angrybubbles | "The Vampire Armand" scenes I want adapted (Reply)

Anon Ask:
When reading TVA is there any particular part you liked and are hoping it will be included in the show? I'm trying not to have too many expectations, but I'm really hoping for a scene where Armand confronts Marius after Benji and Sybelle are turned, I think Assad would be excellent for that.

Anon, you are SO CORRECT. Assad would KILL THAT SCENE. He'd kill all of them.

If I said I wanted all of it 😭 I know that's unreasonable, and I try to be reasonable, but... my baby...

I truly find TVA to be just... an incredible book. It's one of the most moving books I've ever read, even as it tore into me and left me hollow.

Okay, but I will try to narrow it down to three scenes just for simplicity:

1- Armand meeting his family as a vampire. I mean, if anyone has read chapter ten of The Vampire Armand and somehow made it through dry-eyed, then they are either made of stronger stuff than I or they just never empathized with the story. It is HEART WRENCHING. I was sobbing at work. I blabber aimlessly to my friends in our Discord server when it comes up, but I will genuinely be writing every possible fix-it fic if the show doesn't give us a version of the meeting. I will drown myself in every historical reference about the Delhi Sultanate and create the most atrociously complex headcanons just to make every version of that meeting again and again and again to fill that hole in me.

And if you say, "hey Mr. Bubbles, it doesn't appear that Armand has memories of his family like he did in TVA," I say to you: we have an established show-verse power of blurring memories. Armand could have learned it from two powerful vampires, but only one who could have blurred memories post-turning: Santino. (I will connect Alessandra to him for the moment, but she technically had the age to do that as well) And I have like... a nebulous theory I could figure out how to pin down about why exactly I point at Santino over Marius for specifically the family, but that would be digressing and much more work, research (I have ridiculously complicated headcanons for Santino--like him being from Islamic Spain and forcefully converted into Catholocism to be able to make that religious parallel to Armand/Amadeo/Arun), and brain power than I have available to me right now.

2- Bianca and Marius in chapter 4. I mean, first and foremost, if we don't get Bianca I will cry real tears. Don't take my women from me AMC, there's not many of them that are plot-relevant in TVC. Second, however, is how that meeting operates as Amadeo's two world's clashing. One where he is achingly human and has an emotionally intimate relationship with the woman he's sought safety with during his tenure at the palazzo--and the other where he is prized, desired, and guided into the mystery that he pours all that is left of his faith into. And while Amadeo expects Bianca to be overwhelmed, instead she stands firm against the revelations of her sins/skills (murderess) and challenges Marius's near-godly authority. The scene acts as a unity of the sides of Amadeo, which allows him the confidence to walk into the next scene believing himself righteous.

That and I want Bianca to accuse Marius of being a pederast so I can save the gif and keep it with me forever.

"No, you cannot judge me! A magician you might be, but you are no angel, Marius. Not you with your boys."

3- I hold time now. The pain of choosing between this and the banquet scene... but I chose this in the end, just because it's a motif that can be reoccurring in small visual ways, which would allow for tighter story-telling and connections across the narrative.

To me, the watch Riccardo gets for Amadeo symbolizes two things: one is hope -- considering it's given to him during their first shopping trip while Amadeo is surrounded by all these new and fascinating things that are overwhelming as Amadeo is experiencing them all at once-- and childhood.

"Amadeo," said Riccardo. "Count the hours for me."

This quote is followed by Narrator Armand's dismissal that he wished it meant something more, which to me is a clue that we are supposed to pay attention to that detail, and we are supposed to use it as an element to examine Armand's narrative with paranoia. And what are two things he struggles with? Hope and the period of time he was a child. It would be such a perfect small scene that can carry a lot of evolving emotional weight, and since I care about story-telling I want the weight to crush me under it's unreasonably heavy load.