#( for once can my fictional spouses live til the end... FOR ONCE!? )

[icepandawarrior]

Brooooo, why did Capcom make Luis so damn fine? Like every scene he's in makes my heart flutter and doooooon't get me started on the look he gives you in the shooting range...

[maryofone]

Til Death

I assume most people like to watch crime shows. I’ve never personally been a huge fan of fictional crime shows like CSI or Law & Order, but the true crime shit is my jam. I think most people would agree that true stories about horrific fatal events are far superior to the pretend ones.

I like to consider myself a morbid person. I don’t bring a dark energy to the room or anything, but I think about death a LOT. The reality of death; the potential for death; the inevitability of death. I never get tired of thinking about that shit. Not necessarily because it’s like a fun pastime, I just have to think about death because the chilling reality of it forces me too. I honestly don’t understand how people can walk this earth and not think about death several times a day.

So I get down with true crime shows, because they can get pretty morbid. The shit we humans do to each other is fucking amazing. Amazing in a horrible, horrible way. And yet, there’s something cathartic about watching shows about murder. Why does it hit such a satisfying nerve to hear a story about some guy stabbing his neighbour to death, or a body being found in a Walmart parking lot? Why do we crave stories like that? It’s partially Dateline’s fault but I also think it’s natural for us ignorant humans to be fascinated by the one thing we can’t really explain or rationalize: death. Especially death that’s brought upon by another person.

I realize I’m stating the obvious here, by stating that true crime shows are the best morbid medicine for an overactive brain. Everyone knows that. What I really want to do is make an admission about the specific kind of true crime shows I watch; specifically which kind of murder I want to hear about. 100% of the time, if I’ve got a hankering for a Dateline murder story, all I ever want to hear about are romantic relationships that end in death.

I could watch shows about spouses killing each other all day. I don’t, because I have a job and a life and a balanced perspective on how I should be spending my time, but in theory I could spend all day watching shows about spouses killing each other and I would not get bored. The dynamic is just endlessly fascinating to me. Any story that starts with two people falling in love and ends with one of them extinguishing the other person’s existence I find fucking riveting.

I’m not exactly surprised that spouses end up killing each other. I had a psychiatrist once warn me that “triangular relationships lead to homicide and suicide” and then he drew me a diagram about it. His point was not to fuck around with adultery, because matters of the heart – when mixed with matters of betrayal and hurt feelings – can lead to actual murder if you’re not lucky. He was essentially telling me that a potential side effect of my behaviour was death at the hands of another person. Feelings can fucking KILL. So after that little chat and the years of true crime shows I’ve watched, I see how spouse-killers aren’t the most shocking reality in the world.

Anytime I see a true crime show about a marriage that went sideways, I gobble that shit up on the spot. It’s so interesting to me hearing how the woman will snap and pull the trigger; or how the man will plot for six months to push her down the stairs. I never get tired of analyzing what their state of mind must have been; in the years leading up to it; in the moment itself; and then after it’s over. Often these people are entirely non-violent in every other aspect of their lives but they just couldn’t handle another second of their honey’s bullshit. What must it be like to be in the mind of a person like that? It’s like there are all of these totally normal people walking this earth, but lurking deep under the surface is a murderous monster, and the only thing that will bring it out is marriage.