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This article contains spoilers for Episode 3 of <\/em>Half Man.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n For fujoshi<\/em>, the Japanese term for women who love media about romance between men, we are living through what can only be described as a second Enlightenment. There\u2019s the recent monumental success of Heated Rivalry<\/em><\/a>, the Canadian hockey show that made superstars of its actors and caused author Rachel Reid\u2019s source books to fly off store shelves around the world<\/a>. Other LGBTQ+ romance books<\/a> have also been surging in popularity<\/a> for years, assisted by steamy movie adaptations like 2023\u2019s Red, White & Royal Blue<\/em><\/a> and 2024\u2019s Queer<\/em><\/a>. Hell, out gay actor Jonathan Bailey is People magazine\u2019s Sexiest Man Alive<\/a>. At times it has felt like many among us have become Zendaya in 2024\u2019s Challengers<\/em><\/a>, smiling deviantly as we watch Mike Faist and Josh O\u2019Connor kiss feverishly. Indeed, there has never been a better time in which to fujo<\/em> out.<\/p>\n Enter Half Man<\/em><\/a>, the follow-up show from Baby Reindeer<\/em><\/a> <\/em>creator Richard Gadd, which is also laden with homoerotic yearning, albeit in other twisted ways. The BBC and HBO co-production, which premiered in late April, spends decades following two men, the chaotic ogre Ruben (played by Gadd as an adult and Stuart Campbell as a teenager) and meek closet-case Niall (Jamie Bell and Mitchell Robertson), after they become \u201cbrothers from another lover\u201d when their respective mothers begin a romantic relationship together. The boys\u2019 bond is fraternal, but also poisonous and unstable, marked by years of yearning, brutality, fear, and competitive masculinity. The complicated relationship isn\u2019t consumed by endless will-they-won\u2019t-they sexual tension so much as it is confronting in its physicality, both violent and sexual. At the end of the very first episode, for example, after Ruben has assaulted Niall several times, he assists his younger \u201cbrother\u201d in losing his virginity with Ruben\u2019s willing girlfriend. At one point, as Niall is inside his girlfriend, Ruben leans close to him and helps guide his breathing. At another, he helps redirect his brother\u2019s penis. Minutes later in another scene, the episode ends as the now-adult Ruben lays on top of his brother before savagely beating him once more.<\/p>\n On TikTok, Half Man<\/em> has been accurately described<\/a> as \u201creal doomed toxic obsessive yaoi,<\/em>\u201d a Japanese term for the \u201cboys love\u201d genre. But the show is trying to do something very different than other popular works of this kind. Half Man <\/em>is homoerotic, to be sure, but it\u2019s as much about straight men as it is about gays. The show explores how much queerness\u2014rejecting it, flirting with it, shaming it, running from it, weaponizing it\u2014can sit at the heart of straight male culture. For these men, queerness is an obsession<\/em>, even if they would never admit it. If Heated Rivalry <\/em>kicked off a \u201cmass psychosis event,\u201d as New York magazine<\/a> described, in which the sight of two men going to town on each other had \u201cawakened a libinal desire\u201d in women of all sexualities, Half Man<\/em> turns the mirror back to men and asks just what is making them so scared. Think of it as Heated Rivalry<\/em> for sickos.<\/p>\n The show\u2019s third episode, which aired on HBO on Thursday night, is the midway-point linchpin on which the entirety of Half Man <\/em>turns. The characters are dealing with the fallout from young Ruben\u2019s appallingly vicious assault on Niall\u2019s classmate and love interest at Glasgow University, Alby (played by Bilal Hasna, and later as an adult by Charlie de Melo). The attack put Alby into a coma for six months and left him disfigured, but now, years later, he\u2019s pressing charges. Both Ruben and Niall\u2019s mother, Lori (Neve McIntosh), ask Niall to lie on his behalf, to swear in court that Alby groped Ruben before the assault, thus justifying his sudden outburst of violence. This is because, as Ruben says his lawyer tells him in 1993 Britain, \u201cthe only thing a jury hates more than a thug is a fag.\u201d Whether or not Niall will go through with the plan will have lasting effects on everyone for decades to come.<\/p>\n