If ppl want to genuinely enjoy the canon story the way it was/is told they have to realize/accept that it wasn't a cute, romantic love story. It is gritty, miserable, (unrequited even; at the beginning) depressing at best (even when they're officially together) based on manipulation, cheating, lies, manslaughter & the one of the two characters is the epitome of sociopathy. It ain't cute & Robert isn't a lost innocent boy. He is lost I give him that. But he is also malicious & Aaron 1/2
unfortunately for the romantic souls out there wasn't enough to "cure"him. Its a sad story overall & ppl will never fully like it & accept it the way it is. I missed your thoughts on the stories in my dash. Anyway cheers!!!
shit i just wrote 4 dope paragraphs and accidentally deleted them. attempt #2.
I remember after the ONS having all these complicated thoughts and feelings, like I had been validated on one hand but disappointed on the other. Because I was still rooting for them as a couple even while being skeptical about their compatibility and healthiness, and I was trying to desperately to grasp onto the belief that Aaron was different, and special, and that not only had Robert changed for him, he changed because of him, was better overall, had learned to lead a life that was less manipulative, less toxic, etc., even independent of whether Aaron was around. But unfortunately Robert was (is!) still stuck in a phase where he depended on Aaron to be his savior, the cure to his flaws, and that wasn’t fair on Aaron. He didn’t deserve it and he especially didn’t need that burden. He wasn’t qualified to be that and tbh no romantic partner should be!
And I think that’s where the audience (me included) got lost amidst this narrative that we might have been projecting onto their story despite the show not entirely intending it (though they did muddle it with stuff like ssw and the wedding, which imo was done as audience appeasement). The cheating reveal made that a ton worse, because Aaron explicitly thought he should accept it, that him believing he deserved better was wrong (tying back into his traumas) ... and the shot of Robert cradling into Aaron says it all, really, about the ‘lost boy’ angle. Robert sees himself that way and he’s gotten Aaron to buy into it to an extent, too. He’d gotten Aaron backed into a corner where he believed this was something he had to forgive. And it took him months of trying to convince himself that was true until he was finally able to cut it off and face reality.
The show took Robert on this arc from ‘15-’16 where he found acceptance, someone he was deeply attracted to, and began to understand himself, by virtue of being with Aaron. He had a pseudo-redemption in chicken pt. 2 and the abuse sl merely so that the audience could stomach him being put back into a less objectively villainous light. But the purpose of all that - as *I* see it -- was not to write him as gearing up for a loving romance. It wasn’t to show that the two of them were destined for each other, and that they fixed each other. If anything, the opposite -- it was to show that even though they wanted to be together, they could still be dysfunctional, unhappy, treat each other like shit, and possibly even become worse versions of themselves in some ways. To me the most delusional way to think they would work as it stands would be to believe that the ~majesty/divinity of their love automatically solves or counteracts the parts that make them toxic, and justifies everything they’ve put each other through. It doesn’t have to be like that, and imo it’s more interesting to see it for what it is, as blunt and unromantic as it may be. I have a lot more fun watching them as two separate characters working toward/failing at partnership, rather than a whole that’s more important than the sum of its parts.
