thank you for your summary! i love hayden's rumination on love containing inherent elements of fantasy but ultimately containing its own emotional reality i have to wonder if the author was some liberal arts student hehe. i really like your interpretation of what hayden is conveying to brett <3 it really is such a generous stance imo like hayden is really trying to not pressure brett even though objectively it feels like hayden is the more "vulnerable" one emotionally here.
this season in particular has felt like this back and forth between this pure fantasy world (of hayden's) and hard, cynical reality (for brett) so i definitely feel like things might come crashing down soon..and yes i wonder how brett is going to be in the next chapter :( nervous but i really have full faith in this author's writing and storytelling
This chapter was so CUTEEEEE OH MY GOD. I do have an unnerving sense of foreboding with how it ended but we’ll see when we get there but for now, their cute Christmas village date! Hayden is such a sweetheart honestly he deserves everything good to him. They walk around and talk about the fake snow around them and how it’s not rlly cold (also dissing early 1930s asbestos snow and kids that drank morphine ). Hayden goes on about the nature of plays and fantasy’s once more, building off what he said before. How people are willing to suspend their disbelief for a while, but the emotions, the feelings they have during that fantasy are not false. I love this honestly. It’s like he’s telling Brett it’s okay if their relationship has been fake up til now, what they felt and how they enjoyed themselves was not fake, effectively countering Brett’s more transactional view of their relationship that if he can’t give anything tangible, real to Hayden, its not enough, it’s not effective to show affection. Hayden is simply saying,” I don’t care, let’s just be in this fantasy together. What we feel matters more”
After this they KISS UNDER THE LIGHTS AND SNOWWW and Hayden thanks Brett for giving him a chance. The next part doesn’t rlly translate well, but Brett compares Hayden and whatever he felt during his gangrape but I can’t rlly figure what it’s trying to say tbh. But I like the callback to episode 6 where Hayden is leading Brett. They eat dinner and are cute.
Though the episode ends with them making out in the car and seemingly going to sex, and since this is like RIGHT after the rape scene I wonder if Hayden’s going to find out I’m getting real concerned about Brett’s condition tbh after that comparison scene. But another amazing chapter