#also do ya like the new tim design - it's really subtle but... i changed his dye job a little lol

[light-sins]

SeptiplierWeek (Day 6)

Remember when I said I wouldn’t write more ? Yeah, I lied. I couldn’t help it. All of the days combine to make one story.

Characters : Markiplier + Suicidal!Jacksepticeye Prompt : High School Event hosted by : @septiplierweek Chapters : [1]  [2]  [3]  [4]  [5]  [x]

“Sean ? Sean, are you listening ?” A voice snapped him back to reality, and he lazily opened his eyes, turning to the therapist in front of him. “Yeah, sorry, I ah…zoned out there for a Sec” he yawned, stretching. The tiny Box Tim plush sat comfortably on his lap, smiling as always. She sighed, but offered him a gentle smile. “It’s alright, Sean. Let’s just focus on something else for now” she leafed through the booklet. Honestly, she was very happy with the progress he had displayed. Perhaps in a few months, he could even start working again. But the heavy bandage around his neck made her hesitate. Maybe. She just left it as maybe.

“You said you had another persona, called ‘Jack’, right ?” She looked at him, watching as he nodded, smiling. “Yeah, was a high school thing” he told her, stretching. “Well, maybe you could tell me about then ? How was high school like ?” She inquired. He was about to continue when Mark came in, twenty minutes late. “Sorry, sorry, did I interrupt ?” He asked, turning to look at the two of them, who had changed their attention to him. His face flushed pink, starting to list out a pile of excuses like traffic and work, but she just smiled and waved him to sit down beside Sean.

Originally, she had been Counselling him alone, but found that being around Mark helped Sean open up a lot quicker and smoother. If there were tears, Mark could comfort him and soothe him. If Sean felt bad, guilty or hesitant, he was the one who slowly coaxed him. She had insisted that it was time that perhaps Mark could take care of Sean on his own instead, but she could see the hesitation and worry in himself. “What if i fail him again ?” He had told her. “What if I can’t choose what’s right for him ?” And with that, their sessions continued.

“So, uh, what’re we doing ?” Mark asked, still a little embarrassed from his sudden yell when he burst in. “We we’re going to talk about high school” she informs. “Mostly about this ‘Jack’ persona” she adds, preparing a pen in case she needed to take notes on their behaviour. It was always heartwarming to see how their love worked, despite the problems they both had. Then again, all relationships had problems. It was the way they tried to help one another with them that made her so happy to see them every week.

“Well, why don’t we get started !”

High school was a time that wasn’t too hard for either of the two boys. Or, that’s what it initially appeared as at least. Other than the acne, and the occasional problems with trying to fit in and the ‘girls and guys’ kinda thing, it was pretty normal, only… it was hard for Sean to stay ‘normal’. And, the fact that his name wasn’t Sean during then. His name was Jack, and he was so much more different than he was as an adult. Teenage Jack was called a lot of things by his friends. Mostly cause he only had one. Jackadork and jackaboy were his favourites during then. Mark had a tendency to just call him 'Jack’ though.

“Hey ! Mark !” His voice practically boomed through the room, and his accent was still fresh in his voice. He still wasn’t so used to a new country yet, but he was making good progress! “Hey !” Mark responded the call with a high five, exchanging a complicated hand greeting they had made up at the end of last year. “Ready for tonight ?” Jack couldn’t hold the excitement off his voice, practically jumping in his spot, making the other laugh. “Of course I am ! Are you nervous ?” He teased the Irishboy, grinning. “Of course I am ! It’s our first time streaming on twitch, who wouldn’t be nervous ?”

“It’ll be just like we practiced !” Mark assured with a smile, slapping his shoulder. “Oh yeah, sure. I Guess I should trip over my computer wire again ?” Jack joked lightly, smiling back. “Maybe this time your content would actually make someone laugh” he responded with one of his own, filling the small room with laughter.

It was Jacks birthday that night and they had wanted to celebrate with a full game fest online, and figured it would be fun to stream it too ! Their growing channel was slowly speeding up to a hundred thousand people and it was getting more and more fun by the day. So many happy comments and viewers who cheered them on. It was always so heartwarming to see, and he loved to read the comments with Mark. Well, he loved spending time with Mark in general. And honestly… he was a little confused on how he felt.

It was weird, actually. He felt so nervous when he was around and he couldn’t help himself but want to be even closer. He loved how he laughed and how much he smiled and the way his jokes, no matter how self-deprecating, always made him laugh and never made him hurt, because he knew Mark never meant them. It was fun and they loved making those jokes, even if they were crude.

But being around him also roused a lot of questions about himself. Jack wasn’t actually ever sure if…if he liked girls. Of course, he never discriminated being friends but… the idea of kissing another girl, no matter how beautiful he imagined her, never appealed to him. He got anxious as the days gone by. Why was he like that ? Was there something else wrong with him ? He started panicking and started getting worse and worse. But of course nobody could ever tell.

After school, Jack and Mark bought arm-fulls of snacks. Cookies, chips, sodas. Anything fat and tasty. They had even bought lots of coffee for the drink lover to enjoy. Plus, it’d make sure he stayed awake. And after a few hours of setting up at Marks home, by the declared time, they were ready. They turned on their web cams, tested their mics and their headphones were on, grinning as they sat beside each other, Mark on his computer, and Jack on his laptop.

It was a little slow as it began, but neither really cared. They had fun, playing horror games, some fun multiplayer and made jokes about some really bad romance novel games, and the night just kept going with around a few hundred watchers. There had been no mention of his birthday either, because Jack was the type that never really liked himself to be publicised or anything. He liked to keep to his friends who could say those words to him, and they’d always mean so much more than the small texts that appeared. But…nobody had wished him birthday yet. It made him a little sad, but, he knew his friends still cared. He just wished they would call soon…

Halfway through, Mark mentioned he was going to take a piss. “Yeah, not subtle at all” Jack rolled his eyes, continuing the game, occasionally checking the twitch chat. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves at the stupid comment Mark made at least. A lot of people were just chatting and watching and making random comments. A few minutes later, he heard Mark yell for him to help him with something.

“What ? Ya want me to help hold yer dick while ya piss ?” He got up, pausing the game as he did. He was halfway through the room when Mark came in, holding onto a sleek, expensive black video camera. The name Jack was engraved beautifully at the side and on top sat the most dainty green bow he could’ve possibly found. “Thought I forgot ?” Mark’s smile seemed to glow, giddy with his own form of excitement and relief at how stunned Jack was. “What kind of Friend would I be if I didn’t remember your birthday ?”

The chat exploded with exclamation marks and 'Happy birthdays!’, before there was the click that signalled someone had used a word that triggered their sound effects. “Happy birthday, Jackaboy !” He heard Singes voice came through, followed by Amy, Ethan, Felix, Marzia, Tyler, Bob and Wades. Everyone he had called a Friend wished him a happy birthday and when one clip ended, a new random one would play. Jack felt his cheeks flush red, staring at the computer in stunned silence. They hadn’t forgot…did… did Mark plan this ?

He turned to Mark again with a playful anger to ask the same question, but that golden smile silenced him again, the camera pressed into Jacks hands. And throughout all the noise in the room, filled with voices of the people he cared about, Marks voice was the loudest.

“Happy Birthday, Jack”

“I don’t want to go home…” Jack muttered, leaning against the couch in Marks home. It was the end of the short school holiday and he dreaded returning home. He didn’t want to, for more reasons than just to have more company with Mark. He was…afraid of going there. He didn’t want to hear his foster parents scream his name, and he didn’t want to bear the harshness of his dad. He instinctively rubbed his arm, hidden away under the sleeve of his shirt.

“Me neither, but…y'know, everyone has to go home sometime” Mark smiled at him, patting his shoulder. Of course, he could never understand Jacks fear of his own house. It was something he thought was personal and he didn’t think it was anything as bad as it actually was. He had met Jacks Mother and Father once or twice and thought they were kind people. But, under closed doors, they were from another world.

Jack didn’t reply for a while, silent and holding onto the crumpled pieces of paper they had been working on for a while. Blue prints, or really just shitty designs for two character plushies, but he just kept staring at it. “…I don’t want to go home…” he repeated, quieter this time. Mark turned to look at him with a small smile but before he could convince Jack again, he noticed the silent tears drop onto the piece of paper, staining it. That was when he noticed something was wrong.

“Jack..?” He gently nudged him, putting his hand on his arm. He got even more worried when he flinched, tensing up. Something was horribly wrong. “Why don’t you want to go home ?” He finally asked. The answers that followed took hours to get, and the next few weeks felt like months. Nothing felt right anymore. Everything suddenly became clear to him. Why Jack seemed to always flinch when someone yelled, why the first few times he met him, he seemed to take a step back when offered a high five. How did he never notice ?

The next few weeks, was filled with careful planning. Mark stored Jacks clothes and all in his house, along with belongings like pictures and anything he needed. Only necessities and personal valuables. And throughout those weeks, he found out why Jack had always been so secretive with his money and owned so little. The computer had been something Jack worked months to buy, because it was his only happiness in his stressed household. And a phone, nothing else. Most of his clothes were thrown to Jack from his deceased older Brother, who had been a biological child.

The easy part was getting Jack into Marks house. The hard part was getting proof. Jack had to alternate into his own home, filled with dread and fear each day to record how his family was like, and each video clip made Mark sick to the core. How could he had lived like this for so many years, he would never know.

School was hard now too. Mark and Jack had to pretend everything was okay and find a teacher to help. Eventually, they found a teacher they thought could trust, a woman who was a counsellor in school. They told her about the abuse and she seemed to agree to help. So they relaxed a little and schooling continued and each day got a little more hopeful.

Until… Jack didn’t come to school. The entire day, Mark was anxious and fidgeting and chewing on his nails. He had never missed a day before, and with his parents background… Mark was anxious. But Jack had told that if this ever happened, he’d text him, and he’d know if he was okay. So during recess, he escaped to a safer place and checked his phone with shaky hands, finding a message from Jack to fuel his relief. But the text that had been sent only paralysed him from the inside out.

“Help me”

Mark held onto Jacks hand, trying to give him the strength he so badly needed. His blue eyes were dimmed in fear, watching the court speak. His parents were both bound, heavy with charges and they displayed the videos Jack had so carefully and secretly recorded. He could feel the weak teen tense and whimper, and he didn’t hesitate to pull him into his arms, hugging and patting him to calm him down.

“Don’t listen to it…” Mark whispered to him, covering his ears, holding him close. “You’ll be okay…you won’t have to live with them anymore…” he murmured. He could see his own friends casting worried looks to Jack. No one had suspected something like this to be happening in Jacks life. No one had ever thought it could be possible with how cheerful and excited he always was. He always looked like he was…happy. Not the crying, trembling man they all saw now.

This was not the Jack that they knew.

“It’s been three days, are you sure ?” Mark asked, resting a hand on Jacks shoulder. “I’m sure. I don’t want this…brand anymore. I don’t want to be 'Jack’ anymore” he muttered, holding onto him, as if to ask for support. “I know, bud, and I support you. It’s your name and…if you really want to, then…” he passed him the legal documents. “Make sure you choose a name you love, alright ?” Mark smiled, letting go of him, waiting outside as Jack left the room, because he knew when he came back, Jack would cease to exist. Because Jack was a dead name, something that had been manifested to be the happy, cheerful screaming Irishman. The man that suffered abuse and never spoke out. Jack was an old mask, and it was time to throw that away.

When he came back, he seemed to have had a load lifted off his shoulders, and he wasn’t Jack anymore. Jack was gone, and Sean had come back. And Mark knew, Jack or Sean, everyone would love him just the same.

[book-o-scams]

Ed Weekend Analysis Challenge

eene-fangirl said to book-o-scams:

Either 1. Do an analysis on Ed's dream in Rock a Bye Ed Or if you don't want to do an analysis just answer this question. 2. What does Ed's dream in Rock a Bye Ed entail about his home life? *Read the post on my page of you have any questions

‘Rock-a-Bye Ed’ is probably my favorite Ed episode and it is credited to Big Jim Miller:

I’ll try and be brief because my “a” and “w” keys are sticking and I want to hold out hope that I will do a shot by shot analysis in the future.  I will probably fail to be brief and fail to fulfill the full analysis. :p

Ed begins the nightmare by characterizing his sister as someone who is similar to himself. She is staring blankly at the TV (it’s subtle, but in the shot above she’s actually going wonky eyed from a previous expression that was more focused).  I get the impression that this situation, Sarah getting annoyed at him for playing with a paddleball, was a recent real incident, and I think it’s interesting how Ed seems to empathize with Sarah at this point.  She endures his thoughtlessness for a good 26 seconds before stealing his toy.

I love how this first sequence of the nightmare plays out like a “slice of life” moment, yet is littered with stray details that, placed in the same scene, create the feeling that this is off from reality.

1.  The scene opens on Sarah.   This creates the initial feeling that we are seeing a Sarah story for once. If I were watching this for the first time, I would assume Sarah was dreaming, if anyone.

2.  Ed is completely checked out, barely moving yet creating a disturbance.  There is a sense of physical and emotional distance from the main character that is mildly discomforting.

3.  This is the only time Ed’s living room has a TV.  It is not unusual for new appliances, furniture or architecture to appear or disappear episode-to-episode, but it does retrospectively add to the sense that this is not the canon world.  I mean, a later dream sequence in the episode also includes this section of Ed’s living room, and even that omits the TV:

So a few episodes have had Sarah threatening Ed’s toys, but now we finally get to see Sarah at her worst, in private.  The tone of the scene changes immediately. It turns out, Ed isn’t sitting this episode out, this episode is showing Ed being forced to act for himself, separated from his friends, and it’s showing the part of Sarah that Ed openly describes as a demon.  But most importantly, we will see who Ed considers the devil behind it all, Ed’s mom.

Ed actually defends what’s his.

What’s with all these Sarah expressions with no bottom lip?

Sarah stifles two tantrums in a row, first opting to demand it calmly, then pretends to respect Ed’s space.

“I’M TELLING MOM!”

Similar to her “fake crying” bit Ed demonstrated in ‘It Came From Outer Ed’, ain’t it?

This next shot also has a good combo of unsettling details that are otherwise completely normal to the series:

1. The hallway colors are a little darker than usual, and it seems to be at a completely different angle than the kitchen.

2.  Ed’s kitchen floor is always a flat pattern like that (except for one close-up shot of a spoon in ‘A Twist of Ed’) but it goes a long way to making this room feel alarming.  Perhaps Ed sees it that way because he associates it with his mom’s scoldings.

3. The colors are really DELIBERATELY far from the outlines on that potted plant.

4.  Although Ed’s size seems normal in this, this is most likely the first shot in the show of a character looking at an off-screen adult, which becomes one of the main devices of the digital era.  It’s cool seeing it appear in cel animation, and I just noticed an odd trend.  The next episode includes a scene with Eddy looking at and speaking to his off-screen mom.  The episode after that includes the scene with the Eds speaking to a fake-out Bro.  The episode after that, part A of the season 3 finale, includes Ed standing at the counter of the candy store, inches away from an adult.  Seems like they got into sort of a proto-season 5 kick, huh?

We now present to you, a brief moment in Ed’s private life.  When this episode came out, I freaked out the second someone outside the main cast was on-screen.  Even though, we are probably all aware they will turn out to cheat this with Jonny’s head on Ed’s Mom’s body, but I still feel like this is true to Ed’s mom design, except with skin coloring like the real Ed’s Mom hand we see at he end of ‘Mission Ed-Possible’ in season 5.

I always love the silent moment between Sarah and Ed as he begs her not to get Mom’s attention, it takes advantage of this unusually personal moment for suspense.  Ed’s Mom hums to herself throughout the scene-- I can’t tell if that’s Jonny’s voice, one of the female voice actors, or a sound effect (but that’s less likely, because there’s also a scene-specific “hm?” at the end of the humming clip).

We finally get to see how Sarah manipulates their mother-- Sarah takes the high road by claiming to hate tattling, moments before tattling.

Of course she ends with a baby pout.  I feel like, in my old fanart, pouts like this were my go-to Sarah expression for the longest time, I just love the mouth shapes Sarah makes.

Ed’s mom from the front.  The camera shrinks Ed.

Her gloves come off with a whiplash that makes Ed flinch.  Do you think Ed has been belted before?  I suspect Eddy’s dad of giving Eddy paddlings.

Ed realizes he dare not even dream the face of his secret abuser.

I dunno, I think she’s cute.

I always really love the composition of this shot in particular.

I feel like Big Jim was using Ed’s Mom to practice silhouettes.  I hope she doesn’t really force herself to wear heels all day, she’s just in her own house, doing chores...

Does anyone else watch Legion on FX?  I’m gonna bring it up again later, so to explain it a little, it’s a very arty show that spends an intentionally disorienting amount of time in characters’ imaginations and memories.  It involves a lot of the same sort “unreliable narrator” visual cues as EEnE, such as “ambiguous time period” or  “faceless traumatic figures.”  I always assume the Eds ignore adults’ faces because it’s traumatic, but this nightmare really makes it hard to question that in regards to Ed’s mom.

This nightmare is littered with perfect sound design, stray evil laughs and unsettling echoes all over the place.

I always eat these shots up, they’re so cinematic and convey the feeling that Ed thinks his life is an inescapable hell.

Ed’s wallpaper ends in the flames of hell.

100% normal height difference between Ed and the EEnE adults.

“I see we’ll have to wipe that silly grin off your face, won’t we?”

Seems like Ed’s mom has a habit of misreading his expressions in order to further guilt him and render him speechless and afraid to defend himself.

Now things get really symbolic.  Ed seems to be haunted by Plank’s visage, and I think that’s the real reason Jonny’s dragged into this.  Many lesser-iterations of Plank litter this court room, as well as a gigantic “Lady Justice”-inspired blindfolded Plank who holds scales from fragile branches (a callback to Plank mysteriously growing a branch in ‘Scrambled Ed’?). Is Plank judging the cul-de-sac?  Plank sees things, after all.

I suppose this is a fine time to drag Legion back into things. In that show, a war over mutants with mind-bending powers is interrupted by a parasitic “devil with yellow eyes” who is attempting to cooperate with the most powerful mutant, who has no idea how to use his abilities.  The main reason I bring Legion up is because I think Plank is that kind of paranormal parasite, that he has ties to Evil Tim, and that he wants to control the active imaginations in Peach Creek, with Ed and Jonny as the most powerful.  Furthermore, I’d like to suggest that this episode’s unclear structure, beginning as Ed’s meaningful dream, then posing as reality, and then turning into Jonny’s meaningless nightmare, is part of Plank’s hold on Peach Creek’s dreamscape, blending it seamlessly into their reality.

Ed can’t defend himself so Mom calls out to the jury.

I like Mom’s eyeshadow.

AAAHH

I bet the animators weren’t happy about having to animate a crowd of 12 Sarahs...

Those off-model Planks are so perfectly creepy.

All those eyes on the wall watching Ed, hellfire painted all around him.

I finally get to say it: these boobs are so weird

I wonder if Ed keeps dreaming about this spoon for a reason?  Like, more of a reason than his mom doing dishes.  Is this the spoon that sees May attack Ed in season 4′s ‘A Twist of Ed’?

This show does such beautiful horror...

Now for the scariest Plank of all...

GET IN PLANK’S BELLY

Ed hears Sarah echo “SERVES YOU RIGHT.”

Ed’s personal hell contains shark versions of his physical tormenters, suggesting that Ed connects all the different types of abuse in his life.  They are having a deeper impact on Ed than he lets on.

“This hurts me more than it does you silence....”

In the end, it is suggested that Ed’s mom used the classic parenting line “this hurts me more than it does you” during his last punishment.  I think his nightmare is suggesting that, by acting like the martyr during his punishment, she has forced him into silence again, just as she did when she pretended not to hear Ed offering his side of the story.

And so ends Ed’s nightmare...

Whether or not this is a dream, at least Edd and Eddy are there for Ed at the end of his nightmare.

WELL, I finally did this post!  That’s it!  See ya!