as my final thought before i go to bed and then disappear off tumblr for the whole day tomorrow in order to avoid limited life spoilers, i leave you with something about watcher grian in the traffic series.
specifically, this ask from martyn regarding watchers feeding on negative energy.
i'm not focusing on the feeding aspect so much as i am about how martyn says "[grian's] chaotic / mischievous nature actually takes the edge off for a lot of players. Helping them revel in the twists and turns, adopting a more 'the games the game' mindset actually sours the soup so to speak." this is in reference to the watchers feeding on negative energy, and implying that grian disrupts that by trying to make people have fun.
and somehow. THIS HAS JUST BEEN SITTING IN MY MIND FOR DAYS. it's the way that grian isn't, at least at this point, able to break them out of the games, but he is able to cause the watchers annoyance and disrupt their plans. it also dovetails very nicely between the rp "this is a death game loop everyone is trapped in" and the irl "this is a game the creators choose to participate in."
it's a death game but grian's there, smile on his face and pain behind his eyes, trying to coax everyone into having as much of a good time as they can instead.
we also tend to view a lot of grian's more....violent and chaotic incidents in the traffic series as a flaw or negative trait when we do more serious-readings of the series. but this concept, and martyn's wording of "helping [the players] revel in the twists and turns of the game" really imply otherwise. sure, grian kills gleefully and takes a lot of joy in causing trouble, but he is far from the only one. if everyone is encouraged to have fun making traps and scheming, giving in to some of these worse desires--and they are and they do--then they're actively going against the watcher's expected outcomes. they all die in the end, either way. if they can take some fun from dropping tnt minecarts on each other, then at least they died AND pissed off the watchers right?
idk idk it's the tiny bit of control over a hopeless situation that's getting me with this. martyn notes that grian is consistently been an annoyance to the watchers and they haven't been able to stop him, but grian is also clearly unable to stop the death games. (of course the meta reason is the CCs like making them, but from an rp standpoint he would gave ended it by now if it were an easy task.) it's like a stand-off. he can keep causing them problems. they can keep the games going. he can't break everyone out of the games, but he can ensure the games don't go the way they want them to. the players in the games don't have much control over their situation, but if they can find some fun in not taking it so seriously, then that's just a tiny bit more control that they have.
so it's just....a watcher!grian doing the best he can in a bad situation. finding a bright spot in it and trying to make others enjoy it too. and thus the traffic series is goofy and silly, filled with laughter that covers and undercurrent of despair.
grian and scar laughed while they fought in the cactus ring in 3rd life, remember?
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