Armand De Romanus - Tumblr Posts
I think the biggest reason why I dislike almost every single physical depiction of Armand is because when I first read the books, I identified so much with him. Even down to some of the physical features. Also the history and personality and I felt like he was one of, if not, the ONLY literary character that I’ve ever seen myself in. Being loved, taken, abused, loved in a different way, turned young, and seemingly abandoned. He has so many problems and sometimes not really the most moral and the best person but being turned at an age where you pretty much only have hormones and you’re not the most stable mentally, it made me feel like I could relate with that with mental illness. I’m never gonna grow out of it. I’m stuck with it forever. And while other characters did love him, for the most part, he was incredibly “othered”. And while I know his physical appearance can be whatever, having him be forever 16 really just shows how young he was, how he’s stuck forever in puberty, how his age corrupted him and how it became a rule to never make vampires so young after. His parallels to Claudia because of it. I’m also not defending the things he’s done, nor would I ever do them myself, but teenage me reading the vampire chronicles for the first time and seeing myself in him, sometimes I get it.
But I will say Assad is way better than Antonio and I love his performance!!
@somewheremillo is this enough to convince you to read the books/hj
i've started reading tvl and no amount of posts telling me there's a "huge tonal shift" could have prepared me for this HUGE TONAL SHIFT this is the funniest fucking thing i've ever read it genuinely goes like:
louis, narrator of iwtv: as i wandered the streets of paris, i wished most of all for death. i had called to god, to satan, anyone, to find meaning in it all. but for an evil creature such as myself there is no place in this world. there can be no love where this evil lies. it was as though a veil separated me from all that could be good and righteous. i did not deserve to love and be loved in return, not by claudia, lestat, armand. to attempt it would be a sisyphean task, a fools tale. and yet...... the need for hole from armand was so great. greater was only the need for........ living human blood.
lestat, narrator of tvl: hey guys, my name is lestat, you may know me because i'm really hot and sexy. english isn't my first language so sorry if i make any mistakes!! okay here's my story: after rotting beneath the earth for decades, my hot and sexy body has finally risen from the ground. i used to be depressed, but now i'm slutting it up again in the 20th century! first thing i did was get some (hot and sexy) new clothes and then wore them while riding my (hot and sexy) motorcycle and listening to bach on my sony walkman. while i was watching this super niche indie film (you've probably not heard of it) "apocalypse now" i realized that i'm so evil that i shouldn't exist. but then i realized what could make me deserve to live on this planet: rock n roll music.
As I previously stated somewhere on this site, I would 100% go full-on Joaquin Phoenix's Joker if the love of my life called me as boring as a beige pillow
The thing about Armand to me is that he strips us of any preconceived or prejudiced notion of what it means to be a manipulator or a narcissist. Most people who'll emotionally abuse you in your life won't be this evil character who is out to get you, they'll be people who actually feel and experience the emotions and feelings they manipulate you with.
To them, the reality of those feelings is there, raw and feeling like an exposed wire. That's why it's so hard to get out of toxic and/or abusive relationships — because you learn the way your abuser see and experience the world and it makes sense to you, even if it doesn't on a rational level. You get it. You empathize with it. And it becomes so much harder to leave.
So yes, Armand is this abused, traumatized man who regrets things and is so desperate to be loved he'll do anything to have it. But he also will do anything to have it.
It's why forgiveness is earned, not deserved. If forgiveness was about deserving, the whole world would be made of saints.
Being an adult while watching iwtv means that you really can't pick a character to hate on because of nuance - and they're all equally horrible lovable hateable complex beings, can't even be mad at armand because he's not some evil mastermind manipulator, while at the same time he is, but he has the cadence of doing all of that while being a shivering, quivering scared chihuahua and that's what makes it worse because 'evil' is not some big tough infallible guy. It's a 17 year old guy with glowing orange eyes with enough anxieties in him to melt a planet and he's always plotting in such a loser yet scaryy way. You get me ?
YOU WANNA TELL THAT I'M WRONG?!?!
