#youve gotta respect the grind though

[a-sad-secret-death]

so my cousin texted me 'we're safe oregon lost' with no context and i was like what the fuck are you talking about wdym oregon lost what does that have to do with anything? And now he's going on about the rose bowl game of 2020 and time loops and how this year is going to be really good?

None of us are american?? and none of us knows jack shit about college football? except one of my cousins apparently?

[barbatos-sama]

the boss and prince's dynamic in this show is essentially that they have a transactional sexual relationship where boss is required to sleep with prince once a month in exchange for the prince allowing boss to use his magic book that allows him to teleport to the living world. this relationship is unhealthy because boss literally needs this book to do his job; it basically makes the dynamic "fuck me or your career is over". this power imbalance is made worse by the fact that even beyond being able to hold his livelihood over his head, the prince is, yknow, A Prince. royalty. one of the more powerful beings in hell. compared to boss whose species is treated like dirt. it's very hard for an imp to earn any kind of respect or to make a name for themself like boss is trying to do. so this relationship is unbalanced in more way than one.

the thing about prince is that from the description of this arrangement you'd think he's well aware of this power imbalance and is taking full advantage of it; that he doesn't care about boss and sees him as a plaything. it's not true though. prince wants to have an actual partnership with boss, he is someone who craves intimacy beyond just meaningless sex. he's a tragic figure whos spent his life yearning and reading romance novels but had the traumatic reality of being a gay man forced into a marriage with a woman who didn't love him. so he does crave a partner who actually loves him. a lot of people on the fandom side with him because of this; he's done a couple of weak attempts at trying to be something beyond sex with boss and they weren't reciprocated, so a lot of people view boss as the bad guy. but they're not, yknow, taking into account the fact that this whole arrangement they had going on put so much power in prince's hands and left boss feeling like his life is basically at the mercy of this prince.

the prince tried to rectify this in the latest episode: he got a crystal for boss that fulfills the same purpose the book did, so boss no longer needs to rely on prince to do his job. prince did this with the hope that they could still continue their relationship, just as one that was no longer transactional. basically, prince was trying to make it healthy, which is good on him! the problem is that boss has a Lot of issues and trauma!

boss believes that prince could never truly love him, so when presented with this crystal and the prince's speech about how he's no longer obligated to be there but he still hopes he'll stay because he wants to stay: boss assumes it's some kind of weird roleplay thing. the gears in his brain are basically grinding horribly doing mental gymnastics trying to fathom what this could mean. prince can't possibly mean this, prince only wants sex, he definitely doesn't love him, so it's gotta be some weird roleplay thing.

when the prince realizes this is the conclusion boss has drawn, he basically pisses his little diaper and starts crying. like "wah wah why can't you see i love you why do you always assume it's about sex" basically making himself the victim now and the biggest problem about this argument is that from this point forward he will not allow boss to get a WORD IN. boss is literally begging like "can you please just give me a minute to fucking absorb what is happening right now, you sprung this on me all at once and i need a minute to process" but prince is like NO YOUVE GIVEN ME YOUR ANSWER YOU NEVER LOVED ME AND YOU REFUSE TO SEE THAT I LOVE YOU

so now boss is just pissed off! the guy won't let him get a word in or talk about his feelings or why he interpreted it the way he did and this is essentially prince breaking up with him because of the 'you've given me your answer' thing, so he's mad so he starts saying shit that he know will hurt prince, because prince is hurting him right now so his hurt animal brain response is to just say anything that'll sting no matter how much he really means it. stuff like "you royals are all the same, you think you can play with our feelings because we're smaller and not as important. you think you can dismiss me like one of your little butler imps, well i'm not letting you bitch" after which prince literally physically dismisses him by teleporting him out of the castle, which kinda proves his point honestly bc he used his royal powers to end the conversation even tho boss literally just said that they still needed to talk and this was Not how their relationship was about to end because he hadn't even been allowed to talk about his own feelings or explain his point of view or Anything.

i will acknowledge that from prince's point of view it's probably frustrating and saddening that ur boytoy won't believe you genuinely love him, but truly there were only a few times prince actually Tried to make an attempt to make things beyond sex happen. one of these occasions was after they'd been publicly humiliated at oz's club, and prince asked if boss maybe wanted to watch a movie or a cuddle, to which boss replied "i'm not in the mood, stop trying to pretend like what we have is anything more than you wanting me to fuck you. you make that really clear all the time." and the conversation ended there. boss sounded very close to crying when he said "you make that really clear all the time" as well. and you wanna know something? THATS TRUE!!! the big thing that annoys me about prince is that in these later episodes he's acting like he was soso normal amount boss and was never obsessively weird and sexual towards him even tho that's ALL HE EVER WAS IN EARLY SHOW!!! and i think ppl who take his side in this argument seem to forget that as well. if you watch early episodes the prince is just Uncomfortably sexual towards boss, like it's all he talks about, he was even talking sexually to him in front of his Daughter. like huh prince, i wonder why boss would be under the impression that you view him as a sexual object? it's not like you answer the phone with "hello my big dicked bliitzy" or anything? no hi hello? just gonna talk about how much you want his cock down your throat? did you forget about that? did you suddenly forget how you behaved towards him during all of season 1?

to defend the prince A Little it seems he was under the impression that boss was in to dirty talk but i can't even use that defense for very long because boss was obviously not reciprocating?? like he was obviously rolling his eyes or being like UGHHHHHH every time prince would talk to him like that in a non-sexual setting, so you can't use the misunderstanding excuse for very long when boss made it so obvious he was Not reciprocating and was telling him to Stop. stop doing that. stop saying those things. they're annoying/cringey/uncomfortable. stop. especially since when he would get really into it, it really made it sound like he was fetishizing boss' species (idk just weird emphasis on his red skin and the fact that he's an imp in general) and the way he spoke just made it really apparent to me why boss would assume prince just has a fetish for imps or has fantasies about peasants rawdogging him. like the way this guy talked really did make it seem like he viewed boss as a sexual object/fantasy. like im begging some ppl to go back and watch season 1 and listen to how this guy spoke about boss, seriously.

so yeah, basically, my conclusion is that while prince was trying to do the right thing by giving boss that crystal and setting him free, he also handled the rest of the argument horribly by not allowing boss to speak or process anything, and isn't doing any introspection on why boss thinks he doesn't love him! he didn't examine his own behavior and think about what possible fault he could have in it, he just started to play victim and cry and sent boss away before they could have any kind of productive conversation.

i do like this argument from a writing standpoint because if this were an an i the asshole post the ruling would probably be the "everyone sucks" result because it's a very messy dynamic they have and they both screwed up. i am not at all saying that even if boss Did truly think prince loved him that he would be the perfect partner; we had an entire episode dedicated to how boss hurts the people who love him. he broke up with verrossika specifically because she told him she loved him. boss isn't a good person! what i am saying is that this argument isn't even close to black and white, and boss isn't this asshole who hurted princey's widdle feelings based entirely on his own insecurities (although his insecurities do play a part in it). basically some people just act like the entire reason boss thinks prince could never truly love him is just because boss is insecure and thinks Nobody could love him because of his own self hatred, but that simply isn't true. prince has displayed plenty of behavior that paints himself unfavorably and supports boss' beliefs that he views him as a sexual object and nothing more. i refuse to allow ppl to paint the bird man as a victim who did nothing wrong in this situation