You did the right thing wrt tagging the gabistat posts but I’m getting really tired of people seeing Lestat make self destructive choices to cope with Louis being gone like his elevator fling, inviting his mom back into his life now that he is grown and has agency, etc, and having people compare it to when he was a child and his actual abduction rape etc. I think acknowledging that rape played a big part in how he learned he was valuable informs why he makes these choices, but I also think his coping mechanisms may be things he’s doing if his own volition at this point. I say this as someone who didn’t recognize my own hypersexuality and risk taking behaviors until I finally went to therapy. Consensual sex between adults can be many things- disturbing, scary, uncomfortable, and even full of power imbalances. But I feel like people are really muddying the waters here by calling everything that.
Yeah, it's definitely a really complex line to walk in terms of discussion, especially with a character like Lestat whose experiences of sexual trauma informs so much of his behaviour and his relationship to his sexuality and his body. Even more so, I think, given what some of the themes of the season seem to be in terms of the commodification of his hypersexuality as a selling point for the band, sex work and transactional sex, which as I mentioned yesterday is even there pretty textually, with the John and sex worker having sex in the room next door to Lestat's, and the text conversation between Gabriella and Lestat making it pretty explicit that the sex they're having is what Lestat's giving in exchange for any comfort at all:
I was actually turning it over a bit in terms of the orgy scene last night as I was getting ready for bed, which I agree was more his hypersexuality in action in a way that's been informed by his past, but there is also another really complex, murky dynamic in that with Baby Jenks in that she was explicitly honey-trapping him, seemingly for the Fang Gang (and it seems like Bruce and co used Claudia's plan in presenting Baby Jenks the same way Claudia presented the twins/Tom, which they presumably learnt from the book).
I was thinking about it last night more in terms of her character in the book, and wondering if this is how the writers are adapting that element of her past sex work and relationship with Bruce (who seems to be who she's marrying), and the - - let's borrow a word from Jacob and say icky power imbalance with her being mortal still at this stage, but also the inherent murkiness of both the sex and consent here. Everyone's choosing to be in that elevator, but the only person for whom that's a straightforward choice is the Bellman, between Baby Jenks being (admittedly presumably still at this stage, since we haven't seen the full context with her) used in the way she is, and Lestat and Dee being drugged (as well as poisoned in Lestat's case), and set-up to be delivered to the Fang Gang on the top floor.
There's a lot going on in that sense, which I think kind of speaks to what you're saying about the layers to these different types of adult sex scenes that also involve so many shades of grey that teeter into disturbing and uncomfortable areas with lines that blur more than people might like them to. That is inherently different from Lestat's abduction and rape, as you said, and will be too, I think, from how Gabi and Lestat's dynamic is portrayed on the show (and part of why I agreed with the anon to using that tag for the sexualised scenes between them), and they should be talked about differently, especially in the context of fiction where thematic and character intention plays such an important role in how these scenes and the overall story plays out.
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