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rallamajoop · 4 years ago

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...and the unironic joys of better living through chemistry

How do I love Venom: The Hunger, let me count the ways…

It’s by far the shippiest Venom/Eddie story to come out of the character’s heyday. It’s the only story of the era to treat Venom’s violent wild-animal instincts not as an immutable fact, but as something that can be managed. It pulls off an aesthetic like nothing else that was being done at the time.

And then there’s the way it says, Does the world around you seem sinister and foreboding? Do you lie awake at night contemplating metaphorical oceans of despair? Well shit, son – have you considered you may be suffering from a mundane neurochemical imbalance, and a round of the right meds could clear that right up for you?

It does all this without breaking the atmosphere, without a whiff that our story has been interrupted for a Very Special Message about mental health.

In the near-decade since I was first prescribed anti-depressants, I don’t think I’ve read another story that lands the message “Sometimes, it’s not you, it’s just your brain chemistry,” so well.

Fair warning: if you have not read The Hunger, I am about to spoil every major plot point. If you have, well, maybe I can still give you a new appreciation for a few details you might have missed.

It’s a strange book, whatever else you take from it. It’s almost the only thing either author or artist contributed to the Venom canon, and it’s so different stylistically and tonally from the 90′s Venom norm that it feels like a tale from some noir-elseworlds setting instead of 616 canon. When you take risks that big with a property, you leave yourself precious little landing space between 'unmitigated triumph’ and ‘abject failure’: if this book hadn’t absolutely nailed it, I’d be dismissing it as edgy, OOC dreck. Fortunately, if The Hunger is nothing else, it is a story that $&#@ing commits – to basically everything it does.

Now, I'm not going to tell you Venom: The Hunger is a story about overcoming depression, because I don't know whether author Len Kaminski even thought about it that way while working on it. There's always space for other readings, and this one take is not gospel. That said: holy shit is this thing unsubtle with its metaphors. And with that in mind, let’s start by talking a little about Kaminski’s take on Eddie himself.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to divide 90′s Eddie into two broad personas: the Meathead, and the Hobo.

Kaminski’s Eddie nominally belongs in the angsty, long-haired Hobo incarnation, but that’s a bit of a simplification: this version certainly has plenty of angst and plenty of hair to his name – but nowhere, not even at his lowest ebb, does he doubt that he and his Other are meant for each other, which is usually Hobo!Eddie’s primary existential quandary.

He’s also taken up narrating his own life like a hardboiled PI.

So that’s... novel.

The only other time Eddie’s sounded like this is, er, in that one other Venom one-shot Kaminski penned (Seed of Darkness, a prequel that sadly isn’t in The Hunger’s league), so I think we can safely file it under authorial ticks.

Then again, Hobo!Eddie’s always been one melodramatic SOB, so maybe this is just how he’d sound after learning to channel his angst into his poetry. You can’t argue it fits the aesthetic, anyway.

We’d also be remiss not to mention Ed Halsted’s art, which I can only describe as gothic-meets-noir-meets-H.R.-Giger. Never before or since has the alien symbiote looked this alien: twisted with Xenompoph-like ridges and veins.

But Halsted doesn’t treat Venom to all that extra detail in every panel. Instead, the distortion tends to appear when the symbiote is separated from Eddie or out of control – and I doubt you need me to walk you through the symbolic importance of that creative decision. More importantly, Halsted’s art provides exactly the class of visuals that Kaminski’s story needs.

Did I mention this is a horror story? You might be surprised how few Venom stories really fit that genre, but if all those adjectives about Halsted’s style above didn’t clue you in, this is one of them.

Anyway, with that much context covered, let’s get into the main narrative of this thing.

As our first issue opens, Eddie’s world has become a dark and foreboding place. He’s not sleeping, though he mostly brushes this off. (Fun fact: trouble sleeping is one of those under-appreciated symptoms of depression. Additional fun fact: the first doctor ever to suggest I might be suffering from depression was actually a sleep specialist. You can guess how that appointment was going.)

Just to set our scene, here’s all of page 1.

Eddie’s narration has plenty of (ha) venom for his surroundings, but the visuals are here to back him up: panels from Eddie’s POV are edged in twisted, fleshy borders and drained of colour, the people rendered as creepy, goblin-like creatures. A couple of later scenes go even further to contrast Eddie-vision with what everyone else is seeing:

As depictions of depression go this is a little on the nose, but then, you don’t read a comic about a brain-eating alien parasite looking for subtlety, do you?

Eddie doesn’t see himself as depressed, of course. As far as he’s concerned, he’s seeing the world’s true face: it’s everyone else who’s deluding themselves. He’s still got his symbiote, so he’s happy. He’s yet to hit that all-important breaking point where something he can’t brush off goes irrevocably wrong.

But he’s also starting to experience these weird... cravings.

He just can’t put a name to exactly what he’s craving until a routine bar fight with a couple of thugs takes a turn for the horrific.

(I include this panel partly to point out even in The Hunger, the goriest of all 90′s Venom titles, you’re still not going to see brains getting eaten in any graphic detail. We don’t need to to get the horror of the moment across. The 90′s were a more innocent time.)

Eddie himself is horrified when he comes back to himself and realises what he’s done.

Or rather, what his symbiote’s just made him do.

Kaminski doesn’t keep us in suspense about why, though. Eddie may have just done something horrific, but there’s a reason, and it’s as mundane as a vitamin deficiency. He’s bonded to an alien creature, after all, and his symbiote is craving a nutrient which just happens to be found in human brains. And if Eddie can’t or won’t help it meet that need, it’ll do so alone.

Now, giving us that explanation so quickly is an interesting creative decision: this is a horror story, and horror lives in what we don’t know. Wouldn’t it be all the more horrifying had the symbiote been unable to explain what’s going on, leaving Eddie without the first real clue as to where this monstrous new hunger had come from?

The Hunger doesn’t take that route though, and I love it. Eddie isn’t a monster, this isn’t his fault: he has a fucking condition, and wallowing in his own moral failings is going to get him nowhere. You might as well try to cure scurvy or rickets with positive thinking. Just like depression can make you feel like an utter failure at the most basic parts of being human, and all the affirmations in the world won’t fix it when it’s fundamentally your brain chemistry that’s the problem. Or like addicts aren’t weak-willed for struggling not to relapse, they’re dealing with genuine chemical dependency – or even like how someone who’s trans isn’t at fault for being unable to reconcile themselves to the bodies and the hormones they were born with by pure force of trying. Free will is more than an illusion, but we’re all messy, biological organisms underneath, and your own brain and biochemistry can and will fuck you over in a hundred wildly different ways for as many wildly different reasons and it’s not your fault.

We aren’t monsters. But if we do, sometimes, find ourselves identifying with the monster, there might be a reason for that.

(Ahem)

I’m just saying, that’s fucking powerful, and we need more stories that say it.

Anyway, in case you missed it during that tangent, issue #1 closes with the symbiote having torn Eddie’s heart in two itself free to go hunting brains without him.

I’m trying not to get too sidetracked at this point talking about Kaminski’s take on the symbiote itself. Suffice to say there are broadly two schools of thought on how it ought to function while separated from its host: the traditional ambulatory-slime-puddle version, and the more recently popular alternative where anything-you-can-do-with-a-host-you-can-also-do-without-one. I’m not much of a fan of the latter, personally: if your symbiote doesn’t actually need a host, I feel you’ve sort of missed the point. (The movie takes the route of saying symbiotes can’t even process Earth’s atmosphere without a host, which is a great new idea that appears nowhere in the comics, and I love it. Hosts or GTFO, baby!)

Kaminski has his own take, and I can only wish it had caught on. Without Eddie, the symbiote becomes an ever-shifting insectoid-tentacle-snake-monstrosity, driven by an animalistic hunger. It’s many things, but it’s never humanoid.

If you absolutely must have your symbiote operating minus a host, I feel this is the way to do it: semi-feral, shapeless and completely alien (uncontrollable violence and cravings for brains to be added to taste).

Issue #2 comes to us primarily through the perspective of the mild-mannered Dr. Thaddeus Paine of the Innsmouth Hills Sanitarium (yes, really).

Yeah, he’s not fooling anyone. Meet our official villain! He joins our story after Eddie is picked up by the police and handed off to the nearest available institution, on account of how completely sane and rational he’s been acting.

Naturally, Dr. Paine soon has copious notes on Eddie’s ‘crazy’ story about his psychic link to a brain-eating alien monster. Fortunately for Eddie, Paine also runs some tests and makes an interesting discovery.

Congratulations, Venom: the ‘vitamin’ you were missing officially has a name!

Finding the right meds isn’t always this easy. I got lucky – the first ones my psych put me on worked pretty well – but I have plenty of friends who weren't so lucky. In fact, the treatment for Eddie's problems is so straightforward it arguably has more in common with, say, endocrine disorders like thyroid conditions or Addison’s disease, which differ from clinical depression but present many similar symptoms (but can sadly be just as much of a bitch to get correctly diagnosed – please do read author Maggie Stiefvater’s account of the latter when you get the chance, because forget Venom, that is a horror story).

‘True’ depression remains much less well understood by medicine, either in its causes or how to effectively treat it. But simply having a name for what was wrong with me made so much difference, and that’s an experience I imagine anyone who’s dealt with any long undiagnosed medical condition could relate to. It put my life in context in a way nothing else had in years.

(I can’t speak to the accuracy of the way phenethylamine is portrayed in this comic – a quick google suggests there may be some real debate that phenethylamine deficiencies have been overlooked as a contributor to clinical depression, but having no medical background, that one’s well beyond me. Either way, scientific accuracy really doesn’t matter in this context – it’s how it works in-universe for story purposes that we should pay attention to.)

Since this issue is mostly from Paine’s POV, we don’t get Eddie’s reaction to having a healthy amount of phenethylamine sloshing around in his brain again, just the assurance that treatment appears to be ‘completely successful’.

He’s still a paranoid, hostile bastard though. Meds can turn your life around, but they won’t make you not you.

But even if Eddie’s feeling better, he’s still psychically linked to someone who isn’t. Symbiote-vision still comes through drained of colour and edged in viscera.

That’s the thing about meds: they won’t solve all your problems overnight. If you’ve been depressed for a while, there are good odds you have problems stacking up. But working meds can be a godsend when it comes to getting you into a space where you can deal with your problems again, whether said problems are doing-your-laundry or all the way into not-giving-up-completely-and-just-accepting-you’ll-die-alone-on-the-street.

For Eddie, ‘dealing with his problems’ begins with stealing a keycard and busting out of the asylum.

Of course, that’s the easy part. How do you solve a problem like a feral symbiote? Like any good 90′s comic book protagonist, Eddie tackles it by putting on his big-boy camouflage pants and kitting himself out with weapons and pouches while quoting “If you live something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down.”

We can add this to the list of things I love about this comic. Even if The Hunger is a weirdly-stylistic tract about depression at heart, it’s also still a goddamn 90′s Venom comic, and not ashamed to be.

We’re into issue #3 now, and back to hearing the story from Eddie’s POV.

Eddie is very much aware that his symbiote has murdered innocent people while they’ve been separated. Even if this is the result of extreme circumstances, there’s a good case to be made that the symbiote is too dangerous to be allowed to live. Plenty of heroes would treat it like a rabid dog at this point.

But Eddie isn’t a hero, he’s a mess of a character and an anti-hero at best, so we don’t have to hold him to the same standard. He’s well aware his symbiote may be too far gone to save, that he may have to put it down – but that’s only his backup plan. He wants to help it. He wants it back. He’s down in that sewer with screamers and a flamethrower because he knows all his symbiote’s weaknesses, but he’s also carrying a large jar of black-market synthesised phenethylamine, because if he can just get close enough...

Depression can’t make you a literal monster, but it can make you an asshole. Miserable to be around, lacking even the energy to care who else you’re hurting. The depression doesn’t excuse that, but it makes everything harder, and it’s that much easier to sink back into your spiral when everyone around you has given up. It can make you think everyone around has given up even if that isn’t true.

So to have Eddie here say, in effect, I don’t care how many people you’ve eaten, I know it wasn’t your fault. I still love you. You’re still worth fighting for – god, does that get me right in the id.

There’s still a whole issue left at this point – we’ve still got to deal with our real villain, Dr. Paine, who we’ve just learned is into eating brains himself and torturing his patients recreationally, and who wants to capture the symbiote for his own purposes. There’s the scene where Eddie and his symbiote finally bond again, and Venom beats up all Paine’s goons while singing David Bowie because like I said, this is still a 90′s superhero comic and this is what Venom does.

But for our purposes, I'm going to skip to the penultimate page of the story, because the way it mirrors our opening page is really lovely.

Remember that shot of Eddie dealing with a beggar back at the beginning of the story, thinking about how these people would 'get their despair all over you'? Here he is again, cheerfully forking over the last dollar in his pocket to the next man to ask him for change. For all the gothic atmosphere and gore, it’s moments like this that make The Hunger easily one of the most positive, uplifting Venom stories ever written. Funny, that. (I could probably write a whole other essay on sympathy for the homeless as a recurring motif in Venom stories, but that... well, whole other essay and all that.)

What’s Eddie learned from this experience? Don’t take your symbiote for granted. Is ‘symbiote’ a metaphor for mental health here, is paying attention to its needs an allegory for paying attention to your own? I still don’t know how literally Kaminski meant us to take this, but it’s a lovely note to end on no matter how you parse it.

At the end of the day, The Hunger isn’t flawless. The conflict with Paine ends on a thematic but slightly unsatisfying note. Eddie makes much of his symbiote's loneliness and desire for union, but when the two of them are finally reunited, the only reaction comes from Eddie's side. In fact, the symbiote seems to have no response to being able to return to Eddie at all, and that’s an omission that bugs me.

But Kaminski is more interested than any other writer of the era in the truly alien nature of the symbiote, in its relationship with Eddie from Eddie’s side, and though plenty of others talk about the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Spider-man, no-one else had the guts to portray their relationship this much like a romance.

And Venom: The Hunger is no less interesting in the context of Len Kaminski’s other work. You don't have to look far into his Marvel and DC credits to pick up that the guy has a real thing for monsters. (“All of my favourite characters are outlaws, misfits, anti-heroes,” he says, in one of the very few interviews I could find with him, “I wouldn't know what to do with Superman.”) He's written for vampires, werewolves, victims of mad science, and all of three at once, littering his work with biochemistry-themed technobabble, melodramatic monologues, gratuitous pop-culture references, and protagonists who must learn to embrace their inner demons. So The Hunger represents more than a few of his favourite running themes.

For our context, his more notable other work includes Children of the Beast, in which a werewolf must make peace between his human and animalistic sides, and The Creeper, in which a journalist must make peace with the crazy super-powered alter-ego sharing his body. In fact, The Creeper and The Hunger share so much DNA (including an evil doctor posing as a respected psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on our hero while he's trapped in a mental institution) that it’s quite the achievement that they still feel like such very distinct entities beyond that point.

The human alter-egos of both werewolf and Creeper even use prescription meds while wrestling with their respective dark sides. The difference, in both cases, is that these are stories where meds play their traditional fictional role – and that's a role that could be as easily filled by illegal drugs or alcohol without making any substantive difference. You see, if a protagonist is using them, it's a sign of unwillingness to tackle their 'real' problems. Even among work by the same author in the same genre, The Hunger represents an outlier. And that's just a little disappointing – at least to me.

In real life, of course, prescription meds are no magical cure-all elixir. Depression meds that work for one person may not work for another, or may not keep working in the longer term. Everyone has heard stories about quack doctors who prescribe them to the wrong patients for the wrong reasons, about lives ruined by addictions to prescription painkillers, or the supposedly-damning statistics about how poorly SSRI's perform in rigorous clinical trials. The proper way to treat depression is obviously with lifestyle and therapy. People will still airily dismiss medications that we all know previous generations got along just fine without, or suggest that figures like Van Gogh would never have created great art if they hadn't been mad enough to slice off an ear. I mean, the fact you think you need those bogus mediations is probably the best possible sign of just how broken you are, right? Who do you think you’re kidding?

Our popular fiction loves stories about manly men who bury their trauma under a gruff, anti-social exterior and come back swinging at the world that broke them, bravely refusing even painkillers that might dull their manly reflexes. Other genres make space for broken people confronting their demons in grand moments of catharsis, finally breaking down into tears when someone gets through to make them face their problems. "I could barely make it out of bed in the mornings until I found a doctor who started me on this new prescription" is not only wildly counter to the accepted social narrative, it's a hard thing to know how to dramatise.

Even other Venom comics have been guilty of this.

Believe me, I recognise all of this, and just how much progress we've made in the last few decades. But I haven't the slightest doubt that for so many vulnerable people, the stigma against prescription medications does infinitely more harm than those same meds could ever do. And just having the right to externalise my problems into it's not you, it's your brain chemistry, may have helped me more than the meds themselves.

(And again, no, being prescribed SSRI's didn't fix me overnight, but I honestly don't know if all the talk therapy and tearful conversations with family members in the world could've got me as far as I've come without them.)

I love Venom: The Hunger. It's no-one's idea of high art, but it doesn’t need to be. There is a whole other post’s worth of things I love about it that I’ve already cut out this one as pointless tangents, and that may actually be it’s biggest drawback as a go-to example: I fully recognise that I would not be making this post if The Hunger hadn't also also grabbed me as a great bit of Venom canon, being the massive fan and shipper that I am. Other people who are just as desperate as me for more stories with the same core theme, but not into weird 90's comics about needy goo aliens, probably won't get nearly as much out of it as I have.

But if it sounds anything like your jam, maybe you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

If nothing else, it proves that you can make a viscerally satisfying story out of a message that shockingly unconventional. And you may even have people still discovering it and falling in love with it 25 years after the fact.

#Venom: The Hunger #Venom #depression #SSRIs #Symbrock #Venom meta #meta #Venom comics #Len Kaminski

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mc-amps · 6 years ago

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Thoughts on Ray’s Route and Unknown

A crazy long rant >.<

It’s been exactly a year since I finished Ray’s route. I still remember that day quite well. I found it actually kind of romantic that I finished on Valentine’s Day. It was like Saeran was my Valentine. My thoughts on the route at the time were that of anger and joy. Suit Saeran made me furious, but GE Saeran made it better. He made me cry a lot of happy tears. Now that a year has passed, I wanted to talk more about my feelings about the route.

Everyone who knows me knows that I’m passionate about Unknown. Heck, just by looking at my blog, you could probably see that. From the very moment I saw him in the game’s opening movie, I was very curious and excited to see the trouble he would cause. I ended up seeing the prologue bad end on youtube and was like “Dang that’s hot +_+” Idk. I’ve always had a thing for those sweet talking kidnapper villain characters. The ones you know aren’t good for you, but if they ever got their hands on you, they’d cherish you in their own twisted way.

As I played through all of the routes, the part that excited me the most was when Unknown would show up and do bad things. Zen’s route in particular was so thrilling. The fact that he didn’t show up in Jaehee’s route was a bummer, but I was extremely disappointed when he did nothing in Jumin’s route too. Jumin was the one I ended up really liking, so I had been hoping to see my main man duke it out with evil side bae. Unfortunately, that never became a thing T_T

I saw some minor spoilers for Seven’s route, so I knew that Unknown would be heavily involved. I ended up being really disappointed with that route. At the time, I blamed it on Seven’s pushing MC away, but in hindsight, another major factor was that we really didn’t get to interact with Unknown much after the break in. Even during the secret ends, he’s there, but doesn’t really pay much attention to you. I guess I had been hoping to explore things with Unknown and his twisted view on the player. I also really wanted to help him recover after Mint Eye, but Seven took total control with that.

By that point, I had kind of accepted that Unknown wouldn’t be dateable, so I just figured that Jumin was my “true end.” But then the Christmas DLC happened. . .

It.

Was.

AMAZING!!!

Seriously! Unknown’s ending was everything I wanted from him!! He abducts you from the RFA, spoils you with gifts, and ties a ribbon around your neck +_+ He’s menacing and creepy, but still very charming and fun about it. It’s thrilling. My only disappointment was that it was so short, but that sparked the hope that Cheritz had more plans for him. Surely, they wouldn’t include that as the only way to end up with him.

When V’s route was announced, I clung to the hope that they were also going to secretly include a Saeran route. I figured that the route would branch off from the prologue bad end and let us spy on the RFA or something.

So then V’s route came out. Gah…I could go on a huge tangent just about V, but all I will say is that I felt no chemistry with him at all, and grew quite annoyed with all the secrets and shenanigans. Ray intrigued me though. Due to not having enough HG, I had to wait to do V’s route, so seeing Ray’s name in the call card purchase thing and also seeing his little intro bubbles when you first start up game made me feel even more hyped. I was so eager to see what this dude’s deal was. Once I played, I was definitely enamored by his cute creepiness, though I was under the impression that it was Unknown putting on a sweet charade for the MC and would soon show his true colors. It did get to the point where I got a little frustrated with Ray and his lies, because I just wanted him to rip off his suit, ruffle his hair, and reveal his true self. That did end up happening…though much later and not at all how I expected. Anyways, Ray did grow on me more, and I found myself feeling frustrated and agitated once we got separated.

And then Unknown showed up. O. M. G. Did that man show up. I honestly still remember exactly what I was doing when that went down. I was upset about missing a Ray call, but then my friend messaged me and said that I was going to LOVE what was about it happen. I had just gotten out of the shower, and was still in my towel, hair dripping wet when I did the chat and got the phone call. THE PHONECALL!!! That had to be the moment that I feel deeply and madly in love with this man. The way he says that he wants you and even says he will show you the things that Ray wanted to do to you. I was on the edge of my seat. I was screaming, blushing and swooning. Even though he could be quite frightening, it was still very fun. I was so excited to see what would happen, and I even spent the extra HG to call him as much as I could. I was honestly hoping that he would come to the cabin, or that we would at least encounter him in person, but alas… he really wasn’t out all that long T_T

I will say that Ray being worried and upset about the possibility of Unknown hurting MC was quite touching. I really was developing feelings for Ray. I didn’t adore him as much as Mr. Sexy Edgelord, but I still liked him, which brings me to the topic of how Another Story handled Saeran. Yes, I do think that Ray was added to make Saeran “romanceable.” I really don’t see any signs of Ray in the OG game, however, my friend, TK, pointed out that during the secret end when Unknown and child!Saeran seem to have that back and forth and then shoot V, that was dissociation. So that could be a hint about him having DID. And it does make sense that Unknown would have eventually taken complete control by the time the OG timeline takes place. All that’s to say, I really don’t mind Ray. He’s a sweet and cute bebe and his creepy side is pretty fun. He and Unknown have a pretty interesting dynamic too. Both have the same desires for keeping MC while destroying V and Seven. It’s just that they go about it different. Unknown is bold and unapologetic, while Ray keeps things in and is much more gentlemanly. They clash, yet I could see them growing to get along and work together. They would honestly make an amazing team. As you can imagine, I was pretty sad when Ray died and furious at V for still not revealing the truth to Seven. Really V? REALLY!?!

So fast forward to when Ray’s route was announced. I was hyped. Absolutely HYPED. This was the most excited I had been about something in a long time. I preordered the Mint Eye box and then waited, and looked at endless fanart of Ray and Unknown. My predictions for the route was that we were going to save Ray from the fate of Unknown completely taking over. That we were going to teach him what real love was compared to obsession. After all, he acts very clingy and creepy in V’s route, so that seemed to be the problem that needed fixing. I also was highly anticipating what Unknown would do. We would be stuck with him, completely at his mercy. Hhhh +_+ I was also thinking that he and Ray would be constantly switching control and fighting each other. But I hoped that they would learn to accept each other. My main worries for the route were that 1. Unknown would disappear forever at the end. 2. MC would be taken away from Magenta and separated from Ray sometime during the route. And 3. Rika would get all freaky fresh and get in the way. Rika did ruin things, and Unknown did end up disappearing forever…or rather, he ended up not existing at all! But more on that later.

It felt like an eternity, but the box finally came. Waiting for the tracking was pure torture, but once it came OMG Here’s the mail it never fails~ It makes me wanna wag my tail~ When it comes I wanna wail MAAIIIIIIIIL~~~! Looking through the box was an absolute joy. The smiling picture of Ray in his diary melted my heart, and I put all of the pictures in frames. Though I will say I was disappointed about the lack of Unknown content…it should have been a red flag about his fate in the route. Anyways, I was going to start the game at midnight that night. It was around a twelve hour wait, but it felt so. much. longer!!! I remember I was listening to the soundtrack and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I Am the Strongest hyped me up, I was almost certain that was going to be the song that played when Ray and Unknown fought, but alas… Four Seasons also made me cry. It made me so happy to think that Saeran would get a happy ending with MC T///T I even saw the trigger warning for the route and figured it involved Unknown being kinky and aggressive. Either that or them really delving into Saeran’s childhood abuse… T_T And once again, I was completely wrong.

Speaking of agonizing waits though, playing through those first four days before entering Ray’s route. Torture. Pure torture. I didn’t care about V, or the RFA, I just wanted Ray and Unknown. Once I got to the first new VN, my hands were so shaky and I was tearing up. Ray’s new faces were amazing, though at the time I hadn’t realized that the Ray I knew was about to change…

It was something I hadn’t noticed at first, but Ray’s creepy, possessive side completely vanishes. I get that he would decide not to give MC an elixir, but I still feel like he isn’t going to magically lose all of his creepiness. That was honestly what made him fun, and while I do understand his self-loathing, I do feel like it got repetitive. Chats during that branch started to sound the same, and I found myself getting antsy. I just wanted to spend time with Ray and get to know him more, but at the same time all the foreshadowing with Zen’s Jekyll and Hyde/White or whatever got me super SUPER EXCITED!

From what I understand, Hyde is based off of Jekyll’s darker impulses. He’s violent and sexually aggressive. Because let’s face it, Ray’s darker desires are that he wants to hurt Seven and V, along with making MC his. He’s just not as bold and active about it, but he does send that Prime Minister info to Seven along with the ripped pictures to V. He also does say a lot of creepy things to MC. It’s easy to imagine that Unknown would actually put these desires into action, and he has shown that he’s very capable of that in other routes. The symbolism was perfect for Ray and Unknown! I believe Zen also alluded to Jekyll and Hyde fighting for control, so I also thought that foreshadowed that Ray and Unknown were going to indeed duke it out. Imagine it. Fighting over your safety and wellbeing. One man just wants you happy, while the other wants to selfishly keep you all to himself. I was so pumped. SO PUMPED.

But then tragedy struck.

Thing is, I am a curious kitty. I’m a ho for spoiler, and me being me, I sniffed around and accidentally saw something I shouldn’t have saw. Someone was complaining that “Saeran” was way too mean to the MC. It went on to describe how he called her ugly, and smelly and how he would feed her.

I was crushed.

I was absolutely crushed. The thought of Unknown doing that was devastating. It just so happened that I saw that on the day that the switch happens, so I spent most of that day moping, and then the night dreading it.

Here’s the thing though. When it happened, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was. It didn’t hurt my feelings, but instead baffled me. This man seemed different than Unknown. Not only was he dressed completely different, but his voice seemed a lot more subdued. His laughs were not nearly as loud or high pitched, and even the chatroom… he felt different than the man who said he would come to cabin and drag me back to Mint Eye. His speech bubbles were even a different color. They’re blue in this, but then reddish in V’s route, the Christmas DLC, and the OG Prologue. (Fun fact, but before V’s route, Unknown’s bubbles were purple.) He seemed a lot less threatening, more extra, more insecure, more sane, and because of this, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are different people. Therefore, I’ll call him Suit Saeran. Now I know some people say that Suit Saeran is like the baby version of Unknown, but eh…that doesn’t explain why he’s so more like the OG Unknown in V’s route. I feel like Rika’s treatment of him affects how the new personality will act, and if we get a Rika route, my theory is that “Saeran” will become possessive of her and become your love rival for her.

Now I will say I get it. I get why Suit Saeran acts the way he does. It ties into Ray’s self-loathing, but…I feel like Unknown would have tied into the way Ray acts in V’s route. Why did they change Ray? Why didn’t they go with Unknown instead of Suit Saeran? Did they think Unknown was too violent? Did they think he was unlovable? Or was it that they were punishing Unknown fans for being so thirsty. Everyone in all the other routes cherishes MC for the most part …except in this route. Suit Saeran and even Rika berate MC, call her useless, and pretty much say she’s better off dead. I personally found it ridiculous to the point of being comedic, but I do know that it deeply upset some people. I do think it went too far. For example, the CGs with Suit Saeran are great, but his dialogue during those scenes just ruins any enjoyment I could get from that.

I was so furious.

Unknown was truly the one thing I had been waiting for, and it felt like a slap in the face.

I will say that Suit Saeran apologizing and then the emergence of GE Saeran made things…kind of better. I was a little upset that Ray and Suit Saeran (And any other personas) seemed to be gone forever though, but GE Saeran was sweet, and after the abuse and agony of Mr. Posh Tie Boy, it was a Godsend. The phonecalls were great, and the chats were great, but that didn’t fix everything. Though looking back, I kind of feel like Ray didn’t really get any development in his own route. Even with the self-loathing plotline, he himself never learns to love himself. The last time you see him, he’s crying and saying how he was never meant to stay around. So he basically just disappears forever. At least Suit Saeran got to learn his mistakes and try to make things right. Idk. It’s just kind of upsetting and strange to me.

Anyways, there were still plenty of sleepless nights where I would just think about how Unknown wasn’t in the route, and how I would never be able to get to him or romance him. To this day, it’s still something that frustrates me to no end, and it’s honestly something that always will. I’ve lost hope that Cheritz will give us any other Unknown content. We haven’t gotten the after ends after all. The daki was nice, but dang…in a way, it’s kind of another slap. They were capable of writing a flirty Unknown. They were capable of writing him fighting Ray for MC’s affection. WHY WAS THIS NOT PUT IN THE ROUTE! THEY MAKE UNKNOWN SO SEDUCTIVE AND PASSIONATE ARGH IT’S WASTED POTENTIAL FSJDLKJLKSDJLFJSDLKfjls

There’s also the fact in the Halloween DLC that Ray compares himself to the Phantom of the Opera…and that dynamic once again fits Unknown more. The only time the Phantom talks mean to Christine is after she pulls off his mask after her first abduction, but it doesn’t last long, and otherwise he’s a lot more seductive and aggressive like…UNKNOWN. Sigh…heavy sigh… I’m a huge phangirl, and honestly I really do feel like the Phantom fits Ray and Unknown perfectly. T_T There’s his sweeter, more childlike, vulnerable angel side, and then his dark, seductive, murderous side. HHHHHHHhhhhhh.

I used to hate Suit Saeran, but now I don’t. I still kind of resent him for taking Unknown’s place, but when I look at him as a separate entity, he’s not so bad. He’s kind of funny, and there’s good fanart of him.

I’m really not sure how I feel about GE Saeran. Back then I had really liked him, but now I wonder if maybe…he had been a little too perfect? And it really bothers me how the other personas are gone. He seems really different from Redhead Saeran too. I get that he escaped from Mint Eye with less trauma and had MC along to help but… JFsldjflsfj idk though. I’ll see how he is in the after end. If we get a dark chocolate Valentine’s day with him unleashing his Unknown side then…I’ll forgive Cheritz…a little…but at this point, I’m not even sure if we’re getting the after ends.

Ultimately, if Unknown had never existed, then I would have liked this route a lot more. The fact that he’s not in it destroys my enjoyment of it.

Ah this is getting long, so I guess all I can do is make Unknown content, and make things the way I wanted them to be. I don’t plan on leaving this fandom any time so soon, so don’t worry about that~ And if you stayed to read this entire rambling rant then you’re so awesome T///T

Edit Feb 13th

So I wrote this a week or so ago and queued this for Feb 14th, and as you can see, I added tags talking about V’s route. I really liked Ray’s villainous side, but now that I’m farther in V’s route, I’ve got so much more to say. For one, my thoughts on Ray still stands, but Unknown. Oh my goodness Unknown.

I was determined to get all of his calls, just figuring that I would I get a fun little flirty time, but I got so much more than that. I can scream to the rooftops that he’s so much more fun and different than Suit Saeran, but he’s also in a lot of pain. It’s something that hadn’t quite sank in the first time around, but he’s happy to have his body back. He’s annoyed at Ray and thinks he’s too soft and an idiot, but a lot less harder on him than Suit Saeran is.

But there’s a phonecall that really got to me. He doesn’t let you respond at all, but he wants you to listen. It seems like he wants someone to talk to.

You know...I still don’t get who I am.

I’ve been awake for only a few times. And I still don’t get how come I’m awake.

But I know one thing... I’ve been so freaking mad from the beginning.

I want to crush everything I see. I can’t control myself.

I just broke every single flower pot Ray was tending.

I felt a little better after stomping those frail roots.

What am I...?

Why did I wake up so suddenly?

Did I wake up for vengeance?

He then goes on to talk about torturing V, but the way he says this, there’s pain behind his growls and cackles. It hurts my heart. I don’t know...even if Cheritz intended for him and Suit Saeran to be the same person, the pain they go through feels different to me. It just feels like they changed so much about his and Ray’s character when they made Ray’s route.

Who is Unknown?

Who is he really?

Will we ever get to find out...?

#also can I just say #I'm replaying V's route #and Ray is an absolute joy #and I'm so excited for Unknown to come #this is more fun than Ray's own route gosh dangit #rant #mystic messenger #unknown mysme #saeran choi

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3rdgymbros · 8 years ago

Text

When the Ghosts Get in Your Head

( PROMPT: Can I please have Peter comforting the reader? With forehead touches/kisses SLAY ME. )

A/N: So. I’ve decided to make a Tom Holland/Spiderman fanzine, and if anyone is interested to contribute (and tell me how the heckie to go about doing it ), please PLEASE send me a message and we can work this out!! I actually want to send the fanzine to Tom Holland himself, but I also have no idea how to send it to him so PLEASE SEND HELP. Because I have no idea what I am doing. *sobs*

WARNINGS: Panic attacks/anxiety, so I’ve put it under a read more!

“I – I can’t do this,” Your voice comes out all croaky and weird; your stomach is a hard, twisted knot. “This is my fault. I helped Ultron. Oh, no no no –”

Your legs are shaking. With sorrow. Helplessness. Regret. Pain.

You should never have aided Ultron, should never have bought into his lies.

He’d promised peace.

And what of it?

The people in Sokovia had been happy. Normal. But Ultron had attacked, changing joy to terror in a blink of an eye. Another explosion, closer this time, shakes the earth upon which you stand so much that you lose your balance.

You can hear it; the screams of anguish, the chaos. You’re drowning in all of it: The thoughts, the emotions, the voices. Dorothy’s mother is in the Shady Pines Retirement Home; Dorothy wonders if she’s been evacuated yet. Sheldon can’t find his little sister; he’s scared. Tom’s vacation is not going as planned.

A high pitched ringing scrapes at your ears. Sweat breaks over your brows and palms and trickles down your back. I’m scared, you try to say, but no sound emerges. Your heart speeds up, faster, and faster. Your lungs constrict far more tightly, the burn intensifying. Your hands and feet mutate into blocks of ice.

Dust mushrooms through the air. BOOM!

“(Y/n)?”

Male voice. You recognise it. The Spiderman? Peter. Right. Peter.

Help, you try to say, but again, no sound emerges.

A muffled curse. The sound of metal being thrown onto concrete. Then footsteps racing over.

Still struggling for breath, you focus hard as you can on the only face you can see. Warm eyes the exact colour of milk chocolate, brown hair that sticks up in five directions and eight little freckles across the bridge of his nose. Peter leans forward, until his forehead gently rests against yours.

Everything is brown.

“Breathe,” Peter’s saying gently. “Do it with me, okay?”

And from the sea of chaos, you find that lighthouse guiding you to shore. It’s the one thing keeping you from unravelling completely. You cling to it; cling to that one thread of relative calm and quiet like a lifeline. You don’t mean to peek into his head, but, unbidden, images float into your mind.

He seems like a good person – or someone who strives to do the right thing, anyway. Though his thoughts, for some reason, are as difficult to penetrate as a rain forest. Some people are like that. Some have minds as dry and as arid as a desert, and just as easily navigated. Others have psyches like Peter’s, only accessible with a machete.

There are images of Sokovia, of the ashes and the rubble, but surprisingly, you’re in there, too. There’s the shadowy plane of your face, obscured by the shadows of your hoodie and your hair. You stand perfectly still, uprooting trees and hurling them at Peter, who dodges them all effortlessly.

There’s one of you in Korea, too, helping Wanda to stop the train. You’re dressed in a pair of shorts, and a white T-shirt. A flannel shirt is tied around your waist, and a pair of duct-taped Converse on your feet. Your hair streams back, away from your face, your mouth agape, eyes shining an unsettling shade of blue. It’s the first glimpse he’s gotten of your face, and even now, you can feel his emotions. There’s a smudge of dirt on the bridge of your nose, and a bloody gash on your collarbone, but all Peter can think is a chorus of beautiful beautiful beautiful, rising up in his mind like the most beautiful song.

Then you at the Avengers Headquarters, huddled in a corner, your arms wrapped around your knees, your face hidden by a tangle of hair. Water had turned your white top totally transparent, leaving your bra (polka-dotted) and all the bones of your spine completely visible. He’s weirdly happy, yet apologetic and embarrassed all at once, for peeking at your intimates when he should be looking away like a gentleman would. He wonders if you’re wearing matching underwear as well, and has to awkwardly shuffle away before anyone notices the hot flush stealing across his cheeks.

And then you now. Your hair pulled back away from your face. Your eyes set wide apart, the smoothness of your skin, and the soft, shell-pink of your lips. It’s the first time Peter’s ever really seen your face, unobscured by your wild, matted tangle of hair, and his emotions spill onto you, a tidal wave. There’s a quiet sense of awe, a much louder voice that’s whooping wordlessly in excitement, and a nervous churning in the pit of his stomach that hasn’t quite managed to settle itself.

You cling to these feelings, strange and unfamiliar, and just breathe in tandem with Peter. And, at last, your heart begins to slow. Your lungs fill. The sweat stops pouring and the chill kisses you goodbye.

You blink back into the real world. Peter’s still whisper-close, so close that you can smell the smoke clinging to his suit, mingling with the faintest scent of cinnamon and vanilla that lingers on his skin. Concern bathes his handsome face.

“So you’ve made mistakes.” Peter says gently, forehead still resting gently against yours. “We all have. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To try and make up for it?”

“But there’s too much,” You say, voice ragged, your mind briefly flashing back to all the destruction, the mess you’d made. “There’s too much. I’ve done too much.”

There’s something infinitely soft in his gaze as he drinks in your every feature, brown eyes warm and soft. “That’s why we’re the Avengers. That’s why we try to save people. It’s why we’re the good guys.”

Avengers. Being thought of as one – well, being linked to them, anyway – is foreign, after so long of thinking of them as being the enemy. First Hydra. Then Ultron. And now, the Avengers. It’s a change you can live with.

There’s an explosion that buffets every nook and cranny of the little shop the two of you have taken shelter in. A metal hand breaks through wood, inches away from your thigh, and you scream. Peter jerks away from you as though he’s been electrocuted, his hand shooting out a sticky stream of web that sends the robot flying backwards.

“Listen. The city is flying, and there are some killer robots – okay, these robots are pretty cool, of course they are, I mean, Mr Stark designed them and all –” If you aren’t so frazzled, you might laugh at his ability to go off on a tangent. “– But we’re the only ones who can do anything about it. So. You can either sit here and mope, or we can go out there and kick some metal ass.”

You wonder if you should tell him you know that he’s ripped this speech off Mr Hawkeye. You have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing hysterically. Peter’s trying his best to look serious and grown-up and Avenger-y.

Who are you to spoil his fun?

Warm brown hues darken, take on a serious edge. Peter pulls himself up to his fullest height, and thrusts his shoulders back dramatically. “But the moment you walk out that door, you are an Avenger.”

His speech would have had a better impact if Peter hadn’t practically sprinted out said door before that last sentence had even left his lips, you think dryly. Inspiring speech or no, you choose to mope, leaning back against the crumbling wall, focusing on the breath entering and leaving your lungs so that your mind can’t wander back to destruction and damage and freak out.

But suddenly, you’re scrambling to your feet, your mouth open in a silent scream. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve been inside Peter’s head, but you can taste his panic, sharp and bitter on the tip of your tongue. He’s pinned down, he can’t move, and they’re coming –

Your feet are carrying you towards the door before you’re even aware of having made a conscious decision to move. The door splinters away into nothing at your approach. You keep your head held high, the wind chaffing your cheeks and lashing your hair about.

You’re calm, scarily so as you turn large, determined eyes onto the robots. There’s no nervousness, no panic, no fear. The only thought looping through your mind as the Ultrons disintegrate into nothingness is that you’re an Avenger now, this is your job, and you’ll be damned if you let Peter die while you’re around.

Only when the last Ultron has been ripped apart do you turn to Peter and offer him a hand up. He’s awed, taken aback, his thoughts are pulsing onto you again, and all he’s thinking is beautiful beautiful beautiful, over and over again.

“T-Thanks.” Peter stutters shyly, and your heart actually reindeer prances in your chest.

You answer, a tad shyly, “Anytime.”

Ignoring the warmth rushing to your cheeks, or the heat of his fingers on your wrist, you focus instead on Peter, who’s rambling, telling someone over the comm-link in an excited rush that “(Y/n) destroyed every single robot with her cool mind powers”, but even that makes you smile, unused to hearing the words ‘cool’ and ‘(Y/n)’ in the same sentence.

“We’ve gotta head to the Blue Bridge,” Peter says, still breathless, still holding onto your wrist. “Mr Barton and Ms Maximoff are already there.”

“Okay.”

His hand is still on your wrist, catching you, holding you in place. You’re drowning in that endless sea of brown. Ask her out, he’s thinking. Coffee, a movie, say something, Parker! Don’t make this even more awkward than it already is!

“I don’t like coffee,” You say slowly, carefully, watching his already pale skin blanch even further, and his eyes widen comically with the realisation that his thoughts are on full display for you to hear. “But I have always wanted to visit a ‘mall’. America has those, right?”

“Yeah!” His face lights up, glowing like the sun against his shock of brown hair. “After – After this is over, we could go? Just – Just you and me?”

“I’d like that.” You have to smile at his enthusiasm. Your cheeks smart at the unfamiliar motion. “A lot.”

If you do make it out of Sokovia in one piece, a relationship with Peter is definitely something that you can get used to.

#peter parker x reader #spiderman x reader #marvel imagine #spiderman imagine #peter parker imagine #ＰＡＩＮＴＡＰＩＣＴＵＲＥＦＯＲＭＥ | my reader inserts #( PLEASE MESSAGE ME IF YOU'RE INTERESTED )#( PLEASE )#( I AM BEGGING )

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