#i feel like they're a little blurry??? but i used the right dimensions i don't understand

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

I got deeply confused at the end of episode one, let's see how episode two does for me.

Oh shit, Kram is having a full on mental break. Noooo.

The timing of the blue water makes me nervous, because now we have an implication that this is all happening in Kram's head.

Don't break me show, pretty please.

Wait... are they saying Tai killed Kram's mom? Why are we just learning this?!

I'm a bit surprised that Kram doesn't think this is bad Tai at all from the beginning. Sure he's missing the scar, but most of us don't go "oh random identical dude" as our first guess.

Max does so well when he plays stoic with a lot going on under the surface.

Uh...I know he looks like your former lover and you're very confused, but this might be overkill, my man.

This feels like it has pretty good meme potential though.

DUDE SERIOUSLY!!!

You just tied him up, my man. He has plenty reason to be scared of you, even if he didn't know bad Tai.

Aw, the Phupha moment is sad. Seeing someone you love so much but they don't know you.

Ah, the Tai that quit vs the Tai that stayed.

I wonder if he quit because of this world's Kram?

Oh Kram. I already know this isn't going to go the way you want.

Wait, was that translation right? Did we just jump 3 months that fast?!

Oh, Phupha dreaming of his other self? Interesting...

Lol, Kram's been busy these three months if he got Tai to do this.

Ok, good, we'll go back a bit again. That was some major whiplash for a moment.

Lol, Kram is a little shit and I kinda love it.

I don't love the blurry filter on the flashback though. It's not necessary and it's distracting.

Aw, I tell ya - vulnerability is a powerful tool.

Of course Tai can't keep his walls up against this.

The body language is so good in this moment, where you can see how painful it is for Tai when Kram gets physical.

But seriously, whoever decided on this constant blur for the flashback - what the heck?

I'm glad Kram had a plan b, because he sucks at interviews. It's all about connections, baby!

Kram is very natural at blackmail, lol.

Awww, Tai.

This has got to be so hard for him. The person you love is back, but they're not really them, but they are so damn similar...

Ha! Called it. Falling for Kram is what changed Tai so much.

Which does make me curious if we're done with Kram's original world and original Tai, or if that relationship is going to develop at some point too... hmm, intriguing.

Um, Kram...what is this plan? He's not safer in your world!?!?!

One could argue he's a lot less safe, because he doesn't have Tai as a bodyguard there!!

Hmm, the blue seemed to disappear before they hit though, so maybe it'll just be two very wet dudes who didn't travel dimensions at all.

I am entertained, the acting is very good, but some of the plot is still a bit baffling for me.

[paninimancer]

Okay, trying to write the version that's tellable.

It's as if you spend your life looking from a fixed point through a lens, right? Until you find yourself taking a step to the side and now you can see - there's another lens beyond it, always has been. It's just lined up with the first one from where you're normally standing, so you've never been aware of it before now.

And both lenses have some natural distortion to them - you don't usually notice this, but now that you're looking from another angle and they're not lined up, the distortion in the lenses is out of sync. It starts to act like frequency interference, significantly changing what you're able to perceive through them and distracting from the view. You become intensely conscious of both lenses, the space and relationship between them.

Here's where it gets a bit silly. The lens is the self - you will never have an unmediated experience of reality, you have only your own mind to experience it through. When you see both lenses, you're becoming aware of your selfhood as an experience. You're observing the observer. You are, in effect, coming into the room with yourself, and meeting him.

(This felt, emotionally, completely literal. I use "him" here because this was the most unequivocal maleness I've felt in myself in a long time. If you're someone else reading this, understand that the "you" in this is mainly me.)

And then there's to figure out what that relationship is, what feelings you have toward him, how your dynamic works. The act of observation has an active subject and a passive object - you find yourself identifying with the subject (even as it feels incorporeal) and compelled by the object. You may try to shift your identification to the object - I did not succeed, but I suspect it would be extremely mystically significant had I pulled it off. Meanwhile, as all this is going on, you can't stop seeing the distortions in the overlapping lenses and being fascinated by the hitherto unknown space between them.

Eventually, your vantage point moves back toward its customary location. Gradually, the lenses realign until the second one apparently disappears - though you know it's still there, just hidden from view. It's almost like losing a dimension of space. For a long time, though, the lenses are just a little off, and outlines and concepts remain just a bit blurry. I was able to have conversations with other people at this point, but my grammar was off. Toward the end I sketched an ugly diagram of the realigned lenses and wrote a missive from the other me before we collapsed back into one identity.

I don't want to go too much into what the relationship between me and the me that I met is, although I know I made it pretty obvious earlier. I'm conscious of the strangeness of it and trying to be prudent about how I talk about it, even as I'm grateful for and wonderstruck by it.

[braveveth]

SONG BEHIND THE SCENE: call your girlfriend by robyn

don’t you tell her how I give you something that you never even knew you missed don’t you even try and explain how it’s so different when we kiss