#as a fandom we do not talk about nancy's trauma enough

[fastcardotmp3]

you are the only person in this fandom i trust to talk about nancy so i just need you to know that during my rewatch i noticed nancy says “bullshit” SEVERAL times in season one, then obviously calls steve/their relationships bullshit at the halloween party in season two, then murray refers to the evidence nancy and jonathan bring him as bullshit (to the general public) and i just feel like that is so delicious to me. like i’m over fics where steve has ptsd related to the word bullshit and i need nancy to reclaim it lmfao

me, trying to proofread my fic all night: I have lost all grasp of the english language I can no longer Read

me, seeing an ask about nancy: OKAY SO-

anyways first of all I'm honored you trust me with nancy but I promise there are plenty of us out here who get her! nancy haters are So Loud about telling on themselves (even when they think they're being subtle) but we are here in our little corner of the fandom where we use our critical thinking skills <3

second of all!! AGREED!!!

steve is out here having been assaulted, tortured, drugged, weighed down by the responsibility over children being threatened by a violent white supremacist etc etc that's not even getting into the MONSTER stuff but people are still making up triggers for him so he can be soothed by (insert man of choice here)

you don't need to do that! you don't need to color Nancy in a light that even Steve "go with Jonathan" Harrington would absolutely not just to see him hurting, I PROMISE. I do it ALL THE TIME. Steve can even be actively heartbroken without him seeing Nancy as some unfeeling bitch of a villain like that is. literally canonically true PLEASE.

I might be wrong but the very first thing I remember Nancy calling bullshit was the fact that no one was hearing her when she said something happened to Barb. THAT'S the canonical origin of her using that word, THAT is Nancy's first moment of looking at the world around her and saying "this isn't right, I can't stand for it, and I'm going to do whatever I have to in order to tear down the facade distracting everyone from what actually matters- that my friend is missing."

Nancy calls bullshit when she and Jonathan are trying to infiltrate the Lab; the evidence that Barb isn't just a runaway is deemed bullshit; the relationship between her parents which makes her feel forced into a box is bullshit; these things that hurt Nancy are bullshit.

Let's look at it from that perspective, huh? Because you know what Nancy was feeling the night she called her relationship with Steve bullshit?

She was feeling hurt. She was lashing out at the thing that was hurting her in that moment and that was the fact that Steve was asking her to try and be normal for a night when she didn't know how.

Only yesterday she was visiting her dead best friend's parents and watching them still trying to find her and she just didn't know how.

Bullshit really isn't a lasting trauma in Steve's story, but have we ever thought that maybe it's a tell in Nancy's? A sign of crumbling walls in the girl who keeps trying to stack them all high enough to read as unaffected when all she's ever doing is trying to survive her own grief and responsibility and fear?

Nancy calls bullshit and her vulnerability slips, her search for justice heightens, her reasonable levels of paranoia intensify.

Nancy calls bullshit because at the end of the day she's still just a teenage girl who will never fit into the boxes anyone wants to put her in whether they be small and delicate or tough and badass.

Nancy calls bullshit because they didn't listen to her about Barb, but one of these days she'll make them.

so yeah, anon, we should definitely let her reclaim it. that's her fucking word, babey 💜

[eskawrites]

I have seen a bit of discussion on the stobin codependency/the way fans talk abt their relationship and I wanted to know your opinion. I think you are one of the authors that always manages to write it best bc you show how dangerous it can be, the negative consequences of it and you don't reduce robin's character to steve's extension or their dynamic as the only thing ever.

You don't have to answer but I am curious abt your pov bc I really love the way you write the characters.

aw thank you anon! this is very kind and i will try to come up with a smart and thoughtful answer for you, although truth be told most of my thoughts on stobin are just me rambling in a word doc to myself until i have enough notes for a story lol

i guess the biggest thing for me is that, in fandom spaces (and i suppose in online spaces/younger communities in general maybe) codependency has come to mean a couple different things? there's codependent as in 'codependent besties, bonded pair, do not separate, they're platonic soulmates and their lives have been helplessly intertwined since time began' kind of thing, which is of course fun to see and read and write for characters. but there's also, like, the psychological concept of codependency, which often involves controlling behavior or enabling self-destruction like addiction and stuff (i should put a disclaimer here that i'm not by any means a psychological professional and all of this post is, of course, simply my perspective)

we all like viewing stobin as codependent besties because that's what they are in the show, and honestly who doesn't love a little trauma bonding? but the thing is, the line between codependent besties and actual, unhealthy codependent behavior can be really thin. i think it's interesting to write and read what happens when that line blurs and the dynamic shifts into something unhealthy (like in my celebrity fake dating au, where 'you're the only one who understands me' turns into 'i can't face life without you' turns into a very limited support system and simultaneous destructive spirals). however, i do think that online discussions and perspectives of steve and robin can sort of mimic that blurring of the line in some way, which then leads to fans viewing stobin's dynamic as the only thing ever, like you said. and honestly, if platonic stobin is the most important thing to you and it's all you ever want to write and talk about, then hey, you do you. have fun with it

as for not reducing robin to steve's extension, yeah. i think it's very often a combination of the above and the tendency for male characters get more attention both in canon and in fandom. i also click out of posts/fics/etc that do that. but then, i tend not to read anything that isn't centered on robin, nancy, or ronance in the first place lol. and to be completely fair, you could probably argue that i tend to reduce steve to robin's extension in my writing, because i am simply more interested in robin (and female characters in general), so that's what I end up prioritizing in my fic

[thestobingirlie]

I have to rant about this because I just noped out of a fic because of it and I need your opinion on it but,

One prevailing fandom trope in any Steve-centric fic that bugs the shit out of me is when they make Steve's popularity absolutely tank either after he drops Tommy and Carol, or after Billy shows up.

Because firstly, just because Tommy and Carol are no longer friends with Steve doesn't mean everyone else will suddenly stop liking him to. In fact, based on Barb's reaction to Nancy potentially dating Steve (excited) to when she brings up Nancy being friends with Tommy and Carol (which Nancy reacts badly to), Tommy and Carol have a worse reputation than Steve does at school so wouldn't people be happy that Steve dropped them?

Steve's also on multiple sports teams and let me tell you as a former sports team player, you don't successfully play on or captain a sports team without at least kind of being friends with/getting along with the people on that team. Getting beat up by a "loser" like Jonathan probably would get him sympathy instead of scorn considering how people seem to feel about Jonathan in general (and because I know that news of those pictures got spread around the school so people likely thought Steve was just being an ongoing victim of Jonathan's creepiness). He's also a rich, attractive, and funny guy. There's no way people just decide to drop him because he dumped Tommy and started dating Nancy.

Then there's the fact that when Billy does show up, Steve is still King Steve enough that Billy almost immediately knows that this is the person he has to beat in order to be Top Dog. He specifically says that everyone keeps talking about King Steve, so why would they be if Steve dropped off the social ladder a year ago?

No one can also convince me Steve stopped being popular after Billy beat him up because firstly, Tommy being his friend isn't an indicator that Billy is now popular (as stated above, Tommy was obviously less liked than Steve was), nor is doing 1 impressive thing at a party half the people will probably be too drunk to remember. He also wouldn't lose popularity from dropping basketball because 1) a bad concussion isn't bad enough to take someone completely out of a sport like basketball once it heals and basketball season wouldn't properly start until a full month or two after the events of S2, so he wouldn't quit because of that and despite what many, many fics try to do, Steve is would not quit to avoid Billy. He just wouldn't, it's so out of character that that's the reason I noped out of the fic I was reading.

This is also not even mentioning that everyone seems to think that if Billy is popular or king of the school, then Steve just HAS to be a friendless loser, which is such a blatant attempt to just dump trauma on Steve. I mean, if they want to make Steve lonely and friendless for the Tragic Backstory, at least have the reason make sense, like Steve pulling away after multiple counts of almost Dying because he just can't relate to kids his own age anymore.

Not to mention the fact that Steve is probably one of the least developed main characters and chances are the fact that we don't see or hear about Steve's other friends is because 1) less people they have to cast/take up screen time and 2) the Duffers just genuinely seem not to give a fuck about developing Steve or his backstory at all.

Anyway, sorry for dumping into your asks (I sincerely hope this is coherent), but this has been bugging me for months and I needed to get it off my chest.

oh yeah, that shit bugs me too. like, i don’t think steve had any super close friends other than nancy, but boy was still popular, he still knew people, he had a place to sit at lunch!!

and that’s actually interesting, about steve being well liked, but not tommy and carol. i’ve never really seen that kind of separation in fics, but it would be fun to have something about steve being the most popular of the group, and tommy and carol being the ones that drop popularity after the split.

steve being super sporty essentially means he always had people to hang out with lmao. and i do see steve obviously not playing basketball for a while, and no longer being captain, because i figure you have to play the game to be captain lol. i honestly don’t know much about sports tho, so i don’t know if you could just jump right in after not playing for a while, but yeah, steve wouldn’t just drop out because of billy. like, the other basketball guy called billy a douchebag. i think it’d be fun if in a fic, everyone turned against billy after the fight.

yeah, steve’s friends aren’t at all relevant to the plot, so we’re not going to see them. and i’ve said this before, but while s2 steve is lonely, he’s not alone. he has friends, he’s popular, but he’s increasingly not seeing any point towards the whole thing and essentially becoming disillusioned to the idea of being the king of hawkins high. but like you said, he’s not a friendless loser.

[strangertheories]

If you're seeing this on a non-Nancy tag, it'll talk about what I tagged a bit later on!

I mentioned this on my TikTok (forever_ronance if you're interested), but Nancy antis using the scene with her and Steve in S2 when she's drunk and telling him she doesn't love him to insult her will never make sense to me. First of all, she can't control her actions because she's incredibly drunk. But secondly, she's a traumatized 17 year old girl whose best friend is dead but she can't openly mourn her as her family still thinks she's alive. Her dating Steve was a coping mechanism for this trauma, even if she didn't realize it.

Not enough people focus on what Nancy is saying beyond her calling her relationship with Steve bullshit. She says that they're pretending that they're ok and that they didn't kill Barb. You see, Nancy believes her having sex with Steve caused Barb's death, so she's acting like they're normal and in love because if she admits she doesn't love Steve, she admits that she "killed" Barb for nothing. When she's saying they're bullshit it's not a personal insult to Steve or that she's been using him, it's that she's traumatized and because of the alcohol and Barb's parents selling her house (plus the whole anniversary affect Owens mentioned), she's unable to repress those feelings.

She's had these emotions building up ever since S1 and I don't think she realized she even had these emotions, at least not fully. Yes it's horrible for Steve that his love is unrequited but she didn't realize she was using him and also sometimes people just do bad things because of trauma. Doesn't excuse it of course, but I don't get why people will forgive Steve for being a homophobic slut shaming bully but not Nancy for being a traumatized kid. Not to mention how Steve has always been a bit of a facade for her to try and seem different to her parents ironically by dating someone she didn't love and how we always knew she'd be actually rebelling by being with someone she loved like Johnathan. (This is especially cool to me with a sapphic lense through Ronance too as her rebelling from her parents would be her being true to herself with added queer angst but that's another post).

It frustrates me because people in this fandom will bang on about how trauantized everyone must be and how the show isn't exploring it enough (which is true in some cases) but then when a character acts out as a result of trauma, they then hold no forgiveness for their character. Like sure, act traumatized but only in a specific neat way that doesn't impact anyone else. I'm not talking about Billy here by the way, he was a racist abuser, I'm talking about people doing mildly bad or annoying things because of their past.

I think Mike and Will are big examples of this. A lot of people hate on Mike, but you've got to remember he's a teenager who's dealt with so much trauma who doesn't know quite how to process his emotions. He always takes accountability after the incidents too. But people act like he's an irredeemable who should be sentenced to medieval execution (exaggeration). This is ignoring the whole internalised homophobia stuff with him by the way since that is not canon currently. Or when people call Will an annoying crybaby who never does anything for the plot when firstly, he is the plot, and secondly, no shit a kid frequently mentioned to be sensitive with an abusive homophobic dad who was kidnapped and possessed when he was barely a teen will cry a lot.

People will extend so much grace to the characters if they're like Steve (because they think they're attractive) but then have zero sympathy for children trying to cope with huge amounts of trauma. Not to mention how people are more willing to extend sympathy to white male characters, but that's for another post.

[two-sides-samecoin]

Omg I hate it when people dismiss Mike's feelings for El. Like he didn't spend the entirety of s3 being in love with her and even blurting it out unprompted. That doesn't mean Mike could develop feelings outside or is questioning his sexuality, bi people exist but El is still a huge part of his life. It's insane that b*lers want for Mike to essentially string El along, don't they see how cruel this is. But I mean you're right Nancy doing this with Steve while everyone cheered lol. I mean they already use Jancy and B*ler as parallels for their endgame theories, funny bc both could be named B*ler sooo. Anyway El deserves better in this fandom, she's not a doormat with no feelings. Also saying she shouldn't have been in a relationship, like she can do whatever she wants, it's so mean to say. M*leven didn't happen for a year really, she had enough time to learn through tv about relationships, don't fault her for wanting to experience it herself with a boy she thinks is cute and saved her life. At this rate none of the kids should be in relationships because they were all 13 years old and have immense trauma. Let El experience stuff.

(Also the biggest ick I have is when ppl say Mike finding buzzcut El cute is proof he likes boys bc she looked like one.)

yes like mike’s feelings for el are real. if you want byler to be canon you can just say that mike just didnt think him and el worked well together anymore or that they both wanted different things in life. you don’t have to just be like ‘wow mike’s romantic feelings for el were never real’ cuz a) that takes away his agency b) that takes away el’s agency and c) it takes away from canon where it is very much real. like it’s soo easy to come up with ways for them to break up so that their ship can be real instead of just taking every possible character’s canonical and agency experiences. exactly about that sentence about mike questioning his bisexuality! yeah they really use those parallels honestly i haven’t been able to unsee how bylers just want what happened with steve nancy and jonathan to happen again and how they want it to be in a positive light. like you can talk about the parallels and etc but why in fuck’s name are we celebrating a wheeler stringing alone a person/character? like people fr somehow end up worshipping these wheeler siblings so much where stringing people alone and damaging them is seen as this thing we should celebrate.

legit el deserves better!!!!! god whenever people are upset that el’s in a relationship and are like ‘well i do t think she’s ready’ all i can see is infantilization of her cuz they’re completely fine with everyone else in the party having romantic relationships. the double standards are shown sooo fucking hard with this. exactly what you said at the end of that paragraph!

that is my biggest fucking ick too. el’s hair and buzzcut was a sign of her trauma and what brenner had done to her at the time of the lab. why the fuck are people using that to promote a ship they fucking like?! it’s just the biggest ick i have with bylers and it pisses me off

[bifuriouswaterbender]

Stranger Things (Steve and Eddie) for 87

Send me a ship (or fandom) and a number between 1 & 101, and I’ll use my Spotify Wrapped as fic inspo

87 - IS IT ME - Loveless

Note: This is post-season 4 canon compliant. It isn't Steddie so much as Steve realizing what Steddie could have been. I hurt myself a little writing it, so while it isn't the angstiest thing ever written, you've been warned. This one might get polished and posted to AO3 at some point.

The aftermath of their battle goes much the same Steve as it always does. He lets Nancy and the others fuss over him medically. Then he goes home to an empty house. He scrubs off the Upside Down grime in the shower and redresses his own wounds after. He goes to bed and tries to pretend the nightmares won’t wait him up the moment he managed to push the images away and try to sleep.

It won’t work. It never does.

But he’s also never had to deal with one of the images in that memory collection being the one where he drags Dustin away from a friend’s corpse.

They should have brought him back. Closing portals be damned.

But Steve had been too focused on keeping Dustin off his ankle and trying to block out that haunted look on Eddie’s face, the blood soaking down the shredded remains of his front.

Steve has always done a good job of looking affected. Even after the Russians, no one had known he woke up screaming every night for over a month. His parents hadn’t been around, so Steve didn’t even need an excuse.

Now, though, he struggles getting up for work in the mornings. It all feels so pointless.

Eddie had finally been about to graduate—a man full of life and vitality and direction. Maybe he hadn’t known where, but Steve knows he was going somewhere, going to do something special. He’d never given much thought to Eddie Munson before all this, and now he regrets it. He should have given him a chance, should have basked in a little of the warmth he gave off even as he tried to look like the kind of guy who would push everyone away.

He has a panic attack for the first time at work. Some klutzy middle schoolers knock over an entire shelf, and instead of berating them, Steve drops to the ground at the sound, unable to breathe. His heart is too loud, like it’s trying to beat up and out his throat.

“Steve?” Robin says, and she almost start hyperventilating with him as she babbles and tries to pull him back from the edge.

In the end, it isn’t Robin who helps him. It’s a whisper in the back of his mind, a memory of Eddie saying, “We aren’t heroes.” They were. He was. And here’s Steve unable to get through the day. But if Eddie can face insurmountable odds knowing he’s not going to make it (because Dustin could tell; it was all over his face), Steve can make himself take a breath. And another. And another.

“Oh thank god!” Robin’s voice is loud in his ear, and Steve flinches away from her.

“You’re okay,” she says, and Steve really needs her to stop talking. “You’re having a perfectly normal reaction to the amount of trauma you’ve gone through. It’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll kick those kids out of the store and clean up the display. It’ll be fine.”

“Go deal with them,” he manages to mutter. Although Steve doesn’t tell Robin he needs her to get out of his space right now, she seems to understand.

By the time she’s sent the kids out the door, Steve’s ready to drag himself back to his face. He can do this.

Within a couple weeks, he’s realized he can’t do this. Steve spends most of his time at work wondering how he’s ended up in a dead-end job stuck in his home town and the rest of it panicked that someone will need hima nd he won’t immediately be there. Even lying on his couch at home (because it’s closer to the door than his bedroom if someone needs him), Steve wonders what would happen if his walkie died, if the kids didn’t have time to radio, if he’s the one who gets flayed, Venca’d, or whatever the next hellish trick is they’ll have to go up against.

He won’t be enough. Steve knows he won’t be.

He won’t be in the right place, with the right group. He’s avoiding the hospital because he wasn’t there to help protect Max from Jason or Venca, and he’s avoiding Dustin because he wasn’t there to stop Eddie from sacrificing himself. At the same time, he can’t stand not to see them.

Steve knows he’s spiraling. He would have known that even if Robin hadn’t so helpfully pointed it out. Still, he doesn’t know how to stop it.

He doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.

“He kept flirting with you the last few days,” Dustin says when he’s finally cornered Steve and guilted him into dinner.

Steve choked on his food.

“Did you notice that?”

Steve attempts to swallow. “Yeah, I might have noticed.”

“Were you flirting back?”

Steve takes a drink not to stall this conversation but to keep his throat from closing up. “I don’t know.”

“If he had survived, would you have?”

“Maybe.”

“You’d have matching scars if he had.”

Dustin says it so casually, like it’s just a fact, not like it’s a bomb that sets Steve off, has him crumbled and sobbing in an old diner booth.

People look at them curiously. Dustin doesn’t show anything on his face to say he’s surprised. They must assume it’s normal.

For Steve, it has become normal.

Everyone else seems to be handling this the way they always do. There are nightmares, of course, and hard moments during the day, but no one else is struggling like Steve. Maybe he’s just taken on too much. Maybe he was always going to hit this point eventually.

He sees flashes of what his life should be. He sees big brown eyes and a wicked smile. Long ringed fingers moving across a guitar Steve has to share affection with. Nights spent curled up together. This was never his life. He can’t assume it would have been. But he can imagine it so clearly that it almost feels like a memory of what he never got. What he never gets.

Eddie is dead.

The man Steve could have fallen in love with his gone. And he’s partially responsible because he should have planned better. He should have insisted on being with the distractions because they were taking on too much. He should have known better. He didn’t. Now that’s his knowledge to be haunted with. Steve’s not as smart as the people around him. He’s stuck, treading water on a lake where he might be pulled it by demobats at any moment.

And he’s the only one who hurts like this.

[1-800-badvibes]

this is my first time posting anything on this hellsite but i have not been able to get this god forsaken thought out of my head for weeks. i see your "robin is toned from biking as her main source of transportation" headcanon and i raise you: buff nancy wheeler

nancy wheeler, who can and will do anything to protect the people she cares about. nancy wheeler, who stood in front of a speeding car and shot at it with no hesitation. nancy wheeler, who wields a gun with as much proficiency as she does a pen. with how much trauma that girl has after everything, you cannot convince me she wouldn't start working out so that she could be stronger, faster, more capable of saving her friends because it was her plan to use eddie as a distraction and max as bait. in her mind, she's the reason barb died all those years ago, she's the reason why max is in a coma, she's the reason why dustin had to tell eddie's uncle that he died a hero.

she refuses to lose another person because she wasn't good enough, so she makes sure that she will always be strong enough to fight for her friends. for her family. because god damn it she's nancy wheeler and nothing, nothing will take them away from her

[thevrslutz]

Dear fellow Stranger Things fans,

I am really starting to hate the ST fandom. Ships ruin everything. My lovely, lovely angst has turned into r e l a t i o n s h i p angst. People are hating on Mike for acting like a teenager. Will can forget about being kidnapped, stuck in an alternate dimension, possessed and outcasted because Mike “can’t take a hint.” S4 Jonathan is apparently not good enough for Nancy anymore. Jason’s an absolute lunatic for going crazy after his girlfriend was brutally mutilated and murdered. Oh and I guess we are also comparing Will and Eleven’s trauma now? I don’t fucking know. When you all are done, can we please talk about ELEVEN BRINGING SOMEONE BACK FROM THE DEAD???? There is, no not 1, BUT 4 HUGE ASS CRACKS to the upside down in Hawkins. Max is in critical condition and Eleven got a front row seat (do I see a cycle perhaps?). Brenner is dead. Hopper is definitely not ok. And oh yeah- NANCY DIDN’T KILL VECNA. Maybe it’s because I am Aromantic, i’m not going to lie, but I simply CANNOT comprehend how relationships out rule ALL OF THAT. I liked the stranger things fandom that thought about who the next villain was going to be, what characters might die, NEW characters, who’ll get more screen time, what plot points will be expanded upon and so on. Discussing this show with others loses it’s unique touch when a lot of people are only focusing on the romance aspects of it. This has happened to s o many other fandoms therefore I can’t help but notice where this is going. I don’t like it. I am really starting to hate the ST fandom.

-Cyrus L

[windowsandfeelings]

nancy/ace! And literati, for a throwback, haha.

omg, my 2 favorite subjects

OK, so Nancy/Ace

1. What made you ship it?

They're just so...well-matched. I remember thinking I was imagining things in season 1 because it did not seem like the show was actively trying to do any of the stuff that I was seeing, but the chemistry was so immediately there, and the complete invasion of personal space was so immediately there, and even in the pilot you have Nancy refusing to let anyone in emotionally while also saying that she told Ace all of her deep dark traumas over the summer (*ahem*). I think I first realized it was something I was into around their visit to the library (maybe a little before that?), or when he drank poison for her(!!!), and I was fully on board when he was the only one who knew the truth about Lucy and his first instinct was to protect that secret until she was ready to share it. The way he dives into doing the ritual in 1x17 when everyone else is asking questions just makes my heart feel like it's going to explode, I love it so much.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

INVASION. OF. PERSONAL. SPACE.

The fact that they both have an inferiority complex and it's so so absurd (Ace is worried he doesn't speak enough languages for her! he speaks 3 languages but that's not enough!! Nancy is an emotional disaster and should really be in so much therapy!!!!! Ace probably should, too!!!)

Excellent gazing.

There's a moment in 2x07 where Nancy realizes Ace and Amanda are flirting and she does these little jealous eyes and it was the first time I thought there was anything intentional going on and it's the best. (related: the way Nancy says "She's competent" in 2x13)

Any and all moments we see text messages between them they are top notch. (MEAT HOOKS!!!)

They both love Horseshoe Bay so much and it informs everything about them.

I can't even talk about the lust curse.

Or the fact that Nancy thinks he has pretty eyes.

OR THE HUG AFTER SHE AND GRANT SAVE HIM.

They. have. a. private. server.

Season 4 is going to be sooooo angsty and I am here for it.

Did I mention the invasion of personal space?

Anyway, there's just so much mutual respect and trust and even when they're mad at each other or not communicating well or dating other people or anything they still care deeply about each other.

Everyone else knew they were in love before they did.

HANDS.

UGH I COULD GO ON FOREVER.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I do not get why the fandom is so invested in Ace calling her "Nance" when the specific way that he says "Nancy" is the hottest thing in the fucking world.

AND MY BELOVED LITERATI

1. What made you ship it?

I honestly barely remember because it's been literally twenty years, but I do know that I went into season 2 very invested in Rory and Dean (and very alone in that, the fandom was intensely Trory in a way that is hilarious to me now), and I hated Jess for a long time because I didn't want anything to get in the way of that (hahahahaha). But he won me over somewhere in season 2, because I do remember reading the spoilers for "I Can't Get Started" and seeing that they were going to kiss and losing my shit in a way that only a 14 year old can (lies, I lost my shit so hard during the Nancy Drew finale that I spilled half a diet coke on my couch and now there is a giant stain on the fold-out mattress). Like running around the house and screaming about it.

And then the night before "Let the Games Begin" aired (it might have been "They Shoot Gilmores...") I got grounded and got my tv privileges taken away and I wrote my parents a letter explaining why it was extremely important that I be allowed to watch and they actually let me.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

Well, let's talk about mutual respect again. Let's talk about chemistry again.

Book nerds in love.

It's a cliche to say 22.8 miles/you looked it up, but 22.8 miles!/you looked it up! (True story: there is a picture of me on Buzzfeed holding a sign that says 22.8 miles/you looked it up, because they went to the same Luke's pop up that I did before AYITL and asked people in line what their favorite Gilmore Girls moments were.)

They pushed each other and expected more from each other. I think the ways that Jess nudged Rory back to herself in season 6 and AYITL get more attention, but Rory was also so important to getting Jess to a place where he could be that person for her. (Anyway, see chapter 4 of MYatRT this weekend for more of my thoughts on this. It's a ~theme~)

Separate from the actual, on-screen ship: Rory and Jess were what drove me to stars-hollow.org in 2004 (right after "Nag Hammadi..." aired), and that message board, and specifically the Lit thread, gave me some of my dearest friends in the world, people who are still in my life every single day, people I've vacationed with, people I love deeply. I would love them for that if for no other reason.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

IDK, the discourse around GG has changed so much over the years (I have to stop looking at the subreddit. It makes me feel 1000 years old), and at no point have I agreed with all of it, but no specific examples spring to mind. I'm not as much of a Dean hater as many (probably has something to do with my answer to 1), which is not necessarily a ship opinion considering Dean is not a part of the ship, but does seem related to them anyway.

OH! I do think it's funny the way people use the ship name now! People call Rory and Jess Literati, but we used to call ourselves Literati (or really, Literatis, even though Literati is already plural. But really, we mostly used Lit/Lits). Like, we were the stars-hollow.org Lits. Lits wrote Literati fic, but I don't think we would say we wrote fic about Literati. Does that make sense? IDK I think it's a subtle difference, but it's there.

[tarlos-spain]

Two of a mind - Chapter 01

Title: Two of a mind. Part 2 of Tarlos Breakup fix series.

Previous Part: One of a kind

Fandom: 9-1-1 Lone Star

Pairing: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand

Characters: Carlos Reyes, TK Strand, Owen, Strand, 126 firehouse Family, Tommy Vega, Nancy Gillian, Gabriel Reyes, Andrea Reyes.

Summary: TK and Carlos are back together, they're back in his home and both are back to their jobs. TK still has headaches every now and then and Carlos worried, but happy for him. Life has back to normal until after getting hurt during a call, Carlos find a possible different way to be happy and do what he has always wanted.

Chapters: 1/?

Words: 2230

acknowledgement: And here we go with the following part of this story. I know that the show won't take this path but this idea of TK and Carlos taking a completely different way for their future together made start this story.

Hope you like it and as usual I have to thank my good friends, allies, listeners and help in the moment of "what can I do now?" or "OMG how can I fix this?" @lire-casander and @morganaspendragonss that is also the spectacular translator.

Please enjoy and I'll wait for your comments.

Carlos checked his phone for what was probably the millionth time, the screen still showing no calls or texts. He didn’t know whether to be happy or worried that no-one was saying anything because they didn’t want him to worry. He quickly fired off two texts to Tommy, one to Owen, and another to Judd.

Carlos: Hey, how’s the shift going?

Judd: Oh, Carlos. Anyone would think you’re actually interested in how my day’s going.

Carlos: Right, sorry. I’m just going crazy because it’s TK first day back and I haven’t heard anything.

Judd: You don’t need to worry, he has plenty of eyes watching him. We’re all on alert, though we’re trying to give him space.

Carlos: So everything’s okay? I mean… He hasn’t had any migraines or anything?

Judd: For now, no.

Carlos: For now?

Judd: Carlos, TK is fine. Tommy has it all under control, Owen isn’t taking his eyes off him, and as for the rest of us… Pretty soon, he’ll probably be complaining that we have him wrapped in cotton wool and aren’t letting him do anything.

Carlos: OK… I promise I won’t bother you again until my shift is over.

Judd: Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Reyes.

Carlos put his phone away and focused on work, although, naturally, nothing happened. There wasn’t even the most minor crime on his beat, which left him with too much time to think.

TK had decided to return to work—he’d insisted on it in fact, saying that he was ready to get his life back. The doctor hadn’t told him otherwise, and the migraines were slowly getting further and further apart.

“I just have to take it easy,” TK said the previous night as they got ready to go to bed.

It had been five months since they’d decided to take another shot at living together, and they’d been the best five months of their lives. Everything was perfect, as if nothing had ever happened; as if they’d never broken up, as if they’d never said all those horrible things.

Not that they’d made them disappear; both of them knew that would be a mistake. Now, they were stronger, they had learned to be more honest with each other, to talk about their feelings, and not push aside things until they grew too big.

“Are you sure that you’re ready? You could always wait a few more days and we can be sure that the migraines…”

“The migraines are part of my life now, Carlos. They always will be, but the doctor said that I could control them.”

“Yeah, no coffee or alcohol, and enough sleep.” Carlos walked over to TK and kissed him. “I just don’t want you to exert yourself too much. The doctor also said that after a trauma like yours, you could be off work for a year.”

TK responded with a kiss and took Carlos’s hand, pulling him towards the bed and making him sit. “I can’t spend a year on the sofa, babe. You know I’m not like that.” He sat himself on top of Carlos and took his face in both hands to kiss him. “I’ve been doing this job for my whole life, ever since I left school. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“I know, but maybe you could wait just a little longer. Just a couple weeks to see if you’re free from the migraines.”

TK kissed his neck and pushed him to lay down in the bed. Carlos sighed; he hated how easy it was for his boyfriend to make him forget about important things through sex. He tried to look away when TK took his sweater off, but he couldn’t, not now nor ever, and his hands moved of their own accord to TK’s hips.

“Everything will be okay, I promise. I’ll be with my dad, Tommy… Nancy is like an older sister. She calls me every day and she says that when I go back tomorrow, she’s going to be my shadow.”

Carlos sat up and kissed TK’s bare chest and abdomen. He hated the idea of leaving him alone all day, but TK was right; he deserved to get his life back. After everything that had happened, after what had probably been the worst months of his life, TK was owed some normality.

They made love until exhaustion knocked them out, and they fell asleep in an embrace, their bodies curled together.

Carlos ran out of the station as soon as his shift finished, jumping in the car and heading straight to the 126. He’d never gotten there so fast, nor felt so nervous, but everything seemed normal inside as one shift ended and another began.

Paul, Marjan, and Mateo were leaving, but Carlos stopped them.

“You should get that panic off your face, Carlos,” Paul said, waving his hand at him. “TK’s going to think that something happened to you at work.”

“Everything okay?”

“Carlos, TK is the strongest guy I’ve ever met,” Marjan responded.

“He hasn’t complained once, and if he was hurting—” Mateo began, but Carlos cut him off, raising his voice louder than he meant to.

“What do you mean he hasn’t complained. Was his head hurting? Did something happen?”

“I’m fine, babe.” TK came down the stairs with his bag over his shoulder. “They’re exaggerating because they were worried enough to watch every expression I’ve made all day.”

Carlos wrapped his arms around TK’s waist and kissed his cheek. “I don’t want to seem desperate, so I won’t ask you how the day went.”

“It was fine, I promise. We helped a kid who was having an asthma attack and a woman who was allergic to bees. It’s been really quiet, honestly.”

“Good!”

Carlos felt like he could finally breathe, though he hoped that nobody would notice how tense he’d been. Even so, he squeezed TK’s waist and kissed him again, still nervous.

“You’re shaking,” TK whispered in his ear. “Let’s go home because you have an anxiety attack.”

For the next few days, Carlos adjusted his schedule so that he could always pick TK up from the firehouse. He wanted to return home with him, he wanted to know how his day had gone and how he was feeling.

But, on the fifth day, he got called to a robbery which needed all available units to assist.

Afternoon turned into night, and it was ten-thirty before Carlos could go home. He checked his phone to see that TK had texted at seven.

TK: Nancy dropped me home. We could order sushi for dinner.

Then, at eight-thirty: I guess you’re in the middle of something. I just wanted to let you know that I’m fine, but my head is bothering me a bit. I’m going to lie down, but wake me up when you get back, please. I love you.

The final message had come through at almost ten, and was the most worrying of all.

I need a painkiller, but I’ll wait until you get back. I still don’t think I can take one on my own. Hopefully I’ll be KO when you get back, but the sushi is on the table.

The whole drive home, Carlos felt like he was going to throw up. He’d never driven so quickly, and his parking, which he was usually so careful about, had never been worse. He barely even worried about closing the door, and only did so to avoid the car getting stolen.

The lights inside were all turned off and he couldn’t hear even the slightest sound. Carlos left his bag in the kitchen and took his shoes off so he didn’t make any noise himself.

The tray of sushi was on the counter, still full; TK hadn’t eaten. He’d waited for Carlos, and then it was too late, so the sushi was left behind.

He dropped his keys into the bowl and went up to their bedroom, only thinking to be grateful that TK hadn’t fallen asleep on the sofa. Carlos wouldn’t mind carrying him up to bed, but TK didn’t need the backache he’d certainly have the following day.

He opened the bedroom door slowly, revealing TK in a ball on the bed, hugging his legs. The orange pill bottle was next to him, lying on the sheets.

TK had tried to take a pill. But the bottle was still closed.

Carlos smiled and sat on the edge of the bed, stroking TK’s cheek, then he leaned over to kiss him. As he did so, he saw that TK’s face was red, like someone who’d been crying for a long time.

“TK,” Carlos whispered. “ Sweetheart. ”

“Babe… You’re back.”

“Sorry I’m so late. It won’t happen again.”

“Don’t say that. You’re a cop and criminals don’t take days off.” TK tried to turn over in bed, but he stopped with a groan.

“You haven’t taken anything, right?”

TK shook his head. “I thought I could, with all the times the doctor told me that it’s okay. But I was scared and it was the first time I would have taken one alone… I couldn’t do it without you.”

“That’s okay. I’ll get some water and you can take one.”

Carlos helped TK to sit up, then put the pill in his hand and pushed the water towards him.

“Today was fine, like all the others have been, and the shift was quiet. My head wasn’t even hurting when Nancy brought me home.”

Carlos took off his jacket and shoes, then settled himself at TK’s side, waiting for him to curl into his arms so he could do what he did best —looking after the love of his life.

“Something tells me this has been an intense day for both of us. You know I haven’t texted anyone on the team to ask about you?” Carlos whispered, and TK laughed.

“How brave you are, Officer Reyes. Anyone would think that you’ve been in the middle of a hold-up with people firing on you.”

Carlos lost all sense of time as they sat there, his hands moving across TK’s hair, neck, and back. In the months since the accident, Carlos had learned that, on a good day, the painkiller would take effect in an hour. Sometimes they made him fall asleep, but not that night. TK breathed gently, stroking Carlos’s abdomen over his clothes.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” TK asked.

“What isn’t?”

“This, the migraine, me being alone and waiting to take the pill until you came back.” TK sighed as the pressure in his head faded at last. He hadn’t had an attack as strong as that one in a while, and he hoped it wouldn’t happen again.

“We can manage it, both of us being at work. The cop and the paramedic. It sounds like some sort of sitcom, right? If you help, we could get up and eat that sushi.”

“You’ll tell me when you have a bad day, right?” Carlos asked as they ate.

“I don’t want to worry you, especially not when you’re working. I don’t want something to happen to you because you’re distracted with worry for me.”

Carlos stroked his cheek and offered him the last of the sushi. “I’ll worry more if I don’t know anything, I promise you. I want you to promise me—whatever happens, you text, you call, you tell me. We’re a team, right?”

“Then you have to promise that to me, too.”

Carlos hadn’t been expecting that. Many things had changed since they’d decided to get back together, but the idea of looking after TK, of protecting him and being his hero whenever he needed him, was something fixed, which would never change.

But TK’s smile and the shine in his eyes, despite the low light in the room, told him that he was wrong. He didn’t have to look after TK alone; now it was something for the both of them. They both protected each other, they both looked after each other, and they’d both be there for the other.

TK leaned across the counter to kiss Carlos.

“I had an idea earlier, tiger,” Carlos said, still a little choked up. “I wanted to tell you when we came back from the firehouse, but…”

“What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about hosting a dinner here for everyone. We have a lot to celebrate and, personally, I have to thank the team for the patience they’ve had with me.”

“That sounds great, anything to be able to enjoy a dinner made by the best boyfriend in the world.”

TK grunted and raised a hand to his temple.

“Time to go to bed, TK. You need to rest and sleep.”

TK nodded and rested his head against Carlos’s shoulder, not needing words for Carlos to know what he had to do. He wrapped an arm around TK’s waist and helped him to stand up. They went up to the bedroom together, and TK let him undress him.

Falling asleep in Carlos’s arms was the simplest thing of all.

Carlos took a moment to send a message to the group chat.

Saturday, 18:00. TK and I want you to come over. Dinner’s on me.”

He left his phone on the nightstand and curled up against TK. He kissed him goodnight and, after encircling his waist and hearing him sigh, Carlos too fell asleep.

[blackjack-15]

Two Can Keep a Secret (if the Family Tree is Dead) — Thoughts on: Ghost of Thornton Hall (GTH)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: GTH; SPY; mention of ASH (and the ASH meta); mention of Nik/HER’s spoilery hints about GTH.

 NOTE: THIS META CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF AND REFERENCE TO SEXUAL ASSAULT. MORE DETAILED SECTIONS ARE MARKED, BUT THIS WARNING STANDS FOR THE WHOLE META.

 The Intro:

It’s time to get our Spooky on, lads. And we’re gonna do it in a meta of truly staggering length, so maybe go to the bathroom and get a snack before you start. My apologies.

Due to the (to be quite frank) absence of nostalgia surrounding them, there’s not really many games that are post 2010 that the fandom tends to agree on, but Ghost of Thornton Hall happens to be a standout in that pretty much everyone has found something to like about it. It often tops the charts of “best newer game” polls, and puts in a valiant effort against the more nostalgic mainstays.

There are a lot of reasons for this, in my mind – the quality of the writing, the choices that Nancy can make that actually affect the outcome of the game and especially affect Nancy, the fabulous voice work, the purposely-unanswered questions that give a deeper sense of horror — but if you ask me, the love for GTH really boils down to one thing:

Atmosphere.

Nancy Drew game fans (and I’m including myself in this) tend to prioritize atmosphere in the games, probably because without good and proper atmosphere it’s easier to pick apart the formula as you’re playing and to avoid being immersed in the game’s story, and GTH has it thick on the ground (figuratively and literally). The fear, unease, and overall sense of being an Intruder in this story comes from the overwhelming atmosphere provided by the grief of the characters, the time-sensitive nature of the crime, the secrets of the house and family, and, of course, the rather stellar visuals and locations.

The Thornton’s house and grounds really feel alive, but dead — in fact, they almost feel alive in the way that a zombie is, where they function and feed but have no heart. The gloriously (and meticulously) decorated walls are cast in shadow and grime; the portraits feel ominous and disapproving rather than lifelike and nostalgic; even the graveyard, as spread out and opulent as it is, feels claustrophobic and unwelcoming.

In a word, the game is – visually, thematically, story-wise, and atmospherically — haunting. And I think that overwhelming feeling of being haunted is, in large part, what draws fans back to this game again and again.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the scariest parts of this game are the things that you, as the player, do not see. Sure, the apparitions of Charlotte, the ghostly figures, the appearance of Harper — these are all scary, but the fear is gone after a moment, leaving the player unsettled but not running to hide under a blanket. The deaths of the fifty-four souls, the secret behind Clara’s birth, Harper’s breakdown — all these things that you don’t see, that you can only hear about or have hinted at are where the fear of the game kicks in, especially for older players.

It’s no secret that, despite the games being labeled for ages 10 and up, that the actual age of the Nancy Drew games fandom hasn’t been around 10 for some time — most people playing these games are in their 20s or 30s, or have siblings who are in their 20s and 30s and got into the games through them. Sure, there are some outliers, but the Clue Crew is much closer in general to the ages of the River Heights crew than they are to the age that that box says.

Because of this, the writers (and I’m going to especially hat-tip Nik here) behind the games have been able to slowly graduate the topics of the games to be a little bit older, hiding the true horror behind things that younger kids just won’t think about. This is especially the case with GTH and SPY, but you see it in a lot of the newer games, where the implications of events are normally scarier than the events themselves.

GTH takes that and runs with it, choosing to hint at and dance around truly upsetting — for any age — topics, presenting a mystery and a story that only get scarier once you’ve finished staring at the screen. The characters’ emotional problems and issues — loss, abandonment, anxiety, guilt — are like this too; while they’re present in the game itself, when you take a step back after finishing the game you realize just how badly scarred everyone is in the story.

Because answers were purposely left vague in order to 1) make the player work for it and 2) keep the 10+ rating, pretty much everyone who plays GTH has a slightly different opinion on what went down at Charlotte’s party, who the Thorntons really are, the circumstances of Clara’s birth, why the children of a female Thornton take their mother’s name — you name it, and there’s around 10 distinct opinions on it, and many more offshoots of those opinions besides.

I’m going to talk a little bit here about a couple of the “biggies”, since I don’t want it cluttering up the Suspect portion of this meta, so bear with me. I’m not so much interested in “this is the Correct answer” as much as just presenting the information from the game and wondering about its conclusions…but I (like everyone else) have my little pet theories, so what follows will be a little bit of reporting, a little bit of inference, and a little bit of supposition.

What follows is a frank discussion of topics such as rape and incest as they apply to GTH. If this is something you’d rather not consume, skip down to the next bolded line.

The most talked-about question left hanging in the game is, of course, who Clara’s father was. I think this question is best addressed from a two-pronged approach, however, because to figure out who Clara’s father could have been is a question that requires another question to be answered: why would Clara’s mother not tell her, even on her deathbed.

The most popular — and horrifying — answer to this is that Clara’s father is Jackson, and that she was a product of rape and incest. Now, just looking at the timeline, this theory adds up; Rosalie (Clara’s mum) would have been 25 when her father was 51 and would have raped her — young enough (especially in relation to her father, a middle-aged man of a lot of power in and out of the family) that she would have been scared to tell anyone anything, but old enough to not have it be super out of the ordinary that she got pregnant and had a baby — especially in 1968.

To add to this theory, there’s the note in the cellar that asks “who was this Jackson?...what’s he hiding, and who put it there? Was it Charlotte?”. If you’re looking for clues with the incest theory in mind, this seems to point directly to it — “who was this Jackson”? both Rosalie and Clara’s father. “What’s he hiding”? his crime of raping his daughter and impregnating her. The mention of Charlotte alludes to the supposition that Charlotte found proof of this crime — tangible proof — and put it somewhere; this pretty much supposes that there’s a document somewhere that names Jackson as Clara’s biological father, such as an admission of guilt or a paternity test.

The final “proof-positive” to this theory is that Rosalie refused to tell Clara who her father was even on her deathbed. We know from the family tree and Wade that Clara was between 5-10 when her mother died (I’m inclined to believe the family tree, and chalk the discrepancy up to either the writers not being concerned with math or, more likely and more charitably, to show that Wade isn’t a Perfectly Reliable source, just like everyone else), and Rosalie’s protection of Clara from the truth makes sense with a child in that age span. It’s one (horrible, horrible) thing to be forcibly impregnated by your father, but to have to say it out loud, and to say it to your child — that’s something that no one can even remotely blame Rosalie for not being up to, especially when weakened by sickness.

There are smaller points — like pointing out that this might be why Virginia (Wade’s mum) was skipped over in inheritance — but these small points have dozens of explanations, so they’re not really good for bolstering a theory unless you’re already dedicated to it and are looking for crumbs to shore it up.

End of frank discussion. The previous topics may be alluded to and/or mentioned, but not discussed in detail from this point on.

Now, let’s talk about another explanation. I think there’s a tendency to jump on the “Jackson Theory” because 1) there are clues that support it, but more importantly 2) because it’s horrifying, and it’s natural to leap to the scariest thing you can think of when considering a game that relies on fridge horror in the first place.

In the “Jackson Theory”, Rosalie would have hidden Clara’s parentage because of shame, horror, and trauma, and probably to (at least momentarily) spare Clara’s feelings — but Jackson isn’t the only explanation for her reticence.

Generally, we can break apart the reasons for Rosalie’s silence into three distinct emotions or emotional states: shame (supports the Jackson Theory), trauma (supports an assault by a known wolf), or, often overlooked, ignorance.

Clara is mentioned repeatedly as being outwardly and obviously scared about her place in the family — a fear borne from and exacerbated in her childhood, as Nik plainly states (“her insecurity wasn’t just a personal flaw, it was a response to her uneven upbringing,” emphasis mine).

An easy way for Rosalie, worried as she must have been about leaving her daughter alone, to fix this if Clara really was a product of incest, is to name a distant Thornton cousin, preferably one who was already dead or out of the picture, as the father, which would assure Clara’s place in the Thornton line by both blood and her future adoption. This way, if Clara’s parentage was tested, she’d show up as a Thornton from both sides in a way that wouldn’t be suspicious, and her daughter would have an easier life.

But Rosalie didn’t do this — she never even hinted at the identity of Clara’s father. As a woman known primarily for secret keeping — not just about Clara, but about everything (“She loved her secrets,” Wade says), Rosalie would have been adept at hiding things through various means, including through lies and subterfuge, not simply staying silent. Given the little we know of Rosalie’s character, then, let’s consider why she wouldn’t have said anything — even something false — to ensure her daughter’s safety when she died.

Looking outside of Jackson (and with any other known Thornton being quite unlikely), the vast majority of assaults are committed by those known to their victim — friends, acquaintances, classmates, etc.

The Thorntons were — and are — an incredibly powerful family, both monetarily and socially. Having dealt with families such as the Thorntons before in matters like this one, it is frankly incredibly unlikely that, had Rosalie been assaulted by someone she knew, that the truth wouldn’t have come to light through another source, and that the perpetrator would have been punished in every way possible.

BRIEF DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT STATISTICS AS THEY RELATE TO ROSALIE’S POSSIBLE CASE.

Some people familiar with only the post-20th-century world as “the modern age” and with a less stellar grasp of the pre-tech-boom world might raise an eyebrow at this supposition of punishment, but this is Exactly what would have happened — and did happen with regularity — even as “far back” as ’68 — especially when the crime was committed against a young, privileged, wealthy woman of the community.

Note, this is after the USMPC adjustment to the definition of rape in ’62, but before the adjustments in the early 70s; in 9 years, forcible rape rates (this number includes only female victims, so the true number of victims is indisputably higher, given the enormous jump in rape statistics in 2016-present as male cases have been included) had soared in the United States from around 17,000 per year in 1960 to, in the year Clara was born, 31,000 reported cases (source: DisasterCenter). With these soaring numbers came soaring awareness, and combined with Rosalie’s identity as a rich, powerful young woman in a rich, powerful family, it’s on the outside of belief that, had her attacker’s identity been known or suspected, that it could have remained a secret and gone unpunished.

END OF BRIEF DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT STATISTICS AS THEY RELATE TO ROSALIE’S POSSIBLE CASE.

Given this historical and social backing, the simplest and unavoidable potential answer to why Rosalie wouldn’t have either told Clara who her father was or made up a “brief love” who abandoned her Dishonorably, is this: she didn’t know.

(I’ll spare a mention here to say that, ignorance because of being a “wild child” in the 60s and having had multiple partners would be a possible theory, but it disregards everything else we know about Rosalie and her behavior, and that her reputation as a party girl would have been common knowledge, unable to be hidden from those who were alive at the time. So let’s move on to what else would cause ignorance.)

Though attacks by a person unknown to the victim are, in relation to known assailants, rare, in the absence of other evidence, the simplest answer to Clara’s parentage was that Rosalie was assaulted by someone that she did not know and had no way of knowing — and who had no idea of the social power of his victim.

Rosalie truly left nothing behind that points to her daughter’s parentage, even for later discovery or for Clara’s private eyes in a bank lockbox when she came of an Age that Rosalie deemed appropriate — so the conclusion to be drawn is, in the absence of evidence, that Rosalie didn’t answer Clara’s question because she simply couldn’t.

This ties into the other theory/mystery I want to cover here — that of what happened the night Charlotte died, and how (and in what way) Clara was culpable and responsible for Charlotte’s death. We know that, according to her, Clara went there simply to “scare” Charlotte — and given the circumstances that Clara gives this confession in, I’m inclined to believe her — and it’s my opinion that the reason didn’t have anything to do with the truth of the identity of Clara’s father.

My stance here — and it’s here that I take a solid stance, rather than presenting options — with Charlotte (and I’ll talk more about her general character in the Suspects section) is that Charlotte found the same breadcrumbs as the players did and came to the same conclusion — that Jackson was Clara’s biological father. The difference, however, is that I believe Charlotte’s conclusion to be understandable, but ultimately incorrect, and that Rosalie’s assaulter was a stranger.

Horrified, this is where Charlotte’s “cryptic obsession with Jackson” (mentioned in the note in the cellar) began, and what led to her changing the beneficiary of her will from Clara — poor, pitiable Clara, already a victim of so much, whose insecurities would be compounded by this truth — to Harper.

An important part of this theory — and of really any theory — is the consideration that Clara was pregnant with Jessalyn at the time. Not only does this partially explain why Clara’s thought was to save herself (and her baby) rather than dragging Charlotte out with her (regardless of any other factor), but it also brings a potential answer as to why Charlotte would change her will to favor Harper, rather than Clara. Just as the cellar note asks “Who was this Jackson?”, I find myself asking a similar, but no less important question:

“Who was this Austin Neely?”

Listed as Jessalyn’s (still living) father on the family tree, Austin Neely isn’t present anywhere else in the game — not by name and not through mentions of “Jessalyn’s father” or “Clara’s ex-husband/ex-boyfriend” or anything like that. There’s not even a mention of Clara contacting him as a guest for the wedding or to help search for their daughter. His absence is glaring, especially in a game so focused around family — so the question of who is Austin Neely is a question that seems incredibly important to me, given that Clara was pregnant at the time of Charlotte’s death.

In mentioning this theory, I do fully acknowledge that I have only some circumstantial evidence — mostly emotional, and based off of who the characters are/were — to support it, but given the total lack of information on Austin Neely, my guess is as good as anything else.

So here’s my theory: Austin Neely is not Jessalyn’s father, and Clara, like her mother, became pregnant via some type of assault (and given that this was the late 80s and given Clara’s age at the time, I would say the most likely culprit is date rape). When Clara became aware that she was pregnant, given her insecurities about her place in the Thornton clan and her lack of knowledge of her own father, would have come to this conclusion: she was not going to let her baby go through what she herself went through. So she did what her mother could have — and honestly speaking, probably should have — done, and lied.

Austin Neely was probably a friend or an acquaintance of Clara’s — someone her family didn’t really know, but that she could make up a story about dating/being engaged to and became pregnant by before it all fell apart. He would have likely received a payout (probably a rather large payout, given the Thornton’s money and influence) and disappeared from the area and the Thornton’s lives, signing off any responsibility or claim to “their” child before he left.

As a result of this, her child now has a father and doesn’t have to grow up wondering, and Clara avoids the stigma, court case, and general Uproar that would come with attempting to find her attacker. She also, importantly for her, avoids that mess for her child, who will grow up in a semi-normal atmosphere, surrounded by family, not doubting her place in the world — and no one has to know.

Except, of course, one person would know. The head of the family: Charlotte Thornton. From then on, based on this series of events, the story behind Charlotte’s death becomes quite straightforward.

Clara’s paranoia and general cleverness clue her in to the fact that Charlotte has changed her will in Harper’s favor, and is scared out of her mind; having recently experienced a trauma and being pregnant with a child, she’s afraid that she will be left with absolutely nothing, that her machinations with Austin Neely and all her striving will have been for nothing, and she will be cast off, unable to give her child the life she wants to give her.

Compounded by her ground-in fear that she does not belong, she decides to try to settle it with Charlotte — she’s going to scare her, to punish her, and make Charlotte rethink the changed will.

And Charlotte, bearing the weight of the family name and business, not to mention its continued propagation on her shoulders, sees a woman who has been — like her mother — assaulted and left pregnant, whose mental state is already fragile, and who the “revelation” of who Charlotte thinks her true father is would topple her completely — sees poor, pitiable, emotional, suspicious Clara, and refuses.

I think that, more than anything else, would have set Clara off. Remember what she yells at Charlotte’s ghost?

“You had so much, so much, and I had nothing.”

In answering some of the questions about the game, Nik/HER’s response is to say that Clara did not literally light the match that burned Charlotte alive — but we know that Charlotte burned all the same. In the video of her birthday, there are candles; in the dust and soot on the floor where Charlotte died, we see candlesticks. And in the response, again, we know that Charlotte lit the candles for the celebration.

In my ASH meta, I discussed the many meanings of the word “fire” and the term “setting the fire” — and that’s important here too. In this case, the fire was set by Charlotte refusing to reconsider the terms of her will; in her refusal, she probably touched on the same point that she makes in the note in her room — that Clara isn’t stable enough to take over the company. Now, I doubt she would have said that straight to Clara’s face, but even framed as a “you have enough to be going on with and I don’t want to burden you” sort of thing, that just would have reaffirmed all of Clara’s fears — that she was unwanted by the Thornton clan, that her child would be unwanted as a matter of course, and that she would truly have nothing.

And so my guess would be that Clara shoved her. Not hard enough to break anything, not even into a direct flame, but shoved her, and Charlotte jostled the table, and a candelabra fell to the floor, where we see it still in the modern day.

When Nancy sees Charlotte’s ghost out in that house — and yes, I’m firm on that being Charlotte’s actual ghost, as she’s out in the open air so carbon monoxide doesn’t figure in, and there’s no way for that to be Harper/Jessalyn — she burns from the skirt up, which follows with a candle falling to the floor and lighting that incredibly flammable dress on fire.

The last thing to note from HER/Nik’s response is that at the end of the game, Nancy faces the exact same choice that the Thorntons have: to help, or to save herself. In this, we have to look back to Clara and Charlotte, and conclude this: Clara chose not to help. It’s debatable how much help she could have really been — we’re not sure how pregnant she was at the time — or if it even occurred to her until she was already out and chose not to go back in — but at the very least, Clara’s guilt comes not only from the fact that she quarreled with Charlotte right before her death, but that she could have tried to prevent it, and didn’t.

Given the supposition that Charlotte was literally on fire, I really do doubt that getting her out or finding water to throw on her would have been successful, but it doesn’t matter — because Clara looks at it as a choice, and Clara (more importantly) looks at it as the wrong choice, and a choice that she’s been punished for since the day it happened. That’s why, when speaking to Charlotte’s ghost, she says this:

“Haven’t I suffered enough for you?”

The last point I want to make in this OBSCENELY long introduction is about GTH’s place in the pantheon of “Haunting Games”. When you look at the bare-bones (heh) circumstances that make up GTH, you’ll start to see shades of other games.

A relationship/marriage gone a bit wrong, a family secret, an ancestral home, a relative/ancestor whose spectre looms over the story, mysterious apparitions and appearances, and Nancy’s status as an outsider and a skeptic — yeah, both CUR and HAU should come to mind immediately.

Having said my piece about, well, the badness of CUR and HAU and their unsuccessful approach to their basic plot points, it delights me that GTH takes a good hard look at them and says “well, what if we did this well this time? What if we gave our characters the complexity, the emotional resonance, the secrets and lies that we should have the first time?”

Like CUR and HAU, the Family is at the center of the game — except this time we believe in this family, in their relationships to one another, and we feel the effects of the family and their choices, not just hear about it from a diffident 9-year-old or a cranky caretaker. The history of the Thornton clan comes alive through the house, the graveyard, the books and journals that we have of them. We understand what this family is and the choices that they make — even if we don’t approve of them — and they feel real, not just like a background chucked in to Make The Spooky Things Happen.

Also like CUR and HAU, we deal with a central relationship and the complexities that come over two people deciding to get married. Happily, this game (unlike CUR and HAU) treats the central relationship as a thing of Import, and comes to the conclusion that it’s the happiness and well-suitedness of the couple that matters, not the family that surrounds them or anything else. It asks the question “what happens if one person runs away from the relationship?” and answers it, quite satisfactorily, with “there are probably some issues that need ironed out before anything else should happen”.

Interestingly, GTH also takes the good points of CUR and HAU – especially HAU’s atmosphere and CUR’s love of family tidbits — and improves upon them as well. Instead of Jane showing off her studies so that Nancy can solve a few puzzles, Wade walks her through the Thorntons were (at least in his eyes) and helps her get to know the people she’s helping. Instead of being duly impressed at the atmosphere in a bombed-out castle, everywhere on the island is teeming with fog — literal and figurative — as Nancy tries to decode the past to help the future.

Now then, let’s leave the general behind, and focus on the specifics of GTH.

The Title:

Ghost of Thornton Hall is a great title in the way that Secret of the Scarlet Hand is a great title – moody, evocative, gives us our location/focus right away, but not in a way that spoils anything, etc. If anything, it’s a little more flexible – are we dealing with The Ghost of Thornton Hall (Charlotte), the ghost(s) of the Thornton family, the ghosts of those who died on the island, or — in a very fun way — are we talking about the ghost of Thornton Hall — the spirit of the building where so much life and death has happened?

As a title for a Haunting game, you really don’t get much better than GTH, and it centers the player’s attention right where it should be — on the messed up family that the game centers around, and how their past impacts their future.

The Mystery:

Nancy’s phone rings in the middle of the night, with Savannah Woodham’s drawl on the other end, informing her of a kidnapping that’s taken place. She’d go herself, but believes wholeheartedly – and is frightened by — the ghost that’s taken up residence on Blackrock Island, Georgia, and doesn’t believe she’d be enough help.

Of course, this isn’t the whole truth, but we’ll get into that later.

Armed with both her detective skills and her inherent skepticism, Nancy sets off for Georgia to find the missing bride-to-be. Of course, when she gets there, she quickly discovers that the family — and family history — is even murkier and laced with tragedy than the presence of a ghost would suggest, and that, even with everyone searching for Jessalyn Thornton, she is nowhere to be found.

To find her, Nancy has to delve deep into the Thornton family lore, Jessalyn’s relationships with her family and friends – not to mention her preoccupied fiancé — and figure out what really did happen to dear, sweet Charlotte Thornton nearly two decades ago…

GTH, as a mystery, is chock-full of hints, clues, red herrings, and background facts that make figuring out the truth behind everything a joy and a delight — not to mention a task that will take more than one playthrough. GTH is also unique in that its mystery can end in more than one way, and that Nancy’s choices actually have more of an impact than just what souvenir she sends home to her erstwhile boyfriend. Choosing to save herself, to save just the “innocent” (for a certain value of innocence), or to save everyone leads to different endings not just for Nancy but for everyone involved with the Thornton Clan, from its matriarch all the way down to a certain spook-hunting ex-girlfriend.

Underpinning the mystery is this question: did Charlotte really come back as a ghost to haunt Blackrock and the Thorntons, or are her appearances just the result of sneaky relatives and atmospheric maleficence? Can all of the sightings be explained by a mixture of carbon monoxide poisoning, a few relatives playing dress-up, and huge amounts of suggestion and guilt? Is it the case, as Rentaro posited a few games earlier, that a ghost doesn’t have to be real to haunt you?

In a word, no. In a few more words, of course not.

Tying the whole of the ‘haunting’ mysteries together is this (previously mentioned) fact: Nancy is not remarkable for being a Skeptic, she is remarkable for being a Skeptic in a world where ghosts exist. The moving wood (and possibly the silhouette) in MHM, Camille’s ghost dancing along in TRN, the reflection of Kasumi in the water in SAW, the ghost of the Willow in GTH — these are all real, unexplainable-by-tech-or-imagination ghost sightings, and the fact that Nancy doesn’t believe in them doesn’t change their reality one bit.

In the house, you can cite carbon monoxide and Jessalyn/Harper running around in a costume for at least some of them — though not all. But the sightings outside — carbon monoxide does not stay in the system for very long in clear air, blessedly — of Charlotte? The consistency of the spectre? The apparition of her burning up at the site of her birthday party? These aren’t things that you can explain by costume theater — especially since these sightings have been happening for over a decade by people who haven’t stepped foot in Thornton Hall.

When they say that Blackrock belongs to Charlotte and has since the fire, it’s not a literary turn of phrase — Charlotte is there, and refuses to be forgotten. Nancy’s status as a Skeptic prevents her from hysteria, but it does not stop her from being haunted by the Ghost of Thornton Hall.

Now, let’s talk about the players — dead and alive — that make this mystery as complicated and dark as it is.

The Suspects:

Beginning with the matriarch of the Thorntons seems as good a place to start as any, so let’s talk about Clara Thornton. Cousin to Charlotte and Harper, Clara was taken in after her mother’s untimely death (but before her aunt and uncle’s equally untimely deaths) and became the equivalent of a sister in at least Charlotte and Harper’s eyes — though Clara herself was always unsettled and wary about her place in the family.

After the events of Charlotte’s tragic birthday (covered above), Clara visited Charlotte’s grave every night for a year, and was hospitalized after being pushed off of the widow’s walk (more on this later). Whether due to her upbringing or her Thornton blood – or, most likely, both — Clara is secretive, paranoid, wracked with guilt…and a loving mother and extremely capable businesswoman.

Though GTH doesn’t actually have a culprit —Jessalyn wasn’t kidnapped and Charlotte wasn’t murdered — Clara is, as the resident secret keeper and witness to Charlotte’s death, the closest thing that we’ve got. Clara’s sense of guilt is far beyond anything that she could have done, and is haunted so completely as to turn her rather cold.

I have a lot of sympathy for Clara, who made a mistake in a fit of anger (whether that’s pushing Charlotte or just not helping her when she started to burn) at the age of 21 and has been wracked with guilt and haunted by the spectre — real and imagined — of her ‘sister’ ever since (not to mention knowing that her other ‘sister’ blamed and hated her for it). Charlotte died before she had the time to make too many mistakes, but Clara had the entirety of the estate and the business — thousands of people’s livelihoods — thrust into her hand when she was a single mother of 21 years of age. Even had Clara been completely stable, it would have been a lot, and it’s no wonder that she rules the company with an iron fist.

I also want to point out that, due to Harper’s breakdown at the funeral and her afterwards, that even had Charlotte’s second will been found right then, Clara still would have inherited until at least Harper received her bill of mental health, as the closest heir to Charlotte of (legally) sound mind and body.

Let’s talk then about the other heir, Harper Thornton. A fan favorite for a myriad of reasons — her Helena-Bonham-Carter-esque design, her wonderful VA (props to Keri Healey, voice of Hotchkiss, Sally, Paula, Simone, and Madeline!) knocking her lines out of the park, and her dark sense of humor, Harper is, like most of the Thorntons, incredibly unstable, paranoid, violent…an affectionate aunt, and a pretty darn good detective in her own right.

Since GTH doesn’t have a ‘culprit’, Harper stands in her own guilty/not guilty paradigm along with Clara. She had nothing to do with Charlotte’s death personally, but was the one who caused assorted injuries and thousands of dollars in property damage at the funeral, and the one who pushed Clara off the widow’s walk and hospitalized her. Yes, Harper was young — 18 when Charlotte died, but pushing your cousin/sister off of a balcony is wrong at any age.

It’s worth noting that of the three Thornton ‘sisters’, one is guilty of some degree of manslaughter/criminal negligence, and the other of attempted murder. When Charlotte notes that she herself has a dose of the “Thornton paranoia”, she’s not just whistling Dixie.

The biggest problem the Thorntons have, honestly speaking, is that all of them are way too emotional and react without thinking. Clara confronting Charlotte, Charlotte not taking Clara aside to talk about the will, Harper’s injuring of others and blaming/pushing Clara, Wade destroying machinery, Jessalyn disappearing rather than talking things out…none of the Thorntons, past or present, have seemed to think with their brains since the woman who received the land on Blackrock Island after the Civil War in the first place.

In keeping with the theme, I want to talk about Charlotte Thornton next. A girl who inherited the Thornton land and business at way too young an age — I don’t even wanna know why Jackson hated his adult daughter Virginia (and yes, I know that there’s a supposition to this in the “Jackson Theory”, but it’s pure supposition) so much that he would stake the family future on a 20-year-old, no matter how much everyone liked her — after the death of her parents four years prior, Charlotte was the darling of the Thornton family.

Well-liked by everyone with a beautiful singing voice, Charlotte was nonetheless every inch a Thornton; she outright acknowledged her own paranoia, kept secrets and locked rooms closer to her than her family, and had a flair for the dramatic and emotional. After considering her cousin/sister Clara too unstable for the task of inheriting the family Business, Charlotte, rather than turning to her older aunt or naming multiple beneficiaries to ease the load, instead leaves 100% of it to her younger sister Harper.

I do want to point out the irony here in leaving the business to Harper over Clara on the grounds of mental stability. Whatever else Charlotte was good at, she was not a good judge of character, even giving leeway for her being 21.

After her death, Charlotte haunts the family home, unable to leave the place that was, for a year, hers to inherit. But why would ‘dear, sweet’ Charlotte haunt, frighten, and otherwise unsettle those around her — from family to neighbors to curious kids — especially to the extent that she does?

To answer that question, we need to talk about the family member that everyone says is incredibly close to Charlotte in personality — our missing bride, Jessalyn Thornton.

Clara’s daughter, Jessalyn is painted as being a sort of return of Charlotte; everyone loves her (all Thornton employees are combing the island looking for her, for heaven’s sake), everyone agrees on her, and she’s next in line to inherit the Thornton family business. She’s even around Charlotte’s age (24, rather than 21, but close enough) during the game, for heaven’s sake — the comparisons are not subtle, nor are they meant to be.

Since it’s more than halfway through the game that Nancy meets Jessalyn, the things that people say about her are the best clues to her personality that we have…right?

Everyone agrees that Jessalyn would never run off and make people worry like this, that even if she was scared or had second thoughts about the wedding or even just needed to be alone, that she would never do this to her family. And, as it turns out, everyone — her mother, her uncle, her best-friend-cum-fiancé — everyone is wrong. Jessalyn did exactly that — she ran off, made everyone worry, and didn’t think about her family, friends, fiancé, or employees one bit.

It also takes her no effort at all to fully believe a woman she’s never met that her mom is a vicious, cackling murderer just because her (single, incredibly busy) mother is a bit emotionally cold, so she’s also not a great judge of character.

And remember, we’re told over and over again — Jessalyn is just like Charlotte. Sure, Jessalyn is also our Nancy foil in this game — a young woman who needs to learn the truth about her mother, coerced/guided by a quasi-unreliable source, worrying her family by running off — and that’s important for Nancy’s character, but Jessalyn is first and foremost our Charlotte analogue. Jessalyn’s family and friends don’t understand who Jessalyn is…so I think it’s fair to say that Charlotte’s family and friends didn’t understand who Charlotte was, either.

We see Charlotte, through her writings and actions, could be thoughtless, was a poor judge of character, was secretive and paranoid — all things that no one even alludes to when speaking of her. Sure, there’s the idea of not speaking ill of the dead, but someone would have noted these things, even fondly or mildly.

So why would Charlotte haunt this place, haunt these people, when she was so good and kind and loved everyone? The simplest answer, the least convoluted explanation, is just that she wasn’t. That the Thorntons didn’t understand Charlotte, as much as they loved her, just like they didn’t understand Jessalyn.

Speaking of Thorntons who may be misunderstood, we’ll focus on Wade Thornton next. A little more rough-and-tumble and a little less refined than his relatives seem to be, Wade is introspective, superstitious, hard-working, and a bit gloomy…along with having some anger issues, vast amounts of distrust, and a bit of egotism.

Wade’s (at least legally) guilty of a few things in the past, but since he won’t even go into Thornton Hall, he’s a pretty easy cross-off of our list of suspects. Wade’s there to give Nancy information on the Thornton Clan, to provide the explanation as for (partially) why Savannah isn’t there herself, and to show another facet of the Thorntons — their anger.

Whether or not you agree with Wade’s actions that led to Clara pressing charges — though I think everyone can agree it’s pretty stupid to destroy your own family’s machinery, especially when the only danger to the employees was caused by him scaring them half to death — and it highlights that Wade, philosophical though he is, is just as much a Thornton as those he despises. He even calls himself out on it – that while he used to think he was on the side of “Good Thorntons”, he’s not so sure anymore.

The best (serious) line in the game does come from Wade — I will be in love with his description of dating Savannah as “[falling] for her like a Black Tuesday banker” until I die. It’s a perfect metaphor without sounding pretentious, and shows just how bleak his own worldview really is.

Next is The Fiancé, Colton Birchfield, who has the most hilariously WASP-y name to ever come out of a Nancy Drew game. A man who’s struggled with depression and anxiety all his life, Colton was born to two politicians and has lived in the spotlight — and his marriage to Jessalyn is getting just as show-stopper-y as a campaign trail before she disappeared.

I mentioned above that the resolution to Colton and Jessalyn’s relationship is the healthy, sane version of what should have happened in CUR and HAU, and I stand by that. While I don’t necessarily like him going back to Lexi after the game is over — a relationship interrupted by one party being paid off is not the healthy, loving, loyal relationship that Colton needs — it’s clear that he and Jessalyn would have made each other content, but never fulfilled romantically.

Colton’s guilty of nothing more than not being in love with his best friend, and he’s a refreshing breath of air as someone related tangentially to, but not cast down by, the Thornton family drama. He may get less sympathy than our other cast members, but he’s no less deserving of it, and I’m really rooting for him to find someone that will give him the same amount of love and loyalty that he’ll give them.

We’ll journey outside the Thornton family and their (almost) relations for our next ‘suspect’. Addison Hammond, Jessalyn’s friend and bridesmaid, makes a cameo phone appearance here to tell us that Thornton Hall is Totes Spooky, and that Jessalyn vanished not once, but twice in the night.

I quite enjoy Addison, not because she plays a big part or because she’s an exceptional character — she’s as bare-bones as we get in the later games (ignoring MED/SEA/MID), honestly — but because she’s simply a girl in her 20s reacting the way that most of us would if our unnecessarily spooky friend dragged us to an old haunted house and then vanished twice. Good for you, girl.

Coming in for a wonderful appearance is Savannah Woodham, ex-ghost hunter, ex-girlfriend of Wade Thornton, and the detective who was supposed to be on the case. Savannah’s too scared of the Ghost (and too reticent to talk to Wade face-to-face) to risk stepping foot on Blackrock Island herself, but she’s more than willing to send the biggest skeptic she knows, hoping that Nancy’s skepticism will keep her safe.

As lovely as Savannah is in SAW — and I adore her in that game — she really shines in GTH. Probably the biggest moment she gets in the game — and probably my second favorite moment in the game period — is her tale of tracing the shape of the old willow tree on her wall, only to have a body discovered under that exact willow tree after a storm. It’s a delightfully creepy — and most importantly, completely inexplicable by any means other than accepting that the supernatural exists — moment, and I think it’s key to understanding Savannah as a character in GTH.

Savannah suffers under the weight of knowing that there truly are Things that Go Bump in the Night, that can’t be arrested or captured or gotten rid of by normal, legal means. Her background knowledge of the Thorntons helps Nancy to get an initial feel for the family, and it helps to not have an ex-girlfriend wandering around that the Thorntons might have a grudge against or dislike for.

She is, in effect, the mirror image of Nancy — what Nancy might have become without her inborn skepticism — and that alone, even ignoring everything else about her, is fascinating to me.

Our other phone contacts are Ned Nickerson and Bess Marvin, teamed up due to George’s absence while doing an internship (at Technology of Tomorrow Today, no less!) and Bess’ extreme boredom without anyone else to hang out with.

The lovely thing about Ned and Bess is that we get to see Ned when he’s not Solo Boyfriend Ned, but a college guy hanging out with his friend. Their light-hearted banter is hilarious and comfortable (Bess dramatically asking permission to do a spit-take in his living room is of particular note), and we really get to see a different side of Nancy’s oft-abandoned boyfriend.

You can tell that their voice actors are having a terrific time as well (Scott Carty’s pitch-perfect imitation of Jennifer Pratt’s cadence and tone makes me laugh every time), and it really helps bring a bright and colorful spot to this otherwise rather tense and grim mystery.

We’ll round out our character list with the quasi-amateur, quasi-professional detective herself, Nancy Drew. Through her foil with Jessalyn — discussed above, so I won’t get too into it here — we get to see Nancy in a slightly different light, and get to look at the effect that she has on those around her when she disappears.

We know Carson and Ned (and occasionally Bess/George, and even more occasionally, Hannah) worry about Nancy while she’s off on a case, but this is the first time Nancy herself is dealing with what she leaves behind every time she jets off to Venice, or gets trapped in a lava tube, or lost in a rock maze. Nancy hasn’t investigated a straight-up kidnapping (or what appears to be one) since Maya in FIN (no, I’m not counting HAU, as it’s not played as a kidnapping nor does anyone think it is until 2/3 of the way through the game), and she has the same sense of urgency here that she did back then.

Upon replaying the game, the player will lose that sense of urgency for Jessalyn — we know she’s alive and well, and was never kidnapped — but Nancy’s reactions to the family are what stay interesting. She’s concerned for Jessalyn, but does most of her detective work through getting a sense of what the rest of the family thinks of the missing girl.

Given Nancy’s reputation as a good girl, a solid presence (if an occasional one) who loves her family and friends, and who is always responsible, it’s easy to see why she misses the one question that would have helped her solve the case in half of the time: what if Jessalyn isn’t missing? After all, Jessalyn, like Nancy, would never jet off after hearing an unsubstantiated claim about her mother without telling anyone or pausing to confirm it through a different, more trustworthy source, right?

In this game, we discover a huge characteristic about Nancy: she is reckless. Now, we know this already from other games — that Nancy is reckless physically, confronting bad guys alone, diving down into murky catacombs, jumping from pillars in ancient tombs — but here we see that she’s also reckless emotionally. Even though it interferes with her investigation, Nancy gets personally involved in this case; she’s mad at Colton for “cheating” on Jessalyn, she’s upset by the tragedy of Charlotte’s death, and she’s concerned for Jessalyn’s safety in a different way than she usually is with a victim or suspect.

Nancy’s always been willing to take huge risks, but she always stays emotionally on the surface level of a case — a good and necessary trait for a detective, and one that allows her to face down killers, saboteurs, and forgers without blinking. Here, Nancy’s dragged down into the web of the Thorntons, and — as we see in the middle and bad endings especially — she doesn’t quite recover from it. Nancy loses a bit of objectivity here, but what she gains is humanity — and she’ll need that for the last two games in this meta series.

The Favorite:

With such a well-executed game — even though it doesn’t fall in my personal top 5 ranking — there’s going to be a lot to love, so let’s get down to it.

My favorite puzzle is probably Nancy’s trek to ‘discover’ the ‘ghost’ — aka completing Harper’s tasks in order to meet her, culminating with reciting Charlotte’s rhyme while blindfolded. It’s a different kind of puzzle than the type we get commonly with Nancy Drew games, and really helped spark and keep the tension needed to maintain such a spooky game.

My favorite moment in the game is a quieter one — it’s Nancy’s remarks on Charlotte’s room. She’s taken aback at how, after a game of everyone talking about Charlotte, that it’s opening the door to her room that cements Charlotte as a living, breathing person. She continues that she can’t let that feeling distract her, that she needs to treat the room like the rest of the house and gather tools that will let her find Jessalyn, but it’s lovely to see the effect of the Thornton’s history really settle into Nancy’s bones as Charlotte Thornton turns from a scary rhyme that children chant to a girl who lived and died in the same walls that Nancy’s exploring.

There are, of course, other things that I love — the objectively creepy poem (“we’ll let you share with Charlotte/a gown of coal and glowing flame” is an incredible line), Savannah’s story about the willow tree, the small Francy crumbs of Frank being sullen after his Very Revealing voicemail in DED and considering an MBA, the multi-layered relationship that Wade and Savannah have, the gorgeous detail of Thornton Hall — and all of these add up to a game that’s frankly just enjoyable to play.

The big thing to mention in this game, as I talked a bit about in the intro, is its atmosphere.

Throughout the entire game, there’s this palpable feeling of death and grief and loss and pure pain, and those emotions are what GTH relies on to keep itself Scary, not the few spectre scares and swinging scythes that it also has to offer.

I don’t normally quote things other than the games/words of the cast and crew in these metas, but I do make exceptions when the quotation is this good, so I tip my hat here to Tumblr user aniceworld, speaking about ranking GTH their top Nancy Drew game of all time:

“The reason GTH is so successful as a scary game is because there’s such a pervasive sense of sorrow at Thornton Hall. People have died here who shouldn’t have. A family has been destroyed. The house has seen so much trauma it can literally no longer stand on its own. There are ghosts that live here, whether you can see them or not.”

This horror is far better than bloody slashers or obnoxious “continuous mysterious accidents”-style thrillers that tend to permeate the genre; instead of random death-by-umbrella or scary-guy-in-the-shower incidents driving the plot, the emotion behind death and loss and betrayal gets to take a turn at the wheel, and the game is much better for it.

The Un-Favorite:

As with any game, however, no matter how good the atmosphere, there are some things that I don’t love.

I’m not actually the biggest fan of Harper; while her design is great and her VA does a spectacular job, she’s a little cartoonish among a cast that endeavors to stay as far away from broad stereotypes as possible.

It’s fine to have a large personality, it’s fine that she’s a bit cracked, it’s great that she has her own reasons and motivations beyond “expose the truth” (especially since she’s not interested in exposing the truth, just in proving that Clara’s a murderer) — she’s just really not my cup of tea, and I prefer Harper as the Anonymous Note Leaver to Harper the Conversational Partner.

Even if she does get some of the best lines in the game.

I don’t really have a least favorite moment or puzzle that sticks out to me; there are puzzles I struggle more or less with, but none of them are immersion-breaking or so frustrating that I have to get up and walk away. The ones I love, I enjoy solving; the ones I don’t love, I turn to the walkthrough and finish them up to get on with the story.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Ghost of Thornton Hall?

Even given my small problems with Harper, I’m not sure I’d change her. Sure, she’s a bit Broad for the game, generally speaking, but she’s also another example of what loss can do to a person — it can make you cold and withdrawn, it can make you righteously angry and dismissive…or it can turn you malicious and violent. She’s an important presence regardless of my personal taste, and while I might tweak a line of dialogue or two, it’s important to note that her Persona is just another thing for Nancy to discover and re-discover as she investigates the Thorntons.

While not a perfect game — very few, if any, of the Nancy Drew games qualify for that title — Ghost of Thornton Hall is an excellent entry in the Nancy Drew series as a whole, and in the smaller series of Nancy-centric games. Through it, we get to see what happens to those who are left behind after a tragic, sudden, and even violent loss — and that becomes more and more important as we leave behind the gloomy Georgia island and leap across the pond to Glasgow.

[thestobingirlie]

I saw someone say Max letter to Steve was pure fan service and shouldn't be used as evidence for their relationship. Something along those lines and I'm like why how and what lol??? But every other interaction she has with Nancy then should be considered more truthful than Max giving a letter to Steve. The math isn't mathing. I mean she did admire Nancy in s3 when she led the group, she looked up to her when Nancy sawed off the gun and Nancy asked her once in s4 after Vecna if she was okay, but that's it. Like the other anon said those situations are high stress trauma time. Where in s3 she and the rest of the group bothered Steve (no traumatic situation occurred yet) and she even went with El to get her free ice cream, even Steve knew El wasn't supposed to be there so he's present with them. Plus Robin called him out for having the party basically walk over him, meaning this is a frequent occurrence. I mean Nancy and Jonathan don't seem like the type of people to hang out with them. Yeah Nancy used to but her and Mike seem to not really speak to each other. Like I have a brother myself, we have a similar relationship like those two. We both do our thing, we don't talk about feelings or have interests in the other's friend group, which is okay lol. And Jonathan doesn't seem to want to hang out with them, he would be easily annoyed plus unfortunately I think he's super busy with holding a job to support his family, I doubt he has the time to do stuff with them. He's only close to Will and El (s4).

Also I saw a post discussing the sibling relationships in ST and they put Eddie and Dustin on there instead of Steve and Dustin and honest to god I wanted to throw up. Stop erasing Steve and Dustin's bond, which is the strongest Steve has out of any of the kids and put that dynamic on Eddie.

how could they say that? omfg. you could say that every single letter is fan service, like wtf. i just don’t understand this obsession that some people have with completely smothering canon relationships just because they like some fanon ones more. steve and max are canonically closer than max and nancy. there’s no need to even compare them! just like max and nancy in your little corner, you don’t need to try and shit on steve and max.

and yeah, steve canonically sees all the kids outside of life threatening situations. they made steve let them into the cinema enough that robin started calling them his ‘children’. and yeah, mike and nancy are siblings, but they don’t hang out. and jonathan and will are super close! but i don’t really get what everyone else sees when they say he’s close with the rest of the party. i mean… this is the same fandom that makes jokes about jonathan hating mike and wanting to kill him. but they’re still super close!! mike is totally his kid!! however, mike does hate steve and that’ll never change! like… what? people just pick and chose canon to disregard steve as much as possible.

omg, i saw that post, and i literally just had to tell myself to scroll away. it honestly hurt my soul to see steve and dustin just tossed away, no regard at all. they are brothers!! they are Thee found family, come on!! (i also think i saw stobin on that same post and… barf. they are not siblings. two friends of the opposite sex don’t have to be siblings guys)

[tibby]

Can you speak more on Steve Harrington's trauma? I've never seen anyone address it, seemingly dismissing his character as just a "dumb mom friend" or whatever...

sure! i’ll stick to the show with this, because even though i have a lot of thoughts wrt steve and his life and why he acts the way he does, it’s all personal interpretation and not actual canon (though would happily discuss those more anytime.)

before i get into any specifics with regards to what steve has been through during the show, i do want to discuss a little about what we can assume of his relationships pre-nancy, and pre-everything: 

canon doesn’t give us a lot to work with in regards to steve’s parents, but based on what we do know, it doesn’t seem good. we can assume that they’re somewhat neglectful and have an unhappy marriage, presumably featuring adultery. he only refers to his father as an asshole or a douchebag and seems reluctant to follow in his footsteps. it seems like he has a slightly better relationship with his mother, but we also don’t know much about her outside of her following his father on business trips because she doesn’t trust him. regardless of how people personally interpret how bad it is, at the very least, he seems lonely and uncomfortable with his family.

up until the final two episodes of season one, we know that steve is king of the school and uses this power to his advantage. but despite his clout, he doesn’t seem to have any actual friends outside of tommy h and carol (and nicole, i guess, but she appears in like three scenes and we don’t really know much about her.) and tommy and carol aren’t good people. it’s not just that they’re horrendous bullies to jonathan and nancy, but they’re not great to steve either, given how quickly tommy turns on him. how quickly he threatens him, and how scared steve is in that moment. and given that tommy participates in mocking steve with billy a year later, it clearly was never that healthy of a friendship. your only friendships being with toxic people who don’t care about you as a person is always going to be damaging, regardless of how “popular” you are.

(steve’s unpleasant family/friendships pre-nancy seem backed up by a quote from the duffers that i can’t read because it’s behind a paywall but is referenced in the wiki: “what kind of family life [Steve] comes from and maybe this girl Nancy is quiet and listens in a way that other people haven’t listened to him at this point.”)

which brings us to the show. steve finds someone, maybe the first person who’s ever really cared about him, the girl he really likes. and he’s protective of her and wants to be with her and ends up fucking up in the process (i maintain that steve had every reason to go after jonathan for the photos, but he was absolutely in the wrong for the slutshaming and the alleyway fight.) 

but the fight shifts something in him, makes him want to right his wrongs, so he finally dumps his toxic friends (one of whom physically threatens him in the process) and goes to apologise. and walks right into a monster trap.

steve gets no context as to what’s happening when the demogorgon shows up, doesn’t get any explanation from jonathan and nancy (not that they’re at fault for that, given the circumstances,) and is basically just confronted with the sudden knowledge that monsters are real. and he ends up saving nancy and jonathan from it.

in an ideal world, the trio would have helped each over with their trauma together and would’ve been friends and would’ve had more natural progressions of their relationships. i don’t like reducing nancy and jonathan’s traumas to Just the monster thing, but it’s how the show tends to handle it, and i really feel like steve’s own trauma with what happened that night should have been addressed even slightly, particularly in relation to the two of them.

(quick sidenote: my issue with the way the show handles jonathan/nancy and their “shared trauma” is a whole other thing, but i really don’t understand how the show can basically reduce it to the fact they fought a monster together, and then leave steve out of the equation entirely. i wouldn’t have an issue if the show actually looked into the trauma both jonathan and nancy have outside of the monster stuff, but since it refuses to develop that, it…bothers me that steve’s role in what happened and resulting trauma is shoved aside, and they both now just ignore his existence entirely.)

but the show didn’t do that, so let’s get into season two, and steve harrington’s very rough week:

gets dumped! it should be noted that i don’t blame nancy for the breakup, nor do i think she was a bad person who set out to harm him. she’s a confused seventeen year old girl dealing with the loss of her best friend, and i don’t think she deliberately led steve on for a year or knowingly lied to him about her feelings. but it’s still going to be hurtful when your significant other reveals that they didn’t love you, they only thought they did. and steve loved nancy, cared about her, took comfort in her - she was the first person to listen to him, to care about him, to like him for who he really was, not for the mask he put on. i wish they’d gotten a proper conversation about their relationship in either season two or three, particularly as the destruction of the high school fairytale (the relationship between the coolest guy in school and the girl next door) is an important element to both their characters. i know steve says that he’s over her in season three, but i still know that that’s an incredibly heartbreaking thing to go through, even if it wasn’t a relationship based on an illusion - the kids that they were before.

gets involved with more monster hunting stuff, this time with a bunch of bratty middle schoolers! overall, i think stranger things handles the collective trauma the entire gang have like…terribly. i find it weird that it’s been three seasons and the only time the party/the teens/jopper are ALL together is in the final two episodes when it’s Boss Battle time. and i know i shouldn’t expect much from a show which barely lets separate people handle their trauma, but i feel like…maybe they should all like, sit and talk and comfort each other? keep an eye on each other? i don’t know. i think the trauma steve has is trauma he would share with all the others, especially since season two properly involves him with all the monster stuff (plus fighting them is hard enough without also having to deal with his past experiences, a big head injury, and the lives of a bunch of thirteen year olds in his hands.)

gets beat up! again! this time it’s not deserved! i really don’t understand why the fandom acts like steve’s repeated injuries each season are a joke and not like…a genuine cause for medical concern within the universe. i get that it’s basically played for laughs in the show and this incident in particular is used to once again highlight how violent billy is. i don’t have much to elaborate on here but i feel like someone needs to check in on steve and all the head related trauma he’s suffered through in the past eighteen months.

and after all of that, steve is just…left on his own to deal with it. he gave up his friends for nancy, and they weren’t particularly good friends in the first place. nancy left him. he and jonathan don’t ever talk. all he has are the kids and it’s not as if he can really talk about his trauma with a bunch of fourteen year olds. out of all the main cast, he’s the one that has the least support when it comes to this. nancy and jonathan have each other. joyce and hopper have each other. the party has each other. the byers family has each other. el and hopper have each other. but steve doesn’t have the same support system, and there’s nothing to suggest in canon that he actually interacts with the other teens/adults.

steve’s left alone in general, really. he maintained somewhat of his social status following the events of st1/st2, since he mentions being prom king to robin, but does he really…have any friends his age? he lost tommy and carol when he chose nancy, and those two latched onto billy (who, again, is someone who hurt steve and who steve does not like.) he and nancy broke up, and considering he shared about ten words with her and jonathan in st3, it’s safe to assume he’s not really friendly with them. and we don’t ever see any acknowledgment that steve has friends his age, even if it’s just…normal people who don’t know about the monster stuff.

it’s not until he meets robin that he really finds someone he can talk about any of this with, and even then it just comes with more trauma. i feel like steve’s experiences tend to get played for laughs and i really got that vibe in season 3. steve was tortured and drugged. he took another beating, arguably his roughest one yet. he and robin both thought they were going to die down there. it’s not really handled at all within the show, but it’s a lot for someone to go through, especially when combined with the past year and a half of steve’s life.

anyway. i don’t think the show will ever actually address steve’s trauma (or anyone’s, really) which is sad because like the others, he’s been through a lot and i think some acknowledgement/discussion of it would further help his character development. but i guess that just isn’t as funny as writing him off as an idiot and a loser.

[two-sides-samecoin]

As for Steve's character development and praise within the fandom and show. I have complicated feelings about it. On the one hand I like that my fav gets praised but on the other I think he hasn't even had enough development to be this highly praised.

I agree with you that the fandom loves to say Steve's grown up but fail to recognize that a lot has to do with trauma.

But then we only really see Steve getting praised for being nicer now, that's it.

I hate the course s3 took with Steve because he had potential after s2 to become a leader type and someone who actively takes responsibility. Instead we got himbo, sometimes immature Steve that comes through at the end but the characters around him don't respect him or his ideas because they made Steve unnecessarily stupid.

You can have him in his loser era after Nancy, show him heartbroken and off his game. Show him unsure about his future but then also give him a plot outside of romance where he's growing as a person. Steve was the captain of the basketball team and a life guard, he has the abilities to take charge of the situation and grow by taking responsibility for the group. Like he should have put his foot down in s3 to not use Erica as bait for this batshit insane mission. Yes he protected them in the end but he should have seen before it was a bad idea. But then even if he voices concerns the group won't take him seriously. It's frustrating because the fandom praises Steve for changing but he's still underused in the show and has so much room to grow.

Yes like same I also love how steve does get praise but also like he hasn't had enough development. I think what started this is that I also have heavily seen steve and zuko from avatar the last airbender talked about together. hell i remember the first time i was in this fandom - i found articles online about how they were the "greatest character arcs/redemptions," which these two should genuienly not be compared together because fundamentally their arcs are very different and the care put into these arcs are high key different. like there is no way to compare them because steve's arc is no where near zuko's redemption - i honestly think the people online just don't understand what a redemption is.

anyway lol sorry buut i wanted to talk about wwhy this kind of started before i continue- yeah like steve only gets priased for being nicer which is honestly weird because he was that in season 1. just because steve is now seen as a main character now people forget that he was still kind in season 1.

okay i'm going to talk about the season 3 comment because i agree and also don't agree. i agree that there was potential for a leader steve arc but also half disagree on how they made him stupider. yes some lines of him are weird in season 3 but they're really not that different from what he's said in the past few seasons. I think that the narrative made you believe he was dumbier than he actually was meaning he's actually has the same intelligence but the narrative wants him to look dumbier compared to the other characters. the duffers honestly hate anyone who isn't seen as an outsider so they have some very heavy bias so they're going to make it seem like steve is just incompete because he falls into the jock category so of course he has to be /dumb' when he isn't. oky so skipping seasons but season 4 had Eddie failing school to where he had to do senior year a few times and yet the duffers show him as this "cool intelligent nerd," to the party and etc. like there's a difference in how eddie is treated vs steve despite eddie failing in school. it just shows their bias and sterotypes because the narrative wants you to see how steve is just completely dumb meanwhile he's honestly totally fine with his intelligence. sorry that was long lol - i'm tired so idk if this makes much sense.

LEGOT EVERYTHING YOU SAID IN THE LAST [PARAGRAPH!!! honestly the fact that he didn't try to pput his foot down with erica and robin and even dustin in season 3 was weird. like he could have tried to put his foot down but again like season 2 the others kind of over take him putting his foot down! also yeah it's frustrating that people always praise steve when he has more time to grow but knowing the duffers - i honestly don't trust them to do anything with that.

[bi-lullaby]

Meredith vs People

Alternative titles: “My other post in a similar format got slightly popular and I crave attention” and “I’m still hung up on the one time Owen called Mer “the only universally liked individual in the hospital” because she is my fave”

Meredith x Cristina

Once called “the true lovestory of the show” I think it’s one of the kost refreshing relationships between characters I’ve ever seen in my, admittedly not that long, experience with fandom. The love and support each other wildly and publicly, straight up say to others how their person is important and a thing to prioritize. It’s so... Amazing to watch their deep, soulmate-like bond develop. I also love them from a narrative standpoint: How they started out as ambitious, driven people with complicated relationships with intimacy who saw surgery as the end all be all goal, and how they’re allowed to grow apart from that slightly, acquire other goals and relationships and projects (Meredith) or continue on that path, prioritizing their career and success solely/mostly (Cristina) and how both are treated as valid, rewarding choices (Mer with her happiness at family life and her Harper Avery, and Cristina with her bomb-ass hospital and the resolution of her personal relationships). They’re two characters that took on distinct journeys, but whose paths to personal fulfillment are deeply intertwined to each other.

Meredith x Alex

Okay, this is my favorite friendship ever. If Izzie showed Alex that his “evil spawn” ways weren’t exactly preferable nor they made him better than anyone or immune to pain, Meredith stuck out her hand for him and said “you’re dark and twisty? Cool. Doesn’t mean you can’t find, and fight for, happiness. Lets be dark and twisty together while we figure this out.” They relate to each other in a fascinating way, both children of neglect (to varying degrees) who worked their way to the top with a lot of bumps in the way. Also, seeing as I’m Mer’s number one stan, I also love their relationship because Alex is so amazing to her. Even Cristina had her moments of “mommy tracking” her, or even putting her aside in favor of a relationship, while Alex sticks by her side like glue and puts her above almost everything (which, I’m not saying a friendship is less valid if it’s not the most important thing in the world to you, of course not. I’m saying that everyone has a favorite person in the world, and the fact Mer is someone’s, makes that someone (Alex) even better in my eyes). Meredith sticks by the people she cares about’s sides through whatever they’re going through, in whatever way she can, and I find that that is surprisingly not-reciprocal in some instances, so it’s good she has her own ride-or-die. It’s also comic to me that two of the most sexually active, sex-driven characters in the show have never had an indication of sexual tension between them. (Almost like men and women can be friends, shocking!). The show’s not complete without Merlex, that’s for sure!

Meredith x Lexie

BRB, will be crying about the softest sisters ever, who deserved a much more fleshed-out relationship! To this day, all my (unpublished) Grey’s fanfiction involve “Lexie is actually alive” because it was such a traumatic loss to Meredith (that was under explored, imo, even if the little mentions of it through the show are heartwarming AND breaking). I loved that they made Mer push her way at first, because it showed her deep resentment of her own life, of not getting the doting father and the protective mother and the “growing up with siblings” and then having someone who had all that come and throw at her face the word “sisters” like they shared anything but DNA at that point... I think my two favorite examples of “family is about choice, not blood” examples of this show are their relationship and how it got deep through knowing each other (Meredith donates a piece of her liver to their father because of Lexie, but doesn’t remember Molly’s name in the same ep because Molly has not actively been her sister) and another one I’ll talk about later. And the contrast between Lexie’s own sadness from suddenly being left with basically no family (alcoholic father, dead mother,stranded older dister and far-away younger sister, all things I feel like people don’t consider enough to understand Lexie has also suffered) and her fight to get that family back was just so amazing. In a way, Lexie was Meredith’s Izzie, not only by being cuddly and fuzzy and nurturing but by having a “I deserve better than you being an asshole so I’ll make you less of an asshole or so help me god” attitude. Mer got softer for lexie and I think that’s beautiful.

Meredith x Amelia

Yeah, that’s my other “favorite family is not by blood, it’s by choice” ark. That clear-contrast scene of Amelia coming from her “sisters” meetup, emotionally drained after having to endure their toxic, demeaning, vicious attacks, and into her sisters, who are earning to hear what she has to say, who empathize with her and support her... I ate that shit UP, let me tell you. Because Mer was such a huge bitch to Amy at first, but came to love her after allowing herself to truly get to know her (which is the opposite story with Nancy and Lizzie and Kate, who all refuse to get to know her past the version that they despise). I also love that Derek was kind of a barrier between them, because he had his own views of Amy that influenced Mer and when he was gone, she had to face a... quite different reality. I see a lot of people shitting on Mer for the “You’re not my sister, Cristina is my sister. You’re Derek’s sister and Derek is dead” line, and I can see why, it was rude, but... That’s Meredith’s whole instance on family? Yeah, Amy was sweet and I’d bet she was mer’s favorite “Shepherdress” out of the four woman (she had stood up to her before, against Derek, nonetheless), and it breaks my heart that Amy saw her as “the only sister she could relate to” (seriously I was sobbing) but... Sister? That’s a personal, intimate title she reserved very, very few people in her life, and Amy has earned that right with a lot more patience and care than most people put into relationships. Of course she was more loyal to Cristina than to Amy at that point (who herself was more loyal to Addison than to her own siblings, hence she didn’t tell Derek about the affair, for example). But then? She literally tells Megan she can’t possibly choose which one of Owen’s wives she likes more, and need I remind you the other one is Cristina herself? (who she called “her soulmate” over Derek?. They’re two example of women who’ve gone through tremendous trauma and pain and came out changed from it, and the fact they have each other for support now makes me very, very happy. I do wish they had more scenes together, but the ones they do share are enough for me to say their relationship is a gift for this show.

Meredith x Maggie

So pure! I like that they meet up when they’re both older and more experienced and have kind of “set” personalities, that clash sometimes, but also can add up into beautiful things when combined. It was... slightly frustrating to see Mer push away yet another person at first, but watching them get closer was also sweet. I hate the comparisons between their relationship and Merlexie’s (and the comparisons between Maggie and Lexie/Cristina/April like she’s just a stand-in for them). They were different moments of all their lives. Mer and Lexie? Inexperienced 20-something women going though shit trying to find their place in the world, when Mer was still in her dark and twisties and needed to be cajoled into giving Lexie even an inch. Mer and Maggie? Well-established women in their late thirties whose relationship wasn’t built on a need for each other, but in working together for the sisterhood they wanted. I love that it was Maggie that had to get to know Meredith and be persuaded into liking her, actually. And look where they are now! They have such a comfortable, intimate relationship that’s based on love and mutual respect! I love Maggie’s small fangirl moment when Mer pulls that amazing straw-in-the-skull stunt in the airplane and Maggie’s filming the interview (although I hated what came afterwards. C’mon Maggie, fighting over a boy? Really?). It’s also good to see how Meredith helps Maggie navigate her first real trauma (loosing her mother) and how her pain has build her up and actually helps others! It’s an excellent stance of character development that remains true to the character. Their little interaction when Mer’s creating her little dream-induced invention and Maggie looks at the board once and understands it, helping her figure it all out, is so cute and nice! They’re sweet and good for each other, and I’ll protect this relationship forever!

Meredith and Jo

“You’re Jo Wilson, I know exactly who you are!” makes me weak. Because it’s such a powerful, important phrase, but also such... A Mer thing to say. At the end of the day, Mer loves people and takes them under her wing and empathizes with them. She becomes Jo’s support system and doesn’t let go. I love how she’s the one to stand by her side and protect her from Paul, and I love how she’s the one in the more recent episode to manage to get Jo to open up, to get up and get help. They’re almost mirrors, Jo with Mer’s headstrongness and emotional baggage, barging in and taking the world by storm, with Mer being Jo’s Bailey in a way, with a lot of crankiness and a slight superiority complex but lots of wisdom and care, looking at her go with a smirk like “that girl will go far but she’ll need a couple wrist slaps on the way”. Mer was extremely important in Alex’s life, she became extremely important in Jo’s life, and that’s beautiful and sweet. Also, their “shared custody” of Alex is hilarious.

Meredith x Callie

How could we have guessed that two people that initially were at each others throats constantly would be so close one day? They are absurdly different, and yet so close! The way they support each other’s journeys as mothers, wives and surgeons is a great thing to see. And they have such iconic moments, like the panties in the bulletin board, the trial, and the little kiss!

Meredith x Mark

I’m not gonna lie, I shipped those two very briefly but very intensely when they first met! Then they evolved into a rather sweet friendship. I love to think Mer tells Sofia all sorts of stories she heard through Derek in those first years. When she told Callie that Mark used to call her (not Derek, not Addison, not Derek’s mom, not Bailey, her!) whenever he needed advice or had a crisis in the middle of the night, I teared up a little, because that’s such a huge step from who they began as! From loner and relationship-phobic insecure to parents with loving relationships who could count on each other! My favorite dirty mistresses ever!

And there’s so much more! Meredith and Bailey and how they both grew so much, Meredith and Arizona and how their relationship is underrate, Meredith and Jackson’s sibling-esque relationship, Meredith and April... “I used to think you could only have one person, but now I know. Turns out I have a whole damn village!”.

[spectraling]

Some fandom sexism I don't see talked about much: Nancy and Mike. They're both grieving their loved ones at the end of s1. But while Nancy gets called a bitch for not neatly burying her feelings to support a boy (again), I've never seen Mike get any hate for not supporting Nancy, only the other way around. It's also entirely possible that Nancy tried to reach out to Mike and was rebuffed, yet the fandom assumes the best of the male character and the worst of the female character, as always.

I wouldn’t expect Mike to like..take responsibility of Nancy’s well-being, as a younger sibling and a kid. Mike did get some hate for letting his grief be “taken out on others” (Max mainly), just like people see Nancy’s revenge plot being her “taking her grief out on others” (like it would be in Will’s best interest to keep going to the lab). In that way they’re treated somewhat similar.

They also both kind of swerved into destructive behavior because of their similar traumas, like Nancy losing control of her alcohol and Mike being disobedient in school, etc… would’ve been so nice to see some kind of parallel or support there. However, I can see Nancy not really being able to fully confide in Mike as that’s pretty difficult to do with a younger sibling you supposedly have some responsibility for. Like…I get that about Nancy. But I also understand that Nancy might’ve had a ton of shit on her plate and Mike just withdrew, so expecting her to be there for him 100% of the time is also not realistic and I can get that she got caught up in her own life.

The assumption that Nancy willfully neglected Mike all the time because she’s a selfish bitch, tho, that’s just the misogyny talking as you said :) Always assuming the worst, while giving male characters some leeway to stumble and be dicks (except when they have feminine characteristics like Jonathan, interestingly enough).Nancy’s whole “let’s tell each other everything from now on” was a very sweet gesture, and she clearly cares for Mike (”I was so worried about you!”), but never gets a chance to follow up on it. She gives us reason to believe she cares, so why do people then come to the conclusion that she doesn’t give a fuck later on? Does that mean that any conversation that didn’t literally happen in s2 is also proof that a character never talked to the other? Are we for example to assume Joyce never once talked to Jonathan about the events of s1? I would call that a bigger concern.

In short, I just would’ve liked for Nancy and Mike to have like…anything, at all? They literally had one brief scene together where the only thing that happens is her calling him an asshole lol They had so much shared trauma that the show otherwise was so quick to point out to bring characters together.