A whipping for The Young Knight - from BrosFate

Brosfate - Ryan Whipped

 This dramatic animation is one of Brosfate's recent works, related to his story 'Young Knight'. Ryan is the Young Knight in question and is seen here being whipped for the amusement of his captor who, you will notice, is well wrapped up for the damp chill of the dungeon. Poor Ryan is stripped to his woolly underwear but I suppose the exercise is keeping him warm elsewhere.

 

Intriguingly Ryan's lips are moving, but what is he saying? To me it seems to be "ask me" but that doesn't make sense, could it could be counting? e.g. "eight, Sir", I hope not, that reference seems unreal for the context. Suggestions for defiant words from readers are welcome!

 I didn't feature this story in my original, mitchmen review of BrosFate, but some of the imagery is quite unusual and imaginative so I've added some examples below

 

Brosfate - Ryan is Blessed

This rather splendid picture invokes the way we imagine chivalry was conducted in medieval times, with majestic ceremony and duty entwined with religious sentiment. Not nudity maybe and yet it doesn't seem completely out of place here, symbolising Ryan's absolute deference to his Lord and his purity of spirit, which was an important quality in Arthurian legend and is the core theme of Wagner's Opera 'Parsifal'. These are both Victorian constructs, of course, and the composition and bright colours BrosFate uses also chime with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art of that era. 

Ryan's youthful nudity, tastefully rendered here, also gives the image a distinct erotic buzz, expressing vulnerability and contrasting with the elaborately dressed, experienced, older men who surround him watching his initiation into the knighthood. One is irresistibly reminded of dirty old men lusting after youth, well you know what priests are like!

 

Ryan and Goliath - Nightmare 2

This picture also draws on the imagery of great Art, most obviously Michaelangelo's 'Creation of Adam' but the device of two flying characters reaching out to each other also figures in numerous other religious works about salvation which is closer to the subject matter here, BrosFate even includes the fires of hell. This modern interpretation by Marc Fishman is interesting,

On the erotic level it's Ryan's nudity once again which stimulates the juices, that and the beastly hands reaching out to claim him, there's even one groping between his legs. Apart from the glimpse of pubic hair it's again very tasteful nudity as if to underline his purity. 

The Goliath character who is desperately trying to save him is a fellow soldier whom Ryan has fallen for. The moment where they meet (shown below ) is rather humourous and shows that Ryan is not as innocent as these images paint him. Goliath's role as rescuer here plays out the gay adolescent fantasy of an kind, older man showing the way into sexual adulthood. Brosfate defers to modern homoerotic iconography by showing him restrained by tentacles. What would Michaelagelo have made of that?

 

BrosFate - At The Well

Ryan offers to wash the back of a sweaty soldier who is highly embarrassed by this attention from a higher ranking Knight, not least because he is very much attracted to the young man and no doubt well aware of his own limitations in the looks department. He can't quite believe that his feelings are reciprocated or that it's possible to bridge the social gulf between them. Having got up close to his hairy hulk, Ryan the soldier Knight seems to have become more boyish in appearance and that's echoed in his naive approach to seducing Goliath. The innocence of this scene is charming and I have no doubt many of my readers will have memories of similar, perfectly innocent fantasies about older men.

BrosFate - Punished for Disloyalty

Ryan  suffers a fair amount of punishment in this story, including another whipping from his own brother Logan for disloyalty. Ryan protests that he wanted to stop the fighting and I'm sure that his moral superiority must irritate his brother as much as his defiance of instructions. This martyr-like punishment continues Brosfate's quasi-religious characterisation of him. This is not as good an image as the others presented here but it fairly obvious why I've included it.

See more of Young Knight at BrosFate's Tumblr including Ryan's temptation by a Devil

 Read the original mitchmen review of Brosfate's work in 3 parts