#someone give clint mcelroy and all his player characters a hug right now i swear to christ

[ladyfl4me]

someone needs to give ned chicane (and clint) a fucking hug

every time i hear clint say that ned’s feeling like a failure, or that ned’s trying hard to pull his weight in the team, i just. oof. i want to give ned a hug, but i am also really fucking terrified - because clint is saying these things in griffin’s earshot. it’s not just subtext. he said that he bought the crépes by monica van specifically because he felt like he wasn’t pulling his weight in the pineguard; and in the actual investigation at the bar in episode 21, he took a break from the investigation because he didn’t feel like would actually be able to contribute anything, if i remember correctly.

and that hurts. ned is really doing his best. he’s trying hard to do his best. and frankly, this scares the shit out of me.

from what i understand of ned's internal struggle, he's starting to come back onto the straight and narrow thanks to the pine guard - he's caring more about the people he's working with, he's caring more about the town beyond it being just his home base and where his business is. and in the face of that, he feels helpless. at the end of the day, he's just an ordinary dude with no funky magic powers and no cool ass sword. whatever he does, in his head, isn't going to measure up to whatever duck and aubrey are capable of, and because of that, he feels like he's failed them by not meeting the same standards they've set. 

and that, as a character flaw, can be exploited really heavily by other characters. if he feels like a failure, ned will be willing to do anything to redeem himself. if he feels inadequate, he'll do whatever it takes to bring himself out of that slump and start to matter to the team - or whoever he cares about the most in the moment. like he jumps to help aubrey out right away when aubrey asks him to help convince dewey to stay away. he's starting to get willing to go to ridiculous lengths in order to "pull his weight." 

the fact that Ned, specifically, was the one who saw that rift and the eye looking through it is not a good feeling. the fact that boyd is coming back now, of all times, and asking ned to help, plying him with chances at riches and fame and the old days when they were friends, when they were a team - that is not a good feeling.

this might be a long shot. but i think that ned's going to get targeted by whatever's hunting kepler this time around, either in the course of pine guard investigation, by whatever boyd gets him into, or both. and whatever the end result is, it's not going to be pretty. i'm genuinely scared for him now.