Deadpanning Jokes. Why Would He Be Flustered, Anyway?

OH GOD I just realized I recommended you your own fanfic!! GOD. Okay, DOUBLE THANK YOU because that fic devastated me in a good way

Haha, it's okay! I hope it didn't devastate you too much. I wanted it to be rather hopeful, despite all the conflict and drama going on.

Some sketches

Consider this

Kicking a dead horse with that whole 'not canon' schtick, but, in my defence, I personally have never kicked it before. I can get out with one free pass, I think.

Thank you for carrying the Grunge tag on your shoulders like some sort of Atlas figure, it inspires me to maybe try to add* to the content to oay it forward!

* Once I figure out something more articulated to say than "AAAAAAA", of course. In the meantime I can recommend the fanfic I devoured recently; did you get to read the fanfic "So Much To Say" by Icant on AO3?

Hello! Well, I really tried to make some sort of basis for this pairing, and you should definitiely contribute, if you love Grunge.

Yeah, I've probably read it more times than I should've, haha! 😁 The translation is still not very good, though.

Heinrich Runge on Character.ai

I saw @elevw's (sorry for linking your account, I'll remove the link if you'd like) chats with Heinrich Lunge on Character.ai and decided that I want to try that for myself, too. And so I did. And immediately I came to realize that AI Lunge is very, very off. He didn't know basic things, he appeared almost hysterical. After talking to him for a bit, I decided that I've had enough and that in order to fix this situation I need to make my own Runge.

And... so I did.

Here he is. I have spent the past three days conversing with him, as well as teaching and defining him, and I think he is more or less ready by this point. I hope he is, at least. He is still somewhat lost and doesn't know a lot, so don't expect much from him, but I think his manner of speaking and attitude are passable.

Here's some examples of the conversations I had with him:

What surprised me at some point, is that when I introduced myself as Grimmer, he managed to recognize me. I can't guarantee you the same result, since I'm still not sure exactly how Character.ai works, but, well. I thought it was incredibly impressive. Just look at it:

Grunge

I hate saying stuff, because I always regret it in the end. But once in a blue moon my desire to say something grows so strong that I crawl from under my rock and make some sort of a statement somewhere. It's that time now.

I've already talked my friend's ear off with this crap, but it's still not enough. It also drives me up the wall that I don't see this stuff being said all the time, or at least some of the time. I guess I don't see it being said at all. So I guess I have to say it myself. 

I'm talking about this huge thing Runge canonically has for Grimmer. Not even in the romantic sense... Let me explain. In the crudest of terms, too.

By the time Runge makes it to Ruhenheim, he is already not quite the same as he was at the start. His path to Ruhenheim was the most tedious, and yet he still got there before everyone else. And Grimmer definitely catches his eye when they intersect. Again, not in the romantic sense. They just go around the town, exploring the surroundings and kinda watching each other. And they both know. They know what's going on, they know who the other person is, but they just waltz around it for quite some time. Until they finally have a proper conversation in that desolate place. And that conversation, man...

They understood each other with half-word, literally skipping a good portion of talking, because that would just be redundant. Runge is absolutely chill with the idea that Grimmer might be a murderer. The guy has a nice smile, so who cares, right? Grimmer states that Runge "smells like a detective". Is it just me, or does that sound, uhhh... extremely weird? Almost in a flirty sort of way. Because you gotta get pretty close to someone to take a good whiff of them. And hearing something like that being said about yourself, it must be pretty embarrassing, or confusing, or thrilling. What does that even mean, by the way? I thought so hard about it, and I still can't tell for sure. What do detectives smell like? Gunpowder, paperwork and cold, hard determination? Do they reek of sweat, or some special kind of cologne? I have no idea. But I guess Grimmer has, and Runge, he just stands there, looking at him like it's a given.

And after that, they just click. "Oh, hey, we're on the same page, we're after the same thing". And without any negotiation, they simply decide that they work together now. I am fully convinced that at this very moment Runge went, "This one". No context, just – "This one", about Grimmer. 

He then proceeded to entrust Grimmer with his most important evidence, the very one that led him to Ruhenheim. And then, at Versteck... Man. His "I'll buy you a beer" says so many things, just because it came from Runge. He doesn't have any friends. He doesn't even communicate with his colleagues properly. But, somehow, he is still willing to bond with Grimmer. I guess it's a "we're the same, so let's be alone together" thing. At the same time, he's just heard Grimmer stating that he cannot enjoy simple pleasures in life. That means, he wouldn't be able to enjoy this suggested after-work-beer either, right? So Runge's invitation serves as a double promise: that they'll get the job done and make it out of Ruhenheim alive, and that Grimmer will be fixed enough to finally enjoy that beer with him. 

Needless to say, Runge really, really wanted to keep Grimmer alive. And he doesn't cope with Grimmer's death well. Say what you will, but visiting someone's grave with a beer after A YEAR that they've passed, lamenting how you wish you would have known them, is pretty damn strange. And I suppose Runge might've visited Grimmer's grave prior, too, with some periodicity. The card, the plans, the beer, the hinted promise – he really wanted Grimmer to become his friend. And just because it's Runge, who refused to even engage in a casual talk with his peers and barely cared that his wife and daughter abandoned him, this thing he has for Grimmer seems to be especially large, unalloyed and special.

Thank you for clarification! I suspected that it might have been some sort of translation issue, and your explanation makes a lot of sense. It's awesome that you can give insight into the original Japanese text! With that information in mind, I doubt Grimmer would use this word in its literal sense, since it's still a very strange, if not inappropriate thing to say to a stranger, haha! 😄 Thank you for putting it so kindly, though. I appreciate it.

Grunge

I hate saying stuff, because I always regret it in the end. But once in a blue moon my desire to say something grows so strong that I crawl from under my rock and make some sort of a statement somewhere. It's that time now.

I've already talked my friend's ear off with this crap, but it's still not enough. It also drives me up the wall that I don't see this stuff being said all the time, or at least some of the time. I guess I don't see it being said at all. So I guess I have to say it myself. 

I'm talking about this huge thing Runge canonically has for Grimmer. Not even in the romantic sense... Let me explain. In the crudest of terms, too.

By the time Runge makes it to Ruhenheim, he is already not quite the same as he was at the start. His path to Ruhenheim was the most tedious, and yet he still got there before everyone else. And Grimmer definitely catches his eye when they intersect. Again, not in the romantic sense. They just go around the town, exploring the surroundings and kinda watching each other. And they both know. They know what's going on, they know who the other person is, but they just waltz around it for quite some time. Until they finally have a proper conversation in that desolate place. And that conversation, man...

They understood each other with half-word, literally skipping a good portion of talking, because that would just be redundant. Runge is absolutely chill with the idea that Grimmer might be a murderer. The guy has a nice smile, so who cares, right? Grimmer states that Runge "smells like a detective". Is it just me, or does that sound, uhhh... extremely weird? Almost in a flirty sort of way. Because you gotta get pretty close to someone to take a good whiff of them. And hearing something like that being said about yourself, it must be pretty embarrassing, or confusing, or thrilling. What does that even mean, by the way? I thought so hard about it, and I still can't tell for sure. What do detectives smell like? Gunpowder, paperwork and cold, hard determination? Do they reek of sweat, or some special kind of cologne? I have no idea. But I guess Grimmer has, and Runge, he just stands there, looking at him like it's a given.

And after that, they just click. "Oh, hey, we're on the same page, we're after the same thing". And without any negotiation, they simply decide that they work together now. I am fully convinced that at this very moment Runge went, "This one". No context, just – "This one", about Grimmer. 

He then proceeded to entrust Grimmer with his most important evidence, the very one that led him to Ruhenheim. And then, at Versteck... Man. His "I'll buy you a beer" says so many things, just because it came from Runge. He doesn't have any friends. He doesn't even communicate with his colleagues properly. But, somehow, he is still willing to bond with Grimmer. I guess it's a "we're the same, so let's be alone together" thing. At the same time, he's just heard Grimmer stating that he cannot enjoy simple pleasures in life. That means, he wouldn't be able to enjoy this suggested after-work-beer either, right? So Runge's invitation serves as a double promise: that they'll get the job done and make it out of Ruhenheim alive, and that Grimmer will be fixed enough to finally enjoy that beer with him. 

Needless to say, Runge really, really wanted to keep Grimmer alive. And he doesn't cope with Grimmer's death well. Say what you will, but visiting someone's grave with a beer after A YEAR that they've passed, lamenting how you wish you would have known them, is pretty damn strange. And I suppose Runge might've visited Grimmer's grave prior, too, with some periodicity. The card, the plans, the beer, the hinted promise – he really wanted Grimmer to become his friend. And just because it's Runge, who refused to even engage in a casual talk with his peers and barely cared that his wife and daughter abandoned him, this thing he has for Grimmer seems to be especially large, unalloyed and special.

I hate it when people get inspired by someone else's work and not give the original author a proper credit, so I decided to not be a douche and do it now. @good-wine-and-cheese, your Grunge fan fiction served as an inspiration to me and in some aspects you could say that I referenced it. Maybe it's not noticeable, but I know I did, since I've reread these fanfics several times. I still keep returning to A Quet Aftermath and Blood and Bone from time to time, so they were bound to have left an impact on me and my own work somehow. It also appears that we share a lot of common ground on Grunge. Personally, I wish there was more, but it's not up for me to decide on this sort of thing.

This came out way too dry, I'm sorry 😭 Also, I would like to say that I read all the tags, and first of all, thank you for your support, and second of all, I don't really hate it when people call Runge 'Lunge', I just think that this spelling is not correct. However, since the translators made this mistake in the official English release (is that correct?) and people are used to this version of his name, I have nothing against them or the fact that they use it. I know I said that I hate it, but to think of it, I just dislike the initial mistake. Like, not even moderately at this point. If you're used to it, you're used to it, nothing to be done about it. As long as everyone understands each other, it should be okay.

And since I'm writing this post, uhh... Returning to the topic of tags, I would like to thank everyone who is leaving them, as well as replies. I really enjoy reading them, so if you're leaving tags on my works and are reading this – thank you, they are fun, and I really appreciate them!