#damek also very much read as vampire equivalent to sex worker to me which i'm sure is intentional

[knifeeater]

imho louis feeding from armand is something they do outside of daniel being there, the scene has a quality of putting the bedroom on display for someone you're seducing. it's not only sexual but also a controlled way for louis to feed in the sense that he can abandon himself to the hunger without the fear of killing his victim. (at the same time still in a second hand way sharing in armands kills, something i’m sure he supresses to hell and back.) it's an interesting reversal also in the coding of feeding on someone as taking on a dominant role. like you said ‘feeding a baby bird’ is indicative of nurture which is on 1st sight the role of a servant (rashid) but is revealed to be on 2dn sight creating a space for louis to give over control over his own needs and desires to someone else (armand). service dom armand truthers please stand up.

i've just been rereading the theatre des vampires part and one of my favorite lines which i think speaks to this is: "my heart growing calmer, as if his calm were drawing off my trepidation, my care, like the sea drawing something into itself from the land." this illustrates not only that it's armand's quality of drawing pain and depression into himself that appeals to louis so much, but also one of the main attractions for him being enabled (in a way almost forced) to relinquish control and further down the line learning to self-regulate. (something which armand is exceptionally skilled at to the same amount that it's the very antithesis to lestat unbridled indulgence de lioncourt. there's another essay right there.)

this ofc returns in the infamous ldpdl tradwife great feminine longing line because the only way anne rice could conceive of those dynamics is in binarily gendered terms, which is why i'm very happy the show complicates them in a more complex and interesting way.

octavia butler voice dependency is deeply sexy if it is chosen and not coercive louis in choosing to drink from people repeatedly and non-fatally instead of killing becomes dependent on their consent for his basic needs. in his quest for control over himself he has to give up some control over others and be in relationship with people who would otherwise be objects or animals to him. but of course he does still have power in these relationships because we can assume most/all of these people are employees who need the money – perhaps desperately – and then that leads us to real-world analogies like selling your plasma and paid surrogacy and oh look at that we've arrived back at sex work. in the ideal scenario you would have a kind of even pull of mutual need and trust between louis and the people working for him, but the real world is often not ideal.

and these are all men everyone you see in the house is a young man, and the sexual element of that is unavoidable but also kind of distant and sterilized. louis is clearly invested in maintaining relationships with the people he's biting that are at least like. one-to-one and professional and respectful and that's pretty much what he achieves, or at least succeeds in projecting to daniel. but it's not sexy beyond the conceptual. the way he interacts with damek isn't intimate it's polite it's like damek came to drop off his dry cleaning.

and then there's rashid and this is where i'm coming at long last to my point which is like. post the armand reveal the context of that contrast changes dramatically. the beautiful young man who works for louis but also loves him and stuffs himself with sweet things before he offers up his neck – which from one perspective is a submission to him but from another is feeding him like a little baby bird – doesn't exist. it's a fantasy. it's a relationship he doesn't have with the people he's drinking from but possibly wishes he did. and we don't know if they're performing this primarily for each other or for daniel and what that expresses about what dependencies they really have going on but it is interesting in that it's like. almost aspirational