Alright, here we go again. (actually this is kind of a preamble so feel free to skip this bit (ctrl+f for "preamble (I guess) over") if you don't want to read my nonsensical ramblings or probably unnecessary elaboration on things that were mostly already stated)
(also, this document was created on march 31st 2026, and added to as I read the comic over the course of about six or seven days, so ignore anything that seems off by when you read this, it happens and I don't feel like editing this to be retroactively consistent)
Once again, going in completely blind, so I have no idea what this is about, how long it is, or anything that happens in it.
Though I did see a few characters while looking up images of Red on esix.
There's really only about two good ones, I'm afraid.
Actually, I guess I should elaborate on that.
Okay, so, it occurs to me that I have yet to actually ask why you've been attempting to isolate the exact reason why I like Reynault so much, but I've just assumed it's general curiosity on your part. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though!
Anyway, to elaborate on the thing I said I'd elaborate on, sexual attraction is a separate thing from romantic affection, so while I think Red's design is cute/sexy enough for me to be interested in on that front, his actual character and personality doesn't quite do as much for me as it potentially could've.
I'll be honest, I half-expected myself to start developing those sorts of feelings for him, but he really just wasn't present for long enough for that to happen. That, and what little I did see of him while he was still alive showed that he was basically completely broken, with very little to be salvaged underneath his surface.
For as much as I'd like to imagine he could've gotten better and recovered from what he'd been through if he hadn't died, I think he was already pretty far past saving by the time we saw him for the first time.
You already made the observation yourself, but I think what's important is that there actually is someone capable of being saved underneath the surface.
Reynault's been messed up about the war and he puts up a front to hide that, but he's still a functioning person under that, just not a happy one.
Red's basically completely off the deep end by the time we see him, and while it's not like he doesn't have a good enough reason to be that way, it makes it hard for me to really feel the same way towards him that I do for Reynault.
I guess if I really wanted to force myself to feel something for him, I could try imagining Red as being like Doug Rattmann, just to try viewing him as actually being a moderately functional person, but then that's not really the same thing.
If I'm being honest here, there probably isn't a single specific reason why I like Reynault so much. It's more than anything the combination of a bunch of different factors, his physical disability, his mental/emotional unwellness, and the fact that he's just a cute little fox guy with a funny voice.
Maybe there's something deeper outside of those things that I'm not seeing, but if I had to bet on it, I'd say my feelings towards him are likely just based on him having a particularly potent combination of traits I happen to like and/or resonate with.

Oh yeah, I read part "nein" of Rubyquest.
That bit with Maddie had me going for a sec, mostly because I don't know anything about Weaver themself and assumed I could've been wrong.
Oh, new Red information. "always nice and tells good jokes". Would've been nice to actually see more of him.
Reading some of this dialogue has me baffled how there isn't more doctor/patient kink stuff of this comic. I'm not into that, but with Maddie implying that the cure is administered in an embarrassingly sexually pleasing way, I can't imagine how that didn't just open Pandora's box on that kind of stuff. I mean, ignoring the horrific consequences of the cure itself anyway.

Fuck, okay, I just imagined being one of Red's patients as he gently talks me through giving me the cure with what is most certainly an unprofessional amount of intimacy, I need to stop thinking about this.

Seeing the panel of Red's apparent reaction to that drawing of him was hilarious. That drawing is hot, but I feel like they could've made his mouth bigger.

Also, since this is mostly going to be a journal of my thoughts on the story and related things as I read it, I'll probably have more to say on Red if I get reminded of him somehow.
Also also, I think it's been long enough since I read Rubyquest that I'm starting to have fridge problems with it, so I might just air those intermittently. Feel free to ignore those whenever those come up, since those'll probably just be me ranting with no particular purpose.

Inserting this in here because it just occurred to me and I don't know where else to put it, but fuck. I don't know what it is, I don't know if I'm just more emotional because I'm tired, or if it just took a sec to kick in, but I'm really wishing we got to see more of Red. It's gone past just being disappointed at his early exit from the story in Rubyquest to more of an actual longing. That feeling of what could've been is really eating at me, and there's so little fan-content of Rubyquest that I can't really sate it with that either. It hurts. It really hurts me, somehow, not getting to see more of him. I don't even really know if it's just him I long for or some imagined version in my head, but it's really genuinely hurting me that I've seen all I'll ever get to see of him.
So, you win, I guess.
You got me.

I actually made this file a few days before I started reading the comic. I thought I was gonna get to it way sooner, but something always came up.
I read Boxdog. I actually don't think I remember how I heard about that one, I guess I just saw it when looking up stuff about Weaver and Rubyquest and figured I should read it because it was short.
I'm not happy.
It was a good comic, but fucking christ I feel like I need a drink after that. I don't drink.

Alright, preamble (I guess) over, I'll start reading Nanquest as soon as I finish some small drawing.

Nan seems nice. I think I already like her better than Ruby and Tom.
Should I talk about that? I already talked about that at length (to myself, because I talk to myself sometimes) while going out on a walk in a rainstorm at five in the morning a few nights ago, but I remember most of what I said to myself.
I think Ruby and Tom were acceptable protagonists, if nothing else, but they really weren't very well-defined characters. I think a good metric for how well-defined and fleshed-out a character is is if you can take whatever character you're talking about and put them in an entirely different circumstance from what they're usually in, and still have a good idea of what they would do and how they would act.
Like, if I could ask you "what do you think this character is doing when they're not on screen?", and you could easily picture what they'd be getting up to, I think that means that character is well-defined.
I have no fuckin' idea what the hell Tom and Ruby would be doing if they were in any other circumstance, and they're the characters we follow throughout the entire story.
You know who I could pretty easily picture in other contexts than Rubyquest?
Red.
What do we know about Red?
Well, he's scientifically-minded, ambitious, well-meaning, and a bit misguided. He's also said to be generally pretty nice in part "nein" of Rubyquest, but that's probably not really canon so we might not be able to include that necessarily, but I think the canon stuff has enough to back that idea up too.
I could pretty easily see how Red might fit into a whole bunch of different contexts, but Ruby and Tom are just fairly standard protagonists.
Anyway, I'm glad Nan seems to actually be a character instead of a relatively blank-slate protagonist to be controlled, that's nice.
God I miss Red.

Bit of trolling on Weaver's part, referring to the place Nan wakes up in as the Glen.
Also, nice to see how many responses mention Red.
He really was the best character in Rubyquest, huh?
Despite barely being in it.

I like how you can clearly distinguish the importance of the arcade from the hotel based on how the hotel is much more detailed.
I don't even know what the story of this one's about, but I can still tell that hotel's bad news. May as well pull up to the Felt Manor.
The one from the Homestuck intermission, not the actual location.
Sidenote, I know it's come up before, so I wanna say it here, even if you never intend on reading Homestuck proper (which while I don't blame you for I would still say it's worth checking out to an extent), I highly recommend reading the first intermission. It's basically the point where Homestuck decided to stop being Homestuck for a bit and instead decided to be Problem Sleuth, but about the Midnight Crew instead. It's a great time, probably my favorite part of the comic by far.

Nan's cute. I just got to the panel of her holding her hands to her face after breaking that vase. I like her putting the pieces back "as best she can", before revealing that they're just in a pile with the flowers on top of them.
I like Nan being slightly "plus sized", so to speak. That's not a relatability thing for me, I'm actually fairly fit, I just like her design being a bit thicker.
I'm really liking how expressive Nan is. Ruby and Tom had moments where they'd have more defined expressions, but a lot of those were jokes or weren't all that specific, but Nan's expressions all feel very appropriate or relevant for the moment at hand.

Currently no major thoughts on the story, though I've only just started part 2. I imagine that will change once things really get going.

"Pablo says he is not afraid to die anymore."
Huh.

Not quite picking up on the theme with that number, 4:66.
At first I thought it could be a biblical reference, since there's also that cross, but the closest I could find was Isaiah 66:4, which doesn't seem entirely appropriate here, unless everyone in the hotel is here as divine punishment for some transgression.
Which, I guess could be it, if you wanted to assign a sin to each character we see and say that that's why they're here, like Nan is described once as being lazy so she's Sloth, and that Henry guy was awfully quick to start talking pretty forwardly, so he's Lust, or something like that, but that feels too easy and kinda lame, so I hope that's not it.

The story itself has acknowledged this idea, and seems to be shooting it down. Good.

As of right now, I have strong feelings for neither Pablo nor Santiago.
Pablo's just fine, but Santiago's too far off the deep end for my liking, and not in the same way Red was. Red was mad, but he at least still wanted to do the right thing when he could, and still cared for his patients, even if he had an odd way of showing it.
Santiago just seems mental, but in a way that's too far past saving. The kind of insanity that leads someone to completely tossing away any sense of morality and just doing what they want, regardless of how it affects others.
I'm sure you don't need me to elaborate further on how I feel about characters like that.

Also, yes, the "freedom" thing he mentions.
I don't think I've brought them up too much yet, but yes, I have been noticing some parallels to Deltarune's themes in this, I just don't have too much to say beyond "this story mentions a thing that's also present in this other story", so forgive me if I don't go into any particularly in-depth analysis on that, but maybe I'll have something more to say later.

Also also, apparently Santiago is a coyote, according to Weaver, so it wouldn't count even if I did have feelings for him.
Ha.

He does have a cute visual design though, but he basically just looks like Red anyway, so I don't think that matters here.

Also also also, not super crazy about the rape implications he's got going on, if I'm honest.

"NO QUESTIONS, PLEASE". I wonder if these are intentional references to Red, or if that's just me seeing something that's not actually there.
Kinda interested in what that cloaked figure meant by "I'm sorry it has to be this way". I imagine it's probably just something that views being dead as a better alternative to being stuck here, but it seemed to be talking about some very specific things before, like having purpose in death, so maybe there's more to it.

Really laying it on thick with the rape stuff with Santiago, huh?
"He says Anna wanted it." "You could tell."
I like him being a bit wacky and out there, just as fun traits for a character, but that rape stuff is a bit, uh, undesirable, to put it lightly.
I do not think I'll be drawing his paws like that commenter on esix hoped for, I'm afraid.

Hell of a laugh he's got.
Not as good as Red's, but it's something.

The time travel is interesting, but I don't think I've seen enough of it yet to guess where that's going.

I took a brief break to go look at Weaver's site and see if there was anything of Red.
Only about six images, from Weaver themself anyway, but one of them is apparently of someone's selfship with him.
I don't know how to feel about that.
Lucky bastard.

I kinda wanna talk about that one tumblr post Weaver made about Red and Santiago, or more specifically, how people view them, but I'm tired and I don't feel like getting into it right now. Remind me later if you feel like knowing my thoughts on this highly controversial, thirteen year old tumblr post with like 12 reblogs and 60 likes.
Also, uh, this might take a dip in coherency, I sometimes get a bit loopy when I'm really tired, and I'm kinda feeling that now. Not even just normal sleep-deprived stuff, it's a bit more specific than that. Better at catching it these days though.

I really miss Red.

Oh they're gonna cook Kim alive aren't they?
Well, that's weird.
Getting some minor Homestuck flashbacks, what with the whole "character dying a gruesome death and then showing up like it didn't happen" thing, even got the time travel shenanigans.
Oh, okay.
So I guess that means all bets are off if the hotel can just make illusions like that, unless that actually was Kim from some point in the future and the other hands were something else. That doesn't really explain Henry's reaction to all that though, but I dunno.

Kinda surprised to see Santiago with some actual depth to his design, as opposed to the usual mostly stick-figure esque designs most of the characters (including him) have had up until now.

He really seems to have a vested interest in preserving some kind of "balance" in the hotel. Telling Nan to stop "fighting" it. I imagine there's more to him than just his previously stated ideology, because if he really only valued free will and agency as much as he said he did, I feel like he just wouldn't give a damn about what she and the others are doing around the hotel.

Lots of religious themes going on with this story. Kinda.
I guess that's a parallel to Deltarune, though this seems more based off concepts in actual religion whereas Deltarune has its own made up faith, like the Hammers in Thief. The original Thief, not the shitty reboot.

I feel like I'm supposed to have connected some dots to figure out the overall plot by now, but I'm still a bit lost.

These sequences of Nan in seemingly alternate scenarios are interesting.
The first, if I recall correctly, was of her waking up in her bed with Henry, who in that context was her boyfriend. Most of the others have her seemingly in the past, with that Lorenzo guy, but interestingly, she seems to be less aware that she's in an illusion of some kind with each one, with her asking what year it was and where she was in the first of these events, but seemingly completely fitting in with the later ones, acting as if she'd actually been a nun at the church.
Kinda reminds me of that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "The Inner Light", if you've ever seen that. It's a good episode, I recommend it. Kinda fucked up though, but you know how it is.

I'm curious if that's what this actually is though. Like, she can't have lived all these different events, right? I think the most likely answer is that she's being given the memories of other people that are somehow relevant to whatever's going on in the hotel, and she's just seeing herself in their places as a result. I guess the other option is a Marathon Infinity sort of thing, where these events actually did somehow happen to her, just different versions of her from different worlds, and her mind is being swapped between them for whatever reason.
Probably not though, that would imply the story is way more centered around her specifically than actually makes sense, so it's probably the former.

Ah, that sucks, about Anderson's son.

Alright, I guess we're getting to see the "sins" of the characters now.
So that theory of mine was true, unless this is also the hotel fucking with them, in which case I don't know.

That "oops" with Henry got a chuckle out of me.
So, Henry's the Pilgrim.
Wait, does that make sense?
I mean, Henry has horns, and the Pilgrim hasn't been depicted with horns so far, so I'm not sure how that adds up.
Also the bit about Nan and the rest being attacked by the Pilgrim in that dark room, Nan running out, and running into Henry doesn't make a lot of sense either. Like, is he teleporting? Is he attacking them from multiple different points in time, at the same time? How does that work?
He says he "left them in the lounge", but how? He was being held back by Pablo when Nan left the room, so did time just immediately jump forward as soon as she passed through the door, skipping straight to when Henry had left the lounge, taken off his disguise, and put himself back in position to be found by Nan and keep up his charade?
Either I missed something or my comprehension just flew out the window, because I can't find a way to make that make sense to me.
Also, if Henry's been the Pilgrim this whole time, shouldn't he have some kind of mark on his face from being hit with the rebar when he first fought Nan? We see the rebar go through the eye of the skull mask he's wearing, that probably should've hit his face, right?
"Got stuck in the skull." Oh okay, fuck me I guess.

Also, wait, if Henry's the one who killed Alan, what was that vision we saw?
We know it's not the coincidence thing, Henry explicitly says that Alan said his dad was a lawman and that he'd find him, so there's only one Alan here.
So, what the hell happened after that vision then, did Alan just survive somehow? If that's the case, why is Anderson still looking for him if he already found him and presumably would've found his letter?

Also, okay, what's the actual significance of the whole 466 thing then?
If Nan wasn't responsible for the electrical fire that burned the church down, and she couldn't have been, since that happened in the distant past, what's the significance of the number 466 to her?

Hey wait a sec, why'd the blood all just vanish like that?
Okay, I saw the black stuff, whatever that is, but what actually was that?
Ah fuck it whatever.

Cool of Santiago to give Nan that knife. I mean, he's still a fuck, and definitely implied to have raped someone at some point, if the world's most heavy-handed rape dialogue is anything to go off of, but you know, he's not all bad.
Like uh.
Like Sergeant Hatred.
But possibly not as bad, somehow.
I'll probably write a lot more about Santiago later on, because I'm starting to have some more complex things to say about him outside of just moment-to-moment analysis, but like I said, later.
No, I still don't have feelings for him like that, I just think he's got a bit more depth that's worth going into later.

Okay, wait, how does this fuckin' hotel work again? Because Henry said the hotel didn't stop him from bringing Nan in, but why wouldn't anyone have worked? Like, is it not actually a real hotel, can people not just come in of their own volition entirely normally? I know most of the characters are tied to other people's deaths somehow, but what about Kim and Henry? I don't think it's said what Henry did to end up here, and if we heard what Kim did, I think I might've just missed that.

Alright, I guess that solves the Alan problem.

Also, yeah, Kim having her plan fuck up like that is pretty good. Would've been really stupid if praying was all they needed to do.

Okay, how exactly does Lorenzo actually know Nan? Kim theorized that the visions they were getting were of other people's memories, but if Lorenzo is talking about Nan like he knows her from before, wouldn't that mean that's not actually the case, and she was actually present for the events depicted in those visions?
How does that work?

So, this whole sacrifice thing. How exactly was this supposed to work?
I get the idea that it was done just to kill whatever entity is possessing Father Velasco or whatever, but it seems like they didn't actually have a solid plan for how to do that, because Lorenzo smashed its head in with a sledgehammer multiple times, but it kept coming back, so what exactly was the plan there?
I feel like the safer bet was to just not do the sacrifice and not summon the entity in the first place, but maybe that's the point, that the entity exploited their desire to try and circumvent it to get them to summon it to begin with, but that feels like a bit of a cop out.
Also, why exactly is the hotel like this then?
I get that the entity is some powerful force or whatever, but apparently Lorenzo was still able to get the upper hand on it by tethering part of it to himself, somehow, so what's the hotel about then?
Also, how did Nan actually go back in time and (apparently, according to her) change the past?
Did she even really change the past in any meaningful way?
Like, she gave Anna a screwdriver, somehow, so did that cause that elevator to not fail anymore, and therefore not kill the people inside it? That's cool and all, but Anna's still dead, so what was the point of that exactly?
And for Alan, she gave him a pen to finish writing his letter, but what did that do? He still got shot, and still eventually made his way to the hotel, so did that actually change anything? Was that even the point, to change the past, or was the point to make sure the past plays out as it always did, Harry Potter style?
WHAT TIME TRAVEL RULES ARE WE PLAYING ON HERE?!?!?
IS THIS PRIMER RULES OR FUCKIN' DOCTOR WHO RULES, WHAT ARE WE DOING?!?!?!?!?!?!
christ i need sleep.

I like Nan (the thread anons) bringing Santiago along. I guess to make a pull back from when I read Rubyquest, I'd say Santiago is probably closer to some version of Jack Noir than Red really was. Maybe actually Spades Slick, if it weren't for the rape stuff.
Yeah, I'll get to that, I've been wanting to tear into that fuckin' Alan Moore shit for a while now, don't worry.

Alright baby, start of part nine, we're in the fuckin' endgame now, I've been listening to this fanmade Marathon Infinity soundtrack for HOURS now, let's do this.
I don't like sittin' in silence, what do you want from me.

I like the panel of Santiago and Nan after they arrive in the past, I love Santiago just standing there, he's great, love him. Not like that, but still, he's doing great.

Okay, Nan interacting with Lorenzo during the sacrifice means that the time travel shit can't have been one of those "it happened that way the first time" things, because him saying that he thought he'd never see Nan again during the sacrifice conflicts with him saying that when they found him in that rock altar thing, so again, what rules are we playing on here?

Hey why'd we bring Santiago back with us if he's not even gonna do anything c'mon man.

So Nan did cause that one electrical fire in the nightclub. Alright.
Wait, if she's responsible for that, how was she not like, arrested for that, or even just fired? We've seen how she gets her work orders, she'd have a clear connection to it, especially if she was paid by the establishment for the job, so there's no way people just wouldn't know about it.
I guess unless that really wasn't her and was just another memory from some whoeverthefuck, but at that point, what do we actually know about Nan then?
Lorenzo seems to be supporting the idea that Nan's had multiple lives apparently, are we gonna learn what that's all about?

I swear to god, am I missing something?
Did I miss a bunch of stuff that makes that make sense, because I swear I've been reading this whole thing and it feels like I missed something big.

"The bolt is wrapped with what appears to be human hair."
...
I'm like, pretty fucking sure there's at least one verbal reference to these characters actually being animals at one point or another, but I am way too fucking tired to bother checking where that could be.
If nothing else, if this does indeed take place in the same universe as Rubyquest, I'm pretty fuckin' sure there are active references to those characters being actual animal people, so I feel like this is inconsistent.
Also, the skull that Henry wore seems to be a real skull, and it's an animal skull, so I'm pretty sure he has to have gotten that from a fellow animal person.
Unless the hotel kindly provided him with an animal skull, for some reason.

Looks like Santiago got that smile after all.
Alright, I guess I'll do it now.
So, Weaver made a post on their tumblr way back when, while this quest was still ongoing actually, expressing concern over people (namely women, as they claimed) being fans of Red and Santiago, because Weaver saw both of them as being bad people that shouldn't be "fangirled" over.
I think that's a big load of bullshit and displays a surprising lack of awareness of the characters he had actually written, as opposed to who he thought he wrote.
First, Red is basically fine. He acts very outwardly sinister towards our protagonists, but strictly speaking, nothing he ever does throughout the entire story, past and present, is ever anything worse than morally grey. In fact, pretty much everything he does while he's alive in the present is basically objectively good. He's misguided, sure, but most of his actions were taken with nothing but good intentions in mind, so aside from him being erratic and mentally unstable, I have no idea why Weaver's painting him like he's some monster or something.
Second, Santiago.
Santiago.
So, I made a quick jab at Alan Moore earlier when I first said I was going to go in-depth about Santiago, so let me explain.
Alan Moore fucking hates it when people like Rorschach.
Like, he really, genuinely hates it when people say they like Rorschach.
He says that Rorschach was meant to be a very morally grey character and that you're not supposed to sympathize with him or agree with what he's doing, but the problem with that is that he forgot to actually have him do anything morally grey or do anything with anything less than good intentions.
For all intents and purposes, nothing Rorschach does is anything less than noble and selfless. The most questionable things he does are just killing that pedophile (and let's be honest, was that really a bad thing?) and potentially exposing Ozymandias's plan to the world, but he still did those things for the sake of other people, and those things are, at most, ideologically disagreeable rather than actually morally dubious by themselves.
So, to compensate for this, Alan Moore has Rorschach say a lot of really weird, bigoted non-sequiturs that make no fucking sense for his character based on how he acts in 99% of his actual story, and he just has that as a substitute for actual moral complexity.
That's Santiago.
Think about it.
He's weird, and off-putting, and definitely threatening towards the main cast, like Red was, but to make him seem more like an actually morally grey character, Weaver put in a bunch of lines that imply that he's a rapist or that he has the mindset of a rapist, but he never actually does anything along those lines that we get to see, there's nothing to it.
Like, strictly speaking, when it comes to what we actually get to see him doing throughout most of the quest's story, nothing Santiago does is ever really that bad, and most of it is actually really helpful for the protagonists.
Yeah, he apparently worked with Henry (for some reason, despite seemingly not needing any help to survive and not even agreeing with what Henry was doing), but Henry was already killing people, and Santiago apparently wasn't doing anything more than just helping keep Nan alive, which was a good thing entirely unrelated to what Henry was up to, so it's not even like that's a major mark against him in particular anyway.
Santiago is basically mostly a good person, but Weaver added in a bunch of super ham-fisted lines to imply he's a psychotic rapist, while never actually having him do anything on-screen that makes him bad or morally grey.
I think that's fucking stupid.
I like Santiago, and I wish he didn't have all this bullshit about him actually being super bad and fucked up tacked onto him that isn't even present in the actual story, just because Weaver doesn't know how to do middleground. It really feels like that's only an element of his character because Weaver wanted to correct for Red being basically a straight-forwardly good person in Rubyquest and massively overshot.

Aside from that, I guess Santiago being more of an actual presence in the story and having some similar vibes basically means he's Weaver's attempt at making up for Red in that department too.
And yeah, Alan Moore bullshit aside, I like Santiago, and I'm glad it looks like he's making it out okay. I can't fully detach Weaver's bad writing from him, so I'd still say I like Red more, but I do like Santiago, even if it's in a different way.

Okay, rant over, for now at least.

I liked Pablo.
Again, not like that, I don't wanna stick my dick into and/or curl up in the arms of every character I feel slightly more than ambivalent about, but he was cool. Decent guy. I respect him just going for it like that.

Also, wait, what did they actually have to go back in time for? They said it was to beat the Padre while he was weaker, but then they just ended up getting sent back to the present and weakening him with the Beast and killing him there, so did going back in time even matter?
I feel like a lot of this story consists of the characters doing things that end up being totally pointless for no reason, and that's getting a little old, if I'm honest.

Okay, I guess it was Jumanji rules.
Okay.
I don't know man, fuckin' sure.

I'm glad Santiago gets a do-over at least, I like him getting a second chance to do better, but only because most of the actual harm he did wasn't his fault and was undone anyway.
I hope Nan takes good care of him.
He deserves at least that much.
I also like Kim getting sent back too.
Though it does seem weirdly centric around Nan, making the others the ages they would've been in Nan's time, apparently.

I guess this is a happy ending, sure.

Man, can you imagine getting bounced back like that? Just getting a full, clean-slate do over on your life, complete with having a loving family?
that'd be craaaaaaazyyyyyyyy....

(more) MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS ON RUBYQUEST/NANQUEST PAST THIS POINT

Alright, I'm composed.

This is probably gonna be the last time I get to talk about either of these stories with even the slightest actual justification for doing so in these threads without completely derailing things past any possible excuse, so I wanna get everything out now before I'm basically barred from ever talking about it at length again.
I don't actually have any particular order for the conga line of bullshit that's going to comprise this section so I'll just write it as I see fit, sorry if this is mostly incomprehensible.

Okay, so, how did Henry actually write a letter to have Nan come in and fix the electrical socket? Like, if he can't leave the hotel to actually post the letter, how'd Nan get the work order? Also, wouldn't it be one of the staff of the hotel that would have to put out that letter, not one of the patrons?
And, after Nan fixed the socket and laid down on the bed, what was up with Henry seemingly not fully existing for a sec? Like, the whole thing with him not being visible to her at first, what was up with that? Had Nan just not been fully dragged into the Hotel's domain at first?

Also, what's actually up with the hotel itself? Anderson says the hotel was built shortly before he arrived, in like 1912 or something, so it was apparently like an actual building that had to be made, so does it function normally as a hotel outside of being a weird evil roach-motel?
How do people see the hotel normally, is it just a hotel that weirdly never seems to have any business most of the time? Do people work there? If so, it's obviously not trapping everybody who enters it, because there'd be way more than just a small handful of people (spread out over nearly a century, might I add), so how does that work? It seems to only be taking people who have "sinned", but since that was the whole point of Henry luring Nan to the hotel, doesn't that mean his entire plot was pointless? She was connected to the nightclub fire, and is therefore responsible for those people's deaths, and that newspaper about it was in the hotel, so shouldn't Henry have known about that? Unless that was also bullshit made up by the entity too, in which case, wow, we literally know jack shit about Nan, huh?

And about that, seriously, what was up with Nan? I get that a lot of the stuff around her was meant to be a mystery, especially with the last bit of dialogue in the comic being Santiago asking Nan who she really is, but that kinda just feels like a roundabout way of getting around Weaver not actually having written any answers to those mysteries to begin with. What were all those memories she was experiencing? Who knows! What memories were actually real? Who knows! How did Lorenzo know Nan despite most of his story taking place nearly two centuries ago? Who knows!
Again, I understand that some of these were meant to be mysteries and left up to the interpretation of the readers, but it gets to be a bit much when so much of the story hinges on these things that we just don't get to have answers to.

Also, again, with the time travel shit, how does that actually work?
Shouldn't there have been missing persons reports for the various people who entered the hotel at different points in time and then seemingly vanished off the face of the earth? Wouldn't the people who entered the hotel, especially people with actual connections to other people, people who would notice if they went missing, be logged somewhere?
Anderson was a fuckin' US marshal, there's no way he could just vanish without there being an investigation into his disappearance, and even if that didn't immediately turn up anything, only so many people can all vanish in the same one location before people start to notice something, so what's up with that? Things only got Jumanji'd after Nan killed the Padre, so it's not like the retroactive effect was in play before then.

Why did the rumbling that seemed to mark the moment that Nan got trapped in the hotel start once Nan took the screwdriver from the key thing? Was that actually an indicator of the moment she got trapped, could she have left the hotel normally before that point?

And why was Santiago working with Henry? I get that it was probably just to make sure Henry wouldn't kill him for as long as he could be useful, but it's not like Santiago couldn't just take care of himself. Henry was really only a major threat when he was armed as the Pilgrim, but outside of that, Nan had him on the ropes until she relented to try and get information out of him, so it's not like Santiago couldn't have just snuck up on him and shanked him if he really needed to.
We literally see Henry get taken out by surprise, so he's clearly susceptible to being caught off guard.

Also, did Nan actually lose that fuckin' check she got from the arcade?
Man, that sucks.

Okay, probably the last one here, but this is most likely the last time I'll have to bring this up, so I gotta do it now.
I know we already went over the thing with Bella or whateverthefuck her name was in Rubyquest, but the more I thought about that, the less sense that made to me.
So, they didn't give her the medicine because the people in charge of the facility figured that it could mess with her mind, and therefore compromise the integrity of the facility's security, right?
But if that's the case, why did they give the medicine to anyone at all if they figured it could mess with people's minds in such a way that would require that kind of containment?
The story says that they started requiring all staff in the Glen to take the medicine once the patients started showing positive developments, even going so far as to sneak it into Red's food to make sure he got it, but that they specifically didn't give it to Bella because of the concern of it messing with her mind.
The obvious answer to that is that they knew it could cause problems at the time, and they still gave it to everyone with the intention of spreading its influence over the people in the Glen, but then the problem arises of why they wouldn't also just give the medicine to Bella too if they wanted to disease to spread, so neither answer works here.
If the people controlling the facility weren't under the influence of whatever entity was at play there, why did they mandate the medicine if they knew it would cause problems, and if they were under the influence of whatever entity was at play here, why didn't they give the medicine to Bella if they wanted to spread the disease?
I'm still hung up on that, that just doesn't make any sense to me.

Okay, that should be that.

Well, actually, I hear "Divequest" may or may not take place in the same universe as these two, somehow, and it apparently does have a character that looks just a little bit like Red, but I think that's gonna have to wait.
Hell, not like Weaver isn't taking their sweet time with it, I think I can give it a bit too.

This was decent. The characters in this were actually characters, that was an improvement. I think a little more of the story hinged on things that didn't exactly make sense, but fuck it, I guess.
Apparently Weaver suggested "Home By The Sea" by Genesis for "end credits music" for this.
I'm not too sure that's the song I'd have picked, but it's a good song, and I guess it fits the tone of (some) of the characters getting to walk away at the end.

Oh yeah, I guess at the end of the day, Santiago was technically more sane then Red was.
Huh.
I guess Santiago's general response and mindset to the situation seemed more immediately unstable and erratic, while Red's was largely just a downward spiral into self-destruction.
And for whatever it's worth, the comic does technically show us what Santiago is like when not in the main context of the comic, and he seems mostly normal, for what he's been through, so I guess that makes him a generally stable person overall, somehow.
I dunno, I guess it's just weird that things ended up going as well for him as they did. Not complaining, I'm glad he got out okay and gets to have a relatively fresh start on life, but it just seems weird compared to how Weaver seemed to think of him and depict him throughout the comic.

Anyway, no more of this for a bit, I'm on cooldown.
Go read Problem Sleuth or the Homestuck Midnight Crew intermission if you're so inclined, you'd probably like them.

Alright.
This is done.
I'm done.