Sorry if this is annoying but i was going through the lovely writer tag and saw a lot of your posts on this series. So I just wanted to ask, how do you really feel about Nubsib?
In the initial episodes, I though he was so obsessive and stalkerish, the typical "top" in all BLs and I honestly thought that the way this series was behaving "woke" for a lot of things, it'd be like mid-way through, Gene would understand his manipulative behaviour and shit would go down, and then we'll get some REAL character development for Sib.
Whoosh that didn't happen. After Sib's past and true intentions were revealed, Gene DID hold him accountable but Sib???? Never actually apologized to him?
I dunno, i just, maybe expected more from this series? Like yeah, the coming out to parents stuff was handled quite well but Nubsib's character still irks me the wrong way(even in ep10 when he asked Gene to not go to the beach without him. Bruh.) Especially when the fandom puts him on a pedestal asking for consent before kissing him, like that's the bare minimum? He's still manipulative and controlling? I'm- woah i just realised i have a lot of feelings about this💀💀💀🖐🏼
Anyways!! What do you think about Sib?
Sorry for the long rant!! if you don't want to answer it's completely fine, pls don't feel pressured🥺
I don’t necessarily agree, but I don’t think this is annoying at all. I’ll address your points one by one.
First, Nubsib did apologize to Gene explicitly in Episode 8, when he kissed his cheek over the balcony.
Second, I think where our opinions diverge is that I see and accept that Nubsib is a dark character and it’s actually something that I like about him which you can probably tell if you go through my meta tag.
On the fandom putting him on a pedestal and being a little too defensive about his manipulative and controlling behaviour: I actually agree. I think the fandom sometimes does too much to white-wash him because they want to defend him against people who call him creepy or whatever, when actually, Nubsib being a dark romantic lead that we’re seeing through rose coloured glasses is the most interesting thing about him and the show. I think people should embrace these things about him while also leaving room to praise him on the good traits he already has (caring a lot about consent) and the good traits he develops (apologizing to Gene).
Just to list some of his “bad” traits that I personally like because I think they make him interesting, but a lot of people like to ignore:
Nubsib is very selfish. He approached Gene because he wanted him, not for some bigger altruistic reason. He’s also so selfish that he knew what he was doing to Gene was wrong but he didn’t care because “the ends justify the means”. He was prepared to apologize to Gene from the start because he always knew he was wrong. Building on his selfishness, Nubsib doesn’t initally care about how his actions affect Gene, the show, the crew members, or anyone. His biggest concern is keeping Gene with him. He doesn’t generally care about others.
Nubsib is arrogant. He thought that he could protect Gene from everything and that there was no problem he couldn’t solve, which was why he was stupid enough to allow him and Gene to get caught on the beach. If Nubsib wasn’t so arrogant about his abilities, they wouldn’t have gotten caught. He also only thought about legality of dating Gene, he didn’t think about the human element which would be the fans and Gene.
Nubsib can be very patriarchal and infantilizing with how he treats Gene. We see this the most when he withholds the truth about Aey from Gene, and he expects Gene to take his word at face value while Nubsib takes care of it. Similar to the way parents want to keep their children ignorant while they deal with all the big problems, Nubsib also wants to take care of problems without Gene knowing about them. This ties into how arrogant he can be.
Nubsib’s manipulativeness is pretty self-explanatory. He thinks 5 years in advance and for most situations, has worked out every possible outcome based on his intelligence and knowledge of the person (barring him and Gene being outed). He knows how to manipulate people using his appearance, which we can assume is a side effect of him being a businessman and being treated poorly as a child, by everyone excluding Gene.
And yet, despite every negative thing I wrote, I love all those things about Nubsib. I think it makes him a compelling male lead in a series about how all BL actors wear masks because he’s not just wearing masks to do fanservice. He wore a mask to get our main character! I also think he’s a good narrative foil for Gene who is the antithesis of Nubsib. Gene is selfless, Gene is soft-hearted, Gene is honest, and Gene assumes everyone is being just as honest as he is because he’s naive.
I don’t think Gene’s soft-hearted and honest character would be as highlighted if Nubsib wasn’t as dark as he is.
