shaking back and forth in fetal position as i await the digital release so i can rewatch and piece together my spiralling thoughts abt hunter but FUCK "ryan is alone the same way hunter is when he dies" ... oh my godddddd . bc ryan whelan KNOWS he's gay, he's probably known he was gay since before he knew what gay even was but even till the end hunter, the boy ryan was actively hooking up with, cannot acknowledge the fact he is also queer. ryan and hunter grew up together, were intimate (even if in a brutal and abusive way) but hunter is in such vicious denial about his identity he leaves ryan totally stranded. "make what stop" is such a souless rejection of everything he and ryan shared. make what stop? there's nothing to stop. what we had was nothing. obviously this response comes from the fact hunter is dealing with so much of his own shit, but it's a rejection nonetheless. ++ the conversation he has with naim at the petrol station is so interesting bc he's lying!! all he does it throw things at me, that's all. but we SEE that's not true, bc we get a glimpse of hunter kissing the entity before it turns violent. hunter refuses to acknowledge the fact that he and ryan were intimate--and by extension, his queerness--to anyone, right up until he's killed.
given all that, it casts ryan's attachment to naim is such a heartbreaking light. not only does he like naim, he's also desperate for naim not to view what they have in the same way as hunter. even though the nature of his relationship with naim is different and he obviously holds stronger feelings towards him given that his entity takes naim's form, ryan still has the same fear that naim won't acknowledge what they have. it's ryan who is constantly pushing back on naim's defeatist attitude towards the entity. I don't want it to look like some other dickhead, I want it to look like you. just like "so there's nothing you like about this place?" ryan is constantly bidding for naim's validation that his feelings are returned. at the end of the film, naim's choice to leave bandee and be with ryan despite the entity is not only proving to ryan that naim values what they have together, but it's also a more general validation of naim and ryan's queer indentities. what they have is something. and the entity won't make "it" stop, because "it" is who they are.
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
