#probably aaron & Katelyn? i'm rambling now....

[xerith-42]

My Street Ramblings

Ok ok ok so @gonedreaminggg put it into words very well when they described My Street characters as more of characters than people. Which is so true!! Like I can list off some personality traits of some characters, but can you honestly tell me what Katelyn really thinks about Zane? Even though they're both main characters?

(Editors note, this post ran the fuck away from me so it's long as fuck sjdfjsdhg)

The problem MS has is that a lot of these characters get boiled down to the silliest, memeist versions of themselves, until Jess did a spin maneuver and made the series a story driven show with a darker tone and promptly crashed her faster car into a brick wall. But even before that happened, a lot of MS characters were lacking because of the forced perspective.

Until the plot shows up in season 4 and mandates characters splitting up constantly, a lot of the series is (sometimes literally) only seen from Aphmau's perspective. If interesting character drama is happening and she isn't around for it, it won't be seen. This was somewhat rectified in Season 5, but it was really too little too late. Because Aphmau has to be around for important stuff to happen, we don't really know the characters on a smaller scale, because the series is allergic to taking things slow.

Imagine an episode that's just watching Nana go through her day. She wakes up, starts making coffee, pulls a blanket over Katelyn who fell asleep on the couch watching K-drama's last night, and then goes outside with her morning coffee, a small breakfast, and sits on her porch and scrolls through Tumblr while people watching.

We follow her taking the bus to get to her barista job, and watch as she goes through an opening shift. Scenes fade showing the different parts of her job, maybe she has to deal with an angry customer and we see how she responds. Maybe while she's working one of her other friends from My Street shows up and gets an order and they have a chat as she's working. We watch the care she puts into it, and how she leaves little positive notes with drawings of cats, hearts, and flowers next to their name on their order.

My Street characters suffer from feeling like they aren't doing anything if the Main Character isn't around. How does Travis like to spend his weekends? We can make headcanons about it, but the show, the actual text, can't answer such a simple question about one of it's main characters.

My Street also suffers from having too many characters, but if the series was willing to slow down, all of them could be given proper time, especially because a lot of characters probably spend time together when Aphmau and Aaron aren't around.

I'm talking about an episode where it opens on Garroth honking his horn, and then Zane comes trudging out of his house, gets in the passenger seat, and lets out a huff. Garroth just gives him the aux cord, and Zane puts on his high school emo playlist he unironically enjoys. Garroth nods along to or even lip-sings some of the song (probably Welcome To The Black parade by MCR, I just know all the Ro'maeve brothers love that song.)

Speaking of which, they then pick up Vylad, and all three of them just go for a drive. Eventually they drive into the country side, pull off, and then turn the car off. Garroth pops open the trunk and the three of them all just chill out on a pile of blankets and pillows that were already there. They sit in silence for a while. Vylad and Zane pass a vape pen around, and every now and then Garroth takes a hit off of it.

Finally they all just talk. About life, about their feelings, about their parents, whatever they can think to talk about. Maybe Garroth brings up some of his gripes about his roommate, or Vylad confesses that they're struggling to figure out how to come out to their parents. This is clearly a routine these three established, and something all three of them greatly appreciate. Garroth and Zane never quite felt like brothers to me, but this? I could see myself doing this with my brother.

And for my final random idea I had while in the shower, I want to talk about Melissa my beloved. A character who only exists to help prop up an already existing character. Melissa has almost no identity outside of being Aaron's Sister. Let me ask you this, what's her job? Without checking the wiki?

My idea is that she works for her parents company, a boring, dreadful, and soul draining office job. It's the same routine day in, day out, nothing changes. Wake up, drive to work, sit at her office for 8 hours, go home, sleep, repeat. Until on Friday, when she's truly had enough, when she's just so tired as she slams the car door as she's getting in her car to leave and hangs her head. She's so exhausted, so drained, so miserable. Her moment of anguish is interrupted by her phone playing a stupid love song, and you can just see her face relax the minute she hears it.

She answers the phone, puts it on speaker, and sets it up on a stand in her car. Her relaxed expression turns into a love struck grin, her ears relax, and her tail starts wagging the minute she hears her girlfriend Lucinda's voice. After the drudgery of every single day being the same, just hearing her voice is like medicine to Melissa.

And then the two talk the entire time Melissa is driving to Lucinda's, and they're so so so gay when they see each other in person. They both get dolled up and flirt like dorks the entire time, and then we get a montage of them going out clubbing, singing karaoke, and getting white girl wasted despite neither of them being white.

My Street characters don't feel like people because they're not. They're mostly one dimensional characters who exist to fill out a roster or scene, and we get depressingly little insight into who they are as people.

I hope this post gave them and the MS fandom something to chew on.

[dazenightmare]

I'm back and I'll have you know the ask I sent about aphmau I sent while half asleep reminded me of the little rewrite I did do I'm just going to ramble a bit about my rewrite as the coffeeshop aphmau crew in the au. Aphmau(who's real name is April in my rewrite but aphmau can be a lil nickname) is the manager of the coffeeshop. She's dating Katelyn and Kawaii-Chan(who's real name is Natalie in my thing) and Katelyn works with her while Kawaii-Chan works at the Cat Maid Cafe place. Garroth Laurence and Daniel all work at the coffeeshop too and are also in a polycule with each other. Aaron is blind in reference to the time in canon he just covered his eyes with cloth. He also is roommates with Travis, Zane, and Vylad. Zane is a lil edgy Nonbinary pep and they and Vylad are the local ace/aros of the coffeeshop. Aaron had a huge crush on Zane once but got over it and is now developing feelings for Travis.

Aphmau likes to jokingly flirt with everyone she works with and did a bit with laurence where they fought over romantically pursuing a table. Most customers see the flirting and are just increasingly confused by it. All of them visit the supermarket from time to time and it's probably not rare to see Garroth getting himself wrapped up in whatever chaos is going down in the store that day.

Oh my god I’m getting flashbacks the more I read this. But also,

Garroth, a regular customer: Oh boy, I can’t wait to go to the store for groceries! What could go wrong?

The store: *in the middle of a war*

Garroth: