#because yeah pete is the one who broke away from the narrative when vegas was ready to accept his doom

[fleet-off]

 #i too am feeling insane over 'after their prescribed roles lose their sway' #never over narrative-doomed vegas and his death scene and its inevitability #and how distracting and upsetting it was for the show to go on w/o him - but i couldn't claim it wasn't narratively true #what was most unfair is that pete gave up everything and then lost him anyway #post-credits: haha nah there was nothing inevitable about that #the curtain has closed #this is pete's story now #he's not going to lose his hard-won happy ending #vegas is just a man #there's no such thing as being narratively doomed when you're just a man #a young man. a despicably mutually in love young man. at that :)

via @vegaseatsass because these tags are (as always) perfect. <3

I will never be normal about this scene taking place after the end credits.

Because here we are, literally after the end of the story. And here is the comedic sidekick occasional-mentor, having survived his self-sacrifice for the hero at the end of Act II, having been torn open and loved in the dark, having emerged to realize that he can no longer be a blank moldable surface in his own life.

And here is the villain, having lost too early, having been cradled and seen and afforded grace, having emerged to realize that he cannot be the heartless evil he was made to be, having fought and failed and lived rather than died at the victors' hands.

After the story has been told, Pete is not a background character in service to someone else’s story. He is, in this place, the most important person.

After the curtain falls, Vegas is not a villain—and he is not lost, is not abandoned as comeuppance for his terrible flaws. He is a young man thoroughly, despicably, mutually in love.

Because after the finale has played out, after all the chess pieces have been tidied away until the next game, after the credits roll—the narrative roles Vegas and Pete were prescribed lose their sway. And they hold each other in the aftermath.