#psychosexually obsessed with him back. And he thinks all of these relationships are Normal… his favorite pizza topping is literally avocado

[karouvas]

I can understand someone not liking Gansey that much but I Can Not imagine calling him boring. Sir that’s President Freak of Clowntown right there…

[thepavementsings-archive]

hey there, happy sunday. idk if your last post was (partially) a response to my rb from you, but just in case i wanted to clarify: i do believe este is 100% as psychosexually obsessed with pierre, i just think he’s better at playing mind games and pretending he’s not. pierre wears his feelings on his sleeve, while este is more slippery and i think a lot of people do miss his manipulative power plays. pierre definitely doesn’t miss them but i do think este makes him doubt whether or not their relationship was as significant to him as it was to pierre. sorry idk if that made sense and apologies if this had nothing to do with my rb. i bow down to all pierresteban scholars such as yourself, and this is just my humble opinion <3

omg no not at ALL you're right Este DOES have permanent residence in Pierre's head sksldl. Like to be clear Pierre has never been normal about anything in his entire life, least of all Esteban.

Este makes him doubt whether or not their relationship was as significant to him as it was to Pierre.... fascinating. Because if you watch every single longer form interview where Pierre talks about Esteban from before the teammate announcement (BTG podcast/AT rivalry video from last year/Jean Alesi interview/etc) Pierre always cements that that rivalry is part of why he is the driver he is today. Every time. For Esteban it's mostly been "I fought with Max/Charles/Antoine etc etc". Whether or not he genuinely believes that his rivalry with Pierre has shaped him the same way, he hasn't really spoken about it like it mattered for him like that!!

Until now. When they're both letting each other creep back into the narrative in different ways!!! It SO rich the way they both chose to compartmentalize and package their history together in different ways. Talking about it vs talking around it vs not talking at all... And now they're being forced to face it and neither of them can look away anymore. Wild.

[adelaidedrubman]

👁️: What exactly do they want with their future with each other? Is that something they think of often or do they just stay in the moment?

🕊️: Give just a general domestic tidbit for em (things they like about each other, routines, habits, and just overall sweet stuff)

for johnjess wildfire verse

and also the doomed throuple of girlies from HLS

THANK YOU SKELLY sorry to the fish catching girlfriends for no ship banner i am lazy. credit to the incomparable @derelictheretic for the text divider used for they<33

👁️: What exactly do they want with their future with each other? Is that something they think of often or do they just stay in the moment?

jessie dreams of one day possessing the luck and willpower to slaughter john in some grand, dramatic, spectacular, poetic, climactic manner. (nothing sexual). she makes no meaningful effort or concrete plans to actually do so, because you only get to kill someone once and the moment just has to be special and perfect, you know? (again, nothing sexual). alternatively she dreams of him rotting in prison while she becomes a cultural icon from the reaping publicity. (which comes to fruition in the america’s sweetheart spinoff verse, in which their psychosexual obsession is never actually consummated and instead continues playing out impotently in courtroom dramas and press conferences in perpetuity.)

john is holding out hope for jessie coming to her senses and willingly confessing and atoning, and oscillates wildly between hopes that she will once again become Just Some Guy in the project once that’s accomplished and not consume his every thought and action and he’ll be totally normal and the competing hope that once she is cleansed and faithful they will be together in some complete and eternal manner he purposefully ill defines to himself as he tries his best to convince himself he is doing this all out of duty to joseph. so, classic relationship goals.

tl;dr he wants her flayed skin on his wall she wants his head on a platter, they’re doing great.

🕊️: Give just a general domestic tidbit for em (things they like about each other, routines, habits, and just overall sweet stuff)

during their time apart when jessie is her Never Going Back To The Valley And It’s Fine We Only Did Hand Stuff era, john continues to curl up with the jacket that still has some of her swamp vag stink smell clinging to it when he sleeps at night. jessie takes to wearing john’s watch and fidgets with it as a sort of stress toy to ground herself when she’s losing her mind in the henbane. she’s over him tho.

👁️: What exactly do they want with their future with each other? Is that something they think of often or do they just stay in the moment?

jestiny tends to avoid thinking about the future too much, her ideal scenario would be they just keep doing what they’re doing forever without actually discussing if as an official commitment. her only other dream future would be skylar dumping dylan.

sherri dreams of settling down and staying in hope county, and skylar abandoning any loyalty to dylan’s master bait shop to work with her and take over can of worms fishing store so that she can also focus on restoring the mchelen’s empire to its former glory. skylar more or less shares this dream, but is torn and indecisive on fully cutting dylan out of the picture and occasionally leans towards wanting to leave hope county and all start anew together. jessie is originally included in these dreams, but the constant outbursts, erraticism, selfishness, and irresponsibility eventually convince them she’s not really the type of girl you settle down with.

🕊️: Give just a general domestic tidbit for em (things they like about each other, routines, habits, and just overall sweet stuff)

skylar and sherri will often pack jestiny’s tackle box for her when she’s sleeping in late and missing peak morning fishing hours, so she can come out and join them as soon as she’s up and still get some good catches. she repays them by gutting all the fish for them. (which is quite considerate by jestiny standards. or maybe she just needs to cut something up idk)

[theygotlost]

ok ive been thinking about something and it might be controversial but hear me out. i make a lot of "yaoi gay sex penis laugh now" jokes about gk but can we please discuss the relationship between tsurumi and his subordinates with more nuance than "lol they are all so gay for him!!!! XD"? hold on this has gotten pretty long im putting it under the cut

i want to refer back to that anonymous essay i rbed the other day cause they got it exactly right.

tsurumi is manipulating and taking advantage of deeply traumatized young men by filling a role of support and affirmation that the rest of the government/society has failed to provide. he is deliberately making these vulnerable, unstable people grow attached to him so that they will easily do his bidding, his "dirty work". he explains as much himself. even tsukishima, who seems like the most "normal" member of the 7th division, has been manipulated into being so fiercely loyal that he was ready to injure or even kill a 9 months pregnant woman on tsurumi's orders.

even worse are the cases of koito and usami, who were CHILDREN when tsurumi first began manipulating them. usami was even his own STUDENT. they've both developed an almost psychosexual obsession with him that gets more insidious the more you think about it. while I wouldn't go so far as to call tsurumi a blatant sexual predator, he is certainly exploiting and enabling this type of relationship because it benefits him to have his officers be in love with him. usami especially just makes me really sad more than anything else.

that's why I feel like "shipping" any of these characters, tsukishima, usami, koito, ogata, or whoever else, with tsurumi is entirely missing the point. like these relationship dynamics should be explored, sure, and there's certainly a lot to say about each one. but if your takeaway from these interactions is "wouldn't it be awesome if they kissed?" then you haven't been paying attention.

just like I've said about gul dukat during the height of my ds9 posting, the fact that his behavior is so believable in its maliciousness is what makes him a compelling villain who is fun to hate. when I see people posting like "omgggg tsurumi is so sexy i love him heehee!!!!" it feels like they have fallen victim to the exact same manipulation as the rest of his officers. I'm not saying you're not allowed to find him attractive or whatever, I'm just saying that his tactics are so effective they are working on you the viewer, even though you're real and he's not. idk, something to think about.

"but austin, didn't you just say a few days ago that you're entertained by toxic messy unwholesome relationships, or in your words, 'evil gay sex'? seems like these relationships are pretty toxic, aren't you being a hypocrite?" you fool. evil gay sex is fun when both parties are on EQUAL FOOTING. when they are both equally fucked up and equally hostile toward each other. MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION. by definition, it is the POWER IMBALANCE between tsurumi and his subordinates that makes the whole thing so disturbing. the toxicity doesn't go both ways here; tsurumi is completely in control. hopefully you see the difference. this isn't like, a callout post or anything, just a thought

[lindalung]

Lo and Behold Homoeroticism rant Part Two

If you missed my first part you can go 2 posts back to read it but I just want to add onto my thoughts

The lack of queer characters in TVB shows is nothing new, and on the rare occasion when they remember that LGBTQ+ people exist, it's treated as a joke (ie. queerbaiting the bromance of a character, but no homo bro! or characters defensively insisting that they're straight). We get it, it's target audience is on the conservative side, but it is admittedly tiring to watch sometimes as a queer audience member.

From my previous "essay" you know I've delved into the relationship between the characters Linda Lung and Hung Sheung Sin (the main source of my hyperfixation). I think it's wild how TVB has accidentally created one of THE richest, most intriguing homoerotic dynamics in television history without intending to do so. They're meant to be straight characters, but don't realize how much potential this pairing could have, and how much evidence in canon they've accidentally (or is it intentional??) made. I can't help but think that if this was in an American tv show, it could be such a well made pairing. But of course, even American shows rarely do queer ships well.

What sparked this rant was episode 1228 it's crazy how to fathom that they'd rather have literal incest (Kam Shing On developing a crush on his mother Hung Sheung Sin after a hypnotism session) before portraying healthy queer relationships. They've had Linda accidentally having a crush on Sheung Sin's boyfriend after he saved her from a motorcycle accident (which was actually revealed to be Sheung Sin's dad, which makes it worse). It seems like they'll do everything to dance around the concept of actually having these two women fall for each other before actually making it happen. Though of course, given their track record I wouldn't trust them to do it well and it'd be a joke anyway. It's like how they notoriously queerbait the bromance between Kam Shing On and his best friend Chu Ling Ling, but of course it's no homo. In this episode they also made sure to include a shot of Linda's husband Sung Shui Fai doing the "heroic catch" on Shing On (something Linda/Sheung Sin have done too, mind you); then at the end of the episode Sheung Sin asks her son "Wait, you haven't fallen for Sung Shui Fai, right?" and he defensively reassures her that no matter what, he's only into women. Yes, we get it, that shot was included because haha, gay relationships are suuuch a joke, right?

What's funny is the unintentional inherent homoerotic irony in Sheung Sin hypnotizing her son because she was displeased with his taste in women (which is a whole other rant on why it's problematic), so she hypnotizes him into liking "normal women" (whatever that means) like herself, only to have him fall in love with Linda (after that incest nonsense). The show's reasoning is because Sheung Sin and Linda are very similar, and so after her son fell in love with Sheung Sin, he also fell in love with Linda. What's interesting to me from watching this through a queer lens is that it shows that Sheung Sin is subconsciously in love with Linda. To me, she's trying to impose her "ideal type" onto her son, which is just hilarious to me at how they try so hard to make it not gay, but it in fact inherently is.

It's actually canon and a widely known fact among the characters in the show that Hung Sheung Sin is intensely obsessed with Linda. There are multiple instances of her being so obsessed with Linda that it ruins her entire mood and she spends all her energy on provoking Linda, pushing her buttons, and trying to get a reaction out of her/to piss her off. Linda is obsessed with Sheung Sin too, but to a lesser degree I'd think. Even Sheung Sin's own boyfriend knows that the only thing to motivate his girlfriend is to bring up Linda to her, so that she would be so bothered to be better than her. It's classic homo/psychosexual obsession.

Part three to come...

[lohveandfilm]

The Obsession with Love in Phantom Thread

I don’t know what I was expecting from Phantom Thread.  I hadn’t bothered to see the film when it came out, even after it had been nominated at nearly every awards show.  I’d seen ads for it, but I’d somehow managed to go this entire time knowing almost nothing about the plot other than that it was a romance and fashion was involved.  I knew Daniel Day-Lewis’s character would probably be a bit… odd.  Having watched various fashion-based shows and films, particularly a documentary on Anna Wintour and the planning of the Met Gala, I’d come to understand that almost no one in the fashion industry is quite normal.  I guess, then, I’d been expecting weird.  What I did not expect was a toxic relationship based on the psychosexual pleasure of continuous POISONING and subsequent nursing back to health.

Side note: that doctor should be fired. And arrested. And presented at medical schools as the exact opposite of what to do in any medical situation.

In fact, I was so thrown off by the end of Phantom Thread that I went to its Rotten Tomatoes page just to see what the critics said about it.  It isn’t that I thought Phantom Thread wasn’t a good film; I actually quite enjoyed it.  What confused me is that I had gotten the impression, especially from the Sheila O’Malley piece, that people seemed to view this as a story about loving and being loved, and that they found themselves fully invested in the love between Alma and Reynolds.  I was surprised to find the same on Rotten Tomatoes because my own perspective on the film was so different.  By the end of the movie, I was convinced that Phantom Thread wasn’t about love but rather all-consuming obsession.  I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I experienced some of the same emotions watching this film as I have while watching serial killer documentaries.  Honestly, I’m kind of disturbed that so many people continued to see their relationship as loving because I would never want my definition of love to include behavior like theirs.

In Daniel Farrell’s piece on jealousy, he attempts to explain how feelings of jealousy do not necessarily imply the desire for possession.  I absolutely agree with him; there have been times in most of our lives where, speaking specifically of love, we have desired someone who would rather be with someone else, yet I would never characterize those desires as wanting to own or control their actions.  As Farrell describes, it is the fact that another person chooses to be with you instead of another that we find most pleasing.  This argument, however, does not preclude the possibility of possession as a motivator for jealous feelings.  In Phantom Thread, the desire for control over another fuels jealousy that becomes figuratively and literally toxic.

Watching this film made me realize that, personally, I can’t consider such possessive relationships as loving.  Of course, my initial reaction was influenced by the horrific cycle of abuse to which Alma and Reynolds have seemingly both agreed and by appalling acceptance of this abuse by the doctor and Cyril.  Now, though, I have had time to reflect on the film and feel that what truly disgusted me was the manipulation that both Alma and Reynolds employed to make the other behave how they wanted.  I felt that the level of control both of them wished to possess carried a blatant disregard for the other as a person, another human being with their own personality and interests.  In a way, I viewed Alma and Reynolds as almost inhuman because I simply could not comprehend how someone could treat another human the way they treated each other by the end.

O’Malley characterized P.T. Anderson’s subjects as people who find it difficult to be loved, but I don’t think that is exactly correct.  Yes, the characters in this film seem to have a problem with being the object of another’s love.  However, I think the issue is that these characters would rather be the subject of someone’s obsession, not their love.  They crave attention, and romantic relationships are one way to ensure that someone will always be around to provide that attention.  Take Reynolds, for example.  When a client of his seems to have been meeting with another designer, he is infuriated.  He cannot stand the thought that someone else is receiving the attention he desires and thinks he deserves.  Instead of resolving to improve himself and his work so his client won’t go to another designer again, he lashes out.  You get the impression that he feels his client is tainted and that he would rather never see her again than make her a dress.  He also refuses to put the blame on himself, instead accusing Alma of being a distraction.  Reynolds is a classic narcissist, and he can’t live without someone worshipping him constantly.  Cyril isn’t enough; as his sister, she has an obligatory relationship to him, and she knows him too well to be fully dominated.  He needs someone who he can seduce and control to satisfy his need for attention.  The miracle of Alma, really, is that she manages to find a new path to fulfill his desires that allows her to keep some of the control.  Yet even though she literally holds his life in her hands, she is still succumbing to his fantasies fueled by his strange relationship with his mother.  In the end, her control is illusory since Reynolds knows of and approves of her plans. She’s still just a pawn in his emotional game, and I would never want to consider such ugliness as love.