#two absolutely normal guys

[fuckyeahtheumbilicalbrothers]

David Collins and Shane Dundas at the UK premiere of ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’

[inchidentally]

“some great teamwork as well from Mr. Norris over here, keeping me in second” (bashful Lando smile)

x x

[sysig]

Caughtcha, gotcha, not letting go ♥ (Patreon)

[kookidough]

analysing vance hopper because he lives in my head 24/7 !

tw for like. literally everything the black phone covers!!!!!!

also there's some special effects gore rather far down in the post idk just i feel like i should warn you just in case

okay so before anyones like "but bee!!!! he only had 6 minutes of screen time in a 102 minute long movie!!!!! he was only on screen for 5.8% of the movie!!!!!" and to that i say i Know it was a real tragedy so a lot of this will be built on personal interpretation and subtext and stuff said behind the scenes and whatnot

so firstly i wanna rot about what his childhood/upbringing might've been like..... i havent quite decided on something definitive but i think we can take one look at his character and realise that is glaringly obvious he had a bad childhood, in one interview the actor that plays him (brady hepner) says "the background i had set up for vance is that the reason he was the way he was is his home life was fairly difficult, you know maybe his dad was either not there for him or he wasn't supportive, maybe he was fairly abusive, and so that creates a hair trigger sense of rage in vance" hair trigger meaning his patience is literally as thin as a strand of hair it does Not take a lot for him to snap

there more to it after that which i'll get into soon but yea thats the gist of it it's clear he had absent/neglectful/abusive parents and that would certainly contribute to why he's so angry all the time, maybe acting so explosive was the only way to get his parents' attention, either good or bad, so he just internalised that. obviously rage and anger issues like vance's lead to violence (not in all cases but in his case it does) and i think a neglectful and abusive upbringing would obviously expose him to more violence than a normal childhood would, therefore normalising it and desensitising him to it, whether he's seeing it play out in his own home and/or on television or something like that (because i doubt his parents would be the kind to monitor what content he's viewing)

i feel like he has little control over his life and that only adds to his anger, which in his case leads to a fight when his buttons are pushed too many times. i think he probably takes great pride in being the toughest in town and whatnot and winning fights and being perceived as strong and scary is good to him and helps him regain control/power, something he doesnt have at home. the rest of the quote from the interview i mentioned earlier states "this pinball machine could have been the only thing that he has in his heart that's like, good, like 'holy cow i did this, i set the score,' so when someone comes along and messes it up for him, it takes away the only thing that he has. i think that that's when he switches to a 'now you're gonna pay for that'"

similar to what i said about fighting, the pinball machine and his high score is something he has control over and its an important part of his reputation/image like. hes literally pinball vance ! and the whole thing about that high score being the "only thing he has in his heart that's good" implies that hes. well. pretty shit at everything else, which is pretty much canon if you remember that gwen said vance was held back twice in school. makes me think that while he's not the brightest in school he's certainly street smart

moving onto ermmmmm him getting kidnapped era because im sure youre wondering "well bee if he's so street smart then why did he get kidnapped" so may i raise two theories (this is. literally all i got and its not even concrete, me and my friend gray (@staggersz) tried to figure out how this could even happen and this is the most plausible thing we've got. so shoutout to him real quick he has had to deal with me being unnormal about vance for like a year and a half thanks king couldnt have done all this without my rotting buddy)

so either he got taken by surprise (most likely option) or vance's trust was gained first via getting given quarters at the pinball machine and small talk and shit like that but this is unlikely because i feel like it'd take a loooooong time for someone like vance to trust a some random stranger adult man when he clearly has issues with trusting and respecting people older than him and people with authority (e.g. cops, his parents, or school officials) so yea being taken by surprise would probably be the most realistic option, i always see people on tiktok being like "how did the grabber kidnap vance hes so strong!!!!" dude its a 15 year old boy against like. a 45 year old man who's already claimed two lives its really not gonna be a fair fight here

before i get into the next part i wanna quickly address a theory i absolutely Hate and it is so easily disproven and that is the theory that vance is the grabber's son or is related to him in some other way and i see it Far too often on tiktok and i HATE it. from what ive seen this all stems from his dream sequence where he kicks open the fence to albert's house and, presumably, goes inside after being dropped off by the police after the grab n go fight. idk if some people just straight up didnt realise this but clearly in real life he is going to his Own House??? in the dream it's only albert's house because this is how he chooses to show gwen the house she's trying to find her brother in, the house that he himself was killed in??? i hate the theory i hate it sm

the dream sequence itself is interesting though as the ghosts seem to only be able to conjure up what theyve seen in real life (like how bruce can picture the outside of the house and show that to gwen but the house number is all flipped and not right beause he doesnt know it) so vance being able to picture the house and the number and the gate and every detail would imply that hes seen it before, but im going to explain that away as either he got out once before like with finney's failed escape attempt, or the house is most likely on the route he walks to school or the grab n go or something and he hasnt actually been there prior to being kidnapped

mini rant over now onto being kidnapped i guess, so i used the missing posters to try and estimate a timeline of how long each ghost boy would've been in the basement for (although the missing posters are notoriously unreliable for details such as looks/height/age/etc, the dates seem to all line up). so we know the order is griffin, billy, vance, bruce, robin, finney, right?? if we use the poster date then billy was taken on may 4th, 1976, a month and two days after griffin was taken (april 2nd 1976). vance was taken on september 23rd 1977, almost a full year later (stay with me im going somewhere with this), and after that bruce was taken on july 18th 1978, again almost a full year later

its established in the movie that the grabber stalks his victims before he takes them (canon because we literally see the van watching finney and gwen as they walk home from school early on in the movie) but we dont know how long he does this for since griffin/billy and robin/finney were taken such short distances apart and then the others were taken such long distances apart, also it's possible he could stalk his next victim while the previous one is still alive, etc etc lots of confusing factors, but if i've done the maths right then the absolute maximum time vance could've spent down there is 9 months and 25 days, or 298 days, so erm . let that sink in !

howeverrrr in the movie gwen states that vance went missing "last spring" and september is definitely not in spring, meaning he could've been down there for a year or even longer. an explanation or excuse i could think of for the movie and the missing poster saying different things (other than the missing posters being known for some areas being wildly inaccurate) is that maybe he was taken in spring but wasnt labelled as officially missing until september, when he was properly linked to griffin and billy's similar disappearances and the mysterious grabber? i can imagine it'd be very easy for law enforcement, especially in the 70s, to dismiss someone like vance as a runaway until they get solid evidence that he was taken. idk though thats just my personal excuse / angsty headcanon for the difference in information

not sure what exactly killed him but we do hear from vance himself that "he took his time with me" so it was probably blood loss from a variety of injuries, if we look at him in his ghost scenes we can see his hair is absolutely covered in blood which indicates head injury, he clearly has a broken nose and bruising around his eyes as a result of it, he has these deep cuts on his abdomen area (apologies for the image quality but i believe they're like. sfx pieces you would wear under clothing)

and he also has just like. minor bruising (like the fingerprints on his arm) and other random blood splatters on his face and neck (assuming the blood down his neck comes from wherever he was bleeding on his head) so Yeah overall very unpleasant way to die obviously

okay now the part thats actually in the movie and it only took me 13 paragraphs to get here: vance as a ghost!! first thing i wanna point out is appearance wise i just want to say that when he's a ghost he's missing his choker and that fact Pains me. anyway personality-wise i feel like being violently murdered has, understandably, kicked his rage up to like. the highest level it could possibly go. he's insanely snarky and downright rude to finney on the phone, showing no empathy to the fact that finney is literally in the exact situation he was in

i feel like the whole "this is the nightmare end of your pathetic little life" and "if you knew what you had coming, you'd be fucking terrified" thing is definitely to scare finney on purpose and to get him to do something, vance might as well have just told him he's never going home cuz thats how it came across LMAOO, it is startling though because vance is clearly speaking from experience, that he was literally fucking terrified, and he is warning finney in his own weird way

the thing i think sets vance apart from the other ghosts is that while he does help finney, he does it for a different reason than they do. the other ghosts want finney to escape, to get out, to be free, to live, but personally i dont think vance cares about that. the only thing he wants is for albert shaw to be dead, for someone to seek vengeance, to do what vance couldn't. vance doesn't care if it's bruce or robin or finney or whatever boy could've come after that, he doesnt care as long as that man gets what he deserves after what he put vance through, and i see this through the scene at the end of vance's call where finney thanks him for his help and vance says, and i quote, "helping you? this isn't about you, fuck him! and apologies for being repetitive but to me it just literally proves that to vance, this isnt about finney or his escape, its just about revenge

we dont get to find out what happens to the ghosts once the credits have rolled, and i dont think we quite know enough about tbp's version of ghosts to guess what theyre up to, but i have a few theories :3 maybe theyre no longer bound to those two houses and they can now go anywhere they want in town? or maybe since their shared goal of stopping albert has been achieved, the ghosts can finally pass on to whatever is waiting for them next. i dont think vance would be content to pass on that quickly or easily as anger lingers, but i hope he'd be able to let go of it eventually, and hey we might find out in the sequel. i pray it mentions him cuz i will just die if it doesnt

sometimes, ok thats a lie, frequently i think about an au where he survived or escaped or whatever but ohhhh boy this post is already a train wreck so that au would deserve its own essay of a post :3 if u actually genuinely read this far then Wtf thanks for reading the ramblings of an absolute madman, only pure delusion could get like 20 paragraphs about a guy with 6 minutes screentime but hey thats how i roll, thanks again to my pal gray for letting me rot and thank u to my other pal ana for also enduring all this rot

hope u enjoyed my interpretation of vance hopper im going to crawl in a hole now and probably brainrot some more, thanks again for ur time :3

[corporealchaos]

I FINALLY GOT TO WATCH DEATH FOR A DOLLAR AND IT’S AMAZING!!! I HAVE EXACTLY ZERO COHERENT THOUGHTS RIGHT NOW!!! IT HAS RENDERED ME THOUGHTLESS!!! I AM BARELY RESTRAINING MYSELF FROM JUMPING UP AND DOWN, LITERALLY HOW DID I WAIT TO SEE IT FOR SO LONG???

[itsdefinitely]

hey don't cry. the jeri/rys will never be able to share simple human intimacy. they'll never get to hold hands. why are you crying louder

[jtownraindancer]

totally normal conversations to have with your best friend pt. 1

[rainbowpufflez]

“We belong together

Lying here forever

In the cold, cold, cold”

You’ll never believe which gays Bo’s drawing again

Song inspo if anyone wants it (aka uh-oh I gotta add another song to their playlist)

[tvckerwash]

watching people discover the fucked up science guy part of viktor's lore and then being like "we need to acknowledge that he's a fucked up science guy 😔" is so funny. like yeah, he is a fucked up science guy who thinks ethics committees are bullshit because in his mind having rights temporarily violated is perfectly fine if it means saving lives—especially when the ones condemning his beliefs don't offer what they consider to be an ethical alternative to fix the problem and simply let it continue to exist.

and yeah, he's a fucked up science guy who experimented on himself following a, quote: traumatic period of introspection. he had a mental breakdown, fell into a major depressive episode, and spending this horrible time of his life "alone in the depths" reinforced and radicalized his previous beliefs, and to showcase his beliefs (and to try and get rid of his emotions because of how overwhelming they were) he turned himself into a cyborg (and did in fact make himself worse in certain ways but ehh who cares /j).

and yeah, he's a fucked up science guy who gave a kid back alley anti anxiety meds so he could face down his bullies, but he did so after making him a cozy beverage, teaching him about the dangers of propaganda and baseless rumors, and having him scream into a megaphone to freak out said bullies because it was funny (not that he'd admit to finding it funny because then he'd have to admit to having emotions, and well he can't do that, no sir).

so yes, viktor is a fucked up science guy, but that's half his charm! he cares so much about helping people, but he's a weirdo and freak about it! though to be fair, in the city that also has a chemically enhanced werewolf (warwick), a sentient blob of goo (zac), a wind and water goddess (janna), and a literal war criminal who invented chemical warfare (singed), among many other wacky individuals, he's pretty normal all things considered! fucked up science is just a part of life in zaun, my dudes!

[every-sanji]

[viric-dreams]

If I may, a 🎲 kiss for Cavendish from Robert? 0u0 - gmalaart

"Rest easy. Take this skull and it will all be forgotten."

[watermel0ns-dumb-cringe]

I want to give him all the love in the world and somewhere he can feel safe and cozy ouguhhg my shayla

[saintsatire]

the sheer amount of headcanons i produced while i was drawing this is insane

[quirinah]

on the doodle canvas. straight up "drawing it". and by "it", haha, well. let's justr say.    Nintama

[rararasputins-dick-mind-control]

rereading The King in Yellow :)

[duckapus]

Thought up a few interesting things for the Squid Memes AU

1- Desti was an Elite Octoling back during Splatoon 1, and she and her squad (the three other Octolings that would go on to become the Octoposse) were among those who defected after the battle. Though interestingly, she didn't actually hear Calamari Inkantation like the other defectors, seeing as she was recovering from injuries she sustained fighting Agent 3 and thus wasn't present for the battle/concert. She just found out that her teammates were running away and was like "not without me you're not."

She's fully aware that Paige is Agent 3 (once she finally runs into them on the surface at least) and thinks it's honestly kind of funny that the so-called "Scourge of the Domes" was a freaking kid when they tore through the place, and that of all the people she could've gotten into a rivalry with it of course just had to be 3's big sister. She doesn't tell Meggy both because she's not about to out the kid like that and because it amuses her a little that Meggy doesn't know.

2- Axol and Pearl have been friends since they were kids, partly because I figure it would make sense if the tiny angry rich girl who sings too loud and the otaku who figured out fucking magitech and built a pen that could bring his drawings to life because he was lonely got lumped in together as the Weird kids nobody likes. Plus Marina canonically reads manga so even if Pearl doesn't like anime stuff herself we know someone else liking it isn't a turnoff for her.

3- So for this one I'm also pulling from Spongebob Squarepants canon because I needed an explanation for Heavy Squid and all the other Squidwards we see.

Okay, so we've seen in a few episodes of Spongebob that there are a bunch of squids/octopi/whatever Squidward's meant to be that look almost exactly like him. Obviously there's Squilliam but there was also that town of Squidward lookalikes he moved to once. Well, in this that's because they're not Squids or Octopi, they're instead a fourth (yes, fourth. we count Salmonids in this house) type of Inkfish that I'm tentatively calling "Schnozlings." In terms of abilities they're sort of a halfway point between the playable Inkfish and Salmonids, where they can live underwater thanks to having the right kind of respiratory system and thick enough skin to not get splatted by the ink-eating microbes, while also having Swim forms (which unfortunately aren't microbe-resistant like their humanoid forms).

Their swim forms are round, with six tentacles that all look similar to the long tentacles of an Inkling's swim form, while their humanoid forms are...well...Squidward lookalikes. Complete with four "legs," no fingers, a long droopy nose (hence the name Schnozling) and in a few cases the ability to grow hair on their heads like a human. As a side-effect of their microbe-resistant thick skin, most of them don't have any way to display their ink color in humanoid form, while their Swim forms are color coded just like Inklings and Octolings.

(And yes this means I'll have to redesign Heavy Squid to look less like Heavy and more like Squidward. But still big and muscular because that's his Whole Thing.)