that one hopecore message thats like "i WILL make it because i am crazy" but its neil josten who let his fucking countdown go down with no plan, no backup, no one even aware. lmao yes he is just that crazy. fate bows to his contumacious nature
Have you guys noticed how much the internet/technology just does not listen to you anymore? I click “don’t show this artist” on Spotify and I get recommended a music video by them on the front page. I click “skip this update” on a pop up every time I open a file organization app and it’s right back there every time. O click unsubscribe on a newsletter and it keeps showing up in my inbox!! I click “delete my account” and the next time I open the website they suggest I “reactivate”.
the fact that the eye is shown to be actively opposed to the loss or destruction of knowledge is borderline hilarious to me considering the closest thing it has had to an actually qualified employee for the Special Room Where It Keeps Its Knowledge in at least the last century was that one guy who was too busy being a simp for a serial murderer and gouging out his own fucking eyes to have any long-term effect on the non-spooky parts of the position. the most shocking part of jon getting the job is not the blatant lack of qualifications but the fact that elias was able to choke out the offer over the eye beaming the same anxiety attack over document storage that it’s been having since the vietnam war directly into his little twink skull
like we all dunk on jon for being completely unqualified (fair and true) but so was everyone. fandom seemed to take tim at face value that sasha was qualified for the job and while she definitely had seniority on jon, the girl was also fucking stapling random sheets of paper together when a single google search will tell you to absolutely not do that. tim was an ex-corporate drone who was only there to revenge-kill a regency clown and martin just straight up lied about his qualifications because he didn’t have any. gertrude was the most qualified woman alive to commit acts of violence that violated the geneva convention but from an actual literal standpoint she was a terrible fucking archivist. at age 20 she received supernatural job security and a blank check for a budget funded by a man scared shitless of her and that defined her approach to employment for the rest of her life. her number one hobby was arson and her number two hobby was keeping secrets. not only did she never do any archiving I guarantee you she did not even know what an archivist was. queen of doing any fucking job but the one you hired her for. I’m in love with her.
Hello! I think you said once about a story you had about Danny, Jon and Gerry being ghost hunters (sorry if I misremembered) - I’d love to hear anything else you’re willing to say about it! Your writing is so incredibly amazing, thank you so much for sharing it. I hope you have a great day.
Himbois AU my BELOVED. I have two TMA Buzzfeed unsolved AUs and this one is my favorite of the two. I can’t remember what I’ve shared about this in the past so sorry if this is repetitive:
None of my fanfiction would exist if it were not for this AU because I explained it over text to my beloved moon wife and it made me remember how fun it was to share stories with other people and I started this account
The impetus to this entire thing is Agnes Montague. Jon is trapped in a Web plot, and she is the Web’s natural opposite. The Web carefully lays plans and she destroys them. She meets Jon when he goes to Oxford. Jon had to fight through a horrible craving for cigarettes to even walk into that diner, and the only reason why he did was because he couldn’t afford to buy more cigarettes.
They are inexplicably drawn to one another when they meet. She asks him to walk with her. She asks him if he would rather his path be determined by luck or fate, and he says luck. So she decides to grant him is wish, and rips the webs from his limbs.
It’s a horribly painful process. They’ve been on him since he was eight, after all, and after so long, they’ve become embedded beneath his skin. But he begs her to keep going, even when it gets so painful that he can’t move from it. When she’s done, she tells him that he has his luck, and she does not know if it will be enough to save him. Do not try to find her again.
Both of them think of the other as one of their dearest friends, after, even though they never speak again. Jon thinks of her as the woman who saved him. She thinks of him as the recipient of the one good deed she ever did.
A dog walker finds him burnt and bleeding out in the park and the police get called. Everyone thinks he was subject to a horrific attack by a sadistic freak. Because if Agnes ripping webs out from under his skin, he’s got huge gouges out of his flesh and burns in the shape of hands all over him. He feigns amnesia from the trauma and no one is ever arrested in connection with the crime.
The Web is fucking sweating trying to get him back on fucking track to chain his soul to the eye and end the world but he’s got wildly unmedicated adhd and drama in his soul so he starts a space pirate steampunk folk rock band instead and gets really into leather pants and eyeliner. Keeps forgetting to put in an application to the Magnus institute, re: unmedicated adhd, and it was hard enough to get the application in front of his face to begin with. It’s losing its mind.
Eventually it decides that there’s no way of doing this because Jon with total free will is forgetful and chaotic and it’s just too risky to the operation. But because of what Agnes did, the only way it can get webs back in him is if Jon willingly puts them back on. So it sends Annabelle Cane to intimidate him with simply a fuckton of spiders in an alley. It will make it so very painful while he resists, but if he puts the webs back on? They’ll make him forget it ever happened. And he’ll go on to the place that the Web will get him to anyway, but with far worse pain if he fights.
Cue immediate descent into madness for Jon.
From Georgie’s and his friend’s perspective he gets extremely paranoid, drops out of school, thinks he’s being followed everywhere (he is), and cuts them all out of his life.
From Jon’s perspective, he is desperately trying to escape the Web and unknowingly has kickstarted his own Becoming from his paranoid investigation into the powers. His Nan dies, and the Web sends him flowers to know that it killed her as a punishment for his resistance. He moves into his childhood home and gets more desperate in his search
Then Jessica, his friend from his band, disappears.
The Web arranged for the Circus to take her for parts, then texted Jon from her phone with an address to the warehouse in the woods telling him to come and see what he did to his friend. By the time he gets there, there is already another thing wearing his friend, and yet another speaking with her voice. He’s too late to save her.
While he’s sneaking out of the warehouse he catches a man’s eye. They’ll stopped halfway through the process of slicing off his skin, where it’s partially dissected and hanging off of him. He’s still alive. And there is so much pain and fear in his eyes when Jon locks eyes with him.
Maybe Jon just wanted to know he could save someone.
Whatever the reason, he physically drags this guy out of there, puts him in the back of his Nan’s car, and books it to the nearest hospital. He drops this guy off and fucks off the second people start asking questions like “what the fuck” and “what happened” and “hey, shouldn’t that guy be dead”
The Web watching Jon do what it least expected him to do which is manual labor: ::::o
Jon realizes he has to isolate himself completely. He can’t speak to his friends ever again. He can’t even be in a position to hear news about his friends again. They can’t be used against him if he won’t learn what the Web has done to them. He ices everyone he’s ever loved out and sets out hunting leitner to try and 1) learn more about what is doing this to him and why and 2) see if there’s one that can free him from whatever is hunting him
One day while he’s being generally insane and anguished and whatnot he gains the sudden and inexplicable knowledge that the man he saved is going to be executed along an empty stretch of road by the police, who know he is spooky and cannot allow him to live least other people learn about the existence of spooky things. He does not question how he knows this. He gets in his car and then drives straight to where the knowledge tells him to go and then he hits a police officer with his Nan’s car. He is extremely chaotic and impulsive and it just seemed like the thing to do okay
The man he saved has no memory of a time before the warehouse and has a lot of spooky injuries that cannot heal but inexplicably still allow him to function. Like his hand is barely hanging onto his body by a scrap of flesh and they have to stitch the rest back together but he can still move his fingers and use his hands just fine. He doesn’t get it either.
Anyway section 31 took one look at that bullshit and decided to shoot him in the head somewhere and call it a day and didn’t expect a deranged twink in a 1974 Honda civic to barrel down the road and immediately ram the officer on scene because the evil god that secretly lives in his head told him this was going on and like. He’s not gonna NOT save this guy. He’s done like one good thing in his entire life and that was shove this guy’s massacred body in the back of his grandmas hatchback he’s not gonna let the police UNDO that hard work
Jon doesn’t really know what to do with this guy now that he’s saved him a second time and is sort of freaked out by the Super Prison awaiting him for hitting a police officer with his fucking car so just decides fuck it he can stay in the spare room of his Nan’s house while Jon hunts Leitners.
Jon finds what is, unbeknownst to him, one of the desolation’s leitners on the day that the circus tracks the man to his house. The man lunges for the book, opens it, and the house burns down with Breekon and Hope in it. Jon and the man barely make it out alive. They see Breekon and Hope walk out of the burning house, on fire and wholly unconcerned, and know they have to both run. Now they’re living out of Jon’s Nan’s ancient hatchback and barely scraping by and know that the things chasing them are getting closer by the day
The Web is fine with all this because “Jon has a dark academia style descent into madness and we just sort of skip the Magnus institute and have him become the archivist anyway and get marked by the powers while dicking around with the supernatural” was actually its plan b. This is going great.
They decide the man’s name is Danny because originally he tried out a new name every day and then inexplicably Jon just called him Danny one day absentmindedly without knowing why and Danny had a fucking seizure about it which Danny decided was. Promising. Eventually he built up a tolerance and the seizures stopped so Danny it is then.
Danny is fucking stressed every time Jon goes off on his own. His mobility is limited because he is literally stitched together right now but Jon is somehow serial killer bait?? It is statistically improbable the number of serial killers he meets on his own. He was asking after leitners at a bookstore once and some guy named Mike told him he reminded him of himself, made him feel like he was falling for hours, decided not to kill him, genuinely wished him luck, and fucked off. Like how does that even happen. Jon just goes outside and indiscriminately violent people find him.
Jon insists he’s not going to get serial killed at the next bookstore he goes to, goes to Mary Keay’s bookshop, has a lovely chat with her over tea, asks her if she has a spot of cream, and then tries to climb out the fucking window because oh god oh fuck she’s a serial killer isn’t she
The windows are locked and she’s got a fucking gun so Jon ends up strapped to a table getting serial killed. Danny is going to be so pissed if he gets back and more pissed if he doesn’t
She’s barely started slicing at his skin, has to leave to get the phone, and a kind and beautiful goth rushes in the room and helps Jon escape. They take off together running, both kind of waffle around going to the police, which makes them both realize the other is fucked in the same sort of way. Jon offers to let him crash in their shit motel room for the night so he at least has a safe place to sleep. Well. Relatively safe place.
Fuck it. Fine. Call him Gerry.
Gerry follows this web marked guy back to a shit motel and finds a guy who’s obviously marked by the stranger who sees the blood and immediately starts bitching Jon out for getting serial killed without him and is like “oh you guys are FUCKED fucked”
It is without a doubt the greatest night of his entire life.
Despite how fucked these two are, there’s genuine love between them. They are all they have in the world, and they obviously care about the other despite being impossibly screwed. They treat Gerry kinder than anyone has treated him in a long time. He sort of wants to cry, sitting here with them.
Danny lets him use the green mug (objectively the best mug) because he is a guest and Jon got serial killed when he SAID he wasn’t going to get serial killed and then subjects Gerry to a PowerPoint presentation he’s prepared about What The Fuck Is Up With Jon: Ongoing Theories
Danny: theory 1) he could always do this stuff and no one noticed; theory 2) boy wizard undergoing delayed magic puberty; theory 3) he is possessed theory 4) he is just shaped like a serial killer victim theory 5) it is a pheromone thing; theory 6) he—
Gerry: it’s the third one
Jon: fuck
Gerry is the one who finally tells them everything. They could cry from relief because they’ve been flying blind this whole time. He explains the world, the powers, leitners, his mother, everything.
He’s tried to report his mother to the police to stop her from murdering people and whatnot but she told them that he was her crazy rebellious son and she’s trying so hard with him and he keeps doing these things and he got slapped with making a false report charge and is just. Fucked no matter what. But Jon is like “I could report her for trying to serial kill me? And maybe they’ll find her fucked up skin book?” And Gerry is like “that would be so cool of you for real”
Anyway they get immediately arrested because Mary tells the police that Gerry is her crazy rebellious son and Jon is her crazy rebellious son’s friend and they wrecked her house and are doing this because she wouldn’t buy them concert tickets and Jon’s literally got actively bleeding knife wounds from her and she’s got a little bit of blood on her shoes and they still believe Mary over them.
Jon is like. Sorry I couldn’t do more to stop your serial killer mom. And Gerry is like. No no it’s okay I appreciate you for trying. Sorry we got arrested together. And he’s like no no it’s fine I’ve had worse nights no really sort of, haha, sort of a low bar with being stalked by the spider that tried to eat me in childhood and all.
Anyway the next day the police let them go because Mary, that poor tormented old lady, insisted on not pressing charges despite how terrible the two of them were to her. Jon, who was nearly serial killed by her, feels rather offended.
They’re about to part ways when Gerry tells them to wait. He knows someone who can help put Danny back together. He’s not exactly safe but he’s reliable. You can make a deal with him. Just have to hope the price isn’t too high.
Which is how they end up in Jared Hopworth’s shitty gym bargaining Jon’s ribs for back room magic surgery while Gerry physically restrains Danny from trying to fight the man for wanting Jon’s ribs. Anyway the magic surgery works and Danny doesn’t need to stitch himself together anymore he’s just got a bunch of weird scars. Jared makes multiple pointed comments about how Jon needs more calcium and his bones are weird and spongy. Jon feels rather offended. Gerry has to muscle him out the door before he starts arguing with this fucked up bone man about the quality of his bones.
Jon thinks Danny’s going to fuck off and leave him now that he can live a mostly normal life as a man not actively falling apart and he’s trying to give this farewell speech so Danny doesn’t feel bad about leaving him and it’s just
Danny, doing a handstand: Jon are you kidding me I’m buying you a backpack leash you are never going outside again without me
Jon, choked up: okay
Gerry’s about to go back to his terrible mom because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go when Jon and Danny offer to let him come with them. He’s fucked too. There’s spooky death on his heels. Join the club, literally.
He tries to tell them his mom will be pissed and it’ll be too dangerous for them and Danny is like “I’m sorry I have an entire russian circus after me and Jon is being stalked by the spider that tried to eat him in childhood” and Gerry is like. You know what. Fair.
Gerry has always been damned. He has never been loved in spite of that fact. And the desire to know what that feels like is a physical ache. They’ll probably all die horrible deaths. But maybe they’ll be together as they go.
He gets in the car.
The issue is that while Jon has the physique of a damp kitten, Gerry’s built like a brick shit house and Danny is like 6’4”. And they’re all living in Jon’s Nan’s 1974 Honda civic. It. Is not comfortable.
They think they could scrape together enough money for a shit apartment but the thing is that they are all so unstable and visibly distressed with no job histories whatsoever that not only do they look like drug dealers, they look like drug dealers who do not make that much money. No one will rent to them.
Danny decides to start Ghost Hunt because not only can they claim to be struggling YouTubers instead of drug dealers which he feels is a slightly more appealing demographic to rent to, it’s something they can use to explain why they’re fucking around in abandoned, spooky places. It’s just a cover story. Obviously no one is ever going to watch it.
Jon and Gerry are the faces of Ghost Hunt because they have no illusions about being about to actually hide from the Web and there is no way Mary Keay has learned how to use a computer since Gerry left, but Nikola Orsinov is on Instagram. It’s safest if it’s just the two of them on camera.
The issue with just having the two of them on camera is that they physically cannot take this shit seriously. Are you fucking serious. Gerry has been seeing spooky bullshit since he was in diapers and Jon is being stalked by the spider that tried to eat him in childhood. They physically cannot stand in an empty room pretending to feel a chill when nothing is fucking there. This is. So stupid. Danny’s begging them to take this seriously it’s their entire cover story guys and they just cannot. Danny is on the verge of strangling them both.
This just immediately turns into Gerry and Jon fucking around in haunted houses and goofing off. It’s actually the most fun they’ve had in years. It’s just:
Gerry, reading off the Wikipedia page: it says that horrible fates befall those who mock this ghost
Jon, without hesitation: FUCK YOU
Gerry: *cackling*
Jon: how long is it supposed to take does it say
Gerry: *wheezing* no
Jon: IF YOURE NOT A HACK YOU WILL STRIKE ME DEAD HERE see nothing waste of our time
Most of their videos have like four views and they are very secure in the knowledge that this is a great and unobtrusive cover story and they run a shitty low quality ghost hunting YouTube channel as people who seemingly do not believe in ghosts and who wants to watch THAT and then they fuck off to America to go stop the buried ritual
THE PLAN IS THUS: they are going to walk up to the big hole and toss a leitner for the vast in the big hole
That’s it that’s the plan that’s all they got there is no plan b if the fucked up book thing does not work then the world is fucked they guess
There’s apparently a secret part two of the plan because they get to the fucked up hole town and the buried avatar is there and the second he tries to fuck with them Danny just fucking shoots him
Jon: WHERE DID YOU GET A GUN
Danny: do you remember that grocery store we stopped at
He tried to use a shitty Texas accent for the first part of buying that thing and then rapidly realized that no one cared that he was British and dropped it half way through the purchase process and just walked out with a gun
Anyway they go to the hole and find Gertrude Robinson trying to ritualistically sacrifice an astronaut to the hole and they’re like. Oh. Uh. We’ve got a book we were gonna uh. Just sort of toss. In there. If we could try that first. Danny, Danny don’t get too close just, just frisbee it. Frisbee it.
Anyway it works, town collapses into hole, ritual fails, world is saved, except for this town, which is again in a hole. Who wants to go to red lobster and fake propose to Jon so they get free dessert.
Jan Kilbride does not want to do that. He never wants to see any of them again. Literally no one talk to him. he cannot stop crying that was all so fucked up
Gertrude fucking hates all of them on sight, except for Gerry, who she thinks could do better. She hates Jon in particular. They are all ridiculous people and should not exist.
Anyway they did a great job world saving and are hopping back on a plane to England and are stopped by a fan at the airport. They are shocked they found one of the four people that have ever watched their videos. This is the point where they discover their fanbase has ballooned from four people who probably clicked on their video by accident to several million people while they were distracted by world saving
Some random journalist from buzzfeed stumbled on their YouTube channel and thought they were such a fun and fresh take on ghost hunting videos that they wrote an article which went mega viral while the bois were all too distracted by world saving to delete the videos before too many people watched them
Yeah, the cat? It is out of the fucking bag. They are Known now. It’s too late to delete the videos because they’re too famous. They delete them and ten duplicates will be up within the hour and everyone will be asking questions about why they deleted them. There’s already articles talking about how Jon, an infamous survivor of a violent attack in true crime circles who was reported missing several years ago under highly suspicious circumstances, has resurfaced and is making YouTube videos with an adult goth where they mock ghosts in haunted houses.
Danny’s like. Look. LOOK. We have to fucking lean into this. It’ll be too suspicious if we just delete the videos and go to ground. You are skeptics. You are SKEPTICS. The cover story of YouTubers stops working if you abandon YouTube the second you unlock success. We can USE this
Now Gerry and Jon are globally famous as ghost hunting skeptics on a comedy YouTube channel and are fucking sweating because online theories that they’re secretly monster hunters keep circulating because they are secretly monster hunters and the people they save keep trying to go public about it and keep getting discounted as part of the meme
Gertrude continues to run in the same circle as them and just. Hates all of them.
Gertrude, derogatory: the YouTubers
The boys actually try to save Michael and warn him off from her but they get chased off before they can explain and he thinks they’re just harassing a sweet old lady and then gets ritualistically sacrificed and it’s too late
But then he decides he weirdly likes them because they tried to save him and sets up a door in their apartment, which they discover when Danny randomly walks in there when he’s half asleep and trying to go to the bathroom. They are. Less than pleased.
Michael, oscillating with a million colors: you need not worry. You are hunted but any who try to find your door will instead find themselves walking my paths until their feet bleed with colors that shall make them weep with fear and ecstasy
Gerry: does that include the delivery man
Michael: yes
Gerry: fuck
Anyway they just decide that Michael’s just their fourth roommate who they cannot evict and sort of roll with it. They put up a baby gate in front of his door so Danny will stop trying to wander in there on his way to the bathroom. It’s. Whatever. This might as well happen.
When Mary Keay kills herself they arrest Gerry under suspicion of her murder and they’re like “wait wait we have an alibi” and Daisy Tonner has to watch several hours of uncut video of them fucking around in Scotland trying to find the Loch Ness monster
Jon: I’m Jon sims
Gerry: and I’m Gerry Keay. And this is ghost hunt.
Jon: we’re here on the shores of the Loch Ness, trying to find its fabled monster
Jon, one second later, looking out at the water, cannot swim: well I don’t see it
Gerry, wearing several pounds of leather, realizing they should have workshopped this more: yeah me neither
Jon: well we tried. Okay. Tune in next time for—
Danny, behind the camera: if you two do not find a way to fill at least an hour i will kill both of you
*hard cut to Jon and Gerry sitting on the shore trying to figure out if renting a boat is a hard requirement or if they can get away with just sort of looking at the water from the shore*
Jon: I just realized something
Gerry: what
Jon: we’re ghost hunt. We hunt ghosts. It’s in the name. And the Loch Ness monster isn’t, it isn’t a. A.
Gerry:
Gerry:
Gerry, softly: fuck.
Jon: why did we even come here
Anyway at the time Mary Keay died they had gotten distracted for several hours at a cafe dedicated to highland cows and then decided to pull their own low effort Loch Ness monster hoax with a $20 budget cap to see how easy it is. The answer is very and it is currently on the news, with everyone thinking it was real. Jon and Gerry did not think it would be as successful as it was. Multiple of their rival channels have already released videos about the Loch Ness monster treating it as seriously as possible to ride the hype from the recent sighting and discussing how the recent sighting is some of the best modern evidence of the monster being real and Jon and Gerry are just sitting on this video of them strapping a pool noodle to some driftwood and shoving it out into the loch. Jon fell in at one point and Gerry had to go drag him out it was a whole thing.
Anyway the alibi is airtight and Daisy is unequivocally banned from murdering them in the woods because they’re famous YouTubers and there’s no way people wouldn’t notice they’re missing. She’s convinced there’s something off with them but she has to let them go
Gerry’s shitty mom is a problem again and it ends up with the three of them screaming while Danny whacks at her with an on fire broom and she tries to stab Jon, who she blames for stealing Gerry from her. She keeps calling him a whore and shameless tramp and Jon is like. What are you talking about. We became friends because you tried to serial kill me. You were THERE. Do you. Do you think I seduced him that’s disgusting
They managed to burn her page eventually and it only took multiple fires and a mild stabbing. It’s fine this is fine.
Melanie king hates their fucking guts because they don’t even believe in ghosts and treat the industry like a joke but they’re the most famous ghost hunters by far. It cheapens the profession because there’s people who take this seriously and do good work and instead they’re all lobbed in with these idiots who are cracking jokes while investigating highly corroborated hauntings.
She also hates them because her show is called Ghost Hunt UK and they’re Ghost Hunt (they picked the name because it was stupid and simple and didn’t know someone had something similar. She did NOT appreciate that explanation) and she is treated like the lesser ghost hunt.
Martin has been a huge fan of ghost hunt since its inception. He was two of the four people that watched it originally because he loved them so much he’d watch every episode twice.
He likes them because they just all genuinely seem to love one another and he’s sort of stuck with no family and few friends in a job he’s constantly stressed at and it’s just. They’ve always been sort of an escapist fantasy of his. They were clearly struggling when they started this channel but they still ran off together and did what they loved and the idea of running off with friends was just something very dear to him. He was thrilled when the channel took off.
He’s made Tim watch a few clips of the show and Tim always walked off before a clip of Danny talking behind the camera came up.
On that note Danny the camera man has major cryptid energy to the fanbase because he’s never gone on camera (re: clowns want his skin) and when they started Danny kept telling Gerry and Jon to pretend he wasn’t there but they kept laughing and talking to him and pulling him into bits so he became a very cherished part of the show
Buzzfeed is a minor antagonist in this fic because they keep making these articles like “ten things that make us think the guys from ghost hunt are secretly monster hunters” to play off the meme but every time Jon is like “they’re FUCKING onto us”
When the lonely ritual rolls around Gertrude decides it’s beneath her and texts Gerry to handle it and their solution is to claim that they got an anonymous tip that it was a building undergoing an active haunting and host an episode there. They then start stomping through the halls of Peter Lukas’s fucked up building and loudly commenting on all the building code violations
Ghost Hunt briefly turns into a home makeover show because they find the poor lonely souls who are renting in this terrible building and decide to semi forcibly draft them into guest starring and take them shopping so they can pump their crib. So it’s just
Poor asshole getting unknowingly sacrificed to evil god: I guess the blue rug is fine
Gerry, believes in dedication to an aesthetic: but does it say ‘Janet’
Janet, eyes welling up in tears: no. No it doesn’t say Janet
Jon: then we will find one that does Danny get the car we’re going to the next store
The rest of the episode is Gerry just hauling various accent pieces into the apartments of some of the victims while Jon tries to climb in the fucking vents of this stupid building bitching about how many corners the owners cut and all the fire code violations. The conclusion of the episode is sometimes the real evil spirits haunting us are landlords. It is one of their most popular episodes and ironically the only one where everyone agrees nothing supernatural was going on.
Gertrude texts a link to the video to Peter Lukas with the message “bitch” and then laughs herself sick. It is legitimately devastating to the Lukas family business conglomerate and stock value plummets from the bad press. This is the only thing Gertrude likes about those boys.
The thing is that the head archivist of the Magnus institute is a job and the archivist is an entity and they do not have to be the same thing. When Gertrude dies, Elias appoints Sasha James as the new head archivist of the Magnus institute. But the Eye takes Jon as its Archivist.
Elias doesn’t know where the fuck the archivist is but he knows it’s not Sasha. Don’t get him wrong, she speedran her descent into madness, already Becoming something, but it’s not the archivist. He’s losing his mind where the fuck is the archivist
Meanwhile, Jon, trying to do Ghost Hunt: so you think your bar is haunted
Barkeep: no no we just got a funky air conditioner and the hoax attracts tourists so we keep it going
Gerry: :o
Jon: :o
Barkeep: … why the fuck did I just say that
There’s a subplot where they’re trying to infiltrate a ghost hunting convention because they’re trying to find Sarah Baldwin, responsible for multiple disappearances in the community, and are trying to figure out if maybe they can impersonate someone who has a reason to be at this convention or maybe steal a name tag or something and they’re still debating it outside the convention hall when someone running it spots them and is like “oh my god you’re ghost hunt” they forgot they were the most famous ghost hunters alive
Georgie is at this convention and she’s trying to hunt Jon down like an animal because he fucking disappeared years ago after going off the rails and Jessica going missing and he hasn’t replied to her multiple attempts to reach out and find out what the fuck happened. Melanie helps because 1) gay simp and 2) she hates that fucking guy.
This butterfly effects into a different subplot where Jon Knows that Melanie’s dad is trapped in his nursing home close to being killed by the crawling rot and Jon, Gerry, and Danny end up having to crawl through the window in hazmat gear and carry out like twenty confused and terrified elderly people before setting the fucking building on fire
They haven’t spoken to Gertrude since she set them up to die right around the time they were trying to stop the dark’s ritual (she knew both Jon and Gerry were too far gone in their own becomings and too dangerous to leave alive) and they barely made it out alive so they don’t actually know she’s dead they think she’s just a bitch
They finally collide with the archives crew when Jon’s just trying to go out and buy some fucking juice like a normal person and Danny insists on coming with him because Jon’s going to get serial killed if he goes alone and Jon insists he can go to the store and buy juice without a serial killing befalling him and Danny insists that lived experienced suggests otherwise and Jon insists it will be FINE and then he gets in his car and makes it exactly one block before he Knows that there’s some poor fucking guy trapped in his apartment by Jane Prentiss and he has to pull over. Danny will never let him hear the end of this
He just sort of makes a Molotov cocktail (Gerry taught him how) and sort of tosses it at her and she sort of falls down the stairs and there’s a lot of swearing and stomping and learning that fire extinguishers work way better than Molotov cocktails and when he turns around the poor fuck has opened his door and is gaping at him and Jon was sort of hoping he could dip before being seen. He does not want to end up on Buzzfeed again okay
Martin, thought he was going to die, opens the door to find his celebrity crush of several years personally coming to his rescue: :o :o :o
Jon very apologetically explains to him that no one will believe him and will think it’s just part of the meme so best not go posting anything online and if he agrees not to Jon will give him a ride to a place not haunted by worm ladies and Martin is like “uhhh could you take me to work? I’m an archival assistant at the Magnus institute” and Jon is like “that bitch”
Martin is very confused as to why Jon immediately drives him straight there like he already knows the way and charges right down to the archives and starts shouting at Gertrude to get her ass out here because she is not fucking doing this again not after what happened to Michael. Like. Did he know her personally. Does he not know she’s dead
Jon knows Gertrude is here because the Eye will not fucking shut up about how the Archivist is in the Archivist is in the Archivist is in. Where is the torrid bitch he’ll kill her
Sasha keeps insisting that’s she’s the archivist and demanding to know why he’s here and Jon’s like “no youre not” because the eye is emphatic about that much and it’s not until she tells him that Gertrude is dead that he becomes afraid.
Who is it. Who is the Archivist now?
The Eye practically sings that it’s him.
Jon has a terrible feeling that he has found himself in the same place that Agnes saved him from all those years ago. And he does not know if he has enough luck to leave it again.
He’s uh. He has to go. He’s sorry. He’s so sorry. He’ll—do something. Help them somehow. Fix this somehow. But he has to go right now. He has to, he has to get out of here
An out of breath Elias practically sprints into the room to stop him from leaving. He blocks the door.
Jon tells him to move. Elias is afraid he’s been trying to find Jon for too long to let him leave before a chat. Would Jon prefer Elias’s office or his own?
Jon pulls a fucking gun out of one of the file boxes and points it at him. Gertrude had them stashed all over the place, and it appears Elias missed one.
Jon actually knew that was here because Gertrude once pulled it on him. Woman hated him with a violence beyond compare.
Elias: you don’t even know how to use that
Jon: I’m omniscient. I’ll figure it out
Martin, knows this day has gone so far beyond his wildest self insert fanfic: :o
Elias insists that in a moment, the door behind him will open, and what Jon sees will make him lower the gun and talk to him. Jon insists that’s all the more reason to shoot him now, so he should get out of his way.
Tim comes back from lunch to find Martin’s celebrity crush holding his boss’s boss at gun point and is like ?????????
Jon takes one look at him, says “fuck,” and lowers the gun
Elias very smugly thanks Tim. Tim is like. Celebrity. Gun? Should he. Should he call someone. Police? No? Why would the answer to that question ever be no??
Jon’s looking at him like he’s seen a ghost.
He and his brother always did look similar. Not twins, but close enough. At first glance, Jon almost thought that Danny walked through those doors
He demands to know how long Tim’s been here. Elias says that he hired him several years ago, and he’s very glad he did. It appears that investment will pay off ten times over. Shall they have that chat?
Jon isn’t going to Elias’s office. Elias says he’s more than happy to host it in Jon’s. He cuts Sasha off harshly when she tries to ask what the fuck is going on, and tells Jon to lead the way.
They go into the head archivist’s office, and Jon feels the way he did all those years ago, trapped in an alley with Annabelle Cane feeling like a fly in a web.
Elias tries to launch right into a talk about employment and benefits, and Jon’s like. I’m not fucking staying here. No.
Elias tells him that’s rather shortsighted of him. The archives is staffed with assistants, and they need an archivist. That’s Jon. They’ve already run afoul of one being beyond their comprehension, and poor Mr. Blackwood only escaped with his life because Jon intervened. They won’t survive without him there. And that includes Danny Stoker’s brother.
He’s been working here since his brother—well, not died, exactly, thanks to Jon. Tim loved his brother so desperately. Never recovered from the loss. And his little brother loved him back just as much. Tragic, isn’t it? All these years spent apart, only for Tim to inevitably succumb to the perils of a position as an archival assistant not long after they’re brought back together—
Jon tells him to shut up. Just shut up.
They all sort of thought Danny didn’t have anyone? They spent days looking through missing person reports and never found him. His mark from the stranger made it impossible to Know anything about where he came from. Eventually, Danny told them to stop looking. He had a new life now and wouldn’t leave the two of them for anything. He doesn’t care who he was before this, so it didn’t matter. Jon never even knew his last name was stoker.
Jon leaves. Elias lets him, insisting that he’ll return soon enough. He staggers back to his apartment, where Danny is crawling the walls knowing that Jon has been gone far too long for a juice run and is probably out there being serial killed again. Jon gets back, lets Danny bitch him out, and tells him his name is Stoker. Danny Stoker. He has a brother, who loved him very much, and who saw the stranger take him, and who is trapped in the archives of the Magnus institute. His name is Tim. He is likely going to die, and Jon is the Archivist, which means that maybe he could save him. Maybe he could go back, take his place where the Web set for him, and maybe that would be enough to let Danny’s brother live.
Danny says that if that’s what it comes down to, let Tim die
One of the key conflicts in this is just how fiercely Danny loves Jon and Gerry. He started with Jon, and he’ll end with him. His entire life has been spent desperately trying to save these two people from things that want to eat them while they try to save him in turn. There is no room for anyone else. They’re drowning as it is. And Danny has built his own identity on the foundation of his love for Jon and Gerry, and he is incapable of putting anyone else above them. He does not remember having a brother. And he will not sacrifice Jon to save him.
Danny’s actually furious that Elias is trying to use him as leverage against Jon. He sort of impulsively decides that the only way to stop it is to just cauterize himself from Tim entirely and refuse to talk to him. He doesn’t know who that guy is and doesn’t remember being his brother. There’s no point in telling him Danny’s alive because he’s got no interest in trying to be whoever the fuck this guy remembers. There’s no persuading him otherwise
Cue Jon and Gerry trying to sort of float around the peripheries of the archives refusing to set foot in the building but trying to ease the assistants through their introduction to the spooky world without mentioning the fact that Tim’s dead brother is not dead he’s their roommate and they love him. Meanwhile Danny is trying to hunt Jane Prentiss through the fucking sewers because Jon refuses to leave until she’s no longer an active threat to the archives and he wants Jon away from the fucking Magnus institute. He hears Japan is lovely this time of year let’s move there.
Meanwhile Tim, who walked into this sort of already done with everything because Sasha turned into a paranoid lunatic and he just found out that his boss is evil and they work for evil god and also they can’t leave or they’ll die, has decided that all he wants in this world is to kill the thing that took his brother from him and that these guys are the best chance he has of doing that. Do they need a sound man or something because he’s in on their thing now. He’s in on it. Sorry to force his way in but he’s killing those fucking clowns
Meanwhile Jon is fucking sweating because Tim is loving his brother on main nonstop as if to make Jon specifically agonized with guilt over Danny’s decision to not tell him he’s alive.
There’s a lot more but this is fucking long so I’ll leave it here
I got an ask requesting more from this universe and, so it’s all on one post, I’m continuing it here. So miscellaneous fun facts from the Himbois AU universe:
When the himbois started ghost hunt they did talking heads from an inflatable pink couch like the ones everyone had in the 90s. This was because they were chronically homeless and could only fit inflatable furniture in the car. Danny got it on a whim and when their show took off, they kept the inflatable pink couch as a key feature of it, because they were emotionally attached to it now.
The producers of supernatural have called them up multiple times asking them to guest star as monster hunters who use being YouTube ghost hunters as their cover story to play off the meme and every time they get asked they’re like “hahaha so sweet to ask us but we can’t act sorry thx bye” and sweat even harder
I cannot emphasize enough how the assumption that no one would ever watch this fucking thing was absolutely central to the decision to start ghost hunt. Never in a million years would they have done so had they thought that it would result in them becoming famous.
Danny smacked both Gerry and Jon multiple times when they realized what happened because Danny had been telling them for ages to act like normal goddamn ghost hunters and they kept laughing it off and being like “Danny come on no one is ever going to watch this so what does it matter” if they had acted like normal ghost hunters then no one would have watched their dumb asses but fucking Comedy Central over here just had to go and charm the internet with their irreverent wit. see this this is why they have to listen to Danny this is their fault
Low key tho the fame is in part Danny’s fault because part of the reason why they took off is because of how much they all visibly love each other, Danny included. Most ghost hunting shows just didn’t include the crew and Gerry and Jon just kept dragging Danny into their bits. Their friendship was one of the biggest selling points as a result. Like it was just:
Gerry, reading off the back of the ouija board box: okay so we’re supposed to surround ourself in a salt circle
Jon: why
Gerry: I dunno for protection from the ghosts
Jon: how are the ghosts supposed to move the stupid toy if they’re stuck outside the salt circle
Gerry: the box doesn’t say
Jon: again I question the reliability of equipment purchased from a toys r us
Gerry: I’m just reading the box
Jon: wait Danny’s outside the salt circle are we supposed to just leave him to the ghosts
Gerry: fuck you’re right. That’s fucked we can’t do that
Danny: guys I told you to pretend I wasn’t here
Jon: to the point of your DEATH that’s ridiculous give him his own salt circle Gerry
Gerry: we don’t have enough for two circles
Jon: how do we not have enough salt for two circles was our twelve minutes of preparation not enough to ready us as ghost hunters
Gerry: I got these salt packets from a McDonald’s hardly enough for one circle really. Danny get in the salt circle with us.
Danny: I’m not getting in the salt circle I can’t film you if I’m standing right next to you
Gerry: well I’m not going to summon any ghosts with this thing if it might get you killed by a vengeful spirit
Jon: right are we supposed to just sit here while you are falling victim to saltless murder
Danny: *heavy sigh* I—it doesn’t trap the ghosts outside the circle it keeps them from leaving it. In this scenario I’m leaving you both to the ghosts
Gerry:
Jon:
Gerry: honestly I don’t know enough about ouija boards to say
Jon: we’re sitting in an entire bloody haunted house and we’re supposed to assume that every last ghost has crowded into this circle with us
Gerry: frankly if we’re trapped in with the ghosts it only seems fair that Danny is too
Jon: right right if we’re getting ghost murdered no reason why he shouldn’t be as well
Danny: guys enough I’m not getting in there with you
*hard cut to Danny crammed into the salt circle too, jon and Gerry captured in extreme close up*
Gerry, smug: the gangs all here
Danny: use the bloody thing before there are two more murders in this godforsaken house
*Jon and Gerry try to use it* *nothing happens*
Jon, after a beat: waste of 33 pounds. Do you think we can return it where’s the receipt
And
Gerry, reading off the Wikipedia page: says that people undergo sudden and violent urges while in this room. Jon do you feel anything
Jon: haven’t since 2003
Gerry: cheers. what about you Danny do you feel any violent urges
Danny: literally every day. For the last time you need to pretend that I am not here
From their videos they’re just a group of twenty something skeptics Trying Their Best but the second you look at their history their everything is suspicious. Jon was an infamous case in true crime circles before he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. After he disappeared, there was a new slew of videos about him that went around the true crime circuit for a while because of how bonkers his disappearance was. And now he is a ghost hunter. Like what. What happened. Literally the whole world thought he fucking died why is he a YouTuber.
They are not beating the “actual monster hunter” allegations at all. Like it is fucking bad. There are so many suspicious fucking things about Jon and Gerry that they refuse to answer that just endlessly fuel the conspiracy mill. Like, to show how bad it is:
Jon initially tried to go to the police about Annabelle Cane. He didn’t think they’d be able to protect him from spider magic, to be clear. He was just desperate and willing to the anything. So he lied and told them that he saw the person who mutilated him and this is her description and where he saw her, go get her, and got sort of blown off as hysteria when the person he described was a tiny woman and he claimed to not remember who attacked him when the attack first happened
That being said there is a police report out there that includes Jon saying “she is going to kill me and you do not care enough to stop her” out there that the true crime community shoved in every fucking video after he disappeared
The paranoia, the fact that he thought he was being followed everywhere, his Nan dying and flowers being sent to the funeral claiming responsibility, him cutting out everyone he loved, the house fire—it all made it into the true crime videos and into public knowledge before ghost hunt. Georgie and the rest of his friends actually looked very hard for him after he went missing. They filed multiple police reports and told them everything that was happening to Jon before he went missing. The police never realized it was Section 31 material; they just thought Jon had a breakdown and either disappeared or was kidnapped/murdered by a run of the mill stalker/killer. So all the police reports got released through freedom of information requests, and true crime podcasters and vloggers made him a staple for a while. Then, he pops up alive and doing ghost hunting on YouTube.
Gerry looks like an actual wizard and then his mom goes and dies a mysterious and violent death involving manual skinning and then he gets arrested under suspicion of her murder and then he gets immediately released by having the air tight alibi of *checks notes* setting up a Loch Ness monster hoax at time of murder and then it becomes sort of apparent that he accused his mom of ritualistic serial killing involving skin books on multiple occasions and he and Jon met when his mom tried to serial kill Jon and the police just wouldn’t listen and it’s. It’s a lot of questions no one wants to answer. They stay off the internet for a bit after that.
Moral of the story is that they have such mysterious and strange things in their history that they unequivocally refuse to discuss that everyone’s like “idk maybe they’re involved in supernatural bullshit fr” but it is it is fr
Jon gets into a minor feud involving the true crime YouTubers because people keep begging them to cover true crime stuff too and he got caught on camera saying that he doubts he could ever talk about his own attempted murder with nearly as much unfettered glee as the true crime community and he was of the understanding that making a video to that end was mandatory to run a true crime channel and it does not. Go over. Well.
One of the reasons why Melanie hates them so violently is because the similarity of their names makes her show the most compared to Ghost Hunt out of all the ghost hunting shows and there’s a bunch of fan compilations out there of her show in a haunted attic or whatever being like “I feel it there’s a presence here” or “I think something just pinched me” hard cut to Jon and Gerry standing in the same room like “don’t feel a thing really” and “IF YOU ARE REAL ATTACK ME NOW LETS GO bloody nothing what did I tell you Danny how much longer do we have to do this for.” The general consensus is that Ghost Hunt is the more entertaining and honest of the two shows and Melanie wants them dead
Melanie tries to hunt them for fucking sport because she finds out they may be actual fucking monster hunters when they save her dad from the nursing home and her dad moves in with her and tries to pull up her show and instead finds those nice monster hunting fellows who snuck in his window, got him and the other survivors to safety in the surrounding woods, killed the caretaker with a great deal of arson and screaming and injecting him with cleaning supplies when they got found there anyway, made them burn their clothes and put on new ones, and called the fire department to come pick them up. Delightful young men, seemed very stressed at all moments.
Melanie’s very grateful for saving her dad to be clear but what the fuck do you mean they’ve got concrete knowledge of the supernatural and just never fucking shared it and also their cover was to ruin Melanie’s life specifically
Cannot emphasize enough that buzzfeed is a minor antagonist in this. Jon is convinced that entire news network is a web plot meant to ruin his life personally. There’s this entire Jane Prentiss arc that culminates with Jon on the front lawn of the Magnus institute getting worms ripped out of him and he’s just like “oh dear god we’re going to end up on buzzfeed again aren’t we”
On buzzfeeds end they are not a ensign of the web they just stumbled on these small creators and thought they were such a fun show that they made a post about them completely unaware that they were outing real life monster hunters to the world. they have no idea the ghost hunt boys hate them and have invited them to do the puppy/kitten interview multiple times. It hurts them every time they turn it down but dear fucking god they cannot risk having to directly answer buzzfeed’s questions it’s bad enough as is
Every time buzzfeed publishes an article about how maybe Jon and Gerry from ghost hunt are real life monster hunters haha here’s ten reasons why Danny whacks them multiple times and makes them film another stupid YouTube challenge to try and take the heat off and they’re both losing their minds. Gerry’s a reluctant voodoo boy and Jon’s being stalked by the spider that tried to eat him in childhood and Danny’s forcing them at gunpoint to do unboxing videos. Danny what are they unboxing they live in a car
That being said once their YouTube thing takes off they actually make a very tidy sum because they’re just so ridiculously popular so it does help with the finances. In this world stopping the apocalypse is unknowingly being funded by NordVPN.
When Tim finds out about Danny it’s a whole thing and he is aggressively trying to hire himself as the new ghost hunt sound guy and Danny is like “please please please please please fuck off just fuck off I can’t do this” because the addition of Tim to the mix secretly sort of terrifies him. Like he has spent his entire existence as he remembers it just trying to find a world the three of them can live in and that feels impossible as it is. Danny started with Jon and he’ll fucking end with him too. Gerry and Jon are his world and it’s so hard to find space there for Tim, particularly when Elias is trying to use Tim to hurt Jon. Danny does not fucking want Tim on the team and Tim’s just manifesting like So Glad To Be On The Team Guys
From Tim’s perspective he’s obviously in extreme emotional turmoil about all this but frankly? A world where Danny is alive and *checks notes* a successful YouTuber(?) but seemingly hates Tim is a world Tim will pick every fucking day when the alternative is his brother being dead. Danny could spit in his face every fucking time he saw Tim as long as he was alive to do it. He could never speak to Tim again and Tim would weep every day for joy
That being said like. Cmon. Tim’s not just gonna give up. Fuck no he’s doing the ghost hunting thing.
Tim kept walking off whenever Martin showed him ghost hunt because when he was first explaining it he was very excitedly telling him about how they’ve got Danny The Camera Man who’s never shown but they keep dragging him into their bits while he begged them to pretend he wasn’t there and just. It still hurt to hear that name. Especially in this context. Ghost hunting show is the exact sort of shit Danny would have gone nuts for. It just hurt too much to hear this Other Danny who got to go out and live a life his brother would have loved
After he finds out the truth it sort of haunts him because he could have realized his brother was alive years prior. But that being said the show becomes a huge source of comfort for him when he finds out the truth but when Danny’s still icing him out. He falls asleep listening to it. Sure his brother doesn’t remember him and doesn’t want to but he’s alive and there is hours of content of him laughing and teasing and being so obviously loved.
Danny’s conflict with Tim sort of feeds into an overarching conflict, which is that every single one of the himbois think of the others as their entire world while being insecure about their place with the others
Gerry came in later than Danny and Jon and they both already had their own dynamic going. He initially feels a bit like he’s intruding and not meant to be there and Gertrude initially tries to use this to get a foothold in Gerry until Events happen
Jon meanwhile sort of feels like he’s the most fucked and an active liability to the other two. Like Gerry’s got an utterly shit mom but she’s still human. Danny’s on the run from a circus but they’re not the web. Like, it’s hard to escape the other entities. But it’s seemingly impossible to escape the web. He feels like the other two would have a better chance without him and constantly tries to give them outs he doesn’t want them to take because he has nothing if they leave him.
But, from the other two’s perspective, he was the only one of them that like. Had a life before this. Danny doesn’t remember shit before Jon dragged him out of that warehouse. Gerry’s life sucked and was always doomed. But Jon had friends. He had a band and was in college and was going to have a relatively normal life. So both of the other two sort of worry that they’re the lesser life and he’d rather go back to what he had before them
Danny’s constantly worried because his entire identity is built around Jon and Gerry. He felt like a bag of jumbled puzzle pieces for the longest time and Jon fought to help him make some kind of order of things. Then Gerry got there and made their family complete. But they’re all so unstable that Danny feels like he could lose everything at any moment. He’s trying to desperately to hold onto both of them and the life they’ve built but he’s constantly haunted by the notion that he could lose this life the way he lost whatever life he had before them. That one day the stranger would get him and the version of him that loved Jon and Gerry would just be. Gone again. Like he never existed
Tim is this concrete person who proves that he loved people and had a life before this and he genuinely didn’t want that to be the case because he can’t afford to fight for anything else. He’s barely hanging on as it is.
On the flip side Jon’s constantly preparing for his horrible spidery death and is actively pushing for Danny to build a relationship with Tim so he has someone he can go to if their thing goes to shit. Danny knows he’s doing this and it makes him resist harder.
Jon becomes a meme pretty much every other week. Not an episode goes by without a new meme of Jon sims going viral. He is the internet’s favorite damp little freak.
When they were in their Homeless Poor On The Road days they had a rotating series of bits involving proposing to Jon in restaurants in an attempt to get free food. Sometimes if they were really struggling Gerry and Danny would alternate being the one pretending to be in a committed relationship with Jon and the other snaps and starts to fight them out of secret love for Jon and they all get kicked out before they have to pay the bill. Like they had the most ridiculous fake soap opera drama bullshit going on in an Olive Garden parking lot but they were fucking desperate okay
Jon doesn’t know why he always has to play the guy getting proposed to/fought over. Gerry and Danny insist it’s because he’s not that good an actor and that’s the easiest role. This is bullshit because the man was weirdly born for the stage despite looking and acting like he got lost on his way to the library every moment of his life. Gifted performer and better at it than both of them combined. But the real reason is “out of the three of us you look the most like a bottom” and they cannot tell him that or he’ll drive them all right off a cliff
whenever i look into a historical monarch who doesn’t get talked about much and is just kind of a blank spot in my understanding of the historical narrative, 95% of the time what i find is pure white hot blistering capability. a pencil pusher for the ages. a 39 year reign with no more than three hours of sleep a night. there aren’t any good stories from his reign because he systematically caught and stopped all catastrophic good stories before they could start. you shrimply must respect it
sometimes i talk about how awful it was to feel trapped by my daily makeup routine and how i couldn’t leave the house without putting on a full face and it played a major role in the misery of my high school experience because i had to spend so much extra time getting ready in the mornings and that followed me into my early 20s as well and it was hell and it was so incredibly liberating to go through the slow and uncomfortable but ultimately essential process of getting my bare face back and having makeup be an optional accessory instead of a mandatory uniform. and the response always tends to be ah yes of course, because of your trans and your masculine. and it’s like aha so close! actually! I think if I ended up being a feminine cis woman I also still would not deserve even a second of that shit! I think trans women and nonbinary people and every human alive should have the option to leave the house without a single cosmetic product ever touching their face! but thanks for playing!
and when I say people should have the option obviously I do not mean “yeah you can but everyone’s gonna treat you like you’re frumpy and weird.” I also kinda don’t even mean “you’re beautiful even without makeup!!” because like. well of course i think many people are. some of the most beautiful faces i have ever seen in my life have had not a drop of makeup on them. and that’s awesome or whatever. but it’s also kind of irrelevant to the overall point I’m actually making. really what im saying is it shouldn’t fucking matter if you are beautiful or even pleasant to look at at all! you should be able to just be, all the time no matter what. everyone around you should just treat you like a person who is worthy of respect and fair treatment regardless of what you look like. I am of course keenly aware that that is not presently actually how things work much of the time. but that end goal is what my stance on makeup is informed by. you should never ever ever fucking need it to be treated with decency.
been chewing on how well you characterize izuku in pez and why it is so definitively him in a way that i think even the source material loses sight of and i think it’s bc you highlight his isolation so well. in mha he goes from being alone to having the closest friends in the world. except he doesn’t, because they don’t know him.
it’s so fascinating bc he is a character who will reach out, and the ways class a is traumatized bonds him with his classmates in a way that makes him reach out for comfort. except not when it’s his shit. he’s such a paradox of a character bc he is open and connective and friendly but he is still so very alone. and in the show proper it feels like he never stops being alone.
anyway i am spinning pdd in my mind like a rotisserie chicken i think it is very cool how he will have sleepovers with tsuyu when the shared trauma ptsd hits but when it is trauma that is wholly his own his immediate and innate instinct is to isolate himself so hard he is lost to even himself. yippeee!!!!!
This is actually the exact thing that fascinates me with Izuku’s character to begin with.
The intersection between his Quirklessness and then receiving One for All is the most fascinating thing in the world to me. Because Izuku was completely fucking alone when canon started. He had no friends. He was being bullied endlessly. He was gum at the bottom of your shoe. He is the person society shit on again and again and again and it was because he did not have the thing that society valued most, i.e., a quirk.
And then suddenly he does have a Quirk. He has the most powerful Quirk in the world even. And he has to pretend like he always had that fucking thing. His loneliness, his isolation, the universal rejection from society he was experiencing up until that point—it’s all meant to just go away overnight. He has spent his entire life at the bottom of the food chain and he was just elevated to the top. And he cannot tell anyone that he wasn’t there last week. He has to pretend this was always his life.
There’s something so lonely about that to me. And that, too, intersects fabulously with Izuku’s character because he goes out of his way to make sure no one else is ever alone. He did it to Todoroki during the sports festival arc, Iida during the hero killer arc—Izuku is defined by his empathy and compassion. He wants to help people and save people and be there for them when they need it.
And then entire time, he has to be alone. And he can’t even tell anyone that he’s alone. Because they all know him as the kid who always had a perfect Quirk. He has to keep up appearances. But he’s still Quirkless in his head. There’s something so lonely about it to me.
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