I can't believe you're reblogging kings in 2019 - and who is the most compelling character if not sebastian stan?
oh man okay first of all i think it sucks that it only got one season, because you’ve got all these really good characters that aren’t super compelling yet because they haven’t gone through their character development and jack/jonathan is definitely a character that suffers from this. i don’t know how they were going to dramatise the rest of the books of samuel, but i’m confident we would have gotten to the whole - “he loved him as his own soul” - part, and that would have been so good. i really wanted a whole season dedicated to jack coming to terms with the fact that he’s not god’s chosen, and then following the one who is. and we started to see the beginnings of that!!! when he saved david’s life at the trial, unprompted, and unexpectedly, that was good. i wanted a whole season of that and his bitter self loathing and bitter hatred of david being deconstructed. but we didn’t get that, so instead, his scenes become. difficult to watch and enjoy.
as to who is compelling: silas. and more interesting than just silas/saul himself is his relationships with other people. silas and david were my favourite parts of the series, after rewatching it. they both just do such a good job of being weirdly devoted to each other, to the crown, to god, it’s such a messy and twisted dynamic. every single time david professed his loyalty to silas - even facing the overwhelming evidence of silas losing favour with god, of silas being genuinely power mad and evil - i genuinely believed it. but silas and rose were also great, because i absolutely live for that whole political marriage of the visionary and the architect, and rose’s absolute devotion to her family above all else. shiloh was going down in flames and she sat patiently through it all, absolutely calm in the belief that silas would be coming back, and that she could fix everything, and she did!!! and then silas and thomasina in the most archetypal king/lionheart dynamic in the whole god damn show.
anyway. it’s a good show. i’m still bitter about it being cancelled ten years later.
Note about Formatting: Because these conversations are meant to be anonymous I used special formatting here. The messages in bold and with one > are from me, while the normal ones with >> are from the other person.
More importantly, do not take these as any kind of proof as anything, or even as true statements. They are speculative thoughts where my main method is referencing back to old experiences with him and making comparisons. These are being posted as evidence of my thought processes evolving with research.
[Transcript 1 - Conversation from before I had released anything, one where I explained my history and what I knew to be true.
This is the only transcript where my disclaimer at the top of the page is NOT APPLICABLE.]
>> i love how needlessly complex he makes this all
>> by love i mean "am annoyed by"
>> i just don't get people who don't address their issues i guess. probably because mine are always in my face and i would rather work through them than pretend nothing is wrong
>Yeah, there was a lot of sounding off from me about that when most of the action happened. It was so incredibly clear to me that I couldn't understand WHY the obvious wasn't happening until I concluded much later that it came down to being spineless and possibly ironically trying not to hurt me. Which ended up backfiring and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy lol :'>
>>i mean i get anxiety
>>but there is a difference between fear and just plain ol' cowardice
>Yeah, exactly. I've had anxiety my whole life, it was obviously REALLY BAD during that time and I WAS KEEPING IT TOGETHER THE BEST. Like I could even remove myself from the situation mentally and try to explain and decipher out various things that were happening and just wtf.
>Of course then I got the apology in July 2013 and that led to a scenario where we were talking on a nightly basis from about 10 PM to whenever one of us would pass out. From the get-go he said that he wasn't interested in dating because he wanted to work on his issues. That ended up resulting in him getting surprisingly touchy at even the TINIEST perception that things were headed in that direction, even though he'd often end up jumpstarting situations that caused that to happen.
>>uhhHHHHHHHH LIKE WHAT
>>flirts
>>IT'S YOUR FAULT
>>HOW DARE YOU
>>flirts again
>>FUCK
>>SHIT
>The best part is that I'd usually just deadpan point this out, especially since I wasn't trying to be sly about a damn thing. I think I even stated that I wasn't going to be wanting a relationship but that didn't mean I was going to be engaging in self-censorship because there's no real point in doing so w/ him
>>christ
>>like im just like ??? why
>Yeahh pretty much. It's always been so incredibly beyond me why he feels this constant need to try burying his feelings toward me. Like, okay, sure some of the worse experiences created negative feelings but uh. That doesn't exactly cancel out the positive ones and probably means you should try working through the negative ones. Especially since YOU KEEP COMING BACK. JUST LIKE I SAID YOU WOULD.
>I mean jeez if he's gonna just...not being able to stop having feelings for me we'd all rest much much easier if he'd be honest about it instead of dancing around the issue and hiding and then doing all this shit to me.The closest he came to actually trying to do something that was...idk if it's 'making up for' or what relating to what he did was being a constant and strong support while I was living with my mom. [Note: Hadn't researched enough to realize that I was a target of kind behavior not motivated by guilt]
>[Bringing out the truth is] the only way [resolving this] will be here, and that might be a huge factor in my decision to go as public with this all as I will. You can't really be secure when all the skeletons in your closet are brought out like that.
>I wouldn't be surprised by what ends up happening here. But really, my ultimate goal is just to get him to quit fucking around and come to terms with reality. The reality [of him loving me], that that's what drove him to completely fuck me up in ways that will take years of recovery, and that continually running away or thinking "These feelings of mine just hurt Meriel so I should try to destroy them and force us to stay apart" is the whole. fucking. problem.
[Removed: Discussion of what happened between Jon and I in 2011, specifically events that I won't make public under any circumstances SO SORRY!]
>I've had [stalking] happen several times and it's always been fucked up (Though with Syrg it's entirely possible the incidents were fabricated which is a whole new level of fucked)
[More private details removed]
>Ahah, that somehow reminded me that one of Jon's go-tos when it's breakup time again is that I'm too negative and toxic a person and just...I know sometimes I have moments but is it REALLY fair to be saying that to someone who's getting out of living with constant abuse and tends to complain about it? [Note: I hadn't yet recognized the other possibility of those comments referring to a facet of my self-protecting actions.]
>It seems to just be people interpreting things how they want instead of for what they actually *are*, and with Jon it reflected that he wanted to see me get back to being the energetic kind of person I had been before....
[Removed: mentioning an 'erotic fiction' incident - this will be in the email archives.]
>it was a situation where....okay, a little backstory: I have extensive scarring on my arms and upper legs from medical treatments and I used to have to use lotion and stuff on them to try to make it not so noticeable. I was trying to explain this and realized how questionable it sounded, immediately said something to de-escalate it along the lines of "Well I'm doing this for medical purposes which makes it less erotic". His response is to say that anything can be made erotic, I go "Okay prove it". .....So I get a few sentences in response involving *me* going from routine medical maintenance to....other things....
cue me being completely floored that he had the balls to describe something like that, especially because if someone says something like 'prove you can make anything erotic' you'd think they'd just twist a plain sentence into innuendo or something!
>>JESUS
>>LIKE
>>THATS KIND OF HILARIOUS TBH
>SEE I TOLD YOU also if it was literally anyone else my first response would've been "You were jerking it to the thought of that while you were writing weren't you"
>(The better part was that shortly afterward I complained about some people being loud in the parking lot, he goes "Ruining the mood?" cue more of me blushing and going "WHAT WHAT MOOD" and getting a "Nice Try :P" in response. :|)
>>PFFFFFFF LIKE WAY TO MAKE IT OBVIOUS DUDE
>YEAH, JUST A LITTLE BIT. But if that didn't do it the mentions sprinkled throughout our emails of me being 'cute' and whatnot would've hammered some point home. And at least his wonderfully subtle attempts to get in my pants were a good distraction from my mom being absolutely horrible (And obviously I was more than okay with it, I'm about 1000% beyond attraction denial)
>>hey at least youre honest with yourself
>>how obnoxious tho like
>>>flirts >BUT I DONT WANNA BE WITH YOU
>>like
>>chill
>Yeaaah. I was pretty upfront about "I still feel exactly the same about you but I don't want to have a serious relationship right now because there's a lot of bullshit going down and I want to get to a more stable position before taking a major step like that"
>And hey, I did get out of living with my mom when she abandoned me at my grandparents and then totaled her car that same night and it turns out there's a warrant for her arrest out because they found prescription drugs she shouldn't have had in the car
[Conversation winds down through momchat, so there's nothing more to the topic at hand.]
[Transcript 2: Conversation taking place not long after Jon had made comments to someone asking his thoughts on what I said.]
>>when abused people retaliate, abusers get scared at the thought of losing their power
>>ironically a lot of abusers are fucking cowards
>>they go with either or. if a full out attack doesnt work, they just observe. weird to see him doing that first
>If all my ideas have been correct until this point, it could be explained by actually loving me, since love and abuse aren't necessarily incompatible.I kinda went with the assumption that the gentle treatment of his response to being told about it wasn't for anyone else's benefit but was to instead be convincing toward *me*. Because if I can be convinced that being in contact with him is safe then that means no jeopardizing the future of the relationship. Which then ties into him never blocking me on my old skype - because he fully intended to come back.
>It makes sense, especially since he specifically said "loop" when describing our relationship.
>It was something I pointed out in 2011. There was a seemingly repetitive loop of us coming together, getting very close, then having conflict override everything and break it apart. Cue cooldown period where we're apart and then it comes back together. Kinda like the cycle of abuse itself.
>>yeah, like it's weird how intentional this all seems
to make you feel like you can't escape
>Yeah. I don't necessarily think it's a malicious action though. I'm unsure on how twisted it might be because the real intent might not be to trap me at all.
....it might be to make sure he doesn't have to stay without me.
>>i think it's like he can't figure out how to deal with his feelings so he makes the same decisions in a loop
>>i wouldnt be surprised if he was really upset. i mean, i dont feel bad for him, he just. kinda. well you know
>I don't think it's at all an angry kind of upset. And it does bump up the importance of me writing out my reasons for doing this and my win conditions for this. ...but yeah, considering his reaction this entire time has been to run away, that could nail it.
>>well i didnt mean angry upset either, probably distressed, but yeah--running only gets you so far, and tbh if he faced this much sooner this wouldnt have had to happen
>It might be a fear thing all things considered, like when you lie about something and then have to build on that and build and build and then suddenly you're drowning and it seems like continuing the lie is more vital than the potential fallout of honesty.
>>eventually the walls will cave in though
>My intention was to make this be what did that. In 2011, I started having to accept that simply because of who I am and what role I play, it's impossible for me to make that happen on my own.
I tried to encourage him to stop being afraid and stop hiding away and it just kind of fell apart because I'm the reason for so much conflict in the first place despite never really doing much of significance myself.
It might also...put into perspective a couple lines from an old email....
[Removed: email transcript. It was, specifically, the exchange where I called him a good boyfriend though we weren't dating.]
>When I said that it was because it was pretty honest. He tried to downplay it, but through that summer he was more protective and supportive and kind than even the closest friends I had at that time.
I didn't think that that part would be something I'd be screencapping and preparing but since this perspective makes that necessary it'll happen.
>.....oh goddamnit ahahaa there was a part where, out of nowhere, he remembered and brought up a picture I had taken for him...
"Haha, you underestimate how much my fingers can talk, madam. :P" and out of context this was QUITE SOMETHING to read.
>>when someone is in love w/ u even if they deny it, you can never tell
>lmao it's....like, most of why I have trouble is because I spent so long with him in situations where he'd do things that were really fucking obvious...then realize what he was doing and start being a dick to cancel it out
[E-mail transcript start]
Meriel: Oh shush, or do I have to make you? :P
Jon: Make me, how?
[removed - me being dumb and flirty and focusing on mouth-related silencing and jfc I just made it sound so much worse. Fuck.]
Jon: Haha, you underestimate how much my fingers can talk, madam. :P
[E-mail transcript end]
>I was dealing with [abuse] so heavily at home and it could be argued that this was a point where he was not being abusive. at all. Also if I do shut down my knee-jerk reactions it makes me point out that I did this stuff....and I wasn't pushed away. No eye rolling or anything, like usual with him. No attempts to shut down and even GETTING RESPONSES.
It's...really shocking and weird, because even when things have been 'okay' in the past he's had a tendency to kinda shut it down? I didn't notice due to being 'in the moment' that the advances were not only accepted, but almost subtly *encouraged*
This was the time where he told me that he wasn't interested in dating at the moment and was pushing back when things seemed to be heading that way.
Though really that could have been a kind of distancing method...because if I got too close like that he wouldn't be able to continue to deny things to himself.
>If I were to just take snippets of the email exchanges from here and there it would most likely paint a clear picture of the truth. Even if he tries to deny it again it's not so easy to convince people when they have evidence...
I think this is going to lead to me creating a win condition...something that he can do that is sensible and, if done, could ultimately lead to a resolution. With this evidence it suddenly makes sense why staying away is a pointless action, and why staying close without action is equally pointless. Because no matter what, his feelings stay there. It's not possible to drown out or suppress something of this caliber, which leaves that he just has to accept things...
So I want it to go something like acknowledging the past and what needs to be changed, this time not as someone running away but as someone facing it. And the big part...it will have to be done *publicly* [Note: I haven't really said much to this effect this whole time because it's something that scares me in a weird way. I think I just get so scared of the prospect of rejection that I don't want any response, positive or negative, even though I'd be incredibly happy for a positive response. He's also admitted his problems to me privately already.]
>>because if other people know he can't exactly run away from it
>Yeah, exactly. And because just naturally he's really insecure in that area. If he were to do it on a public level that would also be showing that he's willing to face his fears/insecurities to improve things.
>>even if he's not "ready", will he ever be?
>Yeah, that's....that's one of the big issues.
[Removed: a transcript of an exchange between Jon and I. You don't need to know much other than what you can work out through the context of the rest of the conversation.]
>>I HAVE NO RESPONSE, DAMN
>ahaha I actually had forgotten the full context of him recalling that and taking a look at the tone....selling this whole "He's still very much interested" thing will be THE easiest thing I've done
>>yeah i agree he makes it so obvious
>as easy as it could be to try to push a lot [of this behavior] on Jon as negatives....it's little things like him not pushing back to my clinginess and accepting my sometimes very bizarre advances that spoke volumes about the fact that he was trying to change things, and quite possibly succeeding in some ways. Because aaa I have found some bits too that are me being overly clingy and insteadd of brushing it off or anything, he accepted it.
It got real obvious really fast that something that I had trouble with post-Syrg was lack of response from the other side. Keeping this in mind, Jon would go out of his way to tell me if there was a change that we wouldn't be able to talk on some given night and the exact reason why.
>This..is going to end up tying right the hell back into the "Jon is just very, very in love and unable to handle it" but....things only started going south once I started speaking to Syrg again. Notable is that the first night he was back in contact with me Syrg told me he was still in love with me.
>That ended up leading to me being able to resolve the Syrg shit.
[Transcript 3 - A conversation later on, taking place after I was worrying about having been followed on twitter by a friend of Jon's.
This conversation involves a heavy amount of me referencing past actions and behaviors and relying on the fact that very little seems to have changed at the most basic level.]
[Removed: Me talking about how I was developing an explanation based on something we all had already taken to heart from 2011: the idea that Jon's whole "pretend to hate me, then stop that but continue to be incredibly insecure about the idea of a romantic relationship with me" thing was the default for him, and that the 'get together, get close, break up' cycle was pushed on by this.
Also the fact that doing this callout could be a cause of upset because of how I was taking things into my own hands and the possibility of me disappearing forever was now there.]
>It might sound weird since hey, what about him always splitting off from me? That's true, but...he always comes back and it never sticks, right? And on top of that when he talked about it on twitter a couple days ago he specifically described our situation as a 'loop'. The acknowledgement of the cyclical nature of things might open up the possibilty that those times he walked out of my life....were never EVER intended to be permanent.
----
>and now there's the possibility of it actually being permanent.
>>I'd really think long and hard about letting him in again, based on what he's done every single time before.
>..........that's missing the point entirely.
>and the exact line of thinking that has caused this problem from the get-go actually.
>basically combining all the new evidence with the old and with taking closer looks at the old email archives, the driving force of everything could potentially be that Jon loves me.
>The problem here is that this is something he has awareness of but doesn't want to accept. Those attempts at rejecting those feelings are the basis of all the fucked up things he does. The abusive actions, the mixed messages at me.
>His main goal in this scenario is really simple: keep me close. Meaning the reason behind being a total fuckup when it comes to establishing a romantic relationship is because 1. that would mean accepting the intense feelings and 2. that would actually, in his eyes, create a risk. Because if a romantic relationship were to fail a second time it would make the possibility of me never coming back stronger.
>It's really flawed thinking, but it has to be for this to work
>>I guess that makes more sense actually
>This also means that each and every time he's walked out of *my* life, it was never intended to be permanent. He had every intention of coming back and knowing that I was a clingy person who would just be like "Oh okay!" and accept him back no problems meant that it was still a safe possibility.
>....Then I turned around and called him out. That safe possibility has been put into jeopardy because if I'm able to continue sticking to the idea "Jon is abusive and I should not stay near him" it would mean permanent separation. And that idea is causing turbulence and anxiety.
>....and this goes a long way in explaining why he seemed to not change or even be reluctant to. Because as long as very little to nothing changes, it means that the cyclical nature of our relationship will continue, there's no chance of separation.
>This is also why he didn't even block me or anything when he stopped speaking to me. Because he was going to come back, he KNEW he was going to come back, and an unintentional side effect was that because I have clingy tendencies I would continually do things to ensure my remaining loyalty.
>The info I'm digging up in emails is...I was actually impressively blind to things on his side at points. I've barely started but I've already collected solid evidence that there was attraction there. During a time when he was actively trying to *fight* that. Him getting touchy at the possible hints toward us dating again and generally rejecting the idea was because it'd open things up to a situation where things could end up going badly.
>This all means that "Stay apart" is an invalid option, because he won't be able to and it'd basically mean I'd have to choose between always taking him back because it's easier....or being stalked. But "stay together" is equally invalid because just going back without having a way to address the problem means things will continue to repeat. [Note: This is probably the most blatant example of my problem-solving being separate from my emotions. I didn't even factor in the idea of being in love with him here.]
>The most valid possibility, and the one I'm going for, is the option where he comes to terms with reality.
