#my audience of two people to you i dedicate my emotions

[septembersghost]

sorry but this section of the wiki for from elvis in memphis makes me want to chew glass and commit crimes, something about reading the information encapsulating years of his life condensed into paragraphs and thinking about everything he could've created but never had the freedom or space to do (and i adore a lot of those soundtrack songs, there are terrific/fun/beautiful/iconic ones. can't help falling in love, hello?! but it still...hurts to think about):

do you understand? i am biting maiming

and then:

and the album is so phenomenal and everything should've fallen into place from there and

[ironunderstands]

Yapping about why I love Aventio and what I feel makes it a great ship 

(If you hate it I urge you to read this, because you don’t have to agree with me, but I want you to get where Aventio shippers are coming from at least)

I’ve just really wanted to talk about why I love Aventio because the people do not get it like I do and GODDD ITS SO GOOD WHEN DONE CORRECTLY UGHHHHH

Also this is gonna be VERY stream of consciousness I do not have a plan besides dragging you through my brain so enjoy the ride.

I guess the best place to start is the fact that Aventurine and Ratio are my two favorite characters in the game. Like even if they have no interactions with each other ever and might as well be from different pieces of media I would ship them, because I like seeing characters I like interact and the fun police cannot catch me. That’s a really shallow personal reason though and I feel like the rest I have will be able to be appreciated by others.

GOD THE DYNAMIC IS SO GOOD RAAAAAA

Two emotional constipated dumbasses circling around each other like black holes trying desperately to deny and run from their feelings when they have both fallen hard. The lack of acknowledgement of feelings on both ends is TRAGIC and it makes me want to rip my eyes out in a good way, let’s start with Ratio.

Unfortunately my glorious king Ratio has been mischaracterized to hell and back but we will get to that (and the Incorrect Reasons Why People Hate Aventio) later. Instead I will go over his actual character; a deeply insecure, intelligent man who desperately wants the rest of the galaxy to come to the realizations he has long since stumbled upon, but has been so isolated from his peers from such a young age that he’s doomed to fail in literally every social interaction he has and be misunderstood by both the audience in universe and irl (the autistic coding isn’t helping him either).

Ratio is tragically misunderstood again, both in universe and by the audience, which is why it means so much that Aventurine Gets Him. Aventurine pushes his buttons, tears down that literal cold marble facade masking the deeply silly and caring man beneath (this man bathes with rubber duckies in the privacy of his own home 😭), and that scares the shit out of Ratio. People aren’t meant to see through him, Ratio acts rude not just because he believes it’s the best way to help people, and because he believes he himself is mundane and the conclusions they come to should be their own, not his.

No, it’s also because on some level Ratio is afraid to be vulnerable around people. As much as he pretends like it doesn’t affect him, Nous’s rejection has hurt and haunted Ratio for his entire life. And I do mean his entire life, even in high school he had already set up a strict routine for himself, something commented on by his teacher, Ratio has quite literally always been striving for some sort of perfection and the fact that he cannot achieve it kills him.

Moreover, the guy just grew up way too fast, he didn’t have time to develop social skills. We see it in that afformentioned relationship with his teacher, in which they recommend Ratio (who is again in high school) to be moved up to college level stuff and transferred due to his success. He has quite literally never been able to just relax in a environment of his peers, Ratio for some reason we don’t yet know has always been dedicated to constant improvement and that leaves no room for dealing with failure.

On some level, he knows this too, that he can never be perfect. Ratio is part of the Mundanites in the Intelligenica Guild for a reason, he doesn’t just see himself as mediocre because he believes everyone is and that’s ok, but also because he looks down on himself for being too mediocre for the Genius Society, being too mediocre for Nous’s acknowledgement, being too mediocre for anything.

Which is tragic because Ratio is very accomplished and he is very smart, and his character stories aren’t even told from his pov, but rather in the style of documentaries and letters (his professor) and other works on his well acclaimed life. We don’t ever get to see how Ratio really sees himself, just the tiny cracks in his marble facade that let the real man behind the character shine through.

Because that’s what he’s playing 90% of the time, a character. Whether it be at the Herta Space Station in which his real goal was to uproot the researchers blind worship of the Genius Society, or in Penacony in which he plays up the arrogant, narcissistic scholar both people in universe and irl make him out to be, both to serve a goal bigger than himself. 

Sincere moments from Ratio are RARE but god are they beautiful, his conversation from Screwllum in 1.6 and his note to Aventurine in 2.1 will forever haunt me in the best way possible. If you want to understand Ratio as a character, yes read his character stories, but just watch that damn scene with Screwllum it is phenomenal. He cares so much and is so, so bad at expressing it, he drives me nuts, Veritas Ratio the man you are. 

And the thing is, it seems like he’s always been playing a character and doesn’t know where the real him ends anymore so he just sticks to the way people perceive him a lot of the time. Like as a kid he was constantly striving to be the best so he missed a lot of necessary developmental shit, and as an adult he’s a celebrity so it’s hard for him to attach himself to others anyways because society and his students will hound him for it.

And then you throw Aventurine into the mix, and oh boy does shit get interesting.

Veritas Ratio, perfect “unfeeling” Veritas Ratio and the one person who gets him well enough to push all his buttons and expose the vulnerable underbelly he thought he hid so well. On a fundamental level, Ratio understands this, which is why he doesn’t bother with the alabaster head, as pretending the real him is just as unfeeling and uncaring is easier.

So he brushes off Aventurine’s jests as if they are an insult to his very existence, he can’t look in Aventurine’s eyes when he “betrays” him because his poker face would break, he leaves as soon as he’s done talking because lingering would allow the weight of their conversations to sink in. Part of it is because for pretty much all of Penacony, up until the note Ratio gives him, Ratio is acting, trying to play up the role of the arrogant, unfeeling scholar to make Sunday buy the betrayal plan, because to Sunday this behavior is signs of a bad relationship between the two (honestly the fact that the audience also interpreted it this way makes me mad like did yall seriously not pay attention, but also happy because if even the players were fooled that means Sunday buying it is believable). 

However, even if it feeds into his insecurities, Aventurine knows that false facade and loves tearing it down. It’s very telling that the second time we see Ratio really freak out (the first being at Herta Space Station) is at the suggestion that he came to narrate Aventurine’s demo not because of knowledge or respect for the show or whatever, but because he genuinely likes the guy. What makes it even better is that Aventurine is the one who suggested it, and already figured out the excuses Ratio was going to use to deny it. Ratio can fool everyone else in the galaxy, but he cannot fool Aventurine, and on a fundamental level that is what makes their dynamic work, because Ratio knows Aventurine in the exact same way.

Aventurine can shove away people who care about him, out of distrust and fear that they will leave him like his family did. He can believe he’s unloveable and a person so detestable that even the actions he performs in order to stay alive condemn him to hate himself as much as the rest of the galaxy hates him. But, Ratio doesn’t see him that way.

Aventurine doubts his intelligence, if he has really earned anything he’s done and in his voiceline about Ratio, doubting if Ratio even sees him as smart or worthy. However, Ratios voiceline about Aventurine is about how he believes Aventurine is smart and worthy, and that his doubt will be his downfall if he doesn’t come to the realization that he isn’t worthless. 

Ratio knows Aventurine’s one weakness, the one thing that could stop him; himself. That’s why he gives him the note urging him to stay alive and keep on living because ultimately Aventurine will only ever fail if he gives up. And The Note Is Enough, Aventurine walks into the event horizon of a black hole, confident he can return alive on the other side because someone cares about him, BECAUSE RATIO CARES ABOUT HIM, and wants him to live on even if Aventurine doesn’t feel that way towards himself.

In the metaphorical and literal manifestation of the meaningless of the universe, in the face of overwhelming nihility, Aventurine survives because someone loves him, and with that love he’s strong enough to brave even that. 

Even if they can’t admit it out loud, these two deeply, deeply care for one another and trust each other perhaps more than anyone else in the narrative. The betrayal plan would have never worked if there was not mutual trust, Ratio wouldn’t have gone to Penacony in the first place if he didn’t trust Aventurine, and Aventurine wouldn’t have asked him to come if he did not trust him. We don’t just see this trust between Aventurine and Ratio either, and Jade and Topaz both trust him with their cornerstones, but ultimately it’s Ratio who’s physically with him the whole time, risking his life alongside him for the sake of their plan. 

As much as people like to ignore it, lying to the Family members, to Sunday, is extremely dangerous and puts Ratio’s life in danger as much as it does Aventurine’s. Ratio is not an irrational person, he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t have faith Aventurine would succeed, he would not have done if he didn’t think he would return. They have absolutely faith in one another and it’s beautiful. 

Aventurine’s first constellation is named “Prisoner’s Dilemma” for a reason. A social experiment in which two prisoners are captured and separated, if they sell the other one out and remain silent, they go free but the other remains in jail for 20 years. If they both sell each other out, they get a sentence of 5 years. 

But if they both remain silent, trust the other, they even if they physically can’t communicate and don’t know what the other says, they get the best possible outcome, only one year in jail each. It requires a sacrifice on both ends, they both still have to go to jail, but only for a year, and only if they trust each other completely, as if the other sells them out they will be in jail for 20.

The prisoners dilemma relies completely on trust, and it’s the exact situation Aventurine and Ratio face in the Penacony quests. Aventurines doubts if Ratio’s betrayal was real or not, even if he set it up himself, and Ratio worries about Aventurines survival, if continuing this plan will end well. “You can’t expect a featherless bird to take flight” isn’t just Ratio chastising Sunday, he’s genuinely worried that this plan will put Aventurine at too much of a disadvantage to continue on. 

But they both trust each other, and if just like in the Dilemma neither come out completely unscathed (although it’s much worse on Aventurine’s end), they ultimately achieve their goal. 

God is it sweet and corny in the best way possible 

I want to kill this fandoms perception of stoic, emotionless Ratio because once people realize he’s actually the corniest mf ever is the day I sleep easy. He makes statues of himself doing Jojo poses, he plays chess versus himself, he named himself Veritas (truth), he loves rubber duckies, he literally sits in a bathtub couch, and Aventurine breaths and he gets flustered.

Ratio so deeply silly, chronically corny, it’s a crime he needs to be locked up someone stop him. 

And Aven brings that out of him. His teasing reveals the goofball trying so desperately to disguise himself as a serious scholar. Ratio is very smart of course, but that only makes his silliness better, as you watch this absolute genius of a man behave like a tsundere schoolgirl. 

It’s not like Aventurine is some paragon of seriousness either, he’s the one teasing Ratio, fucking around even in a serious mission. Yeah it’s partly because he wants Sunday to think he’s incompetent, but it’s also because Aventurine genuinely is having fun, enjoying himself before the serious part of the plan kicks in, and the meantime he does that by messing with Ratio.

Their dynamic of Aventurine messing with Ratio, and Ratio trying desperately to pretend like it doesn’t affect him is as hilarious and heartwarming as it is tragic, and that dichotomy is why I love them so much. It’s fun and it hurts so so much because their interactions being this flavor of silly leaves almost no room for the sincerity they both desperately need from one another. 

AND GOD I NEED IT TO HAPPEN. RATIO MENTAL BREAKDOWN SCENE PLEAASEEE LET HIS WALLS CRUMBLE PLEEEEAASEE PLEASE PELADE PLEASEEEE EPLES DOLS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

They’ve gotten closer and closer and closer and soon something’s gonna snap because they are so close yet so distant and if something doesn’t change the tension is just gonna boil over AND I NEED IT TO HAPPEN. I need more Ratio scenes I need more interactions with him I need him with his guard down I need him to profess out loud that he cares about Aventurine I need him to break please he needs it, it would be so good for him. It doesn’t even have to be from Aventurine, just Ratio snapping and revealing the fucking mess he is under his facade and not being rejected by the people he cares about for it is enough.

I honestly doubt it will happen in the story though, as much as I want it to. Although Aventurine’s character demo somewhat changed my mind against this, I feel like hoyo is like “ok they get the vibe between these two we can move on” and the shippers are left to extrapolate how this relationship would go beyond what it is now. As much as I want a breakdown scene for Ratio in general, it probably wouldn’t happen in a while but devs if you are reading this PLEASEEEE. 

The only time Ratio ever gets slightly out of his element is with Aventurine but I need it to go further because god it would be interesting.

Well I’ve deemed that enough yapping about why I love Aventio (for now 😈) so let’s talk about why people hate the ship and why most of the reasons behind it a fucking stupid. (Massive disclaimer of course you can dislike it it’s just a lot of the “oh it’s a horrible ship and anyone who likes it sucks” shit isn’t grounded in reality in the slightest and I’m tired of the slander)

“Ratio was racist to Aventurine”

Now this is a spicy one because if this post was made in 2.0 I would 100% agree with you (during that time I shipped a non canon version of them in which that did not happen because how dare u do my boy like that hoyo). However 2.1 changed a lot and I mean a lot, and basically reframed the 2.0 quests for everyone.

Essentially, Ratio and Aventurine were both acting in that argument scene, making the things Ratio said to Aventurine not how he really sees him, and actively something Aventurine wanted him to say, so you cannot blame him for what he said. I’m not even joking or exaggerating, retrospectively it quite literally does not make sense if you view it in any other way, and honestly even with just the knowledge of 2.0 the scene doesn’t make sense if played straight, so let’s get to why.

a) Ratio and Racism do not mix fundamentally. Ratio is a person who believes that everyone deserves and education regardless of background, that it is a scholars duty to help others achieve that, and no matter who you are, you are capable of intelligence, learning and becoming the best version of yourself, and that those qualities are just limited to geniuses.

THIS AND RACISM DO NOT MIX. “Oh yeah education and improvement is possible for everyone except this specific group of people for some fucking reason!!” Like not only would this scene being serious contradict Ratios entire character, the man who believes people should not be judged for their educational background judging Aventurine for his educational background (that’s actually what the Sigonian upbringing line meant, it was mistranslated in the EN version)??!?!! Make it make sense.

Moreover, half this perception also come from the fact that hoyo made the incredible writing decision of naming Aventurines planet after a slur for Romani people, so unfortunately literally anytime its name, Sigonia, is brought up you’re essentially saying a slur. It’s much worse in the CN version, in EN it’s not obvious at all, because our version of the slur (it starts with a g and ends with a y that’s all the hints you’re getting), doesn’t look like the version of the slur that the name for Sigonia was derived from, which is partly the source of this misconception as I’m pretty certain most people assumed Ratio (and by extension Sparkle) said a slur elsewhere in the conversation when in reality them referring to Avens ethnicity/background/planet IS the slur.

Anyways terrible writing decisions aside, Ratio supposedly being racist doesn’t just contradict his core motivation, it contradicts his job. He’s a scholar, for fucks sake, and racism is inherently illogical. Mmm yes I’m gonna base my identity around finding truth for myself and I will believe government and social propaganda about specific groups of people! Very logical, very scholarly, we all clapped. 

So yeah, doesn’t make sense on a character level, to the point that in 2.0 I concluded that they must be using Ratio as a plot device in that scene to deliver some of Aven’s backstory to the audience due to how OOC it was for him 😭. However I wasn’t necessarily wrong, Ratio was delivering some of Aventurines backstory to AN audience (not just us), and he was behaving OOC in the 2.0 scene, but it was on purpose.

b) The betrayal plan 

Aventurine forms a plan in which him and Ratio pretend to betray one another in order to sneak the Aventurine cornerstone into the dreamscape by replacing it with the Topaz stone (red herring + black hole scene dialogue implies she and Jade are there for other reasons) and the Jade stone (perfect dupe). 

Now this betrayal hinges on Sunday, their main antagonist buying it, actually believing that Ratio would betray Aventurine on a mission as important as Penacony, and it requires Sunday also buying that he is winning the whole time, that the loss of the cornerstones was somehow a fumble on Aventurine’s end rather than something he planned all along. 

So, they stage the 2.0 conversation. Ratio yells at Aventurine for losing the cornerstones, something which was part of their plan the whole time. He then insults Aventurine’s background allowing Aventurine to reveal key details of his past that Sunday would not have learned otherwise, which he uses in the trial against Aventurine. Seriously, Aventurine only found out he was the last Avgin when he became a Stoneheart, do y’all think Sunday summoned that info with his mind or something during the trial (like do you guys genuinely think Sunday read his wiki or something)

Moreover, Ratio not only insults him, but portrays Aventurine as useless, disposable to the IPC because he is apparently already sentenced to death. Why does he do this? Well, so Sunday feels confident enough to do the same to Aventurine. Seriously, sentencing an IPC member, especially a high ranking one to death is a risky move, even for someone as convicted as Sunday, he would need the confidence to do so and learning Aven might already die would give him that ability. 

Because well, it doesn’t matter that much if he’s already going to get disposed of in the near future. I also think the IPC plans to use Aventurine’s “death” as leverage against the family because they were pleased to hear of his death sentence according to Dr. Ratio, meaning a) he likely did not have one from them at the time, although in the past he was sentenced to death and b) even if Aventurine succeeded in getting the cornerstone his seeming loss in the rest of the conversation wasn’t actually a loss at all, getting sentenced to death/“dying” at the very least was part of the plan all along as the IPC could still use it as leverage if things went south.

Continually, Ratio treating Aventurine in the exact same sh1tty way the rest of the galaxy does perfectly slots him into the arrogant, uncaring scholar role, which Sunday knows are some of the most easily manipulated people in the galaxy, considering he tries to bribe Ratio with knowledge about Stellarons it seems he bought this idea hook line and sinker. Sunday isn’t even subtle about it either “I heard you and your companion haven’t been getting along lately” where did he hear that from? Ratio didn’t tell him, and even though we know Sunday was 100% watching the two of them on their little adventure pre-meeting him (the bird and hound statues) that scene hasn’t happened yet so where did he get that from?

Some other interesting proof for it is that the Final Victor lightcone likely depicts Aventurine trying to convince Ratio of this plan of his, the events of which must occur  pre-Penacony for several reasons, the least of which being that we just never see it happen on Penacony which if you think it did we would see it. Moreover lightcones are canonically condensed memories and the Final Victor lightcone released in 2.0, meaning it’s the memory of something that happened before then. 

All signs point to the 2.0 scene, the one people use to paint Aventio as toxic being staged. And I have so much more evidence for this, (Ratio would never agree to go without a plan, Aven clearly formed his pre-Penaocny, so much of the plan like Ratio opening the cornerstone box, which he can’t do up until the betrayal as it’s in Sundays possession, rely on him arriving knowing how to do so, the time discrepancies, the complete 180 in personality Ratio would have to do to go from distrusting Aventurine to putting his whole faith in him, etc), but I will reupload one of my old slideshows to elaborate more on it. Basically the one thing that people use to say it’s toxic is not true and is in fact a greater show of the trust between those two. 

“The shippers are all weird and racist” 

Now this one actually has some truth to it because yes there are some incredibly fucking weird Aventio shippers and I do not blame yall for disliking them.

HOWEVER, most Aventio shippers are normal and hate that shit just as much as you guys do. Like do you realize most shippers also really like these characters and have something insane called morals so they don’t automatically excuse racist fujoshi goobers just because they are making content for their favorite ship. Trust me someone doing that pisses me (and most other Aventio shippers) off significantly more than people who hate the ship. Also free Ratio from this shit man poor guy is getting mischaracterized as a slaveowner by his fans and haters 😭

And like guys, have you ever been in a fandom before, like ever? Weirdos are always gonna be weird and it’s not Aventio’s fault they are this months victims. For a fun little example of how gross other fanbases can be, one of the most popular Overwatch ships on ao3 is Genji Shimada X Hanzo Shimada WHO ARE BLOOD RELATED BROTHERS. THERES LIKE 300+ FICS OF IT, SHIMADACEST IS LITERALLY A TAG ON THERE. I WAS IN THE TRENCHES SEARCHING FOR GENJI HANZO ANGST FICS (Hanzo killed Genji it’s complicated doomed siblings will always get me) AND HAVING TO COMB THROUGH THOSE ABOMINATIONS IN THE PROCESS.

Like please I’m relatively new to fandom culture but yall cannot be acting like this is weird for fans to do, it’s weirdo behavior but it is not unique to the HSR fandom or even Aventio. And even if understandably this makes you not like the ship, don’t paint the people who enjoy it as being the people who do this kinda sh1t. It’s not our fault peak gets tainted by miserable creatures ok, let normal ppl have their harmless fun and stop lumping people together into a monolith. 

?????

Well that’s it that’s all the “valid” reasons people have for hating Aventio, at least the ones I can remember. Everything else is just personal opinion and not at all an objective reason.

“They’re so sibling coded!”

Anyways again obviously you can still dislike it not everything is for everyone, I really just wanted to make this post to demonstrate why I and many others like it, and why the reasons people use to say it’s problematic are incorrect. Feel free to call it mid, block it whatever I don’t care, just don’t harass shippers for having some harmless fun, because the characters aren’t real but the people who like them are and in doing so you are really just being a jerk for no reason. If you somehow hate Aventio and read this the whole way through I congratulate you on your ability to actually listen to other people, and regardless of whether you changed your mind or not I respect you for doing so anyways. Thanks for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts. 

[suzannahnatters]

Subplot Romance

Over the years I've created some twitter threads on writing and history and I've decided it's a good time to start compiling and sharing them on this Tumblr. I'm going to tag them "writing".

-

Here's what I've learned about writing subplot romance. (People who write genre romance probably already know this stuff. It's those of us who are mainly leavening romantic subplots into fantasy novels that need this info).

1. Romance = fundamentally character-driven. All internal conflict & internal growth. (Can these two trust each other? Will their character flaws drive them apart?) The more study you put into creating characters and building character arcs, the better your romantic writing.

A romance arc is not the SAME as a character arc, but it 100% NEEDS solid character work undergirding it.

2. Romance needs two ingredients: a compelling reason for the characters to be TOGETHER, & a compelling reason for them to be APART. This forms the conflict in the romance so do not skimp on either.

Eg, a common mistake in male-penned stories: female lead has no compelling reason to want male lead. "He's a good-looking warrior dedicated to winning her throne!" Yeah nah, she's literally surrounded by good-looking warriors dedicated to winning her throne, why's he different?

3. Romance needs chemistry = a believable spark of attraction. Something that blew my mind when I realised it: romantic chemistry =/= sexual chemistry. Sexual chemistry (purely physical attraction) is simply PART of romantic chemistry.

Romantic chemistry is a good deal broader. (Read/watch some good romances to see how chemistry is built by different storytellers. One fave of mine is the Romola Garai EMMA. Peerless friends-to-lovers chemistry. Watch the actors' body language; the way they gravitate to each other; the way their faces light up)

Chemistry tip A: if the driver behind sexual chemistry is lust, the driver behind romantic chemistry is trust. Protag needs/wants someone to trust. It's the way you play with trust/distrust that will create romantic tension.

eg: love interest holds protag's hand. With sexual chemistry, protag simply feels a jolt at the contact. With romantic chemistry, protag feels comforted and trustful - then betrayed when it turns out LI is tracking her pulse to see if she's lying to him (see: MISS SHARP 😇)

Chemistry tip B: if protag is falling for someone, that person should occupy their mind. LI should be mentioned/thought of each scene, even when absent. When present: LI consistently provokes unaccustomed emotion - either positive or negative, depending.

Chemistry tip C: make the characters their best/most lovable/most iconic selves when with each other. Quirkiness, smarts, hilarity. Make these the most fun character scenes in the book & the audience will ship them. Passionately.

4. Build romantic chemistry/attraction through escalating moments of trust and tension. If aiming for happily-ever-after(HEA)/for-now(HFN), then the overall arc is towards greater trust, but you need those moments of tension to give the big payoff scenes appropriate catharsis.

OTOH, if you're writing a tragic/backstabby romance, you need the trust/comfort moments in order to sell the big tragedy/betrayal.

5. Trust, comfort, & happiness are POWERFUL. This is what genre romance thrives upon. Even in dark/spiky stories, the most surprising thing in the story can be the moment when the LI DOESN'T betray the protag. That too can be wildly cathartic. Use it.

6. Just as character-driven skills help you with romance, so if you master romantic writing, you'll be better able to write ALL types of relationship - platonic, friendly, hostile.

OK that's all so far. Two book recs: ROMANCING THE BEAT by Gwen Hayes & THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY by Gail Carriger teach you the rules/expectations of genre romance so you'll know what the rules are for a happy romance subplot & how to break them for a tragic version.

[pendragonsclotpole]

I need to preface this post with the fact that I’ve been aware of Supernatural for as long as I’ve known what the terms fanfiction and fandom mean. It’s one of those pop culture moments that’s existed on the periphery of my mind as something really beloved and bemoaned about by people on the internet, but it’s never been something I really cared about outside of some iconic memes.

For the past four days, I’ve been watching Supernatural non-stop in my free time. I think I sat through eight episodes straight on one of those days, and I just have to say, the show is phenomenal.

I don’t know where to start, I could make a dozen of these posts about various points throughout the first two seasons and it still wouldn’t be enough. I’ve now taken a break at episode one of season three, because now that it’s a weekday I have work and can’t dedicate the time I could on the weekend.

First, Jared Padalecki’s acting is so beautiful and poignant and emotional. He really makes Sam Winchester into the bleeding heart of the whole show, and the entire time he’s on screen I worry about Sam. His portrayal of Sam’s heartbreak and desperation at Dean’s impending death after the car crash, as well as Sam’s horror at the reveal of what John told Dean before dying held a tragic desperation and denial that really embodied what the character represented in the first two seasons. Even as a hunter and with his special abilities, Sam felt like a quasi self-insert for the audience. I don’t mean that in a bad or overly tropey way, but in the way that he felt robbed of a proper childhood in favor of his father’s crusade. Sam is the angry, indignant younger sibling who never bore the brunt of responsibility like the older sibling did and it shows. In some ways, it makes him more entitled—I don’t mean that Sam does not have the right to be angry with John Winchester. He does. Fuck John Winchester. I mean entitled in the unintentional, coincidental way that your little brother or sister always demands the things you never had or rebels against the authority of the parent without ever dealing with the consequences you did as the older sibling. It reveals the veneer of freedom he had and the protection he received by virtue of his place in the Winchester Family. For me, it made him unbearably real, and this feeling of realness was made worse by the genuine naivety and innocence he keeps even as he continually gets screwed over by the demons. There’s a steadfast belief in the goodness of others within Sam that often conflicts with the sense of goodness he believes he lacks.

Sam trusts so easily, but he understands people in ways that should be antithetical to his upbringing. It took me forever to reconcile why he seemed so familiar, until I realized that Sam Winchester, for all that he was one of John Winchester’s son, had received the unconditional love of an older sibling for his entire childhood.

I don’t mean the perfect, kind, healthy love that often exists between fictional siblings. Too often I’ve watched media that makes me wonder how siblings like that even exist, or conversely, made me glad my siblings weren’t so fucked up.

I mean the kind of platonic love that exists between siblings living in the liminal space of love and hate thanks to the single fucked up connection that draws them back together continuously out of some sense of duty or commiseration or the need to be understood.

I mean the kind of love between siblings that would wither away when in a perfect world that does not stake their survival on their codependence of each other, but that in an imperfect and real world is equated to familiarity. Sam and Dean against the world—against John Winchester.

Out of all of the episodes I’ve watched in the last day and a half, perhaps the one that struck me most was episode 20, Season 2. What is and What Should Never Be. Not only was the title a bit of emotional whiplash—the juxtaposition of Should and Never lending a finality or a sense of wrongness that can’t be replicated by the words “Could Never—but we see Dean and Sam in a world where their one connection, hunting, has completely vanished and at a high cost to all the people they’ve saved, but mostly to Sam and Dean themselves. They’re connection as ride or die brothers is gone, replaced by an ostensibly better, healthier, more normal future liberated from the expectations of the rest of the world.

Without the death of Mary Winchester, Dean and Sam are no longer Dean and Sam. They’re just two people, connected by the two people that raised them, and likely to drift apart after that connection dies—frayed ends of a tapestry pulling apart and unraveling. Dean gains a mom and a normal life, but metaphorically loses a brother and a sense of purpose. Who is Dean Winchester if he’s not a hunter and Sam’s brother? And the sad thing is, neither of these are traits Dean ever chose. They are conditions foisted upon him, perhaps not intentionally, such as in the case of Sam, but ultimately placed on his soul until they tethered themselves to the very core of what being Dean Winchester is supposed to mean. The end of the episode, and Dean’s choice to return to the real world, regardless of Sam waking him up, is Dean fully giving up his dream in order to save Sam and be a hunter. The fallacy of the episode is in the choice Dean makes, which the more I think about it, feels less like a choice and more of an inevitability but one compounded by Dean’s readiness and willingness to go with it.

This is where I get to the crux of my surprise with these first early seasons of Supernatural: Dean Motherfucking Winchester.

I don’t know what I was expecting from early seasons of Supernatural, especially with the context of the later seasons. Maybe an overly cheesy, early 2000s ode to roadtrip Americana with a self-reverential take on the classic gun slinging frontiersman of the Wild West and bad supernatural CGI. Not to say it isn’t that (shout out to Sam’s comment on Dean’s particular brand of butch), but what surprised me was how real the connection between the characters was manifested on screen and how much good will the show built up in the audience. There came a point where I sided with Dean so much in the events of the show that I felt like I was riding shotgun in the impala. I saw it with every compliant “yes, sir” he gave to John, with every teasing comment he threw at Sam, and with every act of selflessness he exhibited by protecting other people. This isn’t to say that Dean is perfect. Sometimes he doesn’t take things seriously enough, or he’s willing to sacrifice people for some misguided greater good, or he’s obsessed with saving Sam even when he wouldn’t be if it were anyone else, but Dean has a conviction so many people lack. He has the capacity to love at a great cost to himself, either because he believes himself unworthy of being loved or because he’s not used to anything else.

Jensen Ackles does such a good job at this portrayal and with such a different technique than Jared Padalecki. Ackles embodies the desperate need for self-assuredness that Dean breathes, as well as the genuine fear he has of being seen. I love laughing with Dean as much as I love screaming at him for how stupid he’s being. If Sam is the self-insert, then Dean is the tragic hero, although that comparison feels like a poor facsimile for what Dean Winchester truly is because I don’t particularly feel an overwhelming sense of pity at his state or at his hinted downfall with that demon deal. If anything, I feel a sense of indignation mixed with understanding and frustration that Dean can’t catch a break but at the end of it all, is just how he prefers it.

It shouldn’t be a shock to admit that even without knowing what happens from seasons 3 to 15, I know how Supernatural ends. Just thinking about the ending makes me wonder if I should even continue it past season 5, but that’s a decision for another time.

For now, there’s something unbearably tragic in seeing Dean Winchester so close to a chance of a normal life and apple pie happiness (something he really seems to desire no matter how much he denies it) and then having to give it up, not just because it’s not real, but because he believes it should never be real.

Dean Winchester deserves better.

[yuurivoice]

Do you have any specific tropes that always make you emotional or teary eyed?

Also any trope that you HATE?

Some of my personal favorites in no particular order are...

Time Loops (YV's Version)

Haunting the Narrative (YV's Version)

That Thing Where A Character Doesn't Know It's The Last Time They'll Speak With Someone Important To Them And Future Events Reframe The Conversation's Context

I Waited For You

Lovers So Desperate They Overcome Time & Space (YV's Version)

YV's Version = I'm very particular about how these are portrayed and I'd argue that I'm so critical of it that you'd think I don't actually like the trope. I'd also argue that people just don't bother utilizing those tropes to their fullest extent. They might be fine, but there's so much left in the periphery that remains out of the text that I find it mostly unsatisfying in most popular media.

As for tropes I hate, I don't have much of a list but communication based conflict is the quickest way to piss me off. The circumstances needed to execute a reasonable, enjoyable version of this are so rarely achieved that I pretty much loathe its very existence. Communication based conflicts are so real, but in media they're often treated as a way to manufacture stress for the audience rather than actually explore the characters or create an interesting scenario. It is short term conflict with less than satisfactory resolutions, because the audience KNOWS what the outcome should be, KNOWS what the solution to the problem is, and KNOWS the quickest way to solve that problem. Unless you are willing to dedicate time and effort to giving purpose to that conflict, I would rather not even be bothered.

House of Dragon did this (you'll likely be spoiled if you've only watched s1, so be warned), and I felt it cheapened one of its core conflicts by giving an antagonist a soft out for their badness. There's a Big Thing that was all a misunderstanding. At first, it appeared they let the Big Thing breathe, and our knowledge of it was meant to make the conflict tragic. Then, midway through s2, the Big Thing is cleared up and just used as a way to garner pity for a character that likely would have been best suited left simply as a selfish asshole rather than.......an accidentally selfish asshole?????

They ALMOST had a "the conversation recontextualizes everything" and that knowledge belonging purely to the viewers would have been good, actually. But they pissed it away and it was clear it was just an excuse to get two characters on screen together a few more times than the source material would have allowed. And I think that's actually Quite Bad!

[darcytaylor]

I'm happy that the last stop before the London premier of Bridgerton season 3 part 2, Nicola got to be in Galway.

The fact that the tour made this stop shows how much they love and appreciate Nicola. They made two stops in Ireland and only needed to go to Dublin (most popular city in Ireland), but Galway was all for her!

The message that Luke wants the audience to take away from part 2 is - discovering who you are but also knowing you don't have to do that on your own and that someone can help you.

My request is for Luke to take his own advice. He has obviously fumbled a bit in regards to his career and some choices, but if he leans in on the people that can help him, and really accept their help, he just may be able to turn it around.

Knowing that Nicola dove right into learning about the fan base of her character, Polin and Bridgerton in general, shows her dedication and love for the projects she is in. It never ceases to surprise me how much she wants her fans to enjoy her work and that is the basis for everything she does, it's for the fans and not for the fame. She became an actor because it's her passion, but she's a star because of the passion she shows towards her fans.

I'm shocked that they didn't realize that Colin would have given people in ick in episode 1. I mean wasn't that the whole point. He was supposed to give people the ick because he came back and pretended to be someone he wasn't? I wish they would have explained a bit further as to why they were offended by people stating the obvious.

Nicola showing emotions and not being ashamed to cry (even though I don't think she was expecting the tears) was heartwarming to see. I love when people aren't scared to come across as soft, to show emotion and not be ashamed. I love a soft Queen!

[pineapple-split]

Arcane S2 and what I Did Not Like:

1. THE MUSIC VIDEOS

2. The set up for dictator!Caitlyn and the failed follow-through. This could have been really interesting. You might even still be able to pull off a Caitvi endgame (I think… with a LOT more development and general care), but I see that as a secondary goal to really exploring how an otherwise well-meaning character can go off the deep end. She gassed Zaun using the system her mother wanted to use to clean their air, in her mother’s name!! Follow up on that!! Why give Caitlyn the Lady Macbeth imagery in the intro if it wasn’t actually going to show up?! Caitlyn did not answer for a single one of her actions, never reckoned with how Piltover oppresses Zaun and her role in it, and never took actions to right these wrongs or help the people of Zaun like she was set up to do in S1.

3. The massive fumbling of Jayce and Viktor’s relationship. I’m sorry Jayvik fans, but this was off the wall ridiculous in every respect. There’s a whole 2 minutes spent on Viktor deciding to leave and we, the audience, are meant to infer that he’s upset that Jayce didn’t destroy the Hexcore and/or is so fundamentally changed that he doesn’t feel the “affection (that) held us together”. Except that’s immediately undercut, because Viktor never expresses this again and repeatedly asks Jayce to work with him! If he felt betrayed enough to leave, why does he want Jayce with him again? If that was just a cover and this new Viktor simply doesn’t care like he used to… again why the focus on Jayce joining him? There’s never a textual reasoning given for either scenario.

Jayce is apparently destroyed by Viktor leaving, but there are no scenes to that effect. In fact Jayce doesn’t comment about their relationship until Act 3, when he swings wildly between “my partner is dead” to “I just want my real partner back” with no bridge between.

There’s no acknowledgement of Viktor’s story to this point, which is that he was dying of an illness brought on by the horrific conditions Zaunites live in, and he wanted to use Hextech to improve life in the undercity. Now he wants a glorious evolution for *reasons* that he doesn’t express out loud until Act 3. We the audience have to infer that he thinks he’s helping people, but he’s also speaking and acting so unlike Viktor that it makes us question who’s really in the pilot’s seat. And of course Jayce then undergoes the worst bit of character assassination I’ve seen in a long time and spouts some bullshit about how Viktor was always perfect the way he was (dying, brought on by Piltover’s literal poisoning of Zaun), that he should have accepted his “imperfections” (the illness that was killing him and harming his body). This is after trying to kill him mind you (was the plan to destroy him or try to reason him away from evolving everyone, bc we kept ping-ponging between the two). Also after Jayce’s entire motivation in the back half of S1 was saving Viktor’s life. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

This is not a plot line you can squash into the margins of 9 episodes. If you want to get to this endpoint, you need at least an episode of Viktor coming to terms with being alive after the explosion before he leaves. You need to spend time with Jayce grieving and/or trying to find Viktor before he goes to the Hexcore. Jayce probably needs a full episode dedicated to his alt timeline adventure, AND THEN we need to see him wrestling with what he’s done after he shoots Viktor. If his relationship with Mel breaks down (😭) we need to see it. (And if not, there needs to be some goodbye or closure between them ffs). If Jayce is first “destroy Viktor” then ends up at “I want my partner back”, show us that journey! Jayce needs to have some emotional struggle with all this!

Through all this, if we’re to believe it’s still Viktor in there somewhere and not the Arcane talking through his re-animated body, we need more scenes explaining what Viktor wants as well, and how his actions may/may not be achieving this. If he’s angry at Jayce, why? If he’s not, why did he leave? Is Sky a manifestation of his guilt, the Arcane manipulating him, actually her, or some combination of the three? How does he feel about the developments between Piltover and Zaun? Explore these things!

4. Speaking of Piltover and Zaun, what in the fresh hell. I was afraid they would take this route (the oppression doesn’t matter, praise the cops, the Zaunites will be thrown scraps and they should be grateful for it, etc etc etc) but goddamn. I don’t even have the energy to expend the words expressing how fucked up this is, in today’s climate. if you don’t have the guts to address class conflict like this then maybe don’t even bring it up??? Fuck.

5. Ekko was set up to be a true advocate for Zaun in S1. Of the Zaunites in S1 Act 2 and onward, he alone expressed a willingness to take care of people, not just defeat his enemies. He’s shown to be wise beyond his years, empathetic, tough as nails when he needs to be - in short, a wonderful leader. Then they sent him off to a parallel universe to get time warp powers so he could end the show alone and depressed????? He had all of half of an episode for his trauma to be addressed and establish some connection with Jinx, and then it became very clear they only did that to manufacture angst. Again - if you want to get to this end point, you have to actually show us the character journey to get there. Why was he talking about forgetting to build a better future, when he literally never did????? He established the Firelights and the community oasis before hitting 20. He pulled back from killing Jinx on the bridge. He saw an outcast from Piltover and invited them to see his work. And it’s the tree dying that drives him to the Hexcore. HE LITERALLY NEVER LOST THAT FOCUS, so why did he apparently need alt!Powder to re-teach him??? I’m going insane.

6. We really should have seen Jinx emerge as a leader of the Zaunite uprising (and this is a whole season arc, let’s be clear). We also needed a LOT more push and pull between Vi and Jinx before they reconciled. If Isha was going to be important to Jinx, we needed more time with the two of them.

I actually have no problem with Warwick/Vander in Act 2, but I think it should only have come after an actual Zaunite revolt and after Jinx and Vi both had gone through some shit opposing each other. In short, it should not be been resolved with a single hair-pulling fight and then Warwick busting in. In fact, Jinx and Vi still should have been struggling to find footing all the way up to the point where Jayce shoots Viktor, imo. There should have been real consequences to Vi joining the enforcers besides Jinx snapping at her.

At the end of the day, this family was always the heart of the show and that should have been front and center throughout. The ideas and themes they introduced should have resonated through the B plots like they did in S1 before everyone came together in the finale.

7. I also don’t mind the flashbacks with younger Vander and Silco, but if they were going to do that they needed to spend much more time on it. Show the events that let to Vander trying to kill his brother, and use it to parallel the struggle between Vi and Jinx. Show it as a struggle between opposing ideologies as much as between siblings. OR, if you’re not willing to do that legwork simply don’t go down this route at all. 🤷🏻‍♀️

8. I love Ambessa but they could have cut her and the Noxians completely and lost nothing. Sorry, but it has to be said.

9. Which leads me to Mel. I actually loved about 90% of Mel’s story, BUT: she needed resolution with Jayce one way or the other (as he was the major emotional relationship she had in S1), if they were going to go the mage route we needed to see her journey of coming into her power, AND we needed her to NOT BECOME THE NEW NOXIAN COMMANDER. What the fuck!? Piltover is her city, the home she has put her blood and sweat into, the home she came to love and ultimately chose! She rejected the life of a military leader, why make her one now?? Because she can wield magic??? Because the only thing anyone can apparently imagine with that is being a battle mage???? NO.

I would also have loved a more coherent explanation of what the hell the Black Rose is, what they want, etc, but again - you could cut them completely and lose nothing. Mel’s abilities could just as easily be a result of the Arcane “waking up”.

—-

Anyway. Moral of the story is you need reasons and buildup for characters to do things, instead of just bouncing them from plot point to plot point. I really thought the team behind Arcane understood this, but evidently not. Even the most beautiful animation in the world doesn’t save you if there’s no substance backing it up.

The real kicker is I still think S1 of Arcane is damn near perfect. Time will tell if I’ll be able to go back and watch it without S2 affecting my enjoyment.

[syre-stane16]

DOES THE PYRO VISON HOLDERES DESERVE THEIR ELEMENT?

PYRO

Ye, so Pyro is associated with war in Genshin. Why? Wecause war ravages the land and it kills everything its touches. A heavily destructive force, the element is also related with bad temperaments and rage.

Pyro's positive qualities is its warmth, light and energy.

It can be used to represent love, courage, strength and passion perhaps even ambition.

Now, I am bad at explaining the way I feel a character would represent the love aspect. But basically big positive feelings towards a select few or the entire world. You get me?

Let's begin.

AMBER

Amber is a warm and friendly character but so is most of the cast, so I won't call it out unless a character's warmth is significant enough to do so.

She's energetic, passionate and courageous.

KLEE

BOMB

Also, she a very energetic and passionate child. Klee is also considered the strongest of the knights of Favonius. Also the destruction aspect.

LIGHT

WARM,FUZZY SWEETHEART.

Guys she would love so hard oh my gods. Family, friends, random strangers. It's hard not to adore her and she just loves. I feel so upset about characters that love, like why do we deserve you. Why do we deserve your love. We are horrible, HORRIBLE people.

DILUC

His vision burned out after Crepus died. To compensate for this, Diluc used his father's delusion whilst he hunted down the Fatui. That man went on a rampage and he was exiled from Snezhnaya. So.. rage and destruction.

There's also the case that he lashed out at Kaeya and attacked his brother when he told Diluc about his connections to the Abyss Order allowing Kaeya to gain his vision.

Diluc's vision was rekindled of course, but it was interesting that his passion died the night his father did. The man still holds his dedication to justice.

Power.

Courage.

Also, he and Kaeya have a fire/ice kinda deal going on. I think Diluc and Kaeya deserve to get more story quests, like there is so much more we need to know about those two.

I can't really tell anywhere from the game, the comic or anything about what his relationship with Kaeya used to be, and how badly it broke. I feel that they both want to rekindle their relationship but aren't sure if the other wants to.

Even then, I feel like Diluc also falls int the love aspect. He got banned from a REGION because of what he did after they took his father away from him. His relationship with Kaeya is messy but you KNOW that man has a LOT of feelings.

And that may just be why I think he works with the love factor. His actions gives us an idea of how large and heavy his emotions are , you guys get me, right?

XIANGLING

Let's be honest, her dedication to the art of cooking already explains it. Also she's a chef.

XINYAN

Passionate of course, she's really friendly as well and she has a fiery personality.

Courage in a way. Imagine going onto a stage time and tome again and despite your audience constantly throwing tomatoes at you, you keep coming back to perform what you love.

HU TAO

Energetic.

She also has an interesting relationship with death. She believes that death is a natural part of life and feels that trying to prolong it is meaningless. Hu Tao embraces death.

Also she's a funeral parlour director. Cremation.

I adore how she's associated with butterflies, a symbol of death and change.

YANFEI

You would expect someone who works with law to be a hydro user wouldn't you.

Oh well, Yanfei is very passionate about the law. Like damg.

Also. Fun-fact: She finds Fontaine 's laws too difficult. Which is understandable.

THOMA

I'm not a ThomaTo shipper, but he definitely loves the Kamisato siblings. They are like a family to him and he is extremely loyal to them.

Thoma is a very friendly character and hardworking. He's also protective of the Kamisato siblings. idk guys, he's just one of those characters that you just know loves with all their heart.

YOIMIYA

FIREWORKS

passionate about fire works

friendly

DEHYA

She's from the desert.

She's strong.

Destruction.

Courage.

Her vision came to her at a low point making it a light at the end of her tunnel .

LYNEY

He is passionate about magic. He's the extrovert of the hearth siblings. He shares an element with Arlecchino, which may hint to them having a closer bond.

Light.

Courage.

The terms 'smoke and mirrors' is used when referring to a magician's tricks.

I'm gonna say a case can be made with love, for his siblings, 'Father' and for the magician that trained him and Lynnette. This boy rarely leaves his sister's side for long periods of time. Also he loves the traveller I don't make the rules you gays can't change my mind.

MOVING ON

CHEVREUSE

Passion

GUN

Courage

GAMING

His name is FIRE. He's passionate about his art. He's friendly. REALLY friendly and courage works too. His animations are LIT.

What more do you want?

CONCLUSION

Passion seems to be the most common trait amongst these fiery little guys.

Cryo next and I promise you I will gush about Kaeya and his beautiful face .

Bye!

Edi: i forgot Yoimiya.

[theladyrebecca2]

Stranger Things: The First Shadow (My spoiler-filled review and thoughts)

“Nerds, do you copy?”

Buckle up, because this is a long one! I've tried to remember as much as I can from when I saw the play on Dec 5th.

Disclaimer: This is in no way a complete recollection of things that happened. They really packed a LOT into it. This is just what I can personally recall, helped along by other reviews and recollections I’ve found online that sparked my memory. 

If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read any further!

Act 1.

After an epic intro scene, where soldiers on a ship at sea get dragged off by demogorgons (more on this later), we’re shown the Stranger Things intro exactly as though we’re watching an episode.

Chapter One: The Girl from Nowhere.

Hawkins, 1959. 

It opens with a young Bob Newby on air, talking on his radio show (the founder of Hawkins AV club! <3). We learn that he actually has an adopted sister, Patty Newby. She’s black, so she feels like an outsider (bear in mind it’s the 1950s/60s, so… yeah.) Principle Newby, their father and only remaining parent, is also very religious. 

He’s also the pastor (?) at the local church, and often makes Patty go to the church with him. She admits to Bob that she only likes to go to listen in on people’s confessions (some of which are really juicy). She also enjoys the choir there (?) as she likes to sing.  

Principal Newby doesn’t like that Bob and Patty read comic books. There’s talk about how some things are discouraged or outright forbidden because they involve sex (gasp!) and morally ambiguous behaviour. Patty in particular is looked down on by her father for acting rebellious. He disapproves of her answering him back. 

Instead of praying to God, Patty prays to Wonder Woman.

One of the first sections in the show’s programme is dedicated to the impact of comic books and science fiction on kids in the 1950s:

[This has always been the way with fiction. Whether you are talking about adventure, fantasy or sci-fi, stories set in faraway places reflect the anxieties of the here and now. Just as the children in Stranger Things turn to a fantasy game to help them make imaginative sense of a dangerous world, so we escape to alien landscapes to think about ourselves. As South Africa novelist Lauren Beukes once said, “By imagining the unimaginable, it’s possible to make reality more bearable.”]

[As Patty in Stranger Things: The First Shadow is aware, however, whether male or female, superheroes were almost exclusively white. Unless you happened to get hold of a copy of All-Negro Comics, published in 1947 by Black journalist Orrin Cromwell Evans, Black children would not see themselves represented in popular culture.]

[... in this age of technological advance and political uncertainty, [comic books] provided the thrills, the escapism and the imaginative fuel that audiences, young and old, needed more than ever.”] - Mark Fisher

Next, we’re introduced to Joyce. She’s Joyce Maldonado at this point. She’s half undressed and trying to find her clothes, obviously fooling around with Lonnie Byers, who is already talking down to her in a very casual way, telling her she’ll never amount to anything and that she’ll never leave Hawkins like she dreams of. It was another example of only physical attraction existing between two characters - there’s little to no emotional compatibility there. I sort of had the vibe that the scene was effectively introducing Joyce and Lonnie’s unequal power dynamics as they are in the show moving forwards. Lonnie sits with his legs encasing Joyce as they both sit on a mattress, and she’s visibly vulnerable in her bra, listening to him say these casually demeaning things to her. 

Joyce wants to direct the school play, although she’s pretending to Principal Newby that they’re doing Oklahoma. Oklahoma will serve as a smokescreen for the real play she wants to direct: The Dark of the Moon. This has its own page in the programme too: 

[From the depths of Scottish folklore to the Broadway stage, the journey of The Dark of the Moon is as shrouded in mystery and intrigue as the contents of the piece itself. Over the course of several hundred years, the story evolved from humble beginnings (The Ballad of Barbara Allen) into something rather darker and more brooding than its simpler folktale roots.] [In its original versions, it seems to have been an innocent, if tragic, ballad about a young man who dies of unrequited love, only for the grief-stricken object of his affection to follow him to the grave. There, they become a rose and a briar respectively, destined to be intertwined for all eternity.] - The Creel House front door, anyone?

[In 1939, it had somehow become part of the Appalachian mountain lore of the north-eastern USA… [sometimes] with a central theme of divorce rather than death. But perhaps its oddest reincarnation is as a regular feature in the annual school play catalogue across the United States… retitled The Dark of the Moon, the play recasts Barbara Allen as a young maiden desired by a witch boy whose request to be made human is granted on the condition that she is faithful to him for a year. When that condition is tested to destruction, tragedy naturally (or unnaturally) ensues. The play is rich with allegory, including themes as knotty as religious fanaticism, demonic possession and mob psychology, and with its plot of star-crossed lovers meeting across the divide between this world and a mystical parallel one, it’s a kind of Gothic Romeo and Juliet.]  -Michael Davies

In the next few scenes we’re introduced to a whole host of characters as they come into the high school, and eventually gather around for the casting of Joyce’s play:

Ted Wheeler, school jock, Mr Popular. Very much a ‘peaked in high school’ vibe. 🙈

Karen Childress, Ted’s popular cheerleader girlfriend. Ted and Karen are depicted as two teens who can barely keep their hands off each other. They constantly make out. It’s suggested that Karen is only dating him because he’s popular and um… well-endowed. 

Walter Henderson (who must be Dustin’s dad) is a total dick. He’s openly racist towards Patty at one point, earning him glares and snappy remarks from both of the Sinclairs who are present at the time. Patty has a horrible nickname at school, “mystery meat”, because of her unknown origins. But it’s clear with Walter's comments that her race also plays a factor in her general ostracisation. 

Claudia Yount (Dustin’s Mom). She has a cat called Prancer, and is dating Walter. I thought it was very fan-servicey to include Dustin’s parents at all, because we know canonically that Dustin and his mom only moved to Hawkins when he was 4th Grade. So I guess Claudia and Walter moved away, had Dustin elsewhere, then Claudia came back to Hawkins again with Dustin after Walter had left/divorced her?? 

Sue and Charles Sinclair. Again, it was a cute Easter Egg to include them, but all the parents of the OG boys being there felt very fan-servicey - especially with them all already being coupled up in high school. It felt too unrealistic and a bit jarring. I’m choosing to take this as they were literally intended as cute little Easter Eggs, and as prime opportunity for comedic relief (e.g. seeing Ted Wheeler as a total player, in total opposition to the Ted we know). 

Alan Munson. He’s a little strange and quirky, a lot like Eddie. He has a rock and roll vibe, and sticks out his tongue and does devil horns with his fingers, lol. The others don’t seem to know what to make of him, but there’s no animosity or anything. He’s really funny in all his scenes.

And of course, Jim Hopper Junior. To me, Young Hopper was like… a weird mixture of old Hopper from the show, and Steve! The actor did a great job, but yeah, it was giving Steve more than Hopper in some places (to me, at least). I don't know if this was intentional.

Hopper has some dad issues - his father is the chief of police, and they don’t get on. There’s a whole scene later on in the show where they even have a physical fight in the police station (although this isn’t depicted super seriously, and is actually part of a larger comedic section that involves some of the other cops in the station getting involved for laughs. At the end, Hopper and his dad sort of come to an agreement.) It’s kind of slapstick. They’re all falling over each other, and there’s even a part where one male cop falls against another face forward onto a desk, and it’s pretty suggestive (one is sort of mounted behind the other). Idk if this was supposed to be a standard ‘gay joke’ just for lols, or if it was more that the cops had an unexpected ‘moment’ together (they take a while to part from each other, and then they avoid each other’s eyes, so… idk). Just something I noticed happening off to the side.

Anyway, back to Act 1. We’re taken away from Hawkins High to outside the Creel house, and introduced to the Creels moving into Hawkins, just like they appear in the show’s flashbacks. They’ve moved from Nevada, and the reason they’ve moved is because something had happened with Henry, and this is meant to be a new start - it’s left ambiguous as to what exactly happened, but there’s mention of a kid that had been ‘left in a wheelchair’. 

At first, Virginia Creel seems somewhat loving towards her son, hugging and kissing him and trying to act ‘normal’, but she’s clearly unsettled by him. Henry is unpredictable, and almost seems to switch between different personalities: one that’s familiar, shy but friendly, and one that quickly rages and turns violent. 

Whilst it’s not explained WHY yet, we clearly see that Henry is somehow ALREADY under the influence of the Mind Flayer - and that he has powers.

Virginia becomes more and more openly terrified of Henry as the play goes on. Meanwhile, Victor Creel is generally absent the whole time as he’s dealing with his own ‘demons’ (severe PTSD from the war). People in Hawkins think he’s odd and weird. Remember that nobody understands PTSD at this point in time. 

Again, we get a spread in the programme about this: “These are the tranquilized fifties… the legacy of trauma in post-war America”:

[It is very likely that Corporal Victor Creel, 9th Airforce, missed the birth of his son Henry in 1945… Getting their bodies back to the US would be a huge undertaking… getting their minds home would be another problem, and one which no-one had thought to predict.] [Victor Creel is a familiar figure to us now: shellshocked, prone to outbursts, turning to alcohol to numb his trauma… what to do with the man who has seen atrocities - who is in himself a living testament to the fact that they exist, that they happen - who, in Victor’s case, may even have committed them himself? The answer was to bury him. Though shellshock was first given its name in the aftermath of the First World War… there was no widespread study of PTSD until after the Vietnam War, even though more than double the amount of American soldiers showed symptoms of PTSD during WW2 than WW1… Those suffering on the front were sedated and told they were exhausted��� once they made it home, they were told not to talk about it: that they were lucky to be alive.]

[One response in particular would have been familiar to the Creels - the child who becomes aloof from their father, and who disengages from the emotional life of the family… Much like Jim Hopper and his father, there was often immense love between these children and their fathers, but they had no way to talk about the pain they were feeling.] -Beth Kelly

Henry is clearly lonely and feels misunderstood when he first moves to Hawkins. It’s like he’s aware that there’s a darker side of him that’s dangerous, but he can’t fully explain why he does certain things (e.g whatever he did to the kid left in a wheelchair). There’s a scene where he sees the smoke of the Mindflayer swirling around him in the void, and he yells, "What are you??"

He’s the new kid at Hawkins High. People at school think he’s strange. They’re not necessarily cruel to him, but they’re not really sure how to take him either. Joyce is pleasant to him. But the only person he really connects with is Patty Newby - who we know is also a bit of an outsider at the school because of her peculiar origins and skin colour.

It’s clear there is an instant connection between Henry and Patty. Henry in particular is obviously crushing on Patty, and acts awkward around her. They bond over their love of comic books, and decide to be friends. 

Anyway - back to Joyce’s play. So the reason she wants to direct the play in the first place is to impress some visitors from a university, so she can achieve a scholarship to study theatre outside of Hawkins. 

It involves “witches, satanism, religious allegory”. Lots of things that Principal Newby would definitely disapprove of (hence why she pretends that they’re doing Oklahoma). 

Joyce talks about the overarching message: “That’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? Whether love can conquer fear.” (paraphrased). I think that was perhaps a really meta moment, and applies to THIS play and even Stranger Things as a whole.

Also there was something like, “they’re witches, not lesbians!”/ “They were witches as well as lesbians”… “Does it matter?” (again, paraphrasing, I can’t recall the actual lines, and I think this was either said at this point by Joyce and someone else, or a conversation that happened earlier between Bob and Patty when they were talking about a comic or story they had read. I’m sorry, I can’t remember!) But I thought it could be a reference to the Fear Street trilogy, maybe. I was on the lookout for any kind of LGBTQ+ imagery or dialogue, and yet my brain still managed to forget details by the end of it all (Act 1 needed to be 20 minutes longer, seriously. They went through so much dialogue so quickly, it was difficult to keep up. I feel like I need to see the whole thing again to properly take it all in).

Maybe I was tripping, or maybe I misheard, but I thought there was also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line about “the ending is happy and gay”. I wish my brain would have held onto those lines, but it happened so quickly. Something like, “the ending will be happy and gay”… “isn’t that what everyone wants?” Now, I’m certain they meant ‘gay’ as in ‘happy’ in the context, but I couldn’t help but side-eye that moment a little because it’s an outdated term in today’s language. It was, I believe, a quick exchange between Joyce and… I want to say Bob? Or possibly Walter? I honestly cannot remember. I'm begging people not to run away with this because it’s also totally possible that it was said in a derivative sense, like, “this story is dark, gothic and tragic... not happy and gay”, you know? "That's what everyone wants, right?" "Maybe, but this ends in tragedy." I really hope someone, ANYONE else caught these lines, and can give me their own two cents on it. (Curse my shit memory and also just how FAST those lines were coming at us during those scenes in Act 1… like guys, please slow down so I can actually take in what you’re saying!) 

Anyway. Joyce is having trouble casting the main leads, John and Barbara Allen, as the two are lovers and will need to kiss, and nobody seems to have the right chemistry or is taking it seriously enough. 

At one point, Karen (acting as the female lead) confidently and passionately kisses Bob (acting the male lead), who’s awkward and flustered afterwards (this is done for the audience lols). 

After hearing her beautiful singing voice (encouraged by Henry), Joyce decides to cast Patty as her female lead. Meanwhile Henry has unwittingly found himself in this room along with everyone, and accidentally gets involved in the casting process. Joyce sees that Patty and Henry have chemistry together, so she decides to cast Henry as her male lead too. 

Henry and Patty grow closer. Henry tells Patty that he’s bad, and she should stay away from him. She doesn’t listen, and says just because someone has done some bad things, it doesn’t make them a bad person.

At one point they sit side by side by the confessional at church. Henry admits to her that he has powers. He tells Patty that he can hear what people are thinking - all the time. It drives him crazy (and says people are always ‘pretending’ to be normal. The vibe is very much in tune with his speech in Season 4 about how everyone is just in a silly little play, all playing pretend with each other, all trapped in these notions of living their lives in a way that society thinks is acceptable or desirable).

As an example later on in a separate scene, he points to Karen and Ted and tells Patty, “she thinks he’s an idiot, and he’s scared of her.” He points to more characters in this scene and says more about them (like Claudia and Walter, Sue and Charles, maybe even Joyce and Hopper?) but unfortunately I can only remember Ted and Karen’s. 

Patty convinces Henry that his powers are not evil, and that he should be able to control them and use them for good. Henry then creates a "vision" for Patty, where she can freely sing with people listening, and everyone around her joins in and appreciates her talent (I think she sings "Dream a Little Dream of Me"? Unless this happens later on. There’s definitely a moment where she sings a bit of that song. Henry associates it with Patty.)

In this vision, even Patty's father is supportive of her and her singing, and it’s quite a funny moment how she imagines him dressed in a saucy red cape, dancing in a way that he *definitely* wouldn’t approve of in real life.

So it seems Henry is actually able to show people their dreams as well as their nightmares. It suggests his powers are his own at this point (at least to an extent), and not necessarily always controlled by the Mind Flayer. 

Victor sees Henry talking to Patty at school, and mentions this to Virginia. He describes it as “harmless, just Puppy Love”, a first crush. 

Virginia is still worried, and tells Henry to stay away from Patty (for her protection). Henry gets angry. We keep hearing his voice change when he changes, like a deep, monstrous voice. It’s creepy, like it’s not really him in those moments - it’s like the Mindflayer using Henry’s body, speaking through him. 

While in the attic (his new favourite spot), Henry keeps becoming influenced by the Mind Flayer. He travels to the void frequently, from where he proceeds to start killing animals - the first of which is Dustin’s mom’s cat. It’s just like the Vecna attacks in Season 4, snapping their bones and blinding them. 

Henry seems to be aware that he’s the one responsible for these killings, and he keeps on going back to the attic, and the void, to keep doing it - but it’s unclear just how aware or remorseful he is about all this, or whether it’s 100% possessed!Henry during those moments. It certainly seems like it’s the Mindflayer making him want to do those things. When he first approaches Prancer, he’s friendly, calm and softly-spoken. The attack happens very suddenly and afterwards, I think Henry sort of ‘comes to’ and cries out in distress/remorse? 

Either way, Henry is definitely under the Mind Flayer's control at that point, and you can see the Mind Flayer smoke flying around in the void next to him. 

After Claudia’s cat turns up dead, Hopper is immediately on the case, wanting to find the culprit. He starts questioning people, and ends up approaching Henry at school.

I want to clear Hopper’s name in something here! I saw someone say that, in the play, it’s stated that Hopper says he hates cats. Whilst this *is* something Hopper tells Henry at this point, it was clear to me that Hopper was only playing mind games in the way an investigator will try to get a suspected criminal to confess: ‘The truth is, I hate cats. So I actually just want to shake the hand of the person who did it - they’re a hero in my book!’ He’s totally bluffing, and it’s just meant to show that he’s already thinking and working like a detective. Regardless, the tactic doesn’t work, and Henry brushes him off. Hopper remains none the wiser. 

When more animals start being killed in the same way, Hopper is the one who figures out that they’re all pets of Hawkins High School students who are taking part in Joyce’s play. He goes to her to request her help, and she and Bob both end up going out to look for clues with him (complete with torches, this gave major Season 1 vibes). 

Joyce and Hopper’s relationship is mostly antagonistic, but it’s clear they like each other and they flirt a bit. Meanwhile Bob admires Joyce from afar, wanting only to impress her and to find the courage to tell her how he really feels. There's some love triangle imagery throughout with where they stand. (Note: Bob does eventually admit to Joyce how he feels at the end, but she casually rebuffs him. I'm so glad they eventually ended up together because Bob was just too pure.)

Henry continues to be haunted by images of a monster reflected back at him in a mirror. I think we’re meant to take that as a representation of Mind Flayer!possessed Henry. He’s clearly afraid of himself, and what he’s capable of. 

The Mind Flayer appears to him as Patty, and taunts him by saying cruel things, like saying that he will end up killing her. In the vision, Patty starts pulling off her own hair until we see her brain. We hear a deep monstrous voice taunting Henry, saying he “will kill many, many more” - that they have seen it happen, and it is his destiny. (Time travel hints? The Mind Flayer can apparently see into his future, unless this was just an empty taunt that unfortunately came true, or a self-fulfilling prophecy). 

[Evidently, there’s something deeply disturbing at the heart of the human psyche about the possibility of uncovering the horrific within itself. When that horror is externalised… it creates a symbolic representation of our own nightmares, perhaps allowing us to tackle them more objectively and overcome those dark, disturbing impulses within us all.] 

[By investing fictional creations with the qualities we most fear - the horrifying, animalistic sides of our nature - we can, perhaps, face them more objectively and convince ourselves that we do, ultimately, have control over them… and ourselves.]

[... Perhaps the monster we fear most is the one we see reflected in the mirror. As Professor Mulrooney puts it: “The monsters in these tales are not necessarily the people we would call the monsters - Frankenstein’s creature or Dracula. The scariest part of these books is the humans.”] -Michael Davies 

The real Patty then interrupts the vision, and asks Henry if he can help her find her mother using his powers. He’s wary of doing so, but agrees to help her. He says she will have to come with him to his attic. 

Once inside, Patty tells him that it’s cold in there. Henry says he likes it cold. 

When Henry enters the void, he successfully locates Patty’s mom. She’s a singer, a show girl, working on a stage in Vegas. Patty asks him what she looks like. Henry says she looks like Patty. That she’s beautiful.

Suddenly, he loses control, and is once again visited by the Mind Flayer. Patty’s mom morphs into a terrifying figure who chases Henry through the void… and eventually catches him. 

We see the Mindflayer going into Henry inside the void, very similar to Will in Season 2 on the school field. (This happens either at this moment, or in a flashback at another point of the play. But it’s at some point!!) I think this was showing us that whoever Henry was, he’s fast disappearing into the darkness of the Mind Flayer, and vice versa - it’s like a fusion. 

Meanwhile, Mr Newby learns that Patty and Henry have been hanging out together a lot. He’s greatly displeased by this, and decides to go to the Creel House to fetch Patty and put an end to the budding romance. Romeo and Juliet vibes be vibing hard.

Downstairs, he speaks to Victor Creel, who is having a PTSD related episode and acting strangely. He says his wife believes the house is haunted by an ancient demon, and with everything that’s happened (and by how the lights keep flashing), he’s beginning to believe her. He feels like his demons have followed him from the war. 

Mr Newby then overhears the commotion from upstairs, and goes up to investigate. In the attic, Henry is holding Patty’s hand very tightly. He’s twitching and yelling as he fights against the Mind Flayer’s possession, and this frightens Patty. When her father walks in, he demands that Patty lets go of Henry’s hand. She tries, but he’s holding on too tightly. “I can’t!” Patty cries out.

Mr Newby is then attacked by Henry, controlled by the Mind Flayer. His body starts to rise up. Patty encourages Henry to fight back by telling him that she believes he is good, and that she loves him.

“Say it back!” she pleads to him. “Say it back!”

Henry responds and says he loves her too. Because of the love exchange, he manages to momentarily break out of the Mind Flayer’s control: Mr Newby drops to the floor, alive but badly injured. 

Joyce, Hopper and Bob were downstairs at this point, having followed radio anomalies to the Creel House (which they did via a machine that Bob built for them). They freak out and run away, and all come to the conclusion that creepy, crazy Victor Creel is the one responsible for Mr Newby’s injuries, as well as the string of violent animal deaths. 

[Joyce has some basis for believing Victor capable of violent crime, based as this may be in her own father’s war experience… When Joyce opens her copy of the DSM, first published in 1952, she will find no entry for PTSD… Instead, the symptoms she might recognise from her father were incorporated into depression or schizophrenia, rather than their own diagnosis. Short of a name for what they were suffering, traumatised veterans were left to find their own way through nightmares - through violence, alcohol or isolation.]  -Beth Kelly (from the Stranger Things: The First Shadow programme)

After the commotion, Henry removes his blindfold. Patty's father has broken through the attic floor, and he’s seriously injured. Patty is very afraid and upset. After a brief time skip (to the next day or two I think), we learn that Patty is staying away from Henry, who is worried that he’s ruined everything. The Mind Flayer starts to creep back in. We see a possessed Henry back in the attic, and Virginia comes up to him and says that she wants to help him, but she doesn’t know how. She reminds him that he needs to stay away from people to protect them. She talks about Patty, telling Henry that he shouldn’t see her anymore.

Possessed!Henry smirks and asks her if she’s jealous. There’s something insidious and disturbing in the way he asks it. Virginia recoils from her son and her “everything-is-going-to-be-okay” facade crumbles. We see she’s absolutely terrified of who Henry has become.

Henry creates a vision, so that it appears as though his pet spiders escape from their jars, and they run all over Virginia as she screams. She flees from the attic as Henry’s dark taunts follow her.

Henry’s sister Alice comes to the mouth of the attic. "Where is Henry?" She asks.

Henry: "He’s right here."

Alice: "You’re not him."

At this point, it was like the Mindflayer had almost completely merged with Henry. The lines had become more and more blurred as the play went on, and now it’s becoming hard to separate them - the ‘real’ Henry is finding it hard to come through and fight the possession. The Mind Flayer is winning. 

This really reminded me of Will and his own possession with the Mindflayer in Season 2. How they described it like a virus taking over, and how Will could have continued ‘disappearing’ until there was no more Will left. 

After the incident with Mr Newby, and her terror with Henry in the attic, Virginia has finally had enough. She willingly hands her son over to an “interested party” who describes himself as a doctor (who we know is Dr Brenner). He vows to take Henry to Hawkins Lab, where he’ll be safe, and contained. 

When he wakes up in the hospital, Mr Newby reveals to Patty that he actually stole her as a baby (?) in an effort to revive his relationship with his wife by having another child to care for - but it didn’t work, and his wife left him. He feels guilty about it, and wants to confess this to her after he almost died.

He tells her that he was attacked by a monster who made him relive his worst nightmares, and that “the boy”, Henry, actually fought back and saved him from death. He then draws the Mind Flayer on a piece of paper, hands it to his daughter, and tells her that this is what he saw.

After learning that Henry actually saved her father, Patty returns to his house to search for him, but it’s too late - Dr. Brenner has already taken him to the lab. However, she is able to communicate by calling out to him.

Henry contacts Patty through the void, where she is able to both speak and see him, despite him being at the lab. She tells him that she knows he is still a good person, and that he should return home.

———

Act 2.

On screen:

Chapter Two: Captain Midnight

So here’s the thing - the play paints us a totally different picture than Season 4 did in regards to Henry/Vecna. 

Henry was not inherently evil, like S4 suggested to many people - he was actually just a regular boy until ‘an incident’ occurred when he was younger, which is what gave him powers and started his possession in the first place. The end of S4 makes us think that El sent Henry to the Upside Down, which is where he meets the shadow monster and morphs it into the Mind Flayer with his powers.

But that wasn’t Henry’s first time there, nor was it the first time he saw the Mind Flayer. That was all just a REUNION.

It’s revealed that Henry actually disappeared into another dimension (Dimension X/ Upside Down) for a period of 12 hours when he was just a kid. He got lost near some caves in the Nevada desert, and when he returned, he had "completely changed in personality". 

He came back odd, ‘not normal’, and couldn’t socialise well. He also returned with dangerous powers, which he violently inflicts on animals. The Mind Flayer had clearly started possessing him from that early point, way before he even came to Hawkins. 

Let’s go back to the very beginning of the play - to the soldiers on the ship. It was Brenner’s father and his crew that were aboard this ship, the USS Eldridge, which had accidentally travelled into Dimension X/The Upside Down as a result of electromagnetic activity. 

This is based on The Philadelphia Experiment, or Project Rainbow, said to have taken place in the Second World War. The programme had a double spread on this: 

[Allegedly, wartime experiments caused the supernatural disappearance of a US naval ship… Project Rainbow was based on Einstein’s research into unified field theory through which [he] hoped to create a single theoretical framework to encompass all fundamental forces, including electromagnetism and gravity.] 

[Carl Allen claimed to have witnessed a strange event in October 1943 involving the naval destroyer escort USS Eldridge and scientists who were working on highly confidential technology which would make ships invisible to the enemy by using powerful electromagnetic fields to ‘bend’ light around them. According to Allen, they succeeded in doing just that. In fact, Allen said the ship was also briefly teleported 275 miles away to Norfolk, Virginia, before reappearing in Philadelphia. …It’s been suggested that the Eldridge’s official logs could have been deliberately altered… with the whole of Project Rainbow moving beyond top secret clarification.]  -Catherine Jones

Brenner’s father is the only survivor of this terrifying event. After returning from Dimension X and taken to a hospital, injured and dying, we learn that his blood type is now “unique” from any other human being. He won't survive a blood transfusion. His ravings about Dimension X before his death haunted and inspired Brenner for the rest of his life. Brenner started an experiment focused on finding and travelling back to Dimension X; his ultimate goal was to "create a gate" to reach it again.

Brenner enacted these experiments in the Nevada desert, where one day, one of his agents ran away with some of Brenner’s equipment near some desert caves. The agent was never found, but a Captain Midnight spyglass was - which was the exact spot where Henry went missing in Dimension X as a little boy for 12 hours. Brenner therefore began searching for the mysterious Captain Midnight comic-book fan who went to Dimension X and returned, watching him and keeping an eye on him. This is what led him to Hawkins: following Henry. 

Brenner tells us that Henry’s powers emerged after he visited Dimension X, and just like his father, his blood type is “unique”. He collects several samples from him. He also tells Henry that his powers become stronger each time he kills, and that’s why he gets so much satisfaction out of it. Brenner also tells Henry that he would get even stronger if he kills human beings, rather than animals.

During one scene, Brenner uses special equipment to see into and hear Henry's mind. He pushes Henry to the limit so he can hear and catch a glimpse of Dimension X. We hear noises similar to the Mind Flayer in Season 2 when Will goes into the Upside Down on Halloween night. The shape of the Mind Flayer appears on the screen (or was it the head of a Demogorgon? It was definitely something Upside-Downy), while Henry convulses. After this incident, Henry asks Brenner, “Can you take me back there?" 

Brenner also introduces the idea of anger to fuel Henry's power. On several instances he riles Henry up to get him angry, insulting him - and the result is always violence. He succeeds in getting Henry to kill a mouse/rat, which explodes into a bloody mess inside its cage, and then tries to convince him to kill a criminal who has been transferred to the lab with an agreement to be killed (he has a date with the electric chair later that week regardless). 

Henry refuses. He’s been speaking to Patty in the void, who has convinced him that he’s good and that he should return home. Brenner is frustrated with this, and becomes sure that Henry has someone that is "holding him back". He vows to find and remove this obstacle. But after Henry leaves the lab, Brenner tells his agents to let him go. He cannot force Henry to kill. “It has to be his choice."

Brenner is shown to have significant influence over Virginia. He’s been providing her with medication/tranquilisers, and tells her that her son desperately needs his help. He encourages Virginia to tell him who the person Henry is attached to. She does. Brenner promises her that he will take Henry back into the lab and that he won’t leave again. 

After Henry returns home, he reads his family's minds and learns that they are all afraid of him and unhappy with his return. He goes into his mother's memories and learns of the last interaction she had with Brenner, including that she wonders if he “may never have been good”, and whether "this was who he was the whole time." He knows that she was willing to give him up to Brenner forever. 

This is when the Creel murders happen, just like they’re shown in Season 4. Virginia Creel and Alice Creel are both murdered at the dinner table - and we know Victor is going to be blamed for it.

Is this Henry’s own mind now, turned to darkness and hate, or is it the Mind Flayer intent on eliminating all of Henry’s attachments? A monster who’s made a monster. I think it’s all left open to interpretation on purpose. 

After the death of his mother and sister, Henry goes straight to Hawkins High to find Patty, hoping to reach her before Brenner does. While at the school, he runs into Joyce, who voices to him her suspicions surrounding the animal killings, and what happened to Mr Newby at the Creel House.

At first, Henry thinks Joyce has worked it out, and that she knows it was him all along. “I wish you hadn’t done that…” he says, stepping closer. But Joyce clarifies just in time that she believes Henry’s father is the one who is dangerous, and that she believes he’s responsible for the terrible things that've happened in Hawkins recently. Maybe this is what gives Henry the idea to frame his father. Either way, he leaves Joyce alive. 

Both Brenner and Henry find Patty on the stage rafters, up on a high catwalk, ready to perform her part in the play. She’s initially wearing a set of wings as a prop, which are attached to the rafter to be lowered. Henry unties her from these wings, pleading with her to run away with him. An argument ensues with Brenner, where he attempts to convince Henry that Patty is his weakness, and that he needs to kill her to let her go. Patty tells Henry not to listen to him. 

During this argument, Henry loses control once more, and the Mind Flayer takes over. This results in Patty slow-motion falling from the rafters as the shape of the Mind Flayer overwhelms the stage. She hits the floor on her back, presumed dead. 

(The stage effects for this particular scene were absolutely incredible, by the way.)

Henry is later seen back at the lab. He’s fully subdued, confined to a straitjacket, mouth gagged, and sat in a wheelchair. Brenner says the implant (Soteria) is in, about to take effect.

If we believe what Season 4 showed us, the play skipped the part where Henry appeared dead alongside his mother and sister (just before Victor is then blamed and incarcerated at Pennhurst Asylum). So assuming that Brenner played a part in covering up Henry’s involvement in the Creel murders, Henry is presumed dead by the town at this point too. Unfortunately the play doesn’t address this, as instead we see Henry run immediately from the dinner table murder scene, straight to Hawkins High to find Patty. It’s a big inconsistency which I guess they want us to explain away with Henry being an “unreliable narrator” in the show. I guess he gave Nancy the abridged version of what happened!

Anyway, it appears that Henry later finds Patty in the void, despite Brenner telling him that he killed her. It seems she has successfully left Hawkins and found her mother in Las Vegas, just as she always dreamed of doing. She uses a walking stick, but otherwise appears alive and well. 

We hear and see static as Henry watches the scene unfold, and Patty glances over her shoulder, like she senses him. But then she turns her back and walks into the distance with her mother. 

An alternative take that I heard from someone, was that perhaps Patty is truthfully still seriously injured and is actually in a coma (similar to Max). They thought that maybe the final scene of Patty with her mother was actually just something that Henry was creating for her in her mind, as a sort of last semblance of goodness and love. I don’t think that’s what was intended, but it was an interesting take that I wanted to include! 

As the show nears its end, we’re presented with a series of newspaper articles relaying the tragic Creel Murders in Hawkins (possibly the same ones that Nancy and Robin find in Season 4). The Creel family all dead, Victor is blamed and sent to the asylum. The empty Creel House remains, a reminder of the horrors. It then shifts back to Hawkins lab, who are now recruiting pregnant women for experimentation. 

Brenner introduces a pregnant woman to Henry (who is still bound to a chair and fully subdued) and explains to him that the "blood transfusion" finally worked on a subject. He points to the woman's belly and remarks, “One, meet Two!" “You are as much a father to them as I am,” Brenner says at one point. Then, “Come… meet your brothers and sisters.” Even though we know Henry is not in any way related to the lab kids, they definitely played into the father/guardian/creator metaphor in the play. If not family by blood, then by circumstance. 

We see photos of the babies created in the lab, with their numbers underneath. We can recognise Eight as young Kali. Eventually we get to Ten, at which point the stage focuses on a now older Henry, wearing his recognisable Season 4 orderly outfit. He kneels beside a child with buzzed hair. 

"Hello, Eleven. Come with me.” He takes her by the hand, and they walk into the distance together. 

———

Some final thoughts:

Because of the incident with Patty during Joyce's play, we can infer that's why she is unsuccessful in her goal to impress the university, and remains stuck in Hawkins - just like Lonnie said she would.

Lonnie is awful, and I’m in two minds about how he’s handled in the play. They did a good job to show he’s always been a douchebag, and unlike what I’ve seen some people say, I actually think it was horribly believable that Joyce (who they establish likes 'bad boys') ends up going back to him and having kids with him. We know from Season 1 that there’s emotional abuse with Joyce and Lonnie, and to me, it makes horrible, horrible sense that it all ends up the way it does. I’m just not sure how I feel about Lonnie being used as any kind of comedic effect in the play (he makes a brief reappearance at the police station, where he’s been lying drunkenly handcuffed on some chairs the whole time during a scene... “It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!" he says, or something to that effect). I feel like using him in that way diminishes how truly awful he is as a character. Maybe I’m just being too sensitive, but I’d much rather they had kept all the laughs and jokes for the other characters, and treated Lonnie completely seriously the whole way through. I don’t want to see him in any way ‘likeable’ or ‘relatable’ or ‘funny’, you know? Not even for cheap audience laughs. This is a guy who called his own kid son a f*g. Let's treat that with the gravity and solemnity it deserves, please.

Louis McCartney and Ella Karuna Williams as Henry Creel and Patty were great, and Isabella Pappas as Joyce was amazing. Dr Brenner was nicely emulated by Patrick Vaill (I personally think he was one of the most believable characters from stage to show). The best performance of all though was Christopher Buckley as Bob. Like, damn, give that kid all the awards! He was so believable as a young Bob, I actually forgot it wasn’t somehow a young Sean Astin on stage. *chef’s kiss*

As previously mentioned, all the parents of the kids are present in the play (and already coupled up). None of these characters are particularly fleshed out, and I think they’re mainly just there as fun ‘Easter Eggs’ to connect it with the show. E.g having Claudia own another cat that gets killed, seeing Ted Wheeler ironically as some kind of jock god who gets all the ladies (and cheats on Karen with, by the way!), Joyce holding an axe prop near the end mid-rant (“Why am I holding this??”) and Hopper making a remark about breaking his own foot (which he does in Season 4). 

They definitely seemed to be going back on the whole ‘it was Henry/Vecna the whole time’ thing from Season 4: the Mind Flayer has been pulling the strings from way before El sent Henry to Dimension X/Upside Down. We even see the Mind Flayer in the shape of a giant eldritch spider during the play, way before Henry appears to ‘shape’ it in Season 4. However, I think it’s also possible that Henry DID actually manage to take control of the Mind Flayer the second time he arrived in Dimension X (as we see at the end of S4). At that point, he’s killed all the lab kids and staff at Hawkins Lab, so he will be much more powerful now compared to the Henry from the play. By now he’s completely embraced the Mind Flayer’s philosophy, and is acting in its stead entirely on his own volition. Honestly? I think they’re going to leave it ambiguous on purpose. I think that’s why the play is technically canon, but totally not necessary before seeing Season 5. I think Henry and the Mindflayer are 'one' (lol) at this point - I think that’s what Vecna technically is. He’s like an amalgamation of this terrifying eldritch being that we can never begin to understand, but at the same time also something that is still deeply, deeply human.

The Henry side of him seems to be lost, but in a way Brenner was right - his feelings for Patty, whether ‘Puppy Love’ or real - was his one redeeming weakness in his early teen years. Judging from the play, I think it’s possible we might see a tragic sort of redemption moment in S5 (which I personally have mixed feelings about). But I do believe the play is supposed to be entirely separate, and that it’s possible Patty will continue not to be mentioned or relevant in the show (I hope I’m wrong). I just can’t help but be cautious in assuming the Mind Flayer is still the one in control after what they set up at the end of Season 4 (especially with Will saying, “it’s weird to know who it was this whole time” re: his own kidnapping and possession). I think Henry has become his darkest self as Vecna.

Speaking of Will… there were noticeably a LOT of parallels with him in Henry. Henry wears pretty much exactly Will’s outfit from Season 4, yellow tones with beige and brown. Meanwhile Patty wears a blue cardigan and a blue dress - at least in Act 1. I’m not hugely into the blue-and-yellow thing in a serious way, but even I noticed there were blue and yellow motifs for Henry and Patty. She wears a bright yellow top with her blue cardigan at one point too. I think there was definitely a mixture of both Will and El in Henry’s character.

Meanwhile Patty had noticeable similarities to Mike. She’s rebellious, outspoken, loves comic books, and worships superheroes.

Seeing the play hasn’t impacted my beliefs or hopes for Byler in any way. I think there are potentially good things to be taken from the writing, and potentially bad things too. My current confidence has neither been raised nor lowered, but what I will say is that it’s undeniable that the Henry x Patty relationship mirrors both Mileven and Byler, but especially Mileven. Hentty is obviously a star-crossed tragedy, deliberately set up like Romeo and Juliet, which we know is NEVER a good thing. I do find it interesting that their love confessions were an exchange, unlike Mike’s monologue. Patty is the one ‘present’, whilst Henry is the one trapped in the void with his eyes closed/blindfold on. It’s a high stakes moment. Patty tells Henry in desperation that she loves him, but she follows this up by pleading with him to say it back. I didn’t see anyone else talking about this, but it really stood out to me.

The play’s themes and messages still reflected what I believe the show to be about: rejecting forced conformity (it dealt with people’s ideas about what it means to be “normal” to fit in, about sex not being taboo, harmful black and white morality, and the damage that can occur from enforcing religious dogma)... and of course, like Joyce said, that love will ultimately conquer fear. Over and out!

[This kind of introspection throws up unsettling and complex ideas about the nature of human morality. What does it mean to be human? Who gets to decide who is “other”? How do we treat those who are different from us? These are huge issues, and far too esoteric for most of us to deal with in abstract. So the way we choose to explore them is in stories.] - Michael Davies

[mrs-johansson]

Escape from LA - Lisa Manobal x Fem!Depp!Reader

Part 5:

The last show in New York was here in no time. I was happy and also a little bummed about it because I enjoyed every show in Madison Square Garden but I was glad to have 2 weeks off and then go to the next city. My birthday was tomorrow also and what better way to celebrate than go to a Blackpink concert?

But before that, I had one last run in New York. While getting ready I was just really quiet trying to store all the energy for the night and be very electric. I will be presented with a Banner Dedication so it’s gonna be fun.

About half an hour into the show I was sitting in a chair in the middle of the stage at the piano. I was speaking before and the next song was New York on the setlist so I needed a few seconds just to settle in and have a more relaxed demeanor. But then the crowd started singing. I didn’t hear what they were singing because of my earpiece so I took them out and then realized they were singing Happy Birthday.

My mouth fell open and tears immediately welled up in my eyes. The smile on my face was so big that my face hurt and when the crowd was lit up with a big light I saw that everyone was holding a paper with Happy Birthday written on it and a gray heart that I always use. I was so happy and filled with joy as the tears slid down my cheeks.

When they finished singing I took a deep breath and tried to get rid of the huskiness in my voice from the crying then spoke into the mic. “Ah, you guys are the most beautiful people out there. Thank you so much!” I wiped off the tears from my face. “I love you all so much you don’t even know. This means a lot!”

The show moved along pretty fast and the next thing I knew was that we were on the last song. I was taking a water break when another voice rang through the arena. It was Jimmy Fallon. “Y/n Fleur Depp everybody,” he said and my eyes shot to the side of the stage where he walked out from. The only thought running through my mind was What is he doing here?

“Jimmy? Hi!” I said, genuinely surprised that he was on the stage. “Hello buddy,” he walked up to me and we shared a quick hug before I looked backstage’s way trying to find out why Jimmy Fallon was on stage. “You’re surprised, aren’t you?” He asked and I nodded with a smile. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s happening,” I chuckled a little nervously. “Well… I received the unbelievable honor to say thank you to you and to say how incredibly proud of you I am. We all are, right?” He asked the crowd who cheered very loudly. “Thank you,” I smiled shyly, now knowing what this is. “These past two weeks you’ve been giving your heart and soul to the people of New York but actually you’ve been doing that ever since you put your first song out. You are electric. You are dazzling. Your music gives us joy and you give us joy. But most importantly you are inspiring. Y/n you are one of the most impactful people in this generation,” said Jimmy, and the audience expressed their agreement with loud applause. All I could do was smile like an idiot already getting emotional. “And we know it’s not a surprise but we have a little something for you,” he said and then a line of light went straight to the banner with my name on it. “15 consecutive sold-out shows in Madison Square Garden! You are officially the youngest artist alive to ever do that,” Jimmy spoke excitedly as I just kept staring at the banner being pulled up to the top of the stadium. Tears rolled down my cheeks for the second time that night. My name hanging next to Billy Joel, Phish, and who else but Harry Styles. Insane moment. “You made over 250.000 people sing over the past two weeks and we enjoyed every minute of it. And there’s no denying it, you are a legend already!” Hearing Jimmy’s words I stopped looking at the banner for a moment and hugged him again. “Thank you so much. It’s an honor to have this presented by you dude,” I said without a mic just trying to soak in the moments of this evening. “Of course buddy. You’re amazing!” He said then I cleared my throat and turned to my fans.

“Thank you so much.” I bowed in front of the stadium. “This is absolutely insane and surreal. I only say a few words because I don’t want to talk too much…” I wiped away a tear that bothered my eye. “There are no words to express how happy every one of you makes me every single day. Your support is something that makes me feel and live. Without you, there wouldn’t be 15 nights here or a single show in the world, so thank you from the deepest parts of my soul. I'm forever in debt to every single one of you. I love you endlessly.”

***

The alarm next to my bed was going off for the fifth time this morning. But finally, I decided to wake up and start getting ready to leave for California for the first time in a while. I was very excited but at the moment I was more tired than excited.

My phone was going off all day, getting birthday messages from basically anyone who had my number. I answered my family and my close friends then left the others till I had time to look at them.

I left the hotel pretty quickly. By 11 am I was already on the plane, trying to get some sleep. Thankfully I slept through the whole 6 hours of the flight so I will have enough energy for the concert.

Got home and Lily was coming over so I had some food then she arrived. We picked some great outfits and while that we listened to music getting in the mood for Blackpink.

“So how are things with Lisa?” Asked Lily as we were finally on the way to the festival. “Everything’s good. I’m excited to see her finally. We’re still getting to know each other but it’s fun,” I smiled and Lily gave me a weird look. “What?” I asked and she shrugged. “I didn’t say a thing,” she insisted. “You made a face.” “It’s just you know that a relationship will definitely won’t be an option,” Lily said and I glanced out the window and then back at her. “Who said anything about a relationship?” I asked and she sighed. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Once we got to Coachella, Lily and I met with some friends, just chatting with people who we knew. Lily went off to find her girlfriend, Shake, so I sent Lisa a text that I arrived.

me: hey, I’m at the backstage area. Are you getting ready already?

Rosalía was currently on stage so I was watching her perform from the TV at the tent. My phone buzzed in my hand but before I could open the text, arms wrapped around me from behind.

“What’s up, Birthday Girl?” The voice I only heard over the phone for the past weeks was by my ear now physically, I looked up at Lisa smiling and I got up from the couch and immediately wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her tightly. “Careful, we’re filming for Blackpink’s YouTube,” she whispered and I looked for the camera and spotted them right away. “Mhm,” I cleared my throat and let her go. “Are you nervous? I’m so excited to see you perform,” I said as I turned my back to the cameras and also tried to speak quietly. “I’m so nervous,” said Lisa, and I smiled gently. “Come on, you will eat this up,” I brushed my hand along her arm. Lisa sighed, still looking anxious. I reached towards her and brought her into the friendliest-looking hug, hoping she would get a little more loose and be more excited than nervous. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she whispered and I couldn’t contain my smile. “Me too.” “Come on, let’s see the girls,” she pulled me to their trailer.

As we stepped into the trailer she said something in Korean and all three girls turned their heads towards us. “Hi,” I smiled widely and we all greeted each other and they introduced me to their assistants and managers. We sat around the lounge area just talking and catching up. Lisa got up to get herself something to drink and then sat back next to me. She looked very out of the conversation, just fidgeting with the water bottle. “What’s up?” I leaned closer to ask her and she shook her head with a soft smile. “Have you eaten today?” I questioned because she seemed like the person who won’t eat if she’s nervous. “Yeah…” Lisa was clearly avoiding eye contact and I sighed. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. Do you guys want anything?” I asked the rest of the people in the trailer and only Rose asked for something so it won’t be hard to remember.

We walked around the backstage food trucks, looking for anything comforting for Lisa to eat. “You don’t have to worry about anything, you know? This is your thing, you were born for this,” I bumped my shoulder to hers and she let out a soft chuckle. “You still haven’t seen me perform.” “But I’ve seen videos and my sister also told me. I’m just excited to see it live finally. And not just me, everyone will be at your show,” I said and she smiled. “It’s gonna be insane,” said Lisa. “Yeah, it will. Best way to spend my birthday honestly.” Lisa laughed at my comment but I just spread my arms. “What? It’s true. It’s kinda unfair that you’ve already seen me perform twice,” I smirked. “It’s kinda unfair there are so many people around,” I felt her fingers brush along mine and I laughed. “It’s a shame, yes, but we’ll have enough time. Two weeks seems like a year these days,” I said and she nodded. “Is your boyfriend coming?” I asked and she shook her head. “He’s busy, but it’s better that way.”

Found the right food place, and we got our meals and for Rose. We made our way back to the girls’ trailer, then Lisa looked at her phone before handing it over to read a message she got.

Rosie💩: we all went to look around

Rosie💩: the trailer is free

Rosie💩: LOCK THE DOOR!

I laughed at Rose’s text and gave Lisa her phone back. “Like we would do anything bad,” I said and Lisa looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “We won’t?” She asked and I chuckled, wrapping an arm around her waist and bringing her closer to my side. “Forbidden things have a charm to them.”

[oneshotnewbie]

Now this one isn’t the character but for the shoe station-19 in general, what if Carina and Maya have a daughter that’s older in the show, and you’re at the emmys irl. And Y/N won the award for best supporting actress and she thanks stephina and Danielle in her speech cause it’s her first acting gig ever and they took her under her wing and really made her feel like a daughter??? Thoughts?

Authors note: It's very short because at the time I wrote this I was sick and my head wasn't working as well as I would have liked. I hope you still like what I wrote. Have a nice day ♥

ᕚ---ᕘ

The glamorous ballroom was filled with a sea of sparkling gowns and elegant suits, which showed their full splendor in the festive, warm spotlights. At the center of the stage was a shiny podium with a glowing Emmy Award just waiting to be won.

A strong and unrestrained applause from the audience echoed through the majestic walls and the lights in the hall flickered wildly as the presenter stepped to the microphone with a solemn voice and an enthusiastic smile and announced the highlight of the evening. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's the time we've all been eagerly awaiting! We're here to present the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Are you ready?"

He drummed his hands enthusiastically on the stand in front of him, largely elevating the mood of the celebrities in the room. The camera panned from him to the excited faces of the nominees as they sat tensely in their seats. The tension was literally palpable. "And the Emmy goes to.." he opened the red envelope in his hands and continued with the famous words as he excitedly announced them. "Y/n y/l/n!"

A deafening round of applause erupted and the room shook with applause and cheers as you stood up from your seat, eyes wide and heart pounding. Your hands were shaking with excitement as you walked onto the stage with tears in your eyes and a bright smile, the audience watching you intently as the camera captured the emotionally charged reaction. In that moment, feelings of joy, pride and surprise flooded through you.

You reached the shining podium where the Emmy waited for you, shiny and golden like a symbol of all the hard work and dedication you had put into your art, feeling the warmth of the golden metal in your cold hands. There was a moment of silence before you cleared your throat and looked up at the crowd. "Wow, I can't believe it. This is really surreal," you began, your voice shaking slightly as you were overwhelmed by the thoughts and feelings flooding your mind.

The bright lights from the cameras almost blinded you as the host presented you with the Emmy. The crowd continued to cheer and you could feel the excitement crackling in the air. Standing in front of the microphone, you felt the weight of the moment on your shoulders and took a deep breath, your eyes immediately scanning the beaming audience until you spotted the familiar faces of the people who had made you who you were today - Danielle and Stefania. A smile spread across your face and your eyes filled with deep gratitude. "I can hardly express how grateful I am for this moment. For me this is not just a trophy, but a symbol of the journey I have taken with so many wonderful people."

Applause broke out again and you took a deep breath, visibly moved as you tried to continue your speech with a big smile and tears of joy in your eyes. "It's my first role and I'm standing here with this incredible award in my hands. I couldn't have done it without the support of some really special people."

You turned your gaze again to Danielle and Stefanie, who beamed with emotion and looked at you with proud eyes. "Dani, Stef, you are the cornerstones of my success. When I was unsure and the world of acting seemed so foreign to me, you took me under your wing. You not only taught me how to play a role, but you made me feel like a real daughter who was truly loved."

The eyes of the two women in question shone with pure emotion, and a hint of it was in the air as they sent several air kisses your way, encouraging you to continue. The room listened reverently as you continued to try to put your thoughts into words. "You saw my fears and helped me to grow beyond myself. Danielle, you were and still are like a anchor in the surf. You saw my fears and helped me overcome them. Stefania, you nurtured my dreams and gave me the wings to fly."

A gentle round of applause accompanied your words as you turned your attention back to the Emmy you were holding tightly in your hands. "This Emmy doesn't just belong to me. It belongs above all to you two because you are not only extraordinary actors, but also extraordinary people. Thank you for being my family. Thanks also to the entire team at Station 19 - Jaina, Gray, Jason, Jay, Barrett... here's to many more years with you as a series family by my side!"

“We love you, y/n/n!” the latina shouted and the crowd cheered once more while you couldn´t help but smile at the call in of Jaina. Danielle and Stefania clapped with proud and emotional faces as you left the stage. The cameras captured the moment, where you fell into the arms of your friends and they celebrated you with happiness. Tears of joy in Danielle and Stefania's eyes in this magical moment could be seen, while the music slowly began to play and the hall celebrated the triumph of this special and successful evening.

[orangeypopsicle]

Writing this because I'm scanning through fics right now like a sad cat in a wet cardboard box. Like, I'm so desperate for a story that shows the complexity of Velvet and Veneer's relationship, but also, I've been in such a depressive funk the past few weeks that I can't write it. I feel like I can dedicate another post to them here, though.

Velvet wasn't an angel, nor was Veneer heartless, but there is something to note how they both had a mix of qualities. This may be a controversial statement, but Veneer seems to have this issue where he leans on his more domineering sister due to low self-esteem, which results in him enabling Velvet. He loved his sister and was partially convinced to go through with harmful actions, but to what extent does loving someone also explain hyping up that person while they hurt people? Also, I don't particularly enjoy the difference in how he phrased the reasoning for his actions to Floyd versus the public. Veneer mentions the attachment to his sister when talking to Floyd, but his own personal gains in the situation are emphasized. When Veneer apologizes to the public for being a fraud, he mentions his want for fame but also retracts this statement by saying that only Velvet wanted fame, and he followed her due to not standing up for himself. It was an admission of guilt, but the shift to his sister being malicious instead of them both wasn't fully taking accountability either. It's a point of emphasis for me due to the softening of Veneer's personality by the fandom. He's a person with a reserved personality and more likely to feel remorse, but also is materialistic and a bit two-faced.

Since I don't want this to be a rant about Veneer because I very much love both characters, I want to get to Velvet. She's a person with a history of emotional regulation issues: explosive, self-serving, and self-centered. Velvet is a person who is desperate for attention and approval by any means necessary. She puts on a show (with talent she stole), gives it her all, gets very close to seriously injuring herself multiple times in the process, and offers to entertain them more when the audience cheers her on. Similar to her brother, I like to think that she's a person with horrendously low self-esteem but tends to deal with it by putting people down so that she can feel better. However, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that she may not be aware of the extent to which she uses people. When Veneer directly states his issues with their relationship in his confession of their crimes, Velvet responds by saying that she thought that he was on the same page with her ideas. Velvet implies multiple times in the story that she believes that they both wanted fame. Did that make Velvet's lack of concern over Veneer voicing his worries okay? No! I want to bring some attention to Velvet not seeming to fully understand how people feel when they are hurt or when they may have different needs. (Writer's note: Mind you, I have a disability and other mental illnesses that impair my ability to understand other people, so I'm more willing to humanize traits like that.) I also want to mention that Veneer did reap the benefits of exploiting the trolls and said that he enjoyed his luxurious lifestyle more than his remorse about hurting people. So it also may be a mix of Velvet struggling to understand people on an emotional level and a genuine misunderstanding.

Despite the two being a bundle of issues, it's very sweet how well they mesh and how they like to be in-sync. Veneer catches Velvet before she falls, Velvet pats Veneer on the head when he's nervous, Veneer instinctively goes behind Velvet to feel safe, they go shopping together and wear matching clothes, and they naturally lean into and are generally physically close to each other. They both aren't great as people, but care for each other.

On a semi-related topic and not wanting to make another post dedicated to it, I wish the movie expanded on the drug metaphor? It's a children's film, but I do feel that talking to young children at home who may be experiencing family members struggling with addiction has a place in media. It makes you do things you wouldn't normally do, it can make you hurt people in a variety of ways, it's an unfortunate lifestyle choice in a number of young people who were chewed up and spat out by the entertainment industry, it frequently starts with the idea that it's casual use/emotionally or psychologically beneficial and quickly snowballs horribly, and it alienates you from your loved ones. This could have been a unique opportunity to not only be about how drug use is harmful but also what it's like to be unequipped to help a person who doesn't want help. We tell children that drugs are bad but also don't prepare them for when the person doesn't want to stop despite all evidence showing that it's harmful. It can be very confusing because it's not emphasized how hard of a process it is to get sober or even want to get sober.

But yeah, those were some of my thoughts! Thanks for reading, if you got this far. 😅

[pinkeoni]

The Perception of Will Both In & Out of the Show

Right now I'm working on a whole post dedicated to looking at how Hawkins views Will, and something that I've noticed is how this in-universe perception is reflective of how the audience views him as a character.

Will the Crybaby vs. Will the Villain

tl;dr for a post I haven't even posted yet, but my assertion is that generally the town has two modes for how they see Will, prey or predator. He's either the sensitive, weak "fairy" who is assumed to be the target of violence based on these qualities, or he is the predatory "Zombie Boy" who is going to spread death and disease to the rest of the town.

Many of the critiques levied against Will's character from fans after season four was "all he does is cry!"

And in the same breath, after it was revealed that Will was going to be the focus for next season, the claim about Will's character was "he's going to be the villain!"

So Will is both the overly sensitive crybaby and at the same time, somehow going to be the villain of the final season.

I do think that GA opinion is actually more diversified then people give it credit for, so it would be inaccurate of me to say that this is widely agreed upon amongst fans of the show, although both of these statements, especially that of Will’s villain arc, did go around enough to be mentioned in articles about the season.

Starting with Will's sensitivity, it is one of his character traits. It's important enough for Joyce to mention this when describing him in episode one. Noah often gives Will really big reactions with weepy eyes and a quivering lip— he's a feeler!

Some push back against this critique of character, especially on here, was sometimes met with “But Will doesn’t cry that much! He’s tough! Look at this scene he knows how to shoot a gun!” which is kind of missing the point. It’s not that Will isn’t soft and sensitive, it’s that being soft and sensitive isn’t a problem.

The villain!Will claim, while maybe a fun idea for fanon material, seems to grossly mischaracterize him. Will, from the constant mistreatment he has faced, will turn vengeful and join Vecna to become a villain alongside him. You mean the same Will Byers who told D’Artagnan that he wasn’t going to hurt him? That Will Byers is going to seek revenge?

I don’t think that any of these takes are intentionally trying to be this way, but there is a subconscious undertone of homophobia coming from both of them. It’s a bad thing for Will to be soft and emotional, but he’s also going to become the vindictive “big bad.” The prey or the predator.

There seems to be a refusal from some fans to view Will in a hero role

This I can’t really fault them much for. I had a good back and forth with an anon awhile ago who stated that if the audience does not perceive the story as being Will's or Will as a main character, then this is a pitfall from the show. Which I agreed with. If the show is failing to communicate something, then this is a fault of the writing of the show. (I did, however, offer a counter argument to a claim they made saying that the show did not offer any substantial proof of this at all, in which I said that Will being the center in the first season was a good piece of evidence among some others)

I should note that I say "hero" but I don't mean this in a masculine way, just that Will is going to be the one to save the day, be that in his own way. He doesn't need to "man up" in order to be the hero.

El, for good reason, is seen as the hero of the story. If the next season is supposed to revolve around Will now, then he must either be A) A victim that El needs to save or B) A villain that El needs to defeat. (I made a post about El and Will's roles next season here)

This isn't always brought up, but a lot of the times the love triangle is talked about in relation to this because it goes along with the underlying homophobia. If Will is the focus next season and he is also the hero then there's an implication that he may be successful in "getting the guy" so to speak, just going off of typical narrative tropes. If El is the hero and Will is either the victim or villain then he either A) is saved by El and, out of gratefulness to her, is able to accept that that he won't have Mike and is able to accept the two being together (which wouldn't make sense considering this is the position he is already in) or B) El defeats the evil gay boy who is after her man, putting him in his place. These people can't seem to wrap their head around the possibility of Will getting the love interest in the end and El, still important to the main plot, ending up solo and it being a positive for both characters.

The problem with villain!Will especially is that, along with the fact that it relies on a mischaracterization of Will, is that there has to come a point where the villain has to lose and be put in their place in order for the hero to succeed. I see even fans of Will claiming that they want Will to have a villain arc because of everything that he's gone through. And yeah, Will has been through a lot and he has been treated unfairly by people around him, but he can't have a triumphant ending if he is the villain of the story.

I guess it has to do with framing. In simplified terms, Will, in some way, tries to fight for a better life for himself. If Will is the villain then he must learn to be complacent with the life he already has. If he is the hero, however, then he deserves and gets to earn this better life. If Will is the victim who is saved by El then he must learn to be grateful to her. Neither make sense for a story where Will is supposed to come of age. He has to be the hero and he also has to be one to save himself.

I want to say again that I'm not trying to use hero in a masculine sense, wherein I'm picturing a Conan the Barbarian or Rambo-esque buff!byers fighting in the Upside Down, but rather I just mean using his qualities that others deem weak as his strength. Will is the hero, just in his own way. @therainscene had a really great addition to a similar post I made while I was drafting this one. To quote a genius mind—

It's wild that Will is seen as weak, because he's the toughest motherfucker in the show -- not in spite of being soft and sensitive, but because of it. Being a sensitive gay boy in 1980's America is playing life on hard mode: he's punished for refusing to conform to traditional masculinity, both in-universe and by the audience, and his response is to doggedly continue refusing to conform. He's crying and throwing up the whole time he's doing it but he just keeps on doing it.

[ghosts-of-love]

My thoughts about the Captain (and especially the scenes in episode 5) under the cut. Not spoiler-free, obviously. it's also...over 1000 words

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the way his story was handled. I’ve never been a Havers girlie and to an extent I’m still not, for reasons I would probably have to explain in a different post. I’ve always known the Captain loved Havers, but I will admit that I did always think it was quite one-sided and, given what we were shown in Redding Weddy, I had previously thought that the Captain didn’t know he loved Havers until after his death.

I didn’t mind being proven wrong about that. There was always the chance that we would be given more information about the Captain’s life that would make me rethink things. I suppose I would now see Redding Weddy less as the Captain realising his feelings for Havers too late, and more him coming to terms with it on another level. Or even just realising that you don’t have to bury everything, some emotions and memories can be brought to the forefront and considered in a healthy way.

I still didn’t get the impression that they were ever together. I think there’s a whole depth to the relationship that we were never privy to. A lot unsaid between them and the audience but also between each other. More could always be revealed in the Ghosts Book that’s coming out soon though.

There could have been mutual feelings and love and even an actual romantic relationship there but I personally believe that the raw desperation in the Captain fighting his way into the event shows that they were not in contact (eg. writing letters to each other) in the way that two people in a secret relationship might have been.

I think that they were something that ‘could have been’. They were each other’s ‘what ifs’. If it weren’t war time, if Havers (sorry, Anthony) hadn’t gone to the front, if it weren’t quite literally illegal.

Or maybe it wasn’t even mutual. I find it hard to parse Havers’ expression. His ‘I know’ isn’t even an agreement or a confession, so much as it is an acknowledgment that he understands the Captain’s feelings, even if they’re not reciprocated.

And the Captain says ‘I had to find you’. It was a desire to know he’s alive. To know he survived. He may as well have said “I had to see you in the flesh”.

I don’t think they were together back then. I think they could have both wanted to be. I think they could have ended up together in the future if the Captain hadn’t died. If he had just waited and found a way to reach out to him a different way.

I didn’t have any problems with any of that bit actually. I thought it was beautifully acted by Ben – I could feel everything so deeply. The panic of it all. The desperation. The deep yearning to get closer to Havers, however possible.

My one gripe (which is perhaps becoming less of a gripe as time passes, but might resurface when I rewatch) was actually with what happened afterwards – the apparent lack of reaction to the story by the ghosts. Or at least, the lack of time dedicated to their reactions. He didn’t say the words aloud, and neither did they.

I flip-flop between being annoyed and thinking it works, somehow. I suppose we get to fill in the gaps ourselves – there’s no, ‘he wouldn’t have said it like that’ arguments because we don’t know what he said, we just know the bare bones of what he revealed.

And they all knew anyway.

I enjoyed (you get what I mean) the mirroring of of his stuttering in season 4 ‘I – I -’. Maybe there wasn’t anything to merit sharing with the group then because he lost his nerve but also because he knew they all knew, even if he couldn’t say it aloud. And with Havers – he can’t get the words out. That doesn’t matter. Havers knew too.

It would have been disappointing to me if they’d joked or said ‘we knew’. It would have detracted from the importance, I think. I would have felt the same if they’d fumbled around to say something he didn’t actually need to hear. For example. I don’t think he actually needed anyone to tell him that ‘it’s okay to be gay’. He’s known this for years by this point, since Sam and Claire’s wedding.

But what did he need to hear?

The man who survived the war but saw no action, who sneaked into a ‘decorated officer’s only’ celebration, who crawled through a window, who stole someone’s medals – just to find, not even necessarily talk to the man he loves – the man who died of a heart attack after the war was won.

He needed to hear that he’s brave. And that’s what he’s told, and by Fanny no less (I don’t have the power to unpack all of the meanings behind that; their friendship, her previous attitudes, her husband). I don’t think anything else they could have said would have sat right with me. Considering it was a group setting, I think it was done under the right conditions – i.e. he wasn’t put on the spot like in season 4, he made the decision to say something himself, he didn’t want to move on still regretting, still believing he wasn’t brave, still thinking he’d done something terrible. I think them telling him he was brave – and all being in agreement, all letting him get his story out with no interruptions too, unlike with Thomas, Kitty, Humphrey talking about their deaths/Kitty’s ball – demonstrated a level of attention and respect they don’t normally give to each other too.

I just wish there had been a bit more. Just something. But I can’t even figure out what it is that I wanted them to say in addition, that’s the funny thing!

I suppose I had also hoped that Alison might be there when he finally admitted something about his life/sexuality. She was the one who introduced him to the idea that homosexuality is legal now and specifically welcome in Button House, after all. I think he deserved to feel that she was proud of him. But maybe she was the one who gave him the strength in season 4 to know he wanted to wait until he was ready.

But also, the knowledge that Ben has had this planned in his head from the beginning comforts me, as does the fact that he has always tried to handle the Captain’s story/arc with respect and dignity (as much as these ghosts are ever given, you know?).

Those are my thoughts, slightly untangled but still not exactly coherent. I’d love to hear what you all think too!

[actual-changeling]

ahhhhh fuck it. sure. back to normal meta posting.

do not copy or otherwise repost any of my writing without express permission, including (but not limited to) any and all blogs that are dedicated to harassing people based on their opinions.

—

a south downs ending does not equal a fairy tale ending/happily ever after.

regardless of how you personally characterize crowley and aziraphale and interpret their actions, ignoring the emotional impact of pretty much the entirety of season two would be a disservice to neil (and terry) as a storyteller.

aziraphale not just broke crowley's trust, he repeatedly chose to side with heaven and "morality" over him—crowley has always been the second choice, otherwise aziraphale would have fallen long ago. he would not fall for crowley because so far he has not fallen, he turned away from crowley every single time it came down to either falling or continuing to hold his position as an angel.

meanwhile crowley fell from both heaven's and hell's graces long before he fell in love with aziraphale; it has never been a choice for him because he decided on who he wants to be and how he wants to live once he found out about the 6000 year deadline on the universe.

crowley fell for what is right, for what is decent and kind regardless of the consequences he'll have to face afterwards.

aziraphale has not fallen simply to keep his personal comfort intact and stuck to the selfish ideology centring whatever is the most convenient option in a given situation, and no matter how you twists and turn it, that's at the heart of it—because, again, otherwise he would already have fallen.

so when neil resolves their conflicts—because i trust that he will do it in a way that's satisfactory for everyone involved, including us as the audience—those centuries predating season three don't just magically disappear.

crowley will hopefully have learned to live for himself and not anyone else, which allows him to choose what kind of relationship he wants to have with aziraphale. they might move into their cottage with their relationship still healing and the end result open. content and together, sure, but crowley is under no obligation to forgive aziraphale for any of the shit that he put him through. there's a degree of intimacy and trust they'll never get back; it sucks, it's sad, but it is what it is.

meanwhile aziraphale will have to face that he fucked up, openly acknowledge how he's hurt crowley and others, and apologize without expecting forgiveness; he might get it, he might not, but he needs to keep growing/learning/changing no matter what.

think about the ending of season one—they're dining at the ritz, content and happily enjoying each other's presence, but outside of that we are not given more information. i can see exactly that happening at the end of season three, a satisfactory ending that also simultaneously allows us to decide for ourselves what happens once we leave them.

if there is a single thing i am certain of it's that we will not get a fairy tale ending, no happily ever after, and if that's what you're expecting going into it, then you will probably be disappointed.

[tamamatango]

Friendship Power Scaling (normal thing to do)

Hello space frog fans, how’s everyone? Take another random off-the-cuff analysis post while I procrastinate on the more significant things I’m supposed to be doing (including the Project I plan to reveal when I put up the next part of said project) because I feel like my brain is melting like candle wax these days.

Here’s a topic I’m sure people have thought about but not really put a quantification to: I will be ranking the Keroro Platoon and their partners by their mutual closeness, as in which have the most believable Platonic Soulmates dynamic. (Read: strictly platonic we do not ship any of these in this house.) Why? Idk do I look like I know why I do anything?

So first place is Keroro and Fuyuki. Duh. Literal world-saving levels of bestest best besties forever, would be completely devastated without each other, needs very little explanation really. I guess it is sort of funny that in terms of demeanor they are maybe the least similar out of the duos but they adore each other so much it just doesn’t even matter.

Second I would say is Dororo and Koyuki. Koyuki rescued Dororo both physically and emotionally and completely changed his outlook on everything pretty much, and Dororo is Koyuki’s only real constant in her life from the village. Dororo is pretty overtly more loyal to her and their shared duty to the Earth than he is to the platoon lmao. More pronounced in the manga but still. It’s kinda hard to pinpoint their exact relationship (siblings? Dororo is her dad? Koyuki is his emotional support human?) but their bond is definitely Very Special. Even in the new project trailer Koyuki is holding him, they are so friggin sweet dude.

For third I’m gonna be spicy and say it’s Kururu and Saburo yes I am very biased but hear me out. Despite being the only pair that doesn’t live together it is heavily implied that they are near perfectly in sync but just have a really weird indirect communication system that’s sort of obscured from the audience and even more so the rest of the cast. They act nonchalant about it but they will drop whatever they’re doing immediately if the other needs a solid no questions asked. In the manga they’re even more openly buddy-buddy with all the 親友 and マブダチ talk (anime Kururu is tsun af and pretends he’s too cool for friendship) but they get even less screen time together so rip. I’ve spent more than enough time on these two before but yeah they have extreme best bro energy everyone else just isn’t big-brained enough to Get It.

Fourth is Tamama and Momoka. They’re very much cut from the same cloth and are definitely like siblings, helps that they’re the closest in age out of all the pairs (Tamama might even be a little younger than Momoka depending on what exact Keronian age theory you subscribe to). Momoka pampers Tamama like a pet, they occasionally boost each other via training, and Tamama helps with Momoka’s Love Schemes. But despite the fact that they are kindred spirits in several ways I think they put their pursuits of Keroro and Fuyuki a little above their friendship. And Momoka is not afraid to just kinda kick Tama’s ass, sometimes for good reason sometimes for no reason lol. They still love each other they’re just not as deep in each other’s heads as the higher duos.

And finally the take that would get me tarred and feathered in earlier Keroro fandom days which is putting Giroro and Natsumi last. Okay, so we know Giroro is for better or worse extremely dedicated to Natsumi in an arguably unhealthy way (well, it’s not rly arguable lol, but it’s more innocuous if you headcanon father figure theory and not The Other Thing). But does Giroro have the same level of importance to Natsumi? Eh, I mean she sees him as a close family friend and she obviously really cares about him plus certainly favors hanging out with him well over the other little guys (though she is closer with Keroro than it seems), but I think the affection is very lopsided on one end here. They both have a warrior-like disposition and a soft side but idk how much they relate outside that. And they’re not really each other’s clear BFF in the same way the other duos are since Natsumi has Koyuki and Giroro has Keroro (and Dororo as part of the RGB trio but it’s Keroro who is specifically stated to be his Best Friend in the manga). Their friendship is very cute but they just don’t have the same Unbreakable Bond Sauce that the others have yknow. And sadly they kinda Have to be a little less good at reading each other for the Giroro pining over her jokes to land. Sadly.

Well that’s it, kind of ironic the explanations got longer the lower down the list but that’s more where I felt I had to justify my positions. Like nobody is going to argue me about Keroro and Fuyuki right. At least I hope not because then I think we might have watched a different show? I mean I guess they win a bit less overwhelmingly in Sgt Frog Abridged maybe you watched that. Fuyuki gives Keroro a speech about how fucked up he is in that one that was surprisingly metal