#iwtv speculation

[nightcolorz]

Armand’s gorgeous titties aside I am so mf intrigued by this room that they’re in bcus I’m assuming it’s armand’s room at the theater, and with this in mind there is both a painting *in progress* on display there and allusive red curtains (VERY MARIUS’S ROOM IN VENICE), which like omg this combined with how the last name armand is going by in his theater days is literally marius makes me think my boy is firmly clinging to his past (if not stuck in it) and I’m so so excited by this character stuff at work here

#Amc posting once again #armand #the vampire armand #the vampire chronicles #iwtv #interview with the vampire #amc iwtv #iwtv amc #iwtv s2 #iwtv season 2 #tvc #iwtv speculation #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire amc #Armand iwtv #armand tvc #vampire chronicles #vc

[hamletshoeratio]

This time, I won't save your life... I'm the quiet you've been longing for... Thoughts are being thunk...

#iwtv #iwtv 2022 #iwtv 2024 #iwtv season 2 #iwtv spoilers #iwtv speculation #armand #daniel molloy #devils minion #we've gotten glimpses of them in s2 and I'm already gnawing at my enclosure

[aurabora]

i’m being so serious rn if assad zaman isn’t rawdogging eric bogosian on my tv screen in s2 i am going to raise anne rice from the grave and telling her that AMC is writing fanfiction and she needs to sue them

#interview with the vampire #amc iwtv #iwtv 2022 #iwtv s2 #iwtv #iwtv season 2 #iwtv spoilers #iwtv speculation #armand #the vampire armand #eric bogosian #assad zaman #armandaniel #daniel molloy #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #anne rice #the vampire chronicles #why am i saying this i wasn’t even alive during the purges #born to young to experience the purges but too old to watch my babysitters a vampire #sigh #pls amc old maniel needs some excitement #armand i know u wanna #queen of the damned #sam reid

[loustat-0]

Armand wearing a bow . Nicholas wearing a bow in the behind the scenes pictures . If you mix that you'll that Armand is making Lestat believe he's kissing Nicholas 😬

#interview with the vampire #armandstat #lesmand #iwtv S2 #iwtv speculation #iwtv #lestat de lioncourt #armand de romanus #armand iwtv #nickolas de lefent #nickstat #nicki x lestat

[ejfarm]

Am i the only one who thinks that Daniel looks in this shot really tired and sickly? He didn't look this old in season 1. Is the interview exhausting our boy so much that he looks like he aged 10 years between the part 1 & 2? 😱 That makes me think that if Daniel's health is declining rapidly and Armand needs to make a big decision by the end of the s2....

#daniel molloy #iwtv s2 #iwtv speculation

[uthseikoashx-goingmyway]

AYO, @meeb90 (twt account) SHARED ON TWT A SHORT VIDEO OF A NEW IWTV S2 SPOT

ARMAND HAS THE VERY FIRST LINE — AND SAYS:

“i am the quiet you've been longing for.”

TO YOUNG DANIEL

AND THAT'S A SCREENSHOT FROM THE VIDEO. guys i don't even know, like wow, i am... wow

(PLEASE check meeb90's video by yourself, there are things about louis, claudia, santiano, madeleine and some gorgeous images... oh lord)

#SO SORRY I WROTE “YOU'D BE” WHICH WAS A MISTAKE... #i heard correctly then wrote a LIE #daniel molloy #iwtv armand #amc iwtv #the vampire armand #iwtv #devil's minion #iwtv season 2 #iwtv s2 #armandaniel #iwtv spoilers #iwtv speculation #interview with the vampire season 2 #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire spoilers

[squirrellypoo]

Me: (trying to sleep)

My brain: What if “You cannot script a hurricane” was actually about Armand’s pre-trial machinations and not the 1790s at all

Me: 😳

#interview with the vampire #iwtv #lestat de lioncourt #the vampire armand #iwtv speculation #iwtv spoilers

[theatrevampire]

how i sleep cycling through my 100000 theories about iwtv s2 knowing i'm probably wrong about all of them but i'm still gonna enjoy the season anyway

#interview with the vampire #iwtv #iwtv season 2 #amc iwtv #iwtv speculation #it's march!!! 2 more months baby!!!! we're almost there!!! #NOW GIVE US THE TRAILER #text post #tp

[toriangeli]

How Armand's AMC background might work with the changes

TW: Mentions of physical, sexual, and religious abuse.  You know, Armand stuff.

Age

First off, it’s not that big a deal for Armand to be aged up for his turning.

I’ve said it before, but being turned, especially very young, can be considered analogous to arrested development caused by trauma.  In the books, getting this across is helped by repeatedly describing a teenager doing/saying these immature things.  In live action media, though, it can be conveyed in a performance.  A bit like how The Umbrella Academy removed Klaus’ ability to float because it was a metaphor for him being constantly high, and Robert Sheehan’s performance conveyed his state of mind so well they didn’t need the visual aid.

Armand is still developmentally frozen in places at those times some new trauma came about—pre-adolescent with the sheer hardship of his childhood, thirteenish with the monks (or equivalent in the show if they keep that bit), also thirteenish getting sex trafficked, then again whenever the Children of Darkness/Satan overturn his life.  Throughout this entire time, the only time he was safe enough to have normal-ish emotional development was during his relationship with Marius, and it didn’t happen because his need for safety meant him foreclosing on whatever identity he thought Marius would want him to have, and relying on Marius to regulate his emotions instead of learning to regulate them himself.  No matter how safe Marius is compared with the rest of Armand’s life, Marius isn’t a psychotherapist and is too flattered by Armand’s total dependence on him to reliably break him of it.  He’s too busy cuddling him and feeding him soup instead of teaching him how to self-soothe, having the same expectations of him as he would have with an adult: that he already knows how to do the things he needs to do in order to be a person.

All this to say Armand isn’t necessarily going to be significantly more mature just because he was turned older, especially since Marius was enabling his emotional dependence on him.

The only difference I could see miiiight be if he spends significantly more time under Marius’ tutelage.  Marius is the only person in his entire life who actually tries to teach him right from wrong, and it’s pretty critical to his character that it didn’t take.  Marius himself notes this at one point during the “banquet” scene, seeing Armand is trying to react how he thinks his master wants him to react, not being properly horrified by people dying.  If Marius has time to actually correct this (which, who knows how long that would take, Armand has been stuck permanently in this state for a long time already), that could make a difference to his characterization.  But the likelihood of Marius successfully teaching him right from wrong was always pretty damn low, given how his method is “Do something heinous, get mad if Amadeo doesn’t cry.”

Origins

This is a little tricky, but it ultimately boils down to one thing: religion.

He’s Turkic, and it’s plausible for him to be Crimean Tatar, but he couldn’t have been trafficked by them the way he was in the books.

Among Turkic people in Armand’s day, an extremely common language, both speaking and in literature, was Chagatai.  This was spoken among Muslims in eastern Europe, as well as central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Ottoman Empire.  Today, Chagatai is a dead language, and while there are experts, it’s entirely possible your dramaturg won’t be able to contact one.  If that’s the case, what modern language is the most similar?  Turns out, Uyghur and Uzbek.

What language does Armand end his prayer in in Dubai?  Uzbek.

If Armand is indeed Muslim (which would be the most narratively satisfying option—for him to be forcibly converted in his early life and find his own religion again later), you did have a more diverse population among Crimean Tatars back then than we have today, especially since Stalin’s genocide.  You had some who came from as far south as Iran, where you can get people as dark as Assad, even if it’s uncommon.  But it being uncommon (aka “exotic”) would be all the more reason he’d get targeted for sex trafficking.

Speaking of.  Islamic and Christian laws forbade enslaving someone of the same faith.  So whoever kidnaps him in this version of events is almost certainly Christian.  The Venetians had a slave trade that was leaving the area for Africa due to the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, but with a little wiggling of decades, we can imagine there were still Venetian slavers raiding the Black Sea.  Since Armand ends up in Venice, this would make particular sense.

One more thing remains: the monks of the Caves.  An order which, as far as I’m aware, only existed in Kiev.  Why would a little Muslim boy be tempted to join an order of Christian monks?  I mean, Islam definitely has its own brands of asceticism, but if we’re trying to make as few changes as possible, I’d still buy it being these monks.  Speaking as someone who was raised evangelical, children are often targeted in the hopes of converting the entire family.  I have no idea how likely that would be for a bunch of Eastern Orthodox monks and a Muslim family way back when, but personally, I’d buy it.

Realistically, would he still live near Kiev (which was part of Lithuania at this time) if he’s from the Crimean Khanate?  Probably not.  But I wouldn’t sweat it.  And I can’t find whether there were any other Muslim groups who lived in/near Kiev.

Timeline

Show!Armand was turned older, so there are years that must be accounted for.  I think he must have been trafficked at a similar age as in the books, because it makes the most sense—he’s very young, but old enough that he doesn’t have to be “raised” anymore.  So he either spent longer in the brothel, or with Marius, or the years are split between.  If it’s at the brothel, they might kick him out once he gets older, and Marius rescues him off the streets instead of from the brothel.  Instead, or in conjunction, he could spend more time with Marius.  My concern is, if the underage aspect of their relationship is cut, it could sanitize Marius too much.  Armand isn’t meant to have any models for healthy relationships in his history, and Marius expecting a kid to meet his emotional needs the way an adult would, in addition to the power discrepancies so typical of pederastic relationships in Marius’ time, explains a lot about both characters.

On the other hand, I don’t want too many flashbacks where a younger actor is playing Armand.  I want to see Assad tackle as much as possible.  He is so damn good.

Then there’s also the complication mentioned above of how vital it is that Armand never learned right from wrong.  And they are still bound by what the network will permit (a reason I’m not sure Claudia’s “surgery” will take place).

It’s possible they could just leave the timeline vague.  Assad is babyfaced enough for it to be ambiguous how old he is at any given time.  I wouldn’t want it to be too vague, though, lest the effectiveness of either possible version of events be diminished.

Conclusion

I don’t have any conclusions about what they’ve chosen to do.  These are all just possibilities.  I think that’s valid in its own right.

All in all, I think they have a great opportunity to flip the stereotype of the brown person becoming more “civilized” because of white people and show Armand’s problems as being caused, in significant part, by losing his own identity and culture, and in total part by the imperialist ideals of the West.

Reading up on all of this history to figure out the possibilities has given me a greater appreciation for why they would make the choice to cast Armand as non-white.  Armand may be white in the books, but he’s not Western, and even though I’m sure she didn't mean to, Anne did tap into that “the West is here to civilize everyone” narrative.  It’s actually something Marius is (intentionally hypocritically) big on—“civilization.”  He took this wild Eastern European kid from the shitty life that came to him because of non-white slavers (who were very much a big deal at the time, but they’ve been used to justify the beliefs of white supremacists since the time of Hitler) and gave him a happy, comfortable life, albeit via a deliberately creepy relationship.  Here in the US, we don’t think of Eastern Europeans as “not white enough” the way they’ve been historically seen in Europe, so I doubt Anne realized she'd accidentally written a story about the “savage” child being victimized by a tribe of "evil" Mongols and rescued by an ”enlightened” white guy (though if you haven’t read the books, keep in mind that Marius is not nearly as enlightened as he believes and doesn’t spend all that much time in the “civilization” he supposedly treasures).

Flip that, make him Islamic, and his slavers must by necessity be Western, so the people who take apart his life are all coming from that angle of “we have the right to do this because we are better.”  And it does not stop after he becomes a vampire. What’s harming Armand isn’t a series of unrelated catastrophes, but an entire culture of imperialism.  The Golden Horde doesn’t exist today.  Actual Crimean Tatars in the 21st century are oppressed minorities.  But the imperialist mindset in Western culture remains, this idea that we are more “civilized” than others.  And that’s something this show can actually speak to that will resonate.

#iwtv #amc iwtv #armand #the vampire armand #iwtv speculation #stuff nobody asked for #marius de romanus #please do not treat me like an expert #i tried #this is just a blitz of ideas #partly brought on by the frustration that i will be out of the country when the season premieres #and i'm curious as fuck

[dlsintegration]

so the iwtv s2 crew list is available on imdb (may be subject to change I think) so I looked the names up, as you do

THIS IS JADE KINDAR-MARTIN

what do you MEAN lestat stunt double what the FUCK is lestat gonna be up to in those theater flashbacks I'm yelling so fucking hard??? work cirque du soleil???????

#turns out the theatre des vampires might be even more batshit insane that we anticipated #im past excitement at this point #im just laying motionless #this and dubai sushi date are the only things keeping me sane #iwtv #iwtv speculation #lestat de lioncourt

[sheisraging]

If they cast another pale blonde guy in S2, my brainrot headcanon is that he's a guy Louis fucks while pretending it's Lestat. And he'll picture and hear Lestat the whole time, just reminding him that it's not as good and also that Louis killed him.

But obvs Louis will keep going back for more. Just dead-eye stare fucking this stand-in, who will never be what he's looking for.

#interview with the vampire #iwtv #iwtv speculation #iwtv season 2 #loustat #amc iwtv

[loustat-0]

I wonder why Louis's way of hallucinating Lestat changes when he gets to Paris . Is it showing as Louis himself starts new & heals from mourning then Lestat heals too ?

#interview with the vampire #iwtv speculation #interview with the vampire season 2 #loustat #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #amc iwtv #amc interview with the vampire #lestat x louis

[chicalepidopterareblogs]

Madeleine's turning by Louis (and a little bit of help from Claudia) will hold much more meaning in this version.

This time is not just about Louis going against his own morality of not making new vampires. In the series they've been very thorough showing us Louis, as a homosexual man, only killing/feeding from men. Claudia and Armand coercing him into bitting/turning a woman...I'll let you draw your own conclusions

#interview with the vampire #louis de pointe du lac #claudia #armand #iwtv speculation

[uthseikoashx-goingmyway]

“is it David Talbot? is it Marius de Romanus?”

guys, the true question is why the fuck Daniel Molloy is talking to this guy

they seem to get along, and they are talking about Armand and (probably) Louis being active threats, so it could be in Dubai still; why on earth would David, or Marius, talk to Daniel — or more accurately, why on earth Daniel would be willing to talk, and probably trust a guy in that setting?

i have some theories but still, what the fuck

just expanding on some things here

maybe it's right after the second interview: it turned out bad when Louis remembered, Daniel thinks he shouldn't come back because of Armand and is probably ignorant still about the devil's minion thing

maybe it's at the beginning of season 2 (most likely) and Daniel is talking to a friend mostly unrelated to the vampires if it's David, to a friend who lied to him about being involved if it's Marius ; etc

if it's Marius, the way Daniel's open here still is makes me think they are... friends or colleagues of sorts? i am quite convinced it's from episode 1 or 2; it would mean Marius befriended Daniel previously — and well, i can't help but wondering whether it might be because Armand asked him to

if it's David, it would be extremely funny that they are just two friends (??) and Daniel just called him at some point like “dude, i need a drink and a sane man to give me some insight because you won't believe the kind of interview i'm on these days”, and David just Listens™ to Daniel and gives him actually good advice

or Daniel is really desperate and starts to talk to this random guy who turns out to be Marius (the vampire who TURNED ARMAND) or David (an investigator about paranormal things...?)

#i need answers #amc iwtv #iwtv #daniel molloy #devil's minion #iwtv season 2 #david talbot #marius de romanus #iwtv speculation #iwtv spoilers #interview with the vampire amc #interview with the vampire season 2 #amc interview with the vampire #iwtv s2

[emeraldracer]

Armand “has ancient power,” Zaman teases, but “his power lies in something more than the superpowers of a vampire. There’s a lot of religious symbolism in power.”

x

I'm thinking about this line, and of course Armand is deeply connected to religious themes in canon, but for the love of me I can't figure out what he means here. It sounds like he's going to have some psychic abilities.

If you have any versions, shoot.

#armand #assad zaman #interview with the vampire #amc iwtv s2 #iwtv speculation