Yay, it's here! (YOU MADE A DAMAGES VID. \o/ IT FEELS LIKE MAYBE I WON SOMETHING). So you already know that I really love this, but I will repeat all the things I love for posterity! It's gorgeous and heartbreaking, and so sympathetic to probably the most sympathetic character ever on this show. This song. Oh Ray. The pacing is great, with the mix between all the stuff that's spiraling out of control and the perfect choices you made about what to linger on, often the violence and anger of other people versus Ray's stillness. He just seems so much more progressively alone and repressed as the vid goes on, and the end, with Gregory, is almost the only time we see him show emotion when someone else is looking, to try to get something for himself, and then oh god, when he tries to kiss Gregory and I want to give him all the hugs ever. Because somebody just needed to. And the way you used Patty is so great now; she's so implacable and remote, allowing him no leeway. And I love the sense I take from it that bowing to Patty over the photos, in the end, was the only way he thought he had left of trying to do well, to do the right thing, the thing that would cause the least amount of hurt in the world. He's sort of like the anti-Ellen, the one who I think initially admired Patty in some ways, or subconsciously desired her approval (by beating her), but who in the end could not wholly be recruited to her side or to her tactics, whatever the ends. Rather than be beaten or used by her, he refused to play the game any longer.

(And pshaw, it was never a mess! <3)