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carnivalcarriondiscarded · 3 months

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ON THE TOPIC OF BARNABY. as well as his relationship with Wally.

So. To kick this off - Riv (@funonion) and I were Speculating, and they introduced me to the johari window:

They put Barnaby in the “facade” section, and I entirely agree. To quote them;

“So he’s Wally’s guide, right? He’s the “knowledgeable” one of the two and is always the one teaching him new things. And you know, it’s one thing if you’re just teaching him how to laugh or how to tell a joke. But.

Clown has given us two doors. One says that Barnaby understands Wally in a way the rest of the neighborhood doesn’t, and is willing to do his dirty work so to speak. The other says that their friendship was not a natural occurring thing and had to be enforced repeatedly within the show. HOW THAT’S BEING ENFORCED IS ANOTHER THING ENTIRELY but it is worth it to note.

What is Barnaby willing to keep? What is he willing to bury for his little buddy? I can’t say anything definitively yet, but the fact that I even have to ask is telling. The class clown archetype is usually used as a way to cover up for something else a character might be experiencing”

And my response, (I won’t directly quote because I have little things in the phrasing & elaboration to add / tweak );

Barnaby being a Comic Relief Character immediately raised so many alarms in my head. I love comic relief characters. They’re always so fucked up in one way or another, and Barnaby is almost certainly SO inauthentic. He’s wearing a comedy mask just as opaque as Wally’s own mask. In everything we’ve seen about him so far he’s either Teaching Wally, wisecracking/joking, or… pretty much nothing else. We got that moment of concern in audio 14-14, but that doesn’t reveal anything beyond genuine care for Wally.

Comedic characters have the best disguises. Their poker faces & ability to deflect is always top tier [and practiced], and just look at comedy-focused actors and entertainers - so many of them have severe issues, either with their mental health or life. From what i’ve observed both in that aspect & with fictional characters, they play it off & work hard to entertain/deflect [one in the same] right up until the end. Sometimes it’s a coping mechanism. Usually it’s both. If they laugh loud enough and make people think they’re lighthearted fools w/ nothing underneath, no one will look any deeper and thus they’re “safe”.

& I’m a little suspicious that Barnaby’s red/orange/yellow spots aren’t naturally those colors. While yes, he could be (in-universe) designed that way to echo Ms. Beagle, there’s a strong possibility that that’s not it. What if he paints them to feel a connection to her, or it’s a physical manifestation of Barnaby covering up his insecurities/issues - what if it’s part of him striving to convince the world that he is what he paints himself as.

The laidback funnyguy with a loving mom and not a problem in the world.

And I mean, Barnaby claims to be a natural blue and I believe him! But the other colors? I’m doubtful

(I was going to include the Cast As Lil Kids Designs in this since Barnaby has all blue spots, but given how early in 2021 it was posted and how there seem to be little discrepancies from the ~official~ designs, I don’t want to provide it as evidence.)

& on the topic of Wally and Barnaby’s relationship being both real and not - disclaimer, this conversation happened before my Updated Thoughts On Them post, so there may be some minor rephrasing here from what I originally said - I’m sure that the relationship started out as inauthentic. Wally was assigned Barnaby as a best friend and technically vice versa, but I don’t doubt for a second that it became real to some extent. Clown wouldn’t treat their relationship outside of “canon” WH stuff the way that he does if they weren’t actually friends. They’ve said that Wally & Barnaby would be friends in every universe (which melts my heart <3 platonic soulmates my beloved <3), so then I have to agree with Riv. what WILL Barnaby do for Wally? I touched on this in the Milk Theory, but especially if Barnaby prides himself on “knowing Wally better than anything else”, what would Barn do to preserve that?

This relates to another conversation we had - Barnaby possibly having abandonment issues. It’s such a choice to have him of all characters be explicitly stated as an orphan. That and while every other Neighbor with a mentioned family have a somewhat large one (Howdy and his gajillion relatives, Julie and her three siblings, Poppy and her crowded tree [note: Eddie has a mentioned mother, but that info is tenuous and who knows if there are other Dears]), Barnaby has also explicitly stated that Ms. Beagle is his only family. That’s it. And farm life can’t be a sociable way to grow up, not with all the chores he must have had and how rural he might have grown up. Barnaby jokes that Home is the “Big Apple”, which could just be a joke - but jokes often come from a place of truth, and Home might be the most populated area Barnaby has lived in. Who’s to say!

Either way, Barnaby was orphaned one way or another, and I don’t doubt that it weighs on him. Especially if his birth parents really did abandon him. That added to a possible life of loneliness… I wonder if he’s latched onto Wally emotionally, which would hit all the painful places if it turns out that my “Barnaby is more attached to Wally than Wally is to Barnaby” theory has merit. Abandonment issues could also strongly back the apparent walls he’s plastered over with circus tent fabric

Back to Barnaby & Wally: the fact that, at present, Barnaby and Wally seem to have the best disguises / strongest masks. That. looking at 14-14, i suspect that Barnaby is excellent at keeping his up, but as soon as Wally’s mask cracks, so does Barnaby’s.

And then there’s the side of their dynamic that we could look at - it seems to be a very multifaceted relationship. The way that Barnaby genuinely cares yet in the 00 Halloween audio Wally was left off to the side and Barnaby was just “checking on him” while socializing (then again, this could be part of Barnaby understanding Wally & respecting his space / Wally wanting a break from that socialization). Barnaby is patient with Wally and yet he seems to sometimes treat Wally as his sidekick / let him fade into the background and yet Barnaby kept checking in on Wally during the 14 bug audios (this last one I could tie into the abandonment issues theory).

Then there’s how Barnaby calls Wally kid & can tend to treat him like one despite both of them being in the same age group. The way that all of this could, in a way, relate to the infantilization of autistic people (no matter how well-meaning or unintentional) & internalized ableism.

Note: Riv pointed out that Barnaby does seem to be doing the best with what he has, and that this can connect to the Johari Window’s blind spot / unknown.

I do agree with this wholeheartedly! And I have to mention that - and making a Very educated guess here - the interactions we’ve seen take place in the very late 60s / very early 70s, so Barnaby’s behavior towards Wally is actually pretty fucking stellar given the time period. We can’t expect him to be perfect or do everything / say everything right. That would be boring I think! And one thing I deeply appreciate about the Neighbors & their dynamics is that they feel like real layered people, not cardboard cutouts being perfect caricatures of what people are “supposed” to be like.

Riv also presented this:

We likely are going to reach a point where Wally asks Barnaby something that he can’t / doesn’t want to / won’t answer. And like.. Ok. This is a slight tangent but I swear it’s related! When I first discovered WH and learned the Wally basics, I wondered two things.

Are we going to watch Wally “discover” new emotions? Because he certainly has them. Clown has said that Wally only ever feels happy, and a lot of people took that to mean that Wally can’t feel anything else. I don’t think we should take that answer at face value, because. I mean. Look at the project & creator we’re talking about. Layers, guys. Indirect direct answers. I think that Clown meant that Wally only ever feels happy in the Neighborhood because he has no reason to feel any negative emotion. Everything is as it should be. Until it isn’t - and I think that’s where he’s going to have to struggle with new emotions as he encounters them through new situations/events unfolding as the “story” starts to deteriorate. We’ve actually seen this a little bit - in Wally’s record audios (i believe the chronological second to last?), the way he says “Let Me In” so insistently. That’s definitely not a positive emotion being expressed.

How will the topic of death be handled - because it will be handled, it’s stated in the project warnings. I was wondering this even before I read the list, because I was presented with a blank slate puppet character and so went “oh fuck, this dude doesn’t know about death, does he?” Obviously I wanted to know how that would go. I want to know how it Will go!

How would Barnaby explain emotions that Wally doesn’t know how to convey? How would Barnaby explain death in a way that Wally would understand - given that Barnaby (& all the Neighbors sans Wally) knows what death is - and would Barnaby be willing to explain such a thing? I have a feeling we may find out.

And in a way, I suspect that if none of them know, Wally will find out himself and have to process it without help. But then again, how can something die if it was never really alive in the first place? Unless the death warning relates to human characters… I’m currently assuming it relates to both humans and puppets.

In conclusion: Barnaby has a carefully fabricated facade, he's doing the best with what he has but it likely won't be enough, and uh. shits fucked!

#AGH I HOPE IM PUTTING THESE POSTS TOGETHER CORRECTLY.#I HAVE TWO DAYS TO WRITE AND POST THEM ALL #but anyway another thing i was wondering in relation to barnaby & wally having an imbalanced relationship was #the possibility of:#howdy < barnaby < wally < home #as in the <[x] character is more important to the [y]< character than [y] is to [x]#because howdy does seem to like barnaby a whole hell of a lot but we don't know if barnaby feels so strongly back #idk. i feel like i might be seeing a little domino line being set up here. and im Nervous <3 #what happens if the first domino falls? who will it be? how hard will it fall.#who's to say if that has any merit i just wanted to mention it! its intriguing to me #(& to be clear since im aware of my laughingstock rep - im not talkin about shippy dominoes)#(i take off the shipping goggles for analysis. howdy can fully cherish barn as a Friend while still being [y]<)#homebogging #welcome home speculation #wh speculation #i feel like i have more in my brain but. im dealing with minor flu symptoms and im exhausted <3 #today was a Lot <3 #so i'll queue this for around 10 & hopefully I'll be awake & with the next post written for you guys!

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sercj · 2 months

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Alright, I'm finally typing it out. Gather around, all, for the tale of the time my friends and I kidnapped a blueberry and drug them into the Vault of Glass.

Once upon a time, I used to have friends I would play Destiny 2 with regularly. None of them that feature in this story still do, to my knowledge, but at the time we were pretty cracked on the PvE side of things. At the time, we were raiding semi-regularly (when schedules lined up), and as Vault of Glass had just been added to D2 recently, it was our raid of choice that one, fateful evening.

We, like any sane PC player, were using Discord for comms, and so I had hopped into the channel to wait, and headed to the Cosmodrome for my favorite time-killing passtime - blueberry watching. For those of you unfamiliar, blueberries is an affectionate term for new destiny players, named after the color of the low rarity gear they end up decked out in, blue. The Cosmodrome, being the first public area a New Light ends up in, is often a place where you can see adorable new players getting the hang of things.

At this time, the voice channel began to fill up, and one of my compatriots joined my fireteam. We initiated some hug emotes with a blueberry and were just all-in-all chilling when we got word that one member of our team would be unable to join us. Then someone (I forget who) suggested 'hey, what if we took this blueberry along with us?'. It was a patently absurd option - we had no communication with them. Their mishmash of blue armor and crappy weapons would clearly be outclassed by the raid, leaving them unable to damage enemies and likely to die instantly if any of the vex even looked in their direction. But we started to plan a bit - really, we could do every encounter with just 5 people. We'd have to protect the blueberry, but that could be done, theoretically.

I think, in the end, we came to the conclusion that we'd try it, but they weren't likely to stick through it. After all, we weren't (and never did) using the in-game VC, or text chat. The two of us hanging out with them in the Cosmodrome sent a fireteam invite. And the blueberry accepted. So we joined the rest of the team in orbit, and launched Vault of Glass.

I could go into our specific strategies for each encounter, but for the most part it was pretty same-y. We'd use emotes and shooting to get the blueberry into a defensible position, then 5-man the encounter. And somehow, this worked. I have taught many, many people many raids in my time (including many people from this friend group!), and I have never seen someone pick up so quickly on what we needed them to do. With no actual words passing! An absolute, biggest-brained legend of a guardian.

We did get this guy all the way to Aetheon. And with some tricks (and good RNG), we were able to even defeat Aetheon. With some random blueberry nobody knew, or talked to! Unfortunately, they didn't get Mythoclast (can you imagine, though!), but they did celebrate with us with their default dance emote, and we all went our seperate ways. Nobody friended them, we just re-released them into the Cosmodrome like they hadn't just helped us save all of time or whatever the point of Vault of Glass is.

Now, perhaps this was a returning player, or someone on a new alt, who already kinda or entirely knew what was going on. But there's no real way of knowing, and it's just as (if not more) likely that this was a brand new player. Can you imagine what kind of a 'first experience' that new player had with the game? How puzzlingly odd to begin with, developing into concern as the activity we brought them to was clearly beyond them, to the 'fuck it we ball' attitude to stick with it all the way through. A true champion.

And imagine the lore perspective too. Fresh guardian, still got gravesoil in their armor, hasn't been to the tower yet, and they get scooped up into the Vault of Glass? Battle Aetheon? AND WIN!? The reaction from Shaw, or hell, the Vanguard as a whole would be amazing. Our guardians getting reprimanded for taking some fresh new light and dragging them through such a crazy difficult experience they weren't prepared for. Fun stuff to think about.

I wonder how that player is doing now. If they still play, how this particular experience flavored their perception of the game and its community. I know the community at large can be extremely toxic (and worse), but I still strive to embody the community impression we made on that day. Patience and Understanding, being goofy and silly about it, inclusive and kind. Dunno, maybe that's just me being sappy about a fun memory with friends gone by.

#destiny 2 #d2 #vault of glass #aetheon #story #long #i hope this tale brightens one persons day #the original occurence was a very fun night #i miss having people i loved to play destiny 2 with #now i just have to lfg everything #which is okay about 60% of the time #genuinely enjoyable maybe 10%#and the remainder is just bad #and that's AFTER screening lfg posts for ones that seem more chill #pro tip: if it says 'KWTD' skip that shit #buggest thing the new system lacks is a definite warning label like that #anyhow i'm just rambling now #shoutout to all the blueberries #i love you guys

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