shit he needs to own up to. If this was meant to come across to us as a resolution of their storyline, the way they ultimately make amends and come to friendly terms, what the fuck are we even doing here? An apology given under duress is not a genuine apology.

Louis coughing up an apology that ultimately amounts to "sorry for being a shitty boyfriend" while he's being tortured does not really account for much. It does not account for how he mistreated Armand long before he knew that he had anything to do with Claudia's death. Louis's dismissal of Armand's trauma was one of the most unlikeable aspects of his character. It is an unfortunately common trait and one that is very easy to see reflected in real people, in real relationships, but he also cannot be expected to be a dial-up trauma therapist for Armand simply by the nature of having been in a relationship with him. Could he have been substantially more understanding, and maybe a little less heavy-handed with the Arun shit? Yes, obviously. That was Weird and I will continue to say that it was Weird. However, I think all of the shit Armand did kind of tips the scale a little.

Armand not apologizing at fucking all does not account for anything that he did, letting him essentially walk away with some faux-blamelessness, while he was actively manipulating, lying to, and effectively brainwashing Louis for 77 years. Unfortunately, Armand being a rebound is not really on the same level as lying about killing your boyfriend's daughter and then staying with him for 77 years, making him forget about his own suicide attempt, and digging around in his memories often enough to make him stay with you when he would have probably otherwise left. Armand is a fucked up person who does fucked up things, grass is green, and water is wet, but the supposed resolution to this arc between him and Louis being Louis grovelling an apology to convince him to spare both his and Regina's lives while Armand does not say a word about everything he did, instead blaming a pretty decent chunk of it on Louis, is an incredibly disturbing thing to see.

So much of the oxygen in that scene was dedicated to creating what was really just an unnecessary trail of breadcrumbs for DMers to sniff up. Pure "shut up and eat your slop". The whole "maybe I never loved you" shit? Why are we talking about this? WHY is this how Armand and Louis resolve things? WHY is this how they move on from each other? "You deserve a love that cradles you", and what does Louis deserve? This reads to me as a weird attempt at writing Louis giving DM his blessing, or giving Armand his blessing to move on, which is NOT necessary. Why did this story become about coddling your abusers? It's offensive how much they undercut his character here. Note: Yes, I do think Armand was abusive. Everything he did is textbook abuse. I think Louis was also abusive. Two things can be true.

Why did we actually need any of this in Lestat's season period? I can understand that the idea of Louis resolving things with Armand would naturally be pretty important to Louis and Lestat getting (properly) back together, but what in the fuck are we doing with this? We're told that all of that was just Lestat repeating what Louis told him after the Final Show, so who knows how much of it is actually even true. I feel like everything they have chosen to focus on here is just disjointed, in a way. It leaves a very unsatisfying residue behind.

I wish Louis had gotten the character arc that he deserved in this season, with Lestat or otherwise. I wish we weren't dedicating so much screen time to torturing black people unnecessarily. I wish Lestat wasn't so fucking bland (maybe the incest just really isn't doing it for me). Also, we still didn't really get an actual story about that. Lestat had a panic attack because Louis found out and then realized that Gabriella was grooming him in his half-dead, half-alive fever dream. What? Can we have characters actually speak to each other? Can we actually unpack all of the shit Lestat just went through mentally? Can we address the experience of grooming and sexual abuse, or is this as good as it gets here?

I really just felt so disappointed in basically everything. It feels like this was just one prolonged "fumble every ball" experience put to the screen. I'm not nearly as mad about the lack of DM as I am about the blatant meta mockery of DM fans ("yaoi manther," are you fucking kidding me) while shoveling it all into the background whilst knowing they've been hyping it up since Season 1. I'm not nearly as mad about the lack of DM as I am about the blatant racism and the shitty resolution to Armand's arc here. Etc, etc. I'm over it. Feel free to send asks or DMs if you want to complain, because I need to keep ranting.

[youaremysunshine-court]

you dont get it. daniel is awful and politically incorrect to everyone until armand worms his way past his defenses. then hes horrible and mean to everyone except armand

[armandgoth]

it is that deep. the mischaracterisation of armand is that deep. i wish for everyone to realise what great disservice the writers have done to his character with their racist storytelling. armand has been described in the show as something repulsive, something without a presence, a fuck cloud and a rotten thing, something boring to death and insipid, something that cannot be loved and something that provokes a reaction of strong disgust in many other characters; lestat was genuinely stunned that louis deemed armand a companion-material. let that sink in.

some will try to argue that all those remarks are only targeted at his evil deeds. unfortauntely that is not true. in the books, however scared or repulsed lestat was by some of armand's actions, he still found him beautiful. he still described him with very reverent language. that was the core of it: everyone desired armand. that was why he suffered so much. everyone treated him like a pretty conquest. at the beginning of tva david talbot literally out of the blue started playing with his hair and sniffing them. it was the most dehumanising desire, that always showed the truth: he was too beautiful for this world.

this is how marius described armand in blood and gold: "And there I saw beauty, beauty which has always been my downfall, beauty in a new and celestial form. Heaven had cast down upon this stone floor an abandoned angel, of auburn curls and perfectly formed limbs, of fair and mysterious face. His soft reddish hair was loose and tangled. His flesh was pale and the bones of his face only faintly sharpened by his Slavic blood."

"This was a boy, as I had said, and he had a head of long curly hair. But his face was shining white, and perfect, the countenance of a god it seemed, a Cupid out of Caravaggio, seductive yet ethereal, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes."

more quotes from books here:

so on what grounds is armand getting so much verbal humiliation in the show? all i see is that the writers for the third time in a row focused on his 'weird' side, his 'gremlin' side, his 'evil and crazy' side, while... completely ditching the rest of the picture. why is it that no one called him beautiful yet? why is he being so perpetually degraded, so belittled and debased verbally? because to me it screams fucking racism, it screams to me all those writers sitting and scribbling their notes about armand and never once admitting to themselves that assad is beautiful, that this bangladeshi man could be described in such a way, that he could actually be considered that. his screentime got radically reduced this season, they literally cut parts of tvl where his character was of paramount importance and any time armand was on screen, we were just given the following messages: he's weird!! he's crazy!! he's evil!! he's desperate!! while completely disregarding the rest. it is a deeply rooted, unconscious racism that genuinely terrifies and saddens me and i truly have no idea how these scripts made it air.

[normalisnt]

Doomed?? Mutated beast??? Are we actually moving in this direction or is this just, like, best guesses because they don't actually know what the writing will be like yet? "Doomed" is, fundamentally, the OPPOSITE of what DM is, the descriptor misses the point entirely. Dude, you could not possibly be further off. I am really, really hoping that they don't write them that way, because that's not their relationship at all.

[star-s0up]

Devil’s Minion has consumed my days 😌☺️

[marsuk-06]

Another DM artwork. I kinda hate how this turned out but decided I decided to post it anyways.

[lexdelioncourt]

I have like, ten million thoughts rolling around in my fucking head, and surprisingly none of them are actually DM fears.

I feel like we're very much set up in a good place for DM in S4. Regardless of how much RPFing Eric and Assad were doing, Rolin has always been adamant that DM is in QOTD and that there would only be seeds this season. Sure, some of us hoped for more, others didn't expect anything. We got something in the middle. Everything and nothing simultaneously. I still think we're set up for good things moving forward as hard as it will be to wait. At least the soil for fics is fertile.

As for a whole bunch of OTHER stuff. Well, I need a little longer to articulate all that.

[skiipsizzyyyy]

yeah we aren’t being subtle at all Armand PHYSICALLY HAS HEART EYES. ARE WE JOKING

[loving-the-world-since-00]

[ladygreene13]

Sideblog, anon time, it's @normalisnt. You absolutely got what I was trying to convey about Lestat being an insanely unreliable narrator. Are they even together? DID Louis tell him about the companions thing, or did he make it up because he's salty about the beheading? Daniel being cartoonishly evil doesn't make sense until you consider the fact that Lestat was so disinterested in him that he would likely just lump him and his motivations in with Armand's, whom Lestat also thinks is cartoonishly evil. I'm an optimist so I choose to believe in the "The Talk happened between episodes 5 and 7" idea, but I would also be pleased as punch if this was how they STARTED working on things and Season 4 is a linear continuation of how they continue to work on it, have The Talk, and be in crazy love forever. I really just need them to not fumble it when it happens.

First of all, hiiiii! <3

"I really just need them to not fumble it when it happens" YES 😭🙏🏻 that's all I want too. I'm honestly so fine with devil's minion this season because i always took it as laying the groundwork for what is to come, whichever direction they take it. It was an introduction.

Sure, there were hints in previous seasons, they were planting the seeds, but if you're not aware of the concept of them as couple, while they do raise suspicion, it's easy to miss. 

And yes, said introduction does feel abrupt and it's not necessarily easing anyone into it loll but i felt like this might be intentional? It sure puts the viewer in daniel's shoes when hearing the confessions, and then again, it's lestat's story. He. Would Not Elaborate on how that happened. It would also feel abrupt to him. Daniel and Armand working together did hit him out of nowhere.

So yeah, i do think they will go deeper into them moving forward in a way that will give more substance, context and sense to all we saw here. If only because they have gone back to give another perspective on things in s2 and tvl.

About lestat's POV-- I've been constantly aware of him as a narrator through the season, which is something i saw people complain about and sure, valid, but i think this is part of the change of tone. Lestat's tendency to embelish, camuflage, dramatize, not lie to himself but lie about how he perceives things when he actually knows the truth deep down, has been made pretty clear, and all of that, along with his intensity, impulsiveness and self-centeredness lol, is visible in the pacing, in the structure, it's seeping through the dialogue, like i mentioned, through characterization, through the visuals and how things are presented. In a way i feel like it's almost necessary to be reminded, to be aware of him, while with louis and armand their presence usually fell into the background as we were "seduced by the tale", with the slow uncovering of their own, subtler, flaws as narrators being part of the story, despite the unreliability of memory and those themes being set up from the beginning.

And speaking of them, i will admit it's been forever since I've watched iwtv, but i can't remember louis or armand talking much about things they were not present or had no direct witnesses for? And everything happening in the present, in dubai and after, was factual, not up to debate, no narrator. In TVL the only scenes like that are the auction and the glimpse of lestat recording the failures. So, to the point of what is real or not - every scene in between he's not present for is stated to be basically a reimagining, thus influenced by his bias and his interpretation of the pieces of information he does have, and what others might have told him.

And this is especially funny to think about in regards to the scenes where it was just armand and daniel, because i have to wonder if he did learn anything more about them in the future and how lmaoo. If he did learn, that might be informing his retelling of the scenes involving others as well – like armand's use of the word "companion" to louis.

Or could his perspective have only influenced their private scenes as far as their limited and abrupt quality are concerned? In any case, they did have some very important and real exchanges for the characters and relationship that we can't just write off as made up or it would undermine all of that groundwork, but like i said that way lies madness 😆

Anyway. Yeah, just like lestat had his cartoonishly evil flare in louis' story – e.g. him dramatically hopping through the fog with a head in hand, in the train scene –, armand and daniel definetely had their own. The horror movie score for armand's dr. frankenstein moment had me cackling loll as did daniel's energy vampire face at the interview. And especially regarding daniel, some of what he was saying, the phrasing and vocabulary, the crazy use of slang, definetely felt reminiscent of lestat and how he, in his pursuit of mingling with the youths, would say it, lol. Daniel is reverting a bit to his younger self, sure, but we objectively know how he sounds being playful or sarcastic or an asshole, we know him, like you pointed out in your post.

I'm done rambling now lolll glad i got what you meant and that we both see the vision about that, haha. I hope we're right!

[claudiadpdl]

seeing ppl im friends with/following going "i loved this season and the finale was great!! can't wait for s4!!"

[starlingherald]

how do you think devil’s minion will primarily manifest in s4?

revisit TVL events, explore the timeskip between eps 5 and 6

moving forward from TVL events, relationship develops in real-time with story

past dm flashbacks (reciprocated established relationship)

past dm flashbacks (stalker armand, unaware daniel)

other/combination/nuance (share in tags?)

Remaining time: 4 days 21 hours

[normalisnt]

I watched the finale again and sat with some of my thoughts for a while. I have many thoughts about where things are being left off, specifically in regards to DM, and what is being set up for their relationship in future seasons (if there are any).

Spoilers are under the cut for anyone who still hasn't gotten their hands on the finale.

Despite the entire season being told through Lestat's POV, what little we can understand about Daniel and Armand's relationship from Lestat's perspective on events gives us some things that are potentially very interesting. One thing to consider is that Lestat may be making half of it up, or that he is overstating the nature of their relationship because he views them in a negative light. Such as, if Lestat imagines Armand as a jilted ex and Daniel as the rebound, constructing a narrative where they get bloody, murderous revenge after Armand gets humiliated and Daniel has been a complete jackass for the entire season, then, well, that would make a lot of sense. Lestat is kind of a dick as a general rule. It has already been thoroughly established that he does not like Daniel and finds him annoying, as he stated at the start of the series, and he was not a fan of the book at all.

About Daniel

Daniel has been so thoroughly mischaracterized throughout the entirety of TVL that it's easier to believe it's an intentional decision to show Lestat's dislike of him through Lestat's own narration than it is to believe the writers just forgot who they were fucking writing about. Daniel Molloy is not so insensitive and crass as to be constantly throwing around racist and ableist remarks just because he is a vampire now. Yes, he has that "splinter of coldness" in him and is not really a good person, but he does have principles. Such principles are often the root of his criticisms and digs at Louis and Armand throughout the first and second seasons. The principles in and of themselves are why he dug his heels in so hard about exposing Armand's lie.

I do not believe that the Daniel we are acquainted with in TVL is an accurate representation of how Daniel would take to vampiric life. I think a lot of what he says, does, or how he acts in general is strongly exaggerated or outright fabricated by the fact that it is coming from a place of resentment in Lestat. Daniel is not cruel because he feels like he has a right to be or even because he gets enjoyment out of it. His conversations with people are not all just snarky one-liners and mean comments. Even in the first two seasons, as funny and sarcastic as he was, it was because he was actively listening and trying to understand — and when he was cruel, when he did get mean, it was because he was unraveling something that he knew was not the complete truth.

This is what makes him such an interesting character. He is a deeply troubled person who has lived most of his life fighting addiction and depression, and the thing he feared the most throughout his youth, death, became an impending reality he could not avoid when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I have always been interested in Daniel's relentless and often self-endangering pursuit of the truth. Not even what he believes to be true, but the search for the objective truth, what actually happened, what people actually think and feel. His search for meaning and to leave something of himself behind, but none of it was ever able to leave him feeling truly fulfilled. Daniel's entire life was one long quest for significance and purpose. Drugs were unfulfilling, so he tried to get clean. Sex and relationships were unfulfilling, so he slept around. Being a husband and a father was unfulfilling, so he threw himself into his work.

This quest for purpose and fulfillment ties very well into the themes of addiction and dependence that permeate his story, both with and without his relationship to Armand being a factor. Addiction is often described as constantly chasing that first high and never being able to feel the way it made you feel the first time again — Daniel, too, is chasing his first high, desperate to feel as fulfilled and complete as he wants to. He chases it with drugs, with sex, with danger, with attempts at love, with work. All of these things are very important motivations behind his actions. The one thing Daniel absolutely cannot make himself do is pass up the opportunity to unravel a good story.

His motivations are almost always intrinsic. He is selfish. The things that drive him are the things that he wants, the pursuit of how something will make him feel. Did he ever achieve that fulfillment? No, not really, which is why throughout TVL, he questions his integrity and abilities as a journalist. Daniel is dead now, and the one thing that he committed the hardest to for his entire lifespan is no longer something that he feels so confident in doing. The one thing Daniel had to show for himself in the end was that he was a damn good journalist, and now that his life is over and a new one has begun, he's questioning that. He's questioning himself, his purpose, his significance, and he's questioning a lot of things that he thought he knew about himself — and having to reckon with the idea that Armand was a much more substantial part of his life than he had ever imagined connects very seamlessly with those themes.

I don't think Eric was wrong about reading between the lines and finding that Daniel's arc in this season and the coming season is very existential. Daniel has always been chasing something. He tried to find it in his wives and could not. He tried to find it in his daughters and could not. He tried to find it in his work and, ultimately, could not. What, exactly, is Daniel looking for? What is it that is going to fulfill him? I don't think the answer is loving Armand. It's too reductive.

Daniel also represents acceptance, something which we are told numerous times is not only what Armand needs to heal, but also the thing that he desires the most internally. Daniel's nature as the "honest" character positions him to essentially be the perfect partner for Armand. Daniel cannot and will not love a lie; his relationship to Armand, whatever it may be, will always be influenced by his desire to understand and know who Armand actually is. Any love that Armand feels for Daniel is a love where, if he wants that love to be reciprocated, he has to become more honest. He knows that the version of Armand other characters are familiar with — see the "gremlin" or "good nurse" line — is not who he actually is.

It isn’t possible to look at the two of them as completely separate characters because of how much impact each of them has on each other's lives and arcs. At the core of their relationship, Daniel is a representation of two things. The most obvious one is a need for honesty. It's why he was the one to expose Armand's deception and, in a way, do for Armand what Armand would have likely never been able to do himself. Daniel loves to crack a story, and he does not particularly hold the emotional fallout that it might cause in high regard. He is principally concerned with finding out the truth above all other things. He wants to know the truth — even when it hurts. When it is ugly, painful, when it threatens stable ground. Daniel's honesty is what makes him cruel, drawing a complete contrast to Armand, whose cruelty comes from his dishonesty.

I had a thought when considering how much truth and honesty as themes influence Daniel's character. The writers made a deliberate choice to have Armand cut Daniel off when he was trying to say "I will never love you". Why? More specifically, why wasn't Daniel allowed or able to finish that sentence from a script perspective? Because, it isn't true. Daniel is going to bring honesty into their relationship, and him not finishing that sentence is indicative of this theme. He is not a man who is especially given to lie outright, and if he said he would never love Armand, that would indeed be an outright lie regardless of whether or not he knows it. Perhaps it is also a subtextual recognition of the fact that he already has, and more to the point, that he subconsciously recognizes Armand as the person that he loves. One can only hope the actual mechanisms of Daniel's memory are more thoroughly explored.

How do these themes reflect back on Daniel as a character? I've already talked the honesty and truth theme to death, but acceptance plays a part for both Armand and Daniel in different ways. Daniel finding out that his view of his entire life has been skewed is going to have a lot to do with acceptance. More specifically, can he accept it? Can he accept the person that it makes him? Can he accept that he had loved Armand, and can he accept the reality that he, obviously, still does? Can he accept that Armand's decision to erase his memory came from a place of love? Can he accept that, to Armand, letting Daniel go was the most loving choice he could have made — a choice that stood in direct opposition to his inability to let go of love before?

Since they are evidently together now, at least according to Lestat, the obvious answer to those questions is yes. Daniel accepts the truth and accepts who it makes him, and accepts who it makes Armand. Is Daniel, then, a love that can "cradle" Armand? There are arguments to be made in both respects. If we are to take Lestat's interpretations of Daniel as fact, then absolutely not. If we are to take these broader themes and Daniel's attitudes in the prior seasons, however? His love for Armand may not be "cradling" in terms of hopelessly romantic tenderness, but he would cradle him with acceptance and understanding. Acknowledgement of Armand's many, many contradictory traits; of love and malice, of gentleness and cruelty, of dishonesty and a desire to be wanted for who he is, all the same. Daniel is the only person who does not want Armand to become different for his sake. He does not want a persona that Armand constructs to please him; he wants to know him, he wants to understand him. What is more than that, however, is that Daniel would not be willing to settle for anything less.

The love that cradles Armand, truly, would be the love that gives Armand what he needs the most. Acceptance, understanding, and someone who would hold the darkest corners of him in hand and love them, not despite what they are, but because of what they are. I do think that Daniel could be and will be that. If Daniel can accept how the inevitable revelation will change him, then he, in turn, can grow to accept what it will change about Armand. It will recontextualize their relationship and Daniel's nature overall in significant ways. Daniel's ability to accept this is what will define how their relationship develops.

About Armand

Armand is a little more difficult due to how much we can assume Lestat's judgments about him may be complicating the narrative that TVL is giving us. I do also feel that Armand is being equally mischaracterized. Boiling his motivations down to simply wanting someone to love him gently is a ridiculous notion, because Armand is so much more complicated than that and has so much more nuance to his perceptions of relationships and desire for true companionship. Yes, Armand's desire to be with someone is a major motivating factor for his character, but the only things we really understand about him as of now are told through the lenses of people who were knowingly taking advantage of this desire.

Lestat and Louis both took advantage of the fact that Armand is willing to alter himself substantially to convince his partner that he is deserving of being loved, and to convince them that he is worth staying for. Lestat did not truly reciprocate Armand's feelings; this much is obvious, and largely because he had already been involved with Nikki. Louis did not truly reciprocate Armand's feelings, either, because he was still very deeply in love with Lestat. Despite knowing this, both of them were willing to accept what Armand was offering.

Armand has been the second choice in both of what we, the audience, understand to be his two most meaningful relationships thus far, not including Daniel in the 70s and 80s. Both Louis and Lestat were massively significant for Armand. The only person, then, that he has been in a relationship with who would have truly chosen him was Daniel. Daniel, a human boy who Armand should not have been with to begin with, who did not have any desire for the many personas that Armand constructs to please others. Daniel, who had both witnessed first-hand and been the subject of Armand's cruelty and brutality, wanted him still. Daniel was desperate for Armand to turn him, not purely for the sake of achieving immortality, but so that he could be with Armand forever and not just a fleeting part of his eternal life.

This is not something that Armand, at the time, would have been able to accept. Someone loving him so intensely that they were willing to give up their human life for the sake of being with him would have been a completely unfamiliar concept. Hence, he erased Daniel's memories of their relationship and fled, because — as he mentioned when he was talking about "Alice" — he did not feel that he could trust him. Of course, when it comes to Daniel and Armand's relationship, this is also its tallest hurdle. Armand may be in love with Daniel, but Daniel does not remember having been in love with Armand.

Armand is poorly adjusted to having his devotion returned in kind. While he has always given his heart in its entirety, he has never been able to say that anyone he has loved has loved him in the same way. He would not have trusted that Daniel was truly willing to give up his human life to be with him. Although he was able to read his mind and understand his motivations that way, Daniel is also a very complicated person. Although wanting to be with Armand may have been a substantial motivator for him, as we are well aware, he is also very selfish, and we already knew that he wanted to escape his own mortality. Perhaps, then, this is what distracted Armand; perhaps it was easier for him to believe that Daniel's fear of death was the primary motivator over his love for Armand, rather than the other way around.

I do not think Armand would be not angry at Louis, either, if he had returned to his relationship with Daniel. I could envision a version of Armand where the more time he spends with Daniel, the more he realizes that he could have spent decades that he now believes were wasted on Louis with him, and the angrier he would get. Not entirely at Louis, but rather, largely at himself for making that decision. Armand obviously feels incredible guilt over altering Daniel's memories at all. His love for Daniel is what brought him back into his life to begin with, in an effort to prepare and protect him. If Armand had taken the time to immerse himself in the way that he feels toward Daniel after all of these years, and realized that what he felt for Louis was not love so much as it was a desire for stability and companionship, then I could envision him being angry.

There is no version of their relationship in which it is realistic for Daniel to agree to be with Armand without remembering what they had shared. Daniel does not trust Armand, maker/fledgling bond or otherwise, and he would not be able to trust him at all until he can be sure that Armand has committed to being forthright with him. Armand revealing what he has been hiding to Daniel would, perhaps, be the most substantial display of this commitment of honesty to Daniel, especially if Armand made the decision to tell him of his own volition.

Fresh with the knowledge of how easily Armand will commit to decades of living on the premise of a lie, Armand would need to reveal their shared past to Daniel for him to a) believe him when he tells him that he is in love with him, and not believe that it is just some freaky obsession, and b) be willing to trust him enough to be his companion and go along with his crazy insane plan at all. If this is the case, then it is safe to assume that this conversation was (reasonably) had off-screen, because Lestat would not be privy to those details. Maybe they walked down memory lane during all of the daywalker training. Maybe it happened in a different way. There is, of course, the possibility that they were not even in a relationship at this time, but once Lestat finds out that they are later, he just kind of assumes that they would've had to have been shortly after Daniel and Armand reunited.

When we are told that, in the finale, someone finally "understands" Armand, is this so? Louis's understanding that Armand has been horrifically traumatized seems like an extremely cheap way to describe someone understanding Armand. If we are reading into this subtextually — even though the apology scene was most definitely what they were referring to — Daniel agreeing to be Armand's companion may in and of itself be the most significant act of understanding possible. To assume that they are together now (which, if we trust Lestat's narrative that they were companions when this was happening, they are) would require us to assume that Daniel understands Armand's erasure of his memories as an act of love, and not something he did because Daniel was a toy he could play with. Or, at the very least, something that Armand believed to be an act of love.

Devil's Minion Itself

Character analysis aside, what is actually being set up for resolution in their relationship?

Assuming that Lestat's understanding that Daniel and Armand are now companions is the correct one, and they were companions during the events of the finale, then there are several things we can infer must have been happening whilst we were not actively following their POVs in order to get them to that point.

It would be interesting if, perhaps, in the next season, part of the story would be about exploring that conversation. Armand's recollection of the time that he and Daniel spent together, and how Daniel reacts to it. Perhaps what Daniel begins to remember of it himself as the story goes on and Armand continues to jog his memories. Since Armand can no longer interfere with his mind, we can assume that he would also not be able to undo the damage that he's done; however, memory is not simply "forgetting" and "remembering". It is a far more complicated process, and it is entirely likely that Daniel would be able to remember some of his own perspective on those events if Armand were to give him the necessary information. He was able to remember San Francisco on his own with the help of the tapes. There is no reason it would not be the same for the 12-year relationship he had with Armand.

Louis telling Armand that he "deserves a love that cradles him" in the same episode where it is unceremoniously announced that he is now in a relationship with Daniel, his canonical endgame romance, is clearly a set-up for what we can expect to see out of Devil's Minion going forward. Armand is going to stay with Daniel, so this resolution to his arc with Louis allows us to infer that Daniel is going to be what Armand deserves. We have seen more or less every character in a relationship except for Daniel. We understand how people like Louis, Lestat, and Armand view love and how they behave toward their partners. The only thing we know about Daniel is that he had turbulent marriages that ended in divorce, but how much of that was a fault of his personality, and how much of that was because of losing Armand?

The crux of Armand and Daniel's relationship has always been that what they share is different from what they have shared with others, so incredibly unique and fulfilling for them both that they come back to each other after so many years apart. "True love" seems like a very trite way to describe it, but that is fundamentally what it is about. They spend decades without each other, and ultimately, find each other again, as in love as they were before, both in the book series and, apparently, in the show. I would really like to see all of these themes explored with Daniel, because I think this would be a massive shift for him, and seeing how he handles it would be an incredible thing. Especially if we understand that he is going to be the love that "cradles" Armand — how does he go from point A to point B?

I am not entirely trusting in the writers at the moment, given everything that has happened, but I can certainly hope that they will do it justice with everything they have set up.

[figqss]

Rest.

[angrybubbles]

Something that, I just frankly find absurd and one of the more easily digestible flaws of season 3, is that the reason Devil's Minion feels so empty is because there is nothing tying them to the narrative. There's no themes past "loneliness," and a sprinkle of "patriarchal traditions."

And it's just laughable, because they had the set-up there. Devil's Minion in QotD is about addiction. Daniel relapsing, and Armand in AA as an addict, could have developed the subtext and meat of the relationship. "Too little" or "too early" aren't the problems with the writing, there, the problem is the fact that there wasn't any substance. Where did Daniel's struggle go? Why is Armand doing anything?

They are untethered, which is why they don't have the sauce. For a season with explicit drug use in it, it is not only shameful, but a waste of a motif, to not include two characters who are deeply involved in those themes.

There are SO many bigger, more egregious writing flaws and shocking decisions made, but the lack of meaning there just shows how empty and meaningless the show is, even if you want to say "it's Lestat's POV." How you forget to write in addiction for the couple that is an addiction metaphor is beyond me.

[normalisnt]

Got around to making a sideblog specifically for DM (go me).

A couple of first thoughts: I am one of those dm fans who has not actually read the books, and only did some background research into the DM chapter itself and some other contextual things, so I knew what was going on. I watched the bootleg of the finale on TikTok, and I need to, like, blow out a whoooole bunch of steam, so these are my copyrighted thoughts on what just happened. Spoilers are all under the cut.

I don't understand how or why they felt the need to make a DM reunion happen in 3 episodes, while the two of them had a combined total of probably 30 minutes or less of screen time. And we, the audience, still do not actually know how, why, or when any of that came about. Optimistically, we can hope that the plan is to sort of work backward with Season 4, which will allegedly be focused largely on Armand and his story (known to be deeply interconnected with Daniel's), and explain how everything came to be once we aren't stuck in Lestat's perspective. I have more thoughts on the whole Lestat's POV thing.

Armand referring to Daniel as his "companion" is initially kind of shallow because Armand tends to do that to people long before the other person is ever willing to commit. Until we move on to a few scenes with Daniel. Daniel, for some reason FAR BEYOND my comprehension, leaving me to assume that whoever was writing for him at the time must have suffered a catastrophic fucking stroke, uttered the words "yaoi manther era" with complete, genuine confidence.

The framing of these two scenes happens side by side. Armand says that Lestat's head is "with his companion." Cut to Daniel, carrying Lestat's head in a bowling bag. Naturally, this is direct confirmation that, at this point, Armand is referring to Daniel as his companion. Daniel, who could very easily tell the employee that he isn't married and is just here to bowl, goes along with the idea that he has a wife, a wife who specifically told him to take "his head" (Lestat's, in Daniel's possession) as far away from "her body" (Lestat's body, in Armand's possession) as possible. Armand calls Daniel his companion -> Daniel does not object and rather runs with the notion that Armand is his wife -> Daniel then announces to Lestat that he is in his "yaoi manther era," whatever the fuck that even means. There is no real way to interpret this other than a direct confirmation that at some point between Episode 5 and Episode 7, Daniel and Armand are now in a relationship.

I, too, take issue with the fact that we don't really have any context for this happening. I don't think it would have been outrageous to have a small scene interjected somewhere that makes some mention or insinuation that Daniel and Armand have been talking at any length. As it is right now? While it makes sense that Armand would be 100% down for it if Daniel was willing to put it on the table, what doesn't make any sense is why Daniel would put it on the table in the first place.

An optimistic meta reading of this is that something did happen there, something very significant and emotionally driven, but Lestat has no idea what it is and would (reasonably) think that the whole thing is a little bit silly, so his interpretation of events is Daniel and Armand talk after Armand walks out of his show -> They behead him -> They get together. There's no reason for Lestat to have any information about the details of how, when, or why that happened, and it being confusing for the audience may very well be a reflection of it being confusing for Lestat. I think he would be blindsided by it and also not really care, because he has no reason to be very invested. Hence, the assumption is that they will have to work backward to tell this story. By the end of Lestat's retelling of events leading up to whatever apocalypse he causes, Daniel and Armand are companions, but he's not privy to the details. Sure, fine.

I do feel as though the prospect of DM in this season has been severely overhyped and that they either cut a lot of content that the cast was expecting to be in the final cut of the show, or they were trying to drum up engagement and getting a little overexcited about things that hadn't actually happened yet. Perhaps that is where this collective sense of disappointment comes from; we all had expectations, and none of them were met. Even some of the more interesting theories I've read on here were not resolved in the way many people were hoping for them to be. I get the sense that everyone had a lot of things that they wanted; there just was no feasible way to integrate them into the story they were trying to tell.

We could have definitely had less Gabriella, though. She had way too much screen time, and Lestat finally standing up to her took an unnecessarily long time. We did not really need to see that much of her. Again, another meta reading of this is that she is significant to the way Lestat remembers these events, and therefore is taking up a huge chunk of screen time because he is the one telling the story. Yet, at the end of the day, Lestat isn't real, and these are writers making these decisions. The writers chose to include the gratuitous amount of on-screen incest instead of just cutting back and letting other things take the forefront. The writers chose to mischaracterize some of the most interesting characters on the show. Lestat might be a known asshole, but he doesn't have to be such a ludicrously unreliable narrator that everybody is acting weird as hell. Might be cheap to say in the Unreliable Narrator Tutorial Series, but you know, my thoughts.

I'm tired of talking about DM now, and I'm going to talk about other important things.

Much more thoughtful takes on this have been posted that outweigh my own by a lot, but the racism is also really, really bad, actually. Why, exactly, do Louis and Regina need a prolonged torture sequence? Why does Louis need to give Armand a heartfelt apology while Armand is threatening to kill a frankly innocent woman (while his head is severed from his body and his own lover is dying, mind you) without actually receiving anything half as meaningful from Armand? He, too, has a whole lot of shit he needs to own up to. If this was meant to come across to us as a resolution of their storyline, the way they ultimately make amends and come to friendly terms, what the fuck are we even doing here? An apology given under duress is not a genuine apology.

Louis coughing up an apology that ultimately amounts to "sorry for being a shitty boyfriend" while he's being tortured does not really account for much. It does not account for how he mistreated Armand long before he knew that he had anything to do with Claudia's death. Louis's dismissal of Armand's trauma was one of the most unlikeable aspects of his character. It is an unfortunately common trait and one that is very easy to see reflected in real people, in real relationships, but he also cannot be expected to be a dial-up trauma therapist for Armand simply by the nature of having been in a relationship with him. Could he have been substantially more understanding, and maybe a little less heavy-handed with the Arun shit? Yes, obviously. That was Weird and I will continue to say that it was Weird. However, I think all of the shit Armand did kind of tips the scale a little.

Armand not apologizing at fucking all does not account for anything that he did, letting him essentially walk away with some faux-blamelessness, while he was actively manipulating, lying to, and effectively brainwashing Louis for 77 years. Unfortunately, Armand being a rebound is not really on the same level as lying about killing your boyfriend's daughter and then staying with him for 77 years, making him forget about his own suicide attempt, and digging around in his memories often enough to make him stay with you when he would have probably otherwise left. Armand is a fucked up person who does fucked up things, grass is green, and water is wet, but the supposed resolution to this arc between him and Louis being Louis grovelling an apology to convince him to spare both his and Regina's lives while Armand does not say a word about everything he did, instead blaming a pretty decent chunk of it on Louis, is an incredibly disturbing thing to see.

So much of the oxygen in that scene was dedicated to creating what was really just an unnecessary trail of breadcrumbs for DMers to sniff up. Pure "shut up and eat your slop". The whole "maybe I never loved you" shit? Why are we talking about this? WHY is this how Armand and Louis resolve things? WHY is this how they move on from each other? "You deserve a love that cradles you", and what does Louis deserve? This reads to me as a weird attempt at writing Louis giving DM his blessing, or giving Armand his blessing to move on, which is NOT necessary. Why did this story become about coddling your abusers? It's offensive how much they undercut his character here. Note: Yes, I do think Armand was abusive. Everything he did is textbook abuse. I think Louis was also abusive. Two things can be true.

Why did we actually need any of this in Lestat's season period? I can understand that the idea of Louis resolving things with Armand would naturally be pretty important to Louis and Lestat getting (properly) back together, but what in the fuck are we doing with this? We're told that all of that was just Lestat repeating what Louis told him after the Final Show, so who knows how much of it is actually even true. I feel like everything they have chosen to focus on here is just disjointed, in a way. It leaves a very unsatisfying residue behind.

I wish Louis had gotten the character arc that he deserved in this season, with Lestat or otherwise. I wish we weren't dedicating so much screen time to torturing black people unnecessarily. I wish Lestat wasn't so fucking bland (maybe the incest just really isn't doing it for me). Also, we still didn't really get an actual story about that. Lestat had a panic attack because Louis found out and then realized that Gabriella was grooming him in his half-dead, half-alive fever dream. What? Can we have characters actually speak to each other? Can we actually unpack all of the shit Lestat just went through mentally? Can we address the experience of grooming and sexual abuse, or is this as good as it gets here?

I really just felt so disappointed in basically everything. It feels like this was just one prolonged "fumble every ball" experience put to the screen. I'm not nearly as mad about the lack of DM as I am about the blatant meta mockery of DM fans ("yaoi manther," are you fucking kidding me) while shoveling it all into the background whilst knowing they've been hyping it up since Season 1. I'm not nearly as mad about the lack of DM as I am about the blatant racism and the shitty resolution to Armand's arc here. Etc, etc. I'm over it. Feel free to send asks or DMs if you want to complain, because I need to keep ranting.

[normalisnt]

My unfortunate edit to this is that I have since done some critical thinking and realized belatedly that "manther" is not, in fact, a really weird mashup of words unrelated to each other.

It's the male equivalent of a cougar, ie. an older man who seeks out younger women. Add the unnecessary inclusion of "yaoi" and it's gay now. This is either Daniel saying this ironically (which he'd do) or Lestat straight up making fun of him in his recollection of events because Armand looks so much younger than he does. "Yaoi manther era" sounds a lot more like something Lestat would say to describe Daniel than it does how Daniel would actually refer to himself.

I'm more inclined to believe this is mostly how Lestat would bring it up if he were telling the story. Like, in hindsight, knowing that Daniel and Armand got (back) together around this time. That WOULD be his yaoi manther era. I still don't like it and think it's the dumbest shit I've ever heard, but from Lestat? Checks out.

Also, there is a possibility that they straight up weren't together during this time and Lestat is just assuming they were since they were in cahoots about the beheading.