robrence and graul are both cases of pretty boy shouldn’t be anywhere near this old nasty!! but the matter of predator/prey is not that simple, not based purely on that typical idea, graul’s exterior was built out of traditional shapes to try and prove them wrong with the interior, robrence flips the exterior, but neither audience really appreciated either, robert and paul were the ones liked and sympathised with more, both too pretty and perfect for lawrence and gray, both victims of them <- in a light way for robert, no one’s arguing abuse, it’s the godd poor robert having to face that!! and not the He ruined this guy’s life. i don’t think people think lawrence deserved his torture as much as gray, who was squarely predator to most, but that ofc makes the overlooking of robert’s abuse worse, like if you weren’t tapped in then wanting paul to ruin gray is normal, the supposed victim winning over his supposed predator, but why are we ever feeling bad for robert in this scenario, he’s clearly just treated like paul/victim bc of the visuals, it’s not even about abuse or predation, lawrence’s attraction to robert is disliked purely bc he’s old and robert’s hot and young, (graul have robron age gap but they’re a decade older and bose and villiers have about 13 years and villiers is b*lding so creates the same effect), people didn’t understand/care about paul’s love bc he’s too young and pretty and seemingly good to love gray, boxed into innocence by surface presentation, people don’t understand/care about robert’s abuse bc his youth and prettiness grant him fandom over lawrence’s age and patheticness, minimising/trivialising his evil, like it’s not even that there’s a belief that he can’t possibly be abusing him, it’s just that no one cares, robert is the one sympathised with, lawrence isn’t seen as a gay predator but in robert-centric conversations he’s at least rhetorically turned into one, becomes one in the periphery, while gray who does do traditional predatory things isn’t completely one bc paul was equally engaged in their attraction and love, but it’s treated as black and white, good vs evil, graul’s about the inescapability of these positions despite them not truly being filled, it being a tragedy that they can’t escape them, in action or in audience reception (paul suffers under gray’s behaviour, gray gets satisfyingly punished for his crimes), robrence is about these positions’ subversion and weaponisation by those who can escape (robert). the belief that young(/traditional prey) could never love old(/traditional predator) is something challenged by graul but unchallenged by robrence, but then robrence makes the young one the predator to challenge one of the reasons for that belief, saying that maybe young isn’t purely defined by their weakness and innocence, maybe old isn’t entirely defined by their power and creepiness, maybe other things can be going on, paul against tradition was in love with gray, robert against tradition was preying on that old man, but neither of those things are seen or cared for, victimhood here is about who looks it, sympathy is given to the prettiest no matter what, the traditional victim remaining so, and any physical romance in both cases gets treated as Disgusting bc why would they do that!!!!!!! get awayyyy eewwwww even though both paul and robert Chose to put themselves in bed with gray and lawrence, paul out of attraction and robert out of exploitation, paul not needing sympathy and robert not deserving it
