gothic romance hkv drives me LOONEY. i’ve been thinking of phantom the opera au & now, with nosferatu playing in the cinemas, about other gothic settings we could put them both in. i don’t know why but as much as there’s that romcom-ish essence of them as a pair, there’s also something more peculiarly erotic, like a darker depth with a sting of viscerality/sensitivity that we only see in specific love stories that keeps my neurons BUZZING about in this damned ship. maybe it’s because they both are flawed as people & seeing it being a little more exaggerated in the terms of relation or bonding is something that i love explore in general. alhaitham being that mysterious creature that in the end turns out to be a man so pathetically starved for another person he bottled it up within himself like a madman & to a point that he himself wasn’t aware of & perhaps sometimes even refused to acknowledge but without saying no to seek more & more with kaveh who’s naturally curious & strong-willed yet still lost somewhere in between & unbelievably lonely. it just FITS. so yeah. I THINK OF IT A LOT & I CRAVE IT.