#my relationship to HL and thoughts about how HE feels about his identity have shifted a lot

[blindmagdalena]

Oh god, reading the previous anon's ask makes me think of how stressed Homelander's partner would be around his birthday. I mean, what do you get a man who literally can have it all? I feel like he wouldn't exactly hide his feelings very well if he really disliked the gift either. In your opinion, what kind of gift do you think Homelander would enjoy the most?

anything heartfelt, honestly. you're right, there's nothing he couldn't buy himself, but a thoughtful gift from someone who loves him? that's priceless.

you could bake him a very special cake, or even some Christmas cookies! you could also gift him a framed photo of the two of you two together.

the monetary value obviously isn't going to matter to Homelander. what will matter to him is the effort put into it, and why you got it for him. what made you think of him, and the inherent love that comes with that.

sure, he could buy himself an ornament for his desk, but it's not the same as you gifting him one because it reminded you of your trip together. you can buy him noise cancelling earbuds to wear because you know he can be prone to overstimulation, and even though he knows they won't really work for him, he's touched because you care. you thought about his needs, how to take care of and protect him.

ultimately, Homelander loves love. he wants to feel it, be bathed in it, be adored. the point of the gift isn't to get him something material, it's to show him that he's thought of, wanted, and cared for.

[desertedhero]

i saw those tags, the thoughts, now and forever

OKAY here we go, I regularly bounce between HL, AI funny, and boat boys, but starting off I’ll just focus on what I’ve been thinking about lately on the former! I’m contemplating Mitch, Nick, and Adam deeply as we speak thou since I’ve been brainstorming for and outlining fic ideas for them. That's for another post

Some general line of questioning about Gordon!

I wonder what it is that keeps him going, outside the sheer instinct to survive. What motivation gets him back to his feet every time he's knocked down? What does he have to live for? (I’ve wondered about this for AI Gordon too.) This is a question for both HL1 and 2, and in the latter I imagine he might go throu a paradigm shift of sorts. Almost everything about his reality has changed, so whatever motivated him before--it might be the same, or it's different now. How does he adapt? What keeps him moving throu City 17? His identity is called into question with the incredible burden placed upon him. What does it mean to him to be the One Free Man, the savior of humanity? Not what it means to anyone else and not what anyone tells him it means. Who does he believe he is, and how does he find the strength to pick himself up every time he falls?

Perhaps his strength is in the people he cares for. If this is the case, his core group of Kleiner, Eli, and Barney are still close to him. The motive is the same, but what changes as Gordon has to navigate interactions where he realizes how much emotional growth they've been throu. He still feels like he woke up after sleeping in a little too long; the memories of working together in Black Mesa are all he has. But the people he loves all have more now that (if I may so project) makes him feel alone and like he'll never catch up to them. He'll never be as close as they are to one another now because they knew each other long before he returned. With Alyx, thou, she's almost entirely new to him. I like to think Gordon knew her as a kid, being friends with Eli. Regardless, he might feel closest with her because he's building a relationship from the ground up instead of reconnecting to old friends.

Even without the trauma he has, I've felt how difficult it can be to assert oneself into an established group of friends. It's rewarding and worthwhile! But difficult. What does that feel like when the friend group is the same one you've already long been part of, but one day you wake up and they've lived years without your presence? The loneliness would be crushing. Hell, maybe Gordon prefers being alone to feeling lonely with other people.

Now switching from Gordon to Barney:

A song I love recently struck me as relevant for Barney. I Want My Tears Back by Nightwish, my dad who also loves the group told me, is about an old man who wants back his youth. I wondered how much Barney longs for the days before the Combine--not just because of how much he lost due to the ResCas itself, but even before then. I wonder what Barney considers home when he's uprooted and moved to City 17.

"Where is the wonder? Where's the awe? / Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for? / Before the years take me / I wish to see the lost in me"

The power behind the song implies more than sorrow and regrets. It also expresses anger. Barney was robbed of his past, and whatever future he may have once hoped for is gone. He's angry and he has every right to feel that way.

The love of fairytales in me would want to believe that Gordon’s reappearance would reignite Barney's hope. That he's gonna fix everything because he's the savior and they'll live happily ever after in the end. It's not so simple, sadly, but the alternative is SO much more engaging. For example, even Gordon’s struggling with feeling that he's lost so much time and for what? They both have trauma and disillusion with life to work throu. What will it take for them to truly see what the other is going throu, and to support each other? When will be the first time one is vulnerable about their pain?

When did Barney lose his sense of wonder? Was it even before Black Mesa? His youth is far behind him, leaving little hope of experiencing things that, growing up, he'd always thought of as a constant in life. The imagery of the song brought these things to mind. Things Barney holds dear in his memories but may have resigned himself to never knowing again each day he puts that CP mask on.

[homosociallyyours]

hello! your tags about falling are very interesting! could you explain your full theory? why make you think about that? thanks

Yes! So, to clarify: I have a theory (of sorts) that Falling is less about an indiscretion and more about closeting. 

Here’s what I say near the end of this massive wall of text: This song feels so much to me like a struggle for authenticity and a need to feel needed and find meaning in existence. This song FEELS like a person standing inside their closet with the door closed, wanting desperately to get out and yet utterly terrified to actually leave it because they aren’t entirely sure they know how to handle what’s there. And they fucking hate themselves for it and are sure that their partner probably feels the same. 

That’s the tl;dr. Here’s how I came to that and an expansion:

Typically I don’t do lyric analysis in a way that presumes to know loads about what’s happening in the artist’s life. IMO there are just so many factors that go into writing creatively that I don’t want to assume it’s all 100% personal, real, verifiable information. I would rather connect emotionally to a song and relate to the lyrics through the lens of my own life experiences. 

BUT. Not long after Fine Line came out, Ralph was talking about her issues with the “wandering hands” line in “Falling,” and asked if people had other interpretations of the lyric. 

I started, as a larrie, from the place of believing HL are together and that while there may have been ups and downs for them, they’ve stayed together and faithful to one another. From there, I asked the question of what “wandering hands” could refer to. It made me think of early days, and how touchy HL were with one another, and then it made me think of how tactile Harry appears to be (in photos) when drunk. Knowing that the boys drank a lot during tour, I wondered how often Harry got in trouble for letting his hands wander to Louis. 

And then I started thinking about how much Harry’s closet-- and the way his closet differs from Louis’ --would hurt him in ways that are really clear in the lyrics of “Falling.” 

Harry was out, at least to family and some friends, before going on txf. He went from having people know he’d had a boyfriend to carrying around the image of being sexually active with nearly every woman he came into contact with. His closet wasn’t just a denial of his relationship with Louis or of his identity at the time, it was a denial of who he had been. Living through that must’ve had an effect, and I have to wonder if coming to the end of the band and NOT coming out left him really asking himself, “what am I now? what if I’m someone I don’t want around?” 

As an out gay person, when I push myself into the closet (around certain family, mostly) it’s so incredibly jarring. I become an inauthentic version of myself, and it feels like wearing a too-tight suit. It’s not good. 

I’m fully conjecturing here, but it’s very possible that Harry felt-- or feels --deeply conflicted about not coming out/not *wanting* to come out. But things as they are work in a way. He’s found ways to handle his image. He and Louis have made their closets a lot less work than they used to be (solo louies who come to yell at me about louis’ closet being worse than harry’s will be blocked, fyi). Going from writing songs like “Something Great” and “Happily” to HS1, where the themes are no longer focused on coming out says a lot to me. That shift is powerful. And I think “Falling” points to how fucking hard it is for Harry to reconcile that he’s someone who’s found a way to live in the closet. 

In addition, you have the images of his partner leaving/not being there. He’s been pulled away because Harry was too handsy, and now Harry’s punished by being alone. He fears that this will end up leading to his partner realizing he’s not worth keeping around/being with. And of course with the closeting conflict, he knows he can’t be talked about/mentioned, and that only makes him feel worse. 

I think the “run out of things we could say” line also hearkens back to “telling those stories we already told,” from“Two Ghosts,” which we know was written in 2014 and I think points to the idea that Harry has been finding ways to work through this shit for a while now. Is it possible that rehashing the same stories and lines will end up leaving them with nothing in the end? 

This song feels so much to me like a struggle for authenticity and a need to feel needed and find meaning in existence. This song FEELS like a person standing inside their closet with the door closed, wanting desperately to get out and yet utterly terrified to actually leave it because they aren’t entirely sure they know how to handle what’s there. And they fucking hate themselves for it and are sure that their partner probably feels the same. 

I think it’s also entirely possible that this song could be written in a linear style, starting from an earlier point and moving forward in time through the verses, but I haven’t really given it enough thought. 

And bc it’s important for me to say this: I have no investment in this approach being “right” or “accurate,” as I don’t listen to or engage with music that way. So I won’t debate about it-- if you disagree totally that is a-ok and I’m like. high fiving you. But these are some thoughts I’ve had and that I’m sharing in spite of my fear of getting screenshotted and made fun of for my crackpot theories :/