something ive been thinking about wrt the basic eight is that. so natasha’s not real, but what were the dialogues, the scenes with her, actually like in reality? were they purely imaginary on flannery’s part, or if her words were actually flannery’s words? i guess it’s a mix of both. i mean we know some actions are most definitely actually flannery’s actions (the murder, for one example) and we’ve also seen dialogues that were like, natasha said something, then flannery echoed that, and someone else comments “you just said that”. so definitely some words are flannery’s own. i guess theres also some conversations that went slightly differently in actuality, and the natasha lines were not really what flan said but what she imagined and sort of fitted into the actual conversation, twisting things here and there to fit that in. but maybe there are lines that might have been said by someone else, too? i’m a little uncertain on this part. would she have changed someone else (not herself’s) lines to natasha’s, in her own mind? or would it only be hers or imagined?
theres this part in the book where there’s a day when flan keeps mistaking someone else for adam before realizing that it’s someone else. if some of natasha’s words were indeed said by someone else, if some of natasha’s actions were indeed done by someone else - then flan mistakes it for “natasha” - it’s not dissimilar to how she mistook others for adam. and that’s an interesting parallel. adam who flan considered herself in love with. adam who she kept mistaking other people as him on that day. but with natasha it wasn’t a single day. it’s so, so, so much longer than that
