love the bloodymary au where Markiplier is an actual person in Ryland's universe and funny confusion happens but. Hear this: The movie and game are actual things in Ryland's universe. Simon finally trusts Grace enough to explain what The Quiet Rapture is and when Grace goes to look stuff up about it to see if that's even a concept in his universe the movie pops up and Simon is horrified to realize that it's just a two hour recreation of his most vulnerable moment in life that just. exists out there. for everyone to see. for Grace to see. Nevermind all of the existential questions he gets from it, the sheer amount of shame is enough to kill a man.
Yes I'm writing hcs about a plot point that isn't even technically canon yet, eat my bricks.
- Around the beginning of act 4, Andrew's attitude towards strangers, the few friends we can infer he has besides Chris, and his family greatly changed. While he used to be just a calm, nice guy to hang out with, he turned a little more aggressive, started snapping at people easily, and generally became More Concerning. So when Everette comes into the picture, it doesn't sound too surprising that "Andrew" became a complete loner and shut-in. Rudely glaring at those who tried to strike a friendly conversation or one-upping a friendly smile with a threatening one.
- I have two paths I can see with Everette's relationship with digital devices after the possession, he either:
A. Does not dare touch it or even look at it due to fear, or
B. He's fine interacting with it. Which leads to a few interesting thoughts...
- In case of B, Everette definetly deleted like, half of Andrew's contacts on his phone LMAO. Specifically the people who were acting concerned about Andrew, or were just generally nice to him. He's just protecting himself from getting hurt by others again.
- Yeah, Everette's opinions on people didn't change one bit. He didn't steal Andrew's body to get friends, or reconnect with anyone, or even start a new life. He stole it to live again. He stole it to smile again and to look outside, like he'd look out of the lonely window. Might seem like a shallow motive to steal a body for, but if I was stuck in the digital plane for a decade, I'd want to smell the grass again.
- Speaking of smelling, I bet Everette is not used to senses! At all! Specifically taste and smell. Everette becomes overwhelmed with flavor in food very quickly, so he prefers to eat things with less flavor and minimal odor.
- However, the same could not be said for smell in general. Food is overwhelming cause it's basically taste AND smell at the same time, but I feel like Everette would enjoy just smelling things. Never let him in a candle store. Ever. Oh and he totally stole some of Andrew's sister's perfumes to try out (he sprayed too much the first time, either that or he did so straight into Andrew's nose and choked hard).
- Contrary to the whole "Everette's opinion on people didn't change and he socially turns Andrew into a total recluse" thing, his roommates/family observe that Andrew actually seems happier than usual, even if he talks oddly and seems more... passive-aggressive rather than aggressive-aggressive, Everette makes Andrew seem healthier by like, walking around outside and Eating Food and Sleeping Normally Like A Normal Person.
- Everette gets nightmares. Waaaayyyy more than Andrew does. And he reacts WAYYYY worse than Andrew would.
- Everette starts feeling kind of... stuck after a while. He starts living life again, yeah, but beyond that there is way more. Andrew's responsibilities he has to deal with, people and society in general, money, a way to move forward. He has an idea of where to go forward, and a little bit of a plan, but with the Minecraft world still there, and his original body being nothing but a few bones at the bottom of a well, I feel like he'd be inclined to go back to. Not. Being alive fast. Or, at the very least, try a different way to go. We're more comfortable in places we're familiar with, I feel like this logic could apply here.
- Absolutely horrid body puppeteering skills. He can look normal enough, but good lord his facial expressions and body language are way, WAY off. He's been stuck in a select pre-set of animations that he had no control over and a never-changing skin with a fake smile, and now he needs to take control of a whole body. Which, he isn't very good with, he's relying on Andrew's muscle memory for the most part. But his facial expressions are uh, rather uncanny. Or at the very least weird. Think of the game "Who's Lila?" — it's that.
- Surprisingly acts Andrew's age. A little less depressed, a little less aggressive (more confrontational), but not childish. Just not exactly... mature? Not even teen-like, he's just acting like a smartass-asshole. That's the best way I can describe it.
- HORRIBLE volume control. Shouts a lot. And when he doesn't shout he whispers extremely quietly, like even if someone tried to hear him, they wouldn't be able to, since it was not meant to be heard.
Yeah that's all I have for now, it's getting late, I'm scared as fuck for the next episode and just wanted to throw some headcanons out there before we get the new ep. There are only a few days left in December...
i find it so fun and interesting that you recognize the infinite knowledge take as fanon turned perceived-canon, and yet you say "you know what? this take is so fun. go absolutely hog wild with this, throw canon to the wind. have fun, i'm certainly having fun observing you all."
usually, i only see people getting upset anytime something fanon becomes widely perceived as canon, and y'know, i get why they'd feel that way. but this rule of cool approach feels refreshing, and i hope i worded this in a way that makes sense.
I can't believe I saw this only now! Thank you!
It's always fun to throw canon in a bonfire and cook up something else, and it's even more fun when you're cooking it with a whole bunch of other people. Like idk!! This steak be fucking fire!! Who cares if it's the wrong cow???
Just thinking about how if Andrew gets trapped in the digital world, and gains a digital body, it would be his first and only time truly being face to face with Chris.
Anyone else really scared for the next ag67 episode? No? Just me?
Like yeah, we know it's implied in Slipping Through The Cracks that SMILE/Everette will take over (or, at the very least, attempt to take over) Andrew's body. But I'm scratching my head and pulling out my handkerchief to wipe the droplets of sweat off my face at the thought of just how this will be shown to us and done. Horrifying thoughts. I'm losing my mind.
I really like the concept of d3rking because it's just. So funny. In any scenario.
Uh oh! Bad decision D3rLord3! You've attempted to outsmart the deity that knows literally everything by fanon! And you ALMOST succeeded because you were so clever and unpredictable?? Now you have said wild deity wagging its tail whenever you're near because you're so special and smart and like, it highkey doesn't even want to make you insane or anything, that's just how it works.
I find it interesting how because of a single comment on wifies' video everyone in the fandom agrees that d3rlord3 saw the King in yellow behind the gates, and that seeing Him gave d3rlord3 infinite knowledge, even though nowhere in the book does it say that looking at the King will give you infinite knowledge. Word spreads fast huh
I mean technically how else would he know that a random guy named Avery would find the pc in a school locker, play Minecraft on it, go into the cave, read his book and go on to investigate that
Idk may just be me speculating though. I haven't even read the book itself yet what do I know right
It is curious, but in the book it never states that anyone got infinite knowledge. Just that people who got a glimpse of act 2 of the fictional play "The King In Yellow" went mad.
Although, there are multiple instances where characters know things they seemingly couldn't (or shouldn't) be able to know, none of them in the future, I believe, but a couple nonetheless (Mr.Wilde and kiinda Hildred Castaigne in Repairer of Reputations, and also the mc of The Yellow Sign [who I forgot the name of if he had one god I need to reread tys], who as it is revealed wrote his story [tys] himself, after which the book switches from first person to third person, and becomes less focused on The King In Yellow. Almost like someone else picked it up and continued writing, which could imply that every story before tys was also written by him... Curious [EDIT: I totally forgot The Demoiselle d'Ys oh my god ignore this LMAO]) so I wouldn't say that that theory is completely untrue.
I still think that — while I don't believe that's what actually happened — it's what we should explore. The King as a concept is horrifying and brilliant, and the idea of getting infinite knowledge from the mere sight of Him is even more so, so why not throw potential "canon" into the dump to explore more interesting storylines? It's not like it was debunked in the book anyway, so I think we should go wild!
I find it interesting how because of a single comment on wifies' video everyone in the fandom agrees that d3rlord3 saw the King in yellow behind the gates, and that seeing Him gave d3rlord3 infinite knowledge, even though nowhere in the book does it say that looking at the King will give you infinite knowledge. Word spreads fast huh
This usually pertains to dreams, but I think it's interesting to note that teeth falling out is usually meant to represent helplessness, loss, and despair. Is that anything.
I have a theory about the visitors, not what the visitors are, but about the rates in which a character is a visitor (100% visitor, 0% visitor, random <- these ones)
Besides just being a game mechanic and a reason for characters acting a certain way, I feel like these "rates" are the key to figure out why certain visitors get huge visitor symptoms such as holes in stomachs, melting faces, or horrifying mutations, whilst other visitors are just normal humans with a virus.
I think the key (more or less) here is death. Or, more precisely, a person's relation to death.
I noticed some patterns in the species of characters we encounter, the ones who are guaranteed humans and the ones who are guaranteed visitors, that go against each other in a way that matches up perfectly.
The guaranteed humans are usually resigned people. People who have accepted death or even outwardly seek it out. Their stories and dialogues end with suicide in most cases, some by the sun and some by their own hand. But each human has a strong connection with death, including us — the protagonist.
The guaranteed visitors (and the pale man, when he was a human. I'm including him) on the other hand, are shown to not accept death, fear it, or insist that it will never happen to them. Their dialogue ends with being forced to kill them half of the time.
If you're knocking on death's door and you act hospitable towards her, she'll let you in, of course. You're welcoming her and embracing her, why wouldn't you stay? Why wouldn't you die? But if you're knocking on death's door, whining and crying about how you never want to meet her, obviously she's gonna close the door on you. Don't meet death anyway! Stay alive and serve her instead, out there in the burning sun. Hide in the dirty ground with the worms and bones and weep that you won't be able to join them. Because at night you'll crawl back out. That's what you get for being ungrateful of the eternal rest.
Get where I'm coming from? I think that the visitors who are 100% visitors are either corpses who crawled out from underground on the first day, those who died and got resurrected as the cataclysmic started, or those who have a special relationship to death. And the guests who are random are those who got infected by the parasites in their ears.
(I wrote a bit about each character who is 100% human and 100% visitor below if you want to read a bit more on how I see the patterns. Spoilers ahead if that wasn't obvious!)
Humans
Bar guy - visibly depressed, openly talks about death and how gloomy life is. Even though he's not much fond of most depictions of what happens after death, the idea of death itself is one he welcomes.
Neighbor's daughter - she's too young to know of death, or properly understand it. (note: gives us a phone number to a household with her now dead friend, if that matters?)
Widowed woman - carries a corpse around, goes outside in the sun at the end of her dialogue.
Hazmat guy - worked at FEMA, can go outside in the sun in a dialogue option. Seems kinda detached to the concept of death because, yknow, FEMA.
Burnt firefighter - accepts death already, passes away in our home at the end of his dialogue.
Blinded guy - pretty self explanatory, also hangs himself in our kitchen at the end of his dialogue.
Cultists - also self explanatory. They literally run a cult worshipping death.
Kindergarten teacher - shoots herself at the end of her dialogue.
Wireface - the only outlier! I think he has different things to worry about other than death though so
Visitors
Cashier girl - constantly thanks us for letting her live just a day longer, extremely scared of dying. Asks for a bandage to cover her eyes if we shoot her because she's so scared. Supposedly passed out in the scorching sun and is still, yknow, talking to us.
Old lady - acts like one of the randomized guests, except her stories never match up. An observer instead of a partaker. Not quite living her own life, but not exactly wasting away either. In a way, watching is also living. Also I'm like 50% sure she's another embodiment of death, but other than that, there's not much.
Immortal man - his fandom name speaks for itself. He thinks he is immortal, one who cannot meet death under any circumstance — above death, above life. Always churning and always moving.
Big momma - I am choosing to ignore this one for the sake of my own sanity. Gets killed by us at the end of her dialogue though.
Coat guy - scared of taking off any layers, notably not because he's scared of death, but because he's scared that death won't come to him if he does take off layers, and he'll be left to suffer. A special case, because unlike the others, death, like space and like society, doesn't even need him.
Pale visitor - from the huntsman we can tell that he was horrified of something when he was a human, so much so that he begged to be let in the huntsman's house and going as far as trying to break into his window. Something was following him, and he'd looked "like he had seen death itself."
Ballerina - I have no clue on this one to be completely honest LMAO we know practically nothing about her, and I've played this game in Russian and English. Uhm. Outlier. Gets killed by us at the end of her dialogue though.
Maybe it's just the side of the fandom where I'm at but I see so many depictions of the protagonist as this emotionless, stoic guy, which I (personally) disagree with.
He audibly freaked out multiple times over the course of the game (pale visitor breaking down his door, being torn apart by visitors in his basement), acted downright rude and took next to no shit from guests (mostly in the rus version), was generally wary and concerned over guests in quite a few dialogue options, multiple endings exist just because he felt a certain thing to an extreme (vigilante – rage, murderer – paranoia), and he has "I'm scared" dialogue options when meeting death.
All of this makes sense cause, well, duh. If you're about to die, you'll be scared. And if someone is banging on your door so loud, obviously you're gonna retaliate. And you as the player can always choose to go the soulless route, cause you "control" the protagonist. But you're not exactly writing the dialogue yourself, the options are still there and, in my opinion, still canon.
You choose how you act during the game, and the beliefs the protagonist has when, for example, bar guy asks you what you think happens after death. You can control his moral compass and level of asshole-ness with letting people in or not letting them in, but the dialogue options stay the same, and the things the protagonist has to say about the house stay the same.
It's just sad seeing so much potential get thrown out for the sake of keeping the mysterious vibe, when his character isn't even all that mysterious. The protagonist is one of the few characters we know most about (in terms of backstory & psyche). Just because he's an adult man who keeps to himself doesn't mean he's this "I feel no feelings" alpha loner. Honestly, I feel like he's quicker to lash out and get frustrated & upset than others because of how alone he is, since he's not used to dealing with anyone but himself.
how do ao3 authors write so fast. guys. slow down pls. i'm out of breath. guys help. slow down. i haven't written a single word in the last three hours. guys.
This rarepair gained popularity seemingly out of nowhere, the reason people shipped them being that they just "look neat together", which, I agree. I am a juncruiter shipper, if that wasn't obvious. Juncruiter is neat.
I'm not gonna write about how or why they became popular (and like, the go-to for either Junho or The Recruiter as a side-pairing in any fic ever somehow) because I do not like analyzing social behavior and people scare me. I'm here to ramble about why this pairing makes sense through my personal outlook on these characters and nonsense yap. Strap in.
Other than the fact that these characters look hot together (let's not lie here, the juncruiter tag on ao3 is like 80% rated E), their chemistry and dynamic is explosive.
But. Where the hell did this chemistry even come from?Junho and the Recruiter never even interact. And in the only scene where they're both together, one is already dead. Removing any possibility of them ever crossing paths.
Obviously it's all in the potential. Junho is Inho's brother for God's sake, the Recruiter's boss. People flock to these dynamics like seagulls to fish.
Usually, because the relative of the boss is dating the employee, the relative is the one who has the upper hand. This could easily be applied to Juncruiter as well if you just spin that Junho has some sort of "protection" because he's Inho's brother. So, if the Recruiter were to get close to Junho, he wouldn't be able to do anything because the big boss would have his head on a stake. (for the sake of this let's just ignore the "kill them all" line.)
But, with the nature of the Recruiter as a certified asshole and a menace, and the fact that Inho hides away from his brother like the plague, this cliche gets flipped completely on its head.
Junho's entire motivation throughout Squid Game is to find his brother, and after season 1, he knows where he is. He just. Doesn't know where he is.
Enter the Recruiter. A man who works for the games and goes on fishing trips with Inho (??? funny asf btw, best bit SG ever gave us). That man has information which he can dangle over Junho's head like bait. And since there is no other source of information available to Junho (not including Gihun, who barely knows anything himself), he has to take the Recruiter's bait in order to get to his goal.
However, that does not suddenly erase Junho's status of being a legitimate threat to the Recruiter's job. Or, yk, a threat to his safety. The games' nature and all.
By this point, it's clear that there's a power imbalance. But. Somehow. From both sides? And it only shifts when either of them realize that they have this power over the other.
This is what I personally really like about the ship. You can take any approach with it and it will still work, no matter what your preferances are.
Junho is a police officer, a man of justice. Someone who aims to help and to solve. And yet he breaks all protocol to follow his own goal of finding his brother without any help.
We assume that he's a good man based on his position, and his ambition to find his older brother. A selflessly selfish goal — complicated. He's doing this for his family, and yet, even after that family outright rejected him, he went out on his search again, but this time to get answers instead of saving anyone (and I don't mean to imply that Junho is wrong for that, by the way. But just that he has different, slightly more selfish goals compared to, say, Gihun, who is much MUCH more selfless than the avarage person).
So in this inherently good, selfless person who cares deeply about his brother, there's a blindspot in morality where he prioritizes what he wants to achieve over his safety or others.
The Recruiter, in contrast, is an entirely selfish character. He does things because they're entertaining to him. He toys with people because it's fun to watch them squirm. He spins the cylinder and shoots because it gives him a thrill he cannot find elsewhere. Guns and death give him purpose. His entire existence and life is built at the expense of others.
He's mysterious, and we don't know much about him, that's his whole appeal. You can slap practically anything on him and as long as you spin it well, it can work. But he is not meant to be sympathetic. Or is he?
He has worked at the games from a young age. Likely completely neglected of purpose or care when not in them. Because, when he was given a gun, it was like he was given meaning. Like someone finally looked at him and deemed him "worthy" of being looked at. At this point, I would even argue that he could be a victim of the system. Lured into dangerous jobs because feeling like you have weight somewhere feels good when you don't have it anywhere else.
But after a certain amount of time, and a few promotions, the Recruiter is no longer worthy of such sympathy. He isn't risking his life by playing Ddakji with people, he clearly feels superior to all of the "trash" that he sees outside, and he even goes out of his way to do social experiments with homeless people for no reason other than proving a point to himself. Again and again.
Life was probably harsh to the Recruiter, at first, but the ideals of the games have been drilled into him too much to be reversed. His life has no purpose, and his death was self-fulfilling. To the very end, he is a selfish, irredeemable man.
Junho and the Recruiter completely mirror each other whilst being direct oppositions of each other. They can both use their circumstances and ideals against the other, and yet, use the opposite ideal against the other as well. (I don't know how to word this in the best way, so let me explain.)
Junho's flaw is that he is selfish, the Recruiter can remind him of that through his own actions and the information that he holds. It's just a matter of how much Junho will fight for that information.
The Recruiter's flaw is his history, and the very moral code that he holds. You can toy with his sense of purpose like a yoyo if you have privilege above him, which Junho does. Since he's Inho's brother. Junho isn't entirely stupid, he will catch onto the Recruiter's fatal flaw when enough clues are given to him.
They can both easily rise against and toy with the other.
It's interesting how the only scene where they're together in canon is when they're both unconscious. Extremely close physically, but still farther than ever. Like magnets that have the characteristics of both sides at the same time, Impossible to put together, but helplessly gravitating towards each other at the same time. Though this is starting to sound like nonsense now so I'll wrap it up.
Juncruiter is peak and my friends are tired of hearing about it, so I'm doing the ultimate move and instead of annoying them, I'm going on TUMBLR to be annoying about juncruiter!! Yay!!! Uhm anyways yeah, this totally isn't bait to convince people to write more fic about them whattt??? No but seriously they have SO MUCH MEAT to them that you could write about AUGHHHH if I didn't already have a billion wips I would've done it myself but... Sigh. Alas.
Anyways, I hope this was at least a bit entertaining? I personally love reading character analyses so if anyone has anything to add to this or wants to counter anything I said, please send me an ask or talk about it yourself! I'd love to hear about it <3
