#rly via my being the one to make them....and friendly acquaintances lmao...little better in middle school but also worse b/c.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

was listening to mts (obcr) as usual & got on a train of thought that had me recalling the fun detail of how brooke messes w/jeremy’s hair w/enough Force to drag his head around but it’s also b/c jeremy’s moving with it vs. firmly maintaining posture, & i was like haha just like jeremy to do that, & then i put 1 + 1 + 1 together re: ongoing but also recent musings, which is also a usual occurrence lol.....

anyways it’s that when i first listened to Songs i especially figuratively sat up at that whole Interlude in mts ft. the Dramatic Irony wherein jeremy is just very obviously having a Protagonist Moment but while singing abt how he doesn’t feel like a protagonist, aka the “never gonna be the cool guy, i’m more the one who’s left out; of all the characters at school, i am not the one who the story’s about” bit, like, well i love a protagonist who doesn’t feel like a protagonist naturally, i myself keep going “if i were in media i’d be An Npc With Several Lines Of Funky Dialogue or a jokey side character or one of the randos in any actiony media who gets obliterated in the bg to show the Stakes the main characters are dealing with” etc etc. and the other day i had been musing like “well i suppose it makes sense like, one reason i didn’t often Relate / recognize my experiences in Media is b/c someone operating like i did/do would make a terrible protagonist, right” but then i was also like “but also that’s kind of fucked and actually i do not excuse it” and then like the next day i saw a Relevant Discussion & continued that line of thought

and the point is that it’s neat how jeremy’s whole thing is being Guided by other people for basically the whole story but obviously is still v at the center of things and has a whole arc that way....he makes a Decision and takes Action in going to the payless & everything for sure, & he’s of course not Truly completely passive ever b/c no character is gonna be, but like, the Action he decides to take is “i can’t do this by myself (change things) & i need someone else to steer everything” and then that’s what Happens, and you get LGW as the anti-defying-gravity as joe says, and then even in act 2 the culmination of the climax of the overall story and jeremy’s arc isn’t him being like “haha i’ve completely won the conflict!” (even though he has, he just didn’t Know he was winning the conflict at the time) vs. making a decision and taking an action on his own terms based on his own judgment and wants while also thinking he’s just going to lose that ability to Act of his own agency beyond this.....and that of course he’s not Only being guided around by the squip, but also letting everyone else set the course & steer an interaction while often reacting to what they’re doing / often only taking “initiative” (the squip’s...) based on predicting/presuming what that person Wants, aka what he does still v much defined by other people, and playing by these certain rules, and if someone pushes his head back he’s just going with that flow, and even having had the issue that he felt like he was just Player 2 to michael the whole time.............i think it’s neat