do one good thing before you go

in session five right after drift is turned at the battle at the lake beacon, as legs takes her to his secret bunker (38:33 in drift's episode 5):

drift: doc! legs: drift. drift: can i talk to you? alone? legs: sure. are you my next patient, drift? drift, wryly: how'd you know. legs, under his breath: oh my good-- [cut off by a cut in the video] drift: do you know of any others? legs: i couldn't possibly say. drift, softer: you won't tell anybody else? legs, turning to look at her: i couldn't possibly say. drift: okay.

i keep saying this is really straightforwardly the thing drift does when she's afraid, she finds a person and latches onto them for reassurance and stability; given how she grabs onto avid and then shelby, it would appear that that person doesn't even necessarily need to be that authoritative, but i'm also noting that while she's with avid, she does turn to pearl and cleo for reassurance / generally involve herself in their lives ([whispered frantically to pearl and cleo while avid tries to pull her away for a private chat] "i think i'll be okay, i think i'll be okay, right? wait, am i gonna be okay? i'll be okay, right?" at 32:59 of her episode 2) and scott is pretty centrally someone she is looking to while she's a vampire (following through on scott's thing about her outfit needing work by borrowing his clothes 50 seconds into her episode 7, saying that "regardless of what happened, i don't trust anybody besides, like, you [shelby] and scott" at 1:02 in her finale).

sire-fledgling being a parent-child relationship is just right there that's easy as hell to map over. i made you, etc etc, and owen is so invested in this remaking of himself. what if you got to have a better and truer version of your life in every way, what if your parents didn't treat you kindly or lovingly but you got to have someone else who could step directly into that role. (and let's soo not think about how the circumstances are different. don't look at my interest in parent-child relationships where it is genuinely just flat-out impossible for the parent to give the child what they need.)

owen's obsession with louis as the only real/important/kind person in the world + the way incest works as this natural extension of ideas of family being the most important/only relationship

louis mommy issues forever? louis taking the ways he was treated by his mother (perhaps as a doll to be doted on, perhaps as a cherished pet -- what do you turn a child at eight years old for if not to have something cute and small that is utterly in your control for almost eternity!!) and doing the same to owen, this weird... inheritance of the incestuous relationship, the cycles of abuse that are all the harder to escape because you look at this person and go "they love me so much"