Keni

roma★

JBB: An Artblog!
Three Goblin Art
Sade Olutola
taylor price
RMH
Sweet Seals For You, Always
occasionally subtle

pixel skylines

Kaledo Art
Cosmic Funnies
Peter Solarz
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
DEAR READER
$LAYYYTER
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

shark vs the universe
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

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@ric3hine
via: The Race | Ford's dream plan to race with Verstappen - and Ricciardo
"Niall opens his eyes, a big beaming smile on his face, as he expects to be met with a laughing Ruben" and he was!
Just look at them ✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧
gaddbell uptown girl moment 🎬
i actually find it amusing when haters claim that daniel is irrelevant in big 2026, considering he's literally the most-talked about f1 retired driver
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN
there is a fictional man in my brain and I will never be free
first week without a new episode of half man
brother from another lover.
bts: half man (x)
Having watched the finale, and digested it (somewhat), I wanted to articulate one of the many things about the show that I have loved and always long to see in fiction. That is, the ouroboros of nature/nurture, excuses/explanations, abused/abuser. I sincerely appreciate that Gadd allows several things to be true at once, as they are in real life.
By the end, we are able to see that Niall is a conniving liar, lacking in empathy and a sense of duty to others, a misogynist who is content to treat women and children as collateral, unwilling to take offered opportunities (even as an adult) to self-reflect and to improve himself. He is cruel and petty and selfish. His own suffering is where the world begins and ends.
Ruben is a violent rapist, a murderer, a bully, a lazy sexist, and a brute. His self-image is as fragile as spun sugar, and he holds life cheaply enough that people (both men and women) may be considered merely things to be destroyed and obliterated, property to be held or discarded.
(They are, I think, both addicts).
And yet.
They are the products of their environments, as we all are. The choices that we are capable of making as adults are made possible by the nature of the mechanisms with which we are fitted in our formative years. How are we composed, mixed, alloyed, wired, patched, rigged up, constructed brick by brick, or chipped and chipped and chipped like the knapping of flint? (Pick your metaphor, I suppose).
Niall is bullied, abused, assaulted, raped, dismissed, mocked and belittled, again and again and again. As a child, as an adolescent, as an adult. His opinions, views, fears, doubts and worries are minimised and invalidated repeatedly. If we are supposed to learn moral courage, compassion, and emotional intelligence from adults/elders/family, then who, precisely, was modelling any of these things for Niall?
Ruben is raped, abused, (implicitly) neglected, left behind and passed around from home to home, institution to institution. He is everyone's problem because he is no one's responsibility. (And certainly should never have been Niall's). If we are supposed to develop a sense of self-control as we grow, to understand boundaries and autonomy, to learn to recognise the necessary barriers between self and other, how, exactly, was Ruben meant to grasp any of this? Who is showing him the way, and making him feel safe?
Of course, these are explanations for their behaviour, not excuses. Or are they? Where does one end and the other begin? At what point can we say that decisions made as an adult should not be allowed to sprout from the muck of our childhood any longer? Our 20s, 30s, 40s? When, when?
And is it even possible to do otherwise?
I've personally been frustrated with reviewers and critics who have found Niall and Ruben crudely drawn or unbelievable, and most effectively read only as metaphors of masculinity, because those critics haven't the experience or wit to imagine real people living such lives.
I am in my 30s, a parent, a homeowner, employed, responsible, sensible...an adult by any metric. I still make decisions that have their origin in childhood experiences and trauma. It is draining to be constantly on guard against an earlier iteration of yourself, to act in opposition to wiring installed by a shoddy workman. And, obviously, there is plenty to be said for the way in which boys/men are permitted or quietly encouraged to react to trauma, and the ways in which women are disallowed these modes of expression. (And must, like women generally do, perform the cleaning up afterwards).
Nevertheless, reckoning with abuse means that it costs you to fight your worse instincts, just as it costs you to pursue them when you fall into old patterns.
So, when do you get to put down the burden of such work?
(When you die).
Half Man FYC panel
Richard Gadd being asked on the homoeroticism between Ruben and Niall (with captions and transcript added)
Many thanks to @we-are-all-in-the-gutter for original video here. 🧡
Transcript:
Interviewer: And I think that that is part of what makes the tension between them so electric and the love between them so electric is that it has this something else that feels really uncomfortable as part of this relationship. Was that something that was sort of like IN the script? Was that something that you found in, sort of, the process of making it together? And I'm curious for the other actors like how Richard kind of explained these dynamics or talked through these dynamics with you or how you understood them.
Richard: Yeah. Well, it was certainly intentional that their relationship existed on a kind of subliminal plane of kind of… Homoeroticism may be too strong a word. It is homoerotic for sure. I think really, like the show… in a lot of ways is two men struggling to articulate their love for one another and their love for themselves. And I think one of the biggest things they're repressing, apart from… along with their past and their own sense of identity and sexuality, is the profound, like, adoration for one another and profound love. And it veers into a very strange place for the both of them. And I think that sometimes like if we look back on all the relationships we've had in life and we think about the defining relationships we've had, it's not always the relationships we've had that are pure and beautiful and giving. The relationships we look back on are the ones that are fraught and complicated and you feel deeply for someone and you don't really know why. There are people, you know, that time in my life that I haven't spoken to in 10 years that years that I still… in there somewhere. And I don't really know why.
And these two people form a sort of primal bond where like the best psychiatrists in the world couldn't get to the heart of what they feel for one another. And I think it does veer into, certainly for Niall, a sort of sexual lust. And for Ruben, it's a sort of like a… something similar, but a need to sort of dominate this innocence, this kind of almost like… to envelop this man. So it certainly veers into like a primal place. But I think as human beings, like I think sometimes like my biggest issue with sometimes television and storytelling sometimes in general is that all the relationships are so clear and defined. You know human life and human behaviour is complicated. Even like the whole being here and the whole existence of life is so confusing. And I always try to bring that to the screen. I think that the most powerful relationships we have exist in the sphere of the unexplainable, and that's what I always try to get to with that. Ultimately their love for one another is… breaches a transcendental place that they're not even remotely capable of expressing.
‘half man’ fyc event 6/2/26 (x)
Richard Gadd talking about embracing the ambiguity of the ending
Potentially unpopular theory: Niall doesn’t reform his life after getting with Alby. He continues to visit the bathhouses and engage in extracurriculars throughout their relationship and engagement.
We know that the only thing he’s truly ever felt is his love for Ruben and everything else he does is to numb that need. He loves Alby, but not in the all consuming must-have-at-any-cost way he needs Ruben. I’m not sure Niall has ever named his love for Ruben in those terms, but we see the destructive habits he develops to cope. And while he seemingly has resolved his self loathing for being gay, the other part of the equation, Ruben and his approval, is still missing. Not to mention the whole fatherhood betrayal.
Alby is like Ava, a respectable and appropriate partner, for a now-accomplished author. Even once he’s accepted his sexuality, Niall is still chasing the life the thinks he should have, rather than the one he wants.
The pit of his stomach probably dropped when he felt the all too familiar guilt of stringing someone along he wasn’t fully dedicated to. And friends like Butch wouldn’t necessarily call him out on this. They would keep his secret to continue their own connection, no one else needs to know. He probably got better at masking, being more careful with his partners and anything he took to disassociate, but I don’t believe he stopped cold turkey. But Ruben is far enough away and enough time has passed that he’s found a way to make it work.
That is, until the one person he’s ever felt anything for shows up and he willingly walks with him - risking it all to get his fix from his love/abuser/brother/idol/addiction