BOY MEETS WORLD | 7.23, "Brave New World: Part 2"
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BOY MEETS WORLD | 7.23, "Brave New World: Part 2"
“It's the best and the worst thing, all at once. It's like the only thing. It's the only thing I've ever felt. It's like I'm fucking... high off of you, or something” Half Man, 2026
if I refund tickets and convert the funds to cinemark cash that means I get to see a movie for free later 😌
How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong?
Atonement (2007) dir. Joe Wright
hello tumblr user. in front of you stands a confident and outspoken character. your challenge today & forever is to consider the possibility they may simply have self-confidence and are not just faking to secretly cover up massive insecurities. good luck
"the average fandom person cannot imagine a truly confident person" is a working theory I came up with years ago and every single day on this website my conclusion has proved more & more correct
coming out swinging a year later to say that everyone saying that they do this because "insecure characters have more inherent depth than confident ones" is experiencing what is known as a Skill Issue. get a grip and figure out that there's approximately one million forms of depth and conflict you can write a character experiencing other than generalized fanfictionized Insecurity
walking into a fandom tag and leaving with 10 new users added to my block list
You can sing OR you can play basketball. You can't do both. Never think that
that coffee and pastry will save your life btw
Imagine the level of whimsy I could reach if I just had $5M in my bank account rn
half man 1.06
Reblog and put in the tags if you can remember where you got the shirt you're currently wearing.
Josh O'Connor photographed by Jean-Baptiste Talbourdet-Napoleone for M Le magazine du Monde
the craziest part about the whole episode is that niall admitted to hooking up with mona and fathering ruben's kid right after he also admitted to being gay. we as the audience knew that he just hooked up with mona to get back at ruben, but ruben is discovering that his brother betrayed his trust by hooking up with his wife, his child isn't actually his, the only reason his brother did this was to get back at him because his brother isn't even into women, and he went to prison & therefore missed his mother's death for beating up the wrong guy, all at the same time, right after he confessed some deeply personal info about himself and the abuse he experienced.
it absolutely makes sense to me why this would evoke a much deeper reaction and sense of betrayal than even when ruben was sent to prison the first time. while ruben made threats to niall that first time because of his 'betrayal', he moved on and didnt carry through with them, even when he was still bitter. while this time he has also lost everything in his life -- his mother, his child, mona, and even niall again because of his betrayal. and as much as ruben claims to take responsibility for his actions in this episode, we also see how he continues to engage in the same behaviors and continually blames others for provoking his violence, just the same as he did when he was young. so of course this time he will take it further, will actually try to kill niall, because ruben can't accept that his own actions have led to his life being shitty, and just like niall has been blaming his internal homophobia and his shitty life on ruben, ruben blames his violence and his shitty life on niall and niall's wrongdoings towards him.
i also noticed how when ruben confesses how his father sexually abused him, and how he had physical reactions to it and had complex feelings surrounding it, niall kinda withdrew from him. and it really brought to mind how ruben kinda did something similar to niall in a way, by basically forcing him to have sex with mona, and later on in the hospital, and at several points by groping him and just general borderline or straight up sexual harassment. neither of them mention this but i think that is a big reason why niall ends up not wanting to hear about everything -- not because he is dismissive of sexual assault, but because ruben's words bring to mind the same things he feels about ruben. and even when niall confesses being gay, he still will not vocalize how he feels about ruben, that is still the boundary that cannot be crossed, until it is finally crossed in the last moments of the show, and when niall is the ultimate victim of ruben's violence.
and while i dont think niall wanted to die per se, he is willing to walk into that barn with ruben likely knowing what will happen to him. even when he could have taken so many other steps to diffuse the situation, like calling the cops, or just not going into the barn with ruben, he always was going to do what ruben wanted. he is reckless, because he craves rubens presence and attention even when he should stay away. like niall said, it's a chemical addiction; even when niall has been away from him for years and hasn't chased him down like he did in episode 4, he is drawn right back in, and he can't resist ruben.
we can also see that just like ruben, niall has not really changed, even as he has. although he may have finally come to terms with being gay, and is getting married to a man, he still looks miserable, even before he finds out about ruben coming to the wedding. so in the end, they are back at the beginning: both niall and ruben are tortured by their own minds and unable to escape the cycle, until eventually ruben externalizes that violence like he always does, in a way he can't take back. niall says in episode 4 that he died a long time ago. i think this is true, but it is also true, probably even more so, for ruben. so their deaths at the end of the show is just an externalization of that inner death, and an outer culmination of the cycle of violence that has already destroyed them.
Cycles of abuse on display in the coming out scene:
“My body would respond, sometimes.” “In a lot of ways, it’s the closest I’ve ever been with someone.” “I would cum, sometimes.”
After his childhood choke-out, Niall, a bullied schoolboy whose emotions are overlooked by the mother with whom he is exceptionally attached, wakes up wrapped up in his newly-named brother’s arms and cries into a towel after finding cum on his shorts.
At the end of each of these admissions, Ruben attempts to find solidarity by tacking on a conversational “You know?”
Niall, who experienced these same things at Ruben’s hands, can honestly nod along. It’s “too much” because Ruben is repeating his own experiences back to him.
So when Ruben asks “Do you think less of me?” how could Niall, who could never take care of himself, respond with anything less than “You’re my hero. More so now that I know where you get your armor from.”
Niall never developed the tough exterior Ruben touts because Ruben was his protector as well as his abuser. Where Ruben threw his discontent outward by building himself up and meeting violence with violence, being the protector, Niall learned to turn it inward, hating himself for his sexuality, hating others for what they had that he could not get, plotting and conniving rather than committing to massive, thoughtless acts of violence (barring a few of his larger emotional outbursts).
Niall and Ruben understand each other like no one else can because they have lived the same life from the same and opposite ends.
i really like how nothing ever changed <3 ruben was always full of hate and pain niall was always bitter and mediocre lori was always distant and judgmental alby AND mona were always reckless and too forgiving time is a flat circle they failed every chance they were given and never broke free <3
reading problematic fanfiction but shaking my head so random tumblr user who thinks thought crimes are real knows I don't condone it in real life
ignore my boaner 👍
fictional characters can't consent because they aren't real.. but YOU can consent to reading heavy themes, and you can withdraw consent by clicking the back button and stopping any time, it is your choice to read stories that include or exclude consent 👍