#larry thinks he is so cool and hot and fun and lovable and smart and accomplished

[larrythefloridaman]

I think about Larry (pre-loop) and Home's relationship a lot. How theres a sense of resentment on home's side and a sense of distrust on Larry's. How Larry can puff his ego up easy and yet every time hes given a chance to interact with himself in an externalized fashion theres this. distaste. Its never really strong enough to call 'self-loathing' exactly. Its very... casual. Almost insidiously so.

I think about how FL Man in the nccts expressed his hopes of becoming a champion eventually (although he'd just went 0-2 in his first tournament, and his friend dani would later outpace him easily) and his disappointment at becoming a plain ol' doctor on the sidelines instead (a perceived failure despite how much of an accomplishment he later knows it to be on the other side of that degree- larry shot for the stars and landed on the moon, but fl man is barely past being a dumb kid and kinda doesnt... get that concept, just yet i dont think) and his excitement about the powers hes going to have (which is soured by seeing them in action- clearly a little unnerved by the visceral reality of it.)

I think about how FL Man was 19-20, in that weird transitional phase from being a teenager into being an adult, and doesnt really think of himself as 'grown up' yet. I think of how Home is a boring stick-up-his-ass old man to him (and his shock that home is younger than larry as of current is still funny to me.) I think of how, often, when youre young and dont know much about adult life, before you start to mature, you arent really excited by mundanity. you want something dazzling, you have big hopes, often dictated by what the people and culture around you expect or deem valuable, and how sometimes it feels like a betrayal of your past self or a failure to give up on those hopes once you know more about yourself and what you want and who you are and how things work. I think about how Hamburger Helper shot down Larry's grab for captainship in seemingly as embarrassing a way as possible, because he thought Larry needed to learn patience and respect for his elders.

It seems. likely. to me that Larry got involved in Order's experiments in the interest of attempting to skip the work. hoping to become a better fighter he involves himself in all too many a superhero's origin story, is victimized by painful, unethical science, only to gain a power that, for all he loves it and benefits from it, he has also called a curse, a power that those who arent used to it sometimes look upon the symptoms of with a visceral disgust, a situation he and j0hn were lucky to survive and thrive in spite of together, where others werent so lucky. (For one thing if i recall, juniper's parents certainly weren't.)

I think about Larry and Home, opposed. Sometimes you look at your past self and all you see is a naive idiot, reckless and impatient and clueless, unbaked. It can be hard to give someone responsible for every bad idea you ever had the credit for surviving to become you, especially if youre not that happy to be you. And sometimes, you can't imagine why or how you would ever choose to become something you think you'd hate, make choices you'd regret, before youre standing there in your own shoes. Larry cant trust himself. And sometimes that's for good reason. Home didn't tell himself he'd die, after all. (And his boyfriend kept his future self's secrets- in a way he'd placed the person he'd become over who he was then. Did he think of him as a fixer-upper in the end, like his tech? ...As long as j0hn was happy, and safe, larry didn't mind. He knew he was a bit of a fuckup. J0hn was his whole world. The love of his life. His partner in everything, even this nightmare. And even if he loved the person he could be more than who he was, he was going to become him, so that didnt matter.) (J0hn doesnt care for the mustache.)

And i think about how home was there, a participant and a witness and a victim all at once, unable to alter the course of history but instead forced to watch and enact it and to reflect on how foolish he'd always been as hes forced to be complicit in the suffering of the community he wants nothing more than to protect in the pursuit of his endgoal, forced to trust that if he succeeds it will all turn out for the better. I wonder how much he blames himself. I wonder if he ever apologized to himself the way he apologizes to others he had to rope into all of that.

And he was right. It all worked. The plan worked. He played his role beautifully, so beautifully its part of him now. And he got the happy ending he wanted, he didn't even have to die for it. Turns out, it wasnt really the ending like he thought it might be. And now what? What does he do with himself? Whatever he wants, he has AGENCY now, hes an adult with a degree and a job he (mostly) loves serving his community and useful skills and money and time. He can help people, like hes trained to do, like he did all this to do in the first place, like hes good at. (After a little horrifying revenge. Just a little. If he has to send Dr. Order to a poetically satisfying end to keep her gone for good they can at least drag her errandboy's one winged corpse onstage as a bit for a while. And then that went horribly wrong. And then she wasnt gone for good. And the new susan's too cool and good for it to really be fair to hate her. Cool, cool, awesome doesnt completely fuck up the cathartic closure of that chapter of his life for him at all no sir definitely not hes definitely not having a dissociative episode just seeing Her again, ruining the illusion that he can just move on like all that didnt happen.)

And In his heart, he's always going to be making up for the fact that he couldnt do more. That he couldnt bear it all by himself. That he didn't do more when he could. That he failed to avoid this being necessary in the first place. That it was all rigged from the start, and that to an extent that could be understood as his own fault, and he did all this to himself and thats true in too many ways. Hes making up for being a low-class beat-down fool that doesnt really belong with the stars, but is among them anyway. He's making up for the fact he always was, always is, and always will be. Hes making up for it. He martyrs himself to pay back some intangibly infinite cosmic debt for surviving and thriving at others' expense- survivors guilt has always been something he and folk seem to have in common. Its his apology, for doing what hes done and being who he is. He owes everyone that much, for putting up with him all this time, doesn't he? He'll take advantage of the thick skin hes developed to protect others from the consequences of his and others decisions, draw the attention off of his collaborators, he'll always take the hit to take care of someone else.

But all that doesnt account for the fact his loved ones... yknow. Love him. And want him to be safe and comfortable and live for them as much as hes willing to suffer and die for them.