Alles Was Zaehlt: Or, I may be paying too much attention to music.

[butterfly]

subtitle: I just wrote fifteen-hundred+ words about a soap opera couple.

Roman is a bit of a pushover when it comes to Deniz and while Deniz is intensely sexually attracted to Roman, he finds it easier to deny an emotional connection. One thing that I have found, watching Alles Was Zaehlt all at the same time, not always in order and sometimes with English subtitles but sometimes with just the German, is that I do find the Deniz/Roman relationship to be quite emotionally consistent, with the weaknesses that led them both to the Vanessa arc and to their current troubles in place near the very beginning of their relationship.

Let's start with Roman's musical cue when he first sees Deniz. The soundtrack basically skips up to eleven when Roman is first staring at Deniz like someone who has been struck by lightning. The song in question is Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback," and the specific lines that we cue up on are "Dirty, babe, you see these shackles, baby," Roman is fumbling and nervous and completely blown away by Deniz's mere existence. This is what I refer to as 'completely gone'. Roman is completely gone on Deniz.

As far as I can tell, this is not something that has changed since that first moment when Roman saw him. The healthiness or quality of Roman's feelings for Deniz is not something that I'm going to judge (*cough* sooooo unhealthy, but, wow, are they hot together *cough*) but they have been in place from the start.

For Deniz, though, things are more complicated and are further mixed up because of his capital 'I' Issues regarding money and status.

We learn later on that Deniz had Those Sort of Feelings about boys when he was younger but managed to convince himself that it was a phase (which is to say -- Vanessa is not the first time he actively and willing went back to women after thinking that he might be interested in men). So, he's invested a lot of himself in strong layers of denial that sometimes come out as anger. He wants to look strong, capable and mature and does not believe that people will think that of him if he's gay.

So, Deniz has been successfully bottling up all his gay-related feelings for at least a couple of years now. And then Roman kisses him and it all goes to hell. This was something that was only clear to me once I saw the longer, German-only clips of Roman's party (and Deniz convincing Roman, which has hilarious and brilliant romantic comedy-eske musical cues). When I'd just watched what I could find with the English subtitles, they only showed the kiss itself, but in the longer clip, we see a. how Deniz is left utterly speechless afterward; b. how he seems fumbling and overcome for several minutes afterward; c. it's after this that he kisses Nina on a cheek in a very 'look, Roman! I like girls!' defensiveness kind of way (after having a 'huh' reaction to her kissing him on the lips earlier;  d. he picks up and stares at one of Roman's fan postcards and then crumples it up. All those walls that Deniz built up to convince himself that he didn't like boys touching him were blown to bits by one kiss.

Deniz fought a losing battle with himself for a while after that -- his sexual attraction to Roman was, again, what was focused on ("Sexy boy" playing as Roman gets out of the pool and Vanessa notices that Deniz has not been paying attention to her words but is staring at Roman and sporting an erection). When Roman finally kisses him again, Deniz doesn't even seem to notice that they're in public or really anything other than touching and kissing Roman, until the kiss ends.

And then they get together and everyone's finally okay with it, so why on earth would Deniz take up with someone else?

But there are still two issues: Deniz's dad and the issue of money/status. The money/status thing gets brought up at Christmas (only days before Deniz's New Year's Eve with Vanessa) when he hears that Roman blew a lot of money on a Christmas present for him and he doesn't feel like he can give Roman a present 'cool' enough -- he cancels a date of theirs so that he can work and get more money and then whores himself out, charging a woman money for a kiss.

And that's where Marian (Deniz's dad) comes in.

Marian is the person in Deniz's life who takes the longest to come around with regards to his relationship with Roman. When Deniz talks to him about kissing a girl for money so that he can buy Roman a present, his dad's reaction is -- 'how did you feel kissing her?' and his face is filled with hope.

And there, Deniz can see the truth laid plainly out -- no matter what Marian says, he would prefer it if Deniz were straight. Again, this happens just days before New Year's Eve and the start of things with Vanessa.

He doesn't feel man enough for Roman (able to give him presents and treat him) and he doesn't feel man enough for his father.

When Vanessa kisses him, that war that had quieted down when he'd chosen to be with Roman starts up again -- if he can be straight, he can be the man, be strong, capable, make his father happy. He can live by society's rules (Vanessa, of course, has reasons of her own to want to be in a relationship that society will accept). But... he wants Roman. And so he's torn. Everything inside him that doesn't feel like he can be a man and be gay at the same time pulls him towards Vanessa but he is utterly incapable of letting Roman go. Time and time again, he goes to tell Roman that they need to break things off and time and time again, he fails. He can't make that final break and stop seeing Roman.

It takes Roman breaking things off with him when he sees Deniz with Vanessa, refusing to speak to him, and then finally telling him that he'd lied about the extent of his knee injury to keep Deniz with him that finally causes Deniz to leave things off with him and pursue Vanessa (ah, the way Vanessa and Deniz both get so worked up over being lied to after all the deceit that they engage in -- and how defensive and possessive Vanessa is over Deniz. Well, she already knows she's got a cheater). Deniz has to have something to point to -- 'Roman manipulated me into staying with him; it was all him and none of it was really me'. Which is something that he clings to a lot over the next few episodes. All the sexual tension he feels is Roman's fault and Deniz can't be blamed for it.

Even after he kisses Roman post-breakup, the second that Roman starts kissing him back, he throws him off. He confesses the kiss to Vanessa but lets her believe that Roman started it (which leads to Vanessa's hilariously painful 'confrontation' with Roman where she lets him know that Deniz damn well isn't gay anymore and is totally with her and he doesn't like you, Roman! Get over it!). Deniz continues to be drawn to Roman. He lets Roman give him expensive gifts for nothing in return. And he continues to show an intense sexual interest in Roman.

For his part, Roman feels hurt, slighted, and confused. With Deniz, he wavers between being manipulative, desperate, and hopeful. With Vanessa, he vacillates between being a bright, cruel shell (when he's feeling defensive) or being more bitterly amused (when he's more sure that Deniz's feelings for her aren't as solid as she claims).

And then comes the 'Truth or Dare' kiss and the breakup with Vanessa (embedded in this is Deniz getting a job as a model and getting a taste of the high-flyer lifestyle -- being a party boy means trading on something that he knows he has, his looks and sex appeal, in order to get both money/status).

Deniz goes to Kaya's party knowing that Roman will be there and Vanessa won't. He lies to Vanessa about where he's going to be because he knows that it would upset her. He gets drunk. He takes the bait and kisses Roman (bait which Roman has certainly come to regret recently, as Deniz's 'friendship' with Kaya has given him easy access to drugs and a risky lifestyle).

The break-up with Vanessa actually occurs when Roman reveals the first post-breakup kiss and lets her know that it was Deniz who kissed him, not the other way around. Her gay boyfriend wasn't so 'fixed' after all.

Interestingly, now that Deniz and Vanessa are broken up, Deniz does describe himself as "schwul" aka "gay" again. And he's now entered fully into the 'rebel against the authority figure' mode (he knows that he's gay and he knows that his father would prefer that he wasn't, being 'straight' with Vanessa didn't work because he couldn't stay away from Roman. He can't make his father happy, so he'll make him as unhappy as possible). Kaya and her friends offer him a life where he doesn't have to think about the hard choices, and, while he can distract Roman with kissing, eventually Roman wants to talk about those serious issues, too, and doing drugs means he doesn't have to think.

I was frustrated with the characters at various times (though both Vanessa and Roman admit to being idiots about Deniz in their clearer-headed moments), but I've decided I'm not frustrated at the story (unlike the 'Ameera' storyline on ATWT, which is still just WTF? on so many levels), though I don't know how I would have felt if I'd started watching while the show was still in the middle of the 'triangle' story arc.

Also, Deniz and Roman kiss really, really well together. They've got some impressive kissing going on.

Comments

[thegrungediva.livejournal.com]

BTW, you had asked how "zaehlt" translates. It's literally "paid", though a translation for the whole phrase is "everything that counts".

Hope that helps.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Danke schön!