a disorganised mess

when women don’t work out, and he’s forced to find shane a boyfriend, it’s still with this idea in his head that shane’s boyfriend will just be an extension of shane like jackie is for him. jackie and shane’s man will be friends. so that hayden doesn’t lose his Shane Time (tm). he’s trying to find shane a man who can be his Wife and jackie’s friend, thus completing their perfect heteronormative group of four. without disrupting existing dynamics.

he can’t fathom shane getting with a Man. a Bro, a Jock, a Man who is a guy who is plainly a guy, ya know. that’s why ilya messes with his head so much. ilya, in hayden’s mind (and in reality, but pike is going to get bitter in his own head), ilya rozanov is better than him in everything. and the crux of it is that ilya gets to have shane. ilya gets to infringe on what hayden thought only he had the special privilege of getting. in hayden’s mind, shane is a prize and ilya won. but also back to the point, ilya is very clearly a man and in a gay relationship with shane. a gay relationship that hayden can’t comfortably assign hetero roles to (he doesn’t—can’t—imagine shane ‘being the girl’ and rozanov messes with both this idea and the fantasy. if shane would just dump him and get with a yoga guy, or a personal trainer, or any number of more ‘acceptable’ gay men, then hayden can have his happy little life and his happy little wife and his happy little second wife(shane) who also has his own happy little wife.

But he would do it all while being a Man. Not only that, a bisexual Man with a long history of sleeping with women who flirts for fun and makes Hayden feel inadequate (for the reasons you explained). So now he doesn’t want Ilya and Jackie to be friends.

it makes sense that louis tries his hand at being an artist, and that attempt a symbol of profound hope! but he also happened to pick the artform most prohibitive to him as a vampire (photography requires light and patience, whereas he’s always outrunning the sun.) and he takes photos of humans that he cannot get emotionally close to (the photo he takes of armand is notably the only one an art dealer gets a lil frisson off of.) he completely stacks the deck against himself, putting himself in a position to reaffirm his prior belief that vampirism is a curse and a limitation.

when he realizes his art isn’t great he quits. but if he had waited for cameras to improve, or taken photos of fellow vampires, (and fwiw i think there was a post floating around about how if louis just ate more, things might be easier lolol) or just been content to suck at it for a while, there’s no reason why he couldn’t have continued (lord knows other vampires are out there being bad and weird at whatever they’re making, in part bc they’re v much out of step with the culture they’re attempting to contribute to. and louis actually seems a great deal more clued in to the zeitgeist based on what he says to claudia about the parisian modern art scene, and even up to 2022 where he knows what essencefest is like my girl still knows whats what more or less.)

i think louis stops not only bc its painful and frustrating to not be able to practice this artform the way he wants to, but bc he cannot deal with the idea that he isn’t Creating Value or contributing, he would just be enjoying himself.