#logically there's probably time between those points we're not seeing

[oh-meow-swirls]

y'know if you only count required time progression then all of the games take place in like a week or two- like. 2's the one i know best so using that as an example: chapter 1 is one day, chapter 2 is two days, chapter 3 is two days, chapter 4 is two days, chapter 5 and 6 are one day, chapter 7 is one day, and chapter 8, 9 and 10 are all one day. that's ten days-

[beautifulhigh]

Hi hi!! It's unfair of me to ask you to actually write the full essay on the rwrb red room kiss scene, but I saw your tags and am very interested in at least what the main thesis would be, if you feel like sharing!! No worries if not 😊 Have a good night/day/whatever time it is where you are!

The last few weeks have been, well. They've Been™ and I'm going to use this wonderful ask to dust off my overthinking tag and write a meta post on this movie, these boys, and then hope more than three people care what I have to say.

The Red Room kiss scene is Iconic™ and Important™ and in this essay I (really) will discuss agency, framing, and why it always had to be Alex to be the one to make the move.

While book!Alex takes book!Henry to the Red Room, here he's waiting. Bundle of nervous energy. He doesn't know what to do with himself, how to hold himself, how to present himself when Henry turns up. He's backlit in this (which is a theatre technique, I see you Matthew) but it also adds to the drama and tension of the scene.

The (in)famous painting of Hamilton, about to bear witness to things.

We jump cut between Alex trying to find... something. Here he is realising his shirt has come slightly undone and he wants to try and be somewhat presentable. At least for the moment. But it speaks to Alex's physicality in this scene because he is shifting and moving so much that his clothing is shifting. There's also an interpretation that this suit represents the formality of the situation - the Prime Minister's dinner, at which he (the First Son) and the boy he wants to kiss (the actual Prinec) are supposed to be front and centre and the picture of formality.

He's coming undone in this moment because he's the First Son and he's waiting for the Prince, but he's also Alex and he's waiting for Henry.

Ah, yes. The casual lean against the wall. Fancy seeing you here, your Royal Highness, what do you think of the menu? But there's grounding here too. When you're spiralling focusing on a physical point of contact between you and and something can help ground you.

It's also a defensive stance in a way. You shall not pass, I'm not moving. Alex is claiming space and territory and he's controlling it.

"How dare you fucking kiss me, run away, ghost me, then walk into the White House like nothing changed." This is closed off, defensive, protective - probably why it's the quickest of the poses to be dismissed. He's got his back against the wall like he's scared or ready to come out fighting. And, in a way, both of those are true.

Book!Alex is mid-crisis on his bisexuality and while he logically knows he is very much into Henry, he's not gotten to the point of turning theory into reality.

Movie!Alex is more chill about being into guys, but this attraction to Henry is confusing him. He hates the guy. He wants to punch him in the mouth. With his mouth.

(What? That's literally book canon: and if he weren’t already hell-bent on destroying Henry’s infuriating idiot face with his mouth right now, he would consider doing it with his fist.)

Casual lean against the table, less staged and jarring than the extended arm against the wall.

But then Henry walks in and Alex stands to attention and he is... rapt. He is calm and composed and he is focused. We're back to the back-lit position which helps frame him with a near-halo effect.

And you can see that he is relaxed. There's a slight drop in the jaw, his shoulders are sloped and rounded. Because none on what he was trying to convey before matters. Henry is here.

"Look" he starts with - he's expecting a fight. He's expecting Alex to go off on one for the kiss, for the liberty taken. Even if Alex is willing to forget that it ever happened, take Henry's secret to the grave, Henry gets one thing right in this.

"my behaviour was appalling"

Because it was. Look, Hen, I love you and I'm with Alex in the feeling that I will go to war for you to see you happy and safe. But you did kinda kiss him without consent (harsh reading) and you did ghost him without apology (soft reading) and for a boy raised in the Royal Household that... well... it's pretty much top items on the Very Bad Behaviour list. He did not act with decorum or dignity, he did not act in the way that his status and position demands.

(That's OK, Hen. Because the boy under the linden tree wasn't the Prince. It's OK to not be him, and Alex is going to spend the rest of his life loudly loving the man, not the prince.)

"Shut up, stop talking." // “Shut up, shut all the way up, oh my God,” Alex hisses

Because even though both versions of Alex said he wanted to talk to Henry, in the moment that's the last thing he wants to do. And actions speak louder than words, right?

Why it had to be Alex

Henry needed to make the first move, that New Year's kiss, because there needed to be something to make Alex realise that this thing he's feeling is very much reciprocated, and that Henry wants it too. If Alex had kissed Henry for the first time on New Year's Eve/Day then it would have been too much of a leap. Alex, at whatever stage of his bisexual journey, has no clear idea of Henry's orientation at that party. It's only with retrospective viewing that he realises that Henry was low-key flirting, and that the sharing of these deeply personal moments wasn't just a "two bros in a hot tub" thing.

So Henry had to kiss Alex first but then he had to run because there was no way that the mostly-closeted, private Prince could accept that a) he fucking kissed a boy, b) said boy is the one he's been dreaming of since Rio/Melbourne, and c) the boy kinda?? kissed him back?? Henry will have been having a low-grade anxiety attack all through January (and trying to reclaim some control with the date he went on in the book).

In this moment, Alex knows all the pieces. He's played this logic game to its conclusion and he knows all the facts. 1) Henry is gay. 2) Henry is into him. 3) He's into Henry. That last fact is something Henry isn't fully aware of (or at least can't bring himself to believe it to be true) and so it has to be Alex.

He doesn't want Henry to say something that would get in the way of this, doesn't want to hear any kind of pre-prepared speech of "yeah, we're better off as friends" that always happens when the couple get too close to getting together too early in the run time. Alex is full on shutting that down, shutting Henry up, and he gives as good as he got.

"Wait a minute" // Henry’s too shocked to respond, mouth falling open slackly in a way that’s more surprise than invitation, and for a horrified moment Alex thinks he calculated all wrong, but then Henry’s kissing him back, and it’s everything.

And this time it's both of them. Framed between Hamilton and the books. The American political trailblazer and the literary. In the space between? There's our boys.

Alex's hand is on the wall again and he's controlling the space but Henry is very much in it. He's protective but in a different way.

In one frantic motion, Alex knocks the candelabra off the table next to them and pushes Henry onto it so he’s sitting with his back against—Alex looks up and almost breaks into deranged laughter—a portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Henry’s legs fall open readily and Alex crowds up between them, wrenching Henry’s head back into another searing kiss. They’re really moving now, wrecking each other’s suits, Henry’s lip caught between Alex’s teeth, the portrait’s frame rattling against the wall when Henry’s head drops back and bangs into it. Alex is at his throat, and he’s somewhere between angry and giddy, caught up in the space between years of sworn hate and something else he’s begun to suspect has always been there. It’s white-hot, and he feels crazy with it, lit up from the inside. Henry gives as good as he gets, hooking one knee around the back of Alex’s thigh for leverage, delicate royal sensibilities nowhere in the cut of his teeth. Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn’t what he thought, but it’s something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants. He drops a hand onto Henry’s thigh, feeling the electrical pulse there, the smooth fabric over hard muscle. He pushes up, up, and Henry’s hand slams down over his, digging his nails in.

The sensibility of the suits is on its way out, they're not the First Son and the Prince. And Alex is taking the lead.

Agency

Henry is somewhat passive in this - although he is fully engaged - but it's Alex who set this in motion. Pun intended. Alex who pushed him against the wall. Alex who pushed him up onto the table and hiked his leg up around his hip, Alex who is driving in. Because Alex needs Henry to know that third fact. The one he's worked out, the one that Henry is just catching up with. This isn't payback, it's not some prank. Alex Wants™.

There's a scene I'm writing in my current FirstPrince WiP in which Alex and Henry have a charged moment. And Henry wants to act on it but those princely sensibilities get in the way and he can't let himself be led into doing something that could be used against him. If Henry made all the moves then the accusation of him taking advantage, of the inherant imbalance that comes with status and titles and positions of power. So in the scene, and here, Alex takes the lead. There's no way anyone could accuse Henry of forcing Alex into doing this.

(Good luck getting Alex to do ANYTHING he doesn't want to.)

So Alex gives and Henry takes and he gets the memo very quickly.

Fact number three. Alex wants this too.

Then Movie!Amy walks in on them (which IMO is way funnier than Book!Amy hissing through a crack in the door) and these idiots try to act like they weren't redefining International Relations a second ago. Alex is by the painting, Henry is by the books. They've gone back to their sides and they're playing at being interested in what they find there. But they're not, it's all for show, someone who gives a passing glance at this point sees this part of them, this side of them The First Son and the Prince: the politician and the literary.

They're both backlit, they're in line even if it doesn't look like it, Alex is no longer on Henry's right, and they're both trying to act like the people that others could see them as.

But we - and they - know better. 1) Henry is gay. 2) Henry is into Alex. 3) Alex is into Henry.

4) Everyone is on the same page now.

(Also I know Casey talked about seeing the Red Room on a White House tour and so that's why they included a scene in that room in their book, but I cannot ignore the fact that red = love and passion and danger and fire [the counter to the water motif] and it's a warm colour designed to excite.)

[emelinstriker]

ESAU Master System Explained

To keep it short/simple: Everyone who wants to be a Reader, is a Reader. I myself am a Reader of fiction, which is why I use my persona to fill in the Reader's space in any non-interactive/fullbody drawing I do for ESAU. Which is also why Macaque referred to their Master being currently female in one of the first ESAU asks- Because in that moment, in my drawings, I'm technically seen as their Master. But most of the time I do change the pronouns to they/them whenever it's them talking about "any" Master.

So when you see the servants swap between their Master using non-binary and female pronouns, this is why. If you see me draw them referring to their Master as a "she", they're referring to basically their current Master in that exact moment. However, literally anyone else could also be placed in that spot. This is just the way I'd interact with the servants myself.

Whenever I refer to a Reader's "reincarnation/life", I usually mean either "the same person, but another life" (aka same looks, just different points in time) OR "different people of the same life/a different life" (aka Person A is the Master in one life, Persona B is the Master in the next).

As in, the Reader can imagine themselves having had multiple past lives, or their "past life" is actually another Reader. We're all Readers, we're all the Reader. That's why I kept saying early on that the Master System is rather philosophical in a sense. Lore-wise within the AU, all Masters, except for the First Master, share the same soul, which the servants recognize and are connected to.

The Reader can imagine themselves if they met their champions as a child or as an adult. However, nothing in ESAU is forced to be romantic or sexual. If you were born as a prince/princess/royalty, that doesn't mean your servants are immediately destined to be romantic or sexual with you, right? That entire portion is up to the Reader to decide and imagine. I do not control what another person thinks of and imagines. If they choose to pick a darker path in what they imagine, that's out of my control. But unless it ends up hurting anyone, or they actively push the topic onto others, I see no issue with however a Reader wants to think up what happens in their life with their servants. All I do is create material for others to play with.

Except for the First Master, any other Master/Reader can be considered either the same person or various people.

But that's up to the person behind the screen, whether they feel more comforted with one idea or another. Because despite all the dark lore and angsty hints, it's still a comfort X Reader AU. If you don't wanna have a certain champion be romantic/sexual towards you, you don't need to imagine them being romantic/sexual towards you. Simple as that. Imagine the boys in the type of relationship with you that you feel most comfortable with.

For example in my case, I'd see all of them as romantic interests except for MK, cuz those who know already know how I see him as a smol chibi yello beaaaan- I mean LOOK AT HIM-

And yet I still made it so he can be seen as romantic/sexual interest for those who do actually see him in a different way. (Not counting the chibi doodles ofc, those are all just him being a bean dhfndshfnds)

(Copy n pasted what I explained before in that rant like 2 weeks ago and tweaked it a bit with bonuses just so it's not just a random quote taken from a previous rant post. For anyone curious about the rant, it's really not hard to find cuz that's the only post I tagged as rant and will probably stay as the only rant post for a looong while. Hopefully a long while. The entire drama logic just hurt my brain, but also gave my friends and I content to laugh and meme over fhgnhfgf)

[torchickentacos]

Drew’s Travel Route (Part 1. Sigh.)

Ok, SO! I said I’d try to figure out the travel routes of the anime rivals, and I’m starting with Drew. First things first, starting with Hoenn, here’s the map- I’ve marked down the probable locations of places that the anime made up where relevant. LONG POST, and I’ve edited the map for clarity’s sake. Also, I am vaguely/loosely taking encounter locations from RSE, you’ll get it later, don’t worry about it for now. 

The beginning of his journey is a logical place to start but also we really don't know. He’s from LaRousse City, which is allegedly off the coast of Lilycove, according to Bulbapedia with no citation. He has three ribbons before meeting May and co., but we have no way of knowing where he got them or when or anything. We’re going to ignore those ribbons for my own sanity and just say ‘somehow he got from LaRousse to Slateport’, because otherwise I’d be factoring Solidad in here and it’s just a whole thing that we’re not worrying about. Fanon tends to agree that this isn’t his first contest circuit, so for all we know he didn’t even start from LaRousse. We just don’t know and we’re not worrying about it, and we're calling Slateport our start point because that's where he debuts. (Personal opinion? He's probably at LEAST been around Eastern Hoenn before, maybe down around the islands (Sootopolis, Mossdeep) at some point and around 121-122-123. We'll just assume he made his way from LaRousse>Lilycove>122>123>128>Mauville>110>Slateport, bringing us to our start point and gathering 3 ribbons along the way, but I'm not mapping that out because I have no real evidence).

So, that out of the way, let’s look at his starting point.

Drew first shows up in AG033 at a beach in Slateport City, where he stays until AG035 Win, Lose, or Drew!. After that, we don’t see him until AG050 Pros and Con Artists, set in Fallarbor Town. Now, Slateport and Fallarbor are far away and have a few different routes. We’re saving the desert route for later (I have my reasons to believe he only went to 111 later on), so north is out. You could also go a bit south to Oldale>Petalburg>Rustboro, OR north and then west through Mauville>Verdanturf>Rustboro. We’re assuming the former, as the latter would mean he visited Verdanturf before and didn’t enter any contests and that just makes less sense to me. Also it doesn’t matter. MAYBE he caught Masquerain as a Surskit in this stretch of traveling but it's inconclusive and largely irrelevant.

So, AG050, Fallarbor. He stays here throughout 051-Come What May!. The next time we see him is in AG061, Disaster of Disguise, set in Verdanturf. He stays here throughout 062 as well. Minor backtracking through 114, 115, and Rustboro, but nothing major.

After this, we see him in AG077, A Fan With A Plan, which takes place in, uh, Rubello Town. 

This is where it gets funky. Rubello Town is somewhere between ‘Littleroot and Fortree’ according to Bulbapedia, which is like saying that New Jersey is somewhere between Maine and Florida. So I took it into my own hands and decided that it’s PROBABLY somewhere around the intersection of Routes 118 and 119, or early 119, headed into Fortree. It’s the only place that makes sense given where May and Co. are in the surrounding episodes. We're really triangulating some shit here. Eventually I should try to figure out where all the fake towns are but that's a project for later. Anyways, Rubello Town, AG077, A Fan With A Plan. That episode deserves its own 'wtf' post tbh. Anyways. We're here.

So, from 118-119ish, Rubello Town, AG077, we then see him again in AG113, Who, What, When, Where, Wynaut (WWWWW). So, there’s a lot going on in this little stretch. It’s a big timegap from AG077-113. First things first, I’m assuming he took a detour through route 120 to catch Absol at this point. Absol debuts all the way in the Kanto Grand Festival, but it makes sense for him to have caught it this early on. So, we’re calling route 120 his next stop, maybe offscreen around AG80ish?

And now, we’re detouring back to Route 111. I agonized over this decision but it feels right to put it here.

You see, at some point Drew needs to have caught a Trapinch. Some of you guys who also trawled the bulbapedia ship pages before they got deleted probably remember that Flygon was specifically caught and trained for the theoretical situation in which he faced against May in the Hoenn Grand Festival. Because, you know, raising a pokemon up to at least level 45 is a thing you do for people you feel normally about. That’s a completely normal investment of time and energy and forethought and care. Anyways, I actually hesitated on assuming that Drew would have seen May as important enough to go out of his way to catch it this early-on, but we are three roses in with blatant flirting in 077, and WWWWW is up next (which people seem to agree is when he's like oh shit, those are emotions that I'm feeling), so it feels like a safe enough bet, and also Drew’s just Kind Of Like That™. Also, there’s no other time later in which it makes sense for him to have time to make the detour while also evolving it before the Grand Festival (and honestly even then we’re pushing it a bit). Any earlier and I doubt he’d have considered her in high enough regard to train an entire pokemon to battle her with (again, very large investment of time and energy to get a Flygon). So, with all that, we’re assuming that he goes back to 111 and catches Trapinch here. 

He also gets a ribbon somewhere in this time gap (his fifth). In the anime, pretty much every town seems like it holds contests. I really don’t know. I’m ASSUMING that on his way to Route 131 (we’ll get there in a second), he picks up a ribbon from some made-up location that we aren't privy to.

Now. Gonna be real. I don’t know where in the actual hell they are in the beginning of WWWWW and his next appearance. Vaguely around Pacifidlog? Two episodes ago they were in Sootopolis, one episode ago they were on some random island, and they’re just in the ocean in the next one so I don’t know. Best I can figure is somewhere around Route 131. Why is Drew out in the middle of route 131? Don’t know. He has all 5 ribbons and isn’t going to Pacifidlog to watch May (something he goes out of his way for later but I digress). I really have no earthly clue why the fresh hell he’s out in 131, but HE IS I GUESS and who am I to question it? Did he just want some ocean time??? I don't know why he's here. Usually him being in out-of-the-way places is because May's there, but no, he's not here for her this time, he doesn't watch the Pacifidlog contest to the best of our knowledge, he's just. HERE. I GUESS.

So. Fine. Whatever. We’re on 131 FOR SOME REASON, he ‘travels’ to Mirage Island if you’d call that travelling, they head back to wherever they were on 131.

It’s more straightforward from here- he heads back to Slateport for the Hoenn Grand Festival, AG121-123. We’re assuming he takes a boat, I’m not sending this dude all the way back through mainland Hoenn. Tbh he has seasick vibes, which several unrelated fics from over the last 15 years seem to agree on for whatever reason, but that’s his problem and not mine. 

SO. FINALLY. END OF HOENN (but not end of AG, there’s that part 2 at some point). We’re all the way back at Slateport- his first and last Hoenn appearance is maybe/probably on the same stretch of beach, intentional or not. And with that, we have his PROBABLE travel route throughout his appearances in the Hoenn section of AG!

Kanto gets its own post because this is over 1k words long and took 2 hours to figure out last night :)))))))

(and @silverncats , here it is!!! I hope this is interesting, and I'm planning on doing more! This was super fun, albeit tedious and full of guesswork)

[fras-redacted-shapes]

Thoughts and ramblings about Zane and Filmmaking before NG+

Scratch is the only one of the Alan/Zane/Scratch trifecta that we know can manifest in the real world while still inhabiting the Dark Place. It already manifested as a real person in the shape of Barbara Jagger to Alan, for example.

Zane collaborating with the Dark Presence is a logical move which I think is what allowed him to change his artistic craft from Poet to Filmmaker.

The changes done to reality by the Dark Presence/Dark Place take time to become real, they have to be gradual. I wonder if being done very slowly would allow them to become "canon".

Let's assume Remedy is not gaslighting us and Zane was initially a Poet.

Zane's craft would've been changed between 1970-2019 (2019 being the latest we can assume given Jesse's interview with a psychiatrist, which can be found in Control and doesn't have a date as far as I remember). The change solidified between 2010 and 2019. 2010 being the first time we see poster for Tom the Poet film (the asset appears in the Remaster but the file first appeared in American Nightmare in 2012 as far as I know).

That's a time-frame of approximately 50 years for such a change to become "canon".

We know events in the Dark Place don't unfold in a linear manner parallel to time in the real world, as evidenced by encounters between Saga and Alan happening out of order.

One could also count the times Alan stepped into his apartment and was photographed by Alice's camera set up. The "haunting" started after his disappearance and by 2017 Alice had already photographs of these encounters. So, as Alan has been traversing the Dark Place, his actions have bled into the real world at different points in time.

Not to mention the unknown amount of loops he's gone through before the current game, and how (if) those loops bled into each other.

I'd guess this would also apply to anyone trapped in the Dark Place. In this case, Tom Zane.

We know the Dark Presence is Scratch when it tries to imitate Alan. But when it tries to imitate Zane it becomes the Grandmaster.

The voice files for the Grandmaster lines during Zane's Film are named ZANE_SCRATCH. No grandmaster or master. Zane-Scratch.

I'd guess collaborating or integrating with Scratch would allow him to place "canonical" changes in the real world. And it could've been done at his will, following his plan, unlike the antagonistic relationship Alan has with Scratch.

And let's be honest, Zane praising Scratch? That's exactly what Scratch is after. Encountering someone who would adulate him sounds like the perfect way to manipulate him.

I think that was a great chance to make a character based off of Dark Presence in a film by Thomas Zane. A character that can be conveniently played by Zane himself.

Why changing from Poet to Filmmaker?

Filmmaking is the art form where those that came prior to it can converge:

Writing/Poetry

Painting

Sculpture

Architecture

Music

Performative Arts (Dance and Theater)

Photography

So, if you're trying to change reality, one form of Art will not be enough. In a film, anyone can play anyone.

The director would have total control over a character. Not only by directing their actions and events unfolding around them. A film Director also has control over the character's face and voice. Re-casting power if you will.

And Zane calls himself an auteur, and here, I think that makes him a control freak. Forget collaborations. It's all about him.

Before he went into the lake, Zane already knew a few musicians, the Anderson brothers. He knew at least one architect - the one that built his manor, and with whom he was probably planning on building a Hotel and Spa on an abandoned bunker.

Given the Dark Place isn't subject to causality and linear time as the real world is, we know the following events happened - but not exactly in this order and maybe one didn't give cause the next event, and we're probably missing so many events and loops that could've happened in between, on top and below, all superimposed:

After being trapped, Zane decided filmmaking would serve his goals, whatever those are.

Alice Wake, a photographer, falls into the lake. We don't know yet how the Dark Presence made use of her craft - given Alice seems to be in control of her craft during the game.

Alan Wake falls into the lake, he meets the character Tom the Poet (light in a diver's suit). The Dark Presence feeds off of him. The Scratch persona takes shape.

Tom the Poet the film is made which mirrors Zane's disappearance. Zane's original craft now a movie title, himself a character. It appears in the real world sometime when it coincided with his existence as a poet. Let's say, before or around 1970? this way the title of the film can be confused with his craft. An understandable mistake.

Alan Wake is credited as the writer that inspired the film Tom the Poet.

Alan Wake sees echoes of a cult committing murders in NY subways. Re-writes scenes to traverse the Dark Place, unaware he's (retroactively) affecting the real world. The characters are echoes of real people (Professor = Tammy, Cultist = Ilmo, NYPD officers = Thorton and Mulligan, etc.) as well as seemingly appearances of real people (Ed and Casey).

Alan meets Zane, and Alan says they don't deserve to get out - assuming we believe Zane's words while he's tied to a chair during their second meeting.

Alan stops writing.

Scratch meets Zane and they decide to collaborate, somehow giving shape to the Grandmaster. Who turns out to be the Cult leader whose followers do a lot of killing.

Scratch writes Return.

Zane, in parallel, films Yötön Yö. This movie appears in the real world sometime before Tom the Poet. At least before 1965 which is the earliest we know Zane was living on Bright Falls. Actors are credited with Finnish names, even if they originally weren't (Alex Casey). This retroactively strengthens his Filmmaker persona. This film features a character named Writer Alan Wake (this is the only named character, everyone else is just a role, like Detective and Janitor). This would be the first appearance of "Alan Wake with Zane's face" in the real world. Veikko Alén appears in the credits as the author that inspired the film.

Nightless Night is the translated name. Alan Wake is credited as the writer that inspired Nightless Night. This would be the earliest Alan Wake is referred to as a writer in the English language.

Alan meets Zane for a "second" time (first ingame meeting), in which Alan has no memory of previous meetings.

Alan finds out Scratch wrote Return and confronts Zane.

Alan shoots Zane.

The "fictional character" Alan embraces the Dark Presence and becomes Scratch after finding out the Author (real Alan in the Writer's Room) was responsible for Alice being haunted.

Author Alan embraces the Dark Presence and is shot by Saga.

-

If collaborating with Zane means he gets total control over a person's identity over in the real world then, it was extremely fucking clever to make himself a character in the first place.

And this makes me wonder. What kind of influence can he exert over paranatural beings?

Alan only ever encounters Zane in his film projector, therefore being an actor under Zane's direction. During that last meeting, Zane tried to re-direct Alan, swap their roles, but Alan resisted and took control over the scene.

As did Saga and Jesse on their respective nightmares.

Yet, Jesse corrects herself at the beginning of AWE. The changes are getting to her.

I don't think that bodes well for Ahti considering he's got dialogue where he feels lost and talks like a regular old human being while in Valhalla Nursing Home.

Now, we have not seen the Olds Gods of Asgard in any of Zane's film, yet we know they've met him and maybe were friends with him.

And it's such an interesting details the Old Gods have been performing in Door's show. And Alan has been, unknowingly, playing along, even if he sometimes seems to go out of script.

A lot of people trying to change, claim or appropriate other people's identities, and the former fighting back.

Scratch is the most straightforward doppelganger. I think he at least deserve some modicum of respect for his honesty, he's very clear about his goal to Alan, unlike every other person.

-

On a more meta and speculative note:

The fun thing is, filmmaking cannot exists by itself. Most other art forms can exists more or less independently from each other. A painting can be viewed without the existence of writing. A theater play doesn't need music or even architecture in its barest form. Dance is tricky in this context and someone smarter than me could make an argument in favor or against it existing without music.

Point being: Filmmaking is in essence, Photography.

It's photography in motion, across of time.

I'm really curious if Remedy is going to make use of that fact in any meaningful manner in the future.

-

Last thing to think about.

Let's forget for a moment that a recording (of either music or film) requires someone to press play to be enjoyed.

All forms of art previously mentioned are to be passively experienced. They exists regardless of the audience. No active input required.

However, Video Games do.

Welcome dear player. You're an essential part of the narrative. This experience cannot exist without you.

-

Which makes me think. We should be very wary of Chester Bless attempts at making a video game about Alan Wake :')

[melonteee]

Oda is really good at foreshadowing because, while him having always had a clear complete backstory for each character from the get go isn't so sure, he clearly has character sheets for each of them that highlight the themes to be explored through them and what logically leads them to become who they are today (finding family in strangers for robin : why not bio fam? -> neglect. why realization at enies lobby and not jaya? -> betrayal in the past, needed proof of truthfulness. why this found fam and not another one? -> criminal lifestyle and previous experience of constant exploitation)

Then when he sets up a scene between characters, he takes all of those sheets into account and specifically choses what would make sense to be "revealed"/said between those characters (and in turn to the audience) at this specific point in time in the plot and in the overall story

Ex: Robin and Law's talk about the Will of D. It makes complete sense for both of them to have this talk in the story between each other specifically. Why didn't Robin ask any other D before Law ? The D clan aren't that plentiful when you think about it to the point Robin met 3 of them in her entire life. She didn't know how important it was back then so she never asked Saul. She probably asked Luffy but Luff-man doesn't care about those matters to the point he only found out he even had a dad at 17yo ("sorry Robin"). In short, Law is perfect for the job. And while his information fits at that point in the plot for Robin to uncover, we as an audience aren't ready for it yet.

Alternatively, when those character themes sometimes coincide between different characters, he simply ties them together to avoid redundancy

Bonney is a funny case to me because she was created in a week like most of the non-Strawhat supernovas but Oda made sure that her and these new characters wouldn't interfere or create plotholes with what he's already had in mind while leaving enough leeway to tie them more into the plot if needed. Bonney has the biggest leeway of any supernova because of her devil fruit powers. The fact it changes her age and we were only ever given an estimation means you could technically have her be born at nearly any point in time as well as be the daughter, mother or grandmother to anyone you wish.

Yet she fits so well as Kuma's daughter for a very simple reason: It makes the scene of Kuma sending Perona to Mihawk's island gain a layer of sense that was kinda missing and easily glossed over on a first read. Other than giving a demonstration of what Kuma's abilities could do pre-Sabaody and emphasize how much bigger of a threat he was compared to Moria even if they shared the same title, we never really got WHY Perona was spared like the strawhats were at Sabaody. There wasn't some grand vision to it, no tie to something he was part of like the Revolutionaries, ... So why ? Especially at that point in time where he was slowly but surely losing himself and any tie left to his humanity

But then Bonney comes in and their backstory is revealed. And that's when you begin to notice. You notice that Perona is a pink haired adult woman with a rather childish personality. Notice that her devil fruit can easily be underestimated and holds a lot of potential. Notice that Kuma mechanically asked her a really strange question which lacked an important key setup for it. Notice that the spot on Mihawk's island where he sent her to was safe from danger. And you realize

Perona might have reminded Kuma of someone very very close to him to the point his mind couldn't even fathom harming a look alike.

And chronologically at the time of this encounter, he's only seen Bonney as an adult once back at the Sorbet Kingdom where he ended up fainting at the sight alone

In a strange turn of events, things just fit and we're all happy for it

I have nothing to say you're just spot on about everything here. I am so desperate to see Oda's notes on when he makes arcs and characters for how he puts everything together. I can only hope he's kept all of them so, when One Piece ends, he can release a book with all his concept sketches and character/story plots to see exactly how he does it. I need to see how the gears turn u know

[shortpplfedup]

Episode 10 has put me squarely in my Jeng feelings in a way I have not obsessed about a character probably since Teh Krittikorn Saetun. After watching him compartmentalize his way into a complete abdication of responsibility this week, and having read literally every piece of stellar meta the fandom has churned out, but especially from folks like @bengiyo and @nakasomethingkun about the corporate setting actually being the point of this story...I'm completely down the rabbithole, no way out guys. I vacillate between my optimistic and pessimistic expectations on how satisfactorily this story will wrap. @lurkingshan and @neuroticbookworm STAY on Tee's ass and I can't quite say they're wrong. But the thing I'm now 100% sure about is that the romance is not the point of this story. The romance is here in service of points Tee wants to make and themes he wants to explore around capitalism and queerness (second time Tee is going hard at this idea, after poking at it in Lovely Writer). Tee is using romance because it's the most effective way to make queerness legible for and saleable to a general audience, WHICH IS IN ITSELF A COMMENTARY ON CAPITALISM AND QUEERNESS BUT I JUST BLEW MY OWN DAMN MIND AND HAVE TO PUT THAT IDEA DOWN FOR NOW.

Jeng, Jeng is the character sitting at the intersection, at the tension point between capitalism and queerness. Jeng, who thanks to @waitmyturtles DRILLING Asian family dynamics into my head over the last few months, I have realised is incredibly unlikely to be able to escape his fate as the heir to Jian Group. Why does Jeng work TWO FULL TIME JOBS? Because he can only have the things he wants if he also accepts the things he never wanted. He can't abandon Jian Group, but he can build next to it an entire other life: Pearl & Oliver, queer speakeasies, doing his little part to minimize food waste and support a marginalized community, and Pat. COMPARTMENTALIZATION. For all Jeng's big talk about work/life integration, he doesn't even consider that he can mesh the things he wants with the things he's obligated to do until Pat points it out to him under that bridge. Shouts to the homie @wen-kexing-apologist for breaking that scene down and making me realise that moment is the closest Jeng got this episode to the shape of the relationship he actually wants with Pat. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I say all that by way of preamble (I'm a long-winded bitch, strap in) on the way to one of my actual points: nobody actually KNOWS Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon. Even the two people closest to him in the story, Jaab and Tae, only know pieces. Pat barely knows him at all, because even though he desperately WANTS Pat to know him, the boss thing was a barrier to that, and now they've speedrun straight into a unholy mess when they should have been truly getting to know each other. You can see how, were it not for Jeng's slow motion rolling breakdown (of which his intense infatuation with Pat is honestly part and parcel) and Pat's role at Jian Group, these two could have spent a year at this pace, fucking and talking and falling in love and it would have been FINE. But the life Jeng never wanted broke containment and rolled over Pat, and now here they are.

@plantsarepeopletoo pointed out how the narrative punishes characters for going too fast or out of order (Jaab and Jen), and rewards those who take their time and stay the course (Chot). We thought Jeng would be the latter. That's the Jeng we're introduced to: calm, sensible, logical, responsible, in control. But that Jeng is a TOTAL SHAM, that Jeng is a façade built to meet the world's expectations of him, a carefully crafted and cultivated image of cisheteropatriarchal corporate masculine perfection. The Jeng who has been panting after Pat for the better part of a year and doing absolutely INSANE shit to get next to him, that's the real Jeng. This episode was Jeng trying to rebuild the wall between his two lives after having it collapse last ep and utterly failing BECAUSE PAT NOW IS PART OF HIS LIFE ON BOTH SIDES OF THAT WALL. He cannot neatly compartmentalize Pat into his Desired Life, because Pat also has to exist in his Expected Life. And Pat doesn't actually know Jeng, because this is all happening too fast and out of order, so he doesn't know that Jeng is in the middle of a full-on existential crisis as his two worlds collide.

Sidenote: Pat accidentally hit on Jeng's compartmentalization tendencies early in the show I realize, when he drunkenly whinged about how he couldn't understand why Jeng felt like two different people, and he didn't know which one was the real one. I think that sort of bullseye targeting at the heart of Jeng is one of a host of reasons Jeng fell so hard and so totally for Pat: he thought Pat understood him on some level. It's why having to come out to Pat, having to explain himself when he thought he didn't have to, knocked him onto the back foot and things haven't REALLY been right with them since.

It's so sad, and SO QUEER that Jeng is living this double life and it's slowly breaking him. He's coming apart at the seams trying to hold it all and not lose any of it. Jeng talked a good game about work/life integration, but the flip side of that is bringing your whole self to work. And he can't do that, he can't even think of doing that, right? But he's gotta do something because now Pat has been dragged into the mess, and worse yet Pat has brought Jeng's Desired Life to the direct and un-ignorable attention of the key figure in Jeng's Expected Life: his father. And while I think Jeng's father is aware of his Desired Life (disapprovingly natch, but silently allowing it as long as Jeng continues to live his Expected Life), I think he's stood ready to stamp it out the minute it becomes a problem. And the problem has arrived. That's why Jeng looks so sick when he realizes that Pat went to his father to resign. The shit has truly hit the fan. Compartmentalization is over.

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 14

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 8k

warnings: fluff, allusions to sex/sexual content, swearing, slight angst (Edward J. Munson continues to be the most dramatic person on the planet) mentions of Barb's death/violence

a.n.: this was a much longer chapter that I had to split up for the sake of my sanity - taglist continues to be broken, sorry chat! if you would like to stay updated you should probably just follow me at this point because we're seriously almost done here

It takes you much longer to make it back to the trailer than it had to leave it behind, simply because Eddie can’t stop himself from pulling you close every couple of steps to kiss you again. Long, sloven presses of lips and swiping tongues begging for passage between your mouths. It’s all teeth and ragged breath and soft touches and the honest-to-God biblical revival of unchecked teenage hormones. 

You have to get back, this he knows very well, but now that he’s got you back, he just can’t stop loving on you. Kissing you has always been too easy - as natural as breathing, and you’re such a receptive lover – always have been, from the very start. 

And it’s not like you’re doing much to stop him, giggling and pushing against his chest without any real intention of separating yourself from him. Breathless insistences of “we really need to get back” that don’t mean anything at all when you’re fisting your hands in his jacket and pulling him right back to you for another round.

Not that Eddie’s complaining. He’s too busy fighting the overwhelming urge to bend you over right here in the underbrush.

The only thing really stopping him from popping the button of your jeans and wrestling you out of them is the nagging threat of his inner voice reminding him what a patently bad idea that is, because “that’s how you get killed in a horror movie”. 

It’s the only reliable basis of logic anymore. As far as Eddie is concerned, over the course of a very short week, his life has inexplicably devolved into the plot of a bad horror movie, which, in this scenario, regrettably makes you the horny couple who gets slaughtered whilst bunnyfucking out in the woods. 

As appealing as that sounds, he’s not about to let that happen.

Because you hate a cliche and you have to get back, for reasons that are extremely hard to rationalize when you’re pressed up against him and making all those pretty little sounds.

Eddie casually catches your southbound hands before they can find their way to his belt buckle and expertly replaces them on his shoulders, tut-tutting the way you whine out your displeasure with the move.   

Bad girl, he thinks, Needy girl. 

It’s the honeymoon phase and then some, a speedrun of that long expanse of ooey—gooey fairytale bliss that sees the both of you unable to keep your hands off of each other. Only this time around it’s not the halls and alcoves of Hawkins High witnessing your very public displays of affection, but the trees and the whirling cosmos and everything beyond that Carl Sagan ever promised – it’s super fucking romantic. 

You spent the duration of the not-so-long walk back making your own, much more tangible promises.

“I love you,” You tell him for what must be the hundredth time, eager to make up for lost time.  

“I know,” Eddie assures you, cradling your face and ducking down for the next in a long line of all the kisses he owes you for every time you say it. “But we gotta go.” he says against your lips, “Harrington’s gonna be pissed.” 

You whine pathetically. It’s a muffled sound that Eddie feels more than he hears. 

Normally that would have been enough to sway him considering you’re usually the one with the functioning brain, and he’s the raging pit of electric hormones,

Still, hearing you all needy like that tends to cause the rational part of Eddie’s brain to shut off. Many occasions of you pawing at him just like that have ended with a thick and wanton utterance of “aw hell” that sees Eddie throwing caution —and very often, your panties— to the wind.

But this is neither the time nor the place (though more the former than the latter, because it would not be the first time you’d gotten your rocks off out in the woods – horny teens don’t tend to make smart decisions about location when the mood strikes them that hard). 

Still, one of you has got to retain some of your faculties, because you really do need to get back, despite the way his lizard brain doth protest. 

Get back? Where? Harrington who? What’s he so goddamn pissed about and who even cares?   

“More,” You plead, and you always get what you want with him.

“Okay,” Eddie says, lips clicking with a lewd, wet smack when he parts with you, “One more for the road.”

He didn’t need to even give you that kind of permission, because you’re already chasing him again the second he parts from you. 

“Okay,” You hum, snaking your arms up around his neck and pressing yourself bodily against him, backing him into the tree he hadn’t realized was behind him until the bark is digging painfully into his spine.

He doesn’t care, not when you’re rubbing up against him like that. 

You’re both so unbearably gross and horror movie logic be damned, Eddie just can’t help himself. 

“Maybe just one more.” He hums, hand snaking unwisely up the back of your shirt to twist at the clasp of your bra. 

“Okay,” You sigh into his mouth.

When you finally make it back to the park, stealing across the grounds hand in hand, all smiles and giggles and clothes pulled out of shape like kids stumbling home well past curfew, Steve is indeed raging.

He’s there to whip the door open and bathe you in the accusing orange glow of incandescent light that has you balking as you come clambering up the steps. His looming, perfectly coiffed figure is almost comedic, backlit in the doorway with his hands on his hips, literally tapping his foot, and he’s quick to lay into you like he thought he was your goddamn father or something – not Eddie’s father, of course, which would have been an arguably terrifying turn of events, and not even much like your father, who Eddie has still never met, and at this point is not entirely sure he ever will. 

He’s not even sure your parents really know he exists outside of general rumor – they certainly don’t know what he does with their daughter out in the woods, considering they barely acknowledge the fact that you exist. 

That’s fine by him, it just means he gets you all to himself. 

Steve grabs you by the elbow and yanks you over the threshold and back into the warm, cozy embrace of home – what good is a house when you’re all the home Eddie needs – already halfway through a lecture about how you’ve been gone “way longer than ten minutes” and demanding to know “what the hell took you so goddamn long” because, in case you haven’t noticed, the fate of the world is oh so casually resting on your collective shoulders. 

Not that any of that currently matters, Eddie isn’t listening. He’s completely blissed out, far too busy watching with wrapt attention as you pull your pretty pink, kiss-bitten lips in past your teeth in a miserable attempt at trying not to smile while Steve goes blue in the face.

It’s so unbearably You, though he thinks perhaps only as a result of him rubbing off on you in the worst way – or in the best way, who can say? – giggling in the middle of a dressing down, really playing into the hand you’ve been dealt. 

Christ, you’re adorable … and you love him. 

You love him you love him you love him – and he loves you, he should tell you - no, he needs to tell you…

It takes every bit of Eddie’s limited capacity for self-control not to seize you and drag you right back to him. He’s not finished loving on you just yet – he quietly hopes that there will never come a time when he’s ever finished. 

He’s never been the type to give a second thought to laying a big sloppy kiss on you in front of whoever the fuck happens to be watching, but he knows how public displays of affection make you uncomfortable and he’s not so love-drunk that he can’t respect your boundaries. 

He cannot, however, stop smiling. He knows he’s got to look a goddamn fool, grinning ear to ear like the fate of the world and all their lives don’t hang in the balance — his face is starting to hurt. 

He hasn’t realized how he’s missed that until now, the cramping of his facial muscles against something he’s powerless to resist. 

There’s an entire conversation going on in front of him without his knowledge – he couldn’t repeat a word anyone has said in the past five minutes if someone put a gun to his head, but he could talk endlessly about all the soft little noises you’d been making only a short while back. 

He could go on about those for days, write tomes of essays and sonnets waxing poetic about them, but the loud shouting voice of Dustin returning to the room from whatever odd corner of the trailer he’d been hiding in cuts the lecture thankfully short. 

“There you are!” He squawks, stomping out from the hall. 

He’s standing there looking suddenly very small dressed in an overlarge grey sweatshirt and the deconstructed pieces of the Gilley suit someone had thought to grab from the War Zone. It is his carefully selected uniform for bat-tle, as he’d put it back in the field – you’d booed and hissed at the audacity of such a terrible pun, much to Henderson’s patent chagrin.   

“Do you have any idea how long you two were gone? We were worried sick!” He squawks.  

“Now, where have I heard that before?” You hum, casting a sly, sidelong glance in Eddie’s direction before squeezing past Dustin to disappear down the hall toward the bathroom so you can wash the woods off of you. 

“You know your shirt’s on inside out,” Dustin calls moodily after you. “And backwards,” 

You ignore him. 

Eddie watches you go and gets a little lost in the familiar swaying of your gait. Suddenly he’s back at school, watching you skip away down the hall toward your next class, the tantalizing promise of later hanging in the air. You glance back at him and smile sweetly, and he’s instantly shot full of holes. 

You love him, you love him, you love him. 

“Eddie!” Dustin grouses, drawing him back to the close quarters and warm, incandescent glow of his living room — and he realizes, once again, he’s missed every word of the boy’s outraged spiel, “Are you even listening to me?”

“Sure am.” Eddie lies.

Dustin narrows his eyes.  

“Then what did I just say?”

He shrugs and shoves past him as he spies the carefully folded pile of items from the jaunt to the army surplus store, though more specifically one decidedly metal bandolier sitting in a burnished brass pile on the dining table. 

It sets Eddie’s magpie brain to fluttering and he’s reaching for it before he’s even realized he’s moved.  

“No idea,” Eddie says good-naturedly, clapping a hand fondly down on the top of Dustin’s head as he passes him by.

He can feel the boy’s eyes on him, turning to follow as he saunters across the room.  

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dustin demands.

“Not a thing, Henderson,” He assures him, electing to snatch the belt up rather than confess the undying overwhelming vice of puppy love he’s gripped in.

He turns the thing over in his hands, eyeing it with great interest - it’s just about the coolest damn thing he’s ever seen.

"You sure about that?"

"Hundred percent," Eddie says, "Everything's just fine."

After that, it’s twenty-five minutes or so of finishing touches before Eddie slinks off to his bedroom.

Everyone has armed themselves in some kind of battle garb, armor picked up from the War Zone for the impending task, but nobody had thought to grab anything for you. It hadn’t even crossed their mind because back then you didn’t need any sort of protection, not while the most you’d been expected to do was stand watch in the living room for any curious onlookers come to peek in on the murder scene at the Munson residence. 

Now, with such a daunting task ahead of you, Eddie knows you’re going to need all the help you can get. So he upends his dresser drawers, looking for something — anything that might put some kind of a barrier between you and the flurry of teeth and claws that await you.

Steve’s already returned the battle vest, decidedly worse for wear but not bad enough to be decommissioned, and Eddie fully intends to swathe you in it. It’s not much, but it’s better than the same torn jeans and old t-shirt you’ve been wearing for the last three days. It’s something, at least, 

His room is dark compared to the rest of the trailer. It hadn’t seemed like a smart thing to go flipping on any more lights, on the off chance that someone noticed and decided to come snooping. He doesn’t mind much, considering his aversion to flipping on the overhead light in the first place – Eddie much prefers the ambiance of the table lamp, and he is well-practiced in navigating the dimly lit space  

The front room is abuzz with noise and ambivalent movement. Voices filter in and out and saturate the room in the warm glow of company, the aural equivalent of the incandescent bulbs burning overhead. 

It reminds Eddie of something he has only felt very few times in his life: what it feels like to belong, to be a part of something, even if that something is nothing more than camaraderie forged in the face of impending doom. Somehow he can’t find it in him to be worried about it, not while he’s among friends. 

The mere thought of the word brings a bitter scoff rising up from the deepest part of his chest, and he has to work very hard to swallow it back down again. 

It’s what gets him more than anything, more than the danger of the Upsidedown or the armed hicks crawling the streets, hungry for his blood – it’s that after everything he’s been through over the past few days, suddenly he’s back home and (relatively) safe, because of his friends.

Not Gareth or Jeff or Adam or even Wayne, but astoundingly thanks to Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, and Dustin (less baffling but still bizarre) —his strange collection of new friends, who put their lives and reputations on the line to find him and bring him back from the precipice, despite barely knowing him.

It’s more than a little jarring, and Eddie isn’t quite sure how he feels about it. 

Whatever the feeling is, it’s largely a positive thing. He’s glad they’re all here – and it goes without saying that he’s glad you’re here. 

He’d say it anyway. 

He’s glad you’re here when you have every reason not to be, but you’d promised that you loved him even when you hated him, which actually might have hurt his feelings if he wasn’t so goddamn relieved to hear it. 

Without you, he’s not sure he would have such a strange new group of friends rallying around him, embracing him. 

And maybe that’s not a fair assumption. Maybe Dustin had more of a hand in facilitating his rescue than he’s accounting for— credit where credit is due and all that — but Eddie will be the first to admit that he’s totally and completely biased. You’re far and beyond his favorite person here, and he’s not shy about admitting that. 

The thing he really hates to admit, however, is that he’s glad you’re coming with them to the other side – which seems stupid. 

He was being smarter when he was angry that you were crazy enough to go volunteering yourself to play the bait, but hadn’t he spent the duration of the last jaunt to the Upsidedown bombarding you with psychic postcards? Wish you were here doesn’t even begin to cut it. 

He almost forgets to care about how aggressively he’d rejected the idea of you putting your life on the line only a few hours ago because when it came down to it, that’s what it took to win back your love.

Not that he ever really lost it in the first place (and not that he actually knew that) but Boy Howdy hadn’t you done your utmost to tow that line and make him work for it?  

If only Eddie had known it would be that easy – it wasn’t easy, it was the worst suffering he’s ever experienced – he wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep you from running headlong into peril.

More than that, if he had any idea of what the two of you were going to get up to on your walk back through the woods, he would have thrown you to the wolves and jumped right in after you. 

Maybe not, but the sentiment feels dramatic and appropriate for the status quo as it currently stands.

Danger, it seems, has become his new middle name. Or maybe it’s yours, considering you’re the one who keeps getting him into these situations … except that’s only true because Eddie initially dragged you into all this, so maybe the name belongs to the both of you. 

Maybe you married into the name and now you’re Mr. and Mrs. Danger. 

It’s a stupid thought, and it makes him laugh.  

Snickering to himself in the dark, Eddie upends the last of his drawers and makes a mental note to tell you that joke after all this —  if either of you survives this, that is. 

It’s a dismal thought that makes quick work of chasing away any sense of the levity he’d felt moments before. 

Once he’s satisfied with the excavation of everything he owns, Eddie lays out a series of choices across the stark bed: the first-generation Hellfire shirt, the black one with the short sleeves and white collar, a grey Hawkin’s Phys. Ed shirt with “Munson” scrawled across the nameplate in obnoxiously large print (his old gym clothes), and a super faded Misfits tee he’s had for years and years. 

None of them are particularly significant, only that they are some of the only clean articles of clothing he could find, and he wants you to have options. 

He wouldn’t presume to make the decision for you, because somehow this feels important, as silly as that seems. You deserve to choose what kind of armor you’re going to wear to herald the doom they bring to Vecna.

Eddie finds you in the kitchen with Steve, running through a series of stretches, learning tips and tricks on how to breathe so as best to oxygenate your muscles, and having the very basics of general athleticism explained to you. 

It’s a lifetime of athletics boiled down to a five-minute lecture – Eddie only catches the tail end of it, but it’s riveting stuff.

“The worst thing you can do when you’re running hard like that for distance is start to hyperventilate – you know, gasping for air,”  Steve tells you, and Eddie half expects you to roll your eyes and make some snappy remark about being molly-coddled like that, but oddly enough all you do is nod.

For once, you’ve got nothing snide to say – remarkably, Steve has your undivided attention, and even he seems a little unsure of what to do with it as he continues.  

“If you start in with that, you won’t be able to catch your breath and you’re gonna pass out.” He says matter-of-factly, “If you pass out, you’re dead, you got that? That’s worse than a worst-case scenario, that’s a game over.”

“Yikes,” Eddie can’t help himself from saying, summarily drawing your attention. 

In the span of a microsecond, you go from serious as a heart attack and nodding like your life depends on it – which it very likely does – to dopey grinning, staring wistfully up at him with honest-to-god heart eyes. 

Eddie wonders if you and Steve can hear his heart beating against his ribcage. 

Just like that, the lesson is over, because now that Eddie is here, Steve is never going to get your attention back. 

“Sorry to butt in,” He says tentatively, curling his hands around your shoulders, “D’you mind if I borrow Barry Allen here for a second?”

Steve levels him with a blank if not highly irritable look as the reference sails clear over his head. 

Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk Not so bad, I guess. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is. Total fucking cheeseball. Has apparently never heard of The Flash. 

You, thankfully, are not so hopelessly ignorant.

“Nerd.” You scoff, shoving Eddie playfully – then you notice the thousand-yard stare gracing Steve’s features, and you’re quick to explain, “Barry Allen is–”

“I don’t care.” He says – it doesn’t feel mean so much as deeply uninterested, “Just try to remember what I told you.”

“Sure. Don’t pass out.” You say with a lopsided shrug.  

“Exactly. And no more sneaking off.” Eddie can’t help but get the sense that the second part is more for him than you, especially with the knowing look Steve gives him. 

He just can’t help but tease him a little.  

“No need,” Eddie says, curling his arms around you and jerking his head back down the hall. “Bedroom’s right back there, Big Boy — care to join us?”

“Oh, gross—”

“For the love of…”  

Steve rolls his eyes and breathes the beginnings of a long-suffering sigh – Eddie is quick to let him off the hook. 

“I’m kidding.” He assures the both of you. 

You shove your way out of his arms and Steve shakes his head, in a clear attempt at trying to mask how visibly relieved he is to hear it.

“Yeah well, who can ever tell with you two,” he says, reaching out to clap Eddie on the shoulder before turning his attention to all the other hundreds of little preparations that still need to be made.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You call indignantly. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve replies, “Your shirt’s on backwards, by the way.” 

After that, it takes no effort at all for Eddie to coax you down the hall. Back in the relative dark of his bedroom, you choose the Hawkins Phys. Ed shirt graffitied with his name, and he can’t help but puff up a little with the warm glow of satisfaction for the choice as he watches you shrug out of your clothes.

Out of one shirt and into another, both of them his – the forest green gym shorts are yours, though, and it’s only pure happenstance that they’d gone unnoticed when he packed you away last fall. Stuffed into the back of the drawer they remained, since who knows when – from one of the hundreds of times you’ve slept over, he’s sure. 

It feels a little bit like fate, if he believed in such a thing. Like they’d sat waiting for you, knowing you’d need them here and now, the matching pair to Eddie’s old gym shirt.

Once the shorts are tied tight and the shirt is over your head, you pull it taught by the hem to regard the chicken scratch scrawling of Munson with what he hopes is satisfaction. 

Good, he thinks. Let the name do some good for once, let it shield you from anything that means you harm. Everything means you harm down there, even the air you breathe, but he can’t think about that right now, lest he succumb to his wits and try once more in vain to talk you out of this.

At least this way he can wrap himself around you, make a shield of his things. 

“How’s that feel?” Eddie asks tentatively, watching you turn to regard yourself in what bit of the mirror you can see around Sweetheart.

You level him with a dour look.

“Like gym class.” You answer, flapping your arms at your sides matter-of-factly, “Why do you still have these?”

Eddie shrugs, pushing up from where he’s been sitting on the edge of the box spring with one leg tucked neatly beneath him. 

“‘Cause I’m full of school spirit, remember?” 

You roll your eyes. 

“Right. How could I forget? You’ve got pep in your step.”

“Go Tigers.” 

Eddie holds his battle vest dutifully in place so you can fit your arms through the holes, then pulls it snugly around you like a worn, patchy, denim hug – you’re swimming in it, and normally it would be incredibly endearing, but his heart is suddenly thumping solidly in his chest, and his insides are churning.

The fear is creeping in again.

“Anyway, have a little respect, will you?” he says, poking at the scrawling of his name across your belly. “This is lucky.”

Your brows marry over your eyes, and it’s almost enough to distract from the gnawing dread settling into his bones.

“How d’you figure?”

“Munsons are resilient.” He explains, “We’re hard to kill,” 

Like some kind of unwanted household pest, skittering around Hawkins and coming back time and time again no matter what this town does to try and eradicate them. 

Like cockroaches, he thinks miserably, but of course, he won’t tell you that. 

“Good for you, I guess,” You say, “But not all of us have the good fortune of being a Munson.”

It’s ever so slightly shocking, hearing you say that. He’s never heard anyone refer to his family name as being one of good fortune, and suddenly he doesn’t know what to do with that endearment.

Nobody wants to be a Munson. He imagines the way his mother must have panicked when she came to realize the terrible mistake she’d made in hitching her wagon to his father, but by then it was too late because he’d already taken root in her – Eddie had always been the ball and chain that stopped his mother from escaping the name, what it did to her…  

No, nobody wants to be a Munson… but maybe it doesn’t have to be like it’s always been. 

Eddie tilts his head left to press his shoulder to his ear as he considers the notion – then raises his hand to make a slow, gentle chopping motion down against your shoulder – one, then the other – summarily knighting you. 

“I dub thee: Honorary Munson.” He teases. 

You bite your tongue against the giggling suddenly bubbling up inside you and roll your eyes. 

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” You say. 

“Oh, so suddenly you’re the expert?”

“It’s just not very official, is all.”  

He stares at you a moment, letting the words sink in and feeling his heart beat heavily against his ribcage. 

Suddenly he can’t stop thinking about where you’d been this time last year, propped up against one another on the sofa in the next room.  

Eddie had been sick as a dog that whole week, certain he was always just moments from death’s eternal embrace, and yet laying there with his head in your lap, watching some forgettable movie of the week, he was happy. Happier than he would have been stuffed into the van for sixteen hours, at least. 

That’s all he ever wanted, a life of quiet intimacy, where everybody was content to mind their own damn business, leave you to your devices. 

Let all his grand plans and schemes fall through, so long as it means he gets to spend the rest of his life doing nothing with you.

Filthy rich or dirt poor, he doesn’t care so long as it's with you. 

That’s all he wants, all he’s ever wanted, and he’s been certain of that since way too early on in your relationship, and it was a problem. 

You weren’t even friends yet the first time he lost himself in a flight of fancy over how the rest of your lives would play out – the milestones you’d hit together. 

Eddie shrugs against the way his heart is in his throat as he makes quick work of removing the ring with the dark stone from his finger. He reaches for your hand and hopes you can’t see the way he’s trembling as he slides it easily back into place over your middle finger – it’s nothing really, you’d already asked him for that ring a year into your relationship and worn it proudly up until last summer. 

All he’s doing is righting a wrong, putting something back where it belongs, but somehow, this time it feels more important than that. This time it feels like a promise. 

“There,” He says gently, feeling unbearably vulnerable as he watches you closely for your reaction, “How’s that for official?” 

You’re beaming as you bring your hand up to look at the ring, admiring the scuffed, dingy stone like it were some kind of glittering diamond he’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on rather than the forgotten heirloom he'd found stashed in a dusty corner of his grandmother’s house a hundred years ago. 

“Cool.” You hum.

“So cool.”  

He reaches up to pull the vest tighter around you again before he’s realized he’s even moved, and then suddenly Eddie’s got his arms around you, hugging you tight against his body — his natural state of being, it seems. 

You respond in turn by burying your face into the crook of his neck and sighing against him as he presses his cheek to your temple. 

For as long a moment as he dares, he just holds you like that while the fear creeps up again. 

Don’t go don’t go please don’t go.

“Can I ask you something?” 

Your response buzzes against his flesh and sends goosebumps crawling across his body.

“Always,” 

Eddie’s hand comes down to trace the length of your arm, a gentle up and down, grazing the pads of his fingers along the soft and tender flesh he knows so well. 

His insides go tight and squirmy, and he feels a potent cocktail of nerves and nostalgic shyness bleed into his bloodstream.

He never actually asked you out the first time around. You sort of just mutually fell into the routine of scrambling to spend every spare second you had with each other, until one day he looked up and your lives were woven together.

It feels stupid to suddenly be shy about it, but he can’t let you cross that gate without putting it out there, even if you say no, even if you laugh in his face.

Eddie clears his throat to try and steady his voice. 

“When all this is over — if we make it out, I mean — can I take you to the movies or something?”

You don’t answer, not right away, but he feels you still against him in a way that makes his nerves scream. After an agonizing moment, your hands snake up to rest on his shoulders and you push against him, though not with enough force to dislodge you from Eddie’s grasp more than a few inches.

He grips you by your elbows and holds you there, reluctant to let you go until it is absolutely necessary as you lean back and stick him to the spot with a wry look — eyes narrowed, lips curled.

He knows you’re about to tease him, considering everything you’ve been through, but those nerves are quickly turning sour in his stomach and Eddie doesn’t think he can stand to hear you say something sarcastic right now, not when he’s teetering so close to the edge. 

Why does it suddenly feel like if he lets you go he’ll lose you all over again? His eyes feel puffy with the notion, and you thankfully pick up on it, like you always do, reaching up to stroke the highest point of his cheek with the backs of your knuckles.

The scratchy fabric of your bandage tickles him and he swallows the ragged breath threatening to burst forth from his lungs. 

Eddie clears his throat again to middling results before he continues.

“I bet that stupid Gremlins ripoff is still playing in the city…” He says thickly, then rolls his eyes and offers a lopsided shrug he hopes appears as casual as he means it to be, “I mean … unless you already saw it or whatever.” 

“Critters.” You posit. 

“Right.”

You shake your head. 

“Haven’t seen it.” 

“Right.” He says again, because it’s all he can do to stop himself from falling to his knees and begging you not to do this. 

He’d do just about anything to make you stay here where it’s safe, even if that means marching himself into town and right into the hands of the Hawkins Police. 

But that’s not gonna stop Vecna, and if they don’t stop him then there’s no point to any of this. 

They need you there on the other side, and it's tearing him to little melancholy pieces.  

Your lips quirk up into a wry if not entirely sympathetic smile.

“Are you asking me out, Munson?” You ask, gently teasing him in a dutiful attempt to try and leaven the mood.

Eddie forces out a thick, wet bark of laughter and tilts his head forward to rest against yours. 

“Nah, no way. ‘Course not.” he sniffs, “What, d’you think I like you or something?”

You hum thoughtfully and twist your head to the side so that his forehead is pressed against your temple and take a long hard look at the ring sitting snugly on your middle finger. It’s the wrong one, but the intention is still there.

Same as before, same as he’d felt way too early on in your relationship, Eddie would marry you tomorrow if you’d have him – make a real Munson out of you and do it better than any of the previous generations before him ever managed to. Break the cycle and finally do things right.  

Neither of you may be around to indulge in that whimsy tomorrow.

You wrinkle your nose. 

“Yeah, you know, I kind of got that impression,”

“Well, that’s stupid.” Eddie rasps, “And gross.”

“So gross.” You hum, pushing up on your toes to slant your lips against his.

It's only a chaste peck, made a little less so by a cheeky swipe of your tongue against his bottom lip – it’s all you have time for before there is a rapping of someone’s knuckles against the door frame, cutting the moment short.   

You drop back down and spin around to face whoever it is come to intrude on your moment – only Nancy, thankfully, lingering in the doorway. You stand in front of Eddie with your back against him, like you mean to shield him from prying eyes until he can collect himself again. 

If she notices the way he quickly brushes the wetness from his eyes, she doesn’t mention it, because Nancy Wheeler is nothing if not entirely classy. 

“It’s time, you guys.” She says softly, and Eddie feels his guts seize in terror. 

As if you anticipated the feeling, you reach back and squeeze his hand, nodding curtly. 

“We’ll be right out,” you promise. 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sliding through the gate is probably the worst thing you have ever experienced in your entire life, made all the worse by the way you’d had to ask Eddie for a boost because you’ve always been hopeless at the rope climb and you’re not about to start down the journey of self-improvement now.  

“Cheerleader-style,” you’d explained, showing him what position to get into when he asked how best to do that.

He’d rolled his eyes and taken your foot in his hands.

“That’s not Cheerleader-style,” He snarked, which made Steve choke on a surprised bark of laughter. 

And that’s how you knew the world was well and truly coming to an end. Because Eddie made a stupid sex joke and it was enough to make Steve Harrington laugh. 

You’re so, incredibly fucked.

The reverse suction of gravity pulling you down through at the highest point of the gate and turning your world topsy turvy is the second worst thing you’ve ever experienced, and it sees you landing hard on your ass on the other side.

Your fall was mercifully broken by the bizarro version of Eddie’s mattress — somehow more disgusting than its real-world doppelgänger — which Steve had thankfully thought to pull out from the other room.

You’d only just managed to slide off of the thing before Eddie came crashing down after you, landing gracelessly on his back with a hard thump mere inches from where you’d been only moments before.

Everything moves much too quickly after that.

You follow A Team out into the murky underdark waiting just outside the tin door and have to plant roots in the ground to stop yourself from turning right back around and going for the safety of the gate.

Suddenly, faced with the dark and the debris and the perpetual bloody thunderstorm, sitting watch and babysitting the hole in the ceiling doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. But it’s far too late to start thinking about changing your mind, especially when B Team comes shuffling down the front steps to see you off. 

You distract yourself by playing Mother Hen, turning around to fuss needlessly over your boys. 

Your boys, your precious boys…

You pull Dustin’s hood up and secure it in place with the headband he’d chosen to add to his armor, straighten the Gilley suit, and tweak his nose for good measure, garnering an indignant squawk from the boy before you move over to Eddie.

You’re less frantic with him, and you can feel his eyes on you as you pull the zipper of his army-grade vest tight up to the collar, the demon-faced logo of the Hellfire club winking out of existence as you do. You can’t help but smooth your hands across his chest, attempting in vain to press out the wrinkles there and banish your nerves alongside them. 

It’s not enough, you think, this isn’t gonna stop anything from hurting him.

You have to heave a sharp, steadying breath to quell the sick feeling suddenly stirring in your stomach, and you tell yourself it’s better than nothing. 

It’s certainly better than what you’ve got, which is to say nothing at all – at least he’s got layers to protect against scraping claws and gnashing teeth, he’s got a shield and one of those wicked-looking spears the Sinclairs had prepared back in the field while you’d wasted precious time goofing off. 

You wish you had a suit of armor, but you’ve got to move faster than you ever have, you can’t afford to be weighed down by any more protective layers than a pair of cotton shorts, Eddie’s vest – you’re thankful to have it, it’s the next best thing to carrying him with you (along with the faintest tinge of Steve, regrettably) but somehow you know it’s not going to be enough if something down here decides to try and make a meal out of you. 

You’re cold, at least you think you are, somehow simultaneously shivering under the heavy, dank chill of the Upsidedown and growing sticky with sweat in the cloying humidity. 

This place is a fucking nightmare — this place is where Barb died. 

Suddenly you can’t stop thinking about that night in ‘83, about the party she disappeared from. You don’t know much about it, only that it had been Tommy and Carol at Steve’s place — your old friends who had at the point only recently ejected you from their circle.

Barb was only there because they had a vacancy to fill in the form of Nancy, and she came along by default. Suddenly you can’t help but feel that if Eddie hadn’t waltzed in and turned your world upside down, you would have been at that party, and it probably would have been your face on all the missing person posters and milk cartons.

Barb would still be here, getting ready to take her SATs and live the rest of her life, and you would have been dragged screaming into the abyss, never to be seen again. 

You’re thankfully rescued from the spiral of trying to determine how your karma tallies up against the guilt you feel over it and pulled from the mire of your thoughts by the sound of your name tumbling gently from Eddie’s lips.

When you glance up at him, he’s giving you a deeply concerned look, and you wonder how much of the journey through your thoughts had been reflected across your face. 

You feel the corners of your mouth twitch in your best attempt at offering him a reassuring smile, but you know it doesn’t reach your eyes. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Eddie says.

“No, yeah of course. It’s gonna be fine.” You mumble, painfully aware of how the tremble in your voice betrays that statement, so you try again, “It’s gonna be fun.” 

It’s not even convincing enough to come across as sarcastic — you’re terrified. 

Then, like he’s only just remembered something vitally important, Dustin perks up and begins patting himself down, frantically fumbling in his pockets as you watch without really seeing. He produces a clunky black Casio, the kind with a calculator built into the face, and immediately goes to work strapping it to your wrist.

“I already set it up to count you down.” He explains, “All you have to do is hit start and go, it’ll keep us in sync.”

You swallow hard as you stare at it — you remember the year he got the watch for his birthday, how excited he was about all its features.

You’d thought it was unbearably sweet that he was so thrilled about a cheap watch from Melvald’s General Store, but you desperately wish you were back there now, timing Dustin to see how fast he could run around the block (the answer was not very fast at all, and he’d been royally pissed when Mike beat his time by nearly half.) 

He nudges you to bring your attention back again, this time he’s holding a walkie-talkie out to you. 

You take it and sling it around your shoulders.

“It’s gonna be fine,” You say again, somehow less convincing than before. 

However, neither Eddie nor Dustin gets the opportunity to say otherwise because Steve is suddenly there, sending you leaping damn near out of your skin with the simple act of resting a tentative hand on your shoulder. 

“You ready?” He asks.

No, you want to tell him, but your throat is closing up and you don’t think you could have squeaked out an answer even if you tried. 

You swallow hard against the tightness there and nod.

“Okay,” He says solemnly, turning his attention to B Team - Team Distraction, “Keep your radios on – stay in contact, stick to the plan—”

“And don’t get killed.” Eddie pipes up, winking at you. 

As you turn on your heel and trail after the others across the park, you curl your hands into fists and silently hope you can manage to do all of those things at once. 

It takes every bit of willpower you possess not to turn around and look back – if you look back you’re going to lose what tiny bit of nerve you’d been able to muster – but you didn't look back the last time you’d walked away from Eddie, left him standing there at the foot of those stairs.

The radio crackles, at your hip, and through it comes Eddie’s voice, calling your name.

“–Copy.”

You snatch the walkie-talkie up so quickly that you nearly crack yourself in the mouth, twisting around and stumbling over your feet, almost crashing into Robin as you do. 

“What’s up, Eds?” You answer.

You can barely see him out in the dark, but he’s still there, watching you go. You can’t make out his features, but somehow you know he’s grinning that stupid grin.

“You’re supposed to say over – over.” He teases, voice lilting in that same old sing-song tone.

You roll your eyes.

“What do you want, Eddie … over.”

“Just to tell you your butt looks great in those shorts –”

You’re instantly blushing as Robin makes a harsh sound of undainty laughter at your side. 

“Eddie–!” you hiss.

“Over and out.”

It’s not a long walk to the Creel House, but it’s made that much shorter by the cloud of doom hanging over your head.  

You’d always done your utmost to avoid the place, what with its reputation for being haunted. It’s eerie enough in the daytime, but here and now, with the darkness crushing in on all sides, you can’t help the chill that creeps down your spine.

When you were thirteen, you’d very nearly had a falling out with Carol Perkins, who was still your best friend at the time, over your refusal to enter the house on a dare.

With high school looming, she was at the start of a sudden and violent transition that would inevitably see her become the mean girl she is today. As such, she was subsequently worried that you were making her look bad in front of her cool new friends, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with you, but were still busy making up their minds about her.

She called you a pussy, and you happily accepted the title, staying safely outside of the house while the older girls all filed in to play with the Ouija board one of them had brought along. 

Carol stayed with you, out of some lingering sense of misplaced loyalty, you imagine, and as a result lost some of the budding clout she so desperately craved from the others — from that day on to the eventual implosion of your so-called friendship three years later, she never let you forget it.

Knowing what you know now, pressed up against Nancy sitting crouched beneath the rotting jungle gym across the street, you can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that you’d always had enough foresight to stay out of the house – Vecna’s home. 

Suddenly, you think you can see movement. Figures skulking around in the dark on the third floor, a ghoulish face peering out at you from the attic window. 

You tell yourself the house is empty, that Vecna isn’t up there, despite how patently untrue you know that to be. Part of you wants to take some sort of comfort in knowing that you won’t have to enter the house, but all you feel is the violent buzzing of your anxiety. 

You gasp out loud when the radio crackles, slapping your hands over your mouth and startling yourself as much as your companions. 

“B Team to A Team, do you copy?” Dustin’s voice comes rasping over the static. 

You watch as Steve brings the radio up to his mouth without ever taking his eyes off of the house, you wish you were half as calm as he looked. 

“Copy.” 

“We’re all set back here – go for Phase One?”

“Ready when you are.” 

You feel yourself break into a cold sweat. 

Phase one means you’re one deck. This is all happening very fast – too fast, if anyone were to ask you. Nobody is asking. 

Then, in the distance you hear the first crunch of chords, a rippling echo of a sound that knocks you on your ass, right back to nights and weekends at the Hideout and half a hundred other dingy dives across Roane County. 

Your breath catches in your throat.

If you close your eyes, you imagine you could picture yourself sitting parked behind a slapdash Corroded Coffin merch table set against a far wall, piled high with t-shirts, bumper stickers, and boxes upon boxes of cassettes. 

In your mind’s eye, Eddie leans into the microphone and introduces the band to middling enthusiasm. 

“This one goes out to all the ladies,” he says, like he always does before the first song because of how you’d once expressed vehement disdain for front men who would dare do something so cheesy. 

Your nerves are a swarm of bees in your bloodstream as you suck in a breath through chattering teeth and the sound continues, three descending notes that bleed into a quick, hard riff that shoots adrenaline like lightning down to the tips of your fingers.

It only takes you half a moment to realize you know this song, and the buzzing of your adrenaline surges, thought differently than before – blinding terror has suddenly bled away to be replaced by the kind of heart pounding excitment that comes from standing in the crowd at a rock concert. 

Oh my God, You think, He’s so fucking cool…

It breathes a spark of courage into you, and with a series of short, deep breaths, you fill your lungs and ready yourself to move. Without the necessary prompting you’d all agreed upon, you scramble out from beneath the jungle gym much to Steve’s hushed chagrin. 

You curl your hands into trembling fists as you pad across the grass out into the street, stopping just short of the curb and turning your gaze up at the looming Victorian. In the intermittent flashes of crimson lightning, you can see the bats crawling across its visage, like thousands of teeming maggots, squirming in the belly of a roadkill carcass. 

You suck in a breath and hold it, watching, waiting.

Eddie’s guitar has piqued their interest, just as you’d planned for, now you’ve got to make sure they follow through with that curiosity and clear a path for Nancy and the rest. 

Phase one is in effect – time to go to work.

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

I have a lot of opinions on Shuichi Saihara as a protagonist like on one hand I really liked his arc and think he was a genuinely interesting character and on the other hand the twist in chapter 1 kneecapped a lot of what I thought made him a compelling detective character on top of playing into some sexist tropes but like who cares about that.

What I ACTUALLY want to talk about is the AMAZING energy this guy exudes. He has more eyeliner on than any scene kid from the early 2000's. He's as gaunt as a sheet of paper. He looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over. Probably because he canonically didn't eat breakfast before entering the killing game so somehow the murder teddy bear coliseum has actually IMPROVED his living habits.

Nearly every line of Saihara's dialogue in the Japanese dub makes him sound like he's 5 seconds away from bursting into tears. During some intense moments he does this sprite where he's supposed to be adjusting the brim of his hat in a cool way but after he ditches his hat it just looks like he's doing a really emo peace sign. His character arc is about realizing that he doesn't want to kill himself and the way he resolves the conflict at the end of the game is to turn to the audience and say "You guys all suck. We're going to kill ourselves."

In chapter 6, Shirogane literally says that the concept for his character was her going "Hey what if I made a detective who's just, like, the most pathetic. The most cripplingly depressed poor little meow meow in existence?" He isn't even a poor little meow meow at this point he's like. One of those blind orphans that get run over in those propaganda films from the 40's. He's like if Oliver Twist went through puberty.

All the protags yap a lot but all of Saihara's internal monologue in the Free Time Events makes him sound like a fucking Wattpad fic about getting sold to One Direction. He embodies Komaru Naegi's "uwu im just a normal teenage girl" schtick except unlike Komaru, he'd probably dislocate his ankle running from a Ball Monokuma. Babe at least Makoto Naegi is kind of an extrovert?

He's super smart and observant and when he genuinely makes the effort to investigate the school, he uncovers the mastermind's secret lair on like the second day. And the next time he makes the effort he figures out the mastermind's identity and all of her schemes. Every investigation he looks at the evidence and immediately makes 8 logical leaps and somehow figures out the seesaw zipline toilet paper murder of the week.

But between that he, like, alternates between curling up in a ball and sobbing in his room and curling up in a ball and sobbing in front of Momota and Harukawa so like, it takes him a while to get to it. Kirigiri was busting into boys' washrooms and sneaking into secret off-limits dorms and throwing herself down trash chutes. Meanwhile Saihara sees the girls' washroom and is like "Hhhhhhhh I can't go in there that's cooooooooties" and needs The Power Of Friendship to, like, push over rubble or smth.

Like, oh man, he's a great character and he does get marginally more confident but, like, I think this dude runs on nothing but coffee and anxiety. He probably doesn't get more than 3 hours of sleep a night between Momota's midnight hangouts and whatever the hell the love hotels and the Monokuma theatres are all about. Say what you want about his role in the game but he's definitely a unique protagonist because I didn't think someone like him could narrate for a chapter without having a seizure. He looks like he has tuberculosis. MORE than the guy in the game who actually has tuberculosis.

[rabbitrah]

Is it just me or is anti-asexual discourse making a comeback right now, except instead of saying "asexual" or "ace," the post describes a "type of person" to be avoided/distrusted/mocked? I know that's vague, but I feel like I've seen a lot of "I hate it when [virgins/people who don't fuck/people who are scared of sex] do/say [insert behavior]" The behavior can be anything. It might be transphobia or homophobia, being kinky or being being disgusted by kinks, being a certain fandom or being anti-fandom.

It's tricky, because sometimes things are just memes, like "the chad ____ vs the virgin _____," and other times it feels like OP is trying to draw a direct line between people who don't have sex and Something Bad. I need to reemphasize how much the "Something Bad" can be anything.

It's kind of a clever way to get people to re-engage with anti-ace discourse. You read a post describing a person who does something you hate (something serious, like transmisogyny; or something mild, like reading fanfiction instead of books) and you go "yeah I hate people who do that" and accept the connection to people who don't have sex without much critical thought.

If the post actually used the word asexual, like "Most asexual people distrust trans women and it's so gross" or "I hate it when people are into [kink] but you just know that they're actually asexual" or "People who hate [fandom] are fucking asexuals," it would probably raise some eyebrows and probably not spread as far, since the heyday of just blatantly hating asexual people on tumblr faded around the mid 2010s.

By replacing "asexual" with a stand-in describer for asexuality and then connecting it to something that lots of people on this site are going to be against, we're just re-inventing the old hallmarks of asexual discourse, like

Asexual people are homophobic/transphobic

Asexual people are oppressive

Asexual people are anti-kink, sex negative

Asexual people are too kinky, abnormally sexual, perverted

Asexual people are all just inherently annoying/bad

Idk if this is really a rising pattern or if I've just had bad luck seeing this lately, but as someone who got taken in by some of those same talking points back in the day only to watch a lot of those blogs transform into terfs overnight, remember that infighting is the easiest way to divide a community, inclusion creates allies, personal descriptors that you don't like or understand don't hurt you, and people pushing lines of logic like this are often trying to yank you into a much darker well of hatred.

[redistrictgirl]

What's the deal with North Carolina and Georgia?

So we have our first weird quirk of this presidential election - North Carolina seemingly polling much less favorably for former President Trump than Georgia, even though he won NC and lost GA in 2020. Indeed, my polling average has Mr. Trump leading by over two points in the Peach State but only half a point in the Tar Heel State, so today I wanted to analyze the phenomenon more closely and come up with a few different factors that might be contributing to this.

First, let's go over the one that Republicans will want to talk about and Democrats fear, polling error. In 2020, President Biden led polls in North Carolina by a point more than he did in Georgia, yet lost the former by about 1.5% while winning the latter narrowly. Clearly, this is the same situation and a harbinger of a red wave, right?

Calm down there. First, yes, state-level polls produce outcomes like this from time to time, but it defies logic to assume that pollsters didn't attempt to correct for their genuinely disastrous misses in 2020. Second, there are more undecided voters in North Carolina, which could certainly cause the gap to close as we trudge towards November. Finally, even if we ignore those first two factors, the current polling gap between the two Southeast states is bigger than 2020's - so any polling error must not be the only factor.

This brings us to a possibility that liberals would prefer - the post-Dobbs coalition applying to its first presidential election. For those who haven't seen me use this term before, this describes the depolarization of party coalitions along racial lines in favor of increased polarization along religiosity lines - a phenomenon we started to see in 2020 but really took hold and accelerated in 2022. If it accelerates this year, it would be a boon for Democrats along the Rust Belt and in more secular Sun Belt states like Arizona and Nevada. Certainly, there's some compelling evidence that these demographic shits might be a factor or even the primary driver of the disparity - for one thing, at the state government level, North Carolina actually voted to the left of Georgia on average last cycle! Part of this is the across-the-aisle appeal that Governor Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger have proven to have, but it was still somewhat of a surprise to see that outcome in practice during the midterms. Georgia also had 6% more black voters compared to North Carolina (relative to overall turnout), so the racial depolarization aspect of this equation makes sense here, and we're seeing the strong polling along the Blue Wall for Vice President Harris that would match our hypothesis.

That said, I have a couple of problems with this theory. First, North Carolina actually has more evangelicals in its voter pool than Georgia, so religious polarization should be a problem for Tar Heel Democrats. Second, we're not seeing big polling surprises in Florida, which is more secular but is still a Southeast state, is extremely racially diverse, and just came off an R+20 election in 2022.

Finally, let's look at the boring option, a different pool of pollsters in Georgia vs. North Carolina. It's August, so we aren't going to see a glut of data yet (which is reflected in my model). So let's just do an apples-to-apples comparison of polls from both states around the same time and by the same pollsters, based on which had more favorable margins for Ms. Harris:

GA +2 (Morning Consult, late July)

GA +1 (Redfield & Wilton, late July)

NC +1 (BSG/GS Strategy Group, late July)

NC +6 (NYT/Siena Group, mid-August)

GA +2 (Redfield & Wilton, mid-August)

That's a much slimmer difference in North Carolina's favor on average, and really driven by one massive outlier poll (by the New York Times, but still!) It looks very likely that we're dealing with selection bias at the moment.

So in conclusion, the North Carolina rating being to the left of Georgia is probably a nothingburger driven by small sample sizes, but watch to see more signs of the post-Dobbs coalition going forward - it could make the 2024 map look weird.

[princesscolumbia]

https://www.furinkan.com/features/articles/pregnant.html

About a week-ish ago, the above link was posted to the r/Ranma subreddit. I took a look at the article and the tl;dr seems to be as follows:

Once upon a time there was a person who put forth the question to Rumiko Takahashi on whether Ranma's transformation from boy-to-girl was complete enough that Ranma could experience all the consequences of such a transformation, the logical conclusion being, "Can Ranma get pregnant?" The rather infamous 'quote' of "I don't think about that, and neither should you," is purported to come from this question, which told the audience one thing: Don't fucking ask about Ranma's sex life or by Kami-sama, Takahashi-sensei will gut you! This stood as an uncontested truth until the pandemic when someone decided to try and track down the exact source of the quote, at which point they realized this was NOT said at a convention (as had initially been circulated via rumor at the time), but in an editorial that stood in lieu of a an interview that took place over a sit-down dinner between Takahashi and an editor who would wind up garnering a reputation for ginning up drama for its own sake. It's likely a heavily 'interpreted' quote that probably didn't have the intent to come across as cutting or biting and likely had a LOT of questions left on the table that could have been asked as a follow-up. So now that we've answered the question of whether Takahashi-san was actually a rude bitch or not (likely not), if you want to know whether Ranma can get pregnant you are a smelly sex pervert who most likely has cooties and should just drop dead and save us all the trouble of shunning you.

Am I taking liberty with my summary? FU~HUH~HUH~UCK YES! If you want to see what they actually say, follow the link and read. It's not tremendously long and, save for the author's unconscious purity cult bias, is a pretty solid piece of reportage into the infamous "quote," even if the question isn't actually answered. What follows is what I posted to Reddit in the comments section for that link:

I take issue with the foundational premise that the question of whether or not Ranma could get pregnant is inherently puerile or vulgar, which is not only the foundation of the original misquote but also the basis of the article's author's premise. Guess what, people f*ck, including at least two people you (yes, YOU) know. This should not be controversial. Now, I'll grant that, maybe...maybe in the 1990s when the question came up it might have been one of those giggle-behind-a-hand-in-shock kind of things, but we're entering a phase in world culture where uterus transplants for transwomen are being put through clinical trials to allow them to get pregnant. The rights of trans and gender-non-conforming folk are being trampled on the world over. Some transmen are choosing to become pregnant and have children. The hypocrisy of "cis het people get to talk about pregnancy without everyone assuming the question is about f*cking, but you'd better not talk about someone who's even a little bit trans or you're clearly doing it to be filthy, nasty perverts" is being exposed for the comp-het that it is. Asking "does this character who, canonically, transitions back and forth between one biological set of sex organs and secondary sex characteristics multiple times per day have to deal with all the concerns, consequences, and benefits of both forms?" is no longer the automatic, "You can't say that on TV!" that is used to be (and, honestly, never should have been). Soun, canonically, has f*cked. Nodoka, canonically, has f*cked. Genma, canonically (goddess help us all), has fucked. The operational premise of the primary conflict of the series is whether or not Ranma and Akane are going to, eventually, f*ck. The question of "What happens if Ranma gets pregnant?" should only ever be problematic if Takahashi at some point declares that Ranma is an ace transwoman and never wants to birth children, at which point it would be a thing that shouldn't be considered for hard/soft canon purposes because it would violate Ranma's choices in the matter. IMHO, in the reboot I think an episode where Ranma has to deal with attending both the boy's and the girl's sex ed classes would be tremendously funny. It would also have the knock-on effect getting people to think about things like "consent" and "consequences," something our current culture rather lacks.

This was auto-banned on Reddit because, apparently, saying the word "fuck," even with the self-censoring and used in the appropriate context, is a bridge too far for a subreddit attended by people old enough to know what sex is.

This isn't the first time I've encountered problematic behavior on the r/Ranma subreddit. When I pointed out that Ranma's basically saying that s/he just plain forgot about their gender and they only wanted the cure for Akane's sake, this is basically Ranma declaring that they don't care about their 'curse' and is genderfluid/NB, just lacking in the language that we have for those gender presentations (or non-presentation, as the case may be) that we have today, I got the clapback of, "NUH-UH! You're wrong! Ranma's a cis guy!".

(Yes, a cis guy. A cis guy who has 'his' own bras and likely has to carry around period products "just in case" and grows at least a cup-size canonically over the course of the show's run as commented on by Nabiki...and don't tell me Nabiki's not at least bi!)

This was on a conversation about whether Ranma was trans, which is a challenging question given the best word at the time for what Ranma is was 'newhalf,' a term that has come to be associated with sex workers and holds the same cultural niche as "sh*male" in American culture; it's a bit derogatory and is considered to be a slur that is used specifically in a sexual connotation. Couple this with the anime and manga being, at best, parallel continuities (there's SO many places where the two are different timelines I could probably do an entire series of posts just breaking down the differences) AND the fans stitching the two together to create fused variant timelines for their derivative works means that we just don't, at this point, have a solid answer.

Thanks to THAT episode of the anime:

Am I... Pretty? Ranma's Declaration of Womanhood (Peacock link)

...pretty much no transwoman on the planet is going to question that anime Ranma is a transgirl. The parallels to our own experiences that (femme)Ranma talks about during her dissociative state hit entirely too close to home and if a member of the writing team for that episode wasn't part of the queer community I will eat my bra with spaghetti sauce.

It's important to note, as well, that because of the anime, Takahashi is NO LONGER THE FINAL AUTHORITY ON ALL THINGS RANMA. If 'death of the author' is a thing, Takahashi committed honorable sepuku and gave creative control over to a writing and directorial team that is not her.

For the original manga, because Takahashi was unwilling to tackle those questions that give Purity Cultists hives (though why she'd shy away from the pregnancy angle when she was perfectly happy showing Ranma and her mirror clone working as prostitutes is a question I will probably never get answered), it's "open to interpretation" as to Ranma's Genderfluid/NB status, though IMHO the text is as clear as you can get it for the language of the time.

(In retrospect, it's obvious; she should be in the club)

In the anime, though, Shampoo and Ukyo are bi (and fuckin'), Ranma is a transwoman, and Akane is either lesbian or bi and strangled by comp-het to an obvious degree. Ryoga may well be trans as well, though his pig-related curse makes the matter questionable given his lamentations could be either about not having a girl body like Ranma does OR having a pig body, which would suck and result in severe dysmorphia either way.

This is because the anime team chose to tackle those questions, at least tangentially. Rumiko Takahashi, for all she is to be thanked for giving the world Ranma 1/2 (...and a few other things), handed off the baton to other creators. If we want the answers to the questions like, "Can Ranma get pregnant?", Takahashi is NOT the source for that.

That said, if she and I had the chance to sit down over a meal in San Diego during a convention, I'd apologize on behalf of the community for the monstrous tool who misquoted her and ask the questions like another content creator, not some asshat who just wants to stir up trouble for decades to come.

[inmarbleimmobility]

1.1.4 - "Works to Match Words"

well look who finally got caught up enough in their real job to do their les mis letters posts! (and figured out how to use the title feature!) oh boy there's so much here y'all.

the title immediately stands out to me - it reminds me of a bible verse, though I can't immediately pinpoint which one. a quick google tells me probably james 2:17 (faith without works is dead) but i think 1 john 3:18 fits better - "[...] let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth". this whole chapter is an exploration of what people *say* (or what their titles/positions say about them) vs what they *do*.

Pun Count is now 2 ("My highness cannot reach that shelf", maybe my fave pun in the whole book)!

Myriel refers to the Saint Augustine quote ("place your expectations in him to whom there is no succession") as being "something odd", just like Hugo later says he has his "own strange way of judging things" - driving home that point that for a priest to follow christ's actual words and intentions isn't the rule but the exception.

not sure how the anecdote about his cousin fits my words/works thesis but let me get to the end of this post and I bet I'll find it!

"using the tomb to feed their vanity" seems to imply there's something else these men should be using the tomb for - most likely a contemplation on heaven?

"A pennyworth of paradise" - lots here!! someone else brought up Myriel choosing to convince people to good acts through love rather than fear; we're seeing the fear approach work here, but only insofar as it gets Geborand to donate a single penny - a token contribution, a "work" that is more word than deed. he can say he was charitable, therefore he thinks he'll get into heaven. Myriel's saying it doesn't work that way - that a pennyworth of charity only gets you a pennyworth of paradise, perhaps also that the greater your works on earth, the greater your reward in heaven? this is a view I personally don't vibe all that much with as I feel like in practice it only encourages performative "works" instead of its intent (to reward fully those who were truly good). it *is* a very biblical take, though; see the beatitudes.

the Marquis de Champtercier - others have mentioned him as a kind of precursor to Gillenormand, which, yeah! the "words" here are the marquis claiming he's prioritizing his own poor while the actual work is to deny "Myriel's poor" his donation. Myriel (and I) disagree with the "my poor/your poor" distinction - the suffering of any person is the responsibility of all of us to alleviate, hence "give them to me". interestingly this was the first time i read this line as "give *them* to me" instead of "give them to *me*" - the latter is, again, Myriel saying he doesn't discriminate between "his" poor and the "Marquis' poor"; the former feels like an even cheekier followup to "you must give me something" - if it won't be money, it'll be "his" poor.

"God gives light to men, and the law sells it." Myriel is speaking literally here re: the door and window tax (which I know nothing about; what's the logic there??), but in a larger sense, he also isn't. Light is one of the things I'm specifically looking for on this read, and this feels like the setup for the points Hugo will make later with his other usages of light. God gives light - hope, love, education, belonging, whatever it is - to men, and the law - literally, but also just society and government - sells it (at a monetary cost but also a less tangible one - your soul? your humanity?) goddamn, I can't believe I never thought more about all the things Hugo is subtly setting up in these chapters and passing off as Sick Bishop Burns TM.

"My brethren, be compassionate; see how much suffering there is around you" - it says he's preaching this at "the cathedral", but I don't know much about the demographic of Digne at this time. are his parishioners mostly rich? mostly laborers? a mix?

I appreciate the inclusion of Myriel's knowledge of Southern dialects more now that I know a little about the context of Occitan/lenga d'oc/Provencal at this time! i want to spend some time researching the history and linguistics of Occitan here soon, it's fascinating to me.

lots of people have expressed that Myriel's doctrine of repressing the body so as not to sin as rubbing them the wrong way, and same. unfortunately it very much jibes with the Catholic view of sin. nothing'll give you Permanent Weird Feelings About Your Body And Specifically Sex like Catholicism! (this last to be read like a tagline on a commercial with, like, the Mr. Clean guy doing a thumbs up above it, only he's wearing a miter.) from a modern viewpoint I'd expect Myriel to think a bit differently on this point the way he does on a lot of other Church doctrine things, but I suppose if he really "got it from the Gospels" there's plenty of textual evidence to support that. ew, Catholicism.

also not the first person to point out "but be upright" as paralleling "un juste", the title of this book, but wow it's good.

gonna be vulnerable here and confess I don't really get what he's saying about the "offended hypocrisy" that's "quick to protest and run for cover". pot/kettle I guess? maybe it's just worded in a way I can't wrap my mind around.

again with the Big Three - women, children, and laborers (here "servants". Hugo via Myriel directly identifies the corresponding oppressors - husbands, fathers, and masters - but in this case I'm not sure how much I agree with those. masters certainly, but husbands and fathers? certainly they *can* be oppressive and create those conditions Hugo so strongly opposes, but not always - and in many cases those husbands/fathers are also laborers, so. I much prefer his followup of the strong, the rich, and the wise. once again Hugo says eat the rich.

"the guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." alright everyone, pack it up, we're done here, we've found the Main Idea! lmao can you imagine if that's where Hugo stopped? hilarious.

the counterfeiter. the "word" here is claiming to uphold justice, when the "work" is actually just upholding the law. I especially like the wording of saying the prosecutor had "brought truth to light" here - going to have to go grab my French text and see if this is a Hugo wording or a FMA wording, but either way it goes back to that theme of light - in this case, how the truth of the case isn't necessarily the same as the Light, the good.

the condemned man. there's so much here. "[Myriel] called [the condemned man] by his name" - this brings to mind musical!Valjean's line "my name is Jean Valjean!" when Javert persists in addressing him as 24601, as well as his later surprise when the bishop treats him like a person. sometimes all it takes is treating a person like a person. i'm sure this won't be the last time I say that. Hugo also refers to death as "an abyss" here; that recalls "I am reaching, but I fall/and the night is closing in/as I stare into the void/into the whirlpool of my sin". I don't think this is the first time Hugo refers to the unknown as an abyss, either! in this case, it isn't just the unknown of death that the condemned man fears, but likely also the judgment after, which he knows won't go well for him (he's specifically said to be "not ignorant enough to be indifferent"), much like the abyss of Valjean's sin. Myriel sheds light on this abyss ("showed him the light") and teaches the condemned man not to fear death or the afterlife. fascinating also how we're specifically told Myriel stays with the man onto the cart and all the way onto the scaffold, literally accompanying this man to his fate, helping him not be alone to the very last moment.

the upper classes see Myriel's reaction to the guillotine as "affectation" - because if they were to show the same outward reaction, it *would* be affectation for them.

haha hey did you guys know there's a character limit on tumblr posts? because i do now!! so uhh part 2 in a second i guess.

[lesbicona]

why is season 6 of community your favourite /genq im just curious !! :]

the short answer is frankie

the long answer is: im very particular about endings, not in that i need them to have specific qualities (like sad or happy or epilogue-esque or what have you) but in that i need them to have narrative intent. we came close to living in a universe where basic story and basic sandwich closed community's story, and as much as i do genuinely like those episodes (mostly for comedy reasons), i only like them in the context of the full show we have now. i was not old enough to appreciate the show as it aired, but looking back i can see opinions at the time of the ending were divided. season 5 in general, honestly, seems close to season 4 in people's minds- in the post you're referencing where i expressed this opinion, season 5 received literally 0 votes. season 4 is controversial, but season 5 commits a worse sin- it's forgettable. (and i do like it, i really liked prof hickey which is truly a take on this webbed site, but this is my impression of the public opinion of it).

so in just existing, season 6 elevates my personal opinion of the show, but i mentioned public opinion in the paragraph prior because season 6 often gets lumped in with 4 and 5 as 'bad'. now while i have my own set of takes about even just season 4 (really guys, it's fine, it's just an ok season of tv in an excellent show, but it's not BAD) i will try very hard not to get into here, it is an objective divide between the widely acclaimed seasons 1 through 3 and the more controversial rest. my opinions of season 6 are very influenced by this, because it's like my little meow meow i must protect from the haters.

i feel season 6 closes up the themes of community, as evolved and changed as they are, in a satisfying way, and gives the characters themselves a logical narrative end. i especially enjoyed the themes of growing up continued from season 5, which are very pressing in a show about college. of course i realize this is a silly sitcom we're talking about, so i'm not saying that it put forward anything groundbreakingly subtle or even new, but any long-running show (especially one which could not keep the entirety of its main cast) that can wrap up so satisfyingly deserves praise.

and yet, because of the season 4 hurdle, which leaves many people with a bad taste in their mouth for the rest of the entire show, it is not as acclaimed as i think it deserves to be. i don't think people realize how much the show was probably going to change in season 4 even without dan harmon's departure. the idealized season 4 in people's minds seems to be season 3 part 2, which could not have happened for a successful season of television. seasons 1 through 3 are all already very different from each other despite being clumped together. yet people despise every single change to the show from season 4 onward indiscriminately. so of course season 6, with its many, many changes, is so far from season 3 that people blinded by the latter's glory cannot even see the former.

but most if not all of the changes season 6 brings are purely beneficial in my perspective. frankie and elroy are excellent additions to the cast; they are great comedic forces, with a strong role in relation to the others. they both play the almost-straight man jeff used to be, normal in reaction to most of the shenanigans of the original cast while bringing in their own insanity. they also represent the aging of the show. by bringing them in instead of, for example, freshmen students, the new, more grown perspective of the show is reinstated. the bits of their lives outside the committee that we get to see are interesting, funny, and bring them depth.

of course in particular im fond of frankie, who's normal to the point of pathology, whose line deliveries have a 90% chance of obliterating me on the spot, and who is just like me fr fr (a lesbian). she does not budge in her responsibilities, leading to her fluctuating role in the eyes of the cast, antagonist in some episodes and co-lead in others. her presence adds something new for each character to compare themselves to, for the better. in particular, annie, jeff and the dean are all improved because of her.

britta also receives some focus she hadn't since a few seasons past, and while i do not agree with the narrative framing of all of it (as clearly the show itself does not side with her in disliking her parents, as much as she, as a character, has proper reason to), the contents are extremely enjoyable to me. getting a chance to analyze the wannabe-therapist's relationship with her parents is perfectly ironic just as a concept.

season 6 offers some of my favorite comedy of the whole show. while my favorite line forever remains "i need help reacting to this" (which i saw you also enjoy <3), i was in tears of laughter at the end of a majority of season 6 episodes on my first watch. elroy's addiction to encouraging white people is absolutely unforgettable.

sorry for the Whole Fucking Essay! the medium answer, which you unlocked by reading the long answer, is: though perhaps not the objective best community has to offer, i love season 6 twice as fiercely to protect it from its undeserving haters. stan frankie, bring me 6 cans of olives, goodbye.

[raytorosaurus]

not to get into the philosophy of real person fandom over a random tweet but ngl the brian schechter thing is quite unsurprising to me considering how he has spoken about the music industry in the past and running bands as businesses - remember that 40 year old guys with money do not run in the same online circles as left-leaning teenagers/youth no matter how cool they are skdjfjd. it's probably a pretty logical jump for someone in that generation and wealth bracket to go from profiting off one kind of art to another in a new context, even if we know it's ethically unsound on multiple levels.

the part i don't get is the perhaps overblown emotional response to this news tbh. it's interesting how fandom will fixate so heavily on certain specific non-public figures in the mcr sphere to the point of including them in the band's "narrative" while entirely ignoring others who are presumably equally or more significant. it's based entirely on fandom characterisations i think - i don't just mean in fic but also in the general fandom consciousness, though these two things definitely influence each other. when most people talk or write about brian they're basing like 90% of their information on him off about 15 minutes of screentime in lotms and a vague knowledge of his career trajectory, or off what other fans have said and written about him first.

this isn't me saying "we should stop talking about brian until we know more about him" or "we should learn more about the other people close to the band, not just brian" - more the opposite. i honestly think this is a timely reminder that, although i'd say we can all pretty safely bet that the four guys in mcr are solid dudes worthy of our respect and support, we really truly do not know anything about their personal lives outside the band besides the very little they show us. even within the context of the band we see very little. as a quick and obvious example, can you name four people on mcr's current crew off the top of your head? no? cool, that's totally normal and you absolutely don't have to. just keep it in mind that you can't. no matter how many interviews they do, we see so little of their lives - and they very clearly want it that way. real people aren't fictional characters - like honestly imo if you really want fictional characters, go and read fanfiction about them and consciously create a solid boundary in your mind between those fictional constructs and the real people you don't know and aren't entitled to know. don't let it influence the way you think of the real people, but instead use it as a way to get the narrativising and over-familiarity out of your system if you must. just don't fall into the trap of thinking you really know or understand these guys - it's doing you and them a disservice and can only lead to disappointment. save the sense of connection with the real guys to the music and the live shows in the context of their art and the community they've inspired with it.

i guess my point is i totally understand that we're all emotionally invested in these guys and care about them and feel like we can trust them - i absolutely do too - but i think it's healthier all round to actively remind ourselves how little we know about them every now and then. things like Brian Schechter NFT Boss Reveal are good opportunities to do so. try to avoid that nasty pang of cognitive dissonance when these 40+yo people do something that doesn't match up with the simplified and idealised version of them in your head <3

[sweetestpopcorn]

Why people hate dany and targs in general so much? Even the ones who claim themselves as supporters usually shy away from incest and blood purity thing. And people kind of assume that 300 year (mad) targ rule was very bad while we aren't given a single other example for comparison except robert's one. Which IMO was as bad as any monarch could be

Because they're cooler and more interesting than their boring a** faves. If there's one thing the "intellectuals", incels, and karens of the fandom love is some goo'ol fashion DuTy and characters acting like robots. Rule is: you displayed emotion you are henceforward dumb/stupid. Also, never forget kids, it's only wrong if a Targaryen did it! Which is why they don't like the Targaryens... well most of them. Hence why you have certain Targaryens who are ok to like because they... well were kind of boring in a sense? Way into religion or duty and/or being a punching bag. Those are the fandoms pre-approved Targs like Naerys, (asoiaf canon) Helaena, Maegelle... Vaegon. Elaena can be liked too but she needs some work, like saying her rumoured "affair" with Aegon IV was SA, 'cause you know, we can't have a character enjoying seggs for nothing else than good ol' DuTy. They also tend to like Daeron II, and I actually think he was a very cool dude but the reason they like him is because they think he bent the knee to Dorne in a sense, and because they probably see his marriage to Myriah as one of DuTy instead of love and passion; plus bonus points for him for his beef with Daemon B who was very Targaryen. They will also like Targaryens who in a sense "cleansed" themselves from their original sin (of being a Targaryen) by marrying people from outside their house. Some examples are Rhaenys (Aemon's daughter) and Rhaelle (Egg's daughter who married a Baratheon). Daella they could like - since she married a Arryn - BUT Daella was very emotional and Rodrick was buddies with the Devil aka Jaehaerys, so they can't like her.

We actually have an example before: how Westeros was divided and always waring BEFORE the Targaryens :D but that sh:t isn't really very convenient to bring up.

Bottom-line: Logic isn't really strong with this lot, so let's just let them be. We do have something in common with the antis, which is that we love to spend time with House Targaryen. Difference is, we're having fun, and they are spreading hate and many times misinformation as well. But anything so they can have a parallel of their fav with their "good" Targaryen of choice, or between another character they dislike and a "bad" Targaryen just to hammer down how bad that Targaryen is :(