i feel like i finally need to address all the flirtatious exchanges between grendel and bigby in the game and how many of them aren’t even dependent on player choice, like. they’re just ingrained into the narrative whether you choose them or not. you CAN’T avoid the perception of grendel as a gay dude when literally, off the top of my head Alone :
- [ HIT GRENDEL ] - gren, batting his eyes and smirking up from between spread legs: “that all you got?”
- “anyone ever tell you you’ve got a big FUCKING mouth?” - “ohh, it gets bigger.”
- “how about i buy you a drink?”
- “lotta stools in this place.” - “yeah. but there’s only one right next to you.”
- [ POST-FUNERAL ] .. “what the fuck is wrong with you?” - “me? nothing’s wrong with me. i’m in a good goddamned mood -- you should take advantage.”
do i think bigby was coming from a place of genuine interest? probably not. i’m not trying to accuse the guy of anything major, but a lot of it seemed mocking at worst and severely ignorant at best, if not sincere. he seemed to think, initially, that he could coax gren into compliance by imposing on his space and implicating that he wanted to be around him / buy him a drink. when it didn’t work he grew pushier, more hostile, and more aggressive towards gren. i don’t like that behavior.
do i think gren was coming from a place of genuine interest? somewhat. i do think that he had a thing for bigby, silently, for awhile -- something that bigby might’ve been aware existed + attempted to take advantage of, as seen above, or that might’ve flown completely over his head, still leaving the prior discussion unfortunate but ultimately coincidental. i think gren’s attraction to bigby deteriorated over time after lily went missing, and that the remnants were quickly broken out of him when bigby maimed him. more than attraction, though, was grendel’s masochism and unhealthy belief that he deserved to be beaten like that -- having convinced himself he liked and wanted more of it as a poor method of coping with past abuse.
do i ship grenby? no, not anymore. i used to, but over time i’ve realized that the dynamic is inherently toxic & that there are very few ways grendel would be safe in that relationship, even if it was with a “good” iteration of bigby who didn’t take off his arm. grendel interprets bigby as someone who is willing to hurt him, and grendel hates himself, so he would nag and dig at bigby just to get that pain.
grendel is highly self destructive, bigby is highly destructive of others, they are both mentally ill and similarly afflicted with very different ( clashing ) ways of handling things, and bigby canonically seems to prey on gren particularly hard, whereas gren irks him specifically as a means of seeking punishment -- to the point where even the most morally upstanding version of bigby still expresses a strong desire to hurt and silence him.
yes, grendel is gay canonically throughout multiple sources of media and yes, bigby flirted with him -- but that’s NOT an opening for them to be a cutesy, immediately loving couple. that’s a fucking recipe for disaster.
there’s no way for grenby to work healthily without both individuals undergoing intensive fucking therapy and experiencing a complete overhaul of they way they both approach the world.
that’s the second biggest reason why you’ll never see grenby on this blog.
