#i reworded part of this post due to someone misinterprating what i meant.

[daevite]

ugh okay viewing romantic relationships as cheaper than friendship in a piece of media is just as bad as viewing the former is more significant or important than the latter. the conventional (healthy) model of a romantic relationship is just a close friendship with extra steps. really the only difference between whether two people are “involved” vs. “just” friends is how those two people choose to define their connection with each other because it’s not some clearly-defined binary with hard rules that everyone must conform to. thinking about this because of what some people say about malevolent and people interpreting arthur’s feelings towards john or vice versa as romantic vs. platonic (despite that their relationship is not romantic) and the reason it comes across as ambiguous within the narrative (aside from arthur answering “i suppose so” when the king asks him if he loves john) is because at the end of the day, the line between being close friends with someone vs. being in a romantic relationship with them is incredibly thin and that line is whether the individuals being discussed define it as romantic or not (or in this case, the author, because characters in a story do not have agency.)

basically the difference between romantic and platonic love is arbitrary/socioculturally determined rather than being something objective and defining love between two people as one or the other doesn’t make their actual connection weaker or less interesting or less valuable. that’s a weird way to think about human relationships and a weird way to think about something related to the subject of two same-gender characters in media because as a general rule making two male characters (or in john’s case, male-coded) friends isn’t more revolutionary than making them relationship partners in the cultural context of a homophobic society. that isn’t to say guthrie is homophobic for that decision (he’s obviously not against their relationship being interpreted as romantic despite it not being canon) but fans acting as if it’s a novel thing is tone-deaf to how relationships between men in fictional stories are historically and presently betrayed (a handful of podcasts featuring m/m relationships doesn’t change that we live in a homophobic society where the dominant relationships portrayed between men are...friendships!)

with all that in mind, when it comes to a story like malevolent, i’d say whether arthur’s feelings for john or vice versa are romantic or platonic shouldn’t really matter, lol. there is no actual difference between romantic and platonic love beyond sociocultural stereotypes and ideals (that are malleable). arthur loves john. he said as much. and in the context of the story i’d say it’s something outside the realm of romantic or platonic altogether lmao.