I Write Fanfiction (in Theory)

But if I WAS, I think I might write a story where a thin red-haired Caucasian mother sacrifices herself to protect her child from an unnatural and predatory fringe outsider incapable of experiencing real human feelings like love and hope and desire for peace in a better world who seek solely to transform his body into something unnatural and conquer the natural world by force, fully ignoring the actual and tangible real-world problems that also exist in the story like poverty, child abuse, racism, and slavery

I have to preface by saying I hold absolutely no resentment towards marisha for her character choices — murray is without a doubt one of my favorite characters of the campaign. I think it makes total sense to be suspicious and fully think through what might happen at the theater, given that thousands of innocent people would be attending. But I also think the bird watching mission being short-staffed falls heavily on her shoulders, because she was the first person to bring up the possibility of something terrible happening on opening night, and she aggressively defended the idea from the very first moment it was challenged.

It’s that refusal to let go of her theory that really intrigues me, mostly because I’m not sure if it was intentional or not. Brennan dropped quite a few hints that the theater ritual was going to be a positive thing during the last few episodes, but it kinda seemed too little too late because the mindset that the theater was “ground zero” was deeply ingrained in the party by that point, which makes it hard to tell if murray’s insistence was purposeful.

Assuming it is intentional, I think that’s a really interesting character flaw for a character that hasn’t shown all that many glaring flaws as of yet. As an academic, she should know how important it is to consider all angles of a theory, especially angles that could disprove it. However, given the way she grew up and her role at the Penteveral, it stands to reason that murray has had a lot of her ideas shot down by muckety-mucks that didn’t really give a shit about the merits of what she was positing.

[ID: A digital drawing of Teor Pridesire and Kattigan Vale from Critical Role. They're standing together holding beer cans, Kattigan with his chin resting on Teor's shoulder and a hand on Teor's waist. They're both looking off to the right with unimpressed expressions as Kattigan asks "Do you know what the fuck they're all talking about?" and Teor responds "No." End description.]

The above is a video shared by smrchildsadness on Twitter, showing a person participating in a pride parade exchanging a pride flag with a person standing on his (am using his pronoun based on the TikToks/Tweets of what happened) doorway who had a Portuguese flag. There are sounds of cheers and crying and the two people hug each other as they exchange the flags. The man at the doorway then waved kisses to the crowd within the pride parade.

The Tweet says: "NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HE WAS WAVING THE PORTUGUESE FLAG BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HAVE A PRIDE FLAG AND THEY TRADED FLAGS AND HE'S SO EMOTIONAL TO GET HIS OWN PRIDE FLAG I'M EMOTIONALLY RUINED"

For context, apparently they were worried that maybe he's a nationalist because he was waving the Portuguese flag and some nationalists opposing the pride march were waving that flag. But upon interacting with him, it turns out he didn't have have a pride flag and he wanted to wave *a* flag in support of the pride march. So they had an exchange and now he has his own pride flag 😭🥹.

The image above is a Tweet by kunwara_ladkaa that says "I'm crying so much right now (Image taken by Manuel Fernando Araújo/Lusa)". The image shows the same man from the pride parade crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

The above image is a Tweet by dudz_zZzz that says "ainda não parei de pensar nele," which according to Google translate from Portuguese to English is "I still haven't stopped thinking about him." The image is a drawing of the person from the pride parade, crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

This elderly gentleman lives alone in Porto, when he saw the march coming up his street all he knew was he wanted to participate, so he ran home to get the only flag he had to wave as they passed by, when they did he was overcome with emotion and called over one of the activists, they hugged and exchanged flags, he felt so overwhelmed that he could only hold it and cry.

This isn't a story about a closeted elderly man, António lives and has been living alone for many years now and that little moment made him feel included in something for the first time in many years.

Says the article:

"The act was "of support”, guarantees the man, especially because “each one is as they are and we are all the same”. “The joy I felt at this moment. I cried,” he recalled, still emotional when looking at the photograph offered to him during this report.

However, even though it reached thousands of people, the moment screams a feeling of belonging, of joy and also a portrait of loneliness as a consequence of aging.

Behind that door, whose image spread across the country, António is the portrait of a condition that affects many others like him.  He lives alone, but the walls of his home are full of memories of a life shared and full of love. “Memories I preserve,” he stresses.

He's not gay, nor does he need to be to support and respect the cause.

“We all have the same color blood. We are all the same.”

Still with an emotional look glued to the photograph that immortalized his gesture at the march, António remembers: “I felt embraced by all of them”. After a sigh, he says: “See this photo? I want to take it to my coffin.”

[ID: A digital drawing of Kattigan Vale from Critical Role. He's grinning, saying "Oh-ho-ho getting tense!" and cracking open a can. A little doodle to the side of Occtis and Julien looking angry with each other is labelled "posh boys bickering". End description.]