đ + romance (@gothamlovepotion)
"..well. How quaint it is that you would ask this advice of me."
The corners of his mouth twitch, up and then down again, as he considers the question being asked of him with no small amount of annoyance. Now, there are several ways that one could answer this question, and a hundred or so different tones that could be taken.
The problem with trying to give advice, especially from the viewpoint from which Doctor Crane stands, requires a deeper understanding of it. That understanding requires a definition- knowing the shape of what you are trying to give advice on. And, in trying to draw lines around what romance is what what it isn't, one would have to simplify such a needlessly complicated concepts that is riddled with anomalies.
The mind is an inherently complicated thing already, and relationships even further. But there is something to say about the flawed nature of romance, by which humans will be reduced to something feral and illogical and still try to claim themselves as sane. At least the terrified and the furious and the depressed understand that such an overwhelming emotional response is indicative of something dangerous. The lovestruck, however, can barely manage that.
Director Jeremiah Arkham, for an example, is a man so completely consumed by love that it killed him to have that tie severed. A widow in every right, he obsesses over the life that he had lost, both in terms of his beloved and in terms of the man that he could have been with her. Jonathan never met Ingrid, and now, the only way that he might get acquainted is by staring at the stain that her love had left on the asylum's steps.
Does he still cry for her? the Scarecrow wonders, a thought that Jonathan Crane cannot help but chuckle at. Because of course he would. The Doctor has seen the Director staring a old photographs with a look so forlorn that the expression nearly etched itself into the crevices of the Director's face. There is a grief there, that is so deeply embedded in the fabric of his being- a grief that was cut and fitted and sewn in by the hands of love.
And now, the Director stands alone, with the obsessive need to hold and to cherish something long lost and the terror that he might lose everyone else. Is that romance?
When bright-eyed couples stare lovingly at each other with joined hands and promise to hold one another in sickness and in health, do they understand the tragedy that becomes inherent in it?
Doctor Fries and Doctor Quinzel are two more examples along that same vein. This overwhelming affection for another is the thing that brought them to ruin. That romance, the perception of it or the lack of it, is the thing that rearranges all three of these subjects' bones, bringing them from complete people to something that can only exist in the context of what they want. What they do not have. What they will debase themselves for, on the half-hearted promise of something they might someday get.
They say that something is valuable, because it ends. Something is beautiful, because it is temporary. Something is meaningful, because it one misses it when it is lost.
But, when the thing that you hold so tightly is made of knives and needles and shards of broken hearts, it becomes the very same thing that kills far more than the thing that heals. It becomes a monster so terrifying, because it lulls it's victims to sleep with the possibility of something more.
What a fascinating means of torturing oneself and another.
And, with all of this considered, Doctor Jonathan Crane sighs. The clock up on the wall clicks forward one second, as he levels the other with a unimpressed stare.
"I do not recommend it," the Doctor says.
