#the heartbreak of truth
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Nancy Drew – 4.12 "The Heartbreak of Truth"
A perfect storm.
#nancy drew cw#nancy drew#nancydrewedit#nancy drew spoilers#ace [redacted]#The Heartbreak of Truth#v watches nancy drew#v posts things#finally watched this week's episode and my brain whispered. parallels#and i blacked out and when i woke up i'd made this#oh man the otp is fightingggggg#(i kind of love it ngl)#(something satisfying character-wise seeing what finally makes someone snap like Ace does here)#guys help i am SO very not ready for next week to be the end
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Nancy Drew + text posts (64/?)
4.12 || The Heartbreak of Truth (1/3)
#nancydrewedit#nancy drew cw#ndcentral#the heartbreak of truth#ndcw412textposts#nancy drew text posts#text posts#bethanyactuallyedit#this episode aired one year plus five days ago! I was traveling and took a little longer to finish these :P#queue of themyscira
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NANCY DREW || 4x12: The Heartbreak of Truth
"Horseshoe Bay will exist in truth."
#something something warm and cool something something#only one more to go oh no#nancy drew#4x12#the heartbreak of truth#RR#ND#George#George Fan#Ace [Redacted]#tristan#tristan glass#nick#ned nickerson#nancy drew cw#cw nancy drew#ndcw#cwnd
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Nancy x Ace and the conundrum of pain in 4x12
Alright kids, buckle up for one last time. Don’t worry I will absolutely be back next week for more, but this is the last one where we still have some story left to discover, and I am all up in my feels about this.
There are definitely storytelling choices that I feel are ahem, slightly misguided, but as ever I’m focusing on the Nace of it all, and despite another painful episode of heartbreak, angst, and shouting, I genuinely think we’re making progress. And gosh there’s a lot to unpack from this last episode - it gets long under the cut.
We finally know what the sin was, and we’ve seen them get their memories back. But I still think there’s something else at play here. Because we had heart eyes adoration. We had heartbreak and pain. We had breakups and desperate longing and despair. But then we suddenly shifted to indifference in the wake of that phone call and Nancy’s trip to the Yacht Club. Which either is terrible writing, or it’s some other puzzle piece at play here that we have yet to see. I’m still clinging to the latter. I think there are a few more revelations to come, and I don’t think Nancy and Ace are operating with their full range of memories and emotions yet - hence the anger, indifference, and general out of characterness we’ve been getting.
These last few episodes have served a really interesting purpose though, untethering Nancy and Ace and allowing them to stand on their own. It’s highlighted how much Nancy needs the support of those around her - forcing her to acknowledge her feelings and how important this found family of hers is. But it’s also given Ace the space to breathe, to try and work himself out, to learn to trust himself, to stand up for what he needs and wants, and how he functions as an individual instead of just constantly in service to others. That’s been hard to watch, but it’s been important.
The Nancy and Ace we saw at the start of this season were amazing, yes, look at the yearning! The pining! The heart eyes! But as a couple they were going to run into problems really quickly. They weren’t managing to communicate well - Nancy has slowly been learning not to close herself off since way back in season one where suddenly she wasn’t the only one invested in solving the Tiffany Hudson murder. And Ace has always been supportive of her, quietly there ready for when she finds the words. But they have always struggled to actually communicate effectively, particularly when things are going badly. Nancy takes everything as a rejection and abandonment, Ace actively puts his needs to the bottom of the pile in favour of protecting those he loves. This isn’t healthy, and it isn’t the foundation of a good relationship. And we want them to have a good relationship, we want them to last, because even now for me, they are still endgame.
They have needed to have that time and space to work some of their own issues out so that they can come back to each other on a more equal footing. To be able to say absolutely I want this, I deserve this, and we can do this together.
And it’s always been up to Ace to come back. He is the one who walked away, who committed the ultimate abandonment as far as Nancy is concerned. He’s the one that said stop, no, we’re not doing this. And partly as respect for his wishes, and partly because he’d basically just put a fist through her heart by saying that and then leaving, Nancy has stopped. She’s been devastated, broken, looking for something easy that doesn’t hurt as much, but she has respected his wishes. Which is why it’s up to Ace (hey Ace you’ve done some really excellent growth and learning to stand on your own and have your own boundaries and needs, time to put that into action) to come back. To admit he still loves her, he still wants her, he still wants to make this work.
Do I think the writers are waiting until the absolute eleventh hour and really making this pivot a hard one to pull off? Absolutely yes, dear god this feels a little unnecessary. But I do still think we’re getting this pivot. Nancy and Ace have needed to have that space and individual plot lines to come back together as a stronger whole.
Which is why this revelation about what actually happened the night of the boat trip hits that much harder. This is the very first time we’ve seen Ace beg Nancy to come, to be there. She’s the first person he calls. He just needs her there because something awful has happened and she is his safe space.
GIF Credit @thatonekimgirl
This is huge, life altering vulnerability from Ace in a way we have never ever seen. In all the tragedy, she is his first thought. Not to fix anything, not to make it go away, just to be there with him, hold his hand and smooth his hair away from his cheek and hold him steady in a world that feels like it’s falling apart around him.
GIF Credit @thatonekimgirl
And any other night, Nancy probably would have made a different decision. But she’s emotionally wrecked from her mum’s memorial. She is adrift in grief and fear because those first weeks after her mum died are a haze of darkness and pain, and on this anniversary night she feels the closest to that pit of grief than she’s felt in a long time, and it would be so easy to tip back into it. Shut her eyes and let it consume her.
And Ace is there and he’s panicked and desperate and she’s never seen him like this - never been allowed to see him like this. He is vulnerable and trusting in a way she has never witnessed.
GIF Credit @thatonekimgirl
And she just wants him to be ok. She can’t bear the thought of him going through a fraction of the pain she experienced with the loss of her mum. The guilt, the despair, the anger. She wants to spare him as much pain as she can because she loves him. It’s never about thinking he isn’t strong enough to hold it, it’s not about selfishly trying to keep him as he is. She is, in that moment, so full of love and desperation that she would do anything. And she’s not thinking straight, she just wants him to be ok. Isn’t that all we want for the ones we love?
So she leaves him. Breaks every speed limit getting to the yacht club, just wants it done, wants to take the pain away, smooth the lines from Ace’s brow and wipe the tears from his face. Heal the pain bracketing his mouth as he bites his lip trying to keep the grief at bay. He knows he did the right thing, but it still hurts, still feels like it carved out a piece of him to leave someone to a death like that to save his father. And he’d do it again, even though it would kill him a little more, there’s no way he would change what he’d do, no way he wouldn’t save his father every time.
She isn’t thinking, not really. Panicked by the vulnerability, the fear, the pain, the tidal wave echo of her own grief. She can’t take that away, hasn’t even thought to, can’t imagine herself with the grief hollowed out of her bones. But she can do this for Ace, help him, save him. Doesn’t think through the consequences. Doesn’t think through what else might be taken. What this house of cards might look like when it begins to crumble down. This isn’t Nancy thinking clearly, this is Nancy acting purely on instinct - fear, grief, pain. Her own and Ace’s. And if she can’t be with him at the very least she can take away this burden, ease it for him, shoulder some piece of the load.
But he’s right to be angry once he understands. He’s right to call her out on it. She had no right to do what she did, particularly without telling him what she was going to do. There’s no way he would have let her. And maybe that’s partly why she didn’t say anything to him before she left. Because she didn’t want him to talk her out of it, didn’t want him to have to understand what loss feels like. What regret eating you away from the inside can do to a person.
This is where my comment from last week comes into play though. Ace has been so bad at standing up for himself, for calling Nancy out before this season. We’ve had odd moments - the Aglaeca and how angry and scared he was to be caught up in a death curse. But he’s always kept his feelings quiet and bottled until the odd moment where they explode out (see 4x02 and the passive aggressive snark and withdrawing we get from Ace). But last week we saw him standing up to Nancy, arguing, fighting, getting what he needed. And it’s left a muscle memory path for him to follow so we get not one but two fights this episode. And sure, I’d much rather there were heart eyes and curse breaking, but honestly? The fighting gives me hope. It tells me there’s still something there, there are still messy tangled feelings mixed up in all of this. And it starts to offer a more solid foundation, an equal footing for them to build off.
To say the things they’ve kept bottled up inside, to actually call out what’s upsetting them. That it hurts that each of them seem to have moved on even though neither of them actually have. That it hurts to be around each other, to be so tied up in each other because they can’t bear to be apart. That they’re afraid, so so afraid of what might happen next - of losing each other, of trying and failing, of the possibility not living up to the reality.
GIF Credit @livelovecaliforniadreams
And the sucker punch of realisation that Ace has that Nancy isn’t moving on or as put together as she’s seemed. That they’re both still such a mess over each other and putting on a front that is far too effective because they’re both too blinded by the pain.
GIF Credit @livelovecaliforniadreams
But the real pain, because this episode is just a heaping plate of pain after pain, comes with that final confrontation at Icarus Hall where Ace finally calls Nancy out for what she did. Because it feeds into everything he already fears, that he isn’t enough as he is. That Nancy would do something to change him, to remove his pain, his grief, the painful experiences that ultimately are part of him.
GIF Credit @livelovecaliforniadreams
But with the darkest low points come a turning point, because Nancy needed to be called out. She needed to be told her actions weren’t acceptable, no matter that they came from a place of love, of trying to protect him. She has to have this moment of understanding, of Ace putting it in terms that she could understand so that she can see the damage that has been done.
GIF Credit @livelovecaliforniadreams
They can’t start anything without getting this poison purged, without fighting their way to the truth, no matter how badly it hurts, to start from somewhere clean and whole.
Whilst I know most would rather pretend that kiss at the end didn’t happen, I would like to make one comment on how it evokes Ace even when he’s not there.
Tristan comes to Nancy filled with emptiness, not knowing who he is, something she can entirely relate to - she’s just been rightfully chewed out by Ace who has broken her heart into even smaller pieces than previously thought possible, and walked away again. And then Tristan tells her exactly what she has only ever wanted to hear from Ace - that he feels connected to her, and he kisses her. And she tries, gosh she tries to get into it. Her hands go into his hair and then jerk back out when it’s not the expected softness of Ace’s hair. She tries again and still can’t. You can see on her face that this isn’t the fireworks and mind melting best kiss of her life. This isn’t even close. But then he says “But I know I can’t walk away from you” and it immediately taps into that memory. The heartbreak is on her face and it’s not Tristan she’s thinking of then, it’s another kiss in this space, and another person’s hair, and someone she desperately wants to stay, to choose her, who has walked away from her and broken her heart so many times over these last few weeks. There’s a breath of relief when her phone rings and offers her a way out of this. Because she thought this would be easy, that this would be better, good for her. And all it’s done is serve to highlight that there’s no one but Ace for her.
So we leave them with one episode to go, broken but healing, finding parts of themselves they hadn’t realised existed, and slowly coming back to their love. Always their love, it’s tangled into everything, and we’re finally going to see that play out next week.
On a personal note, this season has been a curious one for me. I’ve overall really enjoyed it, and I think a lot of that is down to doing these analysis posts. It’s forced me to go back over the episodes in miniscule detail, and to really examine what’s happening and why. Believe me there were weeks where I finished my first watch and wanted to post this gif and be done with it.
GIF by lecoeurasesgifs
But doing these posts has pushed me to unpick what the writers have been trying to do in a way I wouldn’t normally have engaged with. So thank you for feeding the meta beast.
I can really understand why people have found this season frustrating, there have been a lot of shall we say interesting choices, for lack of a better word. Part of that is down to the completely broken system we have where shows kinda have to act like they’re about to get cancelled at any moment, which inhibits really thoughtful, interwoven long form storytelling, or they do what Nancy Drew have done and desperately hoped they will get to keep telling these stories and then have to pivot if they’re given any sort of warning that it’s over. And in this case, means we’ve had to have a hard pivot which has shafted a lot of storylines and left a lot of fans (myself included at points) wondering what the hell is going on.
That said, I’ve still really enjoyed the journey. Not just of this season, but the whole show. It’s given me a found family to root for, supernatural shenanigans, thoughtful and well plotted storytelling, and a romance for the ages. Yes I still think we’re going to get that, despite all the roadblocks in these last few episodes. It’s been my spoopy little comfort show through some really difficult years, and I am going to miss it hugely. Thank you to anyone who has read and engaged with these posts, it’s been such a joy both writing them and then talking with people afterwards about them. We’ve got one more wild ride to see how Horseshoe Bay and the Drew Crew will be left, and I cannot wait.
#nancy drew#nancy drew cw#nancy x ace#ace [redacted]#cw nancy drew#nace#nancy drew spoilers#nancy drew analysis#nancy drew meta#naceedit#The Heartbreak of Truth#Nancy Drew 4x12#Nancy Drew 4.12#We're so close to a happy ending#I can almost taste it#Although if I'm wrong I will absolutely get my clown hat out next week#But I truly believe love will win out#And this love is the truest#It's just got some stumbling blocks whilst they work themselves out#I love them your honour
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#quotes#writing#poetry#positivity#thoughts#spilled poetry#spilled thoughts#spilled words#spilled writing#my thoughts#spilled truth#spilled feelings#spilled ink#posts on tumblr#my post#literature#aesthetic#motivation#reminder#reality of life#peace#heartbreak#love#life#deep thoughts#sad poetry#romantic#artists on tumblr#art#creative writing
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Look at you, Wiping your own tears With the same hands That long to be held
Ayesha Zahra
#writers and poets#love#poems and poetry#one sided love#poem#one sided feelings#poets on tumblr#poems on tumblr#love poetry#spilled ink#spilled thoughts#literary quotes#quotes#quoteoftheday#life quote#beautiful quote#love quotes#lovers#heartbreak#hurtful#hurtquotes#so real#life quotes#spilled writing#spilled words#life#truth
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I try to make something beautiful of my pain, but sometimes I just have to sit with it. Sometimes all you can do is sit with it.
#spilled thoughts#poem#poems on tumblr#poetry#spilled poetry#spilled heart#spilled words#heartbreak#love poem#i love him#spilled poem#spilled writing#spilled emotions#spilled truth#spilled feelings#spilled ink#sad poetry#i'm sad#sad thoughts#sad poem#sadgirl#sad quotes#lit#literature#poems and quotes#love quotes#life quote#quotes#quoteoftheday#book quote
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my heart is aching and i miss you terribly
#text#text post#unrequited feelings#unrequited love#creative writing#artists on tumblr#spilled ink#spilled poem#spilled writing#spilled emotions#spilled feelings#spilled heart#spilled thoughts#spilled truth#spilled words#heartbreak#heartache#love quotes#love#loss#literature#lit#grief poetry#poets on tumblr#feelings#emotions#writers on tumblr#dark academia#light academia#writers
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I loved you in the purest forms, only for you to hurt me in the cruelest ways.
#spilled heart#spilled ink#spilled words#spilled thoughts#spilled emotions#my words#words#spilled prose#love#you broke my heart#spilled love#quotes#heartbreak#spilled tears#spilled feelings#spilled truth#spilled poetry#wlw yearning#spilled poem#thoughts#wlw heartbreak#wlw post#sad thoughts#depressing shit#random thoughts#kinda depressing#wlw love#excerpt from a story i'll never write#spilled journal#journal
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Agender Books To Read For Agender Pride Day
Happy Agender Pride Day! Here are some books with agender characters you should read:
Book Titles:
The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta
The Evolving Truth of Ever-Stronger Will by Maya MacGregor
In the Care of Magic by Robin Jo Margaret
Our Bloody Pearl by D.N. Bryn
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb
Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall
The Thread That Binds by Cedar McCloud
Werecockroach by Polenth Blake
#the heartbreak bakery#a.r. capetta#the evolving truth of ever-stronger will#maya macgregor#in the care of magic#robin jo margaret#our bloody pearl#these treacherous tides#d.n. bryn#when the angels left the old country#sacha lamb#something spectacular#alexis hall#the thread that binds#cedar mccloud#werecockroach#polenth blake#agender pride day#agender books#agender#nonbinary#nonbinary books#trans book of the day#trans books#queer books#bookblr#booklr
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and just when this show couldn’t get more australian, we got the nutbush and untouched by the veronicas in the one episode
#told my uk friends that untouched is the national anthem and they believed me#because it’s the truth#heartbreak high#heartbreak high season 2#heartbreak high spoilers
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Nancy Drew + text posts (65/?)
4.12 || The Heartbreak of Truth (2/3)
feat @scarletslippers ♥︎
#nancydrewedit#nancy drew cw#ndcentral#the heartbreak of truth#ndcw412textposts#nancy drew text posts#text posts#bethanyactuallyedit#this episode aired one year plus five days ago! I was traveling and took a little longer to finish these :P#queue of themyscira
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I look for us in the pages of every book I read, hoping that I find that somehow, some way, in some universe we were able to get our happily ever after, after all.
#writers on tumblr#writing#books#prose#heartbreak#hope#truth#reading#bookblr#books and reading#escape#escapism
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#quotes#truth#poem#quote#love#patience#heartbreak quotes#heartbreak#heartbroken#breakup poem#breakup quotes#follow for follow#i follow everybody back#i follow back#im not mentally stable#inspiration#meme
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#positivity#spilled thoughts#spilled words#spilled writing#quotes#writing#spilled poetry#poetry#thoughts#my thoughts#spilled truth#spilled feelings#spilled ink#posts on tumblr#my posts#artists on tumblr#art#creative writing#writers on tumblr#aesthetics#literature#reminder#motivation#love quotes#life quotes#dark academia#light academia#romantic#couple#heartbreak
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