harvey!!

And then one day Jared is, I dunno, 24 years old and is attempting to streamline his own social media consumption because he certainly doesn't have the willpower to nuke all of his accounts and ends up on Instagram, looking at his blocklist for the literal first time ever, congratulating himself for the hour he just spent shadowbanning total strangers in an effort to ragebait-detox his algorithm.

And he discovers that the reason why he hasn't been able to find any trace of Evan Hansen online in all this time...is because Jared blocked him six years ago on presumably every platform and entirely forgot about it.

So Jared is like. Okay. Cringe. And forgetting that he did it implies things about his mental state when he did it that he definitely doesn't want to examine. But it would be really ridiculous and immature to keep Evan blocked forever over some high school bullshit that truly does not matter anymore. High school bullshit that Jared is now healthy and mature enough to recognize as, y'know, partially his own fault.

He's over it. He unblocks Evan. And, hey, Evan seemingly didn't block him back, because Jared can see his Instagram profile now.

evan makes himself as small as possible. he assumes he is the problem and is very much aware of the fact that he is alone, so he clings to any scraps of affection he can find. he hides himself, and getting pulled out generally just means messing up, so he just hides more.

connor's loneliness also morphs into self hatred but has different consequences. rather than try to make himself as small as possible, he assumes everyone hates him as much as he hates himself and projects that onto interactions, lashing out because of perceived hostility that mostly isn’t there.

jared tries to ignore it. he pretends like it's not there, like he's not lonely because he’s not alone. he makes everything into a joke so he doesn’t have to care about it and generally just avoids thinking about his actual feelings.

zoe molds herself into perfection. but not the outstanding kind of perfection, the average kind of perfection. the "gets good grades but doesn't brag about it" kind of perfection, the "isn’t bad at anything, but isn’t good enough to make connor feel bad about himself" kind of perfection, the "apologises for what connor does, but once he's not around" kind of perfection. the goldilocks kind of perfection, so she can slip away into a vaguely nice memory for everyone she meets.

always raining here 💧 a lazy saturday

we will have this print at TCAF 2026 where we are FEATURED GUESTS promoting the new version of Always Raining Here!

hope to see some of you there!

an out of context kleinsen kissing…and crying…

(This is how I imagine their first kiss…)