#am i writing meta on saturday night while im babysitting yes i am

[monstersinthecosmos]

kacy i wanna know how much of a perv you think daniel is LOL so much fic centers on armand dragging him through an experience *armand* wants. so like what's the ratio of daniel being a freak in his nature (and knowing this about himself) vs armand nurturing this trait into him?

My friend, I’m so glad you asked.

THE THING IS IVE GIVEN THIS A LOT OF THOUGHT and in some ways it’s like, what all of my Devil’s Minion fics are about LOL. And yet! I don’t have a simple answer to this question, the way real questions of nature vs nurture are complicated in the real world in real people!

But let me sketch out a framework of the way I’ve questioned this, and everyone might come to different conclusions and that’s the fun of fandom, because there can exist several thousand versions of Daniel based on the same text! AND I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS STUFF, I HOPE IT DOESN’T COME OFF AS MANSPLAINING LMAO but I’m excited to talk about this topic. 

Here’s what we know unequivocally from the text:

Daniel is 20 years old in IWTV.

That’s it, that’s the whole list.

And here’s some fanon that people often try to extrapolate from the text: 

💦 That he met Louis at a gay bar. UNCONFIRMED, but I think it’s likely? In the short story the bar is named the Pink Baby, I think that might be a gay bar or a dick reference idk lol. 

💦 Whether or not the Pink Baby was a gay bar, he and Louis essentially cruised each other and left the bar together! Daniel has the excuse that he’s hunting for interviews for his job, Louis has the excuse that he’s an apex predator who preys on people, but ? Take this wherever you need to. (Also blah blah Ricean biting=sex symbolisms.)

💦 Was Daniel bisexual outside of the assumption that most of the VC characters are bisexual/omnisexual? The only clue we get is that when he and Armand practice voyeurism, he hooks up with men and women. There’s a lot of interesting information packed into the voyeurism paragraph, like this line: Yet he lay empty afterwards, staring at Armand, resentful, cold. and I’ve seen the “resentful, cold” comment dissected many times in fandom. Is it the general resentment of their whole relationship? Is it because he wants to fuck Armand and not randos? Is it because he only wants the Blood? Does he not consent to being used like a zoo animal? Is he gay and doesn’t want to fuck women? Is he straight (minus the orientation-defying vampire attraction) and doesn’t want to fuck men? I’ve seen all kinds of takes on this LOL. But still, no real definitive answer about his orientation in the text.

💦 What did the “roaming the bars of the world” comment mean? Sometimes I read Anne Rice’s language as being kinda lofty and exaggerated but was he ACTUALLY traveling the WHOLE WORLD or is he hyping up that he trolled bars in the Bay Area? Is he FROM the Bay Area or was it a stop in his travels? He worked for a radio station (not in the book, but mentioned in the short story + The Vampire Companion and The Alphabettery) so did he live here, even if he traveled a lot? Was he wealthy before vampires if he was traveling this much, if you think he was a traveler?

AND AFTER ALL THAT, here’s some extra questions where Daniel is FREE REAL ESTATE that every fan has the freedom to make the fuck up:

💦 How much sexual experience did he have at 20? Do we assume that by default as an Anne Rice character he probably had ample teenage sexual experiences, and if he did, is there a quality over quantity aspect to consider? Is the sex we have as teenagers like, all that to write home about LMAO. Do we really understand kinks yet, or do we need to grow up and gain some perspective first? 

💦 As an Anne Rice character, by default, do we assume he & everything else is sexually charged LOL, are the interviews and cruising and taking people home a code for bringing partners home? What percentage of his interviews were also hookups?  

💦 When we talk about nature vs nurture for kinkiness, how micro and macro is this? As a fellow Off the Cuffs fan I know you understand the “radioactive spider bite into kink” concept, and some kinks are so specific to our experiences. But BEING KINKY in itself IS nature, isn’t it? I’ve read some sex & kink theory that kink is (psychologically) more like an innate orientation. IE: in the way you can be straight or gay, some people are also by default turned on by being smacked or by whatever paraphilia. Whatever that thing is, the way it takes shape, is the nurture half. But like, many people can have the same experience and 99% of them don’t develop a paraphilia right? So I think that capability exists in kinky folks at all times, especially when so many of the radioactive spider bites are things that people discover in childhood. ANYWAY I RANTED but I say that to say; DANIEL MOLLOY IS A MONSTERFUCKER, IWTV IS THE PROOF THAT HE IS A MONSTERFUCKER. IT WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME. 

So I bring up all those questions to encourage everyone to make up their own story with this, but I’ll tell you where I personally landed and how I approach it in my fics!!!

The Daniel in MY OWN fics is 20, single child, estranged from his parents, dropped out of college because he didn’t have ADHD support and was struggling, bisexual and promiscuous! I wonder if he went through that like college freshman thing where he got out of his parents house for the first time and partied a little too hard because he COULD! I like to read “bars of the world” as an exaggeration, I like to think he was a normal guy NOT globe hopping, sticking to the Bay Area, maybe he was out there for college, and guess what! There’s a thriving gay liberation culture there, so he finds some safe spaces to experiment with that! 

However, I think the text leaves space to think he didn’t have a lot of close friends, or wasn’t close with his family, due to the way that he simply ✨fucks off ✨ after IWTV. NOW, that’s just me! Because there’s potential here for a TRAGEDY of people looking for him or grieving him! But idk I just like thinking that he was already on the outs and the interview pushed him over the edge.

So I ask like, does the 20 year old have a ton of kink experience? Is he good at sex? WHAT DOES RESENTFUL, COLD MEAN? Was he celibate during the chase years? Are the voyeurism sessions the first time he’s had sex since his old life? Even if he had random hookups during the chase years, was this qualitatively good sex? Can you truly get into good BDSM on a hookup or do you need a trusted partner? (This is subjective, idk, but!) 

Also, how much kink is theoretical and private (to masturbate to) vs stuff you actually try? Especially if we believe that kink is nature, someone isn’t less kinky if they’re celibate, the way someone isn’t less gay if they’re celibate, or even a virgin. As Daniel becomes more and more obsessed with vampires, and with Armand, does it take over how he jerks off? Does he think about getting bitten? HE LIKES SNUGGLING WITH DEAD THINGS.

So like, there IS an element of Daniel being the unwilling witness of Armand’s rapidly shifting hyperfixations, and it’s natural that fandom pervs would extend that to sex acts and kinks. I LOVE IT, yes! It makes sense. 

But when you say like, which one of them is in charge, I wonder if it’s relevant if we assume Daniel enjoys it. (Does he? Would he? Resentful, cold?)

Here’s some points that come to mind when I imagine it as purely Armand’s doing:

💦 People sometimes misunderstand BDSM dynamics when it comes to power and control, because BDSM is a consensual fantasy between two adults. The sub is just as in control, because they allow it. In that sense: Do we believe Armand respects Daniel’s consent? Would he force Daniel to participate if he wasn’t enjoying himself? 

🩸 (How much can we compare this to Venice and how Armand was prepared for vampirism? I’m putting this in parentheses bc I’m putting a pin in this one, I CANNOT ADD A SUB-ESSAY INTO THIS POST ABOUT COMPARING VENICE TO DEVILS MINION but thinking of this too. Returning to the under-negotiated kink in Venice and how much is diegetic to the text, how does experiencing a spectrum of sexuality benefit someone’s last years alive ((sub-parentheses: does Armand flip-flop on turning Daniel as much as Marius did with Armand, does Armand subliminally know he’ll turn Daniel one day, does he go through these experiences as a precursor to turning Daniel eventually?)) are these experiences more for Armand to process the way he was groomed for asexual immortality vs being purely selfless and for Daniel’s benefit?)

💦 Armand uses Daniel as his usher into the modern age, and is it fair to assume he could sense Daniel’s kinkiness and knew that this was the person for him? 

💦 How dubious is Daniel’s consent here? How addicted to Armand’s Blood is he by the time they start fucking around? Is he already within the throes of Ricean Omnisexuality where he’s down for whatever? Does the Blood influence this as well? Is there a secret subliminal violence creeping into your body when you’ve been drinking it again and again? What about less violent kinks, like your feederism fic? Does the Blood encourage all types of excess and consumption??? 

But if DANIEL is the driving force here, I still must consider:

💦 He meets Armand and his life essentially ends when he’s 20 years old. Was he really self-aware of his kinks? Did he know himself very well sexually yet? 

💦 While exploring kinks can be mutually beneficial by sating Armand’s need for WEIRD HUMAN STUFF, maybe it IS something Daniel wants. It’s something he’s missing out on, because he checked out of regular human life when he was 20. Like, everyone’s different, so, I’m not saying that people can’t be sexually articulate at 20, but I know I fucking wasn’t! And I personally never fucked anyone that age who was good at it LMAO. So like how old would Daniel have been before he experimented enough to really know what he liked, and how much of him getting to know his sexuality involved Armand during the next decade?

💦 And this ties into Armand being his sugar daddy! That’s canon! Armand is his sugar daddy! If Daniel, at 28 years old, starts lamenting “I wish I’d gotten the chance to try watersports when I still had a normal life :( “ wouldn’t Armand have arranged that for him? 

🩸 (Again let’s talk about Venice and what did Armand learn there about being the vampire lover, how much does he process and repeat on Daniel, and for whose benefit?)

💦 If Daniel is an innately kinky person, and realizes as he’s approaching 30 that he never really got to explore it properly, wouldn’t Armand usher him through that experience? Even if Armand didn’t plan to turn him, I wonder if he saw the window of Daniel’s mortal experience closing, maybe he worried that this is the type of thing people need to be wild about while they’re still so young. And outside of stigmatizing Daniel's age, it's also about how he was becoming less and less healthy, dying of alcoholism at 32, so there was a small window here for them to have sex adventures.

So basically, I’m saying that the nature half feels very much like Daniel being a monsterfucker, the nurture half is the actual experiences he got to have. And I don’t think he’d be in this situation in the first place if he wasn’t a bit of a monsterfucker, and wasn't a innately into danger and pain. Like, we don’t get a TON of examples but Gretchen and Babette didn’t try to fuck vampires! We know that vampires give humans the heebie jeebies! What kind of sick fuck is into that?!?!?!? 

I don’t really have one single answer here. When it comes to the large library of kinks I think either of them can be blamed, and I also think it 100% makes sense to use Armand as a vehicle to write fic about them as if they’re another collection of human oddities for him to explore. But even using Armand’s weird bullshit to process that doesn’t mean it’s not mutually beneficial, and I think it gets into a fuzzier area that’s up to the writer when it comes to their take on the relationship, how dubious the consent is, how much do they actually like each other and get along? Can it be mutually beneficial in the end even if one person is driving? (see: the conversation about the second whipping scene in TVA and how it works out in the end.) Is it something they have fun agreeing to and negotiating in advance? 

I can totally see how someone might write this as a fun thing that they talk about beforehand as easily as it could be Armand forcing mystery adventure on Daniel and suddenly he’s tied up in some shitty apartment in Hells Kitchen with some man pissing on him, and did he ever even reveal this kink to Armand or did Armand pull it out of his head? 

The ship dynamic is so fucked up and coercive and resentful and toxic, even though there is real love here, so there’s this whole spectrum to use when you build your fanworks and headcanons!!!!!!! AND LIKE

IF IT’S COERCIVE AND FUCKED UP, DOES IT DRIVE THEM FURTHER APART OR BRING THEM CLOSER TOGETHER? IS DANIEL RESENTFUL AND COLD AND DOES THIS CAUSE FIGHTS? IS THIS A WAY FOR THEM TO PROCESS SOME OF THEIR COLDNESS AND RESENTMENT BECAUSE THEY AREN’T GOOD COMMUNICATORS? DO THEY DO BETTER AFTER THESE SESSIONS AND FEEL CLOSER BECAUSE THEY BROKE THROUGH SOMETHING NEITHER OF THEM KNEW HOW TO SAY?

Gosh idk.

Anyway I apologized in the beginning for mansplaining but I also want to apologize for this non answer LMFAO. I hope it doesn’t feel like a cop-out to not have a real answer, it’s just that I think there is such a rich context with a MENAGERIE of possibility !!!!!!!