#that one saga of ibvs chris rants

[crystalkitty1220]

To be fair neither of them really tried to seal the friendship all that much

They should both get smacked with a chair /hj

Chris and Isaac were literally besties right before the explosion. Over the week (keep in mind this was a week, not a year or even a month of falling out, literally a week), Chris constantly hangs out with a guy who had talked to about three times before randomly showing up at his house; Chris proceeds to prioritize this guy he just met instead of Isaac when it comes to any important matter (need to make breakfast at someone else's house? randomly show up at the person who might hate you's house instead of literally just asking your best friend for his apartment number. nevin wants to know who else has powers? tell him about isaac's powers without asking if it's okay or even telling isaac afterward. isaac wants to hang out? play the game isaac recommended with nevin instead, and completely forget about isaac. ghost kid got removed from your body? tell nevin about it first, instead of your literal best friend). I would also like to point out the quote "Isaac thought for a moment. Maybe the two of them hanging out wouldn’t be bad. If anything, he might even be indirectly getting a new friend and Chris would be doing all the work. Nevin was interesting, after all. Plus, they had their shared disliking of Edward." Again, in chapter 18, Isaac thinks to himself that maybe he'll get a chance to hang out with Chris and Nevin in school. In chapter 19, Isaac tries to initiate a conversation with Chris twice, both times getting interrupted by Nevin showing up and Chris walking away with Nevin. The only other time Isaac and Chris are together in 19 still ends with Chris literally chasing after Nevin. Isaac literally tries locking Nevin and Edward in a closet together in chapter 22 (literally skipping away, according to the in-closet pov) in an attempt to have a chance to talk to Chris. Isaac more-or-less invites Chris to eat lunch with him in chapter 25, and Chris seemingly ignores the offer entirely. In s2ch2, Chris specifically admits to having been avoiding Isaac, there's like ten sentences exchanged between the two of them, and then Chris again just leaves. Isaac's thoughts here are literally, "Wait - tell me what's going on." And then he watches Chris leave, and that's when he finally decides to stop caring.

I don't think people think enough about Isaac's actual emotions and actions when reading. They get so caught up in Chris' backstory and relationship with Nevin that they don't actually notice Isaac's point of view. And even when you do add in the Nevin storyline, there is still barely any reason for Chris to be acting like this. Literally all that happened was Chris made a new friend (who he grew incredibly close to over the span of like three days) and forgot to go to one hangout with Isaac. The awkwardness and distance growing any farther was entirely Chris' doing, as Isaac was still trying to hang out and talk to him throughout that whole few-day period where things were getting bad. Sure, the closet thing might've been a little odd, but even that was hardly actually acknowledged and never really affected anything. And literally the only thing I could imagine Nevin doing which would cause Chris to try to avoid Isaac for this long is if Nevin had said something about Isaac during the time they were hanging out that week, but I genuinely don't remember Isaac even being brought up once in the two's conversations, and Chris specifically stated himself that he was not mad at Isaac.

People have said that Isaac's doubts about his and Chris' friendship were what caused them to grow apart, but the story specifically shows Isaac trying multiple times to talk to to Chris, and every time Chris actually avoids him. And the only logical explanation I can think of for this is Chris' worries and doubts. Chris was concerned that Isaac was upset and that their relationship would get ruined, so he started avoiding Isaac entirely. There is literally no other explanation to this because everything else is disproven by the story itself. Chris was avoiding Isaac, Isaac was actually making an attempt to hold their friendship together despite his own doubts, and Nevin is practically a bystander. I am putting no blame on Nevin, Nevin was just being friendly (if not overly so).

[crystalkitty1220]

I haven't ranted about Chris enough so

"'Is this because I make all those jokes about them dating?' Isaac asked. 'Did I make this happen?'

Drew briefly gritted his teeth, frowning somewhat. 'Yeah, that... usually doing stuff like that isn't okay,' he said." (s2ch1)

Sure, okay, that could be a reason Chris is avoiding Isaac, but also

1: Chris was the one to start the shipping jokes (see s1ch2)

2: Isaac specifically asked Chris if he wanted him to stop the jokes, and Chris went "Oh, no, uh..." and then answered Isaac's other question instead, which I could see Isaac (who is horrible with understanding people and emotions, mind you) mistaking for a 'no, it's fine, i didn't mean to make you worry about it' (see s1ch13)

3: Chris tells Isaac that he is not mad at him (s2ch2) which could be a lie but that would be completely out of character for the guy who randomly shows up at near-strangers' houses, decides to sneak out a mere half hour after being grounded, hangs out with the guy who might beat up his bestie just to skip class, and has been blatantly honest in the past and didn't even try to keep his friends' powers a secret from the the first guy who asks about them. But it's in character for the guy who doesn't know how to express he wants to be friends other than sending a facebook friend request to the guy he literally just showed up at the fucking door of and asked to use his kitchen, so at this point Chris' actions and personality are just a coin flip actually. Whatever is convenient, relatable, or works as comic relief I guess. He's secretive when it comes to what happened between him and Isaac, he's blatantly honest when telling Nevin about Isaac's powers (or when telling Isaac about Charlie), he's careless when he's showing up at Nevin's house or vibing with Edward, but he's anxious about asking "would you like to be friends" despite being absolutely absent of anxiety during his previous invasion of privacy/chilling out with his bestie's bully. Either he's got a very, very specific moral code, or he's just making shit up on the fly, and neither works for a very good character.

With that whole thing aside, I have no fucking idea if the shipping jokes are part of the reason Chris is avoiding Isaac. He has literally not given less of a shit about invasions of privacy or crossing boundaries before, but then again how can we know he didn't just change his mind because it's convenient to the story.

[crystalkitty1220]

Wolfy read through that whole paragraph and I watched Daiku's face go into realization that we do that too at times -Lix

Hm, yeah I can see those too. Really comes to show how realistic some of Kai's writings are. I didn't even notice after all the times we've read it

Also holy fuck you have amazing analysis skills. -Wolfy

Yeah I kinda tend to read through things too many times. First readthrough just for fun, and then again as a different reader pov, and then as character 1 pov, then as character 2 pov, and occasionally as "trying to figure out what the author was doing with this" pov. This was a special case though, because I had specifically done a read-through recently where I was putting together a list of Chris' and Isaac's interactions and notable thoughts. The list wasn't ever completed but I had all the bits up to ch20.

[crystalkitty1220]

Smacking chris with a chair..

On the one hand I wanna say he doesn't deserve it but on the other hand in chapter 2 Isaac told him "Edward's probably going to send his goons after me and I'm worried, he tried attacking me on friday" and Chris was like "okie dokie" and proceeded to hang out in Edward's lair and allow Edward to do whatever and drag Isaac there just so he could skip class and play on his gameboy. Didn't even show any concern or seem surpised when Edward came back with Isaac; Chris was completely willing to let Isaac get beat up by Edward just so he could skip class and play video games. And people think Isaac was the worse friend.