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What he don't know won't hurt him.

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“We’ll be like blood brothers”

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one of the best parts about 2017 #evilrobert era is that he somehow occasionally miraculously manages to get chrissie to forget who he is. the moments when she's like "oh wow maybe robert will be a good dad." he is the master manipulator of all time!

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we all know that its about the inherent traditional misogyny at the foundation of the Village Soap — obviously in particular the female duty to bear children both for family values and for the #drama — but also in particular the allegiance to gender conformity. for a man to be gay is not inherently a violation of his gender role. he can still assume masculinity and can still fulfill his position in the nuclear family structure as long as he finds a woman to give him a baby. but for a woman to be a lesbian is to reject the central tenet of performed womanhood, which is to be For Men (desirable, subservient, dutiful). you cannot really truly be a gender conforming lesbian no matter how hard you try. thats why it’s not worth it for 2025 emmerdale to sacrifice their female characters’ pregnancy potential and thats why we certainly can’t have a 2025 emmerdale butch :/

if i'm being real i think its shameful that emmerdale had better lesbian stories going on in the 90s than right now in 2025. #wheredidthedykesgo

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if i'm being real i think its shameful that emmerdale had better lesbian stories going on in the 90s than right now in 2025. #wheredidthedykesgo

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yeah......................... YEAH

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i love stories about being sexually fucked up in childhood and continuing being sexually fucked up in connected ways into adulthood. thank you soaps for firstly being all about being fucked up and secondly for always being about sex and thirdly for showing entire life trajectories

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something so cool abt how the soap genre as a general rule by necessity resists pigeonholing characters into being one thing. if youve been on the show for like two years plus as a major character by design they cant have you defined by being gay or an abuse survivors etc bc the story never stops so you NEED to give those characters something fresh to react to. blah blah representation but i think its fascinating how the genre out of necessity produces extremely well rounded characters with lots of different aspects to them. such a cool little aspect to the soap format. when done well the characters never feel one dimensional or stagnant or stuck in the past because they cant be. they have to keep going

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Enjoy reading your book, because I'm going to enjoy making up with your daughter

Emmerdale | 13.11.14

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feel like several people have said this but the thing is aaron and robert do not know each other at all right now. they love each other but they don’t know each other

robert doesn’t even know half the hurt aaron has felt over the last 6 years, and subsequently how that has changed aaron over that time. hes just not the open happy guy he was in 2019, the guy who wants to be with robert despite who he is because hes sick and tired of ignoring his feelings. instead he is a guy that chooses to reserve and repress himself due to loosing or feeling betrayed by everyone important to him at some point over the last 8ish years -> adam (when he ran), grace, robert, seb (when rebecca denied access), liv (with the drinking), ben, liv (when she died), faith, chas, marco, adam (when he contacted cain), seb (when robert sent him to live with rebeccas aunt). even cain, paddy and eve for a short period in 2023, albeit by his own doing. (side note seriously can this man please catch one single break…). hes a guy thats filled with so much love that cannot give it fully to anyone right now out of self preservation, with the one exception being maybe chas. and his relationship with john has exasperated these issues as well in my opinion

meanwhile, robert is deeply traumatized right now and a complete shell of himself. hes not sleeping, is semi-easily triggered into violence, spends a large amount of time dissociating, and has essentially no personal relationships outside of his sister. but because he has been distancing himself, here is what aaron has seen of robert the last 2 months: got cocky about convincing caleb to give him a job, tried to trick aaron into a friendship by relating their prison experiences, tricked moira into selling him annie’s field, risked his freedom by dealing drugs that he stole from ross lewis and mack to presumably make a quick buck and buy said field, tried to smear the reputation of the good john sugden (his husband), injured john “unprovoked”, and now hes dictating when he and aaron get to be in a relationship again. as in this is how aaron perceived it, not necessarily how robert intended it to be perceived. And we know theres more to the story, but to aaron its same old robert, and aaron cant be with same old robert again even if he wants him so badly

and I also think theres an aspect of they dont even know themselves anymore, nor do they want to know themselves. while robert has acknowledged he needs help, it does seem like hes still repressing his trauma and subsequently how that has changed him as a person. and I also think he views going back to scheming, getting a similar job to his one before prison, and getting back with aaron as a quick fix to his problems/his version of running away. meanwhile aaron has spent years literally running from his problems instead of addressing them head on, and now hes once again running from his current problem (his love for robert). so they both need to overcome this, probably apart, before letting each other back in. similar to 2017

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it's the way you can see, in a split second, Aaron almost, almost let himself be vulnerable again before he mentally pulls himself out of it, and then distances himself physically.

it's so sad because we know he still loves Robert and he doesn't want to leave. but he's petrified of being hurt again. knows he can't go through the pain of losing Robert again. so he's not allowing himself close enough to even risk it.

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EMMERDALE 20.08.2025

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aaron can't be honest with robert about why he's pushing him away right now because admitting the truth, that he's afraid that they're going to fall into something too fast that neither of them are ready for without working through all of the pain of the last 6 years; inevitably leading them to another world shattering break up which would kill aaron, would be admitting to robert that his marriage to john is a sham and that he still loves him. and in the headspace robert is in right now all he would take from aaron's confession is that he does still want to be with him and that they're about to ride off into the sunset together with all of their problems solved forever.

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for a full decade -- ever since emmerdale brought back chas' son as an angry teenage and realized that the kid they hired can weep and sob on cue -- aaron's character has been about overwhelming, uncontrollable emotion that is impossible to suppress no matter how hard he tries. he can't stop himself from being gay even though he hates himself for it. he can't stop himself from violently lashing out in the depth of his anger. he can't hold back the tears. he suffers grief after pain after grief, and through it all his panic/self hatred/misery/anger-anger-anger is openly felt for all to see, perpetually flayed and publicly feeling everything all the time.

which is why its so genuinely upsetting to see aaron emotionless. the losses of liv, paddy, chas, robert -- its like they emptied him out. he ran out of feeling. when the anger finally burnt out, nothing replaced it, and he closed himself in a blanketed room where he could no longer be touched by the pain of feeling things. he's lying when he says "i'm happily married" but not when he says "i've chosen this/john." aaron has chosen to be numb - he cannot be near robert because robert threatens to unlock the very height of feeling, the wild love/pain/exhiliration/devastation that of course he cannot allow himself to touch - and robert also represents the life they once had that now is forever unrecoverable - pain, the opposite of numbness. aaron needs john because john is painkiller- john provides nothingness- john can control his life while making him feel as though he has agency- as if a doll in a dollhouse, free from decision-making free from agony free from joy which means free from loss

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robert is such a dick with all that "i know what you want" talk... you missed 6 years of this guys life how can you be so sure! which is to say he's right about what aaron wants, but wrong about how much "want" counts for anything in aaron's life right now. "are you sure john will want to be with you when he finds out we slept together" asshole move 101. i love this guy <3