Bagel(\-o-/)

and she said "yeah I know AI keeps your face"

Lenny and I have low affection at one another?

That's fine, that triggers his grabbing animation.

Why is that funny as heck to me?

Well, because when Kain throws down a sign that says "CLICK ME" and I do, spawning him in behind me and setting me up for a jump scare, LENNY COMES IN OUT OF LEFT FIELD AND SNATCHES ME UP RIGHT AS KAIN LUNCHES AT ME!??? I'M SAVED????

Lenny and I have high report thanks to me aggressively throwing gifts off my tower for him/ playing our weird little jumping game? This makes him spawn into bed sometimes at night.

Why is this also funny as heck?

WELL! Because Kain came a banging on my door and kicked it in the moment I laid down, you know who also spawned in? LENNY. Literally shielding me from Kain and canceling his animation via spite alone.

Kain leaves a dead cow for me? Lenny bumrushes a live one and throws it at me as a gift.

Kain stands outside my window and prevents me from sleeping? Lenny spawn on the roof and starts running in loud chittering circles to drown him out.

Kain tries to chase me? I accidentally lead him into one of Lenny's web traps (seriously, I had no idea it was there.)

Kain leaves threats, tries a jump scare, or tries to sneak up on me? Lenny leaves behind pictures and sharp objects next to those same threats, and goes full spider mode to get at me first.

Lenny angrily throws a web at me because I died and accidentally dropped my inventory (Full of his gifts!!!) into lava, Kain spawns in between us and takes the smack to the head.

Lenny tackles, bites, and nearly kills me because I still haven't made up for the aforementioned accidental gift burning? Kain is standing right next to my window, by the bed, watching me to see if I wake up. Making it look like the dude dragged me home.

Lenny makes a structure? Kain stands on top of it and shakes angrily until Lenny leaves. Then slaps down a sign or a dead animal for good measure.

I eat something that makes me sick, from Lenny, to please God make him forgive me for dropping his gifts in lava already??

Kain spawns in behind me, slowly walks over, and just stands next to me while I slowly take damage. Then leaves when I recover.

I know none of this is intentional, and it's all just funny game coding clashing together; like when Lenny only gives me crushed animal patties after running off with my chickens; it's not in the code, it's just excellent timing with the gift RNG.

Or when Kain crashes my game by accident and I spawn back in with him literally standing next to me; just staring down at the ground as if he's ashamed of his actions and accidental coding issue (thanks Java) it's just a hilarious byproduct of the game crashing and his model not despawning before the save hits.

These mods are NOT alive, but the coders did so damn good that even their mishaps feel like quirks and personality traits.

I have some Pale Faced Emo and A Big Fluffy Boy running around my forest while I'm busy roleplaying as a firewatch lookout (it's my 2nd dream job behind lighthouse keeper just let me larp.)

I'm busy cataloguing monster spawns, logging weather patterns in my journal, using my spyglass to check the local volcano, and minding my own, while they absolutely beat each other to death and keep being petty bitches for no good reason; and it's actually eaten up three IRL days of my life as I watch this and crack up about it.

I love Minecraft mods, man.

Downside to all this? I've forgotten to make/do literally anything productive. Upside, I now have SO much inspiration for future cosplay crap.

Plus I haven't gotten to play a videogame in months, so it's hard not to binge.

of course you as the audience can't help emma even as she begs for you to, it's just a show, and it was fucking phenomenal so you are cheering. BUT so are the actors, who in the context of the story are the infected. and in the context of the story YOU are there too, cheering along with them. YOU are infected.

i think this is why inevitable and the ending as a whole make me sick to my stomach in a way my words will never adequately describe. we watch as the apotheosis strips paul and the others of their individuality, turning the world into one big musical number, and we are comfortable viewing it all from an audience perspective. but when emma cries to YOU, something shifts. the wall is broken. everything about the show is perfectly set up so that by the end you will be whooping and applauding at a character that so desperately needs your help.

it's set up so that you can initially feel you are in line with the heroes of the story, only for it to put you in the same position as the villain. because maybe in reality that isn't as uncommon of a circumstance as you might think. how often do we dismiss ourselves all the while viewing tragedy from a comfortable audience seat, treating it as a spectacle? i think this is the question the show wants you to walk away with.

from emma's perspective in the original TGWDLM production its a moderately sized crowd of us against her (still terrifying), but in the west end theater it's this gigantic surging ocean of people all laughing at her desperation.

While it's somewhat played up for comedic purposes, the scenes in which Bear asks Not Nikki to stop doing something and she just goes "Okay! :D" stick out to me so much. She was very willing to hear him out when he complained about her behavior (at least sometimes) but it was never going to be enough anyway. When he was telling her that hiding in the corner and watching him sleep made him uncomfortable, she seemed genuinely worried about having made him feel bad, something he never once did for her or the real Nikki (made even more heartbreaking by the "I can be anything you want me to be!" line)

A lot of people are focusing on how Bear first asks to alter his wish and only asks to cancel it once he's told it can't be altered (understandably, it's a great and very important scene), but do not forget that after he buys more One Wish Willows, the first thing he tries to do is wish for Nikki to "only love him as a friend." Even when he's trying to revert things back to "normal" he still feels entitled to having her in his life. And at first I thought "well that's still not good but it's a little better" but then I thought about it for more than five seconds and no, that's not a little better, because after everything he put her through she would never want to have anything to do with him ever again. To try to ask for her to still be in his life is also extremely selfish of him

Still on the previous point, when he asks Ian to wish for him to have never made a wish. There's a lot to say about this scene, but one of the things that sticks out to me is that phrasing. Don't wish for Nikki to have her autonomy back, just make a wish that will make me feel like I fixed my mistake and might turn things back to how they were before my wish (aka, with Nikki still liking me, even if just as a friend)

One more thing about that scene, when he tells Ian that "he can be with Nikki". Of course he says that he "didn't mean it that way", and I sort of believe him, but it's impossible to ignore that he immediately thinks bringing up Ian's attraction to Nikki will make him agree to go along with his plan, the same way his own attraction to Nikki made him make his wish

Maybe this is just me, but when he's in the car with Sarah and he questions her on whether she thinks he should be with someone "like you?", he doesn't seem upset like I assume someone would be if they're in a committed relationship and another person suddenly suggests they should be with them instead. He seems very open to the idea, despite never once having been shown to have feelings for Sarah (in fact at the beginning of the movie he outright tells Nikki he doesn't like her like that), like he just wants to be loved by a woman and now that a "normal" one is showing interest in him he's very willing to abandon Not Nikki despite literally wishing for her, just because she's not exactly what he hoped for and is causing him problems

This is more so just praising Inde Navarrette's acting skills, and I know the point is that Not Nikki is the exact opposite of Nikki, but one notable difference between the two is their crying, and now that I think about it their screaming too. Not Nikki cries and screams in a sort of childish way, and it reminds me of the way some men want their girlfriends to act, like a child that needs them for comfort (maybe minus the screaming). It doesn't work with Bear, it comes off as a bit of a tantrum and just annoys and freaks him out, but despite obviously being how she really feels, with the fact that he literally wished her into existence, I can't help but feel that even the way she expresses pain is geared towards making him like her. But Nikki screams like a regular, horrified adult woman. When she cries in the final scene, there's no high-pitched whining to it, just pure horror and despair. Man I hope Inde Navarrette gets tons of awards for her performance