#joyce-stick

[joyce-stick]

An Essay About Slash Review of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, A Video Game Which is Very Good

(and also: has prompted many quite wrong rather bad takes)

An essay by Audrey of the joystick system

The very bad discourse and drama around The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has served to obscure the simple fact that it is quite a very good video game and this video essay is here to tell you about that.

Video version:

Previous video essay: Lost Judgment's Lost Plot

If you enjoy this essay, please consider following us here or on any other platforms, and/or donating to support future works via our Patreon or Ko-fi.

Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Bluesky

Transcript:

Hi everyone. So. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is really, really fucking good.

If you’ve heard of this game, you’ve probably heard of it in the context of memes, screenshots divorced from context, and/or capricious moral outrage. If you’ve not heard of this game, well, you’re hearing of it now! And good thing, too, because much of the coverage and discussion around this game that already exists has… been, let’s just say, not particularly earnest. I hope to remedy that at least somewhat with this video.

If you’ve heard about this game because of discourse, and come here expecting drama and hot takes, then, this may not be your video. Or your YouTube channel, even. Or maybe it is, if you’d like the delicious comments section. If you’re that sort of clicker, though— welcome! I’m Audrey of the joystick system, and this is the place where I (and my headmates) talk honestly about things we care about, and I hope you’ll hear me out a little and maybe consider staying and improving our viewer retention. Thanks, if you do.

So, to writ: My purpose today is to gush. I will be gushing here. For most of it. And as for what I will be gushing about, some of it will be gushing BLOOD, GUTS, AND DELICIOUS DEATH. I am entirely serious. The subject of today’s presentation contains mature content, including copious foul language and themes slash depictions of death, cannibalism, cultism, demon summoning rituals, parricide, dystopian social decay, and heterosexuality. Oh, and also a little bit of incest as a treat, I guess, but the incest is heterosexual, and that’s worse.

[long pause]

Excellent. You’re still here. So. This morbidly beautiful video game may not be for everyone, but that’s good, because it is instead for exactly me! A short plot synopsis of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley might go as follows:

if you're not watching the video listen to this for extra effect

Siblings Andrew and Ashley Graves are forcibly quarantined inside their apartment by the local authorities, with no food and even less hope for rescue. Their parents have abandoned them. Absolutely no one is coming to save them. In order to survive and escape this awful situation, they butcher and consume the fresh flesh of some guy who got himself soul vored by a demon that he summoned without a plan.

This conspicuously carnivorous crime, and their effort to cover their tracks, puts them in a fair bit of a deeper shithole than they are already in. So naturally they keep digging themselves deeper by committing even more crimes, AND in the process, also dig themselves deeper into their toxic codependent sibling relationship, which is going just great, thank you. Sure, Andrew almost killed his sister, but he didn’t, and that’s what matters! And she still loves him, so it’s all good!

This is of course a joke.

First thing I absolutely love about this game is the writing. It’s witty, intelligent, uncompromising, and just generally delicious. It holds nothing back in depicting the toxicity of the two leads and their relationship, resulting in two compelling characters whose flaws and few virtues perfectly complement slash exacerbate one another, resulting in a beautiful train wreck of a relationship dynamic that proves equal parts disturbing, mesmerizing, and hilarious.

The charming darkly comedic bite of the writing style also lends a lot of great character to the setting. This sardonically presented dystopian world is both richly detailed and fleetingly elaborated on, a commendable balance to have achieved, in my opinion. The first chapter of this game is hilarious not just because of the banter between Ashley and Andrew (which is terrific), but because it presents such a sharp satire of current year bullshit.

As just an example, I give you, one of my favorite jokes in the game:

I probably don’t need to explain the thing this is making fun of to you, but I will anyway.

The situation presented in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s first episode is very easily readable as an allegory for how disasters that are a direct result of ongoing 2020s late capitalist decay continuously fuck people over. In particular, this scenario feels like a direct commentary on both the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Flint, Michigan water crisis. The former obviously has affected way more people but what both have in common is that they are crises created and exacerbated by malfeasance and/or negligence committed in the name of for-profit interests, and that the “response,” to them, such as there was one, has amounted to dehumanizing and marginalizing the victims while minimizing the issue, forcing the victims out of society’s wider view, and being reticent to punish the individuals responsible. 

Just as the authorities responded to the water crisis and the worst excesses of the pandemic in real life, the authorities in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley impose half-measures designed to further restrict the freedom of the dirty undesirables who bear the worst damages, while merely shielding the upper echelons of society from the disaster rather than actually addressing or attempting to solve the issue. Most of you who lived through 2020 in the United States probably have experienced the frustration of being on the receiving end of this kind of policy.

During the pandemic, the quarantine was supposed to protect us, but for a lot of people it ended up doing quite the opposite. A lot of folks didn’t have any savings, and couldn’t get any since the employment market wasn’t exactly on fire, and our representatives had to be bothered way too much just to put out a pithy economic stimulus just to save face. Not to say that this all has stopped, exactly, as all that’s changed now is that we’re just, living with this situation, but.

It wasn’t literally a cop outside everyone’s door preventing them from going outside to not die, but for a lot of people, it might as well have been that! Never mind those who, y’know, had no inside to retreat to. Or were imprisoned during the pandemic and left even more unprotected! Or thrown out by their landlords! And so on. And, y’know, the big chain grocery stores keep throwing out all the perfectly good unsold food, so they’re already sending this message in all but, well… these exact words.

So, that’s why I think this joke lands. It’s exaggerated, but familiarly rooted, and that’s just good satire! It’s a joke which feels lifted right out of Invader Zim, which, I would put The Coffin of Andy and Leyley right about on the level of as far as both the tone it’s going for and the quality of its execution. Which of course, brings us to the extremes that these circumstances push its characters, and its plot, to.

Okay, so, also like Invader Zim, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is hardly a polemic, nor is it a morality tale. Sure, there’s social commentary in it, but that’s just a nice side thing. It’s not a story about the otherwise innocent victims of an unjust society who are pushed to do terrible things by circumstances outside their control— it is, rather a story of terrible people, who, both because of their character failings, and the desperate situations they find themselves in, find themselves doing even worse things.

Andrew and Ashley commit the cannibalism the first time in large part because they kind of have to do it. No food! Cop outside their door actively deterring them from getting food! Out of options! So they do it. They could probably be excused, if only they were given a fair trial. Which they realize they’re not going to get. So yeah. It’s understandable that they do it. And that they kill this one cop, who very much has it coming.

But they do not have to keep doing it! And gosh grief, do they keep fucking doing it— so many its. They really do not stop digging that hole that they are in. Even the first time that they do the cannibalism, when they kind of really have to do the cannibalism, Ashley is just a little bit more excited about doing the cannibalism than she probably should be.

I love this kind of delicious edgy dark humor. I love stories that go for it, imagine the worst possible people they can, and also try to make that funny. I love this about Invader Zim, that it presents a character who is unquestionably a monster, but also has relatable human desires like wanting to fit in and being concerned about looking weird or abnormal, but has those feelings for very different reasons and acts on them by committing some very despicable crimes. It really gets at a deep-seated darkness that I and a lot of other fucked up traumatized queer people who were little kids when this show aired have, the catharsis of visualizing some of our worst intrusive thoughts while evoking the emotions that pushed us to imagine this kind of fucked up shit.

I’ve loved this kind of thing since we saw Heathers when we were 14. Heathers is an absolutely incredible film that you should check out, by the way, and about which we failed to properly or interestingly articulate our thoughts a few years back. Its lead protagonists, Jason “J.D.” Dean and Veronica Sawyer, are similarly relatable characters who have familiar feeling flaws and emotionally resonant trauma hangups, and also function as very toxic enablers of each other’s worst traits, leading them to work through those feelings by, y’know, murdering their classmates!

Heathers made us realize just how exactly mentally ill of a 14 year old we really were when we were 14, and I love it for that. So. So fucking much.

That was ten years and change ago.

We are still a mentally ill 24 year old.

And Andrew and Ashley Graves, if I had to sum them up, are basically J.D. and Veronica, if they were in their twenties, siblings, and also way, way, way worse.

And I love them.

So, obviously. Ashley and Andrew are hilarious. At least, I find them to be such. They’re terrible, and awful, and amazing, and Ashley is such a girlboss. She is one of the most God Forbid Women Do Anything characters ever.

Anyway! I’ve talked about the cannibalism, and the dystopia, and the characters, and why all of that’s good. I’ve also forgotten to talk about the part where they evade an assassin, and, also a host of other things.

I love that this game has so many fun little optional interactions with NPCs, objects, and items, that you can totally miss. I love how the narration hints at the solutions to puzzles by snarkily referring to things you can interact with as what their purpose is to the characters rather than what they are, this quip about the mop that you clean up a murder scene with, the interactions that Andrew has with these cultists who suck at demon summoning, the excellent in-game art and the brilliant visual duality of Andrew and Ashley’s character designs, this line where Andrew is upset that life is so hard for them as fugitives from the law because they can only find this one shitty motel that takes cash and doesn’t ask them for their ID, and also the music, which is royalty free music made by people unassociated with the developer but is nonetheless perfectly suited for the game.

So much about this game is stuff I find so completely brilliant, and I have so little to criticize, that I think we’d probably be here all day if I kept going. So.

Let’s spend a thousand ish more words talking about the parents.

When The Coffin of Andy and Leyley begins, the protagonists’ parents are absent. You can optionally find two early references to them early on— one, if you interact with the bed in their bedroom, and encounter the shocking revelation that “Your parents have FUCKED on this bed.”

The second, is if you interact with the phone, the game dutifully informs you that,

You’re probably less than five minutes into the game at this point, barely begun solving the first puzzle, which prompted you to “find nutrients to not die.” And of course, this says about all you need to know. These children have been abandoned. But if it needed to be any clearer, the game later delivers unto you a flashback to prior in the story, when Ashley desperately calls Mrs. Graves for help after they leave and go move to a hotel, and later a new house, to which the kids are of course not invited. And this specific scene, specific line, here, fucking hit me:

“And I don’t want to hear these lies about starving anymore.”

Emphasis mine.

Even as Ashley and Andrew escalate the severity of their crimes which gradually come to have less and less to do with their need to survive as the story goes on, I find it very hard to not be on their side at least a little bit, and this is easily the biggest reason why.

I have had this phone call.

Not this exact specific phone call, of course. Obviously, I’ve never been locked up in an apartment with an armed patrol outside my door whose job it was to gaslight me while ensuring that I starved to death. Obviously, my mom has never said those exact words.

But gosh grief and fuck me if it’s never felt like she has. She may as well have fucking told me that, with all the things she told me I was lying about. And who fucking knows, maybe she did say those exact words to us, and we repressed them. I don’t know. I am very not done working through all the bullshit that she gaslit us over.

*sighs, preparing to vent*

I have called our mother and had to beg her to pay for food. I have called her and had to beg to pay for our rent, while our parents were supposed to be supporting us studying abroad. I have called her and begged her to forgive me for daring to use just a few of the thirty dollars our parents used to send us to live with every month back then, to buy a drink or a movie ticket or something. I have had to concede to our parents financially holding us hostage, had to go the last week of the month on a shoestring diet while waiting for them to graciously deposit another thirty dollars into our bank account... so that we could continue eating. I used to relish February, the shortest month, for being the one part of the year in which I had to stretch out that thirty dollars the least. And once, I pleaded with our mother to pay for us to move to another apartment when the landlord suddenly kicked us out of the current one, abruptly and obligatorily switching gears from arguing with her to kissing her ass through our gritted teeth, under threat of our parents cutting off their financial support of us completely, abandoning us in a foreign country where we had no money, no job, and barely spoke the language.

And one day, after I stopped dancing to their tune, they just stopped listening, stopped even pretending to want to help. After nineteen years of escalating emotional and physical abuse and neglect, they abandoned us. And one day, after I spent months working 10 hour days every week Ubering food around for tips, sending my resume, filling applications, making calls, stopping into places to ask for work, all to no avail, for months, and desperately plugging the Patreon page of this very YouTube channel praying that some generous soul with money to burn would solve all our problems. All of this still wasn’t enough, and wasn’t going anywhere, and I’d run out of money and was short on rent on the one sublet room we could get that cost exactly three hundred dollars…

And I called her, and I asked her for help. I really didn’t want to. I wanted to hear nothing of her again. And she said to stop lying. To stop bullshitting her that I couldn’t get enough money, or find a job.

Not too long after, I swore off all contact with her, and eventually also with our father. And every time I have spoken to either of them since, I have made no secret of how I feel. Because if I get nothing out of kissing their ass, why fucking pretend.

My family is not poor. They own their house. They own, and leased out, a second house. Their house is full of fancy IKEA furniture and various other niceties, they’ve renovated the place at least twice, they live in a nice, safe neighborhood, they have an attic and a basement, they at one point paid for multiple plane tickets for us per year while still refusing to let us eat on any more than thirty five dollars, an extra five dollars we also had to beg them for. Our dad has a lucrative tech job. All of this, and they insisted, while refusing to answer questions about their finances in any detail, that they couldn’t afford to help us go to where we wanted to go for college, that they had no place for us in their house, that they couldn’t afford three hundred dollars of rent to help us have a roof over our head for one more month.

So when I read this delightful jaunt of a chapter of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, where Andrew and Ashley break into their parents’ new huge house to steal all their shit, and Ashley says “This is some rich people stuff!” about their fireplace,

And when their mom says, “there’s no room to keep housing you here indefinitely,” and the internal monologue says, “even though it’s way bigger than the old house.” It’s both an entertaining mockery of the attitude of the typical American family, how first you’re your parents’ property for eighteen years and then you’re turned out on your own to face the world without their support, and how the fuck are you supposed to live like that, to figure out how to live your life in the face of that, to meaningfully be a fulfilled person in that situation, especially in a time, when, no, mom, I can’t pay a college tuition on a waitress salary like you did back in the fucking nineties, you c--t,

Even though they have an extra bed in their basement and a perfectly good couch and plenty of space for another bed besides, and a vegetable garden, and a kitchen, and all these other middle-class petty bougie niceties, the Graves mom says, “sorry, we can’t keep helping you,” and. And. I read all this, and I think,

“I understand why Ashley wants to fucking flay these people. I understand why she wants to K1!L them.”

I cannot tell you how much catharsis the ending of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley episode 2 gave me. I cannot convey the weight of my gratitude that someone out there validated my anger and my specific fucked up power fantasy with their art. I didn’t even ask them to. I probably would’ve eventually done it on my own. But I’m so glad that someone did it for me.

If I ever hypothetically meet Nemlei, somehow, and have some cash, I will happily buy them a drink. Hopefully, by paying this excellent game’s ten dollar cover price, I already have!

I know you’re not watching this, but on the off chance this reaches your ears, I just wanna say thanks. For giving me a safe, legal, regret-free, socially acceptable, non-violent outlet for the rage I feel towards my parents.

Well.

Mostly socially acceptable.

Meow.

This game is not finished, as you may have noticed if you’ve gone to check it out on Steam. It ends on an ambiguous and open note, but in my opinion, a perfectly satisfying one. Nemlei could disappear absolutely, never release the proper ending of this game, and never make another game again, and I would not be mad. I've already got more than my money’s worth and then some. So. Yeah. I’m happy. Count me as happy!

I kinda wanna start talking a bit more about the branches of the second episode. I wanna say how it’s a brilliant idea to have two separate story arcs for the two variations of this episode’s ending, and how I hope that that’s executed on as beautifully as the rest of the game already is. I wanna talk about the ways in which Andrew and Ashley’s mom is ambiguously humanized despite being so obviously terrible. I wanna talk about the dialogue Andrew does when his parents offer him a chance to make amends, and he has doubts, if you choose to let him have them, and how I would probably also have doubts in his position, and not be able to follow through without my lovely evil cannibal sister pushing me towards… the thing. I wanna talk about this line, where Ashley talks about why she likes eating people, and how it’s so equal parts poetic and macabre and edgy bullshit and that that’s such a beautifully balanced cocktail of emotion to nail and Nemlei totally fucking nails it

I WANT TO GUSH FOREVER. ABOUT THIS GAME. AND I WANT NO ONE TO STOP ME.

Alas, I will stop myself.

And move on to the elephant in the room!

THE FUCKING.

Mom: “But that-.... That doesn’t make any sense.” Mom: “Why would you not-......” Mom: “Ah, I get it.” Andrew: “..........??” Mom: “You fuck her.” Andrew: “Wha— HUUUUH?!?!!?” Mom: “Oh that is disgusting! Andrew, she’s your sister for god’s sake!” Andrew: “I haven’t done anything!? What the hell, mom!?” Mom: “Then what does she give you that makes it worth all this?” Andrew: “W-well that’s none of your business, is it??” Mom: “I knew something was off… How did I fuck up so bad? I’m the worst mother ever..!” Andrew: “No! I mean yes you are, but I have never—!” Ashley: “I’m baaaa-ack!!!” Andrew: “Now of all times!?” Ashley: “I got the money! Did you miss me, handsome?? Did you? Did you??” Mom: “...........................” Andrew: “(I WANT TO DIE!!!!!!)”

Okay. So. I said I didn’t want to talk about this. But I’m talking about this game. I can’t not talk about it.

Yep, it’s hot takes and drama time!

So, not too long ago, Nemlei deleted their Twitter, their Itch.io, their everything, their entire online presence. The Steam page for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, which used to list Nemlei as the developer and publisher, now lists “Kit9 Studio.” It is the only game to their name on the platform. A community forum post from said entity known as Kit9 announces that “the developer” (no name given) “has decided to permanently and completely terminate their activities online from here on.”

I don’t know exactly what happened, or why they did this. There’s a lot of people around who sure think they know. But in brief, as neutrally as possible: Nemlei, or someone close to them, was doxxed, or at least sought out as a doxxing target, by one or multiple users of an online forum. Their supposed crime? Making a video game “for degenerates.”

I don’t know who did the doxxing. I don’t know what their motive was, and for my own sanity, I am not going to look. I am choosing not to care. The most important and most obvious fact at hand here is that Nemlei’s creation has been met with controversy amongst social media users, and about one or two hack video game outrage journalists, who seem to have nothing better to do or say. And it seems clear that the doxxing wouldn’t have happened had they not been met with this negative attention. And all because of this.

Not the cannibalism, not the parricide, not the demon sacrifices. No, um, the one implied sex scene.

And it doesn’t even actually happen! It’s just a premonition of a possible future event that Ashley and Andrew supernaturally receive. It’s not particularly graphic, it doesn’t yet go anywhere, and it’s a short scene on an optional route that the game actively forewarns you about. You have to be trying to see it on purpose.

Well, that’s all true. It is indeed a minor and avoidable scene, and the discourse about it has absolutely poisoned the well when it comes to the conversation about the game. But also, “uhh, it’s optional and not a big thing,” is inadequate as a defense. This is still content in the game that Nemlei actively chose to put in the game, and even discounting this, the themes of incest are all over the game. Ashley speaks flirtatiously to Andrew at basically every turn. Even if you avoid this specific scene, the incest themes are not something you’re going to just not notice, if you’re paying attention to the text.

All that being said, it’s not like this content comes as a surprise. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s Steam store page accurately represents the product! A brother and sister. Codependency and cannibalism. It’s not as if you don’t know what you’re paying for and choosing to play. You came here for this! Most of the people playing this are here for this! You have to figure that if they are fine with killing and eating people, they’re probably fine with fucking each other, or, eventually possibly eventually going to be, at least.

So you’d think, except that many people seem to unironically believe that the cannibalism is more moral than the incest.

Oh, god, I’m doing this right now, aren’t I.

So, I get it. While I’m pretty skeptical of the notion that cannibalism is not as bad as incest, I do realize that incest is, at the very least, the more taboo of these things, and that a lot of people are more uncomfortable with it than they are with the cannibalism and the murder. To quote the one positive and in-depth review available in any media outlet at the time of this writing, from Destructoid:

“This aspect is undoubtedly the most controversial element about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, and I understand why. While cannibalism is a taboo subject, it’s present in mainstream games like Fallout as an option for players. Having incestuous themes crosses over into Drakengard territory, and even then, no option allows Caim to reciprocate Furiae’s feelings for him.”

"The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is horrifying and I can’t get enough of it" Andrea Gonzalez, Destructoid, November 12 2023

So, yeah, I. y’know. Get it. I know why. However.

I can point to a lot of things that Andrew and Ashley do wrong in this game. They are, as per the game’s premise, very not okay, not as individuals, and not together. Andrew is way too attached to Ashley, and Ashley is generally an awful person who is way too attached herself, and also, all too quick on the draw to take advantage of Andrew’s attachment to her to make him do what she wants. This is not a healthy relationship. And we’re here for it! It’s compelling!

But, I think it’s worth asking why it’s such a toxic dynamic. Is it because they’re siblings? Well, not really. It’s a dynamic that’s specifically possible with them being siblings, but it’s not because of their sibling connection.

The actual reason why Andrew and Ashley’s relationship turns abusive isn’t because their relationship is abusive by necessity or nature, but because Ashley abuses their relationship. And she is doing this for basically the whole game. Like, it is abusive the whole time. It doesn’t become abusive when their relationship takes its romantic turn. Does it become more abusive? I mean. Maybe. Maybe the romance exacerbates the abuse. I dunno, we’ll have to wait and see what the next episode says.

So, then, why is the notion of them possibly in the future having sex the elephant in the room here, when before that, they do so many objectively worse things that cause much more harm both to themselves and others? Is that really so much more of a bigger deal than the murder and the people eating?

Or. To phrase it Ashley’s way. You played a game about mutilating and eating your parents’ corpses, and getting laid is what you’re freaking out about?

Is the incest really that much more extreme, or are you just more disgusted with it?

And even if you are more disgusted with it. Even if we grant that it is, actually, somehow, more harmful for siblings to have sex with each other, than to do murder and cannibalism. Is this the hill you’re dying on? What you’ve decided is of such utmost importance and injustice that you decide to go harass some random indie dev who just wants to make a silly video game about a couple of siblings eating people?

Does it truly make sense to let your kneejerk moral disgust guide you to the conclusion that the creator of this game deserves to be persecuted for merely writing about and drawing a thing you don’t like?

Well, to answer that, we have to get into the question of whether or not “immoral fiction” is harmful, or “normalizing” things that are wrong. Does fictionally depicting an immoral action actually cause harm?

I could dance around in circles for a little while about the edge cases, and certain writers who are publishing bad or hateful material in bad faith, or fascist propaganda, which is of course always bad, or whatever other example I could use to qualify my point or list out an exception to appease the people who disagree with me, but, I’ll just cut right to the chase, and tell you the answer

No!

The answer is NO!

The thing about taboos is that they don’t make us more safe. They don’t protect us from bad things. All they do is protect people’s comfort by silencing people they don’t want to understand, and enable bad actors by keeping their victims in the dark, and denying them the ability to talk about it.

The only thing we end up doing by censoring stories about these uncomfortable topics, and making it socially unacceptable to talk about them, is make it harder to know. We deny ourselves knowledge. We deny ourselves a conversation about these subjects, we deny ourselves the ability to meaningfully understand them. We deny ourselves power, what little we have, as readers, to understand, and to critique, to reason.

There’s a tumblr post I really like. Well, a number of them, I really like, on this topic, but I’m picking this one, because it’s got a quote I really like. It talks about Lolita. That Lolita. And, now, I’ve never read Lolita, at least not yet. Lolita is a novel about child sexual abuse, told from the perspective of an abuser. It’s an uncomfortable book with an uncomfortable topic, and it’s not wrong to be uncomfortable with it. The author of this post acknowledges that.

But they talk about it. They talk about how it shines a light on its subject matter. The why and the how of abusers and their actions. The ways in which their victims suffer. How it shows all of this in a way that it only could from the perspective it takes. And, I’m just going to quote them. I can’t do anything else. They said it better than I could, right now.

“Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.” - tumblr user legsdemandias

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has been ridiculed, joked about, hot taked on, made a target, drama-ed over, and so on, but it’s hardly been criticized. No one I’ve seen admitting to not liking it talks critically about why it’s disgusting to them, or tries to understand why it exists, or what it’s for. And this is most people’s reaction to most media that deals seriously with anything taboo. “I don’t get it. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t exist. Get it away from me.”

I’m annoyed that the medium, the art form, of video games, is valued so little by so many that this is the wide reaction when something like this gets popular. That the mainstream games journalism media ridicules it, and the creator gets threatened by an internet mob, and it falls on the weirdos and the freaks and the no-name YouTube uwu girls, to give it the serious consideration and recognition it deserves.

To summarize, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is, in my opinion, a very good video game, and on its behalf, I am mad at video games.

Now, go on. You made it through this video. I told you the plot! You can probably stomach the plot! So go, go. Shoo. Go buy Nemlei a drink. If you want to.

Or, buy us, the joystick system, a drink! You can do that at patreon dot com slash joycestick, or, ko-fi dot com slash joycestick. You can buy us drinks in both of those places.

I’ve been Audrey. Thank you for listening.

Thank you to our Patreon supporters:

Ada. Just Ada • Anime Omelette • ASabitsukiFlow • Azu • ColorfulCast • DameDiadora • deeso • Duskpixie • Elvenoob • Emma and Pals • Femboy Bebop • Gwen Starlight • hev • Kaylee Smerbeck • Korin • L Tantivy • LaLaLacuna • Lilly • M • Mira Yeuden • Nik Gothic • Pigeon • Roger C Walker • RukaCollie • Sally • Saoirse Russell • Scimitar • SimplyAero • SleepySlug • Spiderrebelnews • Thijs • Trucy • Unknowable Entity of Darkness • Vile Lasagna

A reminder to consider following or supporting us if you enjoyed this essay:

Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Mastodon

[jonathanbyersphd]

The conversation we aren't having is that it's an entirely different thing for Jonathan to stay in Lenora than it is for Jonathan to stay in Hawkins.

Like, Lenora Jonathan doesn't have much but he has a best friend. And more importantly, no one knows him. He's not Lonnie's Boy or psycho pervert Byers. At most his Lenora reputation is a stoner. And compared to the hatred Hawkins has for the Byers family that's nothing.

[hearteyes-wheeler]

listen i love mike's s5 hair but i'm ngl i'll forever mourn that we're not getting mike with beautiful shoulder length curly black hair that he ties up into a ponytail sometimes

[manuushroom]

So, you guys remember when I was ranting about Jopper and Stick Season by Noah Kahan a few months ago? And how I said that I could literally take every song from that album and show how it fits them? I may or may not have done just that.

(It's an almost 30-page document with every song and my comments on all the lyrics that I think fit them) My god, the brain rot is real.

[there-was-a-hole-here-itsgonenow]

Can we just appreciate Joyce knowing her son is above drawing stick figures lol

[bookofwambs]

will byers can’t have a characteristic or a trait all to himself. he was always always labeled as the artist in the show (even dustin said how they needed will when max drew her vecna vision) and obviously he can’t have that bc milevens decided that el has to be artist as well. mike is will’s muse confirmed but again will can’t have that bc no mike needs to be el’s muse as well. it’s just really annoying how milevens are stealing will’s characteristics and traits and trying to shove them into el bc they’re so threatened by will? like what did he do to for you to try and take away from his character?

el can be artistic, she can have mike as her muse. but she was only given those traits once it was established that will had them. and the fact that mike loves will’s art and actually cherishes it, milevens had to make sure el was artistic as well.

it’s weird. if you’re so confident about your ship and your favourite character, why are you trying to take away from another’s???

[roanofarcc]

｡･ﾟﾟ･all my love, jim & joyce ･ﾟﾟ･｡

There ain't a drop of bad blood, it's all my love You got all my love while I'm still out here With the pills and the dogs, if you need me, dear I'm the same as I was, it's all okay There ain't a drop of bad blood, it's all my love You got all my love

Write me a list of how it is, of how it was, of how it has to be You burrowed in under my skin, what I'd give to have you out for me I still recall how the leather in your car feels And at the end of it all I just hope that your scars heal

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

talk about anti-climactic lol...

[quinnick]

Joyce interacting with her kids again and not just partnered up with Hopper exclusively like she has been for the past 2 seasons

[purpleshadow-star]

It's sad to think about, but Bob was doomed from the beginning.

When you think about it, he was an amazing guy, but his whole character went against the premise of the show.

At one point, Joyce says to Bob, "This is not a normal family." Bob replies, "It could be."

The whole premise of Stranger Things is about accepting the weird, nerdy, abnormal parts of yourself. It's about going against the norm. It's about rejecting normalcy and being true to yourself. Bob's mindset wasn't, "You're not normal, and that's okay." It was, "You're not normal right now, but you can be."

Not hate to Bob, that's not a bad way of thinking, but it just further proves that, in the long run, he wasn't meant to stay with the Byers family. Because the Byers will never be normal, and that's okay.

[joyce-stick]

Suzume Isn't Gay, But We Liked It Anyway

Despite not being as gay as Shinkai might have tried to make it during its development, Suzume is still quite a good film which we enjoyed immensely on account of its characters, compelling narrative, visual beauty, thought-provoking themes, and the improvements observed over Shinkai's previous two films. So this an essay about Suzume, about why it's good, what its themes are, and our glowing recommendation.

Transcript under the cut.

Previous video essay/transcript: Audrey's Best Girls Winter 2023

If you're on desktop, you may find this more comfy to read directly on our Tumblr site.

If you enjoy this essay, please consider following us here or on any other platforms, and/or donating to support future works via our Patreon or Ko-fi.

Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Mastodon

Citations!

Baron, Reuben. “Director Makoto Shinkai on the Anime Artistry of Suzume - Exclusive Interview.” Looper, Static Media, 12 Apr. 2023, https://www.looper.com/1254434/director-makoto-shinkai-anime-artistry-suzume-exclusive-interview/.

Brzeski, Patrick. “Makoto Shinkai on How Anime Blockbuster 'Suzume' Reflects the Current State of Japan: ‘the Most Honest Expression I Could Put on Screen.’” The Hollywood Reporter, Penske Media Corporation, 7 Mar. 2023, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/makoto-shinkai-interview-suzume-anime-berlin-2023-1235329404/.

Pulliam-Moore, Charles. “Makoto Shinkai Wants Suzume to Build a Bridge of Memory between Generations.” The Verge, Vox Media, 15 Apr. 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/15/23678724/makoto-shinkai-suzume-interview.

Jackson, Destiny. “Director Makoto Shinkai on the Tender Resonance and Maturity of Making 'Suzume': ‘I Think about How to Dig Deeper so I Can Emotionally Move People in My Vicinity.’” Deadline, Penske Media Corporation, 15 Apr. 2023, https://deadline.com/2023/04/suzume-makoto-shinkai-japanese-anime-weathering-with-you-your-name-1235325691/.

https://twitter.com/ao8l22/status/1513116464210919425

https://twitter.com/moogy0/status/1592346490315640836

I had a few good reasons to assume I would hate Suzume.

We've seen three of Shinkai’s films. Yes, those three. We liked Your Name quite a bit when we saw it in theaters, but its flaws became apparent on a rewatch a few years later. We did not like Weathering With You, which made its flaws apparent to us rather immediately. Never watched it since watching it the first time, but, I don't know, maybe we'll go back to it.Still, thinking about that film had us pissed off for a little while, although we're less pissed off now, for reasons we might get to later. So, when we went to watch Suzume, I was reasonably expecting to hate it, or, even worse, enjoy it, while seeing some intractable flaw in it that ticked me off immensely about it.

And… I found none! I mean, maybe I'll think of one later, but my current opinion of Suzume, as I write this hours after having seen it, (and speak it, 'bout a couple days after having written this) is that it was a pretty good film with a lot of breathtaking visuals, funny moments, some emotional bits, and no real huge flaws to speak of. In fact, not only does this film lack the biggest flaws of its predecessors, it's also got a few things about it that I appreciate more.

First thing I liked immediately: Girl. I mean, her name, is the title. It's no secret that we of the joystick system appreciate beautiful anime girls, and this particular such beautiful anime girl is good, both as the protagonist of the film who does all the proactive things to save the guy, which is different from the last two movies where the guy did all the stuff. I'm not gonna pretend like Shinkai is suddenly some kind of feminist icon now for correctly giving a female character some goddamn agency, but: it's a nice touch for us personally, given that… we like girls. It helps that Suzume is emotional and interesting and funny and has a pretty good arc through the movie and her voice actress does a good job- no, we did not watch the dub. I'll probably talk a bit more about her later, but I think she's good.

I think it's important to mention with regards to this girl, that she was, apparently, supposed to be gay. This information came to light in the English speaking anime community after a Japanese entertainment journalist tweeted a tweet sayin’ as much, and then professional translator Moogy went and tweeted about it in turn, citing this journalist as a source. I can’t find that this chain goes back any further than that, although I tried to out of personal interest, because, if I had, then I would’ve been able to write that into the Wikipedia page- which, I DID CHECK, and it briefly mentions that -

Okay, so, since writing that, another, Wikipedia-admissible, source, in the English language, emerged, in which Shinkai is interviewed, and confirms this to be true. So as such, I added that information to the article, with that source. Look. There it is! And it’s still there, probably, unless someone removed it while I was making the video.

In this interview, the interviewer asks Shinkai directly about this, and he says, “I’m surprised you know it! I’ve only told Japanese interviewers about it!” Clearly Shinkai is unaware of the power of Moogy. So, he goes onto say, that, yes, it was his initial idea for a companion, and that the theoretical character who Souta replaced would’ve been Suzume’s onee-san crush; that’s how I’m taking this whole ‘sisterhood romance’ thing. He thought he’d done enough with the boy meets girl thing, and he wanted to try doing something else.

His producer rejected it, because, in Shinkai’s translated words, “You may be tired of these romantic stories, but your audience loves it,” which, I believe, is a polite way of saying “I don’t think a gay film will sell.” The chair thing was chosen to “not make it too much of a romance”.

Shinkai further says— and this part kinda gets me— that he doesn’t think the story would’ve changed if it had been gay, or if Suzume had been a boy or non-binary or whatever. Quote:

“It's not necessarily the context of male/female; it's about a human overcoming something. In my future films as well, I want to focus on that human story as opposed to too much commentary on gender or sex.”

So, my reading of this response, and, take this with a grain of salt because it’s only my personal interpretation, is that while Shinkai was interested in making a gay film as a change of pace, he did not consider it important enough to insist on. There were other things he wanted to make the movie about, and he didn’t want to die on the gay hill.

And, y’know, that’s a shame, but I think it’s fair enough. I would have liked to see the alternate timeline where no one stopped him from making the film gay, but if it wasn’t already clear, I like the film that we got, and I don’t fault Shinkai for having other priorities as a director, like, for instance, getting his film funded and keeping his job. And honestly, I can halfway see the merit in not making it a gay film, because then it’d be a lot harder to, y’know, address the themes, without addressing whatever gay discourse there’d be that overshadows the themes.

I don’t say this to be like, “ooh, the film would’ve just been gay and that would’ve been bad,” it would’ve been good for the film to be gay, I just mean that a lot of the time people are more concerned about there being representation rather than the quality of the story in which the representation exists and it becomes the gay thing, rather than, the thing that happens to be gay, and that’s not always great. I mean, I guess we are getting a little bit of that just off of the knowledge that the film could have been gay, but at least I don’t have to think about talking about it too much past this point, because it’s, y’know, not actually in the film.

Shinkai said other stuff, too, I guess, about the animation and how the characters have different color palettes for daytime and evening and night scenes, which explains the very convincingly presented amusement park scene, that happens at night! So that was interesting.

Anyway, that’s the addendum I have about that, I’m gonna go back to the rest of this:

I have no idea if this would've been good for the film or not, but we have a different video being written about gay pandering, so, let’s move on then I guess!

The second thing that we liked was the film's opening minutes. And to explain why this is, I need to give a bit of context, I think. So, in short, after the 2011 nuclear meltdown and earthquake that irreversibly forever changed Japan and the life of all the people living there (and also delayed Madoka Magica's finale), Shinkai apparently decided that he wanted to make a bunch of films about it. About three so far, to be exact. Which, y'know, is not a bad motivation for making films. It's certainly a better motivation than I had to write this video

So, as such, his last three films are a novel fusion of wacky comedy, coming of age romantic melodrama, and disaster film. Your Name and Weathering With You had really slow buildups to the disaster part of the disaster film, to the point that mentioning it is almost a spoiler, but I'm going to assume it isn't because everyone has now seen those films. So they have a whole first half where it's just kind of weird supernatural romantic comedy slice of life hijinks but then it abruptly tone shifts in the second half.

This is actually, I think, the source of both of these films' major issues. It's kinda cool to watch them the first time and then see the story's tone shift when the mid movie plot twist happens, introducing the big disaster scenario aspect of the story along with it, but the drawback to that approach is that you have, in essence, a movie whose plot twist is that it becomes a different movie. This both contributes to the odd tonal whiplash and also means that the supernatural disaster part of the film is weaker and not as well fleshed out as it could be.

Suzume, on the other hand, smartly introduces the main conflict of the story in the first act of the movie. This choice is good. The serious existential threat to Japan stuff that the film is about is the immediate focus of the film. This allows for a more balanced tone, as then the movie can comfortably use its comedic parts to add levity to its treatment of that harrowing topic, rather than the existential stuff comin' in like a sledgehammer to break a previously comfortable tone- which, I should say, IS a thing you can do, and IS a valid choice to tell a story, I just don’t think it was necessarily a choice that Shinkai handled well before. The pacing is much improved, as the supernatural aspects of the film are more evenly developed and the story has more time to explain itself. Mostly. There's like one scene I don't get. I’ll get to it?

Anyway, the end result of this choice is that Suzume feels like a much more focused and complete film, rather than two halves of different films. Aaaaaand, I appreciate this! A lot. I can see this choice maybe maybe maybe making the movie less interesting to some people, because it's paced more like a normal movie than Shinkai's other previous two romantic comedy disaster movies, but, hey, I think it's nice that Shinkai seems to be growing as an artist and a writer and a filmmaker, who made a normal movie that didn’t leave us confused, and disoriented, and confused, about what it’s about

Other things I like… I like the visuals. The animations and backgrounds and visual effects and the CG are all pretty fire. Suzume is generally a really beautiful film! We all knew this, but, really, it's really good. I like the chair thing. I like the way that the chair is animated. Apparently the animation of the chair was inspired by Luxo Jr., y’know, the Pixar short that became the origin of the Pixar lamp, and… yeah, I can see it. It definitely does have that old Pixar vibe of “inanimate object moving like a very real human inanimate object” that that has. I just like the way the legs move, and the way it emotes so convincingly with these subtle but credible motions.

There’s one scene involving a roller coaster that- that scene is incredible, that’s definitely one of the most visually novel sequences in all of Shinkai’s films that we’ve seen. I like the character design of the guy, Souta, also? When he’s not a chair, I mean. I dunno. The last two guy characters in the last Shinkai films looked like generic anime boys, but this guy looks like the kind of guy who I can believe a woman would find attractive. I like the look of his hair, I like how grizzled he is, I like his long gray coat, I like that you can look at this tired hunk of a man and immediately see that he’s been places and that he’s carrying some shit with him. Bonus points for that he looks like one of the Monogatari exorcists.

As for Suzume! Well, her design is maybe a bit generic, but… she’s a girl. It’s not like our standards are too high for girls. She’s supposed to be an ordinary girl, and, y’know, in this movie contrasting with this dude and then this chair, that works out well. And also, I appreciate that she rotates her outfits throughout the movie. My headmates and I love to see a woman change her clothes, not necessarily directly. I’m just saying, that denim jacket thing she had going on in Kobe, and when she lost her shoes in Tokyo and then borrowed Souta’s boots? Specifically borrowing the boots, because, the only pair of shoes that we own looks like this:

It’s a small thing, but like, Shinkai couldn’t make Suzume gay. Widespread trans representation in anime is a bit far off. I might well be eating off the floor conjuring table scraps pointing at a woman in a man’s shoes and saying “oi, isn’t it gender?” But like, 1, it’s a woman wearing a man’s shoes, and 2, yes, it is gender. And we like the gender. You cannot stop us! We did get to see the movie a second time with a friend, (thank you for seeing the movie with us, and reviewing our script!) and she insisted that the boots are femme coded, and, we disagree, unfortunately. I’m sorry, we cannot see these boots as anything but gender.

However! It is Shinkai’s fault that Onimai exists. That scene in Onimai is definitely influenced by that scene in Your Name. We know this because Nekotofu said so in interviews. Onimai is very good and based and funny, and this is a fact upon which I, and all of my headmates, equally quite agree. It’s nice to agree on something with all of yourself. SPEAKING, of the opening scene in Your Name:

Shinkai did not sexualize Suzume. So, if you hated that scene of Your Name, there’s none of that! There’s no chair peeping on Suzume or anything like that. So, if that knowledge helps you somehow, now you know.

Long story short. Should you watch Suzume. Well, yes obviously. By the time this video comes out, or, by the time you're seeing it, its theatrical run might be over, but like, if it’s not, then, yes, I recommend going and seeing it, like, today. And if it is, then remember to see it whenever it’s on blu-ray or streaming services or your local cat-themed anime distributor. Shinkai made a normal movie. I hope he makes an abnormally good movie next time. I believe in this man. Again. Somewhat. It’s not like it really matters what I say or think, but I do also hope that his next movie is just gay. I won’t matter, to me, or, to us, if his next movie is just a carbon copy of Suzume, but gay. I mean, he got away with making a heterosexual Your Name once after making the heterosexual Your Name. There is nothing stopping him. Except for the pigheaded businessmen who he may have to argue with.

Anyways, that’s that, I guess I’m going to talk more specifically about the plot now, so, if you didn’t see the movie, then, leave, now, if you care. If you did see the movie, or do not plan to see the movie, then, uh, don’t leave. Please. I’m going to put the Patreon credits here. It is not the end of the video. Please do not leave.

Intermission for extra thoughts and Patreon credits!

Hello everyone. This is Audrey, of the joystick system. The name of the brain that I’m the lead woman of. We’re still a plural system, as I’ve not forgotten, thanks to Luci and all my headmates.

As I already think I said, we saw Suzume a second time with a friend. As of this speaking, it continues to play in movie theaters, at least where we are, although it’s not showing nearly as often and probably not in as many places. Nonetheless, if it’s still playing in your area, I obviously very much recommend it. If you have the time and money to see it a second time after seeing it the first time, I think you should see it a second time. Because it’s good!

One thing I’d really like to change about this video, overall, is the tone of it. I think it came off way too much as “oh yeah, Suzume’s actually pretty good”, because I walked in with muted expectations, and then walked out feeling like it was pretty good but also kind of waiting for it to hit me that it’s actually bad… And, no, no, it’s an absolutely fantastic film and I imagine is probably going to line up with our top 5 movies of the year. Although, it’s not like we watch a lot of movies, so it probably won’t have too stiff of a competition. A different friend of ours saw it, and they absolutely loved it and had a lot of really good things to say that just made us like it more- so, yeah, no, Suzume is fantastic. Please watch Suzume. If you can.

I think I also should say, I disagree pretty strongly with the assertion that Suzume is “the same film” as Your Name and Weathering With You. As I’ve already said, the structure is much more cohesive in how it introduces the plot without the plot becoming the plot twist of the plot, and also there’s just a lot of improvements on writing and characterization and storytelling and the film is generally much more tonally consistent than either Your Name or Weathering With You. Sure, it’s a similar overall plot to both of those films, but I think there’s just as much merit in iterating on old ideas as there is in introducing new ones, and Suzume does a healthy amount of both. Maybe it’s a remake of the same movie, but if that’s so, Suzume is definitely the best version of that movie, and I think the growth Shinkai went through as a director and writer to get there is crystal clear.

And as I hope I’m about to make clear, the thematic weight of the film is much stronger as well. The decreased focus on the romance subplot helped a whole lot in that regard, I think, to bring the themes into greater focus, and like, gosh, is the film REALLY THEMATICALLY GOOD on top of being so well structured and written and visually spectacular. I walked into Suzume expecting it to be bad, I spent like two weeks while writing the script and making the video trying to think of flaws in this movie, and I can really only think of like two, which are one, that it’s not gay, and two, that some minor plot details are maybe a small bit inscrutable.

But neither of those things actively bring the film down! It’s just great! And, if we had the time to watch the film a third time and then do a complete rewrite of the script, I’d probably change the tone I took with it, but y’know what, I gotta say a thing, I’ve left people waiting long enough, this movie won’t be in theaters forever, so, it’s good enough, and good enough is perfectly good enough.

Also. The music was really good. It was a lot less intrusive than in Your Name and Weathering With You. Those two films really love going all ham on their mid-movie insert song sequences? In Suzume, the music is, the musical score, which is really really good and is used really extremely effectively in, specifically the chair chase scene, and the amusement park scene, and the opening of the film, and the big Tokyo scene, and really the whole film. It was just really very good.

And, other than that, I think I mentioned everything I wanted to mention in the script, so, uh yeah, that's that!

So, before we get back to the video, channel housekeeping. I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep doing videos, at least not regularly, as things are going. If you’re not already aware of the disaster life we lead, we’ve been aimlessly floating around quasi-homeless and unemployed, for about our entire adult life, and spent around three years crashing at a friend’s place, for longer than we should’ve been because of executive dysfunction, burnout, and general mental illness. And also money.

Most of the stuff we’ve been making our videos with, including our desktop PC, was stuff we got before we were quasi-disowned by our parents, almost, uh, six (note: four or five) years ago? and the rest of it is stuff we have, very not hyperbolically, emptied our bank account for because we kinda needed it. So, if that stuff breaks, and it’s going to eventually, we’ll be on even more hiatus until further notice. Obviously this is pretty untenable, so, we’re going to have to try to get a job, and I don’t see great odds of that working out for our transgender neurodivergent failwomanchild self, and it’s obviously going to mean we have less time to make videos and write things. Naturally the stress of our unstable situation has already been doing that job, but. Y’know.

So, if you want to help even our odds: Ko-fi or Patreon. That is currently our only steady source of income, and even a little bit extra would make a pretty big difference for us day-to-day. You can send us monthly donations through either, although, they take a smaller cut on Ko-fi, so, there’s that. Ko-fi is also the place for giving us money one time as opposed to regularly.

As for what you get out of this, well, besides the obvious your name here and access to our discord, you will earn our gratitude and also we will feel indebted to you, which will lead us to try our best to keep making things. And also if you ever encounter us in person, we’ll give you a hug, if you want one, as long as you’re not, like, creepy about it.

Is that everything? Um. Yeah. That is everything. Here's all the names of all the important people who...

Thanks to our generous Patreon backers:

Ada. Just Ada • Andrew P • Anime Omelette • ASabitsukiFlow • Brea • ColorfulCast • dameDiadora • deeso • Dorian Newlin • Duskpixie • Elvenoob • Emma • Femboy Bebop • Gwen Starlight • hikari no yume • Katherine Ullman • Kaylee Smerbeck • Korin • L Tantivy • Lilly • M • Mira Yeuden • Nichtschwert • Nik Gothic • Pigeon • R2Walker • RukaCollie • Sally • Saoirse Russell • Scimitar • SimplyAero • SleepySlug • Spiderrebelnews • Thijs • Trucy • Vile Lasagna

And, that’s that. Thanks to all of you, named onscreen and vocally, and also those of you not named but who’ve been watching, or encouraging us personally, for your support. Now, back to the normal part of the video. Spoilers for Suzume from here on, obviously.

Intermission over!!!

Okay, so, spoilers.

Plot of this movie! I’m just gonna steal bits of the Wikipedia summary, because I don’t want to write a plot summary myself and get waylaid.

Suzume Iwato is a 17-year-old high school girl who lives with her maternal aunt in Kyushu. One night, she dreams of searching for her mother (who, it's inferred later, died in a tsunami) as a child in a ruined neighborhood. The next morning, while headed for school, Suzume encounters a young man searching for abandoned areas with doors. He then is cursed to turn into a chair by a kitty cat who desires love and she runs away from home with him, and he explains that these doors in all these abandoned places are doors to an alternate dimension that occasionally let out supernatural beings called worms that do earthquakes, and they need to do the right rituals to close the door properly. So their journey across Japan to prevent the earthquakes and also get Souta back out of being a chair, thusly begins.

First of all, I think that Shinkai did an excellent job conveying the pain of losing one’s mother. I say this, because, uh, we have also lost our mother, and grieved her loss. She’s not dead, in case you’re wondering, she’s just a worthless piece of human garbage. So, I guess it’s a little perverse to compare our being estranged from our shitty nuclear family as a result of the events of our entire life up until we were twenty to Suzume losing her single mom in a natural disaster when she was four, but I can’t pretend that the former experience did not lend itself to us empathizing with her, in general. Like, we did definitely cry. That’s a thing that we did.

I also like how cleanly the movie conveys this information within a few minutes. Like, you get the opening sequence of the small Suzume searching for her mother in the Ever After, and then she wakes up a seventeen year old, and you hear her address the woman who is her guardian by that woman’s first name, and it immediately clicks, "ohhhh… orphan, got it, got it, got it," and yeah. In contrast to the previous two films where Shinkai took half the damn movie establishing what these characters’ lives and their relationships with their friends and relatives were like, this kind of storytelling efficiency (which, is present throughout the film, in establishing Souta's relationships as well) is impressive.

And like I said, I like the immediacy with which the plot begins, with Suzume meeting Souta, being asked about the ruins, and then going to check them out herself. I like that there's not a whole album of insert songs in this movie, no fancy opening cinematic, no big deal montage, just a smash cut to the opening title card while Souta and Suzume are trying to close the door in the old bathhouse. It's clean. It's real good.

So, then Suzume tries to patch Souta up when he gets injured, and then he gets cursed by this cat to become a chair, and then the movie gets further good! Suzume runs away from home to help Chair Souta capture this important cat that's supposed to be keeping the earthquakes from happening. And this greatly aggrieves her aunt Tamaki, who's just been trying her best her whole life and everything and I will say, um-

I'm going to get to that!

So, one thing I have to say specifically- I had not read any details about Suzume's plot or interviews from Shinkai before seeing it, and I kind of got the whole deal immediately with everywhere that an earthquake comes out of being an abandoned place of gathering. A closed bathhouse, school, amusement park. This all feels very harrowing to see onscreen- as an American! even though it's clearly intended as commentary on Japan's population decline, because, uh, have you heard of dead malls

If they ever do an American live action version of Suzume, it'll be about them visiting abandoned shopping malls, probably. please do not do that

But yeah, like, we live in Portland, Oregon, and compared to having grown up in pre-covid Philadelphia most of our life, post-covid Portland feels like a ghost town. Like, it's not actually, there's obviously still people who live here, and I don't mean that derogatorily because we love Portland and we'd like to keep living here, if possible, not the least because we get easy access to HRT. But like, there's a lot of closed and abandoned places in Portland, so many empty areas and business that have been boarded up and closed to the point that at times, wandering through downtown Portland almost feels like living in an open world video game where most of the buildings don't have designed interiors.

Places that all clearly closed within the last three or four years, with their signage up and everything. Places that are left in stasis to lie disused or else be reclaimed by the homeless until the homeless get chased out by the cops. It's all just really… eughf. It makes us sad to see this place, this whole country really, be stuck in this kind of disgusting degradation while our government fails to provide for us, let alone adapt to the challenges ahead of us, just leaves all these places where people lived, where people are living, now, to stagnate and stand like zombies of a past we can't go back to

There’s a scene in Heathers, one of our favorite movies of all time, where the main antagonist J.D. has a whole emotional reflection on how the stability of this franchised commercial convenience store enterprise has kept him feeling like there’s continuity in his life, and like, yeah, that’s kind of a feeling.

[Video ID: J.D. (played by Christian Slater), a black haired edgy looking teenage boy of about 16-17 wearing a long black jacket, paces about the convenience store "Snappy Snack Shack", speaking in an affected hard to place accent, to Veronica Sawyer (played by Winona Ryder), a brown-haired teenage girl of around the same age, who is wearing a grey dress that exposes her shoulders accompanied by a blue flower brooch on her chest, and black overalls)]

Veronica: I see you know your convenience speak pretty well.

J.D.: Yeah, well, uh, I've been moved around all my life. Dallas. Baton Rouge, Vegas... Sherwood, Ohio. There's always been a Snappy Snack Shack. Any town, any time, pop a ham and cheese in the microwave and feast on a Turbo Dog. Keeps me sane.

Veronica: Really?

Like, it’s eugh, because, obviously as an anticapitalist, we kinda dislike these sorts of places, the shopping centers, the strip malls, the gas stations, we're against all of this bullshit on principle these places are all kind of intensely hostile to… life, in general.

But also, these places are a part of the world we live in, and they are stable! Relatively. They are kind of the only way we've known the world to be. And it’s sad to see that stability be ever so more greatly upset by the pandemic and the… everything, with nothing on the horizon to replace it. And if and when we see this kind of stability disappear completely, it’ll be sad, even if it’s replaced by something better. We’ll probably miss something about wandering these gross, heavily commercialized disgustingly homogenized nightmare places that’ve been cannibalizing our communities this whole time. Yeah, we hate it, but... it’s where we live, and we’re not immune to nostalgia.

Nostalgia is just a nicer word for grief

And this same very such eughf feeling is very much echoed in Suzume. There’s this deep and palpable grief for these places and the people who used to live here felt in this film, and inherent in expressing that grief is Shinkai’s expression of the, y’know, important stage of grief, i.e., acceptance. Because, to close the doors, Suzume and Souta have to not just, close it, but also think of all the feelings and experiences of the people who used to live in these places, and then… let go.

When the amusement park scene happens, the ferris wheel starts moving, and Suzume is drawn in by the image of the ghosts of the people who once rode it, Souta starts yelling for her to stop, to not go in- not the least because she can’t see what she’s doing and is putting herself in danger, but also because she cannot go back. Those people who used to sit in that ferris wheel, laughing, crying, living, in this place, cannot come back. Suzume can’t go back. This past can’t be gone back to.

Okay, so, one thing I missed when I saw the film the second time. When Suzume was drawn into the Ever After through the ferris wheel door, she was seeing herself of the future in there, and that, was foreshadowing the end of the film. I’m keeping this part anyway because the emotional impact of that scene was still as described even if this plot foreshadowing bit was something I missed the first time seeing the film.

I read a few English language interview articles with Shinkai talking about Suzume right after seeing the film, both because I wanted clarification before I ran my mouth on two things. 1, I wanted clarification on what the cat wanted. I’ll get to him. 2, I wanted to be sure my interpretation of the doors thing was on point, which it was. Shinkai talks in one of these interviews about how when covid was happening and Japan was still trying to have the Olympics happen, it felt really irresponsible and bad, and he did not agree with this. He says, and I quote,

“You were opening this new door and not sure of what’s on the other side without bringing closure or understanding or coming to terms with what’s behind you. I want to say a lot of the Japanese population felt the same way. There was this kind of awkward air about us, and it really wasn’t time to open new doors without first reflecting on what came before us.”

And like, yeah, I agree. I just really, really agree with this. It is indeed what I took away from the film before I read this interview. Suzume spends this entire movie reflecting on the past and trying to grow beyond that and ultimately the one door that she opens, on purpose, is the one that she decides to open intentionally after reflecting on what brought her to this point and deciding what she needs to do and

Eugghhhh

I’m just saying, it worked. It really did work. For us, at least.

Now, to be clear: Japan and the United States are two different countries, and, while there are similarities in how the pandemic left our societies, they're ultimately two different societies, and I don't really know jack shit about Japanese society- I'm just relating, my feelings, of my experience, uh, our experience, as an American, to the feelings that we took away from Suzume.

And... even if I understand this all right. If the people who need to see this sort of message saw it, or, like, took that away, or acted on it when it did... that’d be nice, but ultimately I don’t think that Suzume will move any politician or other person in power making these decisions in Japan, or any country, enough, or in the right ways, to have any impact on policy. But y’know, Shinkai’s just a guy making movies, and I’m just one of the various split personalities of a deranged F-list anime YouTuber, so whatever. Such is life. It’s at least a nice sentiment.

So, the other things, in no particular order. I did cry a bit when Daijin, the cat, got sucked up back into the keystone. He’s hard to like at the start of the film, for, y’know, the reasons why he is, but ultimately when you consider that like… he’s been trapped that way, the same way as Souta spends trapped as a chair, for years? Centuries, for all we goddamn know? Once that clicks, it’s really hard to not empathize with him. And yeah, he might be a god now, I guess, but who knows if he was a person before, or, what even, and just, I think, I think if you spend god knows how long as a sacred relic keeping Japan from being destroyed by earthquakes, you at least, at least, maybe, maybe deserve, if nothing else, a little pet.

[pets microphone]

that was your little pet.

In one of the other interviews Shinkai did, he talked about how Souta becoming a chair, and also a Keystone sealing away the earthquakes, is intended as a metaphor for the experience of pandemic lockdown. It’s not a directly equivalent analogy, but, like, it does make sense! Souta is being forced into a position of being confined, to keep this dangerous and virtually uncontrollable force of nature under control, for the greater good and long-term preservation of society. And when you consider that Daijin was in the same position for gosh knows how the hell long, it makes it a lot easier to empathize with him! He wasn’t being malicious, exactly, not, willfully anyway, he knew that vacating his position was putting everyone else at risk, but, he did it anyway cause he just kinda snapped, like, fuck this, I want to go outside! That does make a lot of sense! Also it sticks out, also, when Suzume screams at Daijin, because that’s, y’know. It’s a whole scene. I feel like I want to say something about this! But I can't really land on anything to say about it? But yeah.

I think the whole thing with Suzume needing to sacrifice Souta midway through the movie is really well done. It’s extremely funny to me that Shinkai apparently thought to stress this point of the movie as how important it is for her to make this difficult choice because of how people criticized Weathering With You for not really being meaningfully critical of the consequence of Hodaka un-sacrificing Hina? And also that Hina never really gets a choice in being un-sacrificed, far as I remember, so... [whispers] that’s a little unintentionally sexist,

but whatever. I’d have to watch the film again, and I don’t feel like doing that right now

Suzume’s aunt, Tamaki. I do like her. She’s a pretty level-headed guardian, as guardians go. I like that when she finds Suzume and Serizawa in the car, and sees that going to this door is important to Suzume, she’s not immediately like, “fuck your feelings, we’re going home”? She’s curious about the child under her care. She’s concerned in a way that she’s willing to not only go all the way to Tokyo, but also to follow Suzume the rest of the way to see what's up because she clearly understands, logically, that even if she doesn’t know what it is that’s compelled Suzume to go this distance, it must be something that she needs to sort the fuck out in order to move on with her life, and that’s kinda good?

Although I should note that while she clearly sees the pragmatic value in not fighting Suzume on this, she’s also pretty reluctant to. She has a line where she’s like to Serizawa while Suzume is asleep, let’s turn the fuck around and go back, she’ll give up. So, y’know, Tamaki’s at least more open-minded than our mom was!

Speaking of that. There’s this one scene in the film, where Tamaki loses her shit at Suzume. Goes on screaming on about how she hates Suzume and wants her life back, and then she runs off to Serizawa being all like “I think I’m losing it,” and it’s a whole thing. On our first viewing, this scene felt a little out of nowhere. It was a whole sudden shock to have this intense scene happen and then also its pivot back into the magical realism aspects of the film with the black cat’s appearance, which confused us a bit cause I don’t think that was really explained at all.

But, watching the film a second time, and seeing the arc of Tamaki’s frustration reaching its peak with the benefit of hindsight, it made more sense that she’d come to a rope’s end and flip out like this. She’s been chasing her niece all across Japan, she’s ridden for several hours in a busted convertible in the rain, she doesn’t even have a proper explanation, her coworker has raised to her that this might be a kidnapping scheme- I get it. It’s a scene that I get.

I still do not understand the role of the large black cat though. Our friend agreed that that part didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So, that didn’t change.

I think the reason why it felt out of nowhere to us the first time is because it was entirely too familiar to our real life experience. In the middle of Tamaki’s rant, Suzume responds by saying, “but you said, ‘you’re my daughter,’” referring to when Tamaki first took her in, and said that. And Tamaki snaps back, “I never said that.” Our mother also did this exact thing, vehemently denying that she said and did things that we definitely remembered her saying and doing. (There's a word for this, it's... it's called gaslighting!) Living with someone who denies you this much, who makes you question your memory and your sanity and your general perception of the world this much, by forcing their own grief onto you like this, is just… really, simply, awful.

Throughout our childhood, we heard our mom say similar shit to us numerous times. That we were a horrible incorrigible child, that she hated us for ruining her family, that she wished she’d aborted us— all those sorts of things. The tone of Tamaki’s unadulterated rage in this dialogue was all too familiar to those memories. So, yeah, on both viewings, we were, very uncomfortable. Even knowing it was coming the second time around, it kinda caused us to actively recoil in our seat, to the point that our friend who we were seeing it with noticed our reaction and held out a stuffed animal she’d brought with her for us to pet.

So, um, yeah, that specific scene may or may not have triggered the PTSD that we may or may not have.

Tamaki does apologize for this later!

And she also, debatably, gets a bit of a pass for this since she’s not Suzume’s mother, and thus cannot reasonably wish that she had aborted Suzume, but can instead wish that she’d not done the unambiguously good deed of keeping Suzume out of the Japanese child welfare system, which, I can’t imagine is a good experience for a child. I don’t imagine any country’s child welfare system under capitalism to be a good experience for a child, but, y’know.  Well, we’re also kind of entirely opposed to the traditional family structure and the basic premise of parents in general, because giving only one or two people total power over a vulnerable young human life is not an ethical tradition to have in any case, but… eugh. That’s something for some other video.

In an interview with Deadline, Shinkai talks about this scene, specifically quoting the “give me back my life” part, and he says that on some level, all parents feel that way to their kids. And that while he acknowledges that it isn’t by any means acceptable to ever say that kind of stuff to a child, it is, y’know, a feeling that is there that he poured into it, and that he wanted to be there, for the parents in the audience who ever felt that way and regretted it. This is how we found out that Makoto Shinkai is apparently not single and does in fact have a child.

He also says, in this other interview with the Verge, that, he wanted the film to provide for an opportunity for people of different generations to emotionally connect with each other. So, in that context, I really understand why this scene is here. It’s serving the purpose of setting up that emotional bridge, that door between Suzume and Tamaki, these characters of two different generations who ultimately come to understand one another, with the hope that audiences in a similar emotional position might come away from the film having felt some sense of healing by way of, y’know, getting that. And also Shinkai talks about how the idealized nuclear family structure is not a thing that’s tenable or possible for a lot of families in Japanese society, and, it’s not very tenable for a lot of people in American society either!

So I recognize the intent of this scene. I think it’s commendable, even. If there is a parent and child out there who saw Suzume together on whom this had the intended impact, I think that that’s wonderful. I sincerely hope that they exist!

Even still… we, were a child, who regularly had this sort of thing said to our face by our real life mother, and tried, in good faith, many times over the years, to repair our increasingly fraught relationship with her, and failed. I am deeply, regrettably cynical about familial relationships because of our traumatic experience with our own family. Our mother is not the sort of person who would come to meaningfully empathize with us through seeing this film.

And we really fucking hate her, so… yeah, this scene is difficult to watch. It’s difficult for us personally to feel any sympathy for Tamaki when she’s saying that kind of stuff to Suzume, and once it was over I could only really kind of feel glad that it was over.

But! It’s not like it’s the film’s fault that our parents were bad. I don’t think our reaction was intended. It just happened! It just happens sometimes that different people other than who the thing was written for react to things differently. That doesn’t make the scene bad, or any less valuable to include. And I do think that Tamaki’s relationship with Suzume is portrayed pretty well and with a surprising degree of nuance! It’s good! Tamaki is a good character and she means well! And I do like what Shinkai said in that Verge interview about wanting to portray other family structures.

However I think that their relationship would work better if she was gay, because honestly, that entire “get out of my life” speech would hit a lot more and probably work a lot better in the context of being directed at a gay teenager rather than an assumed heterosexual one. But, hey, we thought we were heterosexual for most of our life, so, who’s to say much of anything!

Was there anything else I forgot to talk about? Um…

We cried at the end of the film, both times we saw it!

And also, while this film couldn’t have improved our relationship with our mother, it did serve as a very good bonding experience with our friend. I’m really glad we took her to see it. She really liked the scenes where Suzume sits and steps on Souta as a chair, that that was clever, that they took the opportunity to get away with that with him as a chair. And she also agreed that the chair in general was really well portrayed visually. She also cried! at the end. the heterosexual chair film made a lesbian cry. uh, two lesbians, cry. I’m not going to say anything more than that.

Thank you to everyone who watched this entire video. I have an excuse to do a bad job editing it now because there’s not that much footage of Suzume available and it’s all gonna get me copyright striked anyway

To summarize, Suzume Good. Suzume. Watch Suzume. I’ve been Audrey of the joystick system, and I did not hate Suzume. Thank you. Goodnight

[h-i-raeth]

entirely selfishly i'm gonna request The Shadow Of Dust again, love it when things are destined to be long

WIP Wednesday

Murray is a skulking little pest of a man who Hopper didn’t like very much even before his theories started getting uncomfortably close to the girl he and Bernadette have chosen to protect, and the truths they begrudgingly safeguard for Owens and his ilk. His daemon, Cassandra, is not much better.

Hopper tries not to judge people by the shape of their soul too much, but foxes are scavengers. And he’s not sure what you’d call preying on a grieving family for several months other than scavenging.

[stevieschrodinger]

Part One Twenty

Steve gets dressed fast, his brain kind of fixating on the memory of Eddie’s...penis? Wriggling it’s way across his skin. The way the head or...face, had slowly started to open up.

Jesus Christ.

They can just never have sex. Or be naked together. Ever. That’s fine. That’s absolutely the most normal and logical way to play this. Steve stops, one leg in and one leg out of his pants...what if it bites?

“Stee love?” Eddie’s still wrapped in a towel, wearing it kind of toga style, wrapped firmly under his armpits. He already has his hat back on. He’s fidgeting with the edge of the material.

Eddie used to be half fish anyway, so it’s not like Steve was expecting an involved sexual relationship when...when he thought Eddie was going to die. Steve feels like absolute shit for thinking it, but there was never any commitment before, their relationship had a very definite end. Which, yes, okay, had the positive effect of Steve just...completely by passing any kind of sexuality crisis.

Or species crisis.

But now...now he’s in it for the long haul. And Eddie may want intimacy. Hell, Steve would quite like some intimacy. When Eddie just had a...well, a parting, like a girl, Steve hadn’t given it much thought really, Eddie’s only just freshly legged. Eddie only just now has a real life span. Steve just kind of figured they'd...work something out at some point.

They are probably still going to have to do that.

“Stee love?” Eddie asks again, more quietly this time, uncertain. Steve hates that he’s probably the cause of that.

He still wants the defense of pants though, right now, while he...processes things.

“Right, Yeah,” Steve forces his brain back on line; whatever that was, Eddie was fine with it. And it’s a part of Eddie, clearly...so. Steve needs to just get over this real fast, “what do you want to wear? You can choose.”

“Choose,” Eddie goes to the closet, pulling out some draw string sweat pants and the sweater Joyce made for him.

He takes the towel off, leaving it on the bottom of the bed. The slit is clearly closed; Steve can’t see any evidence of anything. He’s so entranced, staring at the space between Eddie’s legs, that Eddie manages to get a leg in before Steve thinks to intervene, “wait, baby, boxers first.”

Steve gets them, Eddie pulling his leg out, turning the pants inside out in the process. He puts the boxers on backwards, but Steve figures it doesn’t matter since he’s got to sit to pee anyway. Eddie’s clearly confused by one leg being inside out, so Steve helps him fix it.

Watching Eddie put on the sweater is a bit of an experience, it starts off going on over his head sideways, one arm hanging from Eddie’s chest, so Eddie twists and sticks an arm in there, forcing it to straighten before he puts the other one in.

“Uhm,” Steve says, staring at the fully six inches of belly buttonless exposed midriff Eddie’s left with, “maybe we should put a tee shirt on underneath.”

“Underneath,” Eddie cocks his head.

Steve gets him a shirt, helping him back out of the sweater, into the tee shirt, then back into the sweater. The shirt is pastel blue, the sweat pants gray, the sweater red and green. It’s a bit of a look, especially with the bobble hat, but Eddie grins big as Steve finishes dressing himself. Eddie watches closely as Steve puts his socks on, and then goes and gets himself a balled up pair from the drawer.

He sits on the edge of the bed, next to Steve, unballing the socks, one immediately falling to the floor, Eddie clearly not expecting what would happen as he unraveled them. He gets them on okay, apart from one being upside down, so the heel is on the top of his foot. He’s pulled both of them up over the top of the ankle cuffs of his pants.

“My boyfriend is a fashion disaster,” Steve comes to terms with it pretty fast; it’s just Eddie being...Eddie.

“Called boyfriend? Called...fashion disaster?” Eddie sounds the words out carefully.

“Oh boy,” Steve sighs, “here, let me at least fix the socks,” Steve kneels, twisting one sock the right way around and then pulling the cuffs of his pants out so they’re over the top. It reminds him of the ring, kneeling in front of Eddie like this; Steve touches it, where Eddie’s hands rest on his thighs. He might not of exactly intentionally put the ring on that finger in the moment, but now that he realizes what he’s done he definitely likes it. “Boyfriends means I love you, and you love me.”

Eddie nods.

“It’s not the same as friend love...so I love Birdie, but it’s different, to how I love you...I won’t kiss anyone, except you, you understand? I love Birdie, and the kids, and Nancy and John and Joyce and...Hopper, I guess. I love them and I care about them, but…”

“Love Eddidie more good.”

“Yeah, yeah baby.”

Eddie nods, “Eddidie love Stee. Perfect love. Kiss Stee. Not kiss not Stee,” Eddie’s so earnest as he looks down at Steve. His eyes are much better, only vague traces of where they were bloodshot, the lids no longer red or swollen.

Steve snorts a laugh, “so you won’t kiss anyone else,” he says slowly, “you won’t kiss other people.”

“People. Stee. Eddidie. Kids. Hopper. El. Joyce…”

“All,” Steve makes a large encompassing gesture with his hands, “all people.”

“Not kiss all people. Kiss Stee,” Eddie tells him, almost desperate, “love Stee.”

“Love you too baby.”

Eddie’s face crumples for a moment, and for that horrible second Steve thinks Eddie’s going to cry, he certainly looks on the verge of it, big brown eyes liquid, when he says, “Eddidie sorry.”

“Sorry for what baby?” Steve rubs at Eddie’s thigh through the material of his sweat pants, trying to comfort him.

“Eddidie different.”

“I...yeah. Yeah but it’s okay, it’s fine-”

“Not. Stee scared.”

Steve sighs, well fuck, he thinks. “I was just…you are different, okay. But it’s fine, okay, it’s good, I was just...surprised. Okay? Not bad. Not bad I promise.”

“Perfect true? Promise? Eddidie not bad?”

“You’re not bad. I promise okay, it’s fine. It’s fine.”

“Touch more? Kiss?” Eddie asks uncertainly, and for the first time ever, Eddie won’t look at Steve when he speaks. He’s staring down at his own knees instead. It guts Steve a little.

“I...yeah. Yeah...later?”

“Today?” Eddie looks up, so earnest still.

He clearly needs reassurance and Steve feels like an absolute shit for making Eddie feel this way. He really didn’t mean to, his response was pure instinct, he really had no control over it, “maybe today...maybe tomorrow? Soon, okay. I promise soon.”

Eddie nods in agreement, but he looks...wilted.

“Come on, you wanted cobbler? And we can watch ‘Splash’?” Steve knows it’s distraction through bribery, but he just needs a little time to process.

Eddie brightens immediately, nodding, “cobbler many good.”

Tom Hanks is under a table, trying to dry Daryl Hannah’s mermaid tail away with his dress tie. Eddie is fascinated. He’s sitting forward in his seat, watching, enraptured.

The phone rings, but Eddie barely registers it, so Steve leaves him to it.

“Hey kid it’s Hopper, you still want a ride to your appointment tomorrow?”

And actually, Steve had more or less forgotten, “uhm...no, I think I’ll be okay,” Steve’s pretty sure he’s up for driving, he can get a shoe on no issue now as long as he’s careful.

“All right, I’m going to need some I.D. photos of Eddie for his documents, think you can manage that?”

“Yeah, yeah Hop, should be able to do that tomorrow. We need groceries anyway.”

“Right, well don’t forget he can’t wear that hat in the photos.”

Shit, Steve thinks, “might have to wait then, I mean his ears are kind of pointy.”

Hopper hums, “what about a wig? Like a fancy dress one that looks like his hair, just for the photos?”

“That...could work, but where-”

Hopper sighs down the phone, and it sounds like it pains him to admit, “I might have something.”

“Again?” Eddie asks, the second the film finishes, “Madison good.”

“Later baby, Joyce is coming over.”

Eddie immediately perks up, “Christmas food?”

Steve laughs, “no, something else, but are you hungry?” Eddie nods, “okay, I can make us something quick.”

“Here honey, sit down,” Joyce indicates a chair for Eddie, “I’m not sure how well this will curl, but if I just spray it down and twist it up, it might be curly tomorrow.”

Eddie sits, letting Joyce fit the wig on his head. It’s obviously false, and nothing like Eddie’s real hair, but the transformation is still immediate. It makes Eddie look healthier, more like himself. Joyce hums to herself as she brushes it out, Eddie fiddling with the ends.

“And why do you have this?”

“I told you kid, no questions.”

“Oh don’t be such a grouch Hop,” Joyce chastises him, smiling, “we went to a costume party for Halloween, we were Sonny and Cher.”

Steve can’t help the shit eating grin he turns on Hopper, “of course you were,” Hopper just rolls his eyes and mooches a beer out of the fridge.

“Eddie I’m going to cut some off this okay? I’ll try and get it about right for you okay?”

“Okay,” Eddie says, sounding bemused, “thank you Joyce.”

“Such good manners honey, you’re very welcome.”

“Called manners?”

“Oh...well it mean you always remember to say please and thank you.”

“Please and thank you.”

Steve watches them chatting away, vaguely listening to them talk as Joyce asks Eddie which were his favorite parts of Christmas; she seems genuinely thrilled that Eddie is wearing the sweater she made.

Hopper’s leaning against the counter with his beer, “kid we gotta do something about the pool.”

For a moment, the words resurface a truly horrific set of memories that bring Steve up short. Just for a second, he almost can’t breathe, and then it passes, “look Hop, that day, I’m...I shouldn’t have shouted, the way that I did-”

“Kid, I’m old enough to know when I was wrong,” he looks over at where Joyce is snipping bits off Eddie’s ‘hair,’ “and I was wrong.”

Steve looks out the window with Hopper; it’s cold out there, a thin layer of fresh snow decorates the lawn with patchy white splotches. Steve can see what Hopper means though; Steve’s pool chair is nearly black with vines. Hopper moves, clearly intending to head out there; Steve heads into the hall, slipping on his sneakers carefully and grabbing a jacket and some gloves.

He meets Hopper, looking down at the vines and the shitty murky crap in the bottom; Hopper flicks his cigarette end into the muck.

He sighs, “what you got in the shed?”

They had drained the pool as much as they could, but the pump soon started to protest the sludge, so they turned it off and then Steve ran it through with buckets of clean water from the hose. Hopper’s in there, double layers of trash bags taped to his thighs and a bandana mask over his mouth and nose. Joyce and Eddie have a shovel and a fork between them, standing on the pool edge, scraping the vines off the edge and the tiles so they drop into the black muck at the bottom. They’re dead and brittle, snapping and breaking off easily, leaving little puffs of grey dust to float down after the chunks fall.

Steve runs back and forth, sneakers dirty as he goes as far in as he dares, shoveling and moving buckets and then the wheelbarrow to Hopper’s instruction. There’s a clear set of footprints and wheel marks across the lawn and snow, into the trees where Steve’s been dumping all this is in the hopes the melting snow and rain will wash it all away.

They work for a couple of hours before the dark finally drives them back inside, but the pool does look much improved. Steve figures if he can get out there in the day and spend a good few hours on it, he could definitely clear the worst of it. It’s gross, but no where near as deep as Steve feared it would be.

“Once we get near to the end we can put a couple of feet of water in, then just get in and scrub and the pump should do the rest,” Hopper tells him, “you got your appointment tomorrow, but I’ll drop by the day after?”

“Thanks...thanks so much Hopper, I really really appreciate this.”

Hopper shrugs, “I’ll bring Jon, he can help.”

“Thank you Hopper,” Eddie tells him, too.

“Kid, really, it’s fine. No pine cones necessary.”

Part TwentyTwo

[manuushroom]

Stick Season (We'll All Be Here Forever) by Noah Kahan is SO Jopper coded, I'm not even kidding. Maybe it's the Jopper brainrot speaking, but could list all of the songs and explain how it fits either or both of them.

[maxlarens]

hi lilli! i love your fics sm, so could i possibly request oscar + brushing a strand of hair away with maybe best friend reader? tysm queen 🙏

joyce!! thank you!!! sorry it took me more than a month to do this. i sat down today to write ANOTHER george drabble and then decided no. i have to write something for oscar. it has been far too long and i miss him and he deserves it. i did this with roommate!reader which i think fits the same vibe!?

“Hey. How you feeling?”, Oscar asks, his head sticking in through the gap in your doorway, hair lit like a halo.

You groan, turning over in bed so you’re not facing the hallway light streaming into the room. You wrangle a hand out from under your sheets, gesture for him to come inside and then shove your face back into the sweaty pillow.

“Close the door,” you add.

Oscar laughs quietly, “Bad. I take it.”

You make a mocking noise, then pat the empty side of the bed for him to sit on. Hopeful that he'll take you up on your offer, despite your apparent contagion.

“Terrible.”

You feel the bed dip as he shuffles to sit next to you. His knees pressing gently into your back from where he's sitting cross-legged. He makes a halfway sympathetic noise, then you feel his hand on your shoulder. He pats you awkwardly, in that way he is wont to do— you can't tell if he thinks you're going to give him this cold you've got, or if he's just being weird about touching you again.

Which is funny, considering.

Considering the lines you've been crossing recently.

Kissing him on the cheek when he leaves or arrives home, cuddling on the couch all the time, standing hip-to-hip in the kitchen while making dinner. Sleeping in each other's beds. But not last night, not with this flu you've got. Part of you had wanted him here, but you'd still refused when he offered.

You'd hate to get him sick with his race coming up. Or, more likely, you hate to keep living in this delusion that you know isn't real.

Yet, here he is. Checking on you first thing in the morning, crawling into your bed like it's normal. Like he belongs there.

"Poor thing," he says absently, running his fingers down your arm.

You turn to face him, body aching and your head pounding a rhythm into your skull. He looks down at you, lips pursed in a tight frown, hair a mess, t-shirt askew like he'd not even adjusted it before checking in on you. Newsflash: He hadn't.

You feel dizzy, from being ill, from his proximity. You're not sure.

He reaches forward, bringing the blankets up under your chin, then in a rare moment of hesitation he reaches to tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear. It vaguely damp there, a little cold, but your skin burns where he'd brushed the shell of your ear.

"Need anything?", he asks, blinking, face as unreadable as ever.

You shake your head, but think: just you.

just a short one for all the sick girlies out there!

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Steve knows the kids don't mean it when they make him feel stupid. Mostly because they're just as dumb as they are smart. If they were curious enough, they'd stick a fork in an outlet. That's what Steve was for, and he's okay with looking out for them until they realize they can start doing it for themselves. They're learning. . .slowly.

Of course, Eddie doesn't realize this until after Vecna, and he's running around like a chicken with his head cut off and he's trying to stop Max from smothering Mike with a pillow in his sleep. Suddenly, he's a stressed-out dad smoking on the back porch at the homecoming party they've thrown at the Munson's new home. He's watching them run around the backyard, looking tired, and Wayne is laughing at him.

"It's not funny," Eddie muttered. "I love those kids but they're going to make me go gray."

"Or lose your hair," Wayne said in amusement.

"Don't even joke about that," Eddie said.

"Got you something, boy," Wayne said and handed him a small box.

Eddie opened it up to reveal a world's greatest dad mug. He looked up to find Wayne drinking out of a world's greatest grandpa mug.

"Seriously? Did you buy that for yourself?" Eddie asked.

"Yep."

Steve came out on the porch, drinking out of a world's greatest mom mug.

"Not you too," Eddie said.

"I think it's funny," Joyce said from beside Hopper.

"Even if it's about one of your kids?" Eddie asked, and she just grinned.

"You know, I think Will and El are the only ones we don't have to worry about," Steve grinned, sitting next to Eddie. "They're angels."

"That's true. . .wait, what's Max doing to Mike?" Eddie asked.

"Well, it looks like Mike has fallen asleep in the grass, and Max is. . .Max is giving Mike a free haircut," Steve said as he sipped his coffee.

"Yeah, I figured that was coming when Mike said skateboarding is stupid," Hopper said.

"You knew Max would cut his hair?" Eddie asked.

"You gave her the scissors, didn't you?" Steve asked.

Hopper stared off in the distance as he sipped his own cup of coffee. Joyce looked at her husband in horror.

"Hop!"

"Should we stop him?" Eddie asked.

"Nah," Steve said.

"What did he say to you?" Eddie asked.

"Well, Dustin joked about us acting like a married couple, and Mike said that I would never marry you in a million years," Steve scoffed and looked at Eddie seriously. "I would marry you in a heartbeat, baby."

Mike yawned and stretched, his brows furrowing.

"Does anyone else feel a breeze?" Mike asked.

"He's looking this way," Eddie said with a grin. "May I kiss you in front of everyone?"

"Absolutely," Steve said with a grin.

Eddie leaned forward and captured Steve’s lips with his.

"Finally," Robin said, coming out of the house.

She was sipping on a mug filled with tea. On the mug, it said: world's worst godmother. Dustin came out a moment later wearing a hat that said: world's loudest child. Eddie glanced at Wayne with an amused look.

"You really went all out, huh?" Eddie asked.

"We had plenty of hush money," Wayne shrugged.

As Max wondered inside, she handed Dustin a pair of scissors.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" He asked.

"Oh my God! My hair!" Mike shrieked. "Henderson! You're dead!"

"It wasn't me, I swear!" Dustin exclaimed and ran off when Mike started chasing him.

"Dustin! You butthead!" Eddie exclaimed. "No running with scissors!"