Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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Certified
was going through my drafts and realized i finished this but never posted it. figured i'd rectify that
connor and alana friendship is important to me
summary:
When Alana meets Connor Murphy's eyes in the mirror, she stops dead. He's standing half hunched over the sink, holding bloody paper towels to his nose, while a scratch up his chin that splits through his lip drips blood onto the porcelain.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Just thought of this. What’s one thing you think people misunderstand about each character in DEH?
i will, rapid fire this:
connor: the difference between real connor and fake connor, i think i probably had an easier time parsing the two because i read the novel before watching the full musical, but i think a lot of people mistake the connor who plays the other half of evan's brain in his arguments with himself as, some indication of what real connor was like, when he's Really Not
jared: how much of his shit is pure posturing, he doesn't have any more friends than evan does, and he does not want anyone to know that, and i think some people take him a bit too much at his word on it
alana: how anxious she is, because she's fairly talkative most of the time i think a lot of people miss that, she is also anxious and isolated and alone, and that's why she talks at evan in her first scene, because, well, there's no one else for her to talk to
evan: why he makes some of the choices he does, i think some people ascribe more malice to him than he really deserves, because like, at first he really is caught up in the moment and trying to help (not to absolve him of anything, just that, he didn't intend the harm he wound up causing)
zoe: her spine. people forget about the interaction she has with connor over breakfast, that she's willing to snap back and match his energy the way no one else ever does (more on that here) and i think they tend to overly soften her
larry: okay this one might be mean on my part but. since we mostly see larry wrapped up in grief, i think people forget how unwilling to compromise he was with connor, i talk about it a little more here, but, he seemed fairly unwilling to attempt to meet connor where he was. i don't think that makes him a monster or anything, but, it does kinda make him a bit of a bad parent
heidi: how hard she tries and how hard she has it. i think this one happens a lot less than the others on this list but, idk, i don't think people appreciate how goddamn hard heidi tries enough, yeah she's not perfect, yeah she fucks up, but man is the effort there
cynthia: the mechanics of her parenting style and the reasons for it, she is often permissive to the point it nearly edges on being an enabler, but just like with larry's authoritarian routine, it's because it's what she thinks will work, gentle parenting done badly by someone who does not understand what gentle parenting means
Give us an Evan ramble? He is the main character, after all
it is very funny that i keep winding up side lining the evan hansen in my dear evan hansen fic lmao
anyway. if making the wrong choices were an olympic sport, evan would be going for gold
listen, evan makes almost exclusively bad choices for the whole damn musical, but like, especially in the novel when you're extra in his head, it's pretty easy to feel some sympathy for him, even when you also want to grab him by the shoulders and shake some damn sense into him.
honestly i don't think i have anything interesting or new to say about him, he's an anxious, mentally ill teenage boy who needs a sort of support he's not getting, and grasped a little desperately at an opportunity to get that kind of support, to everyone's detriment.
also it's fucking ridiculous that people try to discourse about him "not facing any consequences for his actions" did we watch the same musical. just because this seventeen year old is not thrown in jail or whatever the fuck doesn't mean he didn't face consequences. what the fuck are you talking about.
i love all his songs, i love what they tell us about him and his thought process, and i love the way ben platt performs them, the fact that on the cast recording it sounds like evan is about to burst into tears at points is just, perfect, amazing.
his narrating voice in the book is really strong and consistent, and i enjoy all his little side tangents, because like, yeah that's what it's like sometimes, living with an overactive brain, and i think it's done well.
sorry i know this is mostly technical stuff lol, evan as a character does compel me but, i've realized recently i latch onto side characters because of the potential that exists in unexplored character arcs, and evan's got a really strong arc that ties up really nicely, so my thoughts about him are, i think fairly boring? he's an easier character to get a grasp on than some of the others simply because he gets so much airtime, so i see a lot of takes about him that i agree with, and i don't think i diverge that far from most people on him.
oh but that, fun fact from a costume designer, about how evan's sneakers are from new balance to make him look nerdy "without being too dad" is engraved in my brain. i no longer even remember where i first read it, but i will never forget it. it's so funny to me for some reason, i love costume designers.
actually mild side tangent about costumes before i close out real quick, because i think deh does costuming really fucking well, i love evan's slow evolution through the connor project as shown through his costuming, that ends with him in fake connor's hoodie, consumed entirely by this lie he has woven, almost believing it himself, right before everything crashes back down around him. it's subtle and clever, and i love that shit in costumes. 11/10.
anyway, yeah, my evan thoughts? there are not that many of them. sorry. lol.
Zoe ramble?
do you ever think about the fact that zoe is the only person who doesn't immediately buy evan's shit hook line and sinker? because i sure fucking do
"connor hated skiing" sounds like such an innocuous line, BUT IT FUCKING ISN'T. IT'S A CORE PIECE OF ZOE'S CHARACTER AND WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT ENOUGH
listen, listen, i know i've already talked about the murphy siblings and that is Not the question you are asking but i was focused on the kitchen scene in that post and. i couldn't find a good place to bring up the skiing but LISTEN. IT DRIVES ME INSANE.
in the novel when the murphys are all reading over the first emails connor comments to himself that this is what he gets for building his walls so high, that no one in the room knows him well enough to call bullshit, but zoe fucking does
it's so. listen, it's SO important, actually, that zoe is fucking suspicious of evan at first, that she does not cling to the tales he weaves the same way cynthia and larry do. she is angry and she does not believe this boy who is suddenly claiming he and connor were friends, not when she was there to apologize to him in the aftermath of their interaction on the first day of school.
zoe does not want evan's platitudes, she is angry at connor and does not want this sanded-down version of him that evan is constructing.
during the first dinner, cynthia's questions are softballs, she knows this entire thing is fragile spun glass (though she assumes it's because of grief, rather than lies) and she will not shatter it, will not push, because if she does, she will lose access to the version of connor evan is creating, the version she wants desperately to get to know.
zoe's questions, though? they're daggers through the chinks of evan's armor. she aims for the weak points of his lies and she hits them every time. because zoe does not trust this. she is the person in that dining room who actually knew connor best (though she might resent the accusation) so the gaps in evan's stories are obvious to her, even at first glance, and she has no reason to play along.
it's so,,, god it drives me insane.
even after she stops being so actively hostile, stops attacking every crack in his stories, she still wants to hear them the least, that's basically what only us boils down to, her asking evan to stop talking about connor so much. she doesn't want to be "connor murphy's sister", she wants to be zoe, wants some distance from the projection of connor that lays over her.
also i love the way she gets to be angry in her grief, gets to be argumentative, she's pissed off about this! of course she is! this situation is so many fucking shades of awful from every single angle and she's mad about it! as she should be!
but in addition to that, like, god i love the way the novel folds in some lyrics from the show via her music, i love that her bits of requiem and some of only us exist in universe, i love that she uses her music as a way to process her grief, it adds some really nice additional depth to her character.
i also love that she's the single main character who has other friends. evan connor jared and alana are all different ways that people react to anxiety and loneliness, and the different ways those can manifest, and while the evan-connor parallels are by far the strongest, they're all grouped together for a reason. zoe's the only one who exists outside of that, and while she's no social butterfly (and the novel makes it clear that she's habitually somewhat opaque in her relationships) she does, like, have friends, has people she hangs out with and eats lunch with, which makes her somewhat unique within our main cast.
she's also the only person who is not actively involved with the connor project, obviously jared is in on evan's con, and alana jumps at the chance to help with it, but zoe never gets involved, not meaningfully. she is dragged into the plot, unlike the others who all actively step into it.
she's just a little out of sync with the rest of the cast, half a step removed from them, distinct in a very specific way, and it's one of the (many) things that make her really compelling, i think. the way she doesn't fit.
Heidi ramble? Honestly, you should just do one for each character lol
honestly i probably should, but i do worry if i tried to do one for larry i'd just inevitably wind up spoiling an important subplot from all of this can be broken bc my thoughts about him wound up Very tangled up in that context lol.
anyway.
HEIDI MY BELOVED,,,,,, god she's so important to me. sometimes your very best is just not enough in a way you cannot fix on your own, so you just white-knuckle through it because you don't have a real support system, and you are trying so fucking hard but there's no instruction manual and there's no one to guide you or even help you, and there are only so many hours in a day
i love heidi because fuck she tries so goddamn hard, but she's a single mom working too many hours to make ends meet while also taking night classes so she hopefully won't have to work so many hours after she gets her degree, but in the meantime? she's running herself ragged, all while trying to stay aware and engaged with her son's life, which it seems like she broadly succeeded at! up until the connor project when evan starts actively lying to and hiding things from her
oh she's not perfect, she forgets about plans and mixes up dates, but you can tell she's trying and that she cares so much so you just feel so much sympathy for her, because shit, most of this really isn't her fault, but she's the one who's got to pick up the pieces, because who the hell else is going to? mark? not on his fucking life.
i totally understand why heidi's actress needed to be cheered up off-stage after so big/so small every night because fuuuuuuuuuuuuck dude, that song is a very effective emotional gut punch and is such a great look into her character and the way she's been trying so hard to keep her head above water this entire time
and like all the deh characters, she is so human in her flaws, in the ways that she stumbles and fails, but she knows it's important that she try, and she does.
she does her best, and sometimes it's not enough, but honestly, that makes her more compelling.
Can we get a Jared ramble?
listen, i know his bit part in all of this can be broken makes him come off just Terrible but honestly, i love jared as a character
my thoughts about jared are probably even less coherent than my thoughts about alana but, listen, you gotta respect someone willing to commit to the bit as hard as he does for the entire show. unlike alana, he's in on the lie from the beginning, he knows evan's saying bullshit, but he's willing to back him up on it to a point.
jared knows they're running a con, and he's alright with that, what he's not okay with, is when evan seems to start buying what they're selling, when he starts placing more importance on what they both know was a fake friendship than he is on his real friendships. jared only flips when he realizes he's going to be left behind.
despite the way jared crows on and on about "family friends" and how he tells evan he's only being nice to him so his parents will pay for his car insurance, like, that's clearly posturing. jared doesn't actually have any more friends than evan does, and his willingness to help with the connor project does rest on the fact that like, yeah, honestly, when the chips are down, evan's his friend, and i think jared knows that, even if he'd be loathe to admit it aloud.
i also love that he's the one person who forgives evan, at the end of the book, like it's a little up for interpretation but, that's clearly the intention. and i think it's a nice button on his character, of course he'd be the one person willing to really welcome evan back, he's the only other person who knew it was a lie from the start, at the end of the day, he and evan have more in common than they do differences (in a narrative sense, that is).
he's also the only character with no emotional attachment to connor, the murphys are obvious, and alana did have a (thin) connection to him, but jared? in the single scene they share the stage for, he very concisely proves that he does not care about connor murphy on any sort of personal level. so of course, at the end of everything, he's the one willing to put it behind them, because the connor project was evan's scam, he was just playing second-in-command, he had no true skin in the game outside of that.
he's just in this very interesting place in the narrative, and it's a role he fills really well and one i really enjoy tbh
i can't decide whether i prefer alana who uses the word "acquaintance" because she's insecure in her friendships, because she likes to describe everything accurately and doesn't realise it's kind of really weird, or because that way she can convince herself that she's not alone because even if she doesn't have friends at least she has acquaintances (acquaintances is a broad category right? so they can all fit in. even if i probably won't talk to them again, even if i can't remember if they were in that class. they still count, right?)
What are your thoughts on Alana? I feel like she gets overlooked quite a bit.
i love her so fucking much, honestly. i know my fics do Not reflect that but i really really do. "because i know what it's like to feel invisible." absolutely hit me in the face the first time i read it, and like, god i just love her a lot.
she's the only person doing the connor project who isn't lying about it, her connection to connor is genuine, in a way evan's is really not. and she just compels me a lot, i kinda wish we got more of her, i understand why she didn't get a solo song (since evan is the main character a proper solo from her would have ended up a digression in some way no matter where in the show it was placed and would have messed with the pacing) but, on a personal level i really would have loved getting a glimpse into her thoughts during the height of the connor project.
just, the way that she holds onto the very thin connection she and connor had, "we were lab partners in chemistry, and we did a presentation about huck finn together", unwilling to truly lie and exaggerate the way evan does, but still clinging to a connection that might break under too much force, too much scrutiny.
and, y'know, i kinda like to believe that she's barely lying, when she calls him a close acquaintance. i like to imagine alana beck as one of the few if not the only person who might have greeted connor kindly in the hallways between classes, who didn't complain about getting him as her randomly assigned partner for an assignment. who maybe, even while he was alive, understood that in some ways, they were almost the same.
now, calling that belief textually supported would be a goddamn stretch and the sort of mental gymnastics i will not ask you to do with me, lol, but, as a dynamic, it really compels me. (you're right, i should write that fic. it's on my list.)
and you're right, she does get overlooked a lot, and i know i am Not doing my part in attempting to rectify that, but, she deserves more airtime than she tends to get in the fandom. she's very compelling, and there's a lot to explore with her that the musical and novel don't get around to (not necessarily a criticism, it's just an inevitability because there's the Plot and stuff to focus on) and, yknow, she deserves that exploration.
anyway. i love her. so much. beloved.
Ramble about your least favorite DEH character. If you can’t pick, do your least favorite DEH songs (cut songs can be included).
probably says something about me that i immediately thought of my two asshole deh ocs that i invented for fics i haven't even published lmao.
honestly, i don't really. have any? deh is a true musical in the sense that every song moves the plot forward or serves the characters, and in the novel, all the songs were turned into expansive scenes, because that's the only way to adapt a musical into another medium, because the songs are crucial to the structure. (and tbh im not familiar enough with the cut songs to weigh in on them)
in terms of "song i like listening to least", i've already talked about to break in a glove and how i love it as a narrative piece.
and characters,,, again, as an eight man show, deh focuses in on characters who really matter to the story.
sure i'd probably never want to end up in the same room as jared, lol, but i can't call him a true "least favorite" because he does exactly what he needs to in terms of the narrative, and he serves the story extremely well. the show would not be the same without him.
same with larry, ohhh i've got words for him as a person and really want to shake some FUCKING SENSE INTO HIM, but, as a character? he does what he needs to, and serves the story. the show would be less interesting if he wasn't in it.
it's hard to find a true least favorite in something like deh tbh, because there's no true villain, just a lot of people, some of whom are making some really bad fucking choices right now, evan. and everything serves the narrative in its own way.
so,,, guess that's my non-answer of an answer.
Thoughts on Connor as a narrator in the novel?
oh my godddd i love him. i love getting a glimpse into his head, and i love him getting the chance to take his voice back after evan hijacks it with the connor project.
and in general i love it as a way to take advantage of a different medium, in the musical connor never sings, entirely robbed of his voice as he is after his death, because no one ever knew him well enough to have gained that insight into him. but in the novel, he gets a chance to correct the record, the chance to turn to the audience he's denied in the musical.
it somehow makes evan robbing him of his voice more impactful, while giving him a song would have made it seem less so. again, a great use of differing mediums to adjust how the story is told, even though the story itself is the same.
and, okay, i know there was Discourse about it at some point, but i disagree with the people who try and claim that the chapters from connor's pov "soften" him or turn him into a "perfect victim". here, two of my favorite examples.
when zoe walks out of the living room we get:
She storms off. Not much of a storm, in truth. If it were me, I probably would’ve smashed something. (Then, afterward, I’d feel bad about it. But not bad enough to apologize. Or not do it again.)
and in his last chapter:
In the bathroom: the doorframe is two shades of white. The left side had to be replaced. I took a hammer to it. I can’t remember why.
what the novel does is humanize him, it gives him his voice back, gives him a chance to correct the record. it takes him out of the context of other people's perceptions of him, "you're such a freak" "sorry about my brother, he's a psychopath", and into his head.
the novel gives you a chance to really, truly feel for him and get to know him, in a way the musical doesn't, because the only connor we really get to know in the musical is fake connor, plus the things other people say about him, and his like, barely ten minutes of stage presence.
it expands on him, and i love it for that.
also it gave us miguel whom i Love so. extra bonus points for that.
anyway. 11/10 choice, zero complaints, i Love Him.
What’s one thing you can tell us about chapter four of All of This Can Be Broken?
it involves the most screen presence from zoe in the fic so far by a very wide margin :)
Murphy sibling ramble/short analysis?
oh the murphy siblings drive me BUCKWILD insane
actually this is the perfect excuse to talk about one of my favorite bits from the musical
so, okay. movies and musicals have a lot in common when it comes to the measures they take around runtime. they're both mediums that are limited by like, the fact that they're meant to be watched in one sitting. musicals tend to run longer than the average movie (two and a half hours vs 90 minutes, largely because intermissions are still common in musicals but got phased out of movies) but they're still limited, in a way that something like a tv show isn't.
so while tv shows might include like, filler scenes or episodes or whole arcs, musicals and movies always trim the fat, because time is a finite resource in their mediums.
all that is to say, that there is exactly one scene in deh in which connor and zoe are on stage at the same time. the single glimpse we get into their relationship that is not colored by zoe's conflicted grief later on.
and in that scene, the single moment we get as an establishment of what their relationship actually looked like a majority of the time, zoe proves herself as the single person who is willing to match connor's energy.
here, let me transcribe it for anyone who. is not as insane as i am and doesn't have it memorized:
(larry)"he's not listening, he's probably high."
(zoe)"he's definitely high."
(connor)"fuck you!"
(zoe)"fuck you."
(cynthia)"i do not need you picking at your brother right now, that is not constructive!"
(zoe)"are you kidding?"
now, the scene itself is very obviously about establishing the murphy family dynamic more broadly and it does a really good job at it, especially considering how quickly connor exits, but it really is connor and zoe's interaction here that drives me insane
again, this is the single scene that they share, the single chance the writers get to establish how they interact with each other, and when connor snaps, instead of startling, or flinching, or even just ignoring it; zoe snaps back. she reflects connor's energy right back at him with no hesitation, with no concern for how he might react.
for all that zoe later describes him in requiem as a monster and a villain, she is not afraid of him, because that is not how you react when someone you are afraid of yells at you. it's how you react when your brother is being a dick.
it's just,,, there's something in that, isn't there? in the fact for all the ways she talks about him later on, in the moment, when he is alive, when he is there, sitting across from her at the kitchen table, zoe is not afraid of her brother, or his temper. she's just annoyed by him.
they just interact like siblings, like people raised together under the same roof. that foundation from when they were kids, back when they did get along, still exists under the new form their relationship has taken, and in another world, with the right sort of work, they could have stripped away the worse parts, and built something else good on that foundation.
the potential was always there, they just never got a chance to act on it.
[ID: Meme of a person swimming upwards in the ocean. They are being followed by a shark with an open mouth. The shark, in turn, is being followed by huge shark-like jaws that take up the bottom of the image. The person is labeled: "the lore I write." The shark is labeled: "the lore I talk about." And the jaws are labeled: "the lore I obsessively daydream hyper detailed scenories of as I fall alseep in bed."
The most important thing you can do in this life is write hyper-specific fanfiction for you and six other people. Don’t believe anything else you read.
sorry again about the wait. writing is hard lol.
ALL OF THIS CAN BE BROKEN CHAPTER THREE IS REAL THOUGH!!!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
So happy you enjoyed the question. Here’s another: On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the emotional damage of chapter 3.
ooooooooh that's a tough one tbh. it's definitely a lot rougher than the first two chapters, so it might vary depending on where you place those but i'd say,,, a pretty solid 8?
What was your inspiration for writing All of This Can Be Broken (All of This Will Be Broken)?
a bunch of different things! part of it was, i finally read the novel three days after my yearly rewatch of groundhog day, so i had time loops already on the brain as i was reading connor's chapters and finally learning about him the way i always wanted to back when i was obsessed with the musical. and when i hit the supermarket parking lot scene and Fucking Cried i kinda just, clicked the two together because i realized that a time loop could, in fact, resolve all the moments that made me Cry.
the first draft of what will be chapter 4 was actually the first piece of deh fic i wrote after finishing the book, because i needed so badly to immediately put connor in the torment nexus- i mean, time loop.
also i realized i am, as far as i can tell, the first person to put connor in a solo time loop, which is mindboggling to me because he feels like the obvious choice, but that could just be a result of novel goggles and the fact that i Love Him.
i just love time loops as tools for character studies, you can learn so much about a character by how they interface with a time loop, and i'm having fun tossing connor around in this one. getting to take him apart to find out what makes him tick is fascinating.
as for other general inspo for the fic, i do have a playlist of exactly that if you want General Vibes. "bleak", "so much (for) stardust", "again & again", "alice", and "back in school" are Particularly notable even within the list, as well. (fun fact btw, "it tore your heart out" is the first song on the playlist bc that's the song i got the original working title from before i switched it out for the laura marling lyric that i wound up using. it's also where i got this blog's url!)
anyway, tl:dr, i read the book. cried. went "i can fix Everything that made me cry by shoving connor into a time loop (surely this action will have No consequences for him)" and refused to look back so now it is Everyone's problem (but still mostly connor's).
