you can love somebody without using your hands

most analyses of lestat and gabrielle's "consensual" incestuous relationship overlook the fact that gabrielle is the one with the emotional power. her lifelong detachment from lestat's needs outside of her own create a dynamic where lestat is in a state of perpetual age regression because he is willing to accept whatever scraps of affection she might offer. his sexual attraction to her is born from this deprivation. it is an attachment wound that he misinterprets as desire because he has never known love from her in any other form. this also contributes to his hypersexual tendencies and his need for constant physical validation/reassurance because he must be effectively consumed in order to feel loved. this is reflected in his relationship with louis, where he seeks external gratification from antoinette because louis does not meet his extremely specific needs that were encoded by gabrielle. i think it's reductive to say that gabrielle "groomed" him (especially within the book, though this may be emphasized more in the show), but an argument can be made regardless of vampires existing outside the laws of human morality and sexual norms. there is also the issue of enmeshment, as gabrielle merely sees lestat as an extension of herself ("a secret part of her anatomy"), and not as his own person. it's often speculated that the scene where lestat kills the wolves is actually a metaphor for gabrielle giving birth to him, because she is the one who amplifies lestat's sense of violent masculinity as a form of liberation from their shared struggle, so she might live vicariously through him (even though lestat is androgynous and gender non-conforming). gabrielle also experienced gendered violence throughout her entire mortal life and was a victim of marital rape, and she thus views femininity as a form of weakness, so she assumes the dominant role in her relationship with lestat and projects her internalized misogyny onto him. their trauma bond contributes to a disorganized attachment style in which maternal and erotic roles collapse into one another, further destabilizing lestat's agency. i might write more about how this affects lestat's perception of gender later, but for now my main point is that incest is never consensual or mutually empowering, because it is always structured by an inherent imbalance of emotional authority and identity formation that predates any supposed "choice."

‘People only like Loumand because they’re trying to appear woke’ is still the funniest discourse in the world to me because being a Loumand enjoyer is easily the least woke take I could possibly have about vampire interviewed. My favorite relationship is the one where they make each other worse every day and 1 of them is gaslighting the other for 74 years. Be serious

in the vampire interviews season finale louis and daniel (the gay man community) together reject the false flag of armand (weaponized serial monogamy) but when louis goes back to lestat (people who say they’re polyamorous but forget to tell their partners) he realizes he’s still finding himself unfulfilled and instead finds true satisfaction with his lawyer and daniel (kissing the homies) forcing lestat to reassess his choices while meanwhile daniel works to liberate armand from being hung up on louis (unfulfilling monogamy) so he may embrace polyamory once and for all

do you guys think louis was the first and only person in 500 years to call armand “arun” and not mean it as an insult

wait murderbot's mentioned once or twice that secunits were "originally designed for" stuff like de-escalation, quick and efficient rescues, absolute minimum force and the like. ive always wondered why exactly they were designed with human faces in the first place given they're mainly used to enforce corporate slavery and having visibly expressed emotions is a detriment to that. but it would make sense if they were "meant" to be used in more of a rescue capacity, where showing empathy and being visibly familiar would be advantageous. anyway this leads into: if secunits' emotional capacity and skillset are geared towards rescue and they're used as enforcers of abuse.... well it does explain something about how fucked up they are

i thought being a multishipper and diabolicule enjoyer would save me from caring too much about any particular shipping arguments but actually I have discovered one that pisses me off and it's when people jump to the interpretation of anything armand says that is the least charitable to the idea that he loved louis. when he says "it wasnt my love for louis" (a sentence which necessarily seems to imply that love for louis also existed) that means he didnt love louis at all. when he says louis knew that he was keeping tabs on daniel hes lying (even though louis literally tells daniel in s1 that hes been following his career and louis and armand repeatedly refer to daniel as "theirs" in various ways). man I dont think armand has ever stopped loving anyone hes ever loved in his life even when it would be probably better if I did, I dont think hes planning to start with louis de pointe du lac of all people