𝕗𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕞𝕖𝕔𝕒𝕥

✨𝕎𝕪𝕟✨

[boo-kei]

HALF MAN BTS: JAMIE & RICHARD

[bambicest]

but like... I know we didn't need footage of them as actual little kids but they've been so intertwined for so long??? it was always just the two of them?? the insane thing is the show could have just been them as teens or just them as adults even. we got the epic of their whole lives and there's still moorrreeeee. I'm chewing on my computer thinking about it, of course they couldn't live apart!!!!

I also think there is an entire narrative solely in what we aren't shown. it's not quite unreliable narration, it's just Incomplete narration and I am chewing on the shadow it casts on the entire show. there's a lifetime we aren't seeing here!! they've known each other since Niall was five years old!!! and as teenagers they were everything to each other for so long, but we never see it directly!! and it's idealised in its absence and mythologised in the retellings and it colours everything we're shown but, in a show full of half truths and dishonesty and repression, it's delicious to know that even we aren't getting the full story!! and it really is a testament to how tight the writing is that we are able to follow the trajectory of their entire lives in such a limited way and still have the narrative and the characters (in most cases) feel so complete

[rylandgracie]

and ruben needing a love confession before killing niall. he needed to know. he needed to hear it. and he knew he'd kill niall anyway. because you can never go back! you can never go back! you can bite and scratch and beg but you can never go back!

[lazybakerart]

ruben: i hid your gym kit for a laugh

niall: i fucked your wife and fathered your son

[rylandgracie]

now i’m imagining a happy world where niall tells ruben he’s gay during the kitchen scene and they’ve been together since they were 18

and then niall starts writing and all his books are about ruben somehow and super successful, and ruben posts on facebook all these really dorky pictures of niall during book signings and book readings and it’s always something super sweet and silly and self indulgent like:

at the boyfriend’s book signing 📖 he’s so talented i’m so proud 🥰 buy his book 😡👊🏻

bambi’s first book was dedicated to ME 😝 because of course it was 😏😌 first autograph of his life ✍🏻 love you forever 🩷

me and nialler when we first got together at 18 🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏼 and today at our WEDDING 💍💒#iputaringonit #buyTheRisingSun #HusbandAndHusband

[thranduills]

whole essays could be written on ruben’s grunt at the end. the dissatisfaction of it all, after he killed the one thing that gave his life meaning. stewing in grief and betrayal in his prison cell, to wind himself up enough to spin out of control in that barn and drive himself to go through with it, only to feel the weight of realisation that he has nothing anymore. the love was there, and it’s so important that the love was there because what is there without it

[halzune]

love how the word brother meant nothing at the end. that it had its meaning completely evaporated by niall and ruben clinging to it. 'brother' when they both admitted they hate each other's mothers. 'brother' because it was the first real thing they were to each other (but not really, no, not to niall, who used to be terrified of ruben as a bully before ruben came back from juvie. the point was that ruben was never niall's brother.) 'brother' as a stand-in for tormentor, abuser, lover, haven, best friend, husband, betrayer, partner, soulmate, man. 'brother' before every love confession as if they had to test out what it meant to say i love you to each other. 'brother' dropped at the end, because ruben loved niall never like a brother did, and niall couldn't even breathe enough to say it again. 'brother' was true but also superfluous, a lie that grew legs and arms and shoulders and a face, and terrible terrible hands. the love declarations after? they counted, and they couldn't be enough. because ruben found something more punishing and possessive than that one word to give to niall. something only he could give. romeo and juliet they were before they lived under one roof, and that's what they returned to in the end.

[danielsarmand]

it couldn't have ended any other way because they had been killing each other for years. they didn't kill each other then and there in that barn, they did it a LONG time ago. it just took them a while to die

[danielsarmand]

this show is so tightly written and so attentive to its main characters and the details that matter that not only did these people kill in the same way they lived, one violently and the other viciously, but they also died how they lived.

niall died from asphyxiation after a lifetime spent holding his words, his secrets, his pain, his desires and yeah, his very breath, too. he never dared to live openly and honestly, he never emptied his lungs and when he finally tried it was too late. his body had forgotten how to breathe.

ruben died from blood loss after he was stabbed on his side by the person he trusted most in the world. a wound left open and unattended to was his demise. a wound no one could have seen coming, a wound you wouldn't expect from the last person you would expect a wound from. one that maybe could have healed, one that didn't necessarily have to translate in death, but a wound nonetheless. you can survive wounds, but you can't bleed out forever.

[twilightbuckley]

It’s so tragic that half man is one of the best shows in modern memory but recommending it to someone means you have to explain what it’s about. I don’t want to do that.

[real-princess-peach]

I know for a fact that Niall stayed on his bullshit. Butch was the best man at his wedding. They went to that spa LAST NIGHT and did coke in the bridal suite before Lori got there. Credit to Alby for trying, but that man is broken beyond repair. Absolute failure. One of the greatest characters of the last decade.

[luckydicekirby]

someone may have already done this but here's my rough cut of niall's wedding chronologically from 1am last night. congrats to us all

[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

[loving-the-world-since-00]

[loo-nuh-tik]

Half Man | 1.06

[lazybakerart]

niall coming out to ruben and after their back forth ruben says ‘let them call us gay and proud’ immediately making niall’s sexuality about the both of them. it’s never just you or i. it’s we. it’s ours.

[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 to niall's last book. the sales are going to skyrocket baby!!!!