#if i could get my brain to let me write a single contained goddamn narrative

[ashintheairlikesnow]

this is a perfect example of why I love your writing so much <333 i’m going feral over it

Ash, if you ever publish a physical book best believe that fucker will get a special place on my bookshelf

[babygirldennis]

This shit is fake bby!!!

Here she is.. My masterpost of all the dumb, illogical bits of info contained within these s15 “leaks” that make me fairly confident they are complete bullshit. It also includes my little tinhat theories that have absolutely no evidence.

I will be putting it all under a Readmore in case you don't want to risk it or if you simply Do Not Care

First up, I'd like to point out that these call sheets repeatedly give very detailed backstories to characters that have few lines which conveniently paints a picture of each episode's plot. And I'm not an expert so correct me if I'm wrong, but after looking at other similar casting calls, they only ever include the demographic and necessary skills.

Basically who in their right mind would write up casting calls that give away so many spoilers? Seems like that could cause and issue if they were leaked lol. But anyway that's my 1st point. But onto the actual content

So the conceit of this episode as a whole is that during the pandemic, the gang "gamed the system" and received three (3!) Loans to start businesses that went bankrupt. One of these businesses is implied to be the one started by dee and charlie who end up selling to Qanon shaman. Already this is so impossible baby.

1. We've already seen the gang try to get a loan and it didn't work. They don't have good ideas. Ur telling me, they managed to finagle 3 separate loans for 3 separate business ideas from an actual bank?

2. Maybe I just have bad reading comprehension but how does one have a business that is both fictitious and bankrupt?

3. If the customer is supposed to be Qanon shaman, an actual real life guy, why are the only descriptors white and male? They say he's shirtless so are they going to paint on all of the tattoos he has? And if so, doesn't that kind of ruin the dramatic reveal when charlie "throws in" the viking helmet? Why would he do that anyways? Sus.

Moving on

Alright this episode would fucking blow for obvious reasons but im going to refrain from looking at this through my gay dennis thruther lens because im biased.

Purely from a narrative standpoint, a woman hasn't been shown to be interested in dennis in nearly 5 years during the wade boggs episode. Ever since, every single woman he approaches has been actively creeped out by him. And now I'm supposed to believe that 3 "smart, passionate woman" (In Their Twenties!!!!!!) agreed to go on a date with him? And Anna even slept with him! Just because he what? Agreed with her? I'm not buyin it.

Plus the concept of this scenario lacks any potential for comedy. When iasip gets political, they always discuss a very specific topic using hyperbolic situations and flawed metaphors. If this is supposed to be a political episode, what ultimately lukewarm point would rob be trying to make here? So far we know they're ranting about

The patriarchy

Privilege

Socialism

No more personal responsibility(?)

The... nature of power in society(??)

How on earth would an episode like get approved? This shit sounds like a Ted talk. It sounds like it was written specifically to sound like a political episode so boring and pointless it would generate outrage and mile long essay posts from Tumblr users and reddit users alike. Almost like this one lol.

On a completely unrelated note, do not try and convince me that Frank "casual cock ring wearer" Reynolds is unable to perform.

Jeez this is getting out of hand fast. Let's move on

Ok now we're starting to getting into the Ireland of it all. Let me go on a bit of a tangent here about all this.. Now I thinq there are just 3 possibilities. Either this is all a publicity stunt and there is some truth to the Ireland rumors, the entire thing could be bogus from some weirdo fan (ps, if a fan did write this I want you to know I fucking hate you. You did this to me), or it is a publicity stunt but Ireland is just more bullshit.

I am going to assume it was a publicity stunt, otherwise I just wasted my entire evening and I can't have that kind of mentality rn. Additionally, I'm Going to tinhat here for a second and say that the Ireland rumors are true, but the details are different.

I say this because if they were going to do filming in Ireland, they probably figured that that information would be impossible to hide. In essence, my completely unfounded hypothesis is that this leak was their fucked up little way of controlling the situation while simultaneously messing with us.

Ok tangent is over, returning to the casting calls. From the looks of it, dee starts a "scam" acting class and has some very devoted students (Note that Tony was also the name of the porn shop owner. Seems weird!) Presumably after the gang replaces her with a monkey as the title suggests.

Honestly, there isn't too much here that's a red flag to me... seems like a nice little dee-centric episode that is the link to the Dublin angle. Assuming I am At All right, this could be a genuine plotline for Dee. However, the monkey could be a red herring and there could be a whole different side plot with the guys. who's to say. Next one!

Ah yes this is the dennis we all know and despise.. no red flags for me here really, I'm also running out of steam because idk if it shows, but I am majorly sleep deprived atm. Anyway I'm going to the next one

Okay this is where things start getting weird again ough a migraine just hit, anyway back to my earlier point about how casting calls would never contains major spoilers bc the people who see these wont be under any kind of NDA..

These ones reveal that bonnie dies. Again, that info wouldn't be in a casting call.

But also they suggest charlie has a irish penpal named Shelley who is his biological father. First off charlie is illiterate, although as pointed out by @undeadbreeze shelley could also be communicating in symbols. However, this scenario is still unbelievable to me for a couple reasons:

1. Bonnie's last name is Kelly obviously, and we know it's her maiden name because Jack's last name is also Kelly. But Shelley's last name is... also Kelly? In the context of this big ol hoax, it feels like it was written to show that look! his last name is the same as charlie's! That's how you know that's his dad! But It would be way too big of a coincidence if charlie's dad happened to have the same last name bonnie.

And 2. There's the whole mystery of charlie's long-lost sister from 'charlie got molested' but never any mention of a brother which according to this, shelley has been pretending to be his brother for years. And we all know how much rcg loves their continuity, it seems uncharacteristically lazy to just tack this on without any prior buildup.

And finally let me talk about mac for a second and specifically the line in gus's summary "both are gay men who are attracted to the priesthood for all the wrong reasons"

Iasip has commented on pedophilia in the priesthood many times in the past which leads me to believe that they are implying that mac is a pedophile? Please let me know if I completely misread the implications of that statement, but if not, then that is completely insane and one of the biggest indictators that this is fake. Mac is awful, just like everyone in the gang but he is definitely not a pedophile.

However even if i did completely misread that, it's still proof this is fake.. For all his faults, Rob put a surprising amount of care and effort into mac's coming-out. It hasn't been perfect, but Mfhp in particular firmly established that mac's faith is integral to his identity so Its unlikely that rob would throw all of that away for a cheap shot at priests.

Ok my brain is irradiated sludge at this point, but in conclusion. I hope that 1. I'm right, at least about it being fake (Otherwise damb that'll be so humiliating for me) And 2. This eases ur fears a bit. I don't want to lose all faith in future seasons bc I love iasip and miss the gang. If you read this far youre insane but I literally love you so goddamn much because I spent so so long tapping this out on my silly little phone

Please feel free to add on or message me your thoughts and opinions I need to know I'm not the only one who uhhh went a bit insane. And finally: whoever made these is a cunt. Mwah.

[akisazame]

okay, i don’t think i’m obeying the 500 words or less rule but "Can I talk yet?" Josh says softly. through "I could kiss you now," Josh says. on all the solutions were trial and error

link to the chapter in question

“Can I talk yet?” Josh says softly.

Rebecca laughs in spite of herself. She cracks open one eyelid to see Josh, watching her with a mostly neutral expression, his head cocked slightly to one side like a curious dog. “Yeah,” she says, her voice cracking on the consonant. “Yeah, you can talk.”

One of the ways I constantly challenge myself as a writer is pushing to sustain narrative tension, but when I wrote Josh he just instantly wanted to hit the catharsis button. He’s so soft! I love him.

“So,” Josh begins, and then stops. He looks down at his knee, which still has Rebecca’s hand resting on it; before she can get self-conscious and pull away, he puts his own hand on top of hers. “That was… a lot.”

It was a lot. Rebecca, as a person, is a lot. She knows this better than anyone. Her brain is screaming at her that she’s made a terrible mistake, that she’s a horrible stupid bitch who ruins everything and now she’s ruined this, she’s ruined this for good in a completely different way from the last time. She resisted her emotions through her whole speech but they’re cracking through the surface now, pulse racing and tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she somehow manages to say without completely losing control of herself.

Rebecca, on the other hand, isn’t ready to accept that it could be this easy. (We could take a long winding detour here and talk about how much of this scenario is based in reality vs Rebecca’s subconscious presenting her the path of least resistance, but that’s getting into some Deep Philosophy Bullshit and let’s leave it vague it’s more interesting that way.) In a way, this is an ultimate nightmare scenario for someone with any level of anxiety, because you’re faced with having to apologize for shit that you thought you’d apologized for and moved past. It’s like when you’re lying in bed and remember that dumb thing you said in fifth grade, except real. Not great!

“You kind of have a lot to be sorry for,” Josh admits. “I always thought you were so innocent, but this… it’s hard to process all of it.”

Rebecca’s fight or flight response kicks in, and a whole list of excuses are on the tip of her tongue in an instant. Josh shouldn’t have led her on when they met in New York; Josh shouldn’t have told her to lie to Valencia about summer camp; if Josh was very attracted to her then he should’ve kept it to himself instead of making her feel like she had a chance with him. In Rebecca’s memory, she once told him all these things and more, publicly attacking him because she thought that’s what she needed to do to feel better about how he’d hurt her. But it didn’t help then and it certainly won’t help now. “I’m not asking you to understand, or to forgive me. You don’t ever have to forgive me.”

Every single goddamn time I watch 102 I literally yell at the screen during the fallout at Spider’s because IT WAS JOSH’S FAULT!! HE TOLD HER TO LIE!!! In general I think Josh should take a little more responsibility for some of the shit that happens in 1a. But this is Rebecca’s POV post-407 and she’s got that Josh glitter so like... what can you do, I guess.

“But,” Josh goes on, ducking his head so he can see more of her face, “I’m… not mad? It seems like I should be, right? D- do you want me to be mad?”

Does she? She doesn’t know. Rebecca has no idea what she wanted out of this. What she does know is that, in her own present, Josh Chan has wormed his way back into her heart when she was once convinced that he was irrelevant. She also knows that, in her own present, the amount of bad blood and baggage between the two of them is so immense that sometimes it feels insurmountable. If she chooses this and they get to start over again from this moment, with all of her dirty laundry aired, maybe they can build something together that won’t crash and burn. It almost feels too easy. Too pain-free. “Can you maybe yell at me a little bit?”

So, in general, writing Josh’s chapter was hard. I spitballed several different scenarios before finally landing on 111, but even that wasn’t ideal because at that point Josh is still with Valencia. I had a lot of guidelines for myself as far as making things “fair” which basically boiled down to “no one is going to cheat on anyone.” (This is why I picked 302 for Nathaniel even though 211 seems a more obvious choice.) So Rebecca’s end goal is to get with Josh, but she doesn’t see a way forward from here without things getting messy.

All at once, Josh’s whole face softens. “I’m not gonna yell at you, Becks.”

“Well, I feel like someone should be yelling at me,” Rebecca mutters. “You could call Valencia. I’m sure she’d love to give me a verbal bitch slap right about now. Maybe even a real bitch slap.”

“She does really hate you,” Josh says lightly, like it’s no big deal, even though to Rebecca it’s a very big deal in more ways than one, “ever since that whole thing where you kissed her at Spider’s.”

In this house we love and appreciate Valencia Maria Perez!!! It’s unfortunate that Valencia is Dame Not Appearing In This Fic, because I got to touch on the devolution of Rebecca’s friendships with Paula and Heather but not Valencia, who had the furthest to go. Rebecca is totally devastated by the fact that Valencia isn’t her friend, so much so that she doesn’t even let herself dwell on it.

Right. She’d kind of conveniently left that whole incident out of her confessional laundry list. Then again, it’s not as though Josh was the wronged party in that particular scenario. Rebecca finally tugs her hand free from beneath Josh’s so she can grab her wine glass off the table, because suddenly she kind of needs it. “So, uh, here’s the thing about that,” she says, raising the wine glass to her lips and holding it there, tapping her fingertips nervously against the side. “Um, basically, I wanted to be kissing you, but Valencia was there, so I couldn’t kiss you, but Valencia is your girlfriend, so kissing her was basically like kissing you, so…” She winces and tips some wine into her mouth because that’s far preferable to allowing words to continue coming out of it.

Long story short: this is some real fucking bullshit on my part. 1.8 on the Kinsey Scale. I rest my case.

When she opens her eyes again, Josh is just staring at her. She feels exposed, like this is one of those dreams where she’s just casually going about her day and suddenly she’s completely naked, except this is somehow way more embarrassing.

I wrote the nude dream comparison and then thought “wait, would that even upset Rebecca that much?”

“I could kiss you now,” Josh says.

It k i l l e d me to keep Josh’s chapter platonic considering Rebecca gets to go to town on both Nathaniel and Greg, because it made the scenarios feel super unbalanced. (I, uh, might have accidentally lied to Rachel Bloom when she asked what my fanfic was about and I got flustered and said “Rebecca gets to fuck all the guys.”) But, like I said, cheating was off-limits, and I kept myself to it. The thing is, 111 is immediately after the camp episode, where Josh really starts to be unable to contain his big gooey feelings for Rebecca, so he makes the suggestion and Rebecca has to be the responsible one for once and turn him down. In a way it’s a bigger decision for her than coming clean with him in the first place, because this is the way the romcom should go: big grand gesture, followed by a kiss.