#narrator my beloved

[elijahuh]

i think more people should know about that builderscon tokyo 2018 opening skit video where the narrator says shit like "now, there's a good boy" and "you will be a nice boy, won't you? hmm?"

[mosslingg-sideblog]

awoop stanley parable obsession kicked in

i watched clock 0ut animations the other day and blank decay was so good my depression allowed me to draw a scene from it

you can watch blank decay here

[keepthisholykiss]

This weekend I saw a production of The Dolls of New Albion and I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on it but I’m gonna dump some of those thoughts out here. I am not going to name the specific production because I personally took a decent amount of issue with it's depictions of the story and I don’t want anyone to feel bad if they happen to come across it. I am not a reviewer I just like to put my brain places to look back on later. The cast did the best they could with what they had but I think a lack of budget, musical background, and warm bodies (I guess?) was the biggest pitfall of this thing. However, I’m writing about this show in general because after I watched it I was so frustrated with what I saw that I sought out other versions. I am a rock opera kind of bitch, I’m a slut for a concept album, Repo! is one of my biggest musical loves, I was READY to love this thing. So I want to dump my brain out and talk about it. 

TW: suicide, violence, racism (specifically against those who practice vodou)

A Disclaimer: I have been looking around and I know the fans for this show and the entire tetralogy are very devoted. If you are upset that I do not like parts of your Thing or that I have opinions on the racist tones in parts of it I challenge you to engage with that and process it and also to block me. I do not argue with people on the internet I will not reply to anyone who is mean to me, thanks! This is not a review I am just a person who studies art and literature and theatre and I like to throw my thoughts on things I watch online. Also there’s gonna be spoilers in here because idc nothing is earth shattering enough to matter as a spoiler.

My favorite parts of the entire story are the Narrator and Jasper. Both are so interestingly interpreted by various productions I watched or skimmed over the weekend. Now that I have listened to the album I am even more intrigued and personally I would love to direct a production of this. I am seriously considering it because I have a lot I love but I have a lot that I would fix. The Narrator in the production we went to STOLE the show they were amazing and I love the presence so many Narrators have in other versions of this I have looked over. Also I am obsessed with how so many people portray Jasper, I think it’s really cool to see how much creative expression comes out in these productions. People really run with some fun themes and ideas and I think anything that can bring that creativity out of casts and stage teams is great! 

Anyway this story for the first two acts is largely really cool. The first story of Annabel had me GRIPPED I was ready to CRY I love her hopeless pursuit in creating Jasper and I just think it’s a very well laid out portion of the story. I also love the second act, I hate Edgar because he is garbage but I think his story is so well told and amazing. I really felt for Fay and for the society at large that he was influencing. 

The third act I am the most conflicted on. Byron is a FASCINATING character and so is Amelia, I love how Byron’s speeches are displayed. I love how Amelia is integrated in the plot and her suicide really gripped me. But the third act features such blatantly offensive depictions of vodou that are incorrect, inappropriate, and represent a lot of issues with how steampunk treats tropes it has “created” surrounding BIPOC folks. Goth, punk, and steampunk are all areas that owe SO MUCH of their history to black folks who worked their asses off only to then be harmed by stereotypes like this. Not to mention the way these themes are integrated is stilted, does not fit the story, and drags the act out entirely. I want to love this act and I have found the only way I can enjoy its incredibly important story is to skip the songs that promote this trope. 

Also important of note is that I am not black and I do not have familial connections to vodou. So its not my theme to forgive but I am uncomfortable with it knowing people who have been negatively impacted by things like this.

The fourth act is really good! Priscilla makes me want to CRY and Jasper’s character development arc is haunting when displayed here. I think the story of the fourth act is brought down swiftly by the cop/soldier/grifter. I don’t need a cop redemption story in my steampunk technology revolution where just 20 minutes ago a character was giving impassioned speeches about how to take down oppressive governments. But if I skip the soldier dude then I am still having a good time.

Overall I think this is a really good concept and foundation of a show. The songs are hit or miss but still very fun. I am still obsessed with the first two acts and all the Narrator songs and I would kill and die for Jasper. But it has a lot of issues and if I were to put it on it would need a lot of edits for me to feel comfortable with it. 

[give-soup-please]

Alright folks, I've been thinking deeply about a lot of things, and I think I want to start uploading my 'Human Experience' project. To be blunt, inspiration has been flagging for a while, and I don't want to hold out for another five months (as originally planned) if nothing else gets written for it. It doesn't make sense to keep you guys waiting that long if I can no longer continue this story. Several chapters have been completed, and with 27k words, you guys will have plenty of stuff to read if you end up liking it.

Maybe by starting to upload, some sparks will be kicked up and I can keep going. I can't say. But I think i'm starting to lose interest in TSP altogether. (Though I very much intend on keeping the friends I've made in the fandom) And unless something major happens within the fandom or crowsx3 releases some new content to work with, this will be it.

I will still be here, the blog will still be here. Neither of us are going anywhere. But this story needs to be seen.

It's kinda funny, and a little sad. The narrator's death grip is starting to loosen. Or maybe it's my grip that's loosening? Both? Who knows, metaphysics makes things complicated.

Anyway, late tomorrow, the prologue and chapter one will be uploaded. Updates will be random and as I see fit, depending on whether or not inspiration comes back.

I hope it does. Sincerely, I want this story to be complete, and to give the narrator his happy ending. I can't guarantee that any more. But I can guarantee that you'll be able to see what I've been up to. I'll link the A03 link here once it's up.

See you tomorrow.

[gaymanwithanoversizedhoodie]

Trying to be Stanley so hard rn

- ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴇɴᴅɪɴɢ -

[foldingfittedsheets]

Before my beloved and I moved in together they were living with roommates in a place that didn't have a bathtub. Now, a reasonable person might conclude from this that baths would be out of the equation in a home with only one standing shower and no tub.

But these people weren't quitters. Naturopathic doctors and acupuncturists they were dedicated to treating their bodies well and one of the ways they liked to do that was hydrotherapy. Most people are familiar with this through things like polar bear plunges. You sit in a hot tub then jump in freezing water.

It's supposedly good for you and they were way into it. But again, no tub. They'd do hydro showers but it just wasn't the same. These people were not quitters, though. (One of them is the boob soap person, so it really isn't a surprise that she goes hard on everything). So they got what looked like two big metal old timey tubs but which were actually animal food troughs and set them up in the garage. They set up a water heater and god knows how they emptied the tub after, I think there was hoses involved? A pump maybe? I honestly can't remember. Anyway! Voila, hydrotherapy on demand.

I was not aware of this. So when I came over after a long day and my beloved said we should take a bath I was extremely puzzled. I only knew about the one shower. They showed me the garage tubs. I did want a bath and I wasn't really sure about the setup, but honestly I'll try anything once if only for the story, so I agreed.

Fun fact about me though. I haaaate being cold. I've been 0% body fat most of my life with skin barely keeping my bones enclosed. I'm always cold. My favorite activity at the time was sitting directly in front of space heaters. My shower temperatures turn me lobster red and make my beloved cringe. Willingly dunking myself into cold water is the antipathy of my entire deal.

On the night in question I happily submerged into the warm tank, pleasantly surprised by the big silly improvised tub. Which again was meant for livestock. My knees bumped companionably against my beloved as we soaked in the hot water. After a while they rose to go into the cold water. "You don't have to," they told me.

But I was haunted. I wouldn't be doing hydro if I just stayed in the warm tub. Maybe hydro was amazing. It has all these health benefits. I desperately didn't want to but I stood up with them. We were having this nice intimate evening in the garage, just us, I felt safe. I was gonna do it.

They stepped easily into the cold tub, dunking matter of factly into the frigid water. I went to step. I did. I really really tried. My foot went in and I started shrieking, my progress arrested by the total state of shock I entered when my warm toasty foot hit that smug arctic water tension. My beloved started laughing as my pitch ascended the deeper my foot went into the cold water.

I started loudly narrating my discomfort as my foot touched the bottom and I willed my other foot up to join it. "THIS IS VERY COLD," I yelled, "IT'S SO COLD I THINK I MIGHT DIE HOW ARE YOU JUST CASUALLY SITTING IN THIS FREEZING COLD WATER?! I'M DYING- I THINK I'M DYING! I'M DYING BUT WE'RE HERE, TOGETHER! I CAN DO THIS! I CAN DO THESE EVEN THOUGH IT'S SO COLD ALL MY MOLECULES HAVE COMPRESSED INTO A SOLID STATE!"

I ended up with both feet planted in the cold tub, water up to my shins, bellowing and panting while my beloved laughed so hard they couldn't breathe. I hunkered over the cold water, squatting like a frozen gargoyle.

My beloved was trying to psyche me up while I willed my body to obey me. In a sudden jerky drop like a puppet whose strings have been cut I plummeted my body into the cold and let out a shriek that I’m sure could have shattered glass and then leapt up out of the water at a speed relative to a rocket achieving space flight. I didn’t like it.

When we got back inside my beloved's roommates were collapsed on the ground with tears in the their eyes from how hard they'd been laughing. They and probably every neighbor down the block had heard my pterodactyl screeching and narration because the garage was not remotely soundproof.

[moth-without-wings]

ggsghdg sd i think my brain is rotting /nsrs

i am hyperfixated on tsp gahaha

[housederiva]

[give-soup-please]

(LARGE GASP)

Hello TSP tumblr community

[allthegothihopgirls]

'having a communication problem with my partner' what are you two??? 45 and married with 3 kids????

special shoutout to roy harper, stage three clinger

[horangislittletiger99]

Describing my taste in men in one image

[beetleandfox]

I have Thinking About Piranesi Disease and babyy it’s incurable

[give-soup-please]

sobbing, crying/pos

Animation hour

[martyryo]

Wdym it's not halloween yet 🤨

[livwritesstuff]

Tommy POV, wc: 2890, full version on ao3

Tommy Hagan is not jealous of Eddie Munson.

He’s not.

There’s nothing to be jealous of, in his opinion, and Tommy probably wouldn’t be thinking about him at all if Eddie wasn’t the most publicly well known member of his graduating class – well, he hadn’t actually been in his graduating class, Tommy supposes.

They had been seniors at the same time, though.

If Tommy happened to be jealous of anything – and that’s a big if – it would probably have something to do with the famous thing. Everyone has a small part of them that wants to be famous at least in some capacity, he’s pretty sure, even if Eddie isn’t really, truly famous – not like the red carpet celebrities. He’s a writer. Even the most well known writers never get all that much attention, but Munson has his own Wikipedia page, and that’s more than anybody else from Hawkins, Indiana can say. Hawkins itself barely even has a Wikipedia page, and it’s only because of all the atrocities that happened in town in the mid-eighties.

Tommy hadn’t been around for the end of it all – the earthquake-slash-serial killer situation that never made any sense to him. He remembers his mom calling him at his college dorm when the deaths first started. He remembers her asking, “You went to school with that Munson boy, right? Do you think he could do something like this?”

And Tommy had been twenty and a total moron, so he’d said some dumb shit like, “Yeah, he’s into freaky stuff like that. Somebody should’ve put him on a list ages ago,” even though four years of experience told him that Eddie was all bark, no bite. Tommy hadn’t been surprised at all by the statements that later came out clearing Eddie's name, and by then his parents had already high-tailed it out of Hawkins so it all sort of became irrelevant to him.

Tommy never even returned to Hawkins one single time after he left for college (barring his high school reunion, obviously), and twenty years after graduation, he doesn’t really think about those years all that much.

He doesn’t love the person he’d been in high school. He was whiny and immature and had his priorities all messed up. Most of the memories he has of his teenage years, he looks back at and cringes, feels a whole lot of shame and embarrassment, but also some pride at how much he’s grown over the last twenty years. He also knows he’d been kind of a dick in high school, but that he’s less ashamed of. It’s normal, he knows, for kids to be mean, that it’s a standard response to being untreated kindly in other ways. Like, his dad had been an asshole to him as a kid, always on him about his grades and his smart mouth and how he’d no longer been a standout on any of his sports teams after starting high school, and Tommy had coped with that by poking kids beneath him at school. 

It’s just the pecking order of high school. It’s normal.

Even now, when Tommy’s son had dealt with some pricks in the year above him shoving him around, he had come home from school and tormented his little sister for a while – it’s normal, no matter how much his wife had tried to convince him it was something that needed addressing. It’s just kids being kids. They grow out of it eventually, just like Tommy had.

Occasionally he wonders where the kids he’d spent all those years with in the Hawkins public school system had ended up, but these days the internet makes that pretty damn easy to figure out.

He’s learned Tina got married and had kids real young. She still lives in Indiana. Carol, who he’d split up with before heading off to college, lives in Alabama now and she’s got kids and a husband too. Jonathan Byers is a photographer in California – Tommy isn’t into all that art-y crap, so he has no clue if he’s any good, but he definitely recognizes some of the organizations he’s worked for and if that’s any indication, Tommy would wager he’s not too shabby. No wife, though, he noted, so he’d either been right about Byer’s being a queer, or women just found him repulsive (admittedly, Tommy leans more towards the former – he’s a photographer). Tammy Thompson still lives in Tennessee, though it doesn’t seem like she does music anymore (husband, kids, blah blah blah). 

If he’s honest, the only person Tommy is actually interested in tracking down is Steve Harrington, and he’s the one person Tommy can’t find a single trace of online. No MySpace, no Facebook, no weird blog thing, nothing.

Vaguely, he wonders if Steve might be dead. A truly massive proportion of Hawkins had died over just a few short years in the mid-eighties. Maybe Harrington was one of them.

Tommy doubts it. 

He would have known. 

Steve’s parents would have made sure everyone knew if their son had died. Funnily enough, Steve’s mom is actually on Facebook, and pretty actively too, but there’s no sign of Steve anywhere on her page. 

He hadn’t even shown up for their high school reunion in the winter of ‘04, which is odd because Tommy had been certain he would.

He doesn’t obsess over it – he really doesn’t. It’s just a thought that pops into his mind every now and then – where the hell is Steve Harrington?

In the late spring of 2007, he gets his answer.

“Tom,” his wife says, “That guy from your high school is on the cover of this magazine.”

He knows without asking for clarity that it’s Munson – no other person makes sense – and when he eventually gets his hands on the magazine, he finds that he’s correct.

Eddie Munson is on the cover of a magazine because, apparently, he published another book. 

Truthfully, Tommy already knew that. 

It’s his fourth book (which, for the record, Tommy hadn’t known until he knew it because it’s not like he’s keeping tabs on this guy or whatever), and it’s been getting a whole bunch of mainstream attention after a controversial landing on the top of all those book charts Tommy doesn’t follow despite featuring a gay love store amidst all his normal fantasy crap. It sparked a whole debate about banning books and everything (dumb, Tommy knows, because if he learned anything in business school it’s that if you really don’t want something to exist, the best thing you can do is not funnel money and attention into it). 

Tommy does, in fact, watch the news so he’d already caught wind of all this – it’s part of the reason he can’t shake the guy – and it’s why Eddie Munson is on the cover of this magazine (because, seriously, nobody gives a shit about writers until it hits the news).

He allows himself a moment to look at the cover, to look at Eddie, who apparently goes by Ed now. Tommy is loath to admit it, but he looks good. His hair is normal and he’s grown into his frame, not all long and lanky and gangly limbs like Tommy remembers from school. He looks well-fed, confident, happy.

He looks good.

Tommy thumbs through the first few pages of the magazine until he reaches Eddie’s interview, and, again, he allows himself to look over the photo of him that takes up nearly three-quarters of the first page even if he has no intention of actually reading the article itself because, again, Eddie looks good (and maybe there’s something about the scruff of facial hair along his jaw that Tommy's eye gets stuck on). Tommy’s allowed to say that men look good when it’s true – it’s 2007, as his wife likes to remind him whenever it’s convenient for her, and if she’s allowed to say that Angelina Jolie looked good in that CIA movie, then Tommy is allowed to say that Eddie Munson looks good here.

When Tommy flips to the next page, he’s met with a photo that stops him in his tracks, has his feet frozen to the floor because –

Jesus Christ, that’s Steve Harrington.

Fuck, okay, so he’s reading this fucking article.

It takes Tommy a long time to get through it, honestly. Eddie comes out in the article, which might be a big deal, might not (and he doesn't care to be enlightened, thanks). He keeps getting distracted by the pictures scattered throughout it.

The pictures of Steve, mostly.

Because, well, if Eddie Munson looks good, Steve…

Steve looks alive.

Tommy didn’t realize it until this exact moment, but Steve had existed in his head for the last two decades as the eighteen-year-old he’d been the last time they were in the same room together. It hadn’t exactly occurred to him that Steve’s been aging this whole time too, just like Tommy has.

It’s undeniable that Steve is older. 

His hair is starting to go gray at his temples (it’s the only thing that’s changed about his hair since he’s still styling it the same as he did in high school – because why mess with a good thing, Tommy supposes) and he’s got just the hint of crow's feet around his eyes when he smiles. He’s smiling in all the photos – every damn one – and it has Tommy struck by how unbelievably happy Steve seems. It’s an effect that somehow both takes years off the age Tommy knows he is and shines a light on just how good those years must have been for him. 

There’s no solo shots of him like there are for Munson – though according to the article, it's actually Harrington now – and only half the photos are in color. The rest of them – the more candid ones – are smaller and left in black-and-white. 

The one that caught Tommy’s eye first – because it was meant to, he’s pretty sure; it takes up half the page – is right in that sweet spot between staged and candid where Steve and Eddie both know that they’re being photographed even though neither of them are actually posing. Eddie is grinning at Steve in a wicked way that still feels familiar to Tommy even two decades since he’d last seen it on him (probably swaggering around the cafeteria like a total jackass – not that Tommy would know anything about that). Steve is grinning right back at him with a smile Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

Or maybe he has, but not on this version of his face, not since Steve was as young as his oldest daughter.

Just as the author of the article said, the photos don’t show the faces of Steve’s children, either leaving them artfully out-of-focus or choosing shots where they’re turned away from the camera, but they’re still present, and it makes the whole spread almost feel like a photo album in a way, like it should be private but instead was published for the whole world to see.

Steve has three of them – kids, Tommy means. He didn’t know that Steve was a family kind of guy. It makes sense though, when he thinks about it. Steve’s parents were kind of a nightmare — present in the worst ways, and absent in the worst ways too (though it hadn’t seemed that way when Tommy was a teenager looking for a failsafe party house). He'd always felt kind of bad for the guy. Like, Tommy's dad had been a total piece of work, but they'd at least been around, and he'd stuck around long enough for them to sort out their issues at least most of the way, and these days he's a pretty kickass grandpa to Tommy's children.

Tommy wonders about Steve's parents now, wonders if they maybe came around like his own parents had, but then he remembers Mrs. Harrington's Facebook page and how there's not a damn trace of her son on there, never mind three grandchildren.

Tommy isn't sure he wants to touch that.

Steve is probably a really good dad, Tommy decides. He’d been kind of that way when they were friends — Steve used to say he wasn’t all that bright, but he always had a freaky sixth sense for reading people, for caring about them in exactly the way they needed.

There's one photo where Steve is managing to holding his youngest daughter — a tiny little baby still — and her bottle in one arm (that's a level-three dad hold, Tommy knows). The bottle is angled in a way that obscures her face, and Steve's other hand is being tugged on by another daughter, this one with a mop of curly brown hair remarkably similar to Eddie's when it was still long.

That's another thing Tommy won't let himself think about, (because he knows if did he'd start wondering if any of those kids were half-Steve).

Anyways, Tommy doesn't need glance to see that Steve wears fatherhood like a favorite sweater.

There’s something about this, about seeing these pictures, about the way Tommy is getting an answer to that question he’s had for years about where his childhood best friend has been all these years, that is making him feel like his ribcage is being split open, bones splintering and shattering as everything vulnerable inside his chest in suddenly out for display.

He probably should feel uncomfortable, right? Like, a guy he’d been seriously close to growing up — sleepovers and gym locker rooms and all that shit — had turned out to be gay. If his own son came home from school saying that his best friend came out or whatever as gay…well, again, it’s 2007, and Tommy doesn’t think his wife would allow him to denounce the friendship entirely, but there certainly wouldn’t be any sleepovers anymore. He thinks that’s pretty reasonable.  

What was the likelihood that Steve had been, like, into Tommy?

And that should be an uncomfortable notion too, and in a sense, it kind of is, but not necessarily in the way he would expect. 

He just doesn’t understand why all this feels so much like a loss because he knows that he hasn’t really lost anything – not since he got his hands on the magazine, anyways. Steve Harrington hasn’t played any sort of role in Tommy’s life since their final falling out in 1984, and as far as he’s aware, having a falling out with a close friend is pretty much a guaranteed part of growing up. His wife even experienced something similar when her own grade school best friend suddenly stopped answering calls and stopped reaching out after they’d started college – and his wife is basically the nicest person Tommy has ever known, so…it happens to even the best.

It’s just…Steve had always continued to exist in Tommy’s life in a way, even if he wasn't physically present, and maybe Tommy had figured it could be the same for Steve too, that maybe he sometimes wonders where Tommy is, wonders what he’s up to.

This article and these photos makes it pretty fucking clear that Tommy doesn’t even exist in the same galaxy as the life Steve is living.

And that’s not to mention the Eddie fucking Munson of it all.

Tommy had been kind of ignoring the Eddie of it all until he couldn’t ignore it anymore, because he doesn't care about Eddie Munson.

He'd never cared, but he'd spent years seeing the guy's face and his name everywhere, and now it feels like a sick joke, like he's the piece of Steve left in Tommy's life.

If the article is accurate (and he has no reason to believe it isn’t), Steve and Eddie have been together for longer than Tommy has even known his wife. Steve has been with Eddie for longer than Steve was ever friends with Tommy – not by a lot, but still more. That’s a long fucking time, and it’s clear as day on both of their faces that they’re just as in love with each other fourteen years in as they were on day one.

It’s not just Steve, and it’s not just Eddie, and it’s not one more than the other. It’s both of them.

There’s one photo in particular – a small black-and-white one that keeps pulling Tommy’s attention.

It’s another candid shot, taken from a bit of a distance. In it, Steve has Eddie boxed in against the counter in what has to be their kitchen. Eddie is leaning back against the edge of the granite countertop and looking at Steve with something sappy and fond on his face, and Steve’s hands are this close to grabbing Eddie’s waist as he looks at him the exact same way.

It’s shit out of a fairy tale or something, and sure, maybe someone could argue that they’re laying it on thick just for the sake of the magazine or whatever, but Tommy knows Steve Harrington and that look on his face is more real than Tommy had ever seen in all the years he'd known him.

So maybe Tommy has a reason or two (or three or four) to be jealous of Eddie Munson.

[calwasfound]

assortment of tsp / c0 doodles from the past months