Chapter Text
Dave: Realize you’ve made a huge mistake.
You’ve been walking by yourself for… you’ve lost track, to be honest. But over the course of that unknown amount of time, your path has changed frequently, as has your objective. For a few minutes at least, the M.O. was Get Away from Jade, so you made a beeline in the opposite direction that your dead brother/father led her on. Once your nerves had time to settle a bit, you remembered your original plan was to Find Rose, but having no fucking clue where you were or how one goes about finding someone in the middle of an endless goddamn jungle, you just sort of veered off to the direction that you felt at the time had the south-iest vibes. And then some more time passed, and you got more tired, and hungrier, and less in tune with any sort of mystic directional energies that you probably just made up entirely to begin with, and your nerves started creeping in again. Finally, when you stopped to take a drink and a short rest, another feeling crept in that you’d barely remembered anymore after the past few weeks - cold. And that was the last straw. You lost the last inkling of courage you’d been desperately clinging onto, and, you'd hoped at least, turned around to Go Home.
And now you’re just kinda… meandering about aimlessly through the dark, haunted, jungle of doom, completely alone, in the middle of the fucking night. And you just drained your last water bottle. And you’re cold.
At least Ghost!Bro would’ve made it quick- if there is actually anything of your real Bro in the thing, you know it simply wouldn’t have wasted it’s time or energy on torture if its objective was simply to kill you. Unless, of course, its goal was to torture you, lord knows the real Bro wouldn't shy away from that particular mission if so called. Either way, maybe if it turned on you, Jade could’ve protected you.
That thought piledrives a deep pit of shame in your stomach, but fuck it, you’ll take shame over certain death any day of the week. Anyone who’s even peripherally followed your career knows you’re no stranger to shame. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? You had to go and put your foot down. For once in your life you decided to stick to your guns like some kind of well-adjusted adult human man, instead of trusting the one person who’s ever given any indication that she has the slightest clue what the fuck’s going on since you dropped down on this godforsaken rock. You made one firm decision, and you played it up like it was the right one, the logical one, but really, it was always just based on fear. Really, you chose to run and hide from him, instead of choosing to stay with her. You chose him over her.
“I’ve made a huge mistake…” you mumble to yourself. You picture a slow motion zoom-in on your downtrodden face, as The Sound of Silence fades in in the background, a la G.O.B. Bluth in season four of Arrested Development. That makes you chuckle, very briefly, before the existential dread overtakes you.
You’ve made a huge mistake.
Before you even realize, you’re running.
You're running, (possibly,) back the way you came. Back towards her. And him, but you try your damndest to focus on the her to keep yourself moving forward. You can only hope beyond all reason that she didn't get too far in the hour or possibly six since you parted ways, that you're actually headed in the right direction, that you'll somehow catch up…
…that she's actually OK.
You stop, feeling the shame return so strong it physically weighs you down. You suddenly feel the weight of the sword hanging off your hip, the thing that, (oh yeah,) you could have used to protect her, if your worst fear about the Bro-parition turned out to be true. If you hadn’t abandoned her like the useless fucking coward you are. And now, for all you know, she's the one being tortured. Or maybe she's already dead.
"Jade!" you call out in sudden desperation, careless and breathless. You're not anywhere close to where you left her, you at least know that much. But you might as well see if you get a response to your poorly-thought-out plea while you recover from your ill-advised sprint. You don't, of course, so you continue to run, a little more slowly now, but still taxing enough on your already exhausted body and mind. When you can't run anymore, you stop and call again, hear nothing but the sounds of night in the jungle, and carry on again. Rinse and repeat. Until…
"Jade!"
You hear her. Barely. She’s close, but quiet. Her words are indistinguishable. Just a whisper.
“Jade…!”
Still no clear answer, just another whisper, and maybe a faint footstep or two. If you still had your wits about you, you may have come to a more sound conclusion about why that might be.
A twig snaps behind you.
"...Rose?"
Her name barely clears your lips before you finish your turn, and find yourself face to face with…not Rose. Not Jade, either, but someone else entirely, with a thin face and dark, feminine features, the details of which you don’t have time to fully observe.
“Hold still,” she says quietly, (British?) as she quickly wraps one arm around you and presses a cold hand firmly into the middle of your back. You don’t have time to process, let alone react, and you don’t even see her other hand reaching up towards your neck. You just feel a pinch, then see the syringe as she draws it out of you and drops it to the ground, freeing her to wrap her other arm under yours and around to firmly grasp your shoulder.
“Slowly, now…” she again whispers this time, almost sweetly, as she gingerly guides you first to your knees, then forward into her steadying embrace. “Good.” Other voices now appear in the background, as the sound of more footsteps draw nearer. It doesn’t even occur to you to try to fight, because suddenly, the world around you fades, and you fade, too…
*****
You made sure to finish your homework extra fast today, acknowledging that you are perhaps being a bit generous with what you're choosing to consider "finished." But, every so often, there are days when the stars align, the Gods of Irony turn their benevolent gaze upon you, and inspiration strikes so clearly that you simply must risk your B- average for the sake of your art. And it just so happens that today is one of those days.
Today is Cinco de Mayo. It's not an occasion that has held great importance to you in past years, aside from the usual snack and movie day in Spanish class. Today would have been no different, but for one unfortunate, beautiful twist of fate. Señor Cortez had just returned to the classroom from the teacher’s lounge, carrying two large, freshly microwaved platters of nachos in each hand. Then, without warning, without rhyme or reason, he tripped over absolutely nothing, mid-sentence, and flew halfway across the room. Time itself seemed to slow down, as Velveeta-coated store brand tortilla chips rained down on the carpet below, like manna raining down from comedy heaven. The uproarious cries, gasps, and laughter of your fellow students rang out like a choir of satirical seraphim. It was, easily, one of the stupidest fucking things you’ve ever witnessed in your young life.
So anyway, you’re working on a SBaHJ update where Sweet Bro drops his nachos.
It’s a good thing inspiration struck when it did, too, because tomorrow is update day. It’s certainly not the first time you’ve left it to the last minute, and won’t be the last. But some of your best posts have been the ones you pulled out of your ass the night before (that’s what happens when you build your entire brand on the premise of the dumbest shit imaginable.) And whether in your procrastination you stumble upon comedy gold, or just quickly spew out something so unintelligible your audience won’t know the difference, you’ve built up a pretty loyal, five-figure following over the year or so you’ve been doing this. The last thing you’d ever want to do is disappoint them by failing to deliver anything at all on the first Friday of the month. There would be riots in the streets. Or worse, you might lose a few subscribers.
You are almost finished what you decide will be part one of the nacho arc, just mining the depths of the web for a sufficiently hilarious recipe that you later plan to absolutely annihilate through several layers of .jpg shittification, when suddenly, the screen goes black. The whole room goes dark, apart from a small sliver of light seeping in under the door, and the dim green light emanating from your battery-powered alarm clock by the bed. You turn towards it, and, as you should have expected, it reads precisely 12:00. That, and the familiar click of the padlock outside your door that follows, confirm the realization that you are now coming to on your own, as the initial shock wears off.
Bro doesn't have many rules, at least not compared to most of your friends' parents, from what bits and pieces of a more typical childhood you've gleaned from them over the years. But one bit of structure he's always upheld is bedtime, particularly strictly, at that. Simply remove the option for all activities aside from sleep with a quick flick of a fuse and snap of a lock. And despite the fact that you're pretty sure none of your classmates' parents resort to similar measures, it hasn't yet occurred to you to consider it a huge deal. Not usually, at least. Not unless you were in the middle of something, if you lost track of time, like an idiot.
Fuck.
When was the last time you saved?
With a deep sigh that threatens to become tears, you set your alarm 15 minutes earlier than usual, then climb into bed where you toss and turn for your usual hour or so before drifting off to sleep. In the morning, five of those extra minutes fly by as you groggily and helplessly watch your computer take its sweet time booting back up. Then when it’s done yelling at you for so rudely shutting it down incorrectly, you open your file, and are greeted by only the very first panel. No time to grieve, you hastily type up a second panel reading “to be continued” followed by what you eventually settle on as being the optimal number of periods for maximum comic effect. You even more hastily throw on a random word art effect, paste it in place, save and upload the file, and click post, seconds before the first snooze alarm sounds.
Crisis averted. Sure, you’ve lost yourself a few hours of pretty ingenious work, but you’ve bought yourself a whole month to redo it. That’s what you get for losing track of time. You tell yourself you won’t let it happen again, as you rush out to the bathroom to complete your minimally acceptable morning routine. But, of course, you will.
*****
Dave: Open your eyes.
Ow.
You try to open your eyes, but don't get very far before the brightness forces them closed again. You lift your hand to shield yourself from the offending light, and slowly try again. Only then, looking up at a backdrop of tree canopy and blue sky behind your hand, do you realize you're lying down. That reminds your brain to acknowledge the horrible stiffness in your back and dull throbbing in the back of your head. Slowly, painfully, and accompanied by several rather unbecoming noises escaping your lips, you manage to roll yourself over and sit yourself up.
You look around.
Well, you're definitely still in the jungle, but not any part you recognize. To your left is a large, weather-stained and vine-covered concrete wall- a building, you then realize, but it's not The Sword. It's bigger, (you can’t see the ends of it behind the surrounding trees,) and looks slightly better upkept.
Are you off the Island?
As your eyes focus and your mind continues to sharpen, you can make out a faded, familiar symbol painted on the concrete. It’s the same logo from the door to The Sword, and from the orientation video with the hot lady scientist. This version has some sort of squiggly horizontal shape overtop of the line through the “e.” You squint your eyes, some kind of… lizard?
The science babe did say something about there being more than one (what did she call them? Oh yeah,) station. So this must be another one of those. Probably… The Lizard. This must have been where they… uh… kept… the lizards…?
Your mind, still weary from sleep and a heavy dose of tranquilizer, wanders on the topic of lizards, but only for a few seconds, before your gaze drifts further left. You turn around to get a better look at the strange thing behind you. It’s a towering metal contraption of sorts, once painted robin’s egg blue, but now chipped, rusted, and water-stained, like something out of a gritty live-action Dr. Seuss adaptation (oh, that’s good, make a mental note of that for later.) There are two large round buttons low on the machine, one red with a spray-painted white fork and knife symbol, and one royal blue with a single white water droplet. You’re not yet quite conscious enough to feel hungry or thirsty, so you just slowly turn your body back forward to continue your observations. The backdrop ahead turns back to nothing but jungle, so your eyes refocus on the foreground, and you finally realize…
“What the fuck…” you whisper out loud.
You’re in a cage.
With a surge of panicked adrenaline, you whip your head as far back to the left as you can, then to the right. In all directions, solid metal bars, cold, blue steel, tinged brown with age and rust. You shoot up to your feet, nearly falling immediately back down from the intense dizzy spell that follows, but maintain your balance just long enough to make the two stride dash to the cage’s door and catch yourself on it. You take a quick breather propped up against the bars, then frantically stand again and start pulling, then pushing, then shaking the door, all to no avail. As any logical person might assume in such a scenario, it’s locked.
"HEY!" you instinctively cry out for assistance, not yet quite grasping the logical conclusion that you're probably locked in here on purpose. You don't see or hear anyone around, but you try again nonetheless. "Heeeeeey! Yo! Lemme out! What the fuck!"
"Alright already! Jesus Fucking Christ, calm your everloving shit! I'm fucking coming!"
You stop banging, more out of curiosity than any semblance of calm shit, as the voice requested, to see the figure shuffle into view from behind the overgrowth ahead.
"Maybe try banging a little louder, why don't you?” he adds as he continues towards you, “I think there might still be some bugs on the other side of the Island who don't have skull-splitting migraines yet!"
You’re silent for another beat, taking in the unexpected appearance of this dude. His frame, for one, does not match the size of his voice, not by a longshot. He’s even shorter than you, and looks scrawny under his sagging black sweater, (isn’t it a little hot for sweater weather?) though upon closer look you do notice a healthy roundness to his cheeks. He’s young, probably younger than you, but obviously a world-weary adult by the way he talks (yells) and carries himself. His skin is a deep, warm olive, and his dull, black hair swoops and curls haphazardly in all directions, including too far over his face. Gripped tightly in his hands, along with the fraying ends of his sleeves, is a paper plate bearing a flat white sandwich.
You realize he’s stopped just a few feet in front of your cage while you were sizing him up, and is now just awkwardly standing there. He looks at you. You look at him. He looks away and shifts his feet. Is he going to say something? He, awkwardly, does not, so you decide to take it upon yourself.
"What the fuck is this? Who the fuck are you?"
Your vitriol seems to recharge him, and he shifts once again from weirdly silent to unnecessarily shouty.
"This is a sandwich. Turkey and cheese, extra mayo, extra pickles. And I'm the guy who made it for you. You're welcome, by the way!"
“Where's Jade? Is she here? Did you take her too? Is she alive?”
“Yeah… I don't know who that is…”
“Bullshit, bro! You guys sent your mind-reading, shape-shifting, uh, ghost… thing, after her, I fucking saw it!”
He pauses just a second to consider. You try to read his face, but are only able to pick up on trace amounts of skepticism before all the focusing brings on a small dizzy spell.
“Riiiight. OK, well, I don't know anything about that, it's like, several hundred levels above my fucking pay grade, but, and this is just my opinion, bro, that sounds fake as shit.”
He gives you a moment to respond, but you instead use it to finish recovering, so he continues.
“Look, all I know is that none of my people have killed any of your people, and they probably don't fucking plan to, either. So, there’s that.”
“Probably?”
“Pay grade!”
“OK, so,” you pause to catch your breath as subtly as you can, “what is your pay grade? What do you know?”
“Well, I know that you're supposed to eat as soon as you wake up or you're gonna lose your absolute shit from the drugs they shot you up with. So please,” he folds the plate around the sad sandwich and sticks it through the bars, “just take the sandwich, OK? It was this or our chef's weird slime pie, so I'm actually doing you a pretty major fucking solid right now!”
You do not take the sandwich. You instinctively take a step back.
“Did I mention the extra pickles…?” he asks, doing what you assume is his best attempt at an enticing look, but he’s not very good at it, and it just makes you angrier.
“OK, now where the fuck did you even get pickles?”
“I got them from my weird neighbor Equius, I assumed he'd be the kinda guy that's gross enough to keep some around the house at all times, and guess what? I was right! Had to trade him my last sleeve of Chips Ahoy, so that ‘thank you’ I'm still waiting on sure would be nice! Whenever you're ready!"
Your stomach growls on cue with Chips Ahoy as faithfully as if he’d rang a goddamn Pavlovian bell right in your fucking face. It was so loud you’re certain he must have heard it, but you’re too embarrassed to say anything, and he’s, surprisingly, polite enough to ignore it and redirect.
“OK, yeah, obviously, I know that's not what you meant. Sucks for you though, cause they also don't tell me where the pickles come from. Probably the pickle factory, I'm guessing? Imports and supply chains are need-to-know territory, and just like where your friend is, and whether we have a ghost on the payroll, and pretty much everything else around here, I don't!”
You’re feeling faint again from the hunger and embarrassment and all the effort to continue to keep both hidden, but after a short delay you manage to pant out, “You people… have houses…?”
He pauses again, but you’re too tired to even look at his face to try to determine the cause.
“...Look,” he finally says, and in his voice you can now hear regret and pity, “I'm just supposed to give you your sandwich and go. I get it, you have questions, but I'm not the guy with the answers. So… just… here.”
He pushes the sandwich again into your enclosure and gives it a couple gentle shakes to tempt you. You can no longer deny to yourself how tempting it actually is, though undeniably demeaning. “How do you know I like pickles?” you ask, not with any real motivation other than to stall and distract yourself, but when he doesn’t answer immediately, you look up and spot unmistakable terror in his eyes.
“Doesn't everybody?” he mutters unconfidently when he catches you looking.
“No, you literally just said they're gross. But you knew I love them…”
“I… I don't…”
You’re genuinely just confused for a moment, but then… ohhhhhhh…
“Holy shit. You're a fan, aren't you?”
“What? No! I mean… why do you…?”
Now he’s the embarrassed one. Positively mortified, in fact. That notion gives you the strength to go on.
“March 2013 People Magazine. The studio made me do one of those stupid twenty question things, they asked me what I put on my burgers. And I said…”
He sighs defeatedly. “…pickles. And extra mayo. Yes, OK, fine! I read it! Sometimes Feferi, sorry, the person who does the imports and supply chains, sometimes she brings me magazines, OK? When she goes to, you know, get the pickles. And stuff. I guess you could say I, uh, collect them…”
Oh damn, this dude is even easier to fuck with than you initially thought. Might as well milk it, right? Who knows when the next chance you'll get to have some fun will be?
“Cool, so, what, is this, like, a Misery thing? Are you gonna tie me to a bed and smash my legs with a sledgehammer if I try to run, or…?”
“What?! NO! The fuck is wrong with you? Look, I fucking told you, I am not the guy who makes any of the calls around here, got it? I barely managed to convince them to let me bring you the fucking sandwich!”
“How hard did you try?”
“I don’t…”
“To convince them? Did you have to beg and plead with the Senior Vice President of Sandwich Distribution for a shot to feed a genuine real-world celebrity? How many sleeves of Chips Ahoy did you have to barter for a captive audience with the one and only D-Stri? Tell me, was it worth it? Am I everything you hoped I’d be?”
“FUUUUUUCCK!” he bellows, so loud and prolonged that it genuinely startles you. “Alright! You know what? Fine! You fucking got me! Maybe I've seen some of your work, OK? And fine, maybe I thought it wasn't all terrible! So what, I'm a total creep cause I liked a couple of movies? Is that so utterly deranged? Does it make me some kind of unhinged knife-wielding stalker or something? Does it mean I must have a closet full of suits made from human skin, or a freezer full of severed heads, or some shit? Does that make me Kathy Fucking Bates? Cause I liked some fucking movies?”
“I dunno, man. Do you usually lock the directors of the movies you like in cages?”
He makes an appalled sound that seems like it was trying to be words, but falls short before he just falls silent again. He stares at you for several more seconds, mouth and eyes wide, failing to speak, before he pulls himself together.
“Do you want the fucking sandwich or not?”
“How do I know it's not poison?”
“You’re not fucking serious…”
You give him your very best oh, I am fucking serious face. After a brief staring contest, he sighs again. He takes a bite. You delight in watching him painstakingly chew, contorting his face in all manner of disgust that if you hadn’t just had the exchange you’d had, you’d assume were highly exaggerated. You’re quite certain, after your very brief acquaintance with this dude, that he’s honest to God just like that. And, to your surprise, you find yourself laughing.
After he finally swallows, he makes a very dramatic but genuine bleugh! sound, and shakes like a dog shaking off leftover bathwater. After that great sacrifice, you decide to do him the courtesy of suppressing your laughter, and just extend your hand to finally accept the plate, which he’s all too eager to finally hand off.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, whatever. You’re welcome,” he grumbles.
You no longer feel any shame in just taking a big sloppy bite right then and there. In truth, it’s probably one of the least remarkable sandwiches you’ve eaten since you first became a millionaire, but holy fuck if it isn’t the best tasting thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, purely by merit of not being a fish or a coconut.
“Uh, OK… bye…” the dude says awkwardly, presumably after watching you practically make out with this middle schooler’s lunch for several seconds. Your mouth is still too full to respond when he very awkwardly turns and starts walking away.
“Yo!” you call after him, once you’ve managed to swallow most of your bite.
He stops and looks back.
“What's your name”?
He hesitates, looking a little taken aback, then, quieter than anything else he’d said to you so far, shyly mutters, “Karkat…”
You raise the plate in a salute.
“Thanks for the sandwich, Karkat.”
You watch him roll his eyes, then shuffle off the way he came, both middle fingers extended prominently behind his back, as you continue to eat.
*****
“I'm sorry, Mr. Strider, but we're going to have to deny your loan application.”
You’re sitting in a terribly uncomfortable chair, in an oppressively beige office, in a stiff, far too warm for the southern California summer suit. It doesn’t help that the chair, the office, and the suit are all too small. You haven't left your house much lately, you've been too busy writing, and have grown a little too accustomed to the 4,000 square foot open concept floor plan. And sweatpants.
But you’re subjecting yourself to all of this smallness because you’ve exhausted all other options. And because you convinced yourself that, despite your nerves, there was no way in hell they would actually ‘have to deny your loan application.’ So it takes you a few moments to work through the initial shock of hearing those words, processing their meaning, and finally, mustering up the energy to respond, even just with “Wait… are you serious?”
“I’m afraid the project just doesn't qualify as a small business by our usual standards,” the bank guy retorts immediately, like a half-assed line reading, devoid of any trace of remorse or sincerity. Usual standards. Fuck your usual standards, is what you want to say, but miraculously manage not to.
“Yeah, OK, but It's gonna make, like, a shitload, sorry, a lot of money, though. Did you look at what my last two movies grossed?”
He tightens his face and draws in an annoyed sniff. “We did, and that's all very impressive, but those projects also had much higher budgets than what you requested… “
“I already raised the other two mil-”
“…And studio backing, mainstream marketing, a number of high profile producers…”
“OK, yeah! Exactly! I'm not just some asshole off the street trying to break into Hollywood, I'm an actual, professional filmmaker! With, like, experience! And an audience! Fans!”
Clearly, he’s not one of them. Quite the opposite, he’s doing a pretty shitty job of masking his disdain for you now, which, lucky for you, is not something you give a single fuck about at the moment.
“I'm not denying that, Mr. Strider. But as it is, we at Snow Capital are simply not in the movie business. Perhaps you could get in touch with some of the people you've worked with in the past, but I'm afraid we can't help you.”
Well, the problem, aside from this asshole’s tone, is that you obviously already tried that. For years, actually. And over the course of years, the general response has gone from semi-enthusiastic, empty promises of lunches, to vague, condescending affirmations, to tactful dodgings of any commitment to anything, to pretty much radio silence. Not even Stiller will so much as take your fucking calls anymore.
But fuck them. This isn’t their movie. Not this time. This is your movie. And frankly, you don’t need them feeling entitled to any part of it just cause they can pick up a pen and write a fucking check. Like writing a huge fucking check takes talent. Like being stupid rich is even remotely on par with having vision. Like people like them don’t need people like you more than you need them. No, fuck all of them. You can do this. You need to do this. By yourself.
…Almost. You do, unfortunately, still need a check.
“What about my house?” you blurt out without thinking it through.
“Pardon?”
“My house. I bought it with cash, but I can still do, like, a retroactive mortgage or something like that, right? Like, you give me the money and if I don’t pay you back you get to come in and take it? I bought it for just under four million in 2013, so it's gotta be worth, like, more than that, by now, right?”
“You’d like to apply for a home equity loan?”
“Yeah, that. I’ll do that. Can I do that?”
He stares at you, blinking a few times in an attempt to uphold the final remnants of his professional demeanor in the face of your notably unprofessional behavior, and just overall vibe. While he’s staring, and then stops staring and starts typing, you have time to begin thinking it through, and, nope, you’re not coming up with any regrets. This is just the business side of the movie business, someone pays a shitload of money to make the movie, people pay a shitload of money to see the movie, then the money guy gets back an even bigger shitload of money than he paid to make the movie. Simple as can be. Business. Economy. Econony. The only difference this time is that the money guy is you.
Finally, the actual money guy answers “...Yes, it looks like you would most likely qualify. You’ll just have to submit a new application. Let me just grab that paperwork and we can get started. I’ll be just a minute.” He stands and makes towards the door, stopping to ask “Can I get you anything while I’m up? Some more water? Coffee?”
“Yeah, thanks…” you mumble in response to what you were pretty sure was a question, but weren’t paying close enough attention to know for sure. You lost interest after ‘qualify,’ and are too busy already glued to your phone, typing in notes of the inspiration that’s swirling in your head once again, after receiving what you consider to be the second best news of your life.
It’s happening. You’re going to make your movie. And no studio bureaucrats, no co-co-co-executive producers, not even Ben Fucking Stiller can tell you how you can and can’t do it this time. You’re finally going to make your movie.
And it’s gonna be fucking awesome.
*****
A few hours have passed since you finished your sandwich. At least, it’s felt like a few hours. You hope it was, and not that time is just moving unbearably slowly. Your days got noticeably longer when you first crashed and lost access to technology and all other distractions of modern life, but at least you had gradually begun to acclimate to the new routine. You fished, you picked fruit, you fetched water and firewood, you sometimes worked out. A handful of times you even got recruited to do a sidequest. You managed to kill enough time to stay somewhat sane, an optimistic belief now confirmed by the apparent realness factor of the specter of your dead guardian/arch nemesis…
Let’s not reopen that can of worms right now. You’re not that bored yet.
But you are, of course, pretty fucking bored, having lost the ability to do any of your old of new usual daily tasks. And, despite your best efforts, you’re also getting pretty scared. And lonely.
Your stomach rumbles.
And apparently very hungry. It was only a matter of time- your sandwich, though greatly appreciated at the time, wasn’t all that filling in the first place, and that was some number of hours ago. You wonder when they plan to feed you next. Then you start to wonder what they plan to feed you next. Then, with a steady onset of panic, start to wonder if they plan to feed you next at all, and what they do plan to do with you, and when, and for how long, and whether it’ll hurt…
You must have unconsciously started pacing, because the next thing you know, you’re facing the back of the cage, and the big red button on the big Seussian-Orwellian machine catches the corner of your eye. The one with the painted universal symbol for Food still holding strong against the years and elements trying their damndest to wash it away. Before you know it, you’re on your knees slamming your palm against it.
A distorted recording of a bell, ringing high, in quick succession, like an old-timey farmhouse dinner bell, resounds from the loudspeakers at the top of the machine. A few seconds later, a small object drops from the slot at the bottom into the dirty concrete basin below. You don’t recognize it immediately, so you pick it up to examine more closely. It’s a rather off-putting orangish, brownish, reddish color, with a texture somewhere between a shortbread cookie and a chunk of styrofoam. It’s shaped like a fish, and stamped into the center is the now all-too-familiar ECC logo, the same lizardy version as the adjacent building.
Well, here goes nothing… You think, as you slowly lift it to your mouth and take a small, hesitant nibble.
You have to fight every reflex in your body to keep from spitting it right back out. As you probably should have expected, it tastes like fish, (which is disappointing enough,) but worse. Like raw, stale fish, that’s somehow adopted the consistency of an old petrified couch cushion. But you cringe and chew and swallow your first bite, because, at the very least, it is food. You set it back down, deciding to pace yourself, and press the blue Water button. A generic thunderstorm sound plays from the same speakers above, like a grocery store produce section about to turn on the sprinklers (God, you miss grocery stores…) and water pours out from a little pipe next to the food slot that you hadn’t previously noticed, first just a rusty, brown trickle, but picking up to a steady, clear stream soon enough. You place your hands beneath it and begin to greedily drink.
“Uh, Dave?”
You startle at the sound, doing a particularly gross, dribbling spit-take right out over your left-over fish biscuit. You spin around too quickly to realize that you recognize the voice before you’re met with a face you recognize first.
“Oh, you have got to be shitting me…”
It’s Edward. He’s showered, shaved, his hair is combed and gelled to one side, and he’s dressed in a clean polo shirt tucked into jeans. It looks like he’s even already managed to put back on a few of the pounds he’d dropped in the last month. What’s more, he’s, rather conspicuously, not in a cage. He looks like a normal person, who lives a normal, comfortable life. In a house, most likely. Like them. With them.
“How’re you feeling?” he asks. You can hear the clumsy yet earnest attempt at genuine empathy in his voice, like he just recently learned what that is and is still just practicing.
“What is this?” you answer, wiping your sleeve across your drool-covered chin. He looks down, possibly partially out of disgust, but definitely also out of shame, having apparently recently acquired a beginner’s grasp on that concept as well.
“Uh, so, I know we didn’t exactly leave things on great terms last time…”
“You mean when you called me a slur, threatened my friends, and then stormed off and got a bunch of people killed…”
He winces.
“I know, I know. I’m… sorry. But look, nobody got killed! I don’t think so, at least. Megan and Roger, the stewardess, and even those, uh, nice gay fellas, they're all OK! They’re all here, and we’re all completely fine! We lost Neil though.”
“Yeah, I know. We found him.”
“Oh, good! Is he OK?”
The memory of approaching that darkened bathroom, sword drawn, staring death itself in the face, or so you thought, flashes through your mind, threatening to trigger an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle. Simultaneously, the rage that slowly rises in you at the sheer audacity of the question manages to ground you. Then the rage and the trauma battle for control of your psyche briefly, but all it does is quickly exhaust you, and they both surrender you back to yourself.
“… no, dude. He was hiding for his fucking life when we found him. He’s pretty much completely fucked up forever, I’d say. You know, on account of almost being dragged away through the fucking jungle by fucking savages…”
“Well, hold on there, turns out they’re hardly savages at all. Most of them are actually pretty friendly!”
Great. Not him, too. Didn’t you just have this conversation with your best friend? Now, on top of the unbelievable shit-show that is your current life, you have to have it again with your worst (living) enemy?
“Dude…”
“I know, I know how this, uh, looks. But they weren’t ever gonna hurt him. They weren’t gonna hurt any of us! Look at me, I’m fine, see? And yeah, it wasn't, uh, ideal, how they had to get us, but they just had to get us before they could explain…”
“Is Jade with you?” You interrupt, not caring at all about the argument he's trying and failing to make.
“Jade? No, it’s just who I said, the gay guys and the ones I was with that night…"
“Do they have her, though? Is she locked up somewhere like me?”
“No! They haven’t brought anyone else in since you an-”
He cuts himself off, but too late.
“Me and? Me and who?”
“Uh, you know, the stewardess,” he clarifies without missing a beat.
Your stomach sinks.
“Sabrina, dude.”
“Yeah, sorry. You and Sabrina. That’s right, you both came in yesterday.”
Feeling newly defeated, you turn back around. You can no longer trust yourself to keep all traces of emotion off your face, and you really don’t want to give him the satisfaction. You’d also quite like to never see his ugly fucking face ever again as long as you live.
“I haven’t seen Jade. I’m sorry.”
That's all you needed to hear from him, and a hell of a lot more than you wanted to, at that. You just squat down and resume the task of drinking.
“Alright well, I just wanted to make sure you were OK," you hear from behind you, after an uncomfortable (for him, presumably,) pause. "And, you know, apologize. So… I’m sorry. For what I said, and how I acted. And I’m sorry you got locked up. But, listen…” you hear him step in a little closer, and drop his voice a bit too, “If I were you, I’d cooperate. Listen to what they have to say, and really think about it. If you do, I think you’ll be out of this cage sooner than later.”
“Yo, Edward?” you respond between slurps.
“Yeah?”
“Can you please, like, fuck off?"
You wait this time through the next uncomfortable pause.
“Yeah. I’ll see you soon, Dave. Hang in there…”
You keep drinking as his footsteps fade away behind you.
*****
Dave: Read the reviews.
Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff Saga, From Bad to Much, Much Worse
If you’ll recall, my reviews of SBaHJ and The SBaHJquel were far from glowing, but Strider manages to take his signature dumb, at times charming, always absurdist humor to astronomical new heights, or, more accurately, cavernous new lows, with his third feature, and third installment of his Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff trilogy. Whichever metaphor you prefer, SB3HJ, (pronounced sbeezh, I’m told, yuck,) is truly a masterclass in trying too hard, while somehow still managing to amount to so very little. I’ll be frank, and save you all the 164 minutes that I’ll never get back- it’s unwatchable. Don’t watch it. You’re welcome. - Brian Rutherford, LA Times
Strider Breaks the Mold with SB3HJ, Not in a Good Way
The first two Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff movies, based on the obscure mid-2000’s era webcomic of the same name, are certainly no Citizen Kanes. But for those who can stomach the goofball, bro-comedy genre, they manage enough decent laughs dispersed throughout the (reasonable) runtimes to be worth a watch or two. With SB3HJ, writer/director, and now producer Dave Strider, untethered from his previous benefactors at Paramount, seems to have gone off the deep end, apparently aiming solely to cram as much avant garde, headier-than-thou weirdness into the endless two and a half hour runtime as humanly possible, driving out any trace of the heart that saved his earlier films from the same tragic fate. .5/5 stars - Robert Johnson, Chicago Sun Times
Sweet Bro Leaves a Sour Taste
Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney, both of Saturday Night Live! fame, give it their all, to be fair, but are poor substitutes for the now iconic comedy duo of Stiller and Wilson, who originated the titular roles in the first two installments of the franchise. Whether a creative choice, a budget save, or merely a work-around for lack of actor interest, replacing future EGOT-er Donald Glover with a non-speaking puppet in the role of Geromy (the new friend,) comes off as confusing at best, or at worst, racist, and regardless of which, left a poor taste in my mouth that lingered hours after the viewing. To all working and aspiring filmmakers reading this, let SB3HJ serve as a cautionary tale- if the producers, the studio, and the stars all drop out of your project, take the hint. Don’t be the next Dave Strider. - Charlotte Hawking, Philadelphia Inquirer
Kara G
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"It Keeps Happening: How Dave Strider Made an OK Webcomic and Then Utterly Destroyed It Over the Next 13 Years" 2:56:12
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You don't leave your house for weeks.
*****
“Hello, Dave!”
You slept like shit last night, understandably, trying and failing to get comfortable on the leaves and dirt, giving up, pacing a bit, picking a different spot of ground, dozing off in short intervals, waking up, and repeating the process, many times, for many hours. Finally after dawn, you drifted off for, apparently, the last time, and stayed asleep until thirty seconds ago, when you heard your name in a strange voice.
You roll over to see a stranger, a woman, with a round face and a smile almost wide enough to cover it. And while you’ve deduced by now that these hostiles have access to pretty much all modern conveniences from the outside world, she’s the first one you’ve encountered who seems to have taken full advantage of them to maintain any kind of personal style. She’s dressed in a long, black skirt, and a lacy red top, with a matching ribbon holding her impressive mane of full, deep auburn hair back from her face. She’s even wearing makeup, long, black lashes, burgundy eyeliner and lipstick, some of that stuff chicks put on their cheeks to make them look skinnier, or something, you forget what it’s called, and probably some other stuff you don’t even know is a thing, all of which, as far as you can tell, are pretty flawlessly applied. On either side of her painted face dangle large, bronze earrings that, upon closer look, are in the shape of ram skulls.
As you lay there on the ground just taking her all in, you have to take a moment to catch your breath. Admittedly, you’re not sure if it’s because she’s so pretty, or because she’s actually kind of scary. Maybe it’s the sudden and unexpected return of glamor into your worldview, or just the uncanniness of such a sight against such a primal, decidedly unglamorous backdrop as this. But… no, on second thought, it’s not that, it’s not how she looks at all. Sure, it’s a little jarring for your brain to suddenly have to remind you that not every person in the world is either covered in dirt and bandages all the time or just a weird loser, but that’s not enough to send a chill up your spine. It’s her. Something about her feels… off…
…dangerous.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but to be fair, it is almost noon!”
At least she doesn’t sound dangerous. Quite the opposite, in fact, her manner of speaking is downright friendly. It’s not enough to put you at ease quite yet, but it does manage to snap you out of your trance. You spin yourself around to sit up, tucking your legs to one side, putting on your shades in the process.
“Let me guess, you’re also not the one in charge, and you’re not gonna tell me shit either?”
She laughs, a full, genuine belly laugh, despite what you said not being all that funny, before answering you.
“OK, whoa! In charge is an awfully loaded term, don’t you think? Kinda nebulous too, really. Anyone or anything with sentience is in charge of some things, right? Like, themselves, at the very least, and certain things in their immediate surroundings, to some extent. On the other hand, no one is in charge of everything, power is a construct that’s always in flux, due to an infinite number of unknowable variables across countless unknowable universes…”
“Jesus fucking Christ! Are you the leader here or not?”
She grins.
“Nope!”
“Fantastic. Bye.”
You stand, planning to make your way over to your fish biscuit machine in hopes that she’ll, a) not notice how intimidated you’re still feeling, and b) actually just go away, but she cuts you off before you can even turn to take the first step.
“I can tell you some shit though, if you want! And maybe you can tell me some shit too? We can definitely talk some shit!” She’s casually wrapped her blood red tipped fingers around one of the bars of your cage, leaning in slightly and trying to make her offer sound fun and enticing.
“Can you get me outta this cage?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? So when can you?”
She thinks for a beat before answering, actually tilting her head slightly to get a better read on you, like Bec does when food is mentioned in his presence.
Fuck. You miss Bec.
Then she laughs again. “Oh, no, sorry, my bad, I see why that might have been misleading! Technically, now, I can. Well, not now, I don’t have the key on me, but theoretically, today, I could. But I don’t. I’m not going to get you out of the cage ever.”
“Not even if I answer your riddles three?”
She grins again, letting out a soft giggle this time.
“You will get out of the cage, don’t worry. You’ll see.”
At least your levels of pissed off are starting to overtake a little bit of your fear, enough so that you do actually turn around now and make your way to the machine. You crouch down and slam the water button.
“As I’m sure you understand, the matter is a little bit complicated by the fact that one of our people is dead. And one of your people is responsible,” she explains behind you, noticeably not raising her voice at all, or changing her eerily amiable tone in the slightest.
“Yeah, I don’t know anything about that…” you lie instinctively, casually collecting the water in your hands and drinking. Even in instant hindsight, you know lying was pointless, but why make it easier on them than you have to? Why show this spooky bitch any semblance of cooperation?
“OK, sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier, my bad, but just so you know, lying really isn’t gonna help your situation.”
Yep. You look over your shoulder at her.
“You seem confident. You some kinda mind-reader or something? Human polygraph?”
“Oh no, not me! It’s just that I was there when it happened.”
Oh. For some reason, you instantly believe her about that. You're hit with a heavy punch of shame, like when you were a kid and got caught trying to steal one of your Bro's orange sodas when you thought he wasn’t looking.
“I heard shouting, then I heard the gunshot, and a few minutes later I saw you and Harley carrying Egbert back to your camp. And then I… found Vriska…”
She looks wistfully away, and for the first time, her smile actually leaves her face for a brief moment. The wave of sadness that instantly washes over you as a result nearly brings you to tears. Thank God she doesn’t linger on the moment too long, she meets your eyes again and her face brightens with enthusiasm once more.
“Don’t worry, we’re like, ninety-five percent sure it wasn’t you. And we’ll fill in that other five percent soon enough!”
“And then you’ll let me go?”
This time instead of a grin, she adopts a vaguely guilty, but mostly playful smirk.
“Sorry… no.”
OK, now you’re pretty much just pissed.
“Are you literally just here to taunt me, then?”
“Of course not, Dave.”
“Then why are you here? What do you want?”
“I just wanted to say hi.”
She smiles again, but with closed lips and soft eyes this time. A genuine smile. Warm. And despite your best efforts, for a brief moment, your anger and your fear melt away, and you fall victim to her warmth. As if, yes, this is someone you know, someone who doesn't want to hurt you, someone you can trust. You feel at ease, for the first time in… well, at least a few days, at this point. Your body is telling you to give into the feeling, to enjoy this feeling while it lasts and rest for fuck's sake. But your mind, as it's been trained to do anytime you feel OK for any period of time, intervenes.
“You wanted… why?"
Your opponent, in response, sharpens her smile into one final grin, and any feelings of comfort are cruelly ripped away. You’re not a violent person, but you'd relish the chance to smack that grin right off her stupid smug face right about now. But aside from the obvious obstacle, you find yourself too dumbfounded by this chick's words and just generally enigmatic vibes to even move.
“Why don’t I just let you get some rest, and we can talk more later? We’ve all got a big week ahead, after all. Bye ‘til next time!”
She gives you a friendly wave and a wink before turning to go, not bothering to even give you a chance to answer. Which is just as well. All you can really do is remain frozen as you watch her walk away.
*****
You haven't left your house for weeks.
You're sitting at your desk, staring at your computer screen, gripping your mouse harder than you realize.
You're frantically clicking back and forth between three tabs. The first is the men's sunglasses page of a high-end department store's website, where the only acceptable replacement options you've found sit in the $200 - $400 range. The second is an online auction site, where your prize possession, genuine production-used Starsky & Hutch (2004) aviator shades, gifted to you personally by Ben “Starsky” Stiller himself, are hovering at a high (and only) bid of $500, with a countdown clock just under an hour. The third is your online banking portal, which shows a checking account balance of $610.12, sitting on top of a big, red notification reading ALERT: HOME EQUITY LOAN PAST DUE AMOUNT $4610.25.
Needless to say, you're fucked.
You really are this time, too. All of the other random and ironic, (and ironically random,) pieces of genuine movie memorabilia you blew too much of your first few royalty checks on are now long gone, most for less than you paid for them. That's the reason you didn't lose your house last month, or the month before, or the month before that. And now your non-homelessness factor is entirely dependent on someone richer and stupider than you coming out of the woodwork to drop four figures on a pair of shitty sunglasses from a decade-plus-old movie that no one even really cared about a decade-plus ago. In the next forty-six minutes…
Yep, totally fucked.
Without warning, the weeks of mounting stress finally, suddenly break you, giving way to complete and utter despair. You finally feel the soreness in your hand as you release your death grip on the mouse to cover your face and sob.
And then, your phone rings.
You pick it up, expecting to see Spam Risk or Snow Bank, and plan to deny the call immediately. But instead you see a stupid joke you typed in years ago, when you still thought you were cool and funny, but haven’t seen grace your phone screen in far too long: ajint.
You simultaneously clear your throat, wipe your eyes, and pick up the phone so quickly you nearly drop it. Then you answer.
"Karen, my number one favorite lady, love of my life, my honest-to-god best friend in the whole fucking world,” (you don’t really care for Karen,) “what do you have for me? As previously stated I will literally do anything- commercials, porn- "
"Hiya, Dave! That’s great to hear, because I do have something a little bit unconventional for you! Oh! I didn’t even mean to do that!"
You have to pull the phone away from your ear as she erupts into her unfathomably obnoxious fake Hollywood laugh for some reason that’s a complete mystery to you. You give it a few seconds, then press the speaker icon when she starts to quiet down.
“Haha! Sorry about that, Dave. Anyway, it’s a convention. Get it? Cause I said it was unconventional…”
She starts laughing again, but you cut in immediately instead of listening to it again.
"They want me to direct a convention? I mean, yeah, sure I guess, but to be honest I genuinely do not know what that means…"
"Oh, Dave, you're too funny! This is why you're my favorite client!” (You’re fairly certain she despises you.) “No, even better, all you have to do is appear! And of course, shake hands, answer some questions, sign a few autographs, take a few pictures…"
Oh. Yeah, that actually makes much more sense. But also… sounds absolutely terrible. Your stomach sinks as you begin to ponder the implications of becoming someone who makes their living talking to death the art they’ve already made. It represents the official consensus that no one’s going to let you make any more, at least nothing of any value whatsoever. They may as well tattoo HASBEEN on your forehead in big red letters.
"It's an annual convention for cult movies,” Karen’s syrupy voice interrupts your pondering. “It’s in, uh….Milwaukee, big convention town, apparently! Well, anyway, they've been doing this one for twenty-five years or something like that, and it draws a pretty big crowd! Who knew!”
Cult movies? In other words, movies that no one cares about aside from a handful of weirdos. Weirdos such as yourself, of course, and if not for the direness of your financial situation, you think you might actually feel flattered by the label. Then again, the revelation that enough people have seen SB3HJ to even reach cult status is a pleasant surprise- a big step up from the approximately nobody you’d previously thought…
“Anyway, they want to show SBaHJ 2 this year and have you do a panel after the showing!”
Oh. Of course, that piece of shit. You should have known.
"Yeah, I just… I don't know if that's really my thing…"
"It's $25,000 upfront. One weekend. All expenses paid, first class round trip, four star hotel, plus you can charge whatever you want for photos and autographs!"
You almost drop your phone again. Your stomach still hasn’t settled from your initial distaste of the idea, but now on top of that your brain is forced to acknowledge that this distasteful thing would solve every single one of your problems. In a weekend.
"OK. I'm in,” you agree, a little disappointed in yourself for not taking at least a few seconds longer to sell the last of your integrity for a mortgage payment. You try to make up for it by tacking on, “One weekend. But can we not make this, like, a thing?"
“Great! I’ll email the deets! Ciao!”
As soon as she hangs up, you slump back in your computer chair, completely exhausted from your whirlwind tour through just about every emotional extreme in the past ten minutes. One more jolt of panic runs through you, and you sit up to click on the auction tab, and with barely enough time to notice the new high bid of $600, click Cancel Auction. You pick your shades up off the desk and put them back on your face, where they belong.
*****
A little while later, someone else came to bring you more food. You pretended to be asleep when you heard them approaching, and thankfully they either fell for it or just took the hint, just setting down the tray through the slot in the door and leaving without a word. You “woke up” to a dry slice of meatloaf with a scoop of overwatered instant mashed potatoes and some soggy, overcooked green beans- possibly the best meal you’ve ever eaten in your entire life. But that was a few hours ago, and still not enough to make up for how little you’ve even the past few days. At least now you know that you won’t have to rely solely on fish biscuits or the kindness of randos, whose last gesture you didn’t exactly receive with the kind of gratitude that would encourage a person to go out of their way again. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
You glance down at your lunch plate one more time to make sure you definitely licked it completely clean already. You did. So you give in and decide to get yourself a fish biscuit. But before you can, you hear footsteps on the path again, and instead, stand your ground and watch to see who emerges this time.
Karkat emerges, holding something in his arms that you can’t identify from the distance. A jolt of excitement hits you, immediately followed by a jolt of shame over the excitement. You course-correct, leaning hard into acting exceedingly unexcited to see him.
“Oh, it's you."
Maybe a little too hard?
"Yep, it's me! Trust me, I'm just as disappointed as you are!"
"Yeah, I'm not really hungry, bro…” you lie.
“Horse shit! I know for a fucking fact that you have not been eating the fish biscuits, I don’t care how fucking malnourished you are! Those things taste like ass! Worse than ass! They taste like week-old fish ass that’s been chewed up and shat out by a bigger, more putrid fish’s ass, then eaten again along with said ass by an even bigger, fouler, ass-ier fish, marinated in the ass-juices for a couple of days, then diarrheaed out into an unwashed cereal bowl from last year you just found under your bed! Anyone with a single fucking brain cell would rather slowly and painfully waste away then eat the fucking fish biscuits!”
“So I take it you’ve tried the fish biscuits…?”
He once again stands there stupefied for a few seconds, mouth and eyes wide, before conceding.
“It was a dare, OK?”
Aha. Well, victory is yours again, but now that you’ve successfully willed away the excitement, you're too exhausted and just generally devoid of fucks to enjoy it for long.
“Whatever, dude. I get it. You’re the loud, awkward, inscrutably dorky one. You're quirky. Fucking adorable. I’m not hungry.”
“Yeah, whatever, dude! I didn’t bring you any fucking food, anyway! I brought you… um… well, here…”
He holds the thing he brought out to you between the bars, but looks away uncomfortably after a moment. You hesitate another second, but curiosity wins out, and you shuffle over to take it from him.
It’s a zip-up binder, brown pleather scuffed and peeling, absolutely bulging from its overabundance of contents, with some tears in the woven fabric that’s struggling to hold the overworked zipper in place. You unzip it and open it to see what it holds, and it’s page after page of DVDs. Clearly more pages than this thing was meant to hold had been added to the rings over the years to accommodate a growing collection. You almost disassociate for a second there, for the second time today, from the sudden intrusion of this thing that’s vaguely familiar to you, but belongs to such a different time and place in your life than here and now, but you make sure to snap yourself back before too long.
“You came to show me your DVD collection? What, do you actually not have any friends or…?”
Perhaps a little snappier than you intended.
“Wow, he's even funnier in real life! Stop the fucking presses! No, I didn’t bring these just to show you, asshat, I thought maybe you'd want something to pass the time, aside from throwing your own shit around like a goddamn gibbon in a sad unaccredited roadside zoo! Check the front pocket!”
You close it again and notice the additional zipper on the front. You tug it open and pull out what looks like a small but bulky old laptop.
“It's fully charged, should get you through a movie and a half at least…” Karkat comments, somewhat timidly as you examine the device.
“Holy shit, bro, is this a fucking portable DVD player? Didn’t those all poof out of existence in like, 2009?”
“Yeah, well, lucky for you, I held onto mine. I obviously can’t give you a fucking laptop, but I checked with our tech guy and he said ‘thith pieth of trath ith more likely to thit gold dubloonth than connect to any kind of network’ so… look, do you want to watch a movie or not?”
You don’t know or care who the tech guy is or why he talks like that. You just start flipping more quickly through the pages of the binder to see if anything catches your eye. Something soon does- an obnoxiously bright multi-colored disc that happens to be extremely familiar to you. You’ve certainly signed enough of them over the years.
“Um, sorry, I only have the first one on DVD, the other two are saved on my laptop, but, you know…”
Another surge of embarrassment runs through you, draining all the excitement you were just starting to actually allow yourself to feel. “It’s fine. I don’t wanna watch those.”
“No, I know! I mean, I’m not saying you go around watching your own movies all the time or anything… I mean, I don’t know, maybe you do… but that’s… uh… that’s fine…”
“Yeah, I’m just not really in the mood.”
“Right. Yeah…”
You both sit in painfully tense silence for a moment. Once you realize you can’t muster up anything to say, you distract yourself by resuming browsing through the binder, slower this time. He picks up the hint.
“Uh, OK, well… yeah. I’ll leave you to it, I guess. I’ll come back later to charge it for you for tomorrow…”
He starts to shuffle off while still talking, as eager to escape the conversation as you are for him to leave. But he must have changed his mind, because a few seconds later, you hear “Um…”
You look up to see he’s stopped just about ten feet away “What?” you snap.
“I just… I do… really like your movies. Sorry if that’s weird to say, uh, you know, considering…” he starts to gesture half-heartedly in your direction, but soon changes his mind. You can just barely make out the flush in his cheeks. “Uh… yeah. Anyway… yeah, OK…”
You suddenly feel terrible for snapping. Against all logic, you once again start to feel a bit sympathetic for this guy. Was it because he complimented your work? Is your ego still that big, after all the beatings it’s taken, after all these years? Well, yeah, kinda. But more than the compliment itself, it's the realization that he didn't need to pay it. On the contrary, he probably shouldn't have- it most certainly is ‘weird to say, considering,’ to put it very mildly. He clearly knows that, judging from his uncharacteristic timidness. But he did it anyway, and not because he wanted you to like him, obviously, but because he just wanted you to know.
“Which is your favorite?” you find yourself asking, partly because, yes, after the day, week, month, you’ve had, you could use the ego boost, but mostly as your way of showing your appreciation without going so far as an actual thank you. But you once again immediately feel ashamed for asking, for both reasons, as well as a third reason you almost forgot about after a month away from civilization, which is, that you don’t really want to hear the answer. You never do.
“Oh, three, hands down.”
Of course it's two, why did you even ask…
Wait…
"I'm sorry… three?"
"That's what I said…" he answers, somewhat defensively, suddenly seeming to have regained his confidence.
“Wait… really?”
“Yes, really! By far! What’s wrong with that?” More than confidence, he seems to have taken on somewhat of an authoritative air that you haven’t yet seen from him.
“No, nothing. I just… don’t think anyone’s ever said three.”
“Cause like, yeah, all of them have some perfectly decent jokes, and the first two at least have barely comprehensible premises…”
“Thanks…?”
“But three!” he carries on as if he didn’t hear you, “three is actually fucking ingenious, precisely because it’s the only one that knows exactly just how unintelligibly, unfathomably, off-the-wall, batshit fucking stupid it is! And how absolutely bananas garbage stupid the first two are, too, and retroactively makes up for their failure to go all the way and commit to the stupid by going that much stupider itself! Like, it's just completely transcended the so-bad-it's-good category entirely, because it at no point thinks it's in any way good, or tries to be in any way good! It doesn’t even try to waste a single fucking second of its stupidly long runtime on good! I mean, a twenty-five minute dream ballet of falling nachos set to Gregorian chanting of bad internet recipes on top of atonal mariachi music? Who in their right fucking mind would ever come up with such nonsensical depravity as that and think it'd be acceptable to actually put it on film, let alone good? What the fuck is that shit? I'll tell you what it is - It's bad! It's so bad, it's bad! It's so bad, it challenges the very limits of how bad a movie can be and still be called a fucking movie! It's just, like, impeccably bad! Purely, truly, unapologetically, uninhibitedly bad! And that is precisely what makes it amazing! It's not trying to be anything other than the utterly deranged rantings of a raving goddamn lunatic, just challenging the rest of us to get on his level! It’s, fucking, great!”
It takes you a moment to realize he’s done, only because he punctuates his speech by dramatically panting, like he just got off the treadmill. Or like someone in a cheesy movie and definitely no one ever in real life, who just finished a big climactic speech.
Holy shit. How the fuck is this dude even real?
Another few seconds pass before anything he actually said starts to sink in. “Yeah…” is all you manage to say in response, and you're honestly not even certain you said it out loud. Your head is just spinning now with a million different thoughts and feelings, none of which you were remotely prepared for right now.
And while you're ruminating, Karkat comes to his own senses, remembering who he just said what he just said to. And far more than you’ve seen from him before, he looks utterly mortified.
"Fuuuuuuuck…” he squeaks, “I'm so sorry…I'm a fucking idiot…" You glance up and his face has gone from flushed to deathly pale. He looks like he might just burst out crying any second, and, for some reason, the very notion makes your stomach knot up. No, that must be the hunger. But still, he’s right.
"No. You're right. You're absolutely correct. You… get it…"
"...I… I do?"
"Yeah, man. It’s my favorite too. And you're actually, like, the very first person who's said anything like that about it, but that's pretty much- I mean, yeah, that's exactly what I was going for. Damn…"
He's quick to regain his color and his air of confidence at that.
“Yeah, well, I may not know a lot of people, but one thing I know is that on the whole, people are fucking idiots. Especially when it comes to movies.”
“...yeah.” You laugh, an actual, genuine laugh, and don’t even care that you do. “Yeah, they fucking are, aren’t they?”
It’s true, isn’t it? They really are. You laugh again. And again. Not a quick, cool, one-off laugh, like you’ve trained yourself to do, but an actual, full-hearted laugh, that soon enough gives way to a full-blown fit of laughter that doesn’t stop. Memories of the day, week, and month float to the surface of your consciousness, the sheer absurdity of it all, and they feed your laughter. Years and years of dreams and failures, hopes and heartbreaks, successes and setbacks, empty praises and obstinate criticisms, struggle, rejection, loneliness, the depths of despair, and constant, constant uncertainty lurking under all of it, all come pouring out in manic, uncontrollable laughter. And soon enough, he’s laughing too, and his laughter feeds your laughter, and your laughter feeds his. And you just stand there with this complete stranger, with nothing but a cage between you, losing your shit laughing about the dumbest movie ever made and the absolute dumbass who made it.
That’s all you ever wanted, after all.
After what you guess has been several minutes, he’s finally able to manage an exaggerated sigh, signaling that it’s time to come down from your tea party on the ceiling. Another minute or so of alternating recovery breaths and sporadic last bursts of laughter, and you're both finally back with your feet planted firmly on the floor.
“So, hey…” you say, still wiping your eyes under your shades. You now know exactly what you’re about to say, and that it’s a very bad idea for several reasons. You will probably deeply regret it. But instead of hesitating or backtracking, you firmly decide that you’re going to say it anyway, on purpose, because you want to, before the high of your life-changing laughing fit wears off and you come to your better senses.
“Do you, uh, I mean, if it’s like, allowed, by the powers that be or whoever, uh, wanna watch a movie with me?”
He looks at you blankly, a jarring contrast to his usual extreme emotivity. You wonder if you actually broke him, and you almost start to regret it a lot sooner than you even thought.. But then his face actually seems to relax a bit for the first time, and, if you’re not hallucinating from hunger, you think you spot the very slightest of smiles.
“OK.”
You spend the next half hour, at least, flipping back and forth between the pages of his gigantic DVD binder, arguing the faults and merits of a dozen or so movies, before giving up and letting him put on 50 First Dates. Then you sit leaned up against the bars of your cage while Karkat squats behind you, and, for the first time in twenty-five days, you watch a movie.