WAODHDG WHOAG NO WAY HOLD ON MY FAVORITE SONG JUST GOT AN ACOUSTIC VERSION RELEASED BYE GUYS THIS IS ALL IM GONNA BE LISTENING TO FOR THE NEXT WEEK AKJHSK

this actually feels abit like snowgrave. except i would prevent that if i could

you took unreliable narration and ran with it so hard. it’s like. the genre the emotions the setting even the basic plot all of it is warped by grian’s perception of it. and it’s so obvious while you’re reading. but it just hits so hard ogughhhhhh

YESSSSSSS the unreliable narrator aspect of this story is one of my favorite parts, actually. It's a sad story to write but it was fun to write in such a limited perspective while still making sure readers realized what I wanted them to. One of the main questions of the story in my outline doc is "Is this a conspiracy, or does Grian think it's a conspiracy?"

Grian's point of view touches every part of the story. All his basic views of the people around him are influenced by it--you have to ask yourself, is this person he's interacting with Actually being unreasonable, or is it just him? Like, with his interactions with Linda in chapter 9 he's being pretty awful in his descriptions of her out of just. general suspicion but if you read between the lines she's just acting perfectly normal lmao. He feels like everyone else is against him, because he feels like the only one who believes Mumbo is still alive. And well, maybe he is, but that doesn't mean everyone else is an antagonist. He repeatedly holds people at an arm's length or has bad-faith interpretations of their actions.

He's got unreasonable and irrational feelings about Mumbo's disappearance associated with his grief. He think it's his fault. He has self-destructive behaviors related to this (never looking to his own future, not going to work, poor self-care, self-isolation, among other things...) His view of Mumbo himself is warped by the grief, to where he sort of creates him as a flawless person in his mind. To him, Mumbo's a person who did everything right all the time. Grian works so hard to apply as much logic as he can to everything while purposefully ignoring things he finds upsetting. He's so logical it wraps back around to being illogical since he won't acknowledge the most likely scenarios.

One of my favorite trends I'm seeing pop up in the reviews of this story is of people who started out more on Grian's "side" so to speak, who slowly drifted over into expecting the actual story's outcome. I know that readers are primed to believe him and think that he will be proven right just because...that's how a lot of fictional stories go. But the readers have a clearer head than Grian does. Eventually all the irrationalities of his thoughts and actions pile up until it's clearer and clearer he's unreliable. Grian can't see through his own thoughts because he's stuck in his own head and living in the story. But the readers have the benefit of seeing everything more wholly. And to be clear when I say being on his "side" I don't mean that there's a right or wrong side to be on, just that people often start the story more inclined to believe Mumbo's alive. And by the end of it....not so much, even by the point that Grian's still clinging to it.

I think his unrealiability just makes the emotion of the story hit harder, though. I think it makes him more painfully human. It means I can truly tip the world on its end for him, because it shifts the entire narration of the story. As the author I just flipped back and forth between wanting to hug him to wanting to shake him lol.