nevergraciee

[nevergraciee]

i dont think enough people talk about how absolutely batshit crazy the reason for spencer reid’s parents splitting up was. i feel like the show did not delve deep enough into that

[nevergraciee]

part 2 of my favorite n2n lyrics

just another day: “feeling like i’ll live forever; feeling like this feeling never goes away” (these two lyrics being sequential is why i think they’re related—gabe feels like he’ll live forever, always in the memory and life of diana. natalie thinks her hurt will never go away because it won’t… for as long as gabe lives on.)

a light in the dark: “so why do i live there alone” (dan is talking about how despite having a wife, it feels like he lives [in his house] alone. i didn’t think about this for the first few listens, but then it hits me—he SHOULDN’T feel like this. even if not for diana, he wouldn’t be alone. he has natalie, who we know from ‘light’ will willingly step up and help him. but he doesn’t acknowledge that he will never be alone because his daughter loves and cares for him)

superboy and the invisible girl: “our perfect plan” (in natalie’s moment of vulnerability and insecurity, diana tells natalie she’s diana’s and dan’s plan. except, we know their plan. their plan was for natalie to replace gabe. that was the only reason she was born. and she’s doing it perfectly. she is unbelievably intelligent and talented. she is exactly what diana and dan wanted and expected out of gabe)

[nevergraciee]

gabe’s expression of terror in “i’ve been” when he sees the blood will haunt me forever

[nevergraciee]

my favorite lyrics in n2n songs

some of these analyses are a reach tbh but idec

i’ve been: “now i need a lift and there’s no one around” (a reference to my psychopharmacologist and i—diana will fall without a lift, but dan needs to figure it out himself. and more intriguingly, this is when gabe makes himself known and begins singing. he sees that dan is vulnerable and attempts to capitalize on his fears, the way gabe does with diana as well.)

a song of forgetting: “i’ve never felt so high” (dan is referring to natalie’s birth, but he’s ignoring a day that must’ve had him just as joyful: gabe’s birth. at first, i attributed it to 1. diana not knowing about gabe in this moment, and 2. dan’s emotions could’ve been dimmed by the fear of messing gabe up since they were so young, but for 1., i decided he could’ve said “i felt so high” and 2., dan is an optimist through and through—he was 100% overjoyed by gabe’s birth. so, this leads me to two different conclusions. one, he ignores how happy he was when gabe was born, which is very likely, but i also think the second is equally likely and maybe even overlapping with the first. so, second, natalie’s birth WAS happier because dan thought it’d be a way to heal diana. which. oh my god.)

just another day: “when the world will feel my power” (gabe’s ego and crave for more in this song is entirely apparent, but this specific line gets me because it is how we know he is completely and totally aware of how he is affecting everyone. the world, to an eight-month-old boy and a hallucination, is only those he sees. the world is his family. he wants them to hurt, hurt, hurt. diana most directly feels these effects, but dan and natalie do by proxy. and gabe is glad.)

ill post a continuation later !!!

[nevergraciee]

gabe trying to convince diana to keep hallucinating while also telling her exactly how to get rid of him is my roman empire

[nevergraciee]

Real Gabe's grave is likely rarely visited because his mother can't accept he's dead, his father can barely face acknowledging him at all, and his sister is too afraid to ask either where he is.

[nevergraciee]

Gabe as a manifestation of grief also contains all his family’s longing for what he could have been. I love the idea that, when he and Natalie have their moment at the very end, it’s because she for the first time wonders what it would be like to have her older brother with her. Her family has just fallen apart, it’s just her and her father alone in the house and she’s feeling a whole mess of emotions as to what her life will look like from now on. And maybe it would have been comforting to have a sibling at that moment who had grown up with her and could perhaps understand what she was feeling. I know this is probably a bit of a reach but I love the interpretation that this is why Gabe touches Natalie’s hand here and she feels it. Because for the first time she’s missing him too.

[nevergraciee]

ive never seen anyone mention this but in “didnt i see this movie” diana is explaining her thoughts and history as a story. like, someone else’s. as in when at the start she said it feels like it happened to somebody else. i feel like its meant to represent regression in healing

[nevergraciee]

the ghost of my dead brother: it would be my turn on computer... if I wasn't aborted... me: fuck off dude you died in a car crash everyone saw it

[nevergraciee]

i know this is sad but hes looking at it like “oh oops” and its killing me

this choice to put the towels soaked with Diane's blood at Gabes feet fucks me up every single time.

[nevergraciee]

Does anyone else think about Gabe Goodman? Not the one we see in the show, but the one Dan and Diana lost.

The 8 month old who never got to grow up. The toddler who was in so much pain and had no way of communicating it except crying. The one who left his toy car and his music box behind one day, and never returned.

The scene where Diana cries into his baby onesie always breaks my heart because it reminds the audience that the Gabe we see isn’t really their son. The son they lost was so small, so tiny. He was not an Aaron Tveit or a Jack Wolfe. He wasn’t even a toddler.

The Gabe we see is a visual representation of grief (or a hallucination, depending), but he is not the child they lost. That child is gone. Teen Gabe is just a guess at who that child could have been, and the jarring reality is that no one will ever know.

It’s ironic that for how prominent of a role Gabe’s death plays in the plot, his actual life is eclipsed by both the life he never lived, and by his death.

[nevergraciee]

it is so tragic that natalie never got the chance to love her brother, that dan probably often wished gabe had never been born in the first place, that diana’s memories of gabe will be tarnished by her hallucinations of him, and that gabe will never be honored the way a late son and brother should be.

[nevergraciee]

one thing that makes me sad about next to normal is that we have never actually seen gabe. we know nothing about him because everything we hear is clouded by grief—all we know is about dan and diana’s experiences with him and how he died. gabe as we see him is not gabe, the baby whose life ended too short. that was an innocent child, but the one we see is a hallucination/metaphor that is ruining the family’s life.

[nevergraciee]

on gabe: ghosts, grief, and wants.

before i get started: this is all my opinion! i've been into n2n since 2010 so i've had a lot of time to think about this (thank you dunmar warehouse thank you) the thing that those who are pro-poltergeist/demon/ghost/etc gabe don't consider, i think, is that i'm alive tells us everything that we need to know.

he is not just want diana wants him to be. he's what natalie wants him to be, he's what dan wants him to be, he's even what dr. madden wants him to be.

one of the reasons why he takes the melody in superboy and the invisible girl is (aside from the absolute juiciness narratively of her brother that she's singing about overshadowing her in her own song about him overshadows her) because natalie in that moment wants to feel validated, like she's correct in assuming that gabe Is More Acknowledged Than Her and in fact Is An Asshole, which is why he's smiling and bragging so much. (in my opinion!!!)

he isn't able to be seen by dan for most of the show, because that's exactly what he wants him to be: invisible. not there. the reason why he sees him at the end (other than the acknowledgement of grief as a larger symbol and made into a tangible form) is because some part deep inside of him wants someone at that moment; diana is gone, natalie is too. he wants to feel held, so he gets held. (in my opinion!!!)

dr. madden knows him as a baby who died, which is why in make up your mind / catch me i'm falling he's cradling himself in his mother's lap, why his voice becomes more childlike. (in my opinion!!!)

the problem is we are trying to define an abstract concept in simple terms, which is just not possible. not only is gabe a symbol of grief, he very much is a hallucination of diana's, and tends to side with her for that reason. (in just another day, diana is talking about how beautiful the day is, and the only one who agrees with her is gabe- "birds are singing, things are growing", etc.)

and then, of course:

guys, that's the point.

poltergeist? ghost? hallucination? symbol of grief? abstract? that's the point. we aren't supposed to know what gabe is. it's paradoxical. "what you want me to be / your worst fear", "i'll hurt you / i'll heal you", "your wish, your dream come true / your darkest nightmare too". that's how grief is. you don't know exactly what it is. is it love without a place to go? is it anger for losing them? anger at yourself for letting them be lost? gabe can be more than one thing.

especially with theatre! every gabe is going to be different! aaron's gabe is different than jack's gabe is different than kyle dean massey's gabe is different than a community theatre somewhere's gabe! that's the point! some gabes may play him as the all american football throwing jock, some may play him as an evil poltergeist, some may play him as a whiny child who needs his mom. that's the point! the interpretation means what it means to you and how you see it! he means what he means to you! we can discuss all day long about what is the objectively correct opinion on who or what gabe is (i am guilty of this. look at the previous paragraphs), but at the end of the day…

he is what YOU want him to be.

[nevergraciee]

one of the details in next to normal that genuinely makes me insane is the fact that diana isn’t just imagining a perfect son when she imagines gabe. yes, he’s her “superboy,” but in the very first part of the musical, when she’s “waiting up for him,” she imagines him coming home late like any other teenager. she complains and calls him a loser and a brat and a little shit. she’s not imagining a reality that never would have happened where gabe grew up to be the perfect child that never causes her any problems or stress. she imagines him as a real teenager, someone that could have been. diana doesn’t want the perfect son. she wants her son.

[nevergraciee]

gabe injecting himself into everybody’s songs is the best metaphor in the show. in this essay i will—

[nevergraciee]

when katniss volunteered, did asterid catch haymitch’s eye for a brief second? did she silently beg him, “don’t let her turn out like you, and don’t let her turn out like me.” did she think it would be better for katniss to have a fate like maysilee’s, still strong and fiery, rather than become another distant, cold result of panem? did she fear katniss’ return more than her death?