#you know the brainrot is crazy when you have essays on hand about it 😂

[strawberryclementine]

Hello. I saw that you’re intending to write a laloward fanfic. I’m Dying to know what your thoughts on them are. Either the general or elaborate ones are fine by me. Thank you so much, have a great day <3

Hey there! Ajshk yes I do have some seeds of ideas for a Laloward story!! but due to my tortoise speed it will be a while before I post any story about them. I have been churning my thoughts about these guys for a while though, and am very happy to share :D

Of course, Lalo and Howard don't have a canon relationship (beyond the 15s of screentime they share), so my interest in this duo lies in hypotheticals inspired by the sheer fun of comparing and contrasting them as foils. While they immediately seem thoroughly different from each other in terms of personality and the environment they live in, they have some commonalities that make you stop and think.

Here are two guys that live in completely different worlds (the cartel world and the legal world). In general, they would probably never meet, but based on the surface-level facts - Howard being a posh, upright lawyer and Lalo being a bloodthirsty, high-ranking cartel member - one must imagine they wouldn't exactly get along.

And yet they do have commonalities: they are each distinguished in the "realm" that they were born into/brought into by their family. They are clever and charismatic. Perhaps most notably, they are both very devoted to their families and what they do, and are willing to be ruthless (in their own special way) for that cause - that is, for the priorities instilled in them by their environment. They really are products of their environment, deliberately raised to become precisely who they ended up becoming - an upright lawyer and the bloodthirsty criminal.

Ironically and unfortunately, it is their extreme loyalty and conformity to their families and their "realm" (legal and criminal) that wears them down. A striking example of this is how they both suffer from insomnia due to the stress of their role (Howard's insomnia isn't due to just being a lawyer, ofc, but the events surrounding his professional life cause terrible stress). For both of these men, their professional life is their personal life. It consumes them. In addition to their insomnia, they are also both betrayed by a sort of "colleague" around the same time - Lalo by Nacho and Howard by Jimmy. (Not to mention Jimmy becomes their mutual enemy near the end). From these shared experiences, it's really looking like Howard and Lalo could actually be very empathetic towards one another, given the right circumstance. That being said, this circumstance would have to be "just right" - otherwise, you end up with what happened in Plan and Execution.

Nevertheless, if you combine these two esteemed, powerful, ruthless, dedicated characters, you are sure to get something explosive!! And permitting they don't immediately kill each other (ie. a situation in which their identities+priorities are initially concealed), I think this explosiveness could lead to very interesting plots and character development. What would happen when Lalo or Howard sees a piece of himself in a man who superficially seems to be the antithesis to his very existence? How would he respond? I envision a major paradigm shift, and again, some awesome character development.

Finally, there is one more angle I cannot omit - a great deal of my fascination with this duo is related to how they can be read as analogues to Tybalt and Mercutio from Romeo & Juliet (which might sound random at first but I swear it's not). Lalo's role as the hateful, loyal, bloodthirsty product of his environment paints him to look a lot like Tybalt, and Howard, being a wealthy, entitled "friend" to the protagonist, who realises too late the danger he has inserted himself in, looks a lot like Mercutio, especially when we consider how he dies, whose hand he dies by, and his final words.

I wrote some essays discussing this angle in much more detail - you can read about Lalo and Tybalt here and Howard and Mercutio here. I also wrote a mini essay analysing and comparing Lalo and Howard's insomnia (through the lens of Romeo and Juliet). Feel free to take a look if you are hungry for that kind of thing! This comparison with Romeo and Juliet is actually what inspired me to write a fanfiction about Lalo and Howard~

Anyways, thanks for sending this ask! I'm always glad to have the chance to ramble, especially when it comes to Lalo and Howard~~