#atp I can't tell if I feel like this metaphorically

[beastblade69]

doubting reality, having a feeling that you are being factory reset every half a year & having flashbacks which feel like someone else's memories is my fave combo fr

[ryansjane]

Hey!! As a writer I want to know what's your take on confession scenes. Like best to worst? And personal faves!

hi hi! ooooooh, that's a good question! I'm gonna be honest, I don't think I remember a particularly bad confession lol, I think usually they're either basic & forgettable OR beyond iconic! here's the iconic ones that I literally adore beyond words, though:

SEANWHITE'S ROOFTOP CONFESSION

who is surprised this is the first confession I need to talk about? okay, okay no need to all raise your hand :'))) so one very special thing about not me is that there is no "I love you" or "I like you" said, yet both seanwhite & danyok are the most loving, strongest couples I know. seanwhite are literally the most lovey-dovey couple in existence, 100% written as soulmates, yet their love isn't expressed in the way we usually expect. in that respect, sean's confession on the rooftop which barely feels like one, is literally the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. "this is the goal that keeps me alive. and you are too." BITCH, THIS AIN'T A LOVE CONFESSION, THIS IS SEAN TELLING WHITE HE KEEPS HIM MOTHERFUCKING ALIVE!!! this is it, bruh. no other love scene hits this deep. I'm crying again. bye.

TEH & OH-AEW'S NIGHTLY CONFESSION

oh no, what a surprise that my other all time favorite bl is here too 😲 we were talking about confessions that aren't really one, and this falls in that category too! I just love how effortlessly the scene goes by, without ever saying "I like you", and the way oh-aew confronts teh about him liking him too in a way that is not attacking him but also not ignoring the reality of the feelings that they possess. a beautiful, calming scene that is burned in my heart forever, just like the entire show!

JACKZI'S STAIRS CONFESSION

there are very few scenes that make me cry bc of how heartfelt they are, and this is one of them! the acting is top tier, the writing absolutely beautiful & I cannot imagine this scene being more perfect than it is! it's not even a classic confession bc there's no "I love you" exchanged (very much a pattern for me atp lol), but simply zao zi saying "don't leave" is enough to convey how much these characters care for each other! this scene is beautiful despite it being incredibly sad, in a way that HITS so much bc they essentially have their most innocent, happy go-lucky character completely break down after a betrayal. it's, in my honest opinion, the actual saddest scene of the show bc it's so unexpected & cuts so deep. truly one of my all time favorite bl scenes & an absolutely amazing way to see these characters confirm their feelings for each other.

UNTWO'S MULTIPLE CONFESSIONS

so everyone must know that I'm the untwo queen, and it's truly bc both untwo confessions scenes are literally some of my favorite scenes EVER. the first one is a cinematic masterpiece! un is holding a door as he works on the decor for the student play, and two is the one to confront him about his feelings. this scene feels super raw & uncomfortable bc it truly IS for both characters, and ultimately, un, who wanted to escape from the situation, ends up professing his love for two who interrupts him bc he can't take it. this scene is pure tension & pain, just like I love them lol, and the metaphorical (and physical) door between un & two is an amazing concept for the shot!

the second confession is EVEN MORE ICONIC, though! theory of love is such a good show bc it's literally the best homage to movies I've ever seen, and after breaking things off with both un & linn, two finds a copy of 'the perks of being a wallflower' (a very good movie I love which makes this scene even more powerful imo) which is a movie he lent to p'un and the movie that unites them. realizing he can't let p'un move abroad, in perfect romcom cliche, two rushes to the pier where the last boat to the mainland has left, only for p'un to have already come there to confront two one last time. the scene that ensues is beautifully written, and the sentence "you know the answer" IS MAIN COUPLE IN AN ICONIC ROMCOM WORTHY!!! it hits so hard & is exactly why, despite untwo being only a side ship, they were my favorite ship for 3 years before seanwhite showed up lol.

ALSO kudos to tangmolove's confession where the acting is really good & phunnoh's confession that's so heartfelt!!! lmao this is truly just a list of some of my favorite ships :')

xxx

[shopcat]

i personally need s5 to leave the jancy/stancy triangle in the dust i’m so tired of it. like i used to like jancy!! but having jonathan say nancy would abandon her dreams to be with him was so strange bc he knows she wouldn’t do that so it was like what are we even doing why are we inventing drama. and what happened to jonathan wanting to go to nyu? like to an extent i understand the weird stancy revival bc they never resolved their issues but it Was weird to me that robin was pushing nancy towards steve when i can’t imagine a world where robin doesn’t know how that relationship ended. and i would have liked the nancy and steve talks more if they weren’t so stancy forward i wish they could just acknowledge that they meant something to each other but that they’re never going to be the person the other needs romantically. can they be friends they would be so much better if they were just friends. + the only person atp i want steve to end up with is robin platonically.

agree on all counts let's go skip together holding hands. it's SOWEIRD but it's like whatever u can't do much about what's been #done and can only pray for a good wrap up of it all... personally i try and look at it as objectively as my own mind can handle and i've talked about this a little like how... all their little talks in the woods was about how they're just acknowledging what they mean to one another... and i'm even okay with steve maybe being hung up on his feelings like it's FINE but the obvious conclusion there SHOULD be that they reconcile and both move on not fucking ?! go backwards

and it is hilarious that one of the entire little monologues was about how he crawls backwards and he would be crawling backwards to nancy 😭 and so would she!!! i saw someone once say his 6 little nuggets thing was (beyond it being a death speech) just a way to gauge her reaction and she never even REALLY said anything other than some encouragement like i think she was like "that's nice" and that was it and it was a tool for them to realise they AREN'T meant to ultimately end up together even if they didn't break up their fundamental worldviews wouldn't shift. and i also think that speech was obv obv more about metaphors and he doesn't actually want 6 kids he just wants a family and a future and a life beyond hawkins but can't forget his connection to the kids as well and that nancy was and is still important to him etc etc. not that they should fucking. elope or whatever.

like one of the most interesting things to me and it is one of the reasons i'm more positive st4ncy at the very least won't be endgame is how nancy SPECIFICALLY is entirely career orientated like you said + does not want to just become another suburban mom. and then steve describes this insane scenario where she's BEYOND a suburban mom at that point it's like one of the most extreme versions of the literal NIGHTMARE from the little rant in season 1 jonathan described (and i'm hoping that it's all deliberate or i'll kms). and then JONATHAN doesn't want to tell her he didn't get into college because "she'll give up her dream for him" or whatever like it was literally just created to be this intentional alternative to steve's "settle down and have a family" thing, "i won't hold you back from your dream school just for our relationship which makes you end up settling into the suburbanite you don't want to be" and imo DOES show jonathan does obviously know her more/care for her because he doesn't WANT her to do this bc he knows how much her career and going to that college meeeans for her future and for her own like sense of self but the way they try and show this was just a weird and sloppy attempt to revive the love triangle yeah.

which is unfortunate but the good news is season 5 will end in steve with a new york boyfriend and robin in a polyamorous throuple with a deli worker and a life model.

[hollywoodsargeant]

10 on the weird writer questions? Also this poem https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/fucking-in-cornwall/ made me think of boyish. Sort of :)

10. Has a piece of writing ever "haunted" you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

oh this question is wild but Yes and Yes. i'll answer the last bit first bc it feels important for context but to me a piece of writing that haunts me is like. i can't get it out of my head for a Long Time after being exposed to it the first time. i keep going back to it. sometimes i wish it would leave me alone. but it doesn't go away really just. anything that sticks with me to an almost uncomfortable degree

to which i say yes! i have definitely been haunted by pieces of writing and i am definitely actively being haunted by pieces of writing. first thing that comes to my mind is. my favorite poet of all time ever Michael Beard who the first time i heard his work i did literally hear it i heard him read his poems out loud and immediately knew i was never going to be normal ever again. nothing has ever ingrained itself into my brain the way his poetry did and i've heard a lot of poets read their work atp... like. bc i heard them out loud i didn't have records of them (and his stuff was really hard to find online) so just. months. Months of me being haunted by things i could not re-read until finally! i did find some of his stuff and helpfully compiled it into a gdoc for myself so i can continue the horrors at my own free will. i will drop some of the lines that haunted me/still haunt me/et cetera et cetera

"and I thought fragmentation of the self / meant easy to handle" (I have always wanted to be opaque)

"I wonder when I pull / out the poem I wrote to you / and recite its final words / I, too, blur / if they come to fruition / if they chisel away / this marbled image of you / until nothing" (I have always wanted to be opaque)

probably my favorite poem of all time it's the one that stuck with me the most after i heard it. Dead. the opening line is something about someone else's lip balm lingering in the spaces between your words and that is also. the second he read that one out loud i actually felt my brain turn over like a rotisserie chicken in my head

"dry fingers / not conditioned for such intimacy, such / lavish intimacy" (The Roots You Swear By)

"Please don’t ask me to take the cactus home / because then I will grow to witness / what these two hands can nourish, / press thumbs into spines, prove / that cactus and heart / are not so different / when it comes to where we put our love." (The Roots You Swear By)

ughhHhH. put a cactus in your heart. bye.

"Shape my body into a bowl and drink from the shallow collarbone / I leave for you." (Phiale)

"Think of the gestures that make us endless. / Speak, if you can. / Tell me how prayer is too small for this." (Phiale)

every day of my life tell me how prayer is too small for this rings somewhere in my head and every day i kill myself about it

"I wonder why you left yourself / on something rotted. / Your name, still etched into the middle post you thought / would fall into the water." (Re-parting Our Shapes)

"My heart is the moment the post finally falls. / The midpoint between the water and your name." (Re-parting Our Shapes)

yeah does that last one look familiar. Yeah. i love that poem so much the whole thing makes me insane. something about etching your name into rotted wooden posts in lakes and never being able to look at places the same in an after. fuck off my heart is the moment the post finally falls i am killing myself

and my own writing yeah. i used this metaphor both in heartstroke and in a very personal essay i wrote for a uni class but "warm the way a dead thing is in a blizzard" still haunts me. honestly that whole personal piece haunts me not even just for that metaphor but the whole essay is insane and in that i used the metaphor to describe the love i have for my father which is Wild but i stand by it. warm the way a dead thing is in a blizzard (something about by comparison and survival instincts and other crazy indescribable things)

and ohmygod thank you i read the poem and i do see what you mean... that and the idea that you read a poem and thought of something i wrote is making me a bit insane so thank you i really appreciate it <3

weird questions for writers

[homemade-ghosts]

any theories? the obvious answer is maybe gina finds out they can bring dates/finds out ej was lying (for whatever reason. i’m genuinely curious as to why he lied unless it’s to do a promposal himself which would still make me mad if i was gina like go by yourself atp bc you ruined the night just to prompose in the morning?). or metaphorically it means their book/story is getting closed. or maybe their relationship is left open or open ended by the end of this ep (which i hope not if That leak is real bc gina is about to get SLANDERED by Them if so)? to try to think of it in a positive way i can’t really think of any way the emoji can be positive besides the “they’re open ended” way so? idk what do u think. or i just thought of another one maybe it means everything between them finally left out in the open? can be positive or negative ig

I'm not sure Gina would even think to check the camp guide/rulebook & see if "No dates to Camp Prom" is in it because, in order for her to do that, she'd have to first suspect that EJ doesn't want to go with her and what reason does she really have to believe that her own boyfriend wouldn't want to take her to a dance? Unless, maybe Val (or Maddox?) makes an offhand comment early in the ep, like, "So, are you & EJ coordinating your outfits for tonight?" and Gina goes, "That'd be pretty pointless, since we can't actually go as each other's dates." Val stares at her, confused. "What do you mean?" "You know, the whole 'rule' about no dates to Prom. How it's, like, a tradition..." Val's expression grows sad, almost pitiful, "...Gina, that's not a rule." "It has to be because EJ said--" and Val pulls out the rulebook all CITs have to read, cover-to-cover, flips to the section on rules for Camp Prom and shows her that there is, in fact, no rule about not bringing a date.

If EJ did lie though, it would have to because he wanted to breakup with Gina, but he didn't have the courage to actually do it, so he used the "no dates" rule as an out. This doesn't really match up with EJ's mindset in the ep though, since we see him kiss her & say that a perfect musical is how he stays in SLC with her (& while I don't agree with his approach, since Gina literally tells him that this isn't about the musical and that she just wants to spend the day together and try to win Color War with him and he decides to completely ignore that in favor what he thinks is best, I do believe he was being sincere). Something definitely would have had to happen mid-day for EJ to do a complete 180 and we were given no indication of that.

& While I do think their chapter is ending this episode, there are several closed book emojis that would better represent that than this open one does, so I don't think that's what Sam is referencing here. I've seen a lot of people saying that it's "close the book before it turns to tragedy" (a reference to Ricky's breakup/accepting the breakup song from s2) and I love that, but I think it's a bit of a stretch.

I really can't see their story being left "open-ended", the resignation on both their faces during the fireworks scene says, to me at least, that they both know this is the end. Also, I can't watch any more of Gina consistently putting in all the effort into their relationship while EJ does nothing but leave her feeling unappreciated and rejected. I need it to be over. (& yeah, I agree, I already know #they will come for her for the [redacted] even if pw is broken up by then, but I don't want to make it any easier for them).

My first thought was pretty much what you mentioned in the last part of your ask, because when I see an emoji of a literal open book, I think of the phrase "I'm an open book." which is to be completely honest about yourself, no holds barred & I could potentially see that being a reference to their breakup. Both of them have sort of been avoiding all the reasons they don't work up, until this point (EJ by diving into work & refusing to apologize, address or explain why he lied/hid things from Gina. & Gina by repeatedly giving EJ the benefit of the doubt and trying to ignore how little effort he puts in, hoping things will be different if she just keeps trying). Maybe their breakup is when they're finally honest with themselves & each other? Open book, no more secrets or silent suffering. Gina realizes she deserves better and EJ realizes that he...I don't know, doesn't know how to be a good boyfriend/partner and doesn't have the time to devote to being one? That he isn't the right person for Gina? (that was me looking for an alternative to "EJ realizes that he's an asshole", which is what I really wanted to say lol). Then, with everything out into the open, they realize just how disconnected & incompatible they really are.

My other theory is a boring one, but I'll include it anyway: a book typically represents school/work/learning, so maybe EJ nearly stands Gina up because, despite knowing how excited she was for Camp Prom, he was busy working on musical stuff. (& when Gina is rightfully upset because not only did her boyfriend reject her promposal, but she had to stand around watching all these cute couples while her boyfriend was nowhere to be seen, EJ could be like, "This musical is more important than some stupid dance, Gina.”) I'd say EJ doesn't even show up to Prom at all, but there's a BTS pic of Matt, Josh & Frankie all in their 70s-inspired Prom outfits, so he’s definitely there at some point.

I saw someone on Twitter say that Gina "reads" EJ (as in calls him out for being an absolute garbage boyfriend) but my personal favorite is someone else suggesting that Gina throws a literal book at EJ lmao 😭