#sck fandom

[apendixisapain]

Considering my propaganda heped on the Nomi Randy vs Dippy fresh poll im gonna go over here again to remind people

VAMPIRE MATT IS WINNING IN ANOTHER POLL PEOPLE. LET THE SILLY CUBE WIN PLEASEEEEEEE

SIDE-A

Group 3

[ghostdogsofwaverly]

If you could make ANY Nancy Drew PC game into a LEGO set, which one would you choose?

Recently I've gotten VERY into Lego, and I of course love Nancy Drew. I know that a few times in the past, people have attempted to suggest Nancy Drew-themed ideas for Lego sets on the Lego Ideas website, with unfortunately no success (as in, one actually being made, was definitely support from the fandom!) as of yet. If somehow the Clue Crew could actually bring one of these ideas to life in the form of a Lego set, which game would you choose it to be for? Feel free to elaborate on the post or in the tags about what kinds of elements you'd like to be part of it as well! (Like which game (as I've had to group the options, didn't realise there were limited poll options!) what area from the game, which characters would be included as figures, etc...) So again, I ask...

[lizacstuff]

Can I just thank you for being such a voice of reason? I feel so bad for people making themselves miserable over a fictional TV drama, so I really appreciate your maturity, especially because you are such a large voice within the SCK Tumblr fandom 🤗

Oh that's so nice! Thank you for the kind sentiment, I'm glad some of what I've written has helped.

When a show goes this big in trying to reinvent itself it's always very jarring for fandom. We're emotionally invested and it's hard to step back and see why they're doing what they're doing and to see that the outcome might not be so bad.

What helps me with this story is that while there is a heartbreaking time jump, we're not going to have to put up with much if any separation on screen. That's the hardest thing for me as a viewer. You would not have wanted to be around me during season 6 of The West Wing (I'm an old fan girl, perspective helps) when Josh and Donna went their separate ways and only had scenes like every third episode. I was a little angry and ranty and key-smashy during that angsty drought, (just ask @counttotwenty) but I learned that is not a fun way to be in fandom. So for me, when I come across a story that is a gut punch, it's always take a deep breath time, and decide if I want to continue or not. If I do want to keep watching, I need to accept what's happening, put it in perspective (it's a TV show, they're fictional) and find a way to enjoy it or, at least, get through it without spreading negative energy to other people.

And the thing is I KNOW there are a lot of awesome shipper things headed towards us. While I may not love the set up, I'm jazzed for what season 2 is actually going to bring. One thing I feel very certain of is that Ayse and the producers know that this show only works when Kerem and Hande are on screen together. So I expect, even from the get go when they've been apart for years, were going to get plenty of them sharing scenes. We're not going to sit through numerous episode of them separated, we're going to bypass those years of pain and potentially only visit that in flashbacks. For me, that helps.

It also helps to know that the only reason they're doing this is to keep the show going so they can keep Hande and Kerem, and their chemistry, together on screen. And to maximize that they must think rebooting it, and trying to recapture the magic of the first 12 when the characters were falling in love, is the key. But rest assured that is why this is happening, no other reason. You read all sorts of nonsense kneejerk irrational negativity on other social media platforms, but I'm here to assure you that this plot has not been designed to "purposely ruin the show" or because "Ayse hates Serkan" or because "they're punishing fans" or "punishing Hanker for confirming." Good grief. Take my advice and mute anyone who says anything nonsense like that, they're either not in their right minds or not mature enough to be in fandom.

So hopefully it helps to know that this show only continues to exist because of the gold they struck with that pairing and because no one wants to let it go. These big story reboots-- that can feel upsetting and traumatizing-- are the price we fans pay for getting to keep them on screen together.

So my advice is to not take the plot too seriously, it's a Turkish Soap Opera for goodness sake, instead hold your nose when it comes to the set up and then enjoy what we are going to get which is a whole lot of meaty material for Hande and Kerem to bite into. They are going to SLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY this season. And we are going to get to watch Eda and Serkan fall for one another one more time.

[aslibekroglu]

The sad thing is that eda and serkan are both the victims in the story, the only person responsible is selin 😡 I hope she gets what she deserves in the next episodes

Yes! Neither of them deserve what they’re going through. It’s funny, after the trailers for 29, I feel like I saw a lot of “Serkan’s a victim, don’t blame him” and after the episode, I’m seeing a lot of “I hate Serkan, Eda deserves better than him, Serkan’s so heartless” like............ 🙃

[mrsgreenworld]

Bravo, @djemsostylist, you hit the nail on the head with this!☝️👏👏👏👏

I wasn't in the TVD fandom and I didn't watch the show consistently, especially after season 4. But I definitely share your pain and disappointment when it comes to SCK. It's hard to let go but the process kinda started on its own, with me losing my muse and ability to write for Edser. But I will never regret the journey I've had with this show. It's heartbreaking that the end is so ugly but there were better days and I will hold on to them. And I will very much want to hold on to the amazing people I've met in SCK fandom. I hope one day another show will bring us together again and we will speculate and laugh and cry again. And we will have an OTP that won't disappoint and will be the epitome of love and true partnership. Too bad Edser are no longer it.

Do not go gently...

I was re-reading my old posts on livejournal from when TVD went down a dark path and I had to give it up, and its remarkable how closely my disappointment and slow leaving of the fandom parallels what I'm experiencing with SCK.

First it was losing touch with the characters. Characters who we used to practically live in their head became completely cut off and suddenly, we knew nothing about their motivations or their thoughts. Their decisions suddenly started to be controlled entirely by the Plot--longstanding character traits were destroyed or disappeared seemingly overnight. Relationships and elements of those relationships which had long been established disappeared or were purposefully disposed of. It was like the characters were no longer driving the show, but were reduced to Plot Devices that could be moved at will.

Then came the change in acting. I found an entire post I wrote about Nina Dobrev's "Elena Face" she had been doing and it's eerily reminiscent of some of the "Serkan Face" comments I've made recently. It's like the actors don't really know what is going on with their characters so they sort of default to this face that is bored, bland, and vaguely irritated.

Then came the predictability of plots and tropes. Look, neither SCK nor TVD was particularly grounding breaking in their writing, but the early episodes did do some surprising things with characters, and plots moved as a reasonable clip. And then both started to drag. Things like lies and secrets piled up for no real reason other than Plot. People died or survived or reacted depending on what the Plot told them to do. Previously smart characters suddenly lost their ability to think or reason, and it was clear all their Plots were based off nothing more than a need to advance a Plot.

And then we have our main couple. Love them or hate them Stefan and Elena were the main couple of TVD, and the first two seasons were spend firming establishing this. Like SCK, the main couple faced challenges together, and even when they were apart they were together. There were insecurities, sure, but it was made clear time and again they were it for each other. They had long conversations, they supported each other, and even in their worst moments they were there for each other. And when they encountered problems, they worked through them and didn't deal with those same problems again. And then came the dark times. Limited screentime together, no talking or connections, symbols of love being destroyed, moments being erased or replaced, and then the dreaded Other moved in and suddenly our soulmates weren't, well, soulmates any more.

And it was all, inevitably, in the service of Plot. To extend a thing which maybe just should have ended. And it sucks, especially when you are deep the in fandom. It's more than just entertainment, it's ritual and community and bonding. It's getting excited with other fans, coming up with theories, excitedly examining plots, making fanfic and gifs. It's being a part of something a little bit more, and as the show declines, so does the fandom. You lose the passion to write about characters who no longer inspire, the plots are so obvious you have nothing to speculate or wonder about, and analyzing it becomes an exercise in pain. I found a post I wrote about realizing I forgot the latest episode of TVD was on (when I hadn't missed a live airing in a months) and how weird it felt to realize I didn't care. Realizing I didn't care hurt almost worst than the not caring, bc it meant I was losing something I loved, something that had been so important. Like SCK, TVD hit at a time of extreme stress and change for me, and it helped me get through a weird time. Losing it, and the community I had with it, was hard.

SCK is ending. Whether or not they manage to drop this next stupid plot in an episode or not, the writing is on the wall. The show will never be the same again, and the magic that brought us all together is gone. It's hard, and it hurts, and this one is going to take a while to get over. I can watch old TVD episodes now without pain, and I think in time I will be able to do the same with SCK too. But for now, saying farewell to a show and a fandom that I loved, and that was there for so many of us in a rough time, is going to be hard. It's not easy to let something you love like this go, even if it is only a Turkish romcom. But reading old TVD posts made me feel better. This isn't my first rodeo. I'm used to things going south. Most are a "fool me once" scenario and I'm done (see Endgame) but the slow death is almost harder. It's not a clean break, it's a slow decline, and it's hard. But I've met some amazing people and found new things to love through the course of this, and I'll be grateful for this Turkish romcom for giving me that. And I'll remain excited for anything Hande or Kerem do in the future.

[therandomanimefan]

So I started following @detectiveworkisalwaysinstyle and I got the urge to draw Nancy in the outfits they were making based on the games! These are SCK, STFD, MHM, and TRT respectively.

My goal is to pick an outfit for all 32 games and post them in groups of four. Maybe once they are all drawn I'll try to color them, but that'll definitely be a while!

Again, outfits are from detectiveworkisalwaysinstyle

[noisettetornade]

So I sometimes listen to Nancy Drew music while I work and found THIS masterpiece on someone’s playlist. Apparently it was cut... no idea why. =P

[sab-teraa]

I usually stay out of fandom drama ... but omfg. The fact that they cut out this  many important EsZan scenes from episode 12 is mind blowing and infuriating. This is so so disrespectful to the cast, crew, director and writers! These individuals work night+day to give us the best possible episodes ... to the point that they actually sleep on set!  Ilhan and Burcu put their reputation on the line to promote episode 12 and yet production cut out every single EsZan scene which would shed light on Ozan’s behaviour + Esra progression towards love! And for what??? An episode filled with Cagla crying over the same thing?? And the worst part is ... that the crew, cast + writers had no idea that these scenes were cut! Gosh, as a fan this is so so disheartening. 

Plus, its not only episode 12 that had this problem. As we reflect ... theres so many important scenes that have been cut since episode 10. Its slowing down the story and alienating the audience from Ozan. FFS ... THE LETTER SCENE THAT THEY CUT WOULD HAVE TIED THE ENTIRE STORY TOGETHER.  Also, I didn’t mind that their social media PR is horrible .. I presumed that that they promote negativity in order to boost social media ratings since its a catalyst to get people to talk. But this is ridiculous now. THE FACT THAT BURCU HAD TO CALL OUT THE IG ADMIN FOR POSTING CUT SCENES IS INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE FACT THAT THEY POSTED THE WRONG HASHTAG????? THE FACT THAT THE NEW YOUTUBE ADMIN POSTS THE TRAILERS SO LATE??? THE FACT THAT WE DONT GET ANY ESZAN SCENES ON THEIR YOUTUBE??? THIS IS INSANE TO ME  Literally, the only person they promote is melisa??? ik its probs bc of the international success of SCK. However, with all due respect to melisa (she is a great actress and seems like a wonderful person), but, she is the second lead + we don’t care about cagla’s first world problems. This is such a disservice to Ilhan and Burcu ... its their names + talent which got people to watch the show!  AMI is the highest rated show of the summer + we bring in so so so much money + we are often the most talked about show on social media ..... and this is how you treat your audience + crew/cast/writers/director??? Anyway, we are currently trending number 1 in turkey + 40 in the world ... maybe this tag will actually get the production house to listen to the crew/cast/writers/director and the audience for once.  This is so embarrassing and unprofessional. 

[mrsgreenworld]

My SCK people, you know you're the best? You're encouraging, both in silent gestures in the form of likes or reblogs and of course with your words. You're passionate, genuinely fascinated by this show we all love, you're creative, you're talented, you're attentive, you're so freaking smart and wise. You're supportive and loving, you're grateful. And I feel so freaking BLESSED to be among you, to be noticed and heard by you. Thank you for reading my crazy ramblings, taking interests in my awkward writing🙏❤️💓💕

I am working on the one-shot idea mentioned above. But, while it was initially supposed to be very light and funny, after that second fragman for episode 23, it's now inching its way into angst territory🙈. I think I am going to turn this into a crazy experiment. I just hope it won't disappoint you.

I am on the roll this week, just had an idea for a one-shot with the following piece of dialogue:

Balca (confused): "Why does Melek keep calling you her Enişte / Brother-in-law?"

Serkan (also confused by the question): "Well, because I am her Enişte"

Balca: "But you and Eda are not married"

Serkan: "Not on paper, yet. But we actually are"😂

So, what do you say, my SCK people? To write or not to write?

[blackjack-15]

Two Can Keep a Secret (if the Family Tree is Dead) — Thoughts on: Ghost of Thornton Hall (GTH)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: GTH; SPY; mention of ASH (and the ASH meta); mention of Nik/HER’s spoilery hints about GTH.

 NOTE: THIS META CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF AND REFERENCE TO SEXUAL ASSAULT. MORE DETAILED SECTIONS ARE MARKED, BUT THIS WARNING STANDS FOR THE WHOLE META.

 The Intro:

It’s time to get our Spooky on, lads. And we’re gonna do it in a meta of truly staggering length, so maybe go to the bathroom and get a snack before you start. My apologies.

Due to the (to be quite frank) absence of nostalgia surrounding them, there’s not really many games that are post 2010 that the fandom tends to agree on, but Ghost of Thornton Hall happens to be a standout in that pretty much everyone has found something to like about it. It often tops the charts of “best newer game” polls, and puts in a valiant effort against the more nostalgic mainstays.

There are a lot of reasons for this, in my mind – the quality of the writing, the choices that Nancy can make that actually affect the outcome of the game and especially affect Nancy, the fabulous voice work, the purposely-unanswered questions that give a deeper sense of horror — but if you ask me, the love for GTH really boils down to one thing:

Atmosphere.

Nancy Drew game fans (and I’m including myself in this) tend to prioritize atmosphere in the games, probably because without good and proper atmosphere it’s easier to pick apart the formula as you’re playing and to avoid being immersed in the game’s story, and GTH has it thick on the ground (figuratively and literally). The fear, unease, and overall sense of being an Intruder in this story comes from the overwhelming atmosphere provided by the grief of the characters, the time-sensitive nature of the crime, the secrets of the house and family, and, of course, the rather stellar visuals and locations.

The Thornton’s house and grounds really feel alive, but dead — in fact, they almost feel alive in the way that a zombie is, where they function and feed but have no heart. The gloriously (and meticulously) decorated walls are cast in shadow and grime; the portraits feel ominous and disapproving rather than lifelike and nostalgic; even the graveyard, as spread out and opulent as it is, feels claustrophobic and unwelcoming.

In a word, the game is – visually, thematically, story-wise, and atmospherically — haunting. And I think that overwhelming feeling of being haunted is, in large part, what draws fans back to this game again and again.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the scariest parts of this game are the things that you, as the player, do not see. Sure, the apparitions of Charlotte, the ghostly figures, the appearance of Harper — these are all scary, but the fear is gone after a moment, leaving the player unsettled but not running to hide under a blanket. The deaths of the fifty-four souls, the secret behind Clara’s birth, Harper’s breakdown — all these things that you don’t see, that you can only hear about or have hinted at are where the fear of the game kicks in, especially for older players.

It’s no secret that, despite the games being labeled for ages 10 and up, that the actual age of the Nancy Drew games fandom hasn’t been around 10 for some time — most people playing these games are in their 20s or 30s, or have siblings who are in their 20s and 30s and got into the games through them. Sure, there are some outliers, but the Clue Crew is much closer in general to the ages of the River Heights crew than they are to the age that that box says.

Because of this, the writers (and I’m going to especially hat-tip Nik here) behind the games have been able to slowly graduate the topics of the games to be a little bit older, hiding the true horror behind things that younger kids just won’t think about. This is especially the case with GTH and SPY, but you see it in a lot of the newer games, where the implications of events are normally scarier than the events themselves.

GTH takes that and runs with it, choosing to hint at and dance around truly upsetting — for any age — topics, presenting a mystery and a story that only get scarier once you’ve finished staring at the screen. The characters’ emotional problems and issues — loss, abandonment, anxiety, guilt — are like this too; while they’re present in the game itself, when you take a step back after finishing the game you realize just how badly scarred everyone is in the story.

Because answers were purposely left vague in order to 1) make the player work for it and 2) keep the 10+ rating, pretty much everyone who plays GTH has a slightly different opinion on what went down at Charlotte’s party, who the Thorntons really are, the circumstances of Clara’s birth, why the children of a female Thornton take their mother’s name — you name it, and there’s around 10 distinct opinions on it, and many more offshoots of those opinions besides.

I’m going to talk a little bit here about a couple of the “biggies”, since I don’t want it cluttering up the Suspect portion of this meta, so bear with me. I’m not so much interested in “this is the Correct answer” as much as just presenting the information from the game and wondering about its conclusions…but I (like everyone else) have my little pet theories, so what follows will be a little bit of reporting, a little bit of inference, and a little bit of supposition.

What follows is a frank discussion of topics such as rape and incest as they apply to GTH. If this is something you’d rather not consume, skip down to the next bolded line.

The most talked-about question left hanging in the game is, of course, who Clara’s father was. I think this question is best addressed from a two-pronged approach, however, because to figure out who Clara’s father could have been is a question that requires another question to be answered: why would Clara’s mother not tell her, even on her deathbed.

The most popular — and horrifying — answer to this is that Clara’s father is Jackson, and that she was a product of rape and incest. Now, just looking at the timeline, this theory adds up; Rosalie (Clara’s mum) would have been 25 when her father was 51 and would have raped her — young enough (especially in relation to her father, a middle-aged man of a lot of power in and out of the family) that she would have been scared to tell anyone anything, but old enough to not have it be super out of the ordinary that she got pregnant and had a baby — especially in 1968.

To add to this theory, there’s the note in the cellar that asks “who was this Jackson?...what’s he hiding, and who put it there? Was it Charlotte?”. If you’re looking for clues with the incest theory in mind, this seems to point directly to it — “who was this Jackson”? both Rosalie and Clara’s father. “What’s he hiding”? his crime of raping his daughter and impregnating her. The mention of Charlotte alludes to the supposition that Charlotte found proof of this crime — tangible proof — and put it somewhere; this pretty much supposes that there’s a document somewhere that names Jackson as Clara’s biological father, such as an admission of guilt or a paternity test.

The final “proof-positive” to this theory is that Rosalie refused to tell Clara who her father was even on her deathbed. We know from the family tree and Wade that Clara was between 5-10 when her mother died (I’m inclined to believe the family tree, and chalk the discrepancy up to either the writers not being concerned with math or, more likely and more charitably, to show that Wade isn’t a Perfectly Reliable source, just like everyone else), and Rosalie’s protection of Clara from the truth makes sense with a child in that age span. It’s one (horrible, horrible) thing to be forcibly impregnated by your father, but to have to say it out loud, and to say it to your child — that’s something that no one can even remotely blame Rosalie for not being up to, especially when weakened by sickness.

There are smaller points — like pointing out that this might be why Virginia (Wade’s mum) was skipped over in inheritance — but these small points have dozens of explanations, so they’re not really good for bolstering a theory unless you’re already dedicated to it and are looking for crumbs to shore it up.

End of frank discussion. The previous topics may be alluded to and/or mentioned, but not discussed in detail from this point on.

Now, let’s talk about another explanation. I think there’s a tendency to jump on the “Jackson Theory” because 1) there are clues that support it, but more importantly 2) because it’s horrifying, and it’s natural to leap to the scariest thing you can think of when considering a game that relies on fridge horror in the first place.

In the “Jackson Theory”, Rosalie would have hidden Clara’s parentage because of shame, horror, and trauma, and probably to (at least momentarily) spare Clara’s feelings — but Jackson isn’t the only explanation for her reticence.

Generally, we can break apart the reasons for Rosalie’s silence into three distinct emotions or emotional states: shame (supports the Jackson Theory), trauma (supports an assault by a known wolf), or, often overlooked, ignorance.

Clara is mentioned repeatedly as being outwardly and obviously scared about her place in the family — a fear borne from and exacerbated in her childhood, as Nik plainly states (“her insecurity wasn’t just a personal flaw, it was a response to her uneven upbringing,” emphasis mine).

An easy way for Rosalie, worried as she must have been about leaving her daughter alone, to fix this if Clara really was a product of incest, is to name a distant Thornton cousin, preferably one who was already dead or out of the picture, as the father, which would assure Clara’s place in the Thornton line by both blood and her future adoption. This way, if Clara’s parentage was tested, she’d show up as a Thornton from both sides in a way that wouldn’t be suspicious, and her daughter would have an easier life.

But Rosalie didn’t do this — she never even hinted at the identity of Clara’s father. As a woman known primarily for secret keeping — not just about Clara, but about everything (“She loved her secrets,” Wade says), Rosalie would have been adept at hiding things through various means, including through lies and subterfuge, not simply staying silent. Given the little we know of Rosalie’s character, then, let’s consider why she wouldn’t have said anything — even something false — to ensure her daughter’s safety when she died.

Looking outside of Jackson (and with any other known Thornton being quite unlikely), the vast majority of assaults are committed by those known to their victim — friends, acquaintances, classmates, etc.

The Thorntons were — and are — an incredibly powerful family, both monetarily and socially. Having dealt with families such as the Thorntons before in matters like this one, it is frankly incredibly unlikely that, had Rosalie been assaulted by someone she knew, that the truth wouldn’t have come to light through another source, and that the perpetrator would have been punished in every way possible.

BRIEF DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT STATISTICS AS THEY RELATE TO ROSALIE’S POSSIBLE CASE.

Some people familiar with only the post-20th-century world as “the modern age” and with a less stellar grasp of the pre-tech-boom world might raise an eyebrow at this supposition of punishment, but this is Exactly what would have happened — and did happen with regularity — even as “far back” as ’68 — especially when the crime was committed against a young, privileged, wealthy woman of the community.

Note, this is after the USMPC adjustment to the definition of rape in ’62, but before the adjustments in the early 70s; in 9 years, forcible rape rates (this number includes only female victims, so the true number of victims is indisputably higher, given the enormous jump in rape statistics in 2016-present as male cases have been included) had soared in the United States from around 17,000 per year in 1960 to, in the year Clara was born, 31,000 reported cases (source: DisasterCenter). With these soaring numbers came soaring awareness, and combined with Rosalie’s identity as a rich, powerful young woman in a rich, powerful family, it’s on the outside of belief that, had her attacker’s identity been known or suspected, that it could have remained a secret and gone unpunished.

END OF BRIEF DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT STATISTICS AS THEY RELATE TO ROSALIE’S POSSIBLE CASE.

Given this historical and social backing, the simplest and unavoidable potential answer to why Rosalie wouldn’t have either told Clara who her father was or made up a “brief love” who abandoned her Dishonorably, is this: she didn’t know.

(I’ll spare a mention here to say that, ignorance because of being a “wild child” in the 60s and having had multiple partners would be a possible theory, but it disregards everything else we know about Rosalie and her behavior, and that her reputation as a party girl would have been common knowledge, unable to be hidden from those who were alive at the time. So let’s move on to what else would cause ignorance.)

Though attacks by a person unknown to the victim are, in relation to known assailants, rare, in the absence of other evidence, the simplest answer to Clara’s parentage was that Rosalie was assaulted by someone that she did not know and had no way of knowing — and who had no idea of the social power of his victim.

Rosalie truly left nothing behind that points to her daughter’s parentage, even for later discovery or for Clara’s private eyes in a bank lockbox when she came of an Age that Rosalie deemed appropriate — so the conclusion to be drawn is, in the absence of evidence, that Rosalie didn’t answer Clara’s question because she simply couldn’t.

This ties into the other theory/mystery I want to cover here — that of what happened the night Charlotte died, and how (and in what way) Clara was culpable and responsible for Charlotte’s death. We know that, according to her, Clara went there simply to “scare” Charlotte — and given the circumstances that Clara gives this confession in, I’m inclined to believe her — and it’s my opinion that the reason didn’t have anything to do with the truth of the identity of Clara’s father.

My stance here — and it’s here that I take a solid stance, rather than presenting options — with Charlotte (and I’ll talk more about her general character in the Suspects section) is that Charlotte found the same breadcrumbs as the players did and came to the same conclusion — that Jackson was Clara’s biological father. The difference, however, is that I believe Charlotte’s conclusion to be understandable, but ultimately incorrect, and that Rosalie’s assaulter was a stranger.

Horrified, this is where Charlotte’s “cryptic obsession with Jackson” (mentioned in the note in the cellar) began, and what led to her changing the beneficiary of her will from Clara — poor, pitiable Clara, already a victim of so much, whose insecurities would be compounded by this truth — to Harper.

An important part of this theory — and of really any theory — is the consideration that Clara was pregnant with Jessalyn at the time. Not only does this partially explain why Clara’s thought was to save herself (and her baby) rather than dragging Charlotte out with her (regardless of any other factor), but it also brings a potential answer as to why Charlotte would change her will to favor Harper, rather than Clara. Just as the cellar note asks “Who was this Jackson?”, I find myself asking a similar, but no less important question:

“Who was this Austin Neely?”

Listed as Jessalyn’s (still living) father on the family tree, Austin Neely isn’t present anywhere else in the game — not by name and not through mentions of “Jessalyn’s father” or “Clara’s ex-husband/ex-boyfriend” or anything like that. There’s not even a mention of Clara contacting him as a guest for the wedding or to help search for their daughter. His absence is glaring, especially in a game so focused around family — so the question of who is Austin Neely is a question that seems incredibly important to me, given that Clara was pregnant at the time of Charlotte’s death.

In mentioning this theory, I do fully acknowledge that I have only some circumstantial evidence — mostly emotional, and based off of who the characters are/were — to support it, but given the total lack of information on Austin Neely, my guess is as good as anything else.

So here’s my theory: Austin Neely is not Jessalyn’s father, and Clara, like her mother, became pregnant via some type of assault (and given that this was the late 80s and given Clara’s age at the time, I would say the most likely culprit is date rape). When Clara became aware that she was pregnant, given her insecurities about her place in the Thornton clan and her lack of knowledge of her own father, would have come to this conclusion: she was not going to let her baby go through what she herself went through. So she did what her mother could have — and honestly speaking, probably should have — done, and lied.

Austin Neely was probably a friend or an acquaintance of Clara’s — someone her family didn’t really know, but that she could make up a story about dating/being engaged to and became pregnant by before it all fell apart. He would have likely received a payout (probably a rather large payout, given the Thornton’s money and influence) and disappeared from the area and the Thornton’s lives, signing off any responsibility or claim to “their” child before he left.

As a result of this, her child now has a father and doesn’t have to grow up wondering, and Clara avoids the stigma, court case, and general Uproar that would come with attempting to find her attacker. She also, importantly for her, avoids that mess for her child, who will grow up in a semi-normal atmosphere, surrounded by family, not doubting her place in the world — and no one has to know.

Except, of course, one person would know. The head of the family: Charlotte Thornton. From then on, based on this series of events, the story behind Charlotte’s death becomes quite straightforward.

Clara’s paranoia and general cleverness clue her in to the fact that Charlotte has changed her will in Harper’s favor, and is scared out of her mind; having recently experienced a trauma and being pregnant with a child, she’s afraid that she will be left with absolutely nothing, that her machinations with Austin Neely and all her striving will have been for nothing, and she will be cast off, unable to give her child the life she wants to give her.

Compounded by her ground-in fear that she does not belong, she decides to try to settle it with Charlotte — she’s going to scare her, to punish her, and make Charlotte rethink the changed will.

And Charlotte, bearing the weight of the family name and business, not to mention its continued propagation on her shoulders, sees a woman who has been — like her mother — assaulted and left pregnant, whose mental state is already fragile, and who the “revelation” of who Charlotte thinks her true father is would topple her completely — sees poor, pitiable, emotional, suspicious Clara, and refuses.

I think that, more than anything else, would have set Clara off. Remember what she yells at Charlotte’s ghost?

“You had so much, so much, and I had nothing.”

In answering some of the questions about the game, Nik/HER’s response is to say that Clara did not literally light the match that burned Charlotte alive — but we know that Charlotte burned all the same. In the video of her birthday, there are candles; in the dust and soot on the floor where Charlotte died, we see candlesticks. And in the response, again, we know that Charlotte lit the candles for the celebration.

In my ASH meta, I discussed the many meanings of the word “fire” and the term “setting the fire” — and that’s important here too. In this case, the fire was set by Charlotte refusing to reconsider the terms of her will; in her refusal, she probably touched on the same point that she makes in the note in her room — that Clara isn’t stable enough to take over the company. Now, I doubt she would have said that straight to Clara’s face, but even framed as a “you have enough to be going on with and I don’t want to burden you” sort of thing, that just would have reaffirmed all of Clara’s fears — that she was unwanted by the Thornton clan, that her child would be unwanted as a matter of course, and that she would truly have nothing.

And so my guess would be that Clara shoved her. Not hard enough to break anything, not even into a direct flame, but shoved her, and Charlotte jostled the table, and a candelabra fell to the floor, where we see it still in the modern day.

When Nancy sees Charlotte’s ghost out in that house — and yes, I’m firm on that being Charlotte’s actual ghost, as she’s out in the open air so carbon monoxide doesn’t figure in, and there’s no way for that to be Harper/Jessalyn — she burns from the skirt up, which follows with a candle falling to the floor and lighting that incredibly flammable dress on fire.

The last thing to note from HER/Nik’s response is that at the end of the game, Nancy faces the exact same choice that the Thorntons have: to help, or to save herself. In this, we have to look back to Clara and Charlotte, and conclude this: Clara chose not to help. It’s debatable how much help she could have really been — we’re not sure how pregnant she was at the time — or if it even occurred to her until she was already out and chose not to go back in — but at the very least, Clara’s guilt comes not only from the fact that she quarreled with Charlotte right before her death, but that she could have tried to prevent it, and didn’t.

Given the supposition that Charlotte was literally on fire, I really do doubt that getting her out or finding water to throw on her would have been successful, but it doesn’t matter — because Clara looks at it as a choice, and Clara (more importantly) looks at it as the wrong choice, and a choice that she’s been punished for since the day it happened. That’s why, when speaking to Charlotte’s ghost, she says this:

“Haven’t I suffered enough for you?”

The last point I want to make in this OBSCENELY long introduction is about GTH’s place in the pantheon of “Haunting Games”. When you look at the bare-bones (heh) circumstances that make up GTH, you’ll start to see shades of other games.

A relationship/marriage gone a bit wrong, a family secret, an ancestral home, a relative/ancestor whose spectre looms over the story, mysterious apparitions and appearances, and Nancy’s status as an outsider and a skeptic — yeah, both CUR and HAU should come to mind immediately.

Having said my piece about, well, the badness of CUR and HAU and their unsuccessful approach to their basic plot points, it delights me that GTH takes a good hard look at them and says “well, what if we did this well this time? What if we gave our characters the complexity, the emotional resonance, the secrets and lies that we should have the first time?”

Like CUR and HAU, the Family is at the center of the game — except this time we believe in this family, in their relationships to one another, and we feel the effects of the family and their choices, not just hear about it from a diffident 9-year-old or a cranky caretaker. The history of the Thornton clan comes alive through the house, the graveyard, the books and journals that we have of them. We understand what this family is and the choices that they make — even if we don’t approve of them — and they feel real, not just like a background chucked in to Make The Spooky Things Happen.

Also like CUR and HAU, we deal with a central relationship and the complexities that come over two people deciding to get married. Happily, this game (unlike CUR and HAU) treats the central relationship as a thing of Import, and comes to the conclusion that it’s the happiness and well-suitedness of the couple that matters, not the family that surrounds them or anything else. It asks the question “what happens if one person runs away from the relationship?” and answers it, quite satisfactorily, with “there are probably some issues that need ironed out before anything else should happen”.

Interestingly, GTH also takes the good points of CUR and HAU – especially HAU’s atmosphere and CUR’s love of family tidbits — and improves upon them as well. Instead of Jane showing off her studies so that Nancy can solve a few puzzles, Wade walks her through the Thorntons were (at least in his eyes) and helps her get to know the people she’s helping. Instead of being duly impressed at the atmosphere in a bombed-out castle, everywhere on the island is teeming with fog — literal and figurative — as Nancy tries to decode the past to help the future.

Now then, let’s leave the general behind, and focus on the specifics of GTH.

The Title:

Ghost of Thornton Hall is a great title in the way that Secret of the Scarlet Hand is a great title – moody, evocative, gives us our location/focus right away, but not in a way that spoils anything, etc. If anything, it’s a little more flexible – are we dealing with The Ghost of Thornton Hall (Charlotte), the ghost(s) of the Thornton family, the ghosts of those who died on the island, or — in a very fun way — are we talking about the ghost of Thornton Hall — the spirit of the building where so much life and death has happened?

As a title for a Haunting game, you really don’t get much better than GTH, and it centers the player’s attention right where it should be — on the messed up family that the game centers around, and how their past impacts their future.

The Mystery:

Nancy’s phone rings in the middle of the night, with Savannah Woodham’s drawl on the other end, informing her of a kidnapping that’s taken place. She’d go herself, but believes wholeheartedly – and is frightened by — the ghost that’s taken up residence on Blackrock Island, Georgia, and doesn’t believe she’d be enough help.

Of course, this isn’t the whole truth, but we’ll get into that later.

Armed with both her detective skills and her inherent skepticism, Nancy sets off for Georgia to find the missing bride-to-be. Of course, when she gets there, she quickly discovers that the family — and family history — is even murkier and laced with tragedy than the presence of a ghost would suggest, and that, even with everyone searching for Jessalyn Thornton, she is nowhere to be found.

To find her, Nancy has to delve deep into the Thornton family lore, Jessalyn’s relationships with her family and friends – not to mention her preoccupied fiancé — and figure out what really did happen to dear, sweet Charlotte Thornton nearly two decades ago…

GTH, as a mystery, is chock-full of hints, clues, red herrings, and background facts that make figuring out the truth behind everything a joy and a delight — not to mention a task that will take more than one playthrough. GTH is also unique in that its mystery can end in more than one way, and that Nancy’s choices actually have more of an impact than just what souvenir she sends home to her erstwhile boyfriend. Choosing to save herself, to save just the “innocent” (for a certain value of innocence), or to save everyone leads to different endings not just for Nancy but for everyone involved with the Thornton Clan, from its matriarch all the way down to a certain spook-hunting ex-girlfriend.

Underpinning the mystery is this question: did Charlotte really come back as a ghost to haunt Blackrock and the Thorntons, or are her appearances just the result of sneaky relatives and atmospheric maleficence? Can all of the sightings be explained by a mixture of carbon monoxide poisoning, a few relatives playing dress-up, and huge amounts of suggestion and guilt? Is it the case, as Rentaro posited a few games earlier, that a ghost doesn’t have to be real to haunt you?

In a word, no. In a few more words, of course not.

Tying the whole of the ‘haunting’ mysteries together is this (previously mentioned) fact: Nancy is not remarkable for being a Skeptic, she is remarkable for being a Skeptic in a world where ghosts exist. The moving wood (and possibly the silhouette) in MHM, Camille’s ghost dancing along in TRN, the reflection of Kasumi in the water in SAW, the ghost of the Willow in GTH — these are all real, unexplainable-by-tech-or-imagination ghost sightings, and the fact that Nancy doesn’t believe in them doesn’t change their reality one bit.

In the house, you can cite carbon monoxide and Jessalyn/Harper running around in a costume for at least some of them — though not all. But the sightings outside — carbon monoxide does not stay in the system for very long in clear air, blessedly — of Charlotte? The consistency of the spectre? The apparition of her burning up at the site of her birthday party? These aren’t things that you can explain by costume theater — especially since these sightings have been happening for over a decade by people who haven’t stepped foot in Thornton Hall.

When they say that Blackrock belongs to Charlotte and has since the fire, it’s not a literary turn of phrase — Charlotte is there, and refuses to be forgotten. Nancy’s status as a Skeptic prevents her from hysteria, but it does not stop her from being haunted by the Ghost of Thornton Hall.

Now, let’s talk about the players — dead and alive — that make this mystery as complicated and dark as it is.

The Suspects:

Beginning with the matriarch of the Thorntons seems as good a place to start as any, so let’s talk about Clara Thornton. Cousin to Charlotte and Harper, Clara was taken in after her mother’s untimely death (but before her aunt and uncle’s equally untimely deaths) and became the equivalent of a sister in at least Charlotte and Harper’s eyes — though Clara herself was always unsettled and wary about her place in the family.

After the events of Charlotte’s tragic birthday (covered above), Clara visited Charlotte’s grave every night for a year, and was hospitalized after being pushed off of the widow’s walk (more on this later). Whether due to her upbringing or her Thornton blood – or, most likely, both — Clara is secretive, paranoid, wracked with guilt…and a loving mother and extremely capable businesswoman.

Though GTH doesn’t actually have a culprit —Jessalyn wasn’t kidnapped and Charlotte wasn’t murdered — Clara is, as the resident secret keeper and witness to Charlotte’s death, the closest thing that we’ve got. Clara’s sense of guilt is far beyond anything that she could have done, and is haunted so completely as to turn her rather cold.

I have a lot of sympathy for Clara, who made a mistake in a fit of anger (whether that’s pushing Charlotte or just not helping her when she started to burn) at the age of 21 and has been wracked with guilt and haunted by the spectre — real and imagined — of her ‘sister’ ever since (not to mention knowing that her other ‘sister’ blamed and hated her for it). Charlotte died before she had the time to make too many mistakes, but Clara had the entirety of the estate and the business — thousands of people’s livelihoods — thrust into her hand when she was a single mother of 21 years of age. Even had Clara been completely stable, it would have been a lot, and it’s no wonder that she rules the company with an iron fist.

I also want to point out that, due to Harper’s breakdown at the funeral and her afterwards, that even had Charlotte’s second will been found right then, Clara still would have inherited until at least Harper received her bill of mental health, as the closest heir to Charlotte of (legally) sound mind and body.

Let’s talk then about the other heir, Harper Thornton. A fan favorite for a myriad of reasons — her Helena-Bonham-Carter-esque design, her wonderful VA (props to Keri Healey, voice of Hotchkiss, Sally, Paula, Simone, and Madeline!) knocking her lines out of the park, and her dark sense of humor, Harper is, like most of the Thorntons, incredibly unstable, paranoid, violent…an affectionate aunt, and a pretty darn good detective in her own right.

Since GTH doesn’t have a ‘culprit’, Harper stands in her own guilty/not guilty paradigm along with Clara. She had nothing to do with Charlotte’s death personally, but was the one who caused assorted injuries and thousands of dollars in property damage at the funeral, and the one who pushed Clara off the widow’s walk and hospitalized her. Yes, Harper was young — 18 when Charlotte died, but pushing your cousin/sister off of a balcony is wrong at any age.

It’s worth noting that of the three Thornton ‘sisters’, one is guilty of some degree of manslaughter/criminal negligence, and the other of attempted murder. When Charlotte notes that she herself has a dose of the “Thornton paranoia”, she’s not just whistling Dixie.

The biggest problem the Thorntons have, honestly speaking, is that all of them are way too emotional and react without thinking. Clara confronting Charlotte, Charlotte not taking Clara aside to talk about the will, Harper’s injuring of others and blaming/pushing Clara, Wade destroying machinery, Jessalyn disappearing rather than talking things out…none of the Thorntons, past or present, have seemed to think with their brains since the woman who received the land on Blackrock Island after the Civil War in the first place.

In keeping with the theme, I want to talk about Charlotte Thornton next. A girl who inherited the Thornton land and business at way too young an age — I don’t even wanna know why Jackson hated his adult daughter Virginia (and yes, I know that there’s a supposition to this in the “Jackson Theory”, but it’s pure supposition) so much that he would stake the family future on a 20-year-old, no matter how much everyone liked her — after the death of her parents four years prior, Charlotte was the darling of the Thornton family.

Well-liked by everyone with a beautiful singing voice, Charlotte was nonetheless every inch a Thornton; she outright acknowledged her own paranoia, kept secrets and locked rooms closer to her than her family, and had a flair for the dramatic and emotional. After considering her cousin/sister Clara too unstable for the task of inheriting the family Business, Charlotte, rather than turning to her older aunt or naming multiple beneficiaries to ease the load, instead leaves 100% of it to her younger sister Harper.

I do want to point out the irony here in leaving the business to Harper over Clara on the grounds of mental stability. Whatever else Charlotte was good at, she was not a good judge of character, even giving leeway for her being 21.

After her death, Charlotte haunts the family home, unable to leave the place that was, for a year, hers to inherit. But why would ‘dear, sweet’ Charlotte haunt, frighten, and otherwise unsettle those around her — from family to neighbors to curious kids — especially to the extent that she does?

To answer that question, we need to talk about the family member that everyone says is incredibly close to Charlotte in personality — our missing bride, Jessalyn Thornton.

Clara’s daughter, Jessalyn is painted as being a sort of return of Charlotte; everyone loves her (all Thornton employees are combing the island looking for her, for heaven’s sake), everyone agrees on her, and she’s next in line to inherit the Thornton family business. She’s even around Charlotte’s age (24, rather than 21, but close enough) during the game, for heaven’s sake — the comparisons are not subtle, nor are they meant to be.

Since it’s more than halfway through the game that Nancy meets Jessalyn, the things that people say about her are the best clues to her personality that we have…right?

Everyone agrees that Jessalyn would never run off and make people worry like this, that even if she was scared or had second thoughts about the wedding or even just needed to be alone, that she would never do this to her family. And, as it turns out, everyone — her mother, her uncle, her best-friend-cum-fiancé — everyone is wrong. Jessalyn did exactly that — she ran off, made everyone worry, and didn’t think about her family, friends, fiancé, or employees one bit.

It also takes her no effort at all to fully believe a woman she’s never met that her mom is a vicious, cackling murderer just because her (single, incredibly busy) mother is a bit emotionally cold, so she’s also not a great judge of character.

And remember, we’re told over and over again — Jessalyn is just like Charlotte. Sure, Jessalyn is also our Nancy foil in this game — a young woman who needs to learn the truth about her mother, coerced/guided by a quasi-unreliable source, worrying her family by running off — and that’s important for Nancy’s character, but Jessalyn is first and foremost our Charlotte analogue. Jessalyn’s family and friends don’t understand who Jessalyn is…so I think it’s fair to say that Charlotte’s family and friends didn’t understand who Charlotte was, either.

We see Charlotte, through her writings and actions, could be thoughtless, was a poor judge of character, was secretive and paranoid — all things that no one even alludes to when speaking of her. Sure, there’s the idea of not speaking ill of the dead, but someone would have noted these things, even fondly or mildly.

So why would Charlotte haunt this place, haunt these people, when she was so good and kind and loved everyone? The simplest answer, the least convoluted explanation, is just that she wasn’t. That the Thorntons didn’t understand Charlotte, as much as they loved her, just like they didn’t understand Jessalyn.

Speaking of Thorntons who may be misunderstood, we’ll focus on Wade Thornton next. A little more rough-and-tumble and a little less refined than his relatives seem to be, Wade is introspective, superstitious, hard-working, and a bit gloomy…along with having some anger issues, vast amounts of distrust, and a bit of egotism.

Wade’s (at least legally) guilty of a few things in the past, but since he won’t even go into Thornton Hall, he’s a pretty easy cross-off of our list of suspects. Wade’s there to give Nancy information on the Thornton Clan, to provide the explanation as for (partially) why Savannah isn’t there herself, and to show another facet of the Thorntons — their anger.

Whether or not you agree with Wade’s actions that led to Clara pressing charges — though I think everyone can agree it’s pretty stupid to destroy your own family’s machinery, especially when the only danger to the employees was caused by him scaring them half to death — and it highlights that Wade, philosophical though he is, is just as much a Thornton as those he despises. He even calls himself out on it – that while he used to think he was on the side of “Good Thorntons”, he’s not so sure anymore.

The best (serious) line in the game does come from Wade — I will be in love with his description of dating Savannah as “[falling] for her like a Black Tuesday banker” until I die. It’s a perfect metaphor without sounding pretentious, and shows just how bleak his own worldview really is.

Next is The Fiancé, Colton Birchfield, who has the most hilariously WASP-y name to ever come out of a Nancy Drew game. A man who’s struggled with depression and anxiety all his life, Colton was born to two politicians and has lived in the spotlight — and his marriage to Jessalyn is getting just as show-stopper-y as a campaign trail before she disappeared.

I mentioned above that the resolution to Colton and Jessalyn’s relationship is the healthy, sane version of what should have happened in CUR and HAU, and I stand by that. While I don’t necessarily like him going back to Lexi after the game is over — a relationship interrupted by one party being paid off is not the healthy, loving, loyal relationship that Colton needs — it’s clear that he and Jessalyn would have made each other content, but never fulfilled romantically.

Colton’s guilty of nothing more than not being in love with his best friend, and he’s a refreshing breath of air as someone related tangentially to, but not cast down by, the Thornton family drama. He may get less sympathy than our other cast members, but he’s no less deserving of it, and I’m really rooting for him to find someone that will give him the same amount of love and loyalty that he’ll give them.

We’ll journey outside the Thornton family and their (almost) relations for our next ‘suspect’. Addison Hammond, Jessalyn’s friend and bridesmaid, makes a cameo phone appearance here to tell us that Thornton Hall is Totes Spooky, and that Jessalyn vanished not once, but twice in the night.

I quite enjoy Addison, not because she plays a big part or because she’s an exceptional character — she’s as bare-bones as we get in the later games (ignoring MED/SEA/MID), honestly — but because she’s simply a girl in her 20s reacting the way that most of us would if our unnecessarily spooky friend dragged us to an old haunted house and then vanished twice. Good for you, girl.

Coming in for a wonderful appearance is Savannah Woodham, ex-ghost hunter, ex-girlfriend of Wade Thornton, and the detective who was supposed to be on the case. Savannah’s too scared of the Ghost (and too reticent to talk to Wade face-to-face) to risk stepping foot on Blackrock Island herself, but she’s more than willing to send the biggest skeptic she knows, hoping that Nancy’s skepticism will keep her safe.

As lovely as Savannah is in SAW — and I adore her in that game — she really shines in GTH. Probably the biggest moment she gets in the game — and probably my second favorite moment in the game period — is her tale of tracing the shape of the old willow tree on her wall, only to have a body discovered under that exact willow tree after a storm. It’s a delightfully creepy — and most importantly, completely inexplicable by any means other than accepting that the supernatural exists — moment, and I think it’s key to understanding Savannah as a character in GTH.

Savannah suffers under the weight of knowing that there truly are Things that Go Bump in the Night, that can’t be arrested or captured or gotten rid of by normal, legal means. Her background knowledge of the Thorntons helps Nancy to get an initial feel for the family, and it helps to not have an ex-girlfriend wandering around that the Thorntons might have a grudge against or dislike for.

She is, in effect, the mirror image of Nancy — what Nancy might have become without her inborn skepticism — and that alone, even ignoring everything else about her, is fascinating to me.

Our other phone contacts are Ned Nickerson and Bess Marvin, teamed up due to George’s absence while doing an internship (at Technology of Tomorrow Today, no less!) and Bess’ extreme boredom without anyone else to hang out with.

The lovely thing about Ned and Bess is that we get to see Ned when he’s not Solo Boyfriend Ned, but a college guy hanging out with his friend. Their light-hearted banter is hilarious and comfortable (Bess dramatically asking permission to do a spit-take in his living room is of particular note), and we really get to see a different side of Nancy’s oft-abandoned boyfriend.

You can tell that their voice actors are having a terrific time as well (Scott Carty’s pitch-perfect imitation of Jennifer Pratt’s cadence and tone makes me laugh every time), and it really helps bring a bright and colorful spot to this otherwise rather tense and grim mystery.

We’ll round out our character list with the quasi-amateur, quasi-professional detective herself, Nancy Drew. Through her foil with Jessalyn �� discussed above, so I won’t get too into it here — we get to see Nancy in a slightly different light, and get to look at the effect that she has on those around her when she disappears.

We know Carson and Ned (and occasionally Bess/George, and even more occasionally, Hannah) worry about Nancy while she’s off on a case, but this is the first time Nancy herself is dealing with what she leaves behind every time she jets off to Venice, or gets trapped in a lava tube, or lost in a rock maze. Nancy hasn’t investigated a straight-up kidnapping (or what appears to be one) since Maya in FIN (no, I’m not counting HAU, as it’s not played as a kidnapping nor does anyone think it is until 2/3 of the way through the game), and she has the same sense of urgency here that she did back then.

Upon replaying the game, the player will lose that sense of urgency for Jessalyn — we know she’s alive and well, and was never kidnapped — but Nancy’s reactions to the family are what stay interesting. She’s concerned for Jessalyn, but does most of her detective work through getting a sense of what the rest of the family thinks of the missing girl.

Given Nancy’s reputation as a good girl, a solid presence (if an occasional one) who loves her family and friends, and who is always responsible, it’s easy to see why she misses the one question that would have helped her solve the case in half of the time: what if Jessalyn isn’t missing? After all, Jessalyn, like Nancy, would never jet off after hearing an unsubstantiated claim about her mother without telling anyone or pausing to confirm it through a different, more trustworthy source, right?

In this game, we discover a huge characteristic about Nancy: she is reckless. Now, we know this already from other games — that Nancy is reckless physically, confronting bad guys alone, diving down into murky catacombs, jumping from pillars in ancient tombs — but here we see that she’s also reckless emotionally. Even though it interferes with her investigation, Nancy gets personally involved in this case; she’s mad at Colton for “cheating” on Jessalyn, she’s upset by the tragedy of Charlotte’s death, and she’s concerned for Jessalyn’s safety in a different way than she usually is with a victim or suspect.

Nancy’s always been willing to take huge risks, but she always stays emotionally on the surface level of a case — a good and necessary trait for a detective, and one that allows her to face down killers, saboteurs, and forgers without blinking. Here, Nancy’s dragged down into the web of the Thorntons, and — as we see in the middle and bad endings especially — she doesn’t quite recover from it. Nancy loses a bit of objectivity here, but what she gains is humanity — and she’ll need that for the last two games in this meta series.

The Favorite:

With such a well-executed game — even though it doesn’t fall in my personal top 5 ranking — there’s going to be a lot to love, so let’s get down to it.

My favorite puzzle is probably Nancy’s trek to ‘discover’ the ‘ghost’ — aka completing Harper’s tasks in order to meet her, culminating with reciting Charlotte’s rhyme while blindfolded. It’s a different kind of puzzle than the type we get commonly with Nancy Drew games, and really helped spark and keep the tension needed to maintain such a spooky game.

My favorite moment in the game is a quieter one — it’s Nancy’s remarks on Charlotte’s room. She’s taken aback at how, after a game of everyone talking about Charlotte, that it’s opening the door to her room that cements Charlotte as a living, breathing person. She continues that she can’t let that feeling distract her, that she needs to treat the room like the rest of the house and gather tools that will let her find Jessalyn, but it’s lovely to see the effect of the Thornton’s history really settle into Nancy’s bones as Charlotte Thornton turns from a scary rhyme that children chant to a girl who lived and died in the same walls that Nancy’s exploring.

There are, of course, other things that I love — the objectively creepy poem (“we’ll let you share with Charlotte/a gown of coal and glowing flame” is an incredible line), Savannah’s story about the willow tree, the small Francy crumbs of Frank being sullen after his Very Revealing voicemail in DED and considering an MBA, the multi-layered relationship that Wade and Savannah have, the gorgeous detail of Thornton Hall — and all of these add up to a game that’s frankly just enjoyable to play.

The big thing to mention in this game, as I talked a bit about in the intro, is its atmosphere.

Throughout the entire game, there’s this palpable feeling of death and grief and loss and pure pain, and those emotions are what GTH relies on to keep itself Scary, not the few spectre scares and swinging scythes that it also has to offer.

I don’t normally quote things other than the games/words of the cast and crew in these metas, but I do make exceptions when the quotation is this good, so I tip my hat here to Tumblr user aniceworld, speaking about ranking GTH their top Nancy Drew game of all time:

“The reason GTH is so successful as a scary game is because there’s such a pervasive sense of sorrow at Thornton Hall. People have died here who shouldn’t have. A family has been destroyed. The house has seen so much trauma it can literally no longer stand on its own. There are ghosts that live here, whether you can see them or not.”

This horror is far better than bloody slashers or obnoxious “continuous mysterious accidents”-style thrillers that tend to permeate the genre; instead of random death-by-umbrella or scary-guy-in-the-shower incidents driving the plot, the emotion behind death and loss and betrayal gets to take a turn at the wheel, and the game is much better for it.

The Un-Favorite:

As with any game, however, no matter how good the atmosphere, there are some things that I don’t love.

I’m not actually the biggest fan of Harper; while her design is great and her VA does a spectacular job, she’s a little cartoonish among a cast that endeavors to stay as far away from broad stereotypes as possible.

It’s fine to have a large personality, it’s fine that she’s a bit cracked, it’s great that she has her own reasons and motivations beyond “expose the truth” (especially since she’s not interested in exposing the truth, just in proving that Clara’s a murderer) — she’s just really not my cup of tea, and I prefer Harper as the Anonymous Note Leaver to Harper the Conversational Partner.

Even if she does get some of the best lines in the game.

I don’t really have a least favorite moment or puzzle that sticks out to me; there are puzzles I struggle more or less with, but none of them are immersion-breaking or so frustrating that I have to get up and walk away. The ones I love, I enjoy solving; the ones I don’t love, I turn to the walkthrough and finish them up to get on with the story.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Ghost of Thornton Hall?

Even given my small problems with Harper, I’m not sure I’d change her. Sure, she’s a bit Broad for the game, generally speaking, but she’s also another example of what loss can do to a person — it can make you cold and withdrawn, it can make you righteously angry and dismissive…or it can turn you malicious and violent. She’s an important presence regardless of my personal taste, and while I might tweak a line of dialogue or two, it’s important to note that her Persona is just another thing for Nancy to discover and re-discover as she investigates the Thorntons.

While not a perfect game — very few, if any, of the Nancy Drew games qualify for that title — Ghost of Thornton Hall is an excellent entry in the Nancy Drew series as a whole, and in the smaller series of Nancy-centric games. Through it, we get to see what happens to those who are left behind after a tragic, sudden, and even violent loss — and that becomes more and more important as we leave behind the gloomy Georgia island and leap across the pond to Glasgow.

[hideous-little-structure]

I think it's so interesting that one of the main reasons I've stayed on Tumblr this long is that the Nancy Drew games fandom is really robust here and I've met very few people irl who know the games or love them as much as I do, and yet here we are.

I joined the "clue crew" many many years ago after looking up a walkthrough for SCK because my weenie-hut-juniors ass was way to scared to finish the game after I blew up the diner by accident but I wanted to know how it ended. That was my first Arglefumph video and after that, I was hooked. I only owned SCK and HAU and the DVD version of CUR, but his channel let me experience every single game and I really loved watching the videos.

When I was around 15 I think, I was making my own little youtube videos and learning how to edit video. Michael's channel was still relatively small but he was gaining popularity and his videos started getting more ambitious. So, I reached out and told him I was a fan and looking to get more editing practice in, and that I'd love to edit for him. He said yes, and I made a couple of videos for him (a section of Everything Wrong With SCK and then the entirety of EWW CUR and CLK) and had a blast doing it. I asked to do them for free because I didn't need the money.

Afterwards, Michael and I became friends on Facebook and through him I met Paul Franzen of "Oh, a Rock" game studios. I made the trailer for the first Cat President game for Paul, a picture of my cat is in the second one, and I (as well as Michael) played a character in Internet Court which just came out on Tuesday. I was paid for all of these gigs at the insistence of Paul. I loved doing these as well and definitely would work with either of them again if they asked.

I'm transgender (non-binary sapphic) and started my transition at around the same time as I started working with Michael and Paul. Both of them have been friends with me throughout the entire process of me having top surgery, changing my name, and starting HRT. They have both been great friends and supporters of my transition. I have always felt safe with both of them.

I saw a post earlier today of some people upset that Her Interactive was promoting one of Michael's speedruns and had totally ignored a fan effort to raise money for charity. I don't know a ton of the details, but it's definitely common knowledge that being a part of the fandom entails a lot of ragging on Her Interactive, especially recently, as they have a track record of not being in touch with the fanbase. But people took it out on Michael, and as a friend of his, that bummed me out. I commented on it and someone messaged me and accused Michael of being racist and homophobic, as well as cheating on a speedrun. I told them about my relationship with Michael and that I didn't like that such strong claims were being made against him (I also looked into the speedrun thing, and to my knowledge he discovered an existing exploit in a game and Her asked him to take down his video because they didn't want the exploit to become widely known. I don't know the whole story though) especially because I know him personally.

Someone else screenshotted my comment and explained that their beef isn't with Michael on this one, which I appreciated, but someone else linked to a "your fave is problematic" Google doc about him. This frustrates me a lot. Here's the doc if you want to read it for yourself. I'm not gonna try and hide it because I've read through it and I'm not ashamed to be friends with this guy.

I don't know if he talks about it often anymore, but Michael used to be studying to be a Catholic priest. He's religious. But in my experience, he's always been kind about it and has never tried to force his beliefs on others. You can actually see in the doc that he treads pretty lightly. He's also a cishet white man with two daughters who just enjoys the Nancy Drew games and likes to share that joy with others. He was one of the first people to consistently make ND content and it seems like he was the intro to the fandom for a lot of people, so he's kind of become a cornerstone of the community.

There's a section of the doc about underpaying an artist, and I do feel for that person, but they didn't communicate about how they felt the work was worth more (I get it, I have social anxiety, I hate asking for more money, but I also understand that nobody can read my mind, especially not someone who isn't an artist or in touch with the artist community).

Michael is not a racist, or a homophobe, or a transphobe. He is a pretty nice catholic guy who tries to be considerate of other people and sometimes is uneducated but I've never seen him be intentionally malicious.

It's really hard to see someone you've known for years get thrown under the bus because he's just a guy who doesn't spend all his time trying to woke. His blog might have some stuff that I don't agree with, but he's the type of person to extend a hand to anyone who needs it, regardless of their situation or opinions.

I hope Her Interactive gets better about engaging with the fans and supporting all the really cool stuff that members of the community do, but I'm sorry, if you come for my friend like that, I'm not gonna sit there and take it.

[moodypetrichorlove]

hi do you know where i can watch sen çal kapimi w english subs?

Hi anon! 🙂

Yes, I do! So, there's three websites international followers of SCK (and other Turkish shows) use to watch with English subs:

serial4u.net (This is the one I use.)

superriki.yt

turkish123.com

The subs aren't THE most accurate because they mix up pronouns a lot, which can be confusing at times, and there's other minor issues, but it's still understandable enough to enjoy the show.

Other than that, fellow SCK fan, @middle-eastern-queen, has started subbing for the show and her English subs are very accurate from what I hear and know. She's done episode 1 as a sample of her work, and you can check this post of hers to see how to go about using her subs.

Also, you have awesome taste if you're willing to watch SCK! You're in for the best roller coaster ride of your life (pardon the exaggeration, it's just that I love this show a lot 😂). And thank you for sending in an ask! 🤗

Welcome to the fandom! You're going to love it here! 🤞🏻

[sweetrupturedlight]

☕️

Bottom line: actors are human beings. They are not required to tolerate inappropriate fantasies as part of their “job”.

Shipping actors literally doesn't bring any damage (as far as doesn't get thrown into the actors' faces). Don't play a moraler, please, it's needless.

Yeah I don’t agree with anything you are saying. Of course it brings damage, I could list you tons of celebrities whose relationships with coworkers or friends changed bc people made them uncomfortable. Whether you’re “throwing into their faces” or not is irrelevant because you are meddling with their private lives which is simply wrong. And also not all fans are as respectful of the boundaries as others so even if you personally aren’t tagging the actors or whatever you’re feeding into it, it could all cause a snowball effect. I’m not playing anything, this is my view and I won’t be sorry for it.

[lizacstuff]

Do you think the writers would actually change scenes on the fly because of fan theories/reactions? Because while yes, I do think that fans have better ideas than the writers have shown on screen lately, I don't think its a good thing to find out that the writers are pivoting last minute because they're afraid of fan backlash. That sounds extremely messy and we already had rumors of changes during episode 30 and that one did feel particularly "off"

CAUTION SUPPOSED “SPOILERS” AHEAD

Would they change scripts on a dime to please fans? No, I do not think they would change due to fan backlash/requests. I’ve been following along today with some spoilers coming out. One source saying (the gal on IG) that the ending of 31 has been changed due to fan backlash and it will no longer be Selin announcing a fake pregnancy. Then apparently another spoiler source came out (Yasin I think contradicting everything he said on Wednesday) and said that was never the plan and that any changes to the end are small. One said Selin would be gone in 32, the other in 33/24.  (Note: Yasin said 32 on Wednesday, and is now saying 33/34). 

This partly sounds to me more like these spoiler types getting and giving incorrect info and then covering by saying the writers are changing their minds. 

Apparently there are new writers on this episode, and it’s entirely likely they changed some things, but I don’t think they’re catering to fan whims a day before the episode is shooting. However, this Selin storyline is so off-putting I would expect someone in power to recognize that so I wouldn’t put it past for changes to be made because they just went too far with it. Also with the tight timelines on these Turkish show, they definitely could be more responsive and make more last minute changes than what we see in Hollywood, but I don’t know. Also those pressures might not be coming from fans, but from the network. 

You’re right about 30 being disjointed, and I wrote a ton at the time about how in 24 they were clearly rewriting and reworking the episode on the fly because tons of things didn’t make sense and didn’t flow. I have a whole post on it if you’re interested. 

As to what’s happening with these current spoilers that sometime seem to be right and others quite wrong?  Remember when spoiler sources said that at the end of 30 Serkan would remember and come up and kiss Eda in front of everyone? Then spoiler sources backed off on that, and then the episode aired and it turned out to be true, except that it was Eda’s daydream?

Here’s what I think is happening with a couple of these spoilers sources based on years of being in fandom. They’re not getting scripts, they’re paying crew to get their hands on call sheets. In my experience with North American productions, call sheets often tell the location, which actors will be in the scene and then a list of scenes with descriptive names. You can tell a lot, but not the whole picture and things can be misleading when trying to piece together what’s happening. It might not be clear where in an episode scenes fall especially when there might be a heavily used location (like ArtLife for example.) 

For instance, for a scene that is a dream, that might not be indicated on the call sheet so the context is missing for those who only have a call sheet and they totally eFF up and sell that spoiler to everyone like it’s the end of the episode. I’m 95% sure that’s what happened that time. The description might be something like, “Serkan remembers and kisses Eda.”  Except not for real, context missing. And the crew person doesn’t necessarily know that when they give out the call sheet because they don’t have a script just a call sheet, but then the next day they see the episode film, after the spoiler people have gone big on their spoilers and then tell the spoiler buyer, “wait, it’s not quite like that” and that’s when these spoilers sources back off and claim things are changed etc. 

This was a huge source of spoilers back in the OUAT days. The Vancouver paps paid crew to get a hold of call sheets so they knew when they could catch the actors and then they would sometimes leak info to the legion of fans who hung out on set. 

So, yes, I think this Yasin person, TVSinema, and the “Arab girl” on IG are doing something similar. Apparently the gal said she was buying scripts, I think it’s call sheets. Do I know that for sure, no, but it’s my best guess. They might also be fed tidbits from the same crew that are selling them the call sheets, which is why they sometimes give out either obvious or innocuous tidbits on Hande and Kerem.  I also wouldn’t put it past the producers to try and smoke out who is selling info and giving some crew false info on call sheets. You never know. 

As for today and the whiplash spoilers and the claims of big rewrites... I think that is these spoiler sources hedging their bets and trying to cover for the false ones they’ve given out. We shall see, but some of them contradict themselves so much they can say 3 things and if one turns out true they can claim victory after! 

[djemsostylist]

Of Queens and Trash

Here’s the thing. SCK has been on a downward trend since 13. The breakup was long, getting together again was tiring, the amnesia plot was poorly handled and the mess that came following his recovery was, well, a mess. The necessary break for covid gave us a chance for a fresh start for Edser. All the bad stuff in the past, and a focus in the last episodes of them being able to finally fulfill all the promises they had not been able to. After all, this was a story that, at its core, was about two people who met and fell in love and who, no matter what, chose to be together. Invisible handcuffs. And with the return of the OG writer, it seemed we might finally get that. After 39 episodes of angst and only 7(?) of real togetherness, surely it was time? Forget the pain of the past, and start with Edser navigating their world together.

And then the trailer dropped. And all of a sudden, all the people who had spent months eviscerating Serkan for behaving badly in the 30s were celebrating this new plot, the “great angst” and Eda “being a Queen.”

For me, I can’t get over the hiding of the child. It's a hardline deal breaker. I don’t think it matters who writes it, I think it's an awful plotline. No matter how "good" the trailer looks or moments seem, I will remember that I was watching a show about two people who loved each other and never wanted to be apart, about a man who learned how to open his heart, and this ruined it all.

Now, I think it's worth noting that my hard line, in this particular case, is in response to Edser, if that makes sense. I’m not hardline, “if this is in a story I’m not watching”. If it works for the characters and story because that is the type of story being told, then fine.

I don't subscribe to the woke feminism brand of "all women are Queens and all men are Trash" which seems to be a trend of late (and not just in fandom). I think people are people and people are generally imperfect but also trying. I don’t think women, simply by virtue of carrying a child, get full say in what happens to the child, regardless of the father’s wishes. I'm not fond of a “hiding a kid storyline”, and while I get the whole "my body my choice" style of arguing, it took two people to make the baby. Two people get a say in what happens. I get you are growing the kid, but you didn't spontaneously conceive.

For me, Edser being apart and/or hiding a kid is a hardline. It doesn't fit with the characters as I know them and it doesn't fit with the storyline. And look--I hated the amnesia plot. I thought there were a literal million ways this could have been done better, but it's what we got. So for everyone suddenly defending this new plot, despite it making about as much sense as Eda getting married to make Serkan remember her, then that means everything goes. No blaming writers or ignoring canon...everything has context and meaning now. And since “it's realistic” is also a common refrain, then fine. Let’s go realistic.

Imagine being in a plane crash. You wake up, you have clear physical/mental blocks. For someone who likes to be in control, that's terrifying. You have a ring on your finger with a woman's name you don't know, and an entire year missing. You call the one person you know will come (since your parents and friends are useless) and she comes and tells you a story that jives. You can't remember shit and you keep getting flashes and your hands won't work, so you take what she tells you, because why would you have any reason to doubt? It’s not like you can remember anyway, and trying to remember hurts.

You finally go back home, and you recognize nothing about your own life. Friends, family...everything is different. Your mom is out, your dad is gone, your best friends are married. You don't even live in the same house, you have people working in your company you don’t know--even your dog is gone. And then you have a hysterical woman throwing pictures in your face of a man you don't recognize and your brain is still foggy and all your friends and family seem to be shrugging their shoulders at you.

You're terrified and alone and all you get is some vagueness about an epic love story and too much emotion and all you want to do is hide. From everything. Plus your heart is doing this thing every time the girl is near and you think you might be dying maybe and remember how your brother died?

So, the girl kisses you, you literally feel like you might be dying, and it's like naw. Fuck this. I'm getting back an ounce of control. So you propose to Selin. I mean you don’t love her and you barely want her but at least she is the same. At least she hasn’t changed, and at least she doesn’t stare at you with the weight of a million expectations that everyone else does. At least she doesn’t look at you and hope to see a man you can’t ever remember being.

But then the girl everyone claims is your soulmate is suddenly engaged to another man, and spends every moment after that claiming she hates you, she is over you, she is better off/happier without you, doesn't need you.

So it's like, okay, what is the truth. Your brain isn't helping, your friends aren't helping, she isn't helping. So you lash out, you close off, because really, what else is left. Your life isn’t your life, your mind isn’t your mind, you can’t even figure out what’s real and what isn’t. And she’s getting married and you want to die but she’s getting married and surely if she loved you she wouldn’t be doing this?

And then you get your memories back. Finally. Everything comes flooding back ,and it's a lot. You cope in shitty ways, you don't respond well, etc. You’ve returned from the dead twice, and everything feels just slightly off, but maybe you can make this work. At least you have her. After a few days, you’re feeling like your old self. You've got your memories, your girl, the possibility of the future you had snatched twice, and then BOOM. She rejects you, out of nowhere.

Won't talk, won't communicate, you have no idea what the fuck is happening. She’s crying and sad but also not leaving but also not staying and your brain can’t quite work things out but all you can do is promise that you love her, only her, always her, forever. Surely she must know that by now, right?

And then she tells you about the baby. You can't remember the sex of course, but then you find out it probably happened while your brain was fucked, and you barely have time to process this before oh yeah the love of your life is leaving you bc she would rather you raise a baby with your rapist. And suddenly you might be dying, again.

But you stop her. You stop her and even though she says she didn’t come back for you, why else would she have stayed? So, you finally get her back, she tattoos you on her finger and maybe just maybe everything will be fine when BOOM. Cancer. You aren't even over the other shit, and you have a fucking tumor. You are 30 years old, you've survived a plane crash, amnesia, and now you have a tumor. How many times can a person die?

And so you don’t cope well. You withdraw, you back away. Your brother died when he was young, you know what that does to a person. You know what it did to your family. You have this fear that curls around your heart that says “but what if she becomes my mother.” And she goes. She leaves and she takes your heart and your child (that you don’t even know about) and it’s like...fuck. Again. Because everyone leaves you, eventually. And somehow, it’s always your fault.

So, what I'm saying is, Eda endured a lot, sure. She was hurt. Their breakup in 14 was hard and I’m not denying that (although there is another post I could write about how since Eda never actually uses her words to tell him how she feels he can, perhaps, be understood in assuming that breaking up after barely being together would hurt but also that she would move on and live her life happily without him. Which I guess season 2 proves…) Losing Serkan to an accident/amnesia was hard, looking at the body of the man she loves but not seeing the man she loves must have been agony. But Serkan was fucking wrecked. So instead of choosing to write a plot where they both get to heal, where they both get to explore their pain and work through it together, we get Serkan who reverted to being a robot to cope with massive trauma and PTSD, and essentially is abandoned by everyone, again.

I guess what I'm saying is, if staying with him and supporting him when he was dealing with trauma was too much for her, then fine.That is very true for some people, and it’s certainly realistic. But I don't really think that jives with Eda and her character, and while it isn't a trauma competition, I'd still think Serkan comes out a winner here. Eda lost her parents, which was awful. She lost him, but she got him back. Twice. His trauma is losing his brother, being abandoned by his parents, a plane crash, amnesia, emotional manipulation/abuse and cancer. And then he gets punished by having his daughter taken away from him because he was having a hard time coping. Keeping a kid a secret isn't "protecting the child" it's punishing the father.

Tl;dr The direction they have taken the characters is gross for both mains, but if people are trying to justify Eda keeping his child from him because “he deserves it” or “she did what was best for her” then I think we maybe haven’t been watching the same show. Even if he said “I don’t want kids,” saying that to a hypothetical child is very different then being told “a baby is very much our reality.” Because that's the crux right? It's not that he decided he just didn't want to be a father ever, he's scared of having a family and losing them or of them losing him. And then she made that very fear be realized. Which is tragic and quite the opposite of what his life partner needed to do in that situation.

Bitte.

Thanks to @lolo-deli for the proofread and the final lines, you are the best. And for putting up with my uncontrollable ranting about this for days.

[mrsgreenworld]

My dearest SCK people, do we know anything about the ratings?