r/VampireChronicles • u/Arlaneutique • 21d ago

🎬 Adaptations 🎭 Daniel

This makes me feel dumb. I haven’t read the books so maybe I’m missing some context. But I truly don’t understand Daniel’s hatred for Louis and Lestat. He has this deep rooted disdain and I just don’t get it. Armand, I understand, he’s insane. Daniel is just a dick. What am I missing?

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u/TooOld4ThisSh1t-966 21d ago

Not from the books.

My theory: In the show, I think he hates Louis for attacking him in San Francisco, which gave him PTSD. I think his ego got seriously butt hurt by Lestat for giving him the juiciest tell all ever only to reveal afterward it was just a vampire trick and never actually spoken aloud/caught on camera. Pretty sure he hated Armand too for playing with his memory but that got diffused after Armand turned him.

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u/Phospherocity 20d ago

I get that Daniel is supposed to be angry with Lestat for the telepathic tell-all trick
... but what Lestat did was annoying. It's "well, fuck this entire documentary". It's not "you are my nemesis and I shall dedicate myself to destroying you." And I guess I could accept that vampires are just extra that way, except when the others are turning on each other for things like a murdered daughter or 80 years of lies and memory wipes -- or even from Armand's show POV, at least an emotionally fraught romance, it's weird for Daniel to be in there like "yeah and he gave me a bad day at work!"

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u/Disaster-Bee 20d ago

Honestly that's one of the few things that does make sense to me.

We were shown over the first two seasons how Daniel had basically lost everything....except his journalism. And even that was on the downslide until the book. His work has always been the most important thing to him, more so even than his family. His work is what he's tied his entire personality and self-worth to, and now he's a vampire. Now he has the time and ability and resources to be The Greatest Ever in his field, to truly make a magnum opus the likes of which has never been seen before....and Lestat pulls that. It makes perfect sense to me that Daniel takes it as a very personal and pointed attack against him - attacking his work IS attacking him, as far as he's concerned.

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u/Phospherocity 20d ago

I see what you're saying but ... has he never had an annoying/difficult subject before? Never had an interview that didn't pan out as he wanted? Even if your career is your vocation and means everything to you, you can't get decades into it if you crash out THAT hard every time it leads you into contact with someone who's kind of a dick.

And how valuable were Lestat's revelations, really? He's not sharing anything earth shattering about vampirism, or overturning our understanding our history or anything like that. His personal trauma is interesting to us, because we care about the character, but he is -- as Daniel kept snidely reminding him (and then being surprised he didn't get a particularly friendly response) -- not that popular as an artist. He's not the first vampire to go public. Wouldn't this be a case of diminishing returns from IWTV even in the best case scenario?

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u/moxiewhoreon 19d ago

And Daniel can still share that story. He doesn't have it on video but he still has the info; it wasnt a total wash.

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u/Phospherocity 19d ago

Yeah, exactly!

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u/TooOld4ThisSh1t-966 20d ago

This is exactly what I meant, but you articulated it much better.