Three Person Poly Relationship Made Up Of Two People Who Are Already Dating Trying To Coax Someone With

a few notes on jess and roany in "glory road" :

when i first watched this episode i was impressed by the rather intense and kind of strange storyline for jess, especially considering it was only the second episode of the series! andy calls it like he sees it - and he's right - jess is very afraid of roany, so much so that he is willing to leave Sherman ranch peaceably (rather than say, physically fight roany to get him to leave) i think its quite interesting that the show allows jess to be "afraid" so early on (or at all, honestly) considering that he is, ostensibly, a fairly macho gunslinger-figure, and this is a western tv show made in the fifties (there is a bit of the 1950s "sad-boy" type à la james dean about jess, so perhaps the writers were tapping into that style of on-screen masculinity?)

anyway, we quickly learn exactly why jess is so afraid of roany - he is a reckless tyrant, extremely emotionally unstable, and prone to brutally violent outbursts - the show literally compares him to a rabid animal, seemingly docile one moment and vicious the next

but it's the tone of roany's interactions with jess that really get under my skin...there's a layer of uncomfortableness there that suggests jess is afraid of more than plain old physical violence from roany...

for instance, the bar scene - why have the writers phrased roany's threat in such a way? "almost anything" what, exactly, would jess be willing to do for roany to repay his debt? perform violent acts for him? fight or kill a man? or perhaps something else entirely, as the writers (and jess' stricken expression) seems to be insinuating here - something completely unmentionable

but just in case all that subtext wasn't unsettling enough, later in the episode roany even goes into jess' hotel room in the middle of the night to threaten him some more! jess is literally in bed, vulnerable, being coerced into doing something he doesn't want to do - going beyond the textual reasons for roany's late-night visit, the sexual overtones of this scene are pretty obvious (and again, placing jess in such a vulnerable position so early in the show is such a wildly interesting choice, i would love to know what influenced the writers to go this direction with his character)

+bonus for @harper-sherman, jess looking longingly at slim (and his lips) in the first pic :)

brokeback mountain (2005)

Hi this photo has been making me incredibly unwell for the past 7 hours

Thinking about Little Joe, who is left handed and a bit wild, who’s always had darkness underneath the gentleness, and Tirza, the Romani girl from 1x31 who was convinced she was bewitched. Thinking about how Joe could have very well ended up in her position if he’d grown up the way she had, if he’d been on the move all the time with people constantly assuming the worst about him, if he’d been poor and needy, if his sense of justice hadn’t had money to back it up. Thinking about how he probably saw a bit of himself in her, how people probably talked about Ben’s dead wives and the Cartwright Curse, how Joe is so much more sensitive than the others and he had to fight not to believe in it, about how he wanted to save her because a small part of him knew what it was like to be her.

Paul and David, Starsky and Hutch

Forever

feeling nostalgic and sad

Hate hate hate that Jess is painted as innocent of all charges as the show goes on. I don’t want him to be clean! I want the outlaw who dragged himself out of the mud! I want a man who did his time and still has grace!

Mort: Wait until Slim gets back before you do the thing Jess!

Jess: Can’t! Tell Slim I’m gonna do the thing!

Mort: 😧