#tlcobc

Bleak Creek is for me honestly one of their best creations. It's not Dostoevsky obviously but it is a decent book that can be read quickly and easily and for me it was honestly fun. Now, Bleak Creek is much like other R&L works in the sense that a red herring is thrown in - in this case it's the character of Alicia Boykins for whom both their characters Rex and Leif have feelings - and then there is a gazillion of their usual allegories and symbolisms and insinuations.

What I found so compelling in TLCOBC is that through the medium of a text, a book written by them, you get a better chance to draw an accurate picture of their thoughts and emotions. A lot of what I actually use in my opinions and theories is informed by what I read in TLCOBC. I think it allows a deeper insight. It's also super interesting to explore the themes and how dark these themes seem to be inside their hearts and the allegories they come up with. For example, I am pretty hugely convinced that the villain of the whole story, which is like teen horror, is downright inspired by Rhett's father. Like, not even a single doubt. And all those things say a lot, you know?

Then, even though the book was mostly written by Rhett with the assistance of a professional writer, there is huge input of Link in it. Either Link also wrote a lot or he told Rhett exactly what he felt and how he wanted his character to be approached and explored and Rhett adhered to this 100%. What I am trying to say is that even though this is an easy quick young adult / teen read, there is still introspection and very intriguing symbolism / allegory in it. It is a autobiographical work turned into teen fantasy horror.

And because you asked specifically how gay, Rhett once in a promo interview said that Alicia did not symbolise a real person but it symbolised who "they truly wanted to be". This does stand on its own if you read the book but I think what Rhett also meant is that Alicia was also given the traits they both see and love in each other that they can not reveal in their platonic context. There are too many to mention but a very appropriate example right now would be... did you - Anon and anyone else reading this - see that answer I posted a couple of days ago about the " I am dead" move in which when they used to fight as kids and young adults, Rhett had a habit of falling on top of Link and staying there until Link calmed down?

Well, in TLCOBC Leif reflects on his pretty serious crush for Alicia thoroughly and one of the things said is that because Alicia is a tomboy (of COURSE) they would often physically fight for fun (much like real Link would wrestle with Rhett) . Alicia was always able to pull the "Full Nelson" move on Leif, like Rhett always pulled the dead move on Link...... And then Leif reflects on how he had to keep his crush a secret at any cost (because Alicia was a best friend to him and he thought he would destroy their friendship if he revealed his feelings as he was sure she did not return them... like honestly what else do you need, here Alicia serves as a red herring for Rhett) and he allowed himself only to savour the moments when she would pull the full nelson on him and he could feel her hair on his neck when she had him like that... And here's the full nelson:

So Alicia was on his back or on top of him, like Rhett was when he did the Dead move....

he’d convinced himself that he could carry his hidden crush around with him while still enjoying her presence, savoring the moments when she playfully put him in a full nelson, her hair brushing up against the back of his neck

Like... what else does this man have to say...

So, you get a lot of insight through the book, even in the form of parallels, that you do not get in their videos as easily. That is if you read the book as a symbolism and not at face value, in which case it's just a pleasant teen horror. But it's really hard to overlook the symbolism and I believe if you read it, a lot of the things I write here would fall into place better or make more sense.

I actually started a series of metas once, intending to analyse all TLCOBC chapters through a Rhink lens but then I realised that very few of the currently active fans have read the book so I stopped. Here's the only two posts I have made anyway:

Heavy Rhink implications in TLCOBC #1

https://asherlockstudy.tumblr.com/post/614244392916697088/warning-the-lost-causes-of-bleak-creek-spoiler

I also have these links in my One Story Masterlist because TLCOBC is one of the most fundamental points of reference for the One Story.

But in the Bleak Creek conversations version/cut of the documentary, they included a bit where the boys were sitting on the rocks and talking about the types of talks they had there. And Link mentioned how hard it was to not say how bad he didn’t want Rhett to go to a college based on basketball team, but wanted them to go to film school together, like how it’s impossible to say those things.

The last days I have been making some analyses based on Rhett and Link’s latest video “We Dug a Medium-sized Hole”. My realisation of what I have been explaining there led me to a new surge of excitement when watching their content. I have talked before about how much I like Hazel but to be precise I never watched the TikTok videos, I had only listened to the two versions of the song, which is certainly the best song they have written and performed so far in their career in my opinion. So a few days ago, my YouTube feed actually suggested the Hazel videos to me and, as I have been in this new RandL surge, I thought “why not”. I thought it will be fun and creepy, and it was, but once again I wasn’t ready for the hammer of realisation that fell right on my forehead. You see, being freshly out of my We Dug a Hole analyses, I noticed a load of similarities between the two. But even more importantly, I noticed numerous similarities between Hazel and the Lost Causes of Bleak Creek. In fact, what I mean by “numerous similarities” is that they are all essentially the same story, and the only thing that changes are the settings, the side characters and other secondary elements. So if this is the case, Rhett and Link have been telling one story again and again for quite some time and, in their words, have been somewhat disappointed at the reaction they did (not) receive from the viewers (Hazel), their difficulty to promote their story in other media (Bleak Creek) and now their decision to not have expectations so that they won’t get disappointed again (Digging a hole). But let’s say a few words for each of these major projects.

We Dug a Medium-sized Hole

Let’s start from the last one, which is also the smallest and most superficial project. It is a humorous video with a prepared song and a predetermined concept which is supposedly unscripted. I analysed it in excruciating detail a few days ago so I will just give you links to my posts “They Dug A Hole” and “The ‘We Dug A Hole’ Discussion”, which I would recommend because they will help make this post much clearer as well. Anyway, to summarise, here’s what goes down: Rhett and Link agree to dig a medium sized hole without examining this agreement and intent thoroughly and carefully enough to see if they are on the same page fully. They slowly get the hang of this, Link becomes very invested and loses control entirely. Rhett panics and tries to help Link get back to his senses and establish control between them again. Yet, if you remember this part from the “They Dug A Hole” post,

well, it had intrigued me then but it actually proved to be unexpectedly significant for real! Despite Rhett being the one who tries to establish control in the hole-digging process, soon he is the one to fall back into it the hardest. True enough, the second time it’s Rhett we see running the excavator. There are no other characters in the video, except for the mole who supports them but is accidentally killed. Rhett and Link have revealed this is the first of a series of similar videos (and songs, perhaps).

The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

If you haven’t read their novel yet, well this is simply the best thing they have made so far and I definitely recommend it. I have always found it curious how little tumblr fans speak of TLCOBC, especially since it is RAGING with innuendo and symbolism that is not even subtle. I will give the story in very broad terms, however there are going to be some strong spoilers here because I don’t have another way to prove my point. Be warned. Of course here we have a different setting and the main characters are preteens. The setting is a dark twist of Rhett and Link’s actual childhood. Their small town with its extremely puritan, conservative community. The book has many characters but once again there is only one more character that can be considered as “main”, Alicia Boykins, their female best friend with whom they are secretly both in love. Well scratch that off, there is also Janine who is important, she is clearly Stevie’s character. But anyway. Rhett and Link have implied in a Mythicon that Alicia is a symbolic character who represents “their ideal selves”, “who they wanted to be”. So in short Rex, Leif and Alicia is a trio of best friends who live in this small Christian town hiding a dark secret. Leif falls in love with Alicia first and more profoundly, Rex a little later. Alicia is kidnapped and sent unfairly to a notorious reformatory school. Rex and Leif agree to save her but the whole plan goes wrong and Leif falls in a trap, in a very dark, deep and hopeless place, where Alicia also is, where you lose memory and the sense of self. (Won’t spoil more.) Rex returns to his town in utter panic and frustration and creates a master plan to rescue Leif. After a lot of allegories and adventures, Rex dives in the dark deep place and saves Leif (in a very romantic way btw). Alicia is rescued too. They confront the evil guys who control the reformatory school. They resume their peaceful life in their town. The book ends in a cliffhanger where Alicia sees something while bicycling that is a major sign that the cult / curse / that thing that was going on there is not defeated. So here we have as common themes: Link losing control because of how invested he was (in Alicia), Rhett panicking and trying to save him and correct the situation, and another main character who is a mysterious symbolism. It’s a little hard to be certain of what Alicia exactly symbolises, just like it is the case with the mole. What we don’t see in TLCOBC is Rex being the one to fall in deep the second time, but I bet this is the intended plot for the second book.

Hazel Macon

I watched this video a few days ago for the first time. Hazel is a fantastic project Rhett and Link came up with but the platform they chose to execute it on originally (TikTok) literally executed its chances for success. I will explain this in more detail. Rhett and Link promoted Hazel to the unaware GMM viewers by saying they were pulling an all-nighter to compose a song with their fans through TikTok. So they overestimated how many would go to TikTok for that. However, for those fans who signed up for this, they had already prepared a short movie separated in short bits, being uploaded gradually, telling a very creepy story. Here’s the plot: Rhett and Link start their all-nighter in the Creative House by uploading videos on TikTok. In order to get some ideas for their new song, they randomly choose the album Yearning by Hazel Macon. Link is confused because he does not remember this album, although Rhett argues confidently it’s Link’s and he acquired it in GMM (true). They play it and it is a haunting song of a girl wandering lost in a forest (as also evident on the album cover), waiting for someone to play her song, so she can be set free. They both hear whispering in the song and they figure it is backmasking (messages recorded backwards) so Rhett plays the record backwards to decode the message, to Link’s discomfort. Rhett says the message is there for a reason and he mockingly parallels it to satanic subliminal messages. He hears “I just want out. Just open the door. It’s been so, so long. I feel so lost. “ (Needless to say, this is in the official song obviously too.) Meanwhile, dead birds (crows) fall on their doors and windows every time they try to get out of the house. As they listen to the secret messages of the song, the girl vanishes from the album cover and they hear her singing from the back of the house. Scared to death, they see her emerge from the middle room (👀) . They try to hide in the kitchen where Link attempts to say something final and heavy with meaning to Rhett in case they die, but Hazel appears behind him and touches him causing him to fall into shock. She vanishes. Rhett stops playing the record but Link is now in a dead-inside state, the video suggesting Hazel is now inside him. Rhett roams the house but there is no way out as birds fall on every door. In a moment that Link escapes Rhett’s notice, Hazel reappears, turns Link into Harlan Macon, a reserved southern dude coming straight from the 1900s, and leads him to the middle room. Rhett follows in panic but there is nothing there when he opens the door. The Yearning album cover has changed and now it’s both Hazel and Link on the cover and on the record singing. Rhett in despair realises that he will have to play the record again, open the portal, find Link and save him (again, like in TLCOBC, see the trope?). As Rhett walks towards the door listening to Link’s voice from somewhere deep, he says “I don’t know if he can come out. I don’t think I want to go in there but I think I am gonna have to go in there”. This time when he opens the door to the middle room, it is an opening to a forest during a very dense night. It has a claustrophobic feel. Long story short, Hazel attacks him and turns him to Hardy Macon. However, when Hardy meets Harlan (Link), Harlan is “way too deep”, in Rhett’s words, he doesn’t recognise Rhett and he has assumed a different personality. Hardy!Rhett orders Harlan!Link to follow him, he bumps Hazel with a fallen branch, finds the door of the middle room and saves them both. Rhett immediately stops the record and Link returns to his normal self but has no memory of any of this. The album now has only Hazel on it again. Rhett tries frantically to get rid of the “Yearning” album but the “Yearning” album proves to be indestructible. It does not break, it does not melt and when he tosses it in the yard, it comes back.

Then there is a hilarious joke which Link now films; that Rhett is locked in the toilet for way too long, and Link thinks Rhett has shitted himself (however I bet the implied joke is that he was trying to wank it out, as a last resort solution to deal with Yearning). Link then explains to the fans how he still doesn’t remember the Yearning album and hypothesises that Rhett must have brought it earlier to him and ruined their entire evening. Link concludes that if he plays the record backwards again, he will decipher the message and be done with it. Rhett screams from the toilet but it’s too late. Hazel reappears and turns him to Hardy again. When Hazel and Hardy appear to Link again, the camera drops from his hands. The album which had turned to have Hazel and Rhett on the cover and record once Link started playing it again, now morphs into having Rhett and Link together, implying that they now both are lost in those woods with no way out. An unknown hand turns the record to play the normal version, by the Macon Brothers.

Notes and conclusions:

* It is important to note that all of these projects have an either neutral or bad ending. The most neutral one is the digging a hole one, where they have succeeded in making a medium hole but there is also the unintended massive hole behind them, which they choose to ignore. TLCOBC has a fake happy or ominous ending, as the threatening sign appears just when everything seems to be working out well. Hazel is dark and ends in melancholic despair - Rhett and Link remain trapped in that ominous forest hiding in the middle room of their house. These are not happy stories even though all feature Rhett and Link’s light humour (the fork in Hazel came to mind, this joke gets me every time).

* Alicia and Hazel clearly stand for the same or a very similar symbolism. They likely are the personification of yearning, of confronting the truth openly, of being free, as Rhett said Alicia was an allegory for who they truly wanted to be. In two of the projects, they are trapped female entities, whose steps Link follows.

* All of the projects were meant to be part of a series. The book ended in a cliffhanger. Rhett and Link had revealed in their EB for Hazel that they had more scenarios prepared to execute in the same way. Alas, this podcast was filmed before Hazel aired and apparently they were very disheartened by Hazel’s failure. Imagine all that I described, it didn’t take more than 76,000 views in TikTok and most video bits only made like 11,000 views, which must have been a stab in the heart. Ironically, they later uploaded the whole thing on YouTube, and it now has half a million. I mean it’s still not as much as expected for this type of production, but it’s better than the 70,000. In any case the moment was lost then. Now they return with the hole digging which they announced it is the first in a series of similar videos coming. They emphasised how they were determined to ignore the views this time, and even though they did not mention Hazel, I believe the concept is connected directly to the concept of the Hazel video series, postponed for two years after their disappointment. The videos tell the same story, accompanied by a song, but in totally opposite styles.

* Settings, secondary elements and characters vary - the main plot remains the same always in at least 2/3 of the projects at any moment. For whatever reason each time, Rhett and Link decide to do something that unexpectedly makes them vulnerable to a truth they either had not realised or hid well within themselves. Link is seduced or trapped by this truth and falls deeper and deeper, there is always this trope of him falling in deep, either because he wants to or because he has no choice. Link reaches a desperate, helpless state and Rhett realises that he will have to help him out of the situation. Rhett is always very scared and very panicked but in every version he is determined to bring back Link or bring him back to his senses or save him. Rhett struggles and he gets into this dark zone or loses himself in this seductive trap momentarily in order to get Link back. However, he succeeds. They are both back to normal, figuring things out properly. The success is short-lived as Rhett eventually realises he is in fact trapped in way too deep as well, that he is trying to fight something he cannot defeat. The moment he realises this, Link relapses again soon too. This of course is given in a very cheerful, carefree way in the digging video while the plot in the book doesn’t reach the moment of Rhett’s defeat yet.

* The traps in all projects share some common characteristics: the bright sun doesn’t make it clear at first but a hole in the desert is still a hole in the desert. The bigger and deeper it is, the harder it gets to escape it and beneath it there is just darkness and dirt. The forest in Hazel is accessed through a portal to the Creative House’s middle room, it is dark, dense, quiet and claustrophobic. The trap in the Lost Causes is the most mystical, underwater and deep and with other dangers looming as well. Another common element in the last two is the memory loss and losing the sense of self or consciousness.

* Does religion have anything to do with all this? Yes, lots. Is religion the only thing that has to do with all this? No…

* On a lighter note, the Hazel song slaps! It is so good that it is haunting even when played backwards!

* On a heavier note, I was already convinced Rhett and Link are hiding a message in all these projects. I am still not sure however, whether they want this message to be decoded by people or they just make it in order to vent, to get the sensation they escape for a bit the walls of the room, the house, the trap. Hazel is perhaps the boldest of the projects (although the innuendos in TLCOBC are the most glaring) as a main plot because Rhett himself in the video brings awareness into the fact that their song has a hidden, forbidden message that subtextually yearns to be heard.

PS. Just to lighten the mood

Not much to explain here, I picked up all the Lost Causes of Bleak Creek excerpts of particular interest in my opinion and I will make a series of posts about this, divided according to the book's chapters. Some will be given intact, some will have my commentary on why I consider them Rhink or queer symbolism. Obviously, it can’t get more SPOILER heavy than that. Do not read if you plan to read the book uninfluenced by any opinion!

Okay, let’s dive right into it.

Chapter 1

“Yessir,” Steve said. “You too. Can’t wait to eat your meat.” Wayne Whitewood shot his ice-blue eyes at Steve without moving his head from the paper, staring at him for a few uncomfortable seconds. Despite his small stature, Whitewood was remarkably intimidating.

Steve McClendon is Rex’s father. He is strict like every father in Bleak Creek and says some things consistent with what Rhett’s father was saying to him but he is also goofy, funny and a little naive. In this sense, he is closer to Link’s father. Wayne Whitewood, on the other hand, is short yet very intimidating, accusatory and with zero tolerance for anything that could have sexual implications. Whitewood is the one who actually symbolises Rhett’s father and he is the headmaster of the reform school. Rhett often talks about how he dreaded and succumbed to his father even though he was a lot shorter than him. In the first pages of the first chapter, we see the two men (fathers?) interact due to an unfortunate and unintentional sex joke between them. It’s either that or both Wayne Whitewood and Steve McClendon symbolise different sides of Rhett’s father’s personality.

Oh, thanks, it’s for our—” Leif was about to say movie until he saw Rex staring him down. “Fundraiser. Well, not our fundraiser. But this fundraiser. That we’re all attending now.” “Well, okay.” Rex’s mom had gotten used to her son and his best friend saying inscrutable things.

The trope of Link about to reveal a secret and Rhett giving him warning signs made it to the book.

“You want to use my deodorant?” “Yes. Yes, I do.” “Oh.” Leif stared at Rex as if seeing him for the first time, like he’d just discovered some long-buried truth about the best friend he’d known since he was six.

*****

👧🏾 Alicia Boykins is mentioned for the first time as joining while they were drawing pictures of mythical creatures and she uses a rainbow pen. She is the last addition to their friendship trio. Rhett and Link have explained a few things about their inspiration for her. They said she doesn’t symbolise a real person but rather who they would want to be. In my opinion, Alicia is their love, or rather those sides of Rhett and Link and their relationship that is not presented through Rex or Leif. Another key trait of her is that she is way more sincere than they are and voices the opinions they don’t dare voice. Her surname, Boykins, is interesting. Kin to boys? Kin of boys?

Rex had to hand it to Alicia; she was always late, yet somehow her timing usually ended up being perfect anyway.

This is more of a liberal interpretation on my part, but consider if Alicia here stands for an affair between Rhett and Link. Late and yet in perfect timing.

"Oh, hey, Alicia!” Rex watched his mom’s mouth twist into the manufactured grin that Martha McClendon offered to people she had reservations about.

Rex’s mom does not like Alicia but she likes Leif. Diane has admitted to like Link but consider him a bad influence for Rhett. Based on the theory above, Alicia here is the hidden side of Link, the one Rhett’s mom is concerned about.

Rex didn’t hear what Pastor Jingle said next, or what Pastor Mitchell said after that, because, as he took in the features of Alicia’s face, he was distracted by a ping in his chest. He found himself fixated on the gentle curve of her lips.

Rex realises he likes Alicia once he notices her lips. Rhett has recently described Link’s lips as “suppler than the average guy’s”.

Rex couldn’t believe how disoriented he’d gotten in such a crucial moment. And because of Alicia? He shook it off, knowing he needed to focus, and gave a confident thumbs-up to Leif and Alicia, like “Get ready” and also like “Everything’s under control, I wasn’t just distracted by the beauty of someone who’s been my best friend for years”.

Me, a Greek, in whose language agape means love: Dudes you are not making this easy for me

But I suppose as ex-Christians they might know this one.