#sorry if this doesnt make sense this special makes me absolutely unhinged insane im gnawing at my enclosure etc you know

[crunchycrystals]

still thinking about That Scene in chris grace as scarlett johansson and i want as many people to watch this as possible so under the cut it goes. watch this if you've ever been interested in representation in media and how it affects the way you perceive yourself

anyways so ive talked briefly about how i love a good full utilization of a format (link here) but now i wanna go more in depth on it bc i love it a lot

make some noise

jesus christ the first time i saw this i paused and started jumping up and down on my couch. let me start with basics !!! i love that the video of the show appears on the make some noise tv. its so unnerving to see something completely detached from make some noise now on the tv after watching dozens of episodes. and sam just saying the normal spiel he does every time leaves you wondering for a few extremely disorienting seconds if they just edited the video onto a normal episode until he starts to introduce chris and you see his nameplate is erased. another extremely disorienting thing because we NEVER see the nameplates empty and it ties in so well with the identity crisis currently happening in the show. he has no idea who he is as a performer like is the performer part of him the real part?? how much has been played up for entertainment??? and then after the horror has been slammed into you by the prompt and seeing chris as confused by all of this as we are, he runs off which leads to the thing that kept me standing on my couch for the next 10 minutes

very important people

first off. i absolutely love the coincidence (or intentional detail???? who knows but either way) of chris's first line on the make some noise set being "my name is..." because that's the thing that started vip !!!!!!! and throughout the rest of the existential crisis dropout trip he constantly says "hello my name is" too ough i love that so much thats why i started writing this whole post. very important people is the perfect show to add to this segment it makes me feel a little feral thinking about it. coming out on stage without any alterations to his appearance, again back to the idea of is the chris grace on stage the real chris grace?? can he ever be??? and again his name is gone like in the scene before. vic says "you can be anything you want" like the thing scarjo said to justify playing an asian character and he still can't come up with anything. then the card transition oh my godddddddd

dirty laundry

(side note i did say before that the cards on the vip set were dirty laundry cards. i was wrong they are vip card the designs just look very similar esp compared to s1 of vip)

this is gonna be way shorter than the two rambles above i just think it's really cool to use the dirty laundry question format for some identity crisis stuff. i don't know how to properly express how cool i think it is i don't think i can do it justice. the "who..." format for the cards is a great way of expressing how he is losing grip of his identity

this section of the post is also to point out that i am only noticing now that the "dropout presents" version of chris is seen on the couch at some point also heckling stage chris which is a nice detail especially since part of the card was "who is generally a hypocrite"

gastronauts

gastronauts hasn't come out yet so i can't analyze this as much as i'd like but to me it just seems like an extension of the thing started in dirty laundry of everyone confusing him for scarlett johansson. i initially see this as a reference to the fact that throughout the whole show it's been going deeper than him playing scarlett as she plays him and then her playing him plays her again, etc, but thinking about it more for this post makes me think it's like the line between the real person and character they play blurring. i think everyone in the dropout audience is pretty familiar with this like we know brennan pissed on game changer isn't actually how he is in real life, but it's extremely easy to fall into that parasocial trap. when you put so much of your actual self in a character or performance it's hard to find the line between, even for the performer. chris keeps saying that he's not scarlett but everyone insists it's who he is