#And grandma Finch too

[ribcageeater]

Trying to practice some kind of semi realism and I spaced out and drew teenage Cassie Finch, I'm actually really proud of this :]]]

I'm not 100% sure how I did this (don't expect me to ever be able to do something so amazing again)

(Cassie Finch belongs to @drawingsfromthefrogwar)

[finchmarie]

My pretty girl recently had her first zoomies at the new barn we’re boarding at. Couldn’t be more grateful to see her coming out of her shell after she has been kept in a small pen for the last decade or so.

[hareofhrair]

Edith Finch and the Unreliable Narrator

Oh you thought I was done losing my shit over that game? Nah I’ve just been letting it ferment a while. This is just part one because I need to sleep, I’ll hit you with the rest later.

What Remains of Edith Finch has been analyzed pretty thoroughly through the years since its release, but none of the analysis I've seen has ever quite done it for me, in part because I think they are all overlooking an incredibly crucial element of the story.

This is a story about unreliable narrators.

It's not just a cheeky reference that House of Leaves is one of the books found throughout the Finch house. It too is about nested unreliable narration, and I believe is there to draw attention specifically to this element of the game. Edith is not telling us the truth. The stories she reads are not telling her the truth. The result is a matroyshka doll of contradictions and carefully unexamined clues.

Here's a few of the more blatant contradictions, just to prove my point.

Grandma Edie is wheelchair bound. Yet in the retelling of Edith's final night in the house, she sees Edie standing unassisted on the porch. But eh, it's difficult to see. Maybe she had a walker. (Edit: nah that's totally a walker forget this one)

So how about this little nugget.

We are given explicit dates for when Lewis died, when Edith and her mother left, and when Edie died.

Actually, we're given two explicit dates for when Edie died.

We have Lewis's date of death from his tombstone, as November 21, 2010. Edith specifies it was exactly a week after this (November 28) that her mother informed Edie they were leaving, and that same night they fled the house, leaving Edie alone. Edith claims Edie was found dead by nursing home carers the next morning, November 29.

The date on Edie's tombstone is December 5th. A solid week after Edith claims she died.

Here's one of my favorites. Walter is hit by a train that should not exist. The real life Orcas island does not have a train, but in most games I would simply write that off as artistic liberty.

But having a train on an island that small at all does not make sense. Furthermore, even if there were a train, why would the tunnel pass directly under a residential home? Having lived near train tracks, if it were that close to the house at all, the entire family would have been very aware of it, and yet it seems to have caught Walter by surprise. And where is it now? Did they shut it down after Walter was hit? And why would Walter take a sledgehammer to a random wall in the inexplicable tunnels below his already subterranean secret bunker, instead of just going up stairs? Was he afraid of going back through the house? And more importantly:

How does Edith know about any of this?

She had no idea Walter was down there.

("After Barbara died he got as far away as he could" is another lie btw. Walter didn't enter the bunker until he was 16, eight years after Barbara's death, the same year Dawn was born)

So what did they tell her when he died, in 2005, when she was about six years old? Maybe they hid it from her, she's a small child, maybe she just didn't remember. What did they tell her at literally any time after that when she presumably asked about Walter's grave in the family plot? She knew Walter existed, she played in his bedroom. Did she never ask where he was? What happened to him? She has a mysterious uncle she's never met, and then one day out of nowhere there's a new grave for him out back, and she doesn't ask for any explanation about that?

Walter's letter doesn't say he was hit by a train.

I bring this one up not because it's a particularly blatant contradiction, it's actually a pretty fuzzy one with a lot of weird, circumstantial explanations. But it leads into one I think is really important.

When Edith arrives at the house, she informs us the power has been cut off.

But after she leaves the bunker, lights begin turning on.

Eventually culminating in Edith's room being fully illuminated.

This is also the point at which she stops talking about investigating and wanting to find out the truth and switches to "Maybe there is no truth, actually! Maybe it was all just a self fulfilling prophecy and none of these bizarre situations mean anything! You should definitely NOT come here and dig deeper into it."

This is the point at which I think Edith switches from more or less honestly repeating unreliable stories she has no way of verifying, to straight up lying to us, in an effort to discourage her son from ever coming here. There's no answers here, she assures him. Stay away.

People who try to handwave this as a mundane situation, either caused by hereditary mental illness (some real ableist takes about that out there btw yall, yikes) or simply a string of unrelated tragedies highlighting the randomness of death, the complicated ways we grieve, and how sometimes when people die they leave behind unanswered questions that we simply have to live with— Are neglecting the aspects of the story which are blatantly fantastical.

This "string of unrelated tragedies" has been haunting this same family for over 500 years. To the degree there are multiple books written about the curse, by presumably non family members. A man sailed a house across the Atlantic for pete's sake. Even looking at just the deaths since the Finches arrived in America, you cannot tell me that's a normal amount of tragic, unnatural deaths. And Finches have apparently been dying this way and at this rate since the 1400's. You're really going to tell me that's just bad luck? If nothing else, the fact that the family hasn't died out yet with a death rate that high is proof of something unnatural.

How about the fact that Edith's mother was SO alarmed by Edie trying to give her that history of the family, that she got into a physical altercation with a 93 year old, then fled the house, literally just grabbed her kid and booked it, abandoning literally everything she owned, including mementos of her dead husband and children. And then she never came back for them.

If this was a simple case of Dawn and Edie having a personal disagreement, even a pretty intense one worth cutting someone off for, you would think at some point in the seven years following Edie's death, she might have wanted to come back and pick up her stuff!

What was it about Edie trying to give Edith that book that made Dawn change her plans from "we're going to move out" to "we are leaving immediately with the clothes on our backs and never coming back?"

Why does Dawn think Edie's stories killed her children?

And why does Edith never enter the library?

Once we're shown that final evening in the house, it's clear that Edith has known the secret passage into the library from the start. And yet, in the "present" of the game, she never enters it. We only see the inside of the library during her flashback.

You would think, of all the answers Edith might want, the biggest might be what was in that book Edie tried to give her. And if it's anywhere, it's probably still in the library.

But it doesn't come up. Edith, very carefully, I think, completely avoids the subject.

Let's talk about Milton for a minute.

Milton's story is the shortest and contains the least actual details about what may have happened to him. He simply disappeared. Important note, he's not the only one. Barbara's boyfriend also "just disappeared." If I had a nickle for every mysterious disappearance that's happened in this house, I'd have two nickles! Which isn't a lot, but hey, I think maybe any mysterious disappearances are unusual, let alone two.

According to the writers, Milton is the king in their other game "The Unfinished Swan," which is a surreal fantasy that takes place in a magic kingdom. Kind of rules out Milton having just fallen in the lake and drowned during a mental health episode, doesn't it? Kinda makes it explicit that something not normal is going on here, doesn't it?!

Milton's murals are in every secret passage in the house. He knew them all. He knew the house better than maybe anyone.

And when he disappeared, his mother's response was to seal the doors of all the bedrooms. Why? What did she think happened to him? What was her rational for this?

And even more bafflingly, Edie's response to this is to drill peepholes.

Dawn's response to her son's disappearance is to turn her dead relatives bedrooms into sealed tombs. Edie's response is to insist she be able to see into those tombs. And this was apparently an acceptable compromise to Dawn.

Notably, the one exception is Walter's room. There's a peephole under construction in the garage that was presumably for this room. But why did Dawn save that one for last? What made it such a low priority? The fact that there wasn't a memorial in there, because Walter was under the house instead?

Hey, I actually misled you a bit back there. I said she sealed up the bedrooms. That's not completely accurate.

She also sealed the library.

The library where Edie tries to give Edith the family history, that final night in the house.

How did Edie get into the library? I somehow doubt a wheel chair using 96 year old crawled through that secret passage.

Among the bedrooms Dawn sealed, one of them was Edie's. She didn't seal her own or Lewis's or Edith's rooms, so she clearly didn't expect them all to abandon the rooms they were using and sleep in the living areas. So where exactly was Edie sleeping?

Hey, so I actually misled you a bit there, when I said the library was the exception to Dawn only sealing up the old bedrooms.

There's a cot in the library.

Someone was sleeping in there.

During the flashback, Edith doesn't acknowledge it, so why is it there? What is it meant to imply? Was Edie sleeping down here instead of her bedroom upstairs? Sure, I could buy that, stairs are clearly an issue for her.

Except, remember, the door was sealed. Only accessible by crawling on all fours through a cabinet that's maybe 2ftx2ft.

The only remotely plausible scenario is that there is another, more elderly-accessible passage into the library, presumably (since there's no space for it anywhere else) somewhere in the HUGE portion of the third floor we never get to see, and which Dawn and family decided to build a shanty town on top of instead of live in. And that in the couple of minutes between when we hear Dawn and Edie arguing in the dining room and when Edie appears in the library, she booked it up two flights of stairs and down again. Plausible!

But Occam's Razor provides a much simpler explanation.

Edith is lying.

I think it's time to talk about the books.

The books that fill the Finch house are a constant, looming presence. And I do mean constant. There is nowhere in the house that they are not. They're in the secret passages, they're in Walter's bunker, they're in the basement— Literally everywhere.

A lot of the titles are repeated, over and over, and I think this one can safely be chalked up to the realities of making a video game. The amount of work it would take to make that many unique books, the hefty chunk it would add to the game's file size-- The impact it would have on the framerate alone, trying to render all the damn things! So I don't think it's surprising or particularly meaningful that the books repeat as often as they do.

But see, the thing is, they didn't just make one set of books and copy paste it into every room in the house.

Instead, every room gets its own, bespoke book collection, featuring a mix of repeated titles and books seen literally nowhere else.

You go back and read that paragraph up there about how resource intensive and insane it would be to make all the books unique, and then tell me the fact that they DID make them all unique (albeit in a slightly more practical fashion) doesn't mean anything.

So let's talk about some of the titles on display in the Finch house.

I already mentioned House of Leaves, a story about unreliable narrators and a house that grows an impossible hallway that can't physically fit in the space it occupies. I'm gonna talk some more about that later when I get to the maps, just you wait. It's one of the books that appears repeatedly through all rooms.

Other books seen throughout the house include: the Necronomicon. The King in Yellow. Infinite Jest. Gravity's Rainbow. The Weird. And three separate stories by Jorge Luis Borges.

The Necronomicon and The King in Yellow, as well as being allusions to the eldritch mythos of Lovecraft (which is its own whole bag of cats) have something in common with Infinite Jest. They all feature what you might call cognitohazards. Meaning, something that poses a danger to any person who has perceived it. By reading the Necronomicon, you irrevocably bring yourself into the awareness of Lovecraft's eldritch beings. The King in Yellow features a play, which when seen induces madness. Infinite Jest features a film which when viewed causes the subjects to lose all interest in anything other than watching it, eventually leading to their deaths. Additionally, they are all three named after the cognitohazard they feature, meaning it's impossible to tell if the books on the Finch's shelves are the stories that feature these things, or the things themselves.

Gravity's Rainbow and The Weird are two of many books featured in the house which are experimental and surreal or straight up part of the genre known as weird fiction. Defining weird fiction is sort of a debate on its own, but it's a relatively modern genre, applied retroactively to stories as far back as the 1930's but which experienced a resurgence (called the New Weird) in the 80's and 90's. To try and roughly describe it, it's a genre of supernatural fantasy and horror which features transgressive, experimental, and non traditional elements. Lovecraft is considered a writer of weird fiction. He described it thus:

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

What Remains of Edith Finch is, itself, a work of weird fiction. And that's not me talking out of my ass, the writers have said as much in interviews.

Which would then imply, by it's very nature, an element of the supernatural.

Just an element that you don't dare look at.

[allthecastlesonclouds]

tell me about drawtectives. what is this little show.

oooooh my god oh my god. they are my guys. so.

drawtectives itself is a youtube series created by julia lepetit on Drawfee. it's an rpg mystery show– s1 is a murder mystery, s2 is just a mystery– that doubles as an art challenges show. she draws all of the backgrounds and npcs and most of the assets (the 'cutscenes', you could call them) and then the team gets together, knowing absolutely nothing besides what julia's asked them to prepare, and does some funky improv to create a very funky storyline.

there are 3 players and one dm; the pcs are rosé, york, and grendan/grenda/grandma/gma, and the Big NPCs are Jancy True (s1/s2) and Eugene Finch (s2) and they're, in their own words, a found family, so. beloved. their backup plan if all their jobs fail is to move out east and open a bookstore. jancy and eugene have fully accepted their titles as mom/ancestral ghost and son despite meeting each other likely once before the drawtectives dragged them together. overall though if i had to summarize, it's a bunch of friends getting together, making a bunch of puns, appreciating julia's art, and laughing together. the vibes are 10/10 so loving. in writing the transcripts i've written (Karina laughs) (Nathan laughs) (All laugh) So Many Times it's just fun.

so there's three pcs. first one we meet is gyorik 'york' rogdul, who's a half-orc come to the city to learn about his mother's culture. he is the character we have by far the most lore for– if I compiled all the lore I had about the Northern Tribes and Wild Trains, I think the document would be multiple pages. he's also illiterate, which was an interesting decision for the english major of the group to make (in other words, York Will Not Be Illiterate For Season Three bc Y'all Cannot Read) and morally gray if you think about it too hard (he killed his own brother) but yknow he's hot so it's okay. they're all hot any crimes committed are okay. he's also aroace (confirmed by the player, which is!! vibes!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TELLING ME @axolotllee!)

rosé is the Human Rogue and the youngest of the party; her main trait in s1 was Millennial and she Dealt with that. she, in contrast with York, has so little lore we are scraping the barrel. she was a thief, then left everything about that life behind and changed her name to rosé when she went to work for jancy. she lied on her resumé. she knows how to sew; she's sewn Pockets of Holding on most of her clothing. she bonded with a stray cat that lived outside her last apartment. she's three credits short of graduating college. she's, in addition to being a drawtective, jancy's intern, and cried when jancy got her a cupcake. she won't tell her best friends when her birthday is or where she goes to school or what her last name is. that's all we know about her and i love her and she could probably kill someone as she has multiple knives on her person and does not use them. she's bright and funny and can be pretty dark but really does find the humor in it which is. wonderful.

so grendan highforge starts out as The Snobby Rich Boy which. already love the trope something Always Happens To Them if they're a pc. then through s1 they make an offhand comment about a character (faucon, whose name is pronounced 'falco') and how if her name was pronounced that way it'd be grenda. faucon asks how they feel about it. they are caught very off-guard by that and then ask to be called it for the next hour or so. then the next witness calls him gma, and then grandma, and then. yeah she realizes she's genderfluid. and he uses any pronouns and has a full beard and also wears a romper and loves dogs and the player is the Most Experienced TTRPG-er so through maybe using resources a bittt grandma is the most observant character of all of them. he's also a dog walker and a lightweight and does canonically have druidic magic though that was Not Touched On Much and showed up to their first day on the job slightly stoned (they did stop doing that though.) she carries around a box to make the height difference (york is 7'. grendan is 4'. rosé is 6'. you can see the formatting issue) slightly less difficult. she doesn't know how rhinos reproduce but has had a fascination with them since a police chief said one might've committed a crime. i think they could kill someone by talking too much but they don't actually have the strength or dex to do Jack Shit.

and jancy true is the head pi (a great many of the characters are puns and i love it so much) and is there to make sure things get done and clues don't get missed. she has a cochlear implant and uses a cane and solved s1 just by Reading The Paper and hearsay. she solved about half of s2 before Someone Stopped Her. she says hello children to the drawtectives and it is such a fond thing. eugene is. a guy who i love. julia started the show thinking he would be some mysterious character to join them and then made the wonderful improv decision– avoiding having to do npc-npc conversation– of saying 'yeah eugene is spinning a camera on its stand' and rosé just says so gleefully. 'guys. i think he's stupid.' and he became their son. his character is a lot of The Plot of s2 so i don't want to get into it too much but. jancy and eugene my beloved.

they're just. such a family. to quote nathan (grenda's Player) from the s2 talkback: "That's one of my favorite things about this show, is we came in with these vague ideas for characters, and just playing them with each other, they became friends and became better people as a result of knowing each other and solving mysteries. ... Like, we all kind of independently made our characters people that either were distant from their families or, you know, just had tenuous connections to other stuff, and so these are, like, the realest connections they have in their lives."

and then karina (rosé) about 10 seconds later: "Yeah, we love a found family where they bond over just being the worst."

god. them. they're chaotic and loud and feel very real to me. they have excitement and are pretty bad at social cues but they love each other and want to die together because they would hate too much to be separated. i could articulate this better but it's one in the morning and they mean a great deal to me.

[kissorkill16]

Are We Friends Now?: A Hello Neighbor Fanfic

By JJ

Summary: Are they friends now?

"Nick, can you answer me this?"

Delroy passed the note to Nicky in the front. He waited, and the note was passed back to him a minute later.

"Not now, I'm trying to pay attention."

As Nicky continued to try and pay attention, he was passed back another note. He pushed it back to Delroy and continued to listen to the teacher speak, but the note was passed back to him.

"Please?"

Nicky rolled his eyes and looked at the boy behind him.

"Fine. What do you want?", he whispered to Delroy.

"Turn the paper over.", Delroy whispered back to him.

Nicky looked back at the paper and turned it over.

"Are we friends now? Because it feels like I don't hate you as much as I used to anymore. You helped me up when the principal's office exploded, I tried helping you up when you tripped that time in the woods, I was there when we broke Finch's camera, we went into the weather station together and made it out alive, and you hugged me when you were crying about your grandma. We've been talking to each other more often, and without arguing too. Does this mean we're friends now?"

Nicky's eyes widened as he read the note.

Why was he asking this?

Did Delroy want to be friends? Was that why he was asking him this?

Technically, he was right. During this whole Crowface investigation, they've been fighting with each other less and helping each other out more. And the time where he hugged him, he might have to think more about that making them friends, since only friends hugged each other.

But if he was being completely honest, he didn't know if he wanted to be friends with Delroy either.

So he just wrote down an honest answer and gave the note back to Delroy.

"I don't know, man. I'll have to think about it. You should think about it too."

[bigmack2go]

I got live‘sies so its time to appreciate‘sies some brackrond‘sies detailies

Not rly bc but i live how it looks like were zooming up, and then back down the lodge before and after santafee prologue

Why tf is crutchie su confused when he wakes up

Jack proceeds to sleep with one of just drawings wtf

He waves his hand infront of crutchie like „ur eyes closed yet??“

Al playing and leaning on the rail ahhhh ahshwksmdnxlxl (in case u didnt know: i love albert)

Race laughing and slapping specs

Everyone just deads in their tracks and teams up when Albert gives his coment that went to far

Finch scratching his head is so real

DID BIRD FLY TWEETY BOY JUST LEAN IN FOR A GOODMORNING KISS

AND DID GINGER MF JUST REFUSE BIRD FLY TWEETY BOY HIS KISS??

The slap on his chest like „not now honey“ 😭swejfcizp

Ike and mike arent in the same thibgy thing. For fucks sake thank god cuz its been bothering me for a while how they only get mentioned in the same context. I hate it when they do that. Wait nvm that looked like mush but it actually was mike.

Naw sniper can be so adorable

Did i mention i fucking love jojo

Smalls snd finch sharing a room ™️

Crutchie is so done w jacks bullshit

LMAO BUTTONS COMBING HIS HAIR

Albert posing infront of the „mirror“ is so me tbh

Ive mever seen anyone struggle this mutch to out on a hat as blink. All those tbh thats smt that could be me prolly

Specs babe what r u doing on the floor

Race shaking his jaket is so overdramatic and its perfect

Mush and henry are a duo I didn’t know I needed.

Why is mush acting like hes in a circus lmfao

Tommy struggling with the pants is everything

Elmer just took his cap off, put it in his pocket, and the magicaly made it apear in his other hand???

Who is tommy saluting at

Naw specs is like a big brother to livesies blink and it breaks my heart in the best way possible

Albert jumps in the middle like when i slide through the kitchen on my socks lmfao

Tbh sniper just wanted to move too

Sky. What was your thought process when you looked at darcy‘s ass instead of Katherine‘s even tho you knew this was gonna be in the proshot?

BUTTONS WTF??

Finch is such a mood istg

Snipe honey ily but you are being a little creepy

HENRY YOU JUST PUT ON THE JACKET HOW DID IT GO OFF U AGAIN?

I demant to know what jojo is doing

Ok smalls just sitting there dangling their feet is everything

BUTTONS ALSO LOOKED AT DARCY INSTEAD OF KATH WTH ?? HER ASS CABT BE THAT BAD /j

Kath awkward queen

Darcy going „alright“ like „okay thats enough, im done— your dONE“

HES SO PROUD 🥹

Specs. Going down backwards are leathers. This are stairs. Please watch where you’re goibg

RACE TOO IS EYEING DARCY INSTEAD OF KATHERINE

Istg romeo and jack r the only ones eyeing kathering wtf is thos?

RACE LOOKS AT CRUTCHES SO KNOWINGLY LIKE AN INSIDE JOKES UNDER BROTHERS LMFAO I LOVE THAT. THEYRE MAKING FUN OF JACK TOGETHER AHSHWKENFN

Ok so elmer actually looked at kath but he honestly just looks angry

Tommy boy save me, youre the only normal person here!

Nvm

Race wtf is your deal??

OKAY SOMEONE HELP ELMER I THINK HES HAVING A SEIZURE

How is blink STILL bot done?!

Jacks just talking to the air

Every single one of finches facial expressions. Like i can’t even count them all.

Hes so done lmfao

Mush? Wtf? Stop? Please?

You wanna share with the class tommy? We wanna laugh too

Buttons just watches like he just gave up like,,, ah whatever you do you

Mush is becoming a poledancer??

WJEN DID SPECS GO BACK UP THERE WTF

Race slapping buttons on the cheek like a grandma💀💀💀

We all agree that albert is that one friend where the whole friendgroup thinks he’s the token straight friends but hes everything but that, its just that he doesn’t talk about it a lot. And there’s that one friend (i wonder who/j) that knows fron experienced how thats just so fucking wrong

Elmer is like „😒😒😒—oh shit thats my cue- IM HAPPY“

So i got aprox two seconds into it and now in tired so see u lmfao

[crows-junk-pile]

More oc posting, cult edition! So the town Moon and co. grew up in was home to a town wide cult who worshiped some kind of angel-like figure, I haven't quite figured it out but they have something about angels, which is why Finch hates his ability bc the cult and mostly his grandma made a big deal about him being able to have wings and it made him really uncomfortable and now he hates his ability.

So 6 years before the story proper starts this cult town was planning a ritual to summon whoever they're worshipping and that would raise the town and every thing in a 15 mile radius and that would be really bad because the reason that the cult can even pull this off despite their being not a lot of people with magic/abilities there is bc theirs a magic core crystal thingy under the mountain that the town is close too and the ritual would destroy that crystal which for some reason is really bad for Kore. Something about too many deaths too soon.

[drawingsfromthefrogwar]

The thing with the Sims is actually really smart and I'm gonna go do that :D

I love doing it ! its really fun and helps a lot with aphantasia. I have done jaylynn's apartment, mickey's apartment, site 72, finch family childhood home, and the floor plan of grandma and granpa finch's home, <-got too excited to start drawing the comic to finish furnishing it

site 600 is the biggest building ive done so far and I am struggling. very excited very excited

[minisculecosmos]

My grandma passed away almost four years ago.

they say death is love persevering

it's been four years now, and you're still always on my mind.

february means something so different now.

i remember how much you loved me, i remember how my mom didn't always know how much you loved her. i think i'll always carry that feeling of how you never spoke your love, but boy did you show it.

i remember the plate you'd bring me while i was studying. my favorites, the same since I was a baby, a grilled cheese, some fruit, and a can of fresca. the soda that you showed me as a baby when my mom was at work and by some miracle calmed me down. i had never tasted it before. i still haven't except for when your house still felt like home. it always reminds me of your silent, but ever so constant love for me. you always made me feel so safe.

with it, you brought the newspaper, already folded to reveal the word games at the end. i still play those games, when i can, and they always remind me of you and grandpa, playing late at night when i couldn't sleep. you must have been so tired too, but never too tired to make a cup of cinnamon tea, and lull me back to sleep while you read a book with your sweet, so intelligent voice.

you didn't like leaving the house. the house had the cats, and it was quiet, and maybe i judged you for it then but now i understand the real appeal of home. how hard it can be to leave. you rarely did leave. but when you did, so often it was for your grandchildren, because if anything was worth moving for, it was for those you love. i get that now.

i don't know nearly enough about you. i know what you studied in college, and that you met grandpa there, but nothing about why. i want to know why you loved the library so much, if it's in the same way that i carry with me between those shelves in your old room. i regret not asking you more. i was too young to realize that i wouldn't ever get the chance to again.

i remember when we got your diagnosis. how impossible it seemed, once it settled, impossible that such a thing would happen to you, impossible that such a thing could ever win.

i remember leaving the hospital, knowing i would never see you or hear your knowing voice again. i didn't know it then, but years later, all i wish for sometimes is that when life gets hard, if you would just walk in with that homemade lunch and suddenly everything would be okay.

i see you every time i spot a finch in a tree. i see you in every hummingbird perched on a feeder. i see you whenever i spy your favorite shade of purple in a cloud or on a paper. i see you in my mother, i see you in me, and i see you in all the spaces you left unfilled.

i don't know if you made it to heaven. all i know is that I prayed, and i hope to God that you did too.

i miss you so much grandma. this time of year is always wintery and cold where i live now, but it's never seemed quite so harsh as when i can't give you a call.

you mean so much to me. it hurts to cry and it hurts to grieve but if there's one thing i will never regret, it's spending a fraction of my energy on the memory of you when you gave oh so much of yours for me.

I'll love you forever. My grandmother.

2/12/20

[noxexistant]

OKAY. I will start with rehearsal shenanigans because there have been very many, and I want the world to know how chaotic and wonderful my cast is.

So I'm playing a Race who utterly resents Davey for the whole first act of the show, which has translated into a running joke where I, acting as Race, will deadpan snark Davey's actress at any given opportunity. My favorite moment of this so far was last week when we were running Seize the Day and she tried to throw an arm over my shoulder, at which point I shoved her off and glared. It took a moment before she goes "NO this is Act One! Nooooo :( " Earlier in rehearsals she was chilling on the ground and asked me to help her up when blocking started again. I crouched down like I was going to, then said "No. Suffer." and walked away, (It's all good fun, she and I are good friends!).

Scab 3's line has been changed so she says "heck" instead of "hell." The change for this was quite dramatic, since she had already learned her line and she was SO excited to swear onstage xD The director apologized and told her "we don't want to upset any grandmas in the audience." Scab 3 replies to this with "But /my/ grandma won't care!" Just so devastated xD

Less of a problem now, but in Act One Jack kept saying everyone else's lines but forgetting his own, which caused a lot of confusion and a lot of teasing.

Finch's actress had trouble getting the timing for "HEY What's the hold up?" In Carrying the Banner for the first half of rehearsal and when she finally got it right she screamed the line so loudly that she scared Splasher's actress and made her jump a good foot to the side.

Speaking of CtB, Elmer manages to hurt himself every time we run that song. The kid has so much energy and the blocking has him flinging himself down on the "And DEAD" line and he commits too hard xD

Also in CtB I managed to smack Jack in the face during one of our first runs of the dance and we both started laughing so hard we couldn't finish the song ^^'' CtB is dangerous in our show xD

Splasher as a character is selectively mute and goes nonverbal in high stress situations. Splasher's actress, meanwhile, is the one who gets us yelled at for talking when the director/music director/choreographer are trying to give us instructions. I look forward to seeing if she can really stay quiet during the show ^^'' (I love her dearly, but she's got a motormouth)

One guy is double cast as Morris and Spot. His quick change time is *insane* and we all have to make a path backstage as he books it to his spot for Brooklyn's Here.

Also Race abandons Crutchie to Snyder at the end of Act 1 :3 We told his mom (who is play Jacobi) about that and her response was "People will have FEELINGS about that." kind of warning, but we were just like "Yes. That is the point. >:3" She's one of the only people who actually knows though - Crutchie's actor and I have been planning in secret. We even had a private powwow behind the theatre to finalize things last week and we both glared when a parent came around the back. She very slowly backed away xD

Whenever Finch's actress is asked why her character's nickname is Finch she spouts the most disturbing, concerning story she can think of. It is never the same story twice. We have now incorporated that into her character so her morbid weirdness is now canon to our Finch.

Also Pulitzer (stage) punched Jack in the face a good eight times at rehearsal last week, so that was fun ^^

And I think that's a good spot to end! There's lots more, and of course a ton of lore (I haven't even mentioned Tommy Boy or the Tommy Boy Defense Squad) but it is late and I'm gonna go to bed~

!!! oh this is so detailed i am so excited

first off: LOVE race n davey having a complicated dynamic marked by race’s resentment. he’s so biting and mean to davey in uksies and it’s fantastic, and the fake-out with the helping up is SUCH a race move. i can just picture davey grumbling as he clambers up by himself, race walking away all the while.

scab 3 is so valid! (#letscab3sayhell) but honestly i think i like the line as “what the heck” even better - it sounds more childish, and they are just kids!

finch scaring splasher is SO cute (and something to be more expected of someone like albert). elmer getting so excited he injures himself, however, is deeply on-brand - as is race hitting jack in the face and then laughing about it. that’s real brother vibes right there

!!! selectively mute splasher my beloved!! that’s such a good idea, and the actress struggling because she talks a lot is so sweet 😭 i have full faith in her pulling it off! channel the splasher! (imagine finch is gonna come scare her again if she talks)

a morris/spot double cast is WILD, i love it - the gap between him n oscar dragging jack to the basement and then brooklyn’s here is so slim!! that is a QUICK change. incredibly funny to imagine being mowed down in a hallway by morris delancey changing into spot conlon for a song though

also crutchie’s mum was RIGHT, i have MANY FEELINGS about race abandoning crutchie

lying about the origins of the nickname does feel very finch. i can see him straight-facing “oh, i ate a bird. i’unno if it was really a finch, though.”

thank you so much for sharing all these details!!! i love hearing about stuff like this, everyone’s lil things they add to characters is so so fun. and just the general chaos of theatre

[meringuecream7]

Here’s an all-about Poppy the Enthusiastic Finch post! So yeah. She’s George’s twin sister, Kyle’s wife, and Melody’s great-grandma. She started poetry when she went to kindergarten with her brother when they were four. She writes poems in a book and a peppy way. And when she met Brenda in elementary school, she waved her hand in delight to meet her. Brenda taught her to dance. So, Poppy followed her to her family, and when she saw George, she waved to him. His heart suddenly thumped rapidly and blushed red. Poppy saw that in shock and went to their room. She asked him why her brother couldn’t help a blush. Poppy realized he was in love with Brenda!

Poppy went outside and saw the blossoms and clouds, jotted them down in her book, and went inside. She then witnessed George covered in kisses. Devastated, she marched up to Brenda and asked her, “What did you do to my brother?” Brenda explained that she received a love letter from George. So Poppy apologized and ran to her room.

While she was walking down the sidewalk, she bumped into a man. The man said, “Hey there! I’m Kyle.” Poppy waved back and the two made such good friends. Kyle then proposed to Poppy, and they had a good wedding. Then they found a house where they could build. Then the couple had a son named Charlie. While attending school as a teacher for a year. She met a bullied little boy. So she told the bullies not to harm him. The boy said that his name was Dave. So Poppy spent time with him for a year and loved his drawings.

Poppy hated being alone, so she went to war by herself. And her hopes are safe with her. She threw the grenade in sheer fear. Shivers went down her spine and heard the sound, so she rummaged from her pocket and a piece of paper. She smirked that Kyle gave it to her and which is when - surprise! - her brother was at war too! They looked so confused. So they fought a war together like a duo. When the war is over, she and her brother fist-bumped and held hands and ran in pride.

When Poppy stretched outside and strolled with her husband and son suddenly, she became dizzy and collapsed into the ground.

At the hospital, Kyle and Charlie waited for her to get well. Poppy was losing consciousness, so she fell. Poppy’s ghost was a finch-like spirit, and when she met Kel, she waved and comforted her. And to her surprise, her brother came, she ran and hugged him.

Her character is nice and lively, but a little stubborn.

Alright the relationships to Poppy:

Kel- She pulled up funny faces to make her laugh.

George- She’s his twin sister, so they played together. But they squabble sometimes.

Brenda- She was her childhood friend. Poppy danced and danced while Brenda was dancing too.

Dave- When she was a teacher, she saw Dave being bullied by the kids. She cheered him up by admiring his artwork.

That’s all folks!

[moomoorare]

In my head while Rain and Finch are similar. In age for example, and they're both intersex. So they bond a lot. They're also like... There's something poetic about them and the way they came about.

Finch is basically a dead bird brought back to life. Because he was an abandoned egg in the forest, he WAS dead. He's morphed by all the magic used to bring him back and develop. All the rituals and magic, leave him marked by the love he's made of. Why he looks so much like Hannah and Tina, even though he's not biological theirs. Why he's still a bit of a fairy and a bit of a demon, but a forest soul foremost. His hair and wings are supposed to look tan and red (look at willows hair to see) but the colors are washed away. So are his eyes, meant to be green, now gray. But he is alive. And so so loved. He comes from death, but is now life. (He gets sick a lot though, and while it's never death threatening, his immune system is not strong. He also gets overwhelmed a lot and is generally a very silent kid. Also in my head, and this has nothing to do with it, he's autistic, and very susceptible to noises, so he carries around noise cancelling headphones.)

Rain is life prevailing over death. A tiny speck neither Puffy or Niki knew about, the beginning of another probably unsuccessful pregnancy. A tiny life that despite it all, survives. It's kind of, sadly, funny that a curse is what allowed him to be born. A curse meant to kill him or Puffy, and both of them came out alive thanks to their family, friends and love they all share. He's a survivor too. And Puffy and him, do have a price to pay for that, survival of the curse means to be tormented by ghosts. Rain a bit more literally, he can see his grandma's ghost, which is. Guess what! The weird unmarked pirate grave where Puffy got her curse. So her mother did die because of it, and Puffy survived. You can imagine her guilt.. probably why Rain is her favorite lol. He represents all the good things that came from it. Rain is so so special, like to me writing him, but also because FUCKK, he's supposed to be like this big omen of death but really he signifies love and life.

[cereusblue]

hi ! if you ever wanna become friends ( I’m honestly nervous to send this off anon my bad ) one day I’d love to ! I’ve known you through this blog for a while now, your cat are so cool ! I just have vibes towards people I think are cool, and you’re really cool too !! So if you ever wanna yeah !

Oh and, I wanna know how you’re doing and all, I like hearing about people I think are cool days-

Becoming friends is a little more than just passing a note in class to checkmark yes or no, love lol. If there's chemistry, then nice! If not, I'm still so honored you're still hanging around supporting me!

As for how I'm doing? I mean it's winter so my joints are suffering. It's a little hard to do anything at all art wise. Working on getting to the next doctor i need to see about it though so things are hopefully gonna get better in time lol.

We got new furniture! Got a giant pantry and gods did it take forever. 9 hour project on Christmas eve. But it was worth it! Cleaned out the kitchen quite a bit and now we actually have space to cook (kind of). The next project is getting like a craft cabinet and a dinner table.

Also working on getting into some new hobbies. Debating what I want to do. Also wanting to send my fiancé to college as we'd really like to have a house one day. Lots of work in the background. He's busy with his games too and I can't wait till he puts those out. 💙

Also an update, we now have birds! Four zebra finches. We took them as part of a thanks to one of our friends lol. Let me tell you, owning finches is like having a drama playing in your house 24/7. Also we essentially don't need alarm clocks anymore because when their light turns on at 7am? Bird activated, time to scream. We have three ladies and one boy. The oldest is the Grey finch, her name is Ma because she's grandma. Second is the perfectly white lady Alligator Maiden because she's an absolute bitch. And then her baby is BB who is light grey. Then our lucky man is Florida Man, he's got the cheeks.

[frogmanfae]

Newsies as shit that happened at band camp part 5

Race: Hi sir limps a lot!

Finch: He looks sad...

Race: Limpy are you okay? :(

Crutchie: It's 8 in the goddamn morning why am I awake

Race: *already walking up to the field for pictures* Oooohh someone's late!

Davey: *panicking* Shut the fuck up!

Jack: My mom got a button for my grandma

Crutchie: ... Life alert??

Jack: What?? No?? *pointing to a picture order form* Like a button with my band picture on it??

Davey: I think it's nice we tolerate each other's hyperfixations even if we don't technically understand them

Jack: Well I think it's pretty different. Mine is silly cowboys, yours is how likely the human race is to survive an apocalypse and how the world is inevitably going to end at some point

Davey: Yeah mine is a little more existential

Jack: Sometimes I can't manage it but that's only when I'm having a breakdown

Davey: Yeah which is only once... Twice a month

Jack: >:0

Albert: Blink said his back hurt so Mush gave him a massage because his dad is a chiropractor

Elmer: That's a weird cover up to their homoerotic relationship

Albert: Mush's dad will touch you in places you've never been touched before-

Mush: PLEASE STOP

Sarah: FUCK THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO FIND OUT I'M GAY BECAUSE OF TIKTOK

Davey: DAMNIT EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM IS DOOMED

Denton: Okay I have mallets, snare sticks, a harness screw, and two new drum keys for you guys

Albert: *sticking his hand through a crack in his drum head* ... So no head?

Buttons: *asleep on the floor somehow while the band plays*

Albert: *falls on top of a drum that was on a stand, causing the drums on either side to also fall*

Denton: Is... Is everything okay back there? Can we...? What's happening? Can we help him? Don't all move at once. What...??

Davey: *puts on his drum just as they're starting to run the halftime show*

Spot: Where the hell is my- YOU'RE WEARING MY DRUM!

Davey: OH SHIT!

Davey and Spot: *has to run out onto the field with the wrong drums*

Spot: SWITCH! FUCKING SWITCH ME!

Davey and Spot: *ultra speed drum switch just before the starting whistle*

(I can't properly explain how fucking funny this was)

Denton: Sizzle it with the same intensity as you play it

Elmer: What does a horse say when he falls over? Help! I can't giddy up

Buttons: *lovingly* you're a fucking idiot

Medda: Some of you are still popping instead of locking

Jack: Someone stop me before I throw something at Morris Delancey.

Race: What's he doing?

Jack: Nothing in particular, he's just irritating. Maybe I'm a bad person.

Spot: Okay drumline! Breathe in!....and out! Deep breath in again!...and out! Okay. This is the last time we're gonna do this-

Davey: This is literally band camp we have the entire season-

Spot: Okay so it's the last time we'll do this before it's real-

Albert: We'll probably do it tomorrow

Spot: Okay so we'll do it tomorrow and then-

Davey: And we'll probably play once school starts too. Like every day in class and then after school rehearsals-

Spot: Okay so-

Albert: So if we fuck it up we'll just do it tomorrow-

Spot: No!!! If anyone messes up they're fucked! Snares get those accents! If I hear you not playing the accents, your sticks are going into those woods right there!

Race: *mockingly pretending to cry behind Spot the entire speech*

Albert: Facts!

Race: What did you just say?

Albert: Fa- :0

Albert: *whispering* fags!

Denton: Okay, yep, everyone stop and look at the plane. There we go. We can wave to it if we want.

Literally everyone: *aggressive waving at the plane*

Denton: We're gonna roll with it....Roll /step/ with it

Tommy Boy: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHA *sudden blank face of unamusement*

[thewriteflame]

Meet the Writer

Thank you @the-finch-address for the tag! ^^

Rules: use this picrew to make yourself and answer the questions

Three fun facts about me:

When I was little I hated my hair being brushed and messed with so my thick, curly hair was always long and unruly. It was even past my elbows when I was eleven. Then I read The Princess Diaries and decided to cut my hair short like Mia's and that's when I discovered the freedom of short hair! I've kept it above my shoulders (usually in a bob or pixie) since.

I took Japanese for half a year in high school (age 14) before I changed to going to an online school. The only thing that makes me really regret changing schools is that I could have been semi-fluent or fluent in Japanese now. :/ (also Japanese was the only class I truly enjoyed so I really missed it)

Speaking of high school.... My grades were mediocre at best when I entered high school so the school stuck me in reading class. The teacher for the class just happened to be my first grade teacher and she looked very confused when she saw me there. They tested us to see where our reading level was and I was the last to start the test but first to finish. The school moved me to the advanced English class the next day and never looked further into why I was struggling so much. It was a decade later that I realized I have ADHD and most classes just aren't stimulating enough for me.

Favorite season: spring and first part of summer (before it gets too hot)... so like March-June

Continent where I live: North America

How I spend my time: Procrastinating lol... helping my grandma, scrolling through tumblr, watching anime, reading, writing, listening to music, watching Asian dramas, playing video games.

Are you published?: Honestly, I'm not sure I want to get published. I haven't even finished 1 novel so yeah....

Introvert or extrovert?: Introvert!

Favorite meal: I'm a foodie so there's so many meals I love but nothing beats Navajo tacos.

Not sure who all has done this, I'm sorry if you have. >.< Tagging: @blue-kyber @megarywrites @emelkae @ofbloodandflowers @pinespittinink

[kissorkill16]

POV Of A Bully: A Hello Neighbor Fanfic

By JJ

Summary: Finch's point of view when she first met Nicky and how things grew from there.

P.S., for @genericravenbrooksdude

When I had first met Nicky, I tried selling him a box of cookies. He said he didn't have any money, so I told him to step off.

"Why are you even talking to me if you don't have any money for cookies?", I thought. Seriously, there was a whole stack of cookies right on the table behind me, and he somehow didn't know I was selling them.

But I don't think it was really even about the cookies.

I guess I just didn't really tolerate Nicky because he was such a dork. He was obsessed with aliens, his hair was so messy and stuck up in the weirdest places, and he always brought torn up machines to school just to put them back together.

I always talked about him to my fellow girl scouts, and they laughed at him along with me.

"It's like he's fucking 5!", I used to laugh.

Then when he brought his crazy grandma to school, I thought that was golden. No wonder he was such a weirdo, he came from a family full of them!

Everyone laughed at him about it. How his grandma attacked a raven that flew into the school and didn't even bother to clean up the mess she made. We all thought he was as insane as her. However, there was one person who didn't even giggle at the incident.

That stupid Aaron Peterson.

He threatened to stab me if I didn't leave Nicky alone, and I left him alone, like an idiot. I wanted to know why the hell he even stood up for that little weirdo, he didn't even know him.

But that changed soon enough.

Aaron and Nicky became fast friends really quick. Wherever you saw Aaron, there was Nicky, and wherever you saw Nicky, there was Aaron. Their friendship was annoying, especially since they had roped two other girls into their gang of weirdos.

And one of them was my own freaking cousin!

Lucy had always been a sweet girl, and when I heard she also hung out with Aaron, I was livid. Oh Lucy, if only you knew the things he did and said to me in school.

After she died on the Rotten Core, I couldn't have hated Aaron anymore than I did back then. Then both him and Mya disappeared, and I couldn't have been happier.

Matter fact, the whole school was happy. Now that Aaron was gone, no one had to walk the halls in fear.

But of course, that weirdo, Nutty Nicky was the only one not happy with his disappearance. He thought their father murdered him and Mya, and he always said he was going to prove it.

Whenever he came to school with some sort of proof, we all laughed and made fun of him and told him he was such an obsessive hothead who stalked a lonely widow who lost his family. But Nicky wasn't the kind of person to give up so easily.

That whole thing went on for months.

Every other week, he'd tell us bullshit stories about him breaking into Mr. Peterson's house to find proof that he was a murderer. No one believed him, but he kept on doing it anyway.

I kind of admired his determination, it made him kind of cute in my eyes, but those days were just too much.

Then he disappeared.

No one really thought much of it, everyone thought he ran away like he always did.

But throughout the month he was gone, I kinda missed him a little bit. His voice, his face, everything about him I missed.

I tried explaining it to my girl scout friends, and they all made fun of me and said I was in love with him. Of course, I denied because why the hell would I ever be interested in a weirdo like him?

Then he came back to school, and he was even more of a mess than before.

He wore a dirty potato sack over his head and kept mumbling to himself how he would keep playing and begging someone not to hurt him. Of course, like a total bitch, I made fun of him for it and encouraged everyone else to do the same.

"Have you become a doll?", I laughed. "Did your fake trauma turn you into a doll?"

I called it fake trauma because everyone knew what a liar he was. We all thought he was faking it, but none of us knew it was real.

Then one day, I was walking home from a nice walk around the block, when I passed by his house. He was angry and he was screaming "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! ALL OF YOU!"

I thought it'd be cool to make fun of him for, and fortunately, I had my camera with me. It was a special camera that my friend gave me for work purposes. But instead of using it for work purposes, I used it to humiliate the school's favorite weirdo.

He didn't come to school for a couple of days, but when he did, we all made sure to make it hell for him. I showed him the picture, and I loved how his face looked so miserable, and I loved how he ran out of the school in embarrassment.

The new girl, Trinity, dragged me to Principal Abanate to report me for it, but I just said I was simply worried about Nicky and I was going to give her the picture so she could check up on him. Thankfully, she believed me.

After that, Halloween was coming up, and I made my own costume of Nicky in an unbuckled straightjacket. When I showed him, I didn't like how he showed as little emotion as possible, he didn't even blink at me.

I forgot about it as soon as I thought about how many laughs I was gonna get with this.

But then I started to notice some weird things happening around Raven Brooks. Like the animals, they were acting more violent than usual. I could've sworn I saw a fox's eyes glow red.

I tried to forget about it.

A week later, Trinity and her Inventor's Club ganged up on me and Maritza totally smashed my camera into bits. She said it was payback for humiliating Nicky like I did, and everyone was in on it.

Even Delroy, and he didn't even like Nicky.

I was completely terrified. Not because of them all teaming up, but because my camera was broken. That thing was for work, and my friend would kill me if he found out it was broken. Maritza told me to apologize or else I'd end up like my camera.

So I did.

I pulled Nicky to the bathroom and apologized to him for not just the picture, but for treating him so badly all the time. He said it'd take him a while to forgive me, but he accepted my apology. But he said I could really make it up to him by helping him and his friends with an investigation on someone named...Crowface.

I told him that the animals in the woods have been acting up, so we went there together.

What was so weird about our whole team up was that he told me we should hold hands so we could stay close together. It's not that I didn't like holding his hand, it's just that it was so weird and a little awkward.

The whole time, I tried to keep my face from turning red.

We made it out of the woods alive (Thank God), and the next day, we told the Inventor's Club.

Nicky wanted to make me a new addition to the team, but everyone else was hesitant. I didn't blame them, considering how badly I treated Nicky in the past, they had every reason not to trust me.

But Nicky decided to give me a chance, and that's when I saw something inside Nicky that I didn't even notice before.

He was a genuinely good kid.

It was kind of hard finding kids like him, everyone in Raven Brooks is really shallow and mean for no reason, but he actually cares. I kind of liked him for it.

Not like in a romantic way...at least I don't think so, just in a way that a friend is supposed to because someone is a good person.

I kept telling myself that I didn't like Nicky romantically, and I was almost starting to believe it. But something always told me that I was in denial.

I decided to try and ignore it, but even though I tried, I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe I liked him.