This Is Just Another Proof That Macdennis Totally Banged And Glob Is In On It. There's NO Reason For

the holy trinity

Dennis Reynolds | Glenn Howerton

I have so many ideas for how they could implement Mac's sexuality into storylines seeing as we haven't really seen him with any sort of partner/ how he interacts with men romantically.

I think it'd be interesting to see Mac start to date a guy that Mac really wants to like, but the guy just isn't as badass as Mac. Mac's new boyfriend likes going on dates to Color Me Mine and wine tasting and Mac finds these types of dates painfully boring. He feels like his masculinity is being stripped away from him by going on such "girly" dates, but he really likes the guy so he continues on with it. Mac would have this whole struggle throughout the episode, worrying his sexuality is causing him to go soft, and he doesn’t wanna be any less of a badass just because he’s gay.

(Obviously, it’s stupid to stereotype his boyfriend as being non-masculine for wanting to go on dates that aren’t fueled by testosterone, which is sort of the whole commentary of the episode.)

Mac gets tickets for him and his boyfriend to go to a monster truck rally as it's something Mac actually wants to do and he hopes his boyfriend would try doing something Mac likes for once, but his boyfriend declines, saying that kind of stuff just isn't fun to him. Mac loses his temper and goes off about how he's been doing stuff he doesn't think is fun this entire time.

The pair end up breaking up because neither is willing to try new things for the other, which results in Mac coming home sullenly. When Mac comes through the door, Dennis asks why he looks so glum. Mac doesn't mention the breakup, but he does mention he has an extra ticket to the monster truck rally. Dennis excitedly asks, unprompted, if he can come to the rally with Mac. Mac just smiles.

it fascinates me how fundamentally similar dennis' relationship with mac is to his relationship with dee. not necessarily how mac and dee respectively view him, but the ways that he views both of them are so incredibly similar to each other it's kind of insane. it all comes down to dennis needing to be needed and being afraid to relinquish his grip on two people that, at one point or another, have come to terms with the fact that they might be better without him (or at least without him as a centerpoint in their life). there are a lot of examples of this but the one that sticks out to me the most is the direct parallels between FVR & the gang broke dee. for example:

in the gang broke dee, dennis can't stand to see his sister succeeding without him, so he tries to pair her up with a man to settle down with. in his words, this is in order to "take [her] off of our hands forever." his clearer-than-day reason for doing this is less about actually removing dee from his life (however much he pretends to idealise this) and more about keeping her under his control. he's forcing her into a decision that he approves of rather than doing what she wants—thus taking back an independence that dennis tries his best to hold over her head. he insults her attempts at pursuing her dream career—not because he can't stand to see her succeed, but because he can't bear the idea of her succeeding without him. and this is a common theme throughout the show—dee's success is reliant on her joint success with dennis (which is something i have a lot to say about by itself, but that's for another day). her independence inevitably results in ridicule and failure, often because of dennis' manipulation. he tries his best to keep her reliant on him and convinces her she doesn't have anything without him, because he doesn't know what he would do if she realized he's only her brother. this is pretty obvious throughout the show if not explicitly stated—and, formulaically, dennis usually wins whatever mind game they're playing with one another.

but in TGBD, he loses. in his attempts to make her stay he only pushes her away from him further and inevitably ends up groveling at her feet. we don't see this specific sort of desperation from dennis a lot, but when dee is getting on the plane, he genuinely admits that he was wrong and that he loves her. he knows he's about to lose her and he has to compensate for it. it's a rare moment of vulnerability for him.

all that said, when it comes to dennis, it's impossible to extricate the genuine from the manipulative. he's such an untrustworthy person that he's almost manipulating dee without trying to despite the truth in his words. when he tells her "you can succeed, you will be a star" he isn't lying, necessarily, but the rest of his confession says it all: "you have to take me." the unspoken goes: you can succeed, as long as i'm there. you can follow your dreams, but you can't catch them without me. and because he can't just admit to needing her, this is what he resorts to instead. the truth is that dennis needs dee in his life so badly that he would practically have nothing without her, but the most obvious way that this manifests is that he needs to be needed by her. to be relied on, in dennis' understanding, is to be loved.

that was very long and convoluted but unfortunately i'm not done. i feel like dennis' relationship to mac in frank vs. russia is less explicitly spelled out for us than in TGBD, but there are a shit ton of similarities between the two. to begin with, it's pretty well established by like s15-16 that mac's crush on dennis has died down, and in FVR he's actively moved on and is dating other people. dennis should, supposedly, be fine with this, based on how he's previously reacted to mac's romantic advances. he was uncomfortable with mac even touching him for a while, and mac continued to violate that boundary—it would make sense for dennis to be pleased that he's moved on. except that he obviously isn't. when it's finally revealed that dennis is johnny, he says he's only doing it to get mac out of the apartment, but this is an almost embarrassingly seethrough lie because. dude. there are other ways to get your roommate to leave the house than sexually manipulating him via remote controlled anal beads.

johnny is a mask dennis wears in order to keep mac directly in his orbit—to prevent him from moving on and finding love with someone else. dennis may not be ready to address the fact that he has any kind of feelings for mac that aren't anger and hatred—at least, not as himself—but that doesn't stop him from manipulating mac into staying in love with him. not only this, but johnny allows dennis to be vulnerable through text in ways he can't possibly be on the regular; he's afraid to be. we've never seen johnny and mac's texts but there was obviously a level of intimacy there that mac and dennis have never properly shared. through johnny, dennis is able to confront how he feels about mac without actually having to address it as the truth. once again, his manipulation and genuineness are inextricable from each other. it's impossible to tell where the love begins. sound familiar?

that's what it all comes down to. dennis treats the people he loves the most in all of the same ways: he tries to control them. when he has them, he pushes them away, towards other people, but when they actually relent he panics and tries to reel them back in. he idealises a life without them but in reality he'd probably crumble. so he attempts to prevent them from finding other relationships or any viable options apart from staying with him. it's textbook abuse and manipulation, obviously; something being "out of love" doesn't mean that it's good or even justifiable in any way. but it does come from a genuine fear of being rejected by dee and mac—the two people he is actually afraid of losing. dennis is too afraid to treat them with kindness because that would mean opening up his heart and running the risk of getting hurt, but he's afraid to let them go because without them, what does he have? the only option in his mind is cruelty. it's a strange kind of symbiotic relationship, this weird mix of mutualism and parasitism, where clinging on is the only option.

dream macdennis reveal would be mac wearing a "kiss me i'm irish" shirt and then dennis does

perhaps the real macdennis canon was the friends we made along the way

I love the idea that Mac and Charlie had to take these pictures of each other and were probably hyping each other up about how badass they looked

maybe i would have forgiven them more for mac inexplicably not having a beard in season 16 if dennis inexplicably DID have a beard

Probably been said before but what if dennis did use Johnny to get Mac out of the apartment because that was when he was bringing home the guys he had gotten with the S.I.N.N.E.D. system and he knew Mac would be weird about it so he sends him to the motel until he’s done his thing, but also discreetly picks up his phone because using the beads during that time maybe gives him the illusion that when he’s having sex with some other faceless nameless guy he’s actually having sex with Mac but he can’t *actually* have sex with Mac because what if that messes up the delicate balance they currently have, or what if it’s then suddenly too real, all these random people you know it doesn’t mean anything, anyone can get a guy to bang them once, but with Mac it would mean something, something he’s not quite ready to face, something they’re both maybe not ready to face, because Mac’s moved on and Dennis is just catching up, so he hides behind Johnny and the beads, and when the truth comes out, Mac hides behind them just as much because the connection they have through the phone, through the app, it’s safe, for both Mac and Dennis, who’ve never had a genuine relationship, who are afraid to take the leap into one, but it’s still not real and at the end of Frank vs. Russia and continuing through to Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day, Dennis starts to realize he wants it to be... he wants a real connection, he wants to take that leap because he knows Mac will be there to catch him if he falls, but then Mac’s not. Two ships passing in the night or whatever.

my grand hope is still for dennis to confess his feelings to mac so vaguely that mac thinks dennis wants to convert to catholicism instead. and dennis just has to go with it bc it's too embarrassing to explain