#sometimes a campy shakespeare adaptation about gay assassins is also a story about consent and coercion in all their myriad forms

[deliriousblue]

there's so much in bison's reaction to kant in the caddie scene. we don't see kant explain his plan in detail before putting it into action — there isn't time — but it becomes clear very quickly, and really how many options were there anyway?

but seeing kant perform a point for point mimicry of the way he hit on bison that first night at the bowling alley — if not quite as overtly sexualized, of course explainable by any number of contextual distinctions — what is even going through bison’s mind there. i think the amount of jealousy probably is not literally zero but i don’t think that’s really the center of it.

especially when the show’s literal opening scene was bison on a honeypot mission, which he later tells fadel explicitly he doesn’t want to repeat. bison watching kant flirt with someone else the exact same way he flirted with bison, bison watching kant do a honeypot (adjacent?) mission same as bison has been ordered to, bison watching kant do all of this for bison…..so much wrapped up in there all at once.

and then the scene in the pool. bison opening with a comment on kant always being charming and kant teasingly asking if he’s jealous (always going for deflection!). again i do think there’s any jealousy involved there but it isn't about just that. it's about bison knowing exactly what these kinds of missions are like, knowing exactly what lilly is asking, realizing that this cannot be the first time kant has done this. and kant saying ‘our next job will be easy’ in light of all that….

thinking too about how this time it isn't just kant pushing his own desires and preferences to the side but explicitly lilly as well. (i am once again asking. does bison even know that that night in the bowling alley happened before kant had his marching orders? does it matter?)

and so bison gives kant an out; says he and fadel can manage from there. and i think kant's answer is in some sense just as predetermined as anything else he's done (he's already told bison that as far as he's concerned whatever happens to them they'll do together) but it matters that this time it's his choice and it matters that bison cares about giving it to him.