#enen's analysis

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dont remember if ive said this before but like. god. lui's "oh" after norah tells him about isaac's parents bolting his windows. the tense, uncomfortable silence that settles over the whole room. the BODY LANGUAGE. god. god. theyre just kids man. theyre just kids. they all know how shitty isaac's home life is and they have no idea how to help him. fuuuuuuck man. someone put me down im going to. resort to violence against bizlychannel

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theres just something about how the adults are so willing to turn a blind eye to what happens in the Brooks household. it's...very real. its like. it's easier to pretend nothing is wrong because then you don't have to admit that these things have been going on for who-knows-how-long and you haven't done anything to stop it. it's obvious. isaac is terrified of his father. his reaction when mrs. wisp goes to call his parents is the most viscerally fearful he'd ever sounded up to that point. and it's like. IT'S NOT THAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW SOMETHING IS WRONG. she's so obviously just coming up with all these flimsy excuses.................and more than that it's the fear of. upturning all these preconceived notions you had about the people around you. your neighbors. it's a small religious town unadapted to change. the brooks are a lovely family with a delinquent son. how'd he turn out that way, his mother is such a lovely woman. his father is who you look to when you want to describe a good man (and i mean that with a heavy emphasis on the "man" part, that he's what a man should be, not that that's super relevant to my point here). acknowledging that there might be a reason, a real reason, isaac is so terrified of his father, that it's weird those two went for a drive at three in the morning and no-one knows where they are- that's a loose thread that unravels into a whole host of things you didn't want to believe, shame you don't want to keep, guilt you don't want to uncover.

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ok but please consider. isaac turning bitter towards will after he leaves. because i (like many people in this fandom) don't think will told the rest of upp about ANYTHING before he left. i'm not even sure they knew he died. so will leaves and- hang on a minute im getting into the rand parallels again. oops. shit. ANYWAYS. will leaves deadwood and the rest of upp are left reeling. and the years go by and maybe they start to drift apart. maybe eventually one of them sees will on the news and they realize he's not dead, not missing, he just...left. and i think they all cope in different ways. i think they all know there must have been a reason, he wouldn't just leave them like that, he loved them. they loved him. but i think isaac, over time, isaac brooks who has been betrayed so many times, who doesn't really have anyone anymore, who has grown used to the thought that everyone is going to abandon him eventually, starts to think, of course he did. of course william left, left them all, left him. and even though he knows, still, there must have been a real reason, that fear and hopelessness from fucking years of trauma weighing on him starts to overpower that logic. and he starts to get angrier and more and more bitter and it starts to push norah and lui away even more than they already were. and then bella moves out, leaves town to go live as far away from deadwood as she can manage. and then norah goes to college in new haven, and it's just him and lui, and lui was the only one of them who was ever really content in deadwood but he wants to do other things, too, travel the world and start researching the occult all over. so he does. he wanted to stay, somewhat, at least to be there for isaac, but isaac has been...unpleasant to be around, in recent years, and lui knows it would only hurt them both. so he leaves and it's just isaac and his mom, twenty-year-old isaac brooks and his mother who's barely in her fifties but already seems to be wasting away. i think she dies when he's twenty-three years old and then it's just him, stuck in deadwood, working minimum wage and fucking miserable because he knew he never had potential, he always knew it, but some part of him wanted to cling to that hope of proving every adult in his life wrong. and he didn't. and it's just him in a too-big house he inherited with a cross around his neck and no faith that god ever cared about him, because why would he. he starts going back to church anyways. he starts trying his best to help out in the community because maybe a little bit of his teenaged stubbornness is still there, and maybe he wants to at least make a positive mark on the world, however small, even if he's never going anywhere. and he starts to at least feel a little more content with his place in the world. he reconnects with bella, and she visits every so often, tries to convince him to leave but he doesn't really see the point. so he stays.

.....and then maybe, years later, one of the others decides to reach out. try and have the four of them reconnect, be friends again. norah reconnected with will years ago, through a few mutual friends norah made at college, and learned the whole reason will left. isaac's been so disconnected from the world of superheroes, staying in deadwood, he has no idea of anything that's happened, except that once when he was 17 or 18, when he and norah and lui were still together, the whole town had to evacuate for a while. even then he stayed out of it. solving mysteries didn't really have an appeal anymore, and he had a bit of hatred for superheroes after, well- everything. them ignoring deadwood until that day. william leaving and becoming one.

but. it's been years. he's twenty-seven. he wants to get over it. he wants to be like they were when they were kids. so he accepts, and he learns about what happened when they were 16, gets the full story of why they were left behind- he's still a little bitter, he thinks, because will could've at least told them, if only he hadn't been such a fucking coward- but, then, he was sixteen. they all were. they made mistakes. mistakes that william wants to try to fix. better late than never- isaac still has a right to be angry, though, and the other three agree, and will's doing his best to make it up to him and to norah and lui.

william and his other friends- the ones he made in new haven- are famous famous now. on account of the superhero thing. the red-haired one, dakota (isaac likes him a lot), is a big name in reforming the way superheroes operate. getting rid of the corruption in the system. and, after years of wanting to but having to deal with far too many larger-scale complications, the prime defenders have finally gotten to the project will wanted to work on most: helping out deadwood. it's still riddled with supernatural threats, and it's still not assisted by anyone, not anymore. so they want to fix that. finally have the heroes be there for it. (finally have will be there for isaac.)

i think it takes a long time, and i think it's tough because there's so much else to do and there are so many old wounds and all isaac's friends are fucking famous, even if in norah and lui's case it's only in very specific niches, and he's just isaac brooks and it's impossible not to feel a little bit of envy and lack of self-worth from that, but. i think they heal. i think they become friends again and i think after a while isaac is finally convinced to leave deadwood for the first time and i think with all the improvements it's had he's finally really, truly happy staying there but he's not stuck anymore. he goes out and visits his friends and they visit him and idk man. he's happy.

..........jesus CHRIST this post got away from me it wasnt even supposed to be about anything past isaac getting to be angry. fucking hell. adhd huh. man. funny thing is i don't even think isaac DOES get stuck in deadwood. i think it makes sense narratively but it makes me sad and there are always other routes that still make sense so im always flip-flopping between this and that. and yet i still make this long-ass post that genuinely took me like an hour to write. christ. hope you enjoyed i am simply a highschool student with failing grades who is supposed to be doing chores and homework right now while my parents are out or else i'll get in trouble but instead i have spent hours on my puter making posts about upp. be grateful /vvvsilly

oh yeah this post was inspired by me adding "screwing in a lightbulb" by everybody's worried about owen to my upp playlist and then remembering the last bit of it + this thought i had earlier btw. if anyone is interested in that kinda stuff

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Sorry I fear I am never going to get over that "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!". Condi did a truly fantastic job there, I know his favorite thing to do when voicing a character is screaming (shoutout jin my life my love <333) but there was a rawness to that one line that gave me chills when I first heard it. He really, truly sounds like a terrified teenager, one who's alone and has already had bad past experiences with situations similar to the one he's presently in. Isaac Brooks feels real, and you feel just as terrified for him as he is. Improv is an incredible form of art, and Condi is a master of it- his characters have a way of flying under the radar until you realize just how many layers they have, how complex they are, how real they feel. And on that note, I do find that his characters (no matter how outlandish) tend to be the most grounded in reality, which I appreciate a lot- even Vyncent somehow manages to feel like a person you might see walking down the street, despite his origin.

Isaac is a very special character, and I truly hope we get to see more of him in the future; this kid is someone I could see at my school, someone I could be friends with- in fact I already have several friends like him- and that hurts my heart. Condi truly shines in the most human moments of JRWI. His characters are understated (and underrated), but they are some of my favorite characters in any piece of media I've seen, perhaps even because of that. It'd be nice to see more Condi appreciation this year ^_^ he's a really great guy and I love his characters!

On an unrelated note, I feel like Isaac's gotta cut his hair at some point, just from a characterization perspective. Which sucks because I like his stupid bun and undercut and so does he but. The Horrors

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ALSO i don't think any of the upp kids would engage in substance abuse. i know people love to say william smokes b/c of that one pd s2 episode but like. a) that was mostly a bit (tho ofc i've taken bits seriously before...i just think no) and b) do you really think that twink's lungs could handle that. he would try like vaping or something ONE TIME and immediately start coughing and choking and dying (metaphorically) and then never do it again.

isaac too. he wouldn't do that shit (ik they had the white claw thing but that was a meta bit and honestly i'd view it more like the quote "pass the weed thing", which i ALSO have just. removed from my personal sphere of canon because as the campaign progressed and condi and the others got more clear grasps on their characters it became pretty clear to me that isaac isn't the type to purposefully try and get his friends in trouble, especially not in trouble with their parents. and also it was charlie who said that isaac does that, and charlie at that point in time, like us the audience, didn't know isaac that well)

in his case...yeah, isaac ABSOLUTELY engages in self-destructive behavior, but it's not through substance abuse or even actions (though he does take unnecessary risks sometimes, he's actually a LOT more cautious than he seems on a surface level). it's through relationships. with his father, with william, with his mother, hell, even with norah and lui! these are all relationships that, intentionally or not, indirectly or not, hurt him, and yet he seems to refuse to change them or even leave them. and, yes, with some—like his parents—he can't really change the relationship himself. but with others—his friends—he can. idk. there's more nuance to it than that (for example the "refuses" is a bit of a strong word for what he does but i couldn't find a better one) but that's the gist of it

norah's parents are doctors so i imagine she'd be hyperaware of the risks + she cares a lot about her reputation, so i don't think she'd do any of that stuff. not to mention she already has to deal with (auditory) hallucinations and is on several different medications*—i don't think she'd do anything that could make her hallucinations worse or react badly to her meds.

once again i am suffering the curse of not having much to say about lui but wanting to have much to say—anyways i just think lui wouldn't have much interest in alcohol or drugs or anything similar, simple as that. he has his occult stuff, his ghosts and cryptids and the like. he doesn't need anything else to make his life interesting or to destress!

sorry this post ended up just being mostly isaac again i did not intend that it just. happened. The Mind Virus 😔

*both of those pieces of information come from milo's blog btw 👍

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remembered worth the cost exists and felt INCREDIBLY validated bc. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i've ALWAYS thought norah had the potential to have some issues w/ will regarding his willingness to put her (& the others) in danger to satisfy his curiosity!! and i was RIGHT!! i! LOVE!! complicated friendgroups!! friendships that arent perfect, friendships with unspoken problems!! that's REAL!!! YEAAAAAAAAA

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//upp2 spoilers

yknow i dont think isaac cries a lot but i think he cried when he learned about his father's death (the first time, at least- the second time was. well. yknow. A Bit Stressful). i think he laughed, too, and i think his mom couldn't stop sobbing, and i think his sister only showed a sort of vindictive indifference, but i think they all felt so, so relieved.

thing is like. he was still family. in a fucked-up twisted way. i'm sure isaac felt some sort of real sadness at his father's death, and i'm sure he didn't want to, he felt sick at the fact that he did, he felt so much shame about the fact that he didn't want to. he felt worse from the prospect that he would get even a little bit of joy from the death of another person, any other person. felt too much like his father. idk. fw me here

[fizzfangzz]

Got past Wonderlust e24 (halfway through e25 now but that's irrelevant) and Extraordinary Lougferd I have so many complicated emotions about you. It's just. God. He couldn't have been any other way, could he? From the bits of fandom content I saw from before this episode had been released, I'd been thinking he'd be cold. Dismissive. Like I'm sure pretty much everyone else in this fandom did. But he's not, and it makes so much sense — you meet him and of course, of course there was no other way for him to be; a cruel and neglectful father may have the capability to create such a "wonderous", "whimsical" estate, certainly, but there's just...something about the fact that, no, he's not like that. If he was — well, it'd seem almost overplayed by now, I'm sure. It's about the fact that he is exactly what you'd expect the creator of all these things to be: Adoring, kind. Full of love. Spacey. Not fully there. Almost childlike. Head always up in the clouds, thinking about other things. He really, truly loves Troy and Randy. He would give the world for his children — but he doesn't know what they really want, much less what they need, always assuming and talking over. He is the "Type C" of the rich parent you picture in your head, I guess is a good way to put it.

And, what's more, I think Troy's behavior makes so much more sense with his father being the way he is than if his father was the way we assumed he was. I think if Extraordinary Lougferd was the way we assumed he was, Troy would not be a college freshman at the age of twenty-five. He would not be losing any steam-sledding races. He might not even be steam-sledding at all...and he most definitely would not be where he is right now, with Blink and Runt and WD. This is not the behavior of the child of a hateful father. This is the behavior of the child of an absent father, an adoring father. Perhaps a bit too adoring, too lenient, at least regarding how he was early-campaign.

I dunno. Just. Shout-out to JRWI for consistently, in every campaign I've watched, having families that are strained, and having them not be flat and one-dimensional. Troy and his father and brother. Jay and her parents. William and his brother. Dakota and his aunt. Hell, even Shilo and Emizel, whose parental relations aren't gone into too much, have some layers to them! I've found that in a lot of media I consume, especially popular media, family members — especially parents — who characters don't get along with tend to be...terrible for the sake of it. We only see one perspective, and that perspective makes those relatives the bad guy, the plot device for your characters to move on from and get over. Overcome. Denounce. Unlearn the teachings of. Just Roll With It doesn't do that. These parents and siblings are complicated. Sure, they might be a bad guy, but there's a reason they ended up that way. And maybe they're not a bad guy! Maybe they're an aunt struggling with grief and addiction, trying and failing to raise her nephew. Maybe they're a mother who never sees her husband and daughter, who is trying to balance so many different worlds and points of view in her hands, all while slowly dying.

Maybe they're a father who can't get a grasp on reality, who is always looking to the future without considering what's right in front of him.