soph :3

NURSE!! THEY LET HER OUT AGAIN!

[wulfhalls]

things richard gadd and jamie bell have said that make me an active suicide risk 👍

[wulfhalls]

looking at this now is like. straight emotional terrorism. THEY HAD SUCH A CHANCE

[dirt-c1ty]

half man a flawed piece of writing but god how grateful i am for its flaws. idk if im just getting older and my tastes are changing or if it’s a subconscious averse reaction to the rise of ai slop but what a gift to have a work of art like half man where every decision made in the presentation of its story is completely intentional and carries meaning. what’s the point of art if it’s not going to be a window into one person’s freaky mind. it has friction it has texture, so much of what i watch (particularly on television) just slides off my brain these days. im much less interested in whether a work of art is “technically” well executed and more interested in whether it’s honest

[arrangedaccident]

can’t get over ruben not being able to deliver on “i’ll make you ugly” to the very end. in all the violence and death he chose to largely preserve niall’s face

[hystericalend]

half man has given me a fervour for evangelism that being raised in the christian church never could Richard gadd I will spread your good word .

[hystericalend]

thematically it makes more sense for ruben to have shoved the hood ornament up nialls ass as opposed to fingering him stay with me 4 a minute. the car is a masculine status symbol and the hood ornament is an indicator of an especially high value vehicle ergo the hood ornament is semiotically the dick of the car. thus niall breaking it off and then ruben using it to assault him falls in line with their respective patterns of behavior: niall attempting to emasculate or humiliate ruben and ruben responding by further emasculating niall. it would be less gay if he had fingered him really

hi anon, apologies for leaving this so late that ruben has murdered niall and committed slowly bleeding out suicide by the time you got my response but you have raised an excellent thematic point and changed my mind entirely. Ruben raped niall with the car's metal dick. Good lord .

[hystericalend]

Really trying not to let twitter discourse about half man get me down but it's so disheartening to see people write thread after threat loftily claiming the writing as bad and performances overdone when for me this show has upacked themes of abuse and repressed sexuality in such a raw and unapologetic way that has resonated with me deeply and that i haven't really seen replicated in anything else. Yes i think it was rough around the edges and yes it could've been more tightly written at points, but at the end of the day richard gadd has said in interview after interview that his goal was to unpack toxic masculinity and depict what abuse does to a person and to claim half man is bad and did not deliver in that regard is BAFFLING to me. In the era of AI slop and hollow cash grab show writing, I cannot understand how someone could watch half man and not see its humanity and passion bursting at the seams. At the end of the day everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but fuck . I don't care if you think half man is messy, that does not make it "objectively bad"

[hystericalend]

my bus to work plastered with a half man poster. I love seeing richard gadd with jamie bell in a headlock first thing in the morning god is good

[buttholy]

all omegaverse jokes aside I think it's interesting how the audience is primed to come into the show with the assumption that niall is a bottom and ruben is a top - because ruben is masculine and aggressive and straight-passing, while niall is slight and submissive, and it's no secret that as a society we still have fairly heteronormative ideas about sexual positions, even in queer spaces - but in reality niall is the one who tops; niall is the one who penetrates both mona and ava and his gay flings; niall is the who is virile and fertile while ruben cannot fulfill his self-appointed role and impregnate his partner; niall is the one who supposedly has a big cock while ruben is the one obsessed with it and with having it for himself; niall is the one who carries the phallic weapon he will likely penetrate ruben with. when niall is penetrated, it's against his will and not a pleasurable and joyful moment

I don't mean it in the sense of a gotcha, though. I don't think the show is looking down at people who would assume niall would bottom, because niall's unwillingness doesn't just come from a perfectly valid personal preference, it's also an extention of his internalized homophobia: as long as he's topping, he's not gay. like many closeted men, he divides the world into two camps: men and the rest. men fuck, the rest get fucked

and then you have gus, who's getting fucked and loving it, and he is the real winner of the half man wars

[pigandpepper]

Niall saying I'm just trying to figure out the ending of his semi-autobiographical story that is about them and their relationship, and Ruben saying it doesn't matter, just give an ending, any ending. And Niall saying it would compromise his integrity. And Ruben saying he doesn't have any.

And that's them, that's their story, their psychosexual brother-complex relationship in a nutshell.

[hystericalend]

reading a heartwrenching randy/benson fic at my desk during the snatches of free time in between work and i just noticed the mcd tag. it may be over for me i think

[hystericalend]

post ep5 i have seen a lot of people paint niall as calculative and conniving, as if he is pulling strings to intentionally ruin the lives of people around him. though i would certainly agree that niall is manipulative and intentionally causes harm, i don't necessarily think he is as much of a devious planner as people interpret?? though niall can be malicious, the comments he makes almost always happen as a defensive reaction from being hurt and/or emasculated to deflect away from his own insecurity. niall is a sensitive person who cares a lot about how he is perceived, and as we see in every episode again and again, he struggles to take accountability for his actions. niall isn't violent, but he is impulsive. when ruben prods where it hurts, mocks him, makes him feel small and less of a man, niall lashes out and does whatever he can to get a leg up. but unlike ruben, his defensive blows don't manifest as physical violence or angry threats. niall uses what has always given him power to do harm and cause life changing consequences: his words. ruben sends niall a mocking text about doing his due diligance as a housemaid? niall compliments mona on her dancing knowing it will add fire to the argument with ruben. ruben makes him feel powerless and pathetic by saying niall doesn't have a life? niall tells him ava is pregnant knowing he is rubbing salt in a deeply personal wound. people point to him getting mona drunk as calculative and it was, but i dont necessarily believe niall brought her to the pub intending to gather ammunition. maybe i'm being lenient here, but i truly like to believe that (at least at first) it came more from a desire to have ruben's wife speak candidly so niall can understand more about what was going on with him, to know ruben as completely as he did when they were younger. it's only when he's backed into a corner and licking his own wounds that he reaches for ruben's infertility as a weapon, not quite realising how sharp the blade actually is.

feel free to disagree or give me your own perspective, but ive seen ep5 twice all the way through and i really think not enough people are talking abt how niall is just as impulsive and reckless as ruben, it's only that with words as his weapon and not fists, he comes off as far more measured and calculative than really is the case.

[danielsarmand]

ruben sa-ing niall when niall tells him that ava is pregnant is obviously horrifying in itself but what really gets me is that. niall isn't shaken by the violence, because he's so used to it that he barely even reacts to it in the hospital scene; been there, done that, he's spent most of his life enveloped in ruben's violence and it feels more familiar than anything.

what makes him so terrified is the prospect of what this might re-awaken (or, well, push forward) in him after such a long time of abstinence and denial and conversion therapy and active work towards shedding what he thinks is his biggest moral failing. he's scared his body will betray him and he won't be able to go back to faking and everything will be for nothing.

and of course everything IS for nothing, because there was never anything to fix in that respect, but it's the one thing niall has actively hustled towards. being A Man in ruben's eyes. in jeopardy

[sporeblossom]

ruben pallister is also such a good example of how a violent man looms so large in the lives of everyone around him. niall, mona, maura, ava, lori. so many conversations between them are about ruben. what did he do now. how do we negate the damage. how do we keep him from getting angry. oh you know how he is. are you okay. did he hurt you. what does he want. which hoops do we have to jump through now to keep him and by extension ourselves out of harm's way. so much of their lives spent trying to fix and repair and control. all these people carrying the responsibility for one man.

[lazybakerart]

ruben equating the most average nothing hug between benji and mona with sucking dick when he regularly embraces niall with the passion of a sailor coming home to his wife after years of being lost at sea.

[hellgram]

i am gonna lose it.

[chasetheauthor]

also it is INSANE how well this show captures what it's like to be in a family with an abusive person that no one actually wants to accept is abusive. joanna was giving them all reason after reason why ruben is shitty and suddenly somehow her bringing up His Actions is offensive to ruben's mother and subsequently the rest of the table. and now dinner is ruined. because someone had the nerve to be honest. what a fucked up and vivid and realistic and terrifying little family dynamic you have intruded upon joanna girl i hope you stay far far away from them for the rest of your life