welcome to hell

mayumi | main blog | check out my art blog @mayumicantdraw | they/he (i guess she too if you're boring) | lesbian

[lliveonthesunn]

i get why people don't believe in marriage as a social construct but legally it is the best and easiest way to say "this is who i trust to take care of me when i can't take care of myself" and i'm so glad gay people fought for that right bc when shit gets scary at least i know im in good hands

[innerchildabortionclinic]

careers under capitalism

helping elderly people: one dollar

Senior Torture Manager: $1,500,000,000/yr plus benefits

[sluttynurse]

probably the worst attitude tumblr unintentionally cultivates is "the world out there is completely dangerous for you and no one can possibly understand you, so you should isolate yourself from it and avoid interacting with it as much as possible"

[ceruleanheaven]

i am always one wrong word away from being shot by all the people who find me tolerable

[arrangedaccident]

niall and ruben calling themselves brothers even though their parents couldnt be married and they only lived together for a few years. SICK. ruben constantly calling niall “son” and treating him like a child that needs to be guided through his firsts (even the ones a father shouldn’t guide) despite what his own father did to him. SICK. niall pulling ruben way from alby like a cliche soap opera housewife trying to stop her husband from beating her secret lover. SICK. not blood related and not even very brotherly but somehow incestuous in every direction. SICK!!

[danielsarmand]

romanticising is not the same as recognising the romance in something. people aren't romanticising niall and ruben's dynamic because for the most part it is simply not a positive dynamic and that is objective. people, however, think of them as romantic because their relationship is inherently romantic. lol. like the fact that it is toxic and detrimental to both doesn't necessarily imply romance has no role in it. the tragedy is that the love is there and they don't know what to do with any of it so it festers and takes monstrous shapes and makes worse people out of them but alas!!!!!! it never stops growing. and it eats them alive. ugly horrible sad devastating revolting romance sure but #myromance get off me case

[danielsarmand]

"i'll make you fucking ugly" because niall is beautiful to ruben. not in a physical sense, or not just, he is beautiful—a beautiful soul, a pure person, a mind unsullied by what happened to him, he is untouched. or so he seems to ruben. he wanted so badly for him to lie and share his ugliness. he wanted so badly for him to sit next to him and shoulder the burden of a dirty conscience. and sure, niall isn't actually untouched, he's poisoned in ways that he will never be able to bleed out, but to ruben he was full of life and light and so he thought maybe it'd work both ways, maybe he could take some of that light, maybe it'd rub off. then niall denied him the possibility and cursed him to live with himself, alone. "i'll make you fucking ugly" because you couldn't make me beautiful. if we're both ugly, maybe we still have a chance.

[madagascarskin]

Half Man's approach to sexuality is incredibly brave and it's especially rare to see it executed at this high a level. Every sex scene is uncomfortable, and there's a lot of sex. It's not just the sexual violence or the compulsory heterosexuality, even Niall's forays into the homosexual underground are a clear act of self harm and in trying to compromise his desires by playing the role of a domtop daddy, he only works to distance himself further from his identity. The show perfectly manages to capture what it means to be disembodied. Nothing is satisfying not sex or drugs or relationships. There's 2 key moments in this show that I think really compliment eachother. When Niall tells Ava that he had sex with a male prostitute he says he came, but he wasn't relaxed. According to himself, being raped by his father was one of the most intimate experiences of Ruben's life, so what does that say about his sex life after the fact? Is intimacy even possible after it's caused you so much harm? Childhood sexual violence steals something fundamental from within us and we spend the rest of our lives trying to reclaim it. As the title suggests, for Ruben it made him a 'half man'. Emasculating Niall through sexual assault gives Ruben a power that was taken from him at a young age. Putting Niall in his place by suffocating him with his body weight and enacting unrestrained violence against him, asserts Ruben's place in the pecking order; but it's also proof that he can conquer his own weakness. A punishment for a disempowered version of himself, projected onto Niall.

Having a gay awakening potentially as a result of a sexual violation will complicate your relationship with that identity and how you fit into it. If you do fit into it, if your experiences count. Can you really be proud of something that's brought you so much pain? It's really interesting that when Niall tells him how difficult Ruben made it for him to come to terms with himself, all he mentions are the slurs and not the he fact that he sodomized him with a hood ornament while telling him he likes it. Taking something pleasurable and making it as humiliating and painful as he possibly can, fully taking advantage of how being on the receiving end of a gay interaction is considered shameful. All the more fascinating that when Niall discloses his gay identity, Ruben seems to open up and relate to him by trying to share his own gay experiences. Those experiences being father/son molestation. How sexual violence shapes your sexuality is a difficult subject. Even for our main characters this is all 'too much' for them to consider. It's not something a lot of people dare to broach and I think it's commendable that this show tried to tackle these things in earnest.

[tabortrillion]

And if I said Niall embodies the innocence Ruben lost to his father and the softness that life wrung out of him and that Ruben embodies the rage Niall has suppressed in himself his whole life and the confidence that life leeched out of him early on, that they found the missing pieces of themselves in each other so how could they ever possibly give the other up fully, what then huh?

[bedardenjoyer2]

hate bringing stupidity from other internet spheres here but half man mainstream discourse just being people going back and forth saying "its romance" "its not romance theyre brothers" "its abuse so its not romance" "theyre not brothers bc theyre not blood related" "step siblings are siblings" while the characters are assaulting each other and nutting over getting choked out and having sex while gripping each others faces and breathing into each others mouths and tearing each others pants down and falling asleep in each others arms and calling each other brother the whole time like the writers of this show have done everything. Everything. possible to shove nuance down the audience's throats and people are still like "reubens the villain" "nialls the villain" "they love each other but theyre not in love" OPEN THE SCHOOLS!

[isabellaofparma]

this is literally peak romance. to me.

[f-slur]

the inherent infantilization of niall walking on ruben's feet like a child, the visual of his little sneakers on ruben's boots while ruben conjures vague images of the unspoken horrors his own father is implied to have committed upon him... richard gadd is not merely a "freak" for creating half man hes making art about something he genuinely cares about hes drawing from his own heart hes trying to tell you something are you listening

[wulfhalls]

everything clicking into place for ruben while reading wuthering heights in prison like

[womanbachelor]

oh you just know that niall's publisher is going to love that niall got murdered by his twice-convicted criminal brother who famously was the inspiration for niall's last book. the sales are going to skyrocket baby!!!!

[asliceofoceanmist]

when you're at the humiliation ritual competition and then niall kennedy shows up and invites the guy he frequented chemsex parties with, the girl he went to college with who he kept asking for money to pay off his fuck ups in adulthood, the ex who he got pregnant and cheated on a bunch of times, to his wedding with the guy his brother beat half to death and put in coma in college, and then said brother shows up at said wedding so they can kill each other

[wulfhalls]

Half Man // Fyodor Dostoevsky

[anthonycolonthree]

(guy who's not getting anything done voice) I need to learn every skill and all information