#And his father was in murder inc

[doyouknowthisjewishcharacter]

Do you know this Jewish character?

[attila-werther]

almost started liveblogging my way through this editing breakthrough I just had, but actually if I want to get it done, I will simply have to log off and actually do it before I fall asleep

[sad-drake-lyrics]

what my 65yo father has to say about antis:

let me preface this by saying, i literally wish i had what just happened on video to go viral on TikTok. i was shook by this conversation down to my bones; and if you could see my father - a loud old Italian man with dramatic hand gestures - say what he had to say, i think this shit would blow up. but as i was obviously not filming him while we were eating, i will have to relay to you the story with my words.

so i'm sitting eating dinner at the coffee table with my father while watching TV, as Americans often do instead of eating at the dinner table, and since the news was on he started telling me this story that had been recently mentioned on TV once again from maybe ten years ago (it was in 2014, you can read about it here) where these two 12-year-old girls killed one of their friends as a sacrifice to the Slender Man. yeah, real thing. fucked up.

and so my father told me about how they interviewed one of the killer's mothers, and when questioned about where her daughter's motive could've come from, she said something along the lines of: you know, when i was a kid, i was into Stephen King and horror - and so when my kid was into that kind of stuff, i didn’t think it was a big deal.

so, of course, my response was "yeah, being into that stuff isn’t a big deal at all - it's normal - but being a sociopath and murdering someone is not normal; it's fucked up. but there's nothing wrong with being into horror stories - they're just stories meant to entertain - it doesn't make you a murderer to enjoy Halloween - but it would if you put on a Michael Myers mask and went out and stabbed people." and, of course, like any sane person, my father agreed with me.

then, continuing this line of conversation, i started talking about the concept of how "fiction isn’t reality," and how a frightening amount of people don't understand that; and i literally started telling him about antis - people on the internet who attack and harass others over "problematic" or "inappropriate" fictional interests.

i used well-known pop culture examples like: if you're into Game of Thrones and like Jaime and Cersei together or wanted Jon and Daenerys to end up together (i didn't think he would process the term "shipping," but clearly by the end of this conversation i think i was wrong), that people (antis) will say things like "you should die," and that you "support inc*st in real life," and that "you're disgusting."

i also used the examples of "toxic relationships" in pop culture, like the Joker and Harley Quinn, or Kylo Ren and Rey, and how if you’re into those kinds of fictional relationships that people (antis) will say that you "support toxic relationships," and that you are "glorifying abuse," and that it all "must be what you really want and believe is right or good."

and my fucking 65-year-old father literally goes: "I don’t understand. It’s a TV show. Don't they know it’s fake?"

queue my jaw dropping to the fucking ground because i'm like. YES. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT PRO-SHIPPERS ARE TRYING TO SAY AND THESE PEOPLE DON'T GET IT.

he was flabbergasted, my pals. the shock in his eyes was incredible to behold.

and, oh boy, that isn't even the best part, guys.

my father then says, "Don’t tell me it’s like that with anime too?"

and i said, "it's worse with anime."

and i fucking swear to you - no joke, on my life and baby Jesus' cradle - again my 65-year-old father looks at me and says, “It’s a fucken cartoon."

... ... ...

... i can't ...

i can't end this post better than that.

[littlechaoticwitch]

Things I want to happen in future Dead Boy Detectives seasons

-Edwin and Crystal bonding over their grief about Niko's “death”. Both blame themselves for what happened and still have nightmares of Niko's body, so they turn to each other for comfort and a beautiful new bond is built between them. They're still catty and bitchy to each other, but in a more loving and playful way

-Maybe an unpopular opinion but I really don't want Payneland to get together in this season, purely from a narrative perspective. I would much prefer for Charles to slowly put the pieces together and realize he has been in love since that night in 1989, but confused those feelings for a strong friendship due to the rampant homophobia of the AIDS crisis and his own father being an asshole. It would make any future intimate moments with Edwin feel more special and carry so much more weight, especially since he KNOWS that Edwin is in love with him back, he just has to figure out what these feelings mean. Plus, the idea of him being all bashful and excited of being loved by TWO amazing people is good therapy for all the bullshit he had to deal with when he was alive, let my boy have that.

-Please please please let Charles get some closure on his past. As in he gets to haunt his murderers for an episode or stand up to his father, but that’s me wanting him to get some well-deserved revenge

-PLEASE give Crystal her own closure too! Personally, I would love to see her stand up to her parents and eventually cut them out of her life, but that's just me loving the narrative of cutting toxic parents out of your life. Also let her find a way to kill David because being buried underneath that damn tree isn't good enough for me

-Honestly we would to see an exploration of Edwin's family and the fact he was alive when the first world war happened. There could be a lot of unpacked trauma there (whether it's from the religious views of the time, societal expectations/pressures, or from his own parents) and how it shaped Edwin into the person we know now

-NIKO NEEDS TO RETURN (idk if she's a ghost or a demon or whatever now but she needs to come back and still be her bubbly self, I love her too much). My theory is that the Principal is her ancestor and her coming back could somehow link back to her father's death

-FLASHBACKS TO OLD CASES

-GALA EPISODE! No, listen, this only serves the purpose of getting to see them dressed up and the episode itself being pure shipping fuel

-More low-stake episodes, at least in the beginning

-More monsters-involved cases, such as vampires or dragons or werewolves. As someone with an unhealthy obsession with monsters, this would be a delight

-St Hilarion's being fucking burned to the ground (Crystal needs to do it, I will accept no other way)

-Esther Finch was such a fun antagonist for the first season, but I would want the next antagonist (regardless if they’re introduced in the second season or later on) to be a little more threatening. Still campy as fuck but maybe someone who has more of an active role in being an asshole. A demon would be a huge leap from a small-town witch who sacrificed young girls to stay youthful, so maybe a formerly-possessed psychic (which would parallel Crystal’s storyline) could work.

-And finally, the agency adopts a not-so-normal dog. While a ghost dog would make sense, it would be funnier if it was a hellhound or some kind of mythical creature they just picked up on a case. Niko wanted it so they could be more like Mystery Inc.

[somefanficrecomendations]

February Monthly Recap

I had a lot of fics this month. Every one of these deserves a dedicated post of its own but in the interest of efficiency this roundup will have to do!

BATMAN

Uptown Girl by orphan_account (Stephanie Brown/Cassandra Cain), 60k, Case Fic, Friends to Lovers Stephanie Brown has three problems: a supervillain father with a deadly scavenger hunt in the works, a mysterious rich girl who's way too interested in her life, and one really, really painful hobby. Alternatively: a different kind of Spoiler origin story.

The Lois Angle by cabezas_de_vaca (gen), 15k, Bruce & Lois Friendship, Case Fic What she had with Bruce was novel, exhilarating. She had fallen in love several times, and that was like a great swoop of a wing, a flash and flush and then long tumble, but this was like a warmth that welled up from within. This was Bruce grappling up to her thirtieth story Metropolis apartment, stowing the Batsuit in the bathroom, and watching StarTrek with her. This was her driving to the manor when she couldn't sleep, only to find she could do it there. This was having a friend. Or: Despite the long shadow Batman casts and the demands of being one of the youngest Pulitzer winners ever, Bruce and Lois manage to steady each other, in the way that only friends can. Also, there's a case they need to solve. 

the scientific method by orphan_account (gen), 20k, Sibling Bonding, Duke-centric 5 stupid ways Duke's siblings discovered how his powers worked, and 1 time he figured it out for himself. "You have no idea," Dick said. "I had to live through all of their teenage years. They were each independently obsessed with Mythbusters at separate points in their life. I'm pretty sure Cass and Tim have wanted a meta to experiment on since they were 14, but Bruce always said no."

Meet Me Where You're Going by Hinn_Raven (Stephanie Brown/Cassandra Cain), 68k, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining When things get complicated in Hong Kong, Cass requests help from Batman Inc. Unbeknownst to her, Bruce dispatches not one of her brothers, but Stephanie Brown, who Cass has not spoken to since she gave up the Batgirl mantle. Steph is eager to reunite with her best friend, but things between them are complicated. Not the least of the problems is the fact that Steph might be falling in love… but of course, Cass is straight, so Steph really shouldn’t dwell on that. Friendship and romance, conspiracy and adventure await the two of them as they try to unravel a complicated plot that seeks to stop Batman Incorporated before it can truly begin.

when you move, fall like a thunderbolt by orphan_account (Stephanie Brown/Cassandra Cain), 5k, Villain!Steph, Canon Divergence In another universe, Stephanie Brown's plans to kill her father aren't interrupted by Batman. Which means nobody stops her from tripping and falling headlong into running her own gang, and then a little more intentionally rising to the top of the underworld. Meanwhile, seeing as Bruce only has one kid who actually wants to carry on the good name, Cassandra Cain takes over as the Batman of Gotham's future. This would be a fine turn of events if it weren't for the fact that they've been dating on-and-off for ten years.

falling without caution by coffeecrowns (gen), 17k, Bad Parent!Bruce, PTSD Jason is twenty, decidedly less into murder, trying to avoid developing agoraphobia, and putting together some pieces into a life. Tim is sixteen, riding the edge of burnout, and in a show of his truly baffling survival instincts, decides Jason is friend shaped. 

MICE ON VENUS by NEOCULTUREDAUS (gen), 3k, Tim & Damian Bonding “Timothy, if this is revenge for me trying to kill you, I need you to know I’m not sorry.” Damian’s eyes were clamped shut, hands fisting Tim’s hoodie so tightly that if Tim tried moving, he simply wouldn't be able to. “I’m not trying to get revenge. And open your eyes, you can’t ride a skateboard with them closed.” Tim patronized, prying Damian’s hands off him, you know, like someone evil who didn’t care for the wellbeing of his younger brother. Or The one where skater Tim takes his artist younger brother graffiti painting

So Sweet Saluteth Me by Lishalalalalala (gen), 7k, Good Dad!Bruce Sleep deprived™ Jason hangs out with Dick then they surprise Bruce at work with early lunch and some love. This fic is inspired by farmers’ markets on those summery days and the belief that if I run fast enough the sad can never catch me. (I mean you are telling me that Bruce Thomas/Alan Wayne wouldn’t be absolutely BASKING in joy if his kids just decided to randomly show up at Wayne Enterprise and pay him a little midday visit? )

to count by miles or days or people (when will i stop missing you) by jcp_sob_rjl_lmep (gen), 22k, Angst, Hurt/Comfort When Duke is kidnapped off of the streets of Gotham on his way back to the Manor from visiting his parents, it sends the entire Batfamily into a panic. With very little evidence to go on and time slipping past them, there's no help coming as Duke is forced to make a grand escape and get himself home before his kidnappers find him once more.

birds and brothers and other assorted synonyms by Ao3time, hoebiwan, quandaries_and_contradictions (gen), 21k, Series, Found Family A Reverse Robin AU in which Damian is a tired older brother, Duke is a ray of sunshine, and Dick is a baby talon.

Emergency rooms and chicken nuggets by Lilac_hyacinth (Bernard Dowd/Tim Drake) 7k “So…” Duke drawled, sounding suspiciously wide-awake for the day shift kid at two-thirty in the morning. “If I said Damian and I are in a bit of trouble, on a scale of Jason to Cass, how likely are you to kill us?” Clearing his throat and rubbing his eyes to try to wake himself up, Tim grimaced. “What the fuck did you do?” “Nothing.” Or Tim and Bernard get out of bed at two in the morning to go across town and pick up Tim's reckless little brothers.

Pick a Pocket Full of Pennies by Trekkele (gen), 24k, Found Family, Fluff, AU-No Powers The life and times of Dick Grayson, unintentional ringleader to a gang of pickpockets, and how he learned to let go and get adopted. Or something. 

SPIDER-MAN

Death Before Inaction by hppjmxrgosg (gen), 37k, BAMF Peter Parker, WIP “Fuck off, Nicky.” “Hasn’t anyone ever told you spider-napping is illegal?” “You can’t hold me here, I know my spider-rights.” “God, you guys are so old. What are you? Like 27?” “Scale of 1 to 10, how upset would you be if I told you I banged your mom?” - Or, I got my grubby little hands on the spider-man time line and fucked around a little bit. Not much (everything) changes.

[pluckyredhead]

Hi! I've been reading through your character profiles recently (they're incredibly well done, and I love learning about less popular DC characters, so thank you for making them) and in one you said Hawkman mutilated his own godson, and now I'm overflowing with curiosity. Did he actually do that? Why? That sounds horrific.

It is SO BAD, friend!

So this happened during a 2004 JSA/Hawkman crossover called Black Reign in which Black Adam decides to liberate his home country of Kahndaq from a brutal dictator (and become, um, a benevolent dictator, but that's neither here nor there). To do so, he assembles the following squad:

Atom Smasher (Al Rothstein), who is there because he's frustrated that the JSA won't kill bad guys and also because he's hot for Black Adam

Brainwave (Hank King Jr.), who is there because he has a worm in his brain making him evil (yes really)

Alexander Montez, who is there because he's possessed by Eclipso

Nemesis, who is there because she's a random forgettable villain

And Northwind (Norda Cantrell), who is there because...

Well, we don't know! Norda, like Al and Hank, is a former member of Infinity, Inc. with a particularly goofy backstory: his father is Black human man and his mother is a bird lady who kind of looks like a sexy version of Woodstock from Peanuts. So Norda is a Black biracial man who is also part bird. He used to look like this:

He pretty much hadn't been seen for like a decade after Infinity, Inc. disbanded, but Black Reign reintroduces him like this:

Note his head and how much more animalistic it looks. Note the narrative box explaining that he can't speak anymore, because something something evolution.

Geoff Johns decided to take a Black character who had always been characterized as gentle, thoughtful, sensitive, and kind, and turn him into a savage, murderous animal, who is literally incapable of speech. He's the only character in this story given absolutely no motivation, because he cannot speak to express one. He's already been thoroughly dehumanized, and we haven't even gotten to the mutilation yet!

(It's also implied that Norda is the only one of Black Adam's squad, besides Adam, who knows that Hank has a worm in his brain that's controlling him/eating said brain, and just literally doesn't care. That's his friend! What the fuck!!)

Anyway, even though the people of Kahndaq welcome Black Adam as a liberator, the JSA decides to go into another sovereign nation and attack its new ruler with zero authorization from either the US or the UN, because obviously a Middle Eastern nation couldn't possibly have self-determination and a bunch of very very VERY old white American men know best. I'm not saying this is a simple political or ethical situation but I AM saying the story treats it like it is, and like the JSA completely and totally has the right to fart on over to another country and declare war. Probably worth pointing out that this was only three years after 9/11.

ANYWAY. Hawkman ends up fighting Norda, who is his godson, a fact which Hawkman reminds Norda of before doing this:

Jay is, correctly, horrified, and the following dialogue takes place:

It's okay! Sure, Carter ripped one of his godson's limbs out of its socket, but it'll probably grow back! Maybe!

It does in fact grow back, and it's worth acknowledging that Norda was totally ripping out random dudes' entrails at the beginning of this story so he's not exactly innocent here. But for me this particular moment has three key takeaways:

The obsession that comics in the post-9/11 era had with showing heroes doing ever more gruesomely violent, morally suspect things is just as exhausting now as it was back then, and ultimately contributes very little of substance to any conversations about heroism, justice, or the wars in the Middle East.

The treatment of Norda in this story is racist, full stop.

Norda has not appeared in any significant way in the 20 years since. He was never going to be a character with a major spotlight, but this sure didn't help.

[medicmain68]

why are fritz and jeremy so tragic i would do ANYTHING for them to be happy. chad payne please make them happy in murder inc im begging please please please

fritz was so happy in chapter 7 when he heard jeremy's voice because he thought he could finally be reunited with him BUT NO. the respawn machine just has to exist and now fritz will never get to see his son figure again. jeremy had so much to live for but the greed of the respawn machine and fritz's desperation to bring him back tortured him and made him into literal blood soup. i just wish they could be happy omfg literally just let fritz be jeremy's father and have a happy ending!!! ive been crying for the past 10 minutes because of them!!!

when fritz realizes he MIGHT have killed jeremy's ma he was absolutely shattered idk if he did or not but hes convinced that he's a sinner and such a bad person when he couldn't help it and he's just damaged. he was pushed to the limit because of the respawn machine and jeremy's death HE COULD'VE SAVED HIM HE DIED RIGHT INFRONT OF HIM. he probably felt so guilty about it all smh i hate this bro

[lets-ignore-that]

MY FNAF VERSION/AU MASTERPOST!

Little disclaimer my version of FNAF is VERY VERY CLOSE TO CANON.

Everything from lifespans of the businesses to characters to the main plot is under the cut.

Fredbear's Family Diner 1964-1983

Sister Location (Circus Baby’s Funland) 1984

Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza 1984-1993

Fazbear’s Frights 2023-2023

Faux Fazbears 2024

Pizzaplex 2030

The order of the games is such: 5 - 4 - 2 -1 - 3 - 6 - UCN - SB

Characters

William Afton (October 14 1938 - ???)

Henry Emily (June 10th 1939 - September 15 2024)

Michael Afton (February 13 1969 - April 16 2031)

Elizabeth Afton (May 4 1976 - May 6 1984)

Evan Afton (July 6 1977 - July 8 1983)

Charlie Emily ( December 6 1971 - 1983)

Elanor Afton-Schmidt (February 15 1943 - March 6 1978)

Ruth Emily-Davis (November 26 1941- October 1 2026)

Jenny Smith (March 25 1970 - )

Evan Jr. Smith ( October 13 1987 - April 5 2030 )

Vanessa Williams ( September 29 1999 - )

  William was born to James and Helen Afton in Essex, England. James died in WW2 in 1944 when William was 6. Helen remarried in 1946 to a man by the name of George. George resented and was highly abusive to William, their relationship was strained at best. Once William turned 18 he moved to America to pursue a college education. He never regained contact with his mother and step-father. William went to college for a degree in engineering in 1956. There he met Henry and they quickly became friends. One year later he met Elanor and they married in 1959. They had three children together.

  Henry was born to Edward and Dorothy Emily in Hurricane Utah. He had a normal childhood growing up and went to college in 1957 where he met William. He ended up marrying his highschool sweetheart Ruth in 1961. They had their only child Charlie in 1971. They then divorced in 1981.

  Michael is the oldest son of William and Elanor, he was born and raised in Hurricane, Utah. After his mother dying when he was 9 his father started to abuse him, it subsequently got worse as his brother and sister passed. He met his girlfriend Jenny when he was 18 and they quickly had a child, Evan Jr. He worked as a security guard for multiple Fazbear Ent. Inc. locations.

  Elizabeth and Evan are the two younger children of William and Elanor. They were born only a year apart and were favorited by William, their mother died when they were too young to remember her and became highly attached to William. Both died very young. Elizabeth possessed Circus baby and Evan possessed Golden Freddy.

 Charlie Emily was the only child of Henry and Ruth. She grew up very close to her “cousins” Michael, Elizabeth, and Evan. She had a good relationship with her “uncle” William. She was murdered by William at 12 years old and possessed the puppet.

 Elanor Schmidt was the wife of William and mother of Michael Elizabeth and Evan. She was a proficient ballet dancer and ended up being a stay at home mother to her three children, she had a loving relationship with her husband but it ended up tense at the end of it, she was murdered by her husband in 1978.

 Ruth Davis was the wife of Henry and mother of Charlie. She met Henry in highschool and they had a decent relationship until they drifted apart and ended up divorcing. She gave up parental rights to Henry. 

  Jenny Smith is the girlfriend of Michael Afton and the mother of Evan Jr. She met Michael when she was a teenager and supported him through his teenage years, which lead them to fall in love with each other. She got back together with Michael after his accident and they raised Evan together. 

  Evan Jr. Smith is the son of Michael and Jenny. He had a normal childhood and early adulthood. He ended up being possessed by his grandfather William and lost his sense of self in 2030 and essentially died. 

  Vannessa Williams is a security guard at the Pizzaplex. She resurrected William and helped him possess his grandson. They are in a strenuous relationship. 

Main timeline of events       

Henry and William start Fredbear’s Family Diner in 1964

William suffers a springlock accident, permanently scarring him.

Michael Afton is born in 1969

Charlie Emily is born in 1971

Fredbear’s Family Diner opens more locations.

Elizabeth Afton is born in 1976

Evan Afton is born in 1977

In 1978, Elanor Afton is killed by her husband William with a sledgehammer. He takes her body and disposes of it in the Utah desert. Due to marital conflicts being known, he is interrogated but the case is quickly dropped.

Evan Afton’s 6th birthday takes place in Fredbear’s in 1983. His older brother and his friends put his head into the Fredbear animatronic and Evan’s head is quickly crushed. He is rushed to the hospital and put into a medically induced coma. The events of FNAF 4 take place in his head over a week when he is pronounced brain dead and dies. He possesses the Fredbear animatronic.

Over the next year, William’s mental health rapidly deteriorates and he becomes obsessed with the idea of possession. He theorizes that his son is in the fredbear animatronic and starts to design animatronics to test his theory by giving them the capability to capture and kill children inconspicuously. 

A sister location known as Circus Baby’s Funland is opened with William’s new animatronics. Elizabeth becomes infatuated with one of the robots, Baby, based off of her. William commands her to stay away but she defies his orders and is killed by Baby.

William’s sanity decreases once again.

Henry, noticing the problems in his business partner's life and mental state, and proximity to horrific accidents, forces him to leave the company for his own good. He also secretly fears for his own daughter's safety. Henry designs an animatronic puppet to act as a watchguard for her.

One night Charlie is locked outside of Fredbear’s Family Diner and William murders her in the alley next to the building. The puppet follows Charlie outside and she possesses her. William is dropped as a potential assailant due to lack of evidence.

After this death, the restaurant chain is renamed to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in 1984

New animatronics are designed (toys) and new locations are opened up subsequently.

Michael and Jenny have Evan Jr.

William disguises himself as a security guard, uses his springbonnie suit, and murders five children in 1987. 

Due to the murders, the restaurant is about to be shut down, but one more party takes place, during this time, a security guard by the name of Jeremy Fitzgerald gets bitten in the head by Mangle, this is the bite of ‘87

The location is shut down and William is apprehended due to previous speculation, he is let go due to the police being unable to find the bodies.

In 1993 a new location is opened up with refurbished animatronics, Michael is hired as a nightguard but ends up being fired.

One night, William enters the building in an attempt to dismantle the animatronics. He is confronted by the ghosts of the murder victims. In an attempt to scare them off, William dons the springbonnie suit, but the suit malfunctions.

William dies in 1993 in the backroom of a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. He possesses springbonnie. 

Learning of William’s disappearance, Henry closes off every backroom in every location under the guise of “budget cuts’

In 1995, Michael travels to the underground bunker holding Baby and the other Circus Baby’s Funland animatronics to rectify his mistakes and find out more about his father. Baby and the rest manipulate Michael into helping them escape, and they end up leading him into the scooping room, scooping out his organs and killing him. Baby and the others congeal into one animatronic and enter Michael’s body. They use his body as an attempt to  conform to civilian life but it starts to rot and it expels them.. Michael’s soul possesses his own body, essentially becoming undead.

After being expelled, infighting causes Baby to be removed from Ennard due to her being Afton's daughter and refusing to kill Michael. She rebuilds herself and Ennard becomes Molten Freddy.

Michael, being undead, finds Jenny, who accepts him, and they begin to raise Evan together.

30 years pass.

The children’s murders essentially become urban legend at this point.

In another attempt to dispel the urban legend, Fazbear Ent. Inc. opens a horror attraction known as Fazbear Frights in California. Michael starts to work there to continue his hunt for his father. 

Springtrap is transported to the location as a prop, as workers found his body. 

Michael and Springtrap fight and Michael sets the building on fire. Springtrap survives as well as Michael, and Michael captures him and drives him to Utah so Henry can deal with him. 

Springtrap escapes Michael’s capture.

In a desperate attempt to end everything once and for all, Henry opens up a fake pizzeria in 2024 to lure all the still roaming souls.

In a miracle, it works, and Springtrap, Baby, Molten Freddy, Golden Freddy, and the Puppet (in Lefty) all arrive.

Michael works at the building to help Henry during this.

Henry locks down the building and sets it ablaze, killing everyone and himself in the building. Michael survives.

William is sent to Hell, to be tormented by Cassidy for eternity, she traps all of the other souls alongside her to torment William as well. Henry eventually convinces her to release the souls and pass on herself to leave William to burn in hell. 

Six years pass.

Fazbear Ent. Inc. opens up the Pizzaplex, with all new animatronics and redesigns.

Vanessa works at the Pizzaplex as a security guard.

Evan Jr. Works at the Pizzaplex as an animatronic engineer.

Due to her obsession with the murders and William, she attempts to bring him back to life, and it works. 

He ends up possessing her, and appears in her head as Glitchtrap.

Vanessa finds Williams old body (springtrap) under the pizzaplex and slowly starts to rebuild it so william can possess it. 

William possesses his body again.

After the battle with Gregory and Glamrock Freddy, his body gets destroyed and he possesses his grandson, Evan Jr. Him and Vanessa escape.

William and Vanessa work together over a year to start murdering children again, as William wants remnant due to it extending life and he does not want to return to Hell.

Michael goes to the pizzaplex and attempts to stop Vanessa and William.

He ends up getting murdered by William.

Michael possesses Glamrock Freddy.

The future of this is up to debate :)

[tyrantisterror]

Wizard School Mysteries Book 3: Wicked Witchcraft Trivia

Wizard School Mysteries Book 3: Wicked Witchcraft has been out for three weeks now (in paperback and kindle formats), so it's time to continue an old tradition of mine. We're going to talk about slasher movies, faustian pacts, Halloween episodes, and lots and lots of spoilers, so dive in with me after the cut if you've read the book, won't you? WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

General trivia:

I consider this entry the Wizard School Mysteries Halloween special - a spookier-than-normal adventure where our heroes encounter classic horror tropes and have to try and come out on top. I think it's probably going to be the book where the Scooby Doo influence on this series is most prominent - I definitely tried to play into it when designing the book's cover, which is meant to evoke the "Oh no the gang's being chased by the monster!" moments that happen at least once an episode.

As the cover also conveys, this book plays with Slasher tropes a lot as well. I talked about it in the forward a bit, but I do think Slasher films should be in the conversation when we talk about the Mystery Solving Teens genre, even if they're more of a deconstruction of the Mystery Solving Teens tropes than anything else - Mystery Failing Teens, if you will, since the teens in Slasher movies generally ignore all the clues they're given until it's far too late to stop the bad guy. I'm not the first to notice this overlap, as the countless "What if Jason murdered Mystery Inc?" jokes made over the years can attest (it's a Robot Chicken sketch, so you know it's a tired joke), but I thought it'd be interesting to let the crossover of these two genres play in the Teens' favor for once. This is less a story of Jason massacring the scoobies, and more of the scoobies outfoxing Jason.

More than that, though, it's a story of a Faustian pact. One of the things that came up in the research stage of me plotting out this series was the prevalence of devils in the magic traditions of European mythologies. There are a lot of mythic and folkloric wizards whose power is explicitly derived from Satan and his cohorts - even Merlin, in some versions of Arthuriana, is sometimes tied to devilry, with these versions claiming his magic powers and poor moral compass are a result of his father being the Devil himself. And a lot of folkloric demons have a long list of subjects they can teach the people who summon them, which often include types of magic. So while I didn't want all my wizards to get magic from the devil, I thought it'd be interesting to have at least one story arc focus on the devil's role as a teacher - and that aligned with one of my other goals for this series, which was using the wizard school setting as a way to critique real world education problems. What would the devil's education equate to in our modern world? Well, I think an unpaid internship qualifies quite well - he'll pay you in experience, you just have to give him everything you have and then some! And since Gretchen Pappenheimer is the most mad-scientist-y of our meddlesome youths, it only made sense to me that she'd be our unfortunate Faust figure, trapped into a soul-degrading internship by a choice made in innocence of how bad the world can be.

If you look on the publishing info page, you may spy a reference to Michael Jackon and/or Lemon Demon's magnum opus, Spirit Phone!

Chapter 1

Ok, now that we've got the general stuff out of the day, let's go chapter by chapter. I've been reading a lot more manga lately, and one thing that I've found really endearing is the recap page a lot of manga come with after the first volume or so - a brief little summary of the plot so far as well as a list of the main characters (with pictures attached, obviously) and one sentence long descriptions of their personalities. It's not something that's crucial for Wizard School Mysteries to have, necessarily - this is a series that really needs to be read in order, so someone jumping in with book 3 isn't going to have a great time, recap page or no - but given how long the gap between each book's publication is, it could be useful for old readers to be reminded of key plot points before they dive in, and it was fun to make.

While discussing Francane's odd customs that require the differences between family connected by blood vs. family connected by marriage or adoption, Margot relates how the custom was started by a former queen named Ella, whose contentious relationship with her step-family inspired the law. This, of course, would be Midgaheim's Cinderella - and likewise, the Duchess who made strict laws about the care and storage of spindles, Briar Rose, would be Midgaheim's Sleeping Beauty. One of the fun things about making a big multi-mythology crossover is thinking of the consequences of all these stories interacting with their big, dramatic endings - how happily ever after might plant the seeds of new conflicts later on.

There may or may not be some references to the opening number of Beauty and the Beast in the description of Margot and James entering the provincial town of Champagen.

Just as Margot d'Francane's name is a reference to Marie de France (among other things), who is perhaps my favorite medieval writer, Margot's adoptive father/guardian also takes his name from a medieval French writer I love, though his is more obvious. That's right, the blacksmith Creten Detrois is named after the Arthurian Ballad writer Cretien de Troyes.

Creten giving James the protective father third degree is based a bit on my own real life experience. A friend and I were making a day trip to one of Michigan's oldest cemeteries, and when I went to pick her up for it her dad started grilling me, and only halfway through I realized he thought I was taking his daughter out on a date. It was a bit weird and tense but also oddly affirming in a way? I thought it might be nice for James to have the same experience, especially given how the scene for James ends with Creten offering to help "make a man" out of him - a goal James is very much interested in reaching.

One of the subtler traumas of college, in my experience, is how impermanent the concept of "home" becomes when you're at it. I moved to and from so many different residences during my five years of undergraduate work - dormitories, townhouses, apartments, there was at least one big move a year. And when I went back to visit my folks, I was always astounded by how much my town seemed to be changing while I was away - even Home with a capital H was changing while I was away. Ivan's trauma in chapter 1 is sort of a worst case scenario of that - he comes home from his first year of college to find he's not only been evicted, but that the house he lived in has literally been removed brick by brick, with all his possessions sold off.

One of my goals with this series is to try and put some mystique back into how wizards are perceived. A lot of media in the post-Henry Pansley fantasy landscape treats wizards as, like, just normal people who happen to have magic powers in the same way that we happen to have smart phones. Personally, my preference is for the Tolkien style wizards - whether it's Gandalf, Saruman, or the underdeveloped ones, a wizard should feel like An Event when they arrive. They're still a person, yes, but they live in and operate on such a different level of existence from most people that even a casual interaction with them can have big consequences. Rodrigo's curse on Ivan's village is one of my attempts to drive that home - we spend a lot of time with these wizard kids, so it's good to remind the audience that, as human and goofy as they are, they still command a terrifying and awe-inspiring power over magic. In Rodrigo's case, he got to be the mysterious spellcaster who shows up one day to deliver poetic justice to a town full of shitty people, like in a fairy tale.

The concept of a luck child - i.e. the 7th son of a 7th son being gifted with impossibly good luck and a grand destiny - is a folklore trope, and as with Margot's bit in this chapter, we get to explore the social ramifications of that folklore trope being a real, tangible, proven trend in this universe. When you take into account the fact that real-world medieval nobles were already obsessed with gaining and retaining power and wealth through their children, and then add the fact that having a seventh son of a seventh son would guarantee wealth and prestige, and you get Rodrigo's situation, where his parents REALLY want him to have at least seven kids so that one of them could push their family to new heights.

One of the things I try to avoid in my writing is the "forgotten fallen friend" trope, i.e. having a character in a serialized story who dies in a big, dramatic, story-changing manner in one installment, only to have the narrative completely forget about them in all the subsequent installments. This trope isn't necessarily a flaw/bad writing - characters are tools for the narrative to use, and once they've served their intended purpose, you are fully within your rights to discard them for the sake of keeping things trim and tidy. That said, though, there's nothing wrong about finding new uses for a tool you didn't initially intend it for - and I think that a serialized mystery story actually benefits from trying to avoid treating its cast as disposable. If you try to keep a lot of your characters around and treat them as valuable, even if they're minor, then the audience is less likely to have a "Well, obviously the new defense against the dark arts teacher is either the new bad guy this book or one of the victims of the new bad guy" moment. And a coming of age story definitely benefits from this kind of care, as the whole point of coming of age tales is to show the weight of the events that help the protagonist(s) grow up. All this preamble is to say that Polybeus bringing up Gabriev in this chapter isn't just "fanservice" or whatever - for Poly, Gabriev is still haunting the narrative, his ghost hanging over all of Polybeus's actions as he tries to process how Gabriev's death has affected him.

Serena's family is singing "The Irish Ballad" by Tom Lehrer, which I heartily recommend you look up the lyrics to and/or give it a listen. It's in the public domain like all of Tom Lehrer's music, and there's many good performances of it on youtube!

Chapter 2

Margot discovering Helseng, and subsequently arguing with James about him keeping the prophecy secret, are playful jab at the Persona games that serve as WSM's biggest influence. See, in those games the meddling kids have big supernatural plots to deal with, but the player character also has their own secret supernatural subplot that's known only to themselves - namely, their growing relationship with/mentorship by the strange inhabitants of a pocket dimension called the Velvet Room, which itself is a way to explain and explore the mechanics of the game in a way that still more or less makes sense in-universe. The player character is the only one who knows about the Velvet room because the player is the only one who can actually determine how to play the game, and thus their avatar is the only character who needs to explore those mechanics. But, from a narrative perspective, it is kind of weird that you and your friends are solving a supernatural mystery, but there's one huge supernatural thing going on that you never tell them about. The games usually have at least one moment poking fun at this, and Persona 5 subverts that separation in a really compelling way, but there's room to do more with it. And since Wizard School Mysteries is a novel series rather than an RPG, there's no reason I have to stick by the trope at play here. So yeah, our hero's secret benefactor gets found out in book 3 out of 8, and he gets (rightfully) chewed out for keeping it a secret.

In slasher movie fashion, our mystery opens with two young adults getting killed off. Now, you might be looking at the names Donnie Stoat and Hermia Ranchere and thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, something funny is going on here." Well, here, I'll help you figure out what that funny thing is by pointing out the pattern they're a part of. See, in book 1, one of the victims of the fair folk abduction scheme was Nigel Wydbutock, a boy with an exceedingly British-sounding first name that starts with an N and ends with an L sound, and whose last name, "wide buttock," could also be parsed as, say, "fat ass," or if that's too vulgar, "long bottom." We find out later in this book Nigel did not survive his kidnapping, RIP. In book 2, we heard a story about how a student named Henry Pansley (Henry being a name that can be shortened to, among other things, "Harry" or "Hal," and "Pansley" containing the word "pan," which of course is something like a pot) accidentally killed his competitor in a wizard duel by summoning a deadly snake into the fight. Said competitor was named Wyver Wickam - Wyver being the word "wyvern," itself a synonym for the word "dragon," minus the last letter, which would make it similar to Draco, which is the word "drakon," itself an archaic synonym for the word "dragon," minus the last letter, and Wickham having the syllable "Wick," as in "wicked," which would be like having a last name with the syllable "Mal," as in "Malevolent" or "Malice." And here we have Donnie Stoat - Donnie short for Donald, a stoat being a sort of weasel - and Hermia Ranchere - Hermia being a sort of old-sounding but pleasant lady's name, and Ranch being akin to a Grange - getting the axe. What's the pattern, you might ask? Well, all these characters have silly names, that's the pattern you goof!

Chapter 3

If you read this book in one go (or at least read chapters 2 and 3 right after each other), then you'll hopefully notice that we cut directly from our mysterious killer swinging his blade down on his first victims to a blade cutting through meat in a more innocuous setting, itself a classic horror movie visual that I'm pretty proud of working out how to do in print, thank you very much.

May Shade is named after the titular monster from "The Vampire's Ghost," a somewhat obscure 1958 novelty song that I found on a Halloween playlist ages ago and remain very charmed by. I think there's humor to be had in the fact that the song that inspired her had her winning her soul from a man trying to take it through a high stakes cards game - after all, that's what Wizard School Mysteries itself is in the end.

The coven Gretchen is working plays with various tropes about witch trios in fiction, with there being a young pretty one, a plump motherly one, and a scary old one - i.e. the Maid, the Matron, and the Crone, a trinity called the Three Faces of Eve which shows up in a LOT of European mythologies and literature. Hecate, the Gray Sisters, the Fates, the Norns, the Morrigan, the Weird Sisters from Macbeth, it's a very well-worn trope.

Their names are all shortened from words related to their core sin, Sloth: Inak (inaction), Idel (Idleness), and Indol (Indolence). This extends to the name of their coven itself - Letharg as in Lethargy. The fact that their names are interchangeable and easily confused is also intentional, since ultimately they're all just variations on the same nasty person - sure, Idel is more needlessly aggressive, Indol more prone to sleazy flattery, and Inak is more serious and threatening, but at the end of the day they're more or less one awful, abusive monster.

The obscure Tarot arcana for the coven is The Fates, an alternate name for The Wheel of Fortune. Oh, hey, The Fates are one of those Three Faces of Eve examples too, what are the odds!

We get to meet the Mephistopheles to Gretchen's Dr. Faust here, and his name is Stinkbaby. There are two reasons for this obviously ludicrous name: first, imps in my setting are always saddled with ugly, common-sounding names in the style of the demons from The Screwtape Letters. Second, Stinkbaby takes the form of a cat, and any cat owner will tell you that cats always earn at least one pejorative nickname that's nonetheless said with great love and affection. "Stinkbaby" exists in the middle chunk of the Venn Diagram of "plausible Screwtape Letters OC names" and "mean nicknames for when your beloved pet cat is being a little shit."

I do a lot of references to dialogue in things I like when I write that I then forget about doing when trying to think up trivia sections like this, which I mention because there's one from this chapter I remember only because one of my editor's pointed it out to me. When Stinkbaby, the unimposing inhuman creature that's summoned from another world to tempt Gretchen to sin, arrives, he tells her that he's her "servant, friend, and willing slave," which is a reference to the song "Feed Me! (Git It?)" from Little Shop of Horrors, which is my favorite musical of all time and probably my favorite riff on the Faust story in all of fiction, both of which are high praise.

Unlike the protagonists of certain other wizard school stories, Gretchen's reaction to being given a creature that vocally professes its desire to be her slave is "Oh no" rather than "Sweet, I'm gonna tell it to make me a sandwich," and she maintains this position through the whole story, rather than coming around to say "Actually having a whole race of beings who want to be our slaves kicks ass, I was wrong!" She has and maintains this position because I thought about this plot point for more than five seconds, which I presume the writer of a certain other wizard school story did not do.

One of the other imps is named "Pussbucket" after my favorite example of "replacement for a swear word that sounds worse than the swear word" in fiction, i.e. when Peter Venkman says "Mother... Pussbucket!" in Ghostbusters when actor Bill Murray clearly wanted to say "Mother fucker!" Pussbucket is just such a wonderfully gross phrase, we should say it more to express contempt.

The four imps of the Letharg coven are all common familiar choices. We have a cat and a toad (the two familiars mentioned by the Weird Sisters in Macbeth), a rat, and a goat (a la Black Phillip from The VVitch). I wanted that authentic medieval witchcraft vibe, and figured covering the bases here would help with it.

There might be a subconscious influence from Sabrina the Teenage Witch here - while I didn't have the show in mind while writing this at all, as I write this trivia it strikes me that I did watch a lot of that show, and well... Salem is kind of a shining example of a sarcastic feline witch's familiar, isn't he?

After playing Slasher movie tropes pretty firmly with his teaser introduction in chapter 2, we completely break the rules of that genre with Buddy's more proper introduction here, presenting him in a very human and frail way that would be counter-intuitive to how a Slasher movie functions, especially this early in the plot. Which is, of course, entirely the point - this is not going to be a "meddling kids get slaughtered by the Slasher villain" story, where the lighter genre is overridden by the darker one it's crossing paths with. Instead, it's the Slasher genre whose tropes will buckle and sway under the weight of the lighter Mystery Solving Teens story they've wandered into. Jason's not cutting off Scooby Doo's head here - he's being fed soup by a plucky nerd and her sarcastic talking cat.

We also see the Faust narrative breaking here, as Gretchen, faced with every reason to indulge in vices, remains true to her morals anyway, much to her tempter's frustration. That's ultimately our villains' problem in this book - they're in the wrong genre!

Chapter 4

Like the one literary vampire who towers above all, May Shade tells her mortal acquaintance to "enter freely of your own will and leave some of the happiness you bring!"

James thinking vampires would look more decayed/rotten than May does is my nod to the fact that most European folklore vampires weren't as well preserved as modern vamps are - when a person in the middle ages writes about a "walking corpse," they're not talking about the kind that's been pumped full of preservatives to keep it from curdling like sour milk a few hours after death. May is lucky to be a vampire inspired by the more modern takes, but as we'll see later in the book, that's not universally true for all the different types of vampires in Midgaheim.

I hope the joke of May Shade, a vampire, saying that the name Helseng (Helsing) "doesn't ring a bell" lands with you. "Van Helsing? Never heard of 'em," is a funny thing for a vampire to say in my personal opinion.

There's also a bit of irony in May, a vampire, coming to (a) Helseng's (Helsing's) defense. But hopefully it's not too surprising - vampires, especially the shapeshifting kind like May, would know too well how it feels to be a creature that has to disguise their true nature among people in order to interact with them.

You know how in the fourth Henry Pansley story he's forced to participate in a big life-threatening tournament against his will, yet still inexplicably goes out of his way to try and win each challenge just because people pressure him into it? Yeah, James Chaucer wouldn't put up with that shit. He would throw every event that didn't involve saving people's lives, just beef it entirely on purpose while flipping people the bird. One thing I wanted to make clear about him is that helping people and unraveling evil plots is something James chooses to do, regardless of whether or not someone else told him to do so first - even when it comes to Helseng's prophecy, recall that James was given the prophecy ONLY when he confirmed he wanted to hear it. That's why Gernderf's RA plot succeeds in snaring him where previous attempts failed - James isn't motivated by "Go beat up this guy because I told you he's bad," but "These people need help and you might be the only one who can do it for them" might just work.

Ladislava "Good Lad" Chopin is our Temperance Arcana, and like many of the Arcana characters in this series she doesn't quite embody the full nature of her card yet. It's a shame for her that the Heavenly Virtue that remained in the Tarot arcana was Temperance instead of Diligence, because she'd have the latter in the bag easily. Temperance, however, she struggles with, although in the opposite direction than most stories might go - rather than being someone who pursues pleasure over necessity, she's someone who over-works instead, which was a fatal flaw that too many I knew in college suffered from (myself included at least a few times). It's kind of easy to recognize when you're slacking off and letting your responsibilities slide, even if you don't want to do anything about it - but it's a lot harder, in my experience, to realizing you're working yourself to exhaustion and heaping unhealthy amounts of stress on yourself trying to live up to an impossible standard. So, for the sake of overachievers like my past self, let's hope Lad listens to the good advice of her friends and stops overworking herself... and that James realizes that his advice should also apply to himself, honestly, and also to Gretchen, and... look maybe a LOT of people deserve to give themselves a few more breaks, actually.

Chapter 5

The title of this chapter is, obviously, a medieval-ish riff on Friday the 13th and its many sequels.

Ok, so, obviously Buddy isn't just a riff on slashers in general, but Jason Voorhees specifically - his first kill is even by a lake. One of the reasons Jason is my favorite of the Big Name slashers is that he has so much pathos in his backstory, even if the nature of his genre keeps that from being explored in any amount of depth. Here's a person with the mind of a child and the body of a monster, who suffered a near-death experience at the hands of negligent childcare providers, who witnessed his mother being decapitated for trying to avenge his supposed death, and who has dedicated his life to making sure that no other kids or mothers die to that same negligence, to the point where he rises from the grave to keep up that crusade. That's honestly deeply tragic, and in any other horror genre it'd be ripe for exploring in depth. There's potential in Jason to be as complicated and melancholy a figure as the Frankenstein monster or the Phantom of the Opera, but because Slasher movies are built to be focused on hedonistic thrills and catharsis, all that tragedy is little more than flavoring for violent set pieces. But if you took that same character concept and put it into a different genre, well, you'd have a character who's not really Jason Voorhees anymore, but explores what Jason could be, and I think that's fun.

Buddy's stock slasher powers of nigh-invulnerability and tendency to teleport to where the story needs him to be to surprise the audience and menace his victims work pretty well with the stock abilities of ghost, I feel.

Buddy's first fight with the Youths is meant to show that, for all the maddening power they have at their disposal, they're still vulnerable - hopefully without feeling too cheap, either. I wanted this fight to illustrate why Occult and Arcane powers differ - the youths keep using attacks that damage physical matter, but Buddy, by dint of being a ghost, can weather that pretty easily. You can't kill what's already dead, and you can't trap something in a crystal if it can easily phase through walls and other physical barriers.

His clash with Margot, specifically, is meant to be a sly nod to Freddy vs. Jason - a big, masked monster with a cleaver-bladed sword clashing with someone who has a glove tipped with metal claws and an association with fire.

Oh hey, Margot used another one liner her friends suggested in The Meddlesome Youths! Guess that just leaves Gretchen's suggestion of "Abra ca-fuck you!"

Kane Hodder, the actor who played Jason the most times, was adamant that Jason doesn't hurt animals or kids, and Buddy takes that rule to a logical (in my mind) extreme - namely that, as an undead brute with the mind of a child, he thinks big animals are really cool, which is why his first instinct when confronted by a fire-breathing dragon is to try and pet it.

Chapter 6

Gretchen giving Buddy a name, and this in turn being the key to breaking him free of the coven, has a sort of metatextual layer to it. See, Jason Voorhees and his predecessor, Michael Myers, were made in the mold of the anonymous killers of early slasher/exploitation horror films. No one remembers the name of the killers in Pieces or Black Christmas, because their names aren't important - their personalities aren't important, because, despite being mundane human killers, they aren't characters in the narrative so much as forces of conflict, being less humanized than monsters like Dracula or Frankenstein. Jason and Michael were meant to work that way too, but the combination of names, iconic costume designs, and backstories with actual pathos made them both into characters despite the intention not to do so. And both franchises realized this and tried to swerve away from it, each trying to get rid of their iconic slashers with an entry that shifted to a different killer - and in each case, audiences hated those attempts and demanded they get their beloved slasher characters back. A name, iconic look, and backstory kept Jason from being a truly inhuman killer and made him irreplaceable - so too does it give Buddy more humanity than his in-universe creators intended.

The description of Marquise Shax provided by Serena's library book is adapted from his entry in The Lesser Key of Solomon, with a few additions to make his relevance to this story more obvious. The dramatic irony of Serena figuring out the devil behind the Letharg coven well before getting any proof of his involvement is hopefully pretty juicy.

The mcguffin Lord Dhenregirr is looking for in this book, the Eye of Errgonogad, is named after The Eye of Argon, one of the most notoriously bad fantasy books ever written. The titular eye of argon was a "red emerald," which, given the fact that Lord Dhenregirr is a very loose parody of Voldemort, would make the Eye of Errgonogad a loose equivalent of the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone. Poor bastard's three books into this series and he still hasn't gotten the first book's mcguffin.

James calling Dhenregirr's crew the "bone brigade" is a reference to the I Think You Should Leave skit about Ebeneezer Scrooge fighting evil skeletons from the Christmas Waaaaay Future. Frickin' Bonies!

It's kind of funny that Lord Dhenregirr gives James a concise and informative lesson on necromancy - a topic that the AAAM purposely refuses to cover - in the ruins of a near identical castle to the AAAM, while sitting in a throne made of broken podiums. Probably means nothing.

Chapter 7

I'm not sure if people caught Polybeus's many ignored attempts to flirt with Gretchen in the first two books, but they were there! His one-sided crush was based on the popular fan-interpretation of Wyver Wickham Draco Malfoy having a crush on Hermia Ranchere Hermione - and, like most elements of the Henry Pansley stories I homaged in WSM, I was more inspired by the Very Potter Musical parody take than the actual text of the Terf Queen's books.

I want every book in this series to have at least one chapter that's basically a stupid adventure college kids would get up to if they had magic. The first book had kids riding a magic carpet off a roof, the second had the needlessly gendered night out, and this one has the magic school equivalent of urban exploring: seeking out and making a daytrip to the land of the dead.

The shades in the land of the dead are inspired by the blood-sucking ghosts of the same name from Homer's The Odyssey and, you know, by extension Greek Mythology in general. The revenants are there because I love Romero-style shambling zombies, and also because I wanted to establish in-universe that James had a good reason to think vampires were often more corpse-y than May Shade.

Chapter 8

Readers of No Sympathies might recognize some familiar elements in Stinkbaby's description of Hell. Yep, it's the same Hell alright!

The punishment dolled out by Dis, the circle of Lust, is based on the Twilight Zone episode "A Nice Place to Visit."

This is the second WSM book to include a paraphrase from Wizard People, Dear Reader, and that paraphrase happens in this very chapter! Can you find it?

I would like it on the record that I debated very intensely with myself about whether or not to show the transphobia of the Letharg coven in their treatment of Gretchen, up to and including getting one of my trans friends to look it over as a sensitivity reader. The intent was not to be exploitative, but rather to 1. show how the coven will jump on any reason they can find to dehumanize Gretchen so they can feel justified exploiting her, and 2. to make it abundantly clear that yes, Gretchen IS trans, since apparently some readers were in doubt about this during the first two books. I also think that, in our current climate, there is something very topical about an all-female organization that claims to empower its members actually preying upon the youth. The coven are, more or less, trans-exclusive radical feminists.

It's hard to make it clear in text, but my fancast for minor character Professor Romero Medina is Vincent Price.

Perhaps you've noticed that the staff of the AAAM seem much less callous towards students in this book than they did in the first. That was intentional! In my personal experience, your first year of college is kind of isolating - most of the gen ed classes you'll be taking are big lecture halls filled with hundreds of kids, and the professors cannot devote themselves to every student to the degree that public school teachers can as a result, which makes them seem like they don't care about you. The fact that college teachers aren't penalized for students failing to the same degree as public school teachers also adds to this - a public school teacher HAS to try and intervene when a student is floundering in their class (or at least fake it enough to keep plausible deniability) or they'll face severe consequences, while college professors don't really - pass or fail, the college has your money already, so it's on YOU to care about your success. But just because college professors don't have those public school incentives to care doesn't mean they won't - as I went on in my college career, I met plenty of professors who did care a lot, who looked out for me and reached out to try and help me succeed (and more than a few who tried to sway me to major in their subject instead of the one I was already pursuing - I had one teacher who REALLY wanted me to become a linguist, and to be fair, I did name one of WSM's most prominent teachers after two linguistic terms). Romero Medina enters the scene seeming like he'll be cold and cruel, and narrative convention makes us fear he has some bad news for Gretchen, but instead we're surprised that he's actually here to try and give her a break. The system may not incentivize kindness, but that doesn't mean kindness isn't there regardless.

On a lighter note, acting like complete jackasses with your friends in the college cafeterias is ALSO based on my personal college experiences.

Most of the RA requests are references to fantasy media, some very popular, some obscure. Can you figure them out?

The student who fucked up twisting time and space and ended up a desiccated corpse is not a reference to anything, he's just a fun reminder that Magic Can Fucking Kill You.

Loxy Reynard exists because, as the age of the internet well and truly proves, if you could magically modify your appearance, some people WILL choose to be furries, and to deny this is to deny the truth of humanity. As for why she dealt with pervert toilets...

The "wildman" student is a Sasquatch, specifically. What's he doing in Midgaheim? That's his business. What are you, a cop?

Buddy's first words to James being "Ki... ki... ma... ma..." is a reference to the classic music sting of the Friday the 13th franchise - while people often write it out as "ch ch ch ah ah ah," it's actually "ki ki ki ma ma ma," and is meant to be a sort of ghostly version of Pamela Voorhees's madness mantra of "Kill them, mommy, kill them!" Kill kill kill, mom mom mom

When you have the chance to make a gargoyle and a Jason Voorhees knockoff fight, you fucking take it.

Chapter 9

If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed a slowly growing subplot that the homunculi servants of the AAAM might not be treated well. The next book is going to deal with this in earnest, and if you're worried, please no the solution won't be "Hermione shut up no one cares, they like being slaves anyway."

Mordobearns are not a pre-existing mythological entity, but rather a TT original creation. Their name is a sloppy portmanteau of the Old English words for "death" and "child" - literal Murder Babies. That's a good enough name for a species of Jason Voorhees ripoffs.

Everyone's disgust at what's involved in creating a mordobearn hopefully underlines the pathos inherent to characters like Jason and Buddy that's so often ignored. Like, if you actually stop to think about it, they're very much victims in this too!

Stinkbaby's big out-of-body experience with Gretchen is a reference to Faust - specifically the scenes where Mephistopheles shows Dr. Faust the natural world, and in particular the versions where he shows Faust the planets. I like that scene because it shows why all demons in the Ars Goetia and the like would have "can teach various earth sciences to the summoner" in their list of skills. My take is also sort of a subversion of that scene, though - where Mephistopheles showed Faust the universe to ensure the doctor would succumb to temptation, here Stinkbaby, who is accidentally being tempted to do good by Gretchen's continued kindness, shows her the universe in an attempt to comfort her and strengthen her resolve.

Chapter 10

The title of this chapter is a riff on "The Man Behind the Mask," a rock song that was specifically written about/for Jason Voorhees himself.

So, ok, on one level the way the youths convince Buddy to stand down is a meta-commentary on the way the character he's inspired by is shackled by genre conventions - the pathos is there, but he's kept from embracing it, and thus we don't get to explore it, because the demands of his creators and their plans for him to be their killing machine keep him chained away from character growth. By focusing on the pathos built into his character and removing the constraints of the spell that made him (i.e. the Slasher genre), our slasher is free to be Buddy.

This is also very much a Persona 4 kind of climactic scene - the big bad villain has a final stand with our plucky heroes, who've learned his tactics and figured out how to get past his strengths so they can talk him down, at which point the "villain" exposes their vulnerabilities and realizes they don't have to be a monster they thought they were doomed to be. Again, in a meta context, this is redemption by way of genre change - the slasher wandered into a mystery solving teens story and ended up getting the psychiatric help he needed.

Chapter 11

God it was fun to write a demon fucking shit up again.

There were a number of reasons I chose Shax for this book, but one of them was that I wanted to draw a Skeksi-ish monster, and his description made me think he'd fit the bill.

Originally Shax was planned to be from Gehenna, i.e. the ring of sloth, since the extended metaphor of the conflict here is "unpaid student internships = a Faustian bargain," and the core evil at the heart of real life unpaid internships is very much sloth. A company has a bunch of mindless grunt work to do, and rather than pay someone a decent wage to do it, they trick gullible young people into doing it for free under the lie that it will give them valuable knowledge about their chosen field and help them get a better job later on. But, like, it's not just sloth, is it? If it was just laziness, people might, like, notice and get the law to do something to stop it. No, the reason this practice stays around is because it also gives a financial incentive to employers who use it - the free labor allows them to pinch some valuable pennies to pass up to the CEOs, after all. Sloth may be the main sin at the heart of unpaid internships, but Greed is what facilitates them and makes them a sustainable act of cruelty. So it is in Gretchen's pact - the deal may have been brokered by Slothful humans and masterminded by a high ranking demon of Sloth, but it takes a demon of Greed (and several of his own underpaid henchmen) to actually make the scheme work.

Chapter 12

I enjoyed writing the conversation about culturally specific psychopomps in this chapter. I think it's neat that so many cultures not only decided there must be a life after death, but that there'd also be at least one guy whose main purpose was to help you find your way around there. I also think psychopomps just make for inherently interesting characters - like the devil, they personify something humans naturally obsess over, in this case being the most primal fear of all creatures. How you personify that concept says a lot about you and your view of the world, in my opinion. It's always fertile story-telling ground.

See, I told you Gabriev was haunting the narrative!

He's not the only one, either. James hasn't forgotten Laurel Creusa, despite only knowing her for the span of one short conversation. Again, just because a character served their intended purpose for the narrative doesn't mean that has to be the ONLY purpose they can serve.

Insert joke about me airing my infatuation with Hela on tumblr here

Chapter 13

I had a LOT of fun working with the blending of the different mythological afterlifes in this book - a Christian demon haggling with Norse and Greco-Roman death gods for a mortal soul in a bureaucratic clusterfuck is just so amusing to me. Poor bastard can't get his damned soul through customs!

The title of this chapter is a play on The Devil and Daniel Webster, and in turn a play on the many parodies of/homages to that play, such as The Devil and Daniel Mouse. The plot of this chapter is a riff on it too, actually - our heroes organize a trial for their friend's soul, with all sorts of supernatural creatures providing the rest of the court staff.

And we get the reveal of Helseng's true nature as an Angel of Death!

Her Tarot Arcana is very fitting, no?

If you look closely at the cover of this book, you might spot Helseng's true self hiding in the trees. You didn't even know you were looking at a spoiler the whole time, did you?

Her full/true name, Helsengel, has two layers to it. First, it ends in "el," which is true of most Abrahamic angel names, and basically means her name ends in "of God." For example, Archangel Michael's name can be translated as "Gift of God." Of course, "Helseng" doesn't mean anything in particular, so her name is just "Helseng of God," which is pretty funny - but when you say her name out loud, it sort of sounds like "Hell's Angel," which isn't really meaningful for Helseng (she is, despite appearances, very much an angel of Heaven - though I suppose her work as a psychopomp requires her to deliver some clients to Hell every now and then), but is a fun little thing to note.

Helsengel specifies that she is a "blue death" for a number of metanarrative reasons in addition to just the in-story need for exposition about how diverse psychopomps in this setting are. Ok, so: the main inspiration for this series, the Persona game series, has a recurring supernatural figure named Igor who helps the protagonist of each game deal with the various supernatural bullshit on their plate. Igor lives in "the velvet room," which changes its appearance and style to fit each game's theme, but always has a monochromatic blue color scheme. This is a reference to Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death (which, unrelatedly, is my favorite of Poe's stories), and not the only one the Persona game series makes for that. In The Masque of the Red Death, the titular masque takes place in a castle with several themed rooms, each of which has a monochromatic color scheme. The blue room is the first, followed by purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally, breaking the scheme, a black room with red trimmings lit by red light. The red death, meanwhile, is a plague, but also is personified in the play as a very grim psychopomp, which deals a fatal justice to the corrupt partiers after being exposed in the black and red rood. When Roger Corman adapted this story into a feature film, one idea he incorporated was that the other room colors ALSO had a plague/psychopomp associated with them, showing up at the end to talk with the Red Death before going off to their business. So Helseng, who fills Igor's role as the helper of the protagonist in WSM, doesn't quite have a velvet room of her own, but she does make reference to The Masque of the Red Death by being the (or rather a - there are too many people, and too many psychopomps, for Helseng to be the ONLY one in this world) Blue Death to the Masque's Red.

Keen-eyed readers who've seen the colored Tarot cards might notice something about Gretchen's illustration now:

Who is the mysterious Archduchess of Gehenna? Hmm, seems like a mystery. At wizard school, no less.

In my little mythos, Pyschopomps/angels of death like Helseng are specifically considered angels of Diligence, the Heavenly Virtue that is considered the counterpart and antithesis to the Deadly Sin of Sloth. Because psychopomps have a LOT of work on the mortal plane to do, you see - as Discworld's personification of Death would note, they're all about The Duty. Now, notably, Ignorance, i.e. the failure to learn important information that could help yourself and others due to one's own choice not to put the effort in, is considered a sin of sloth. What is the antithesis of Ignorance, then? Well, I think one would argue it's Education. And so we have two big forces controlling this narrative behind the scenes: an angel of Diligence, and a demon of Sloth... or, perhaps, a champion of Education vs. a villain of Ignorance. (I probably shouldn't spell out my themes like this - takes the fun away from other people - but I've been hiding this plot development since before the first book came out, allow me to gush).

Also, given that Temperance is one of the major arcana, and an early Tarot set also included Charity in the roster, I wonder if all the seven heavenly virtues were in the game at one point - and for that matter, maybe the sins were too? Something to ponder.

Gretchen finally figuring out the HRT spell and revealing her face for the first time hit me hard when I wrote it - fully had me crying while typing, truly embarrassing. Hopefully it landed well for you too!

Chapter 14

After all the shit he's gone through, I can think of no child who deserves to get to routinely ride a dragon than Buddy.

More seriously: my dad pointed out to me that a common trend in movies aimed at kids for my generation and those after it was the young protagonist getting to ride some sort of big, flying creature. You have the kid riding Marahute the eagle in Rescuers Down Under, Henry Pansley riding a hippogriff in the third Herbie Porber movie (you know, the third entry in that wizard school series that was oddly spookier than the rest), Hiccup riding Toothless, etc. It's a pretty striking visual thrill for kids, isn't it? I thought it'd be nice to give it to Buddy to show that despite everything, he's gonna be ok.

A recurring trend of Gretchen's life before this book is people reaching out to her and her attempting to push them away out of the joint fear that 1. they're only pretending to like her and secretly hate her and 2. they only like her because she's accidentally tricked them into thinking she's a good person. As of the end of this book, she's finally accepting that people may genuinely like her and allowing herself to be loved, which is why it was important to me to bring back the subplot of the book club that wanted her to join. She's letting people love her - she's no longer afraid to show her face. Gretchen's going to be ok.

If you're wondering why most and possibly all of my Meddlesome Youths have intense self loathing and anxiety about not being worth a damn as human beings, well... that's certainly not based on my own psychological problems. Certainly not. I don't have imposter syndrome, no sir.

Keep an eye on that Ikarus Dactylus. A kid like that is liable to reach heights we've never hope to achieve. I mean, he stopped the dark lord from getting the philosopher's stone - err, Eye of Errgonogad!

And so we end with Rodrigo and Ivan about to pursue career paths, James and pals set to figure out whether the homunculi are being exploited, and Gernderf and James understanding each other better while still lying to each other's faces. There are still more mysteries to solve - good thing we have five more books!

[potterandpromises]

Possible season 4 victims but it's only characters I personally think might be foreshadowed to die

In Only Murders in the Building character deaths tend to be foreshadowed in some way (although not necessarily to the victim's identity, often it's to the manner of death.) Examples include Sazz talking about the chatter on her ham radio in season 3, the broken elevator in season 2, dialogue relating to cold cases in both season 3 and season 4, and so on. Of course these things may be foreshadowing something other then the character's untimely demise, or may not be foreshadowing anything. That's the fun of it!

Propaganda:

Loretta:

Zach and Oliver talked about his wedding venue as setting the tone for their marriage; they're getting married in the courtyard of the Murder Building.

Both Mabel and Charles have had someone close to them (their oldest friend, albeit estranged on Mabel's part) get murdered. Oliver has not yet had that.

Jan:

She's still loose in New York, not Florida, doing god knows what or killing god knows who. Chekhov's gun applies.

Teddy:

Several times, Zach, who's playing Oliver, has been described as Greek. Meanwhile Oliver has twice this season broken into an Irish accent while talking to an Irish person, emphasizing that he is Irish and not Greek. This references the season 2 plotline re: Teddy being Will's bio father and Oliver lying about being Greek, etc.

In 4x09 Mabel says: ""We're the most listened to murder podcast on the Upper West Side that's sponsored by a deli chain." They were sponsored by Dimas Delis (Angel Inc) in season 1, and apparently still are, somehow.

In 4x09 there's a TV broadcast shown about "Nicky "the neck" Caccimello, the Dry Cleaning King of Brooklyn" who has ties to a crime family, and has gone missing. Teddy has been described as "the deli king" and is part of a two person crime family. There could be a plotline related to organized crime, and their murders could be related in one way or another.

See second point about Loretta—it also applies to Teddy.

Lester:

See third point about Teddy. Lester is seen with dry cleaning in season 1 (possibly multiple times, although I don't recall.)

Nicky "the neck" Caccimello, the Dry Cleaning King of Brooklyn:

He has gone missing and the show went way out of it's way to tell us that. He could turn up dead in the Arconia and the next season could simply be about his murder.

Counterpoints:

Loretta:

It might be like, way too sad to kill her off at this point, given that she's marrying Oliver and has only just reunited with her son.

There's likely not as much to learn about her as there has been with previous victims—she already had a secret explored re: Dickie, and it isn't clear that she has more.

Jan:

Season 4 had a Charles-centric victim, and I'm not sure they'd want to have two in a row.

Teddy:

He hasn't actually been in the show since season 2, just indirectly referenced.

Lester:

After a season about the theater and a season about Hollywood movies... would they really have a season about dry cleaning?

Nicky "the neck" Caccimello, the Dry Cleaning King of Brooklyn:

See point about Lester.

Might be seen as a kind of emotional downgrade to bring in an unknown victim right after Sazz.

[morbidology]

Each year, approximately 800,000 children are reported missing. Most safely return home but out of every 10,000 children that are reported missing, there is approximately one that is abducted and murdered. But what about those children that don’t ever return home alive or dead, though? What about those children that remain missing indefinitely?

Born on the 5th of August, 1990, Asha Jacquilla Degree grew up to be a quiet and shy young girl. She was an impeccable student at Fallston Elementary School in Shelby, North Carolina. “She’s an outstanding student with an excellent attendance record,” said Donna Carpenter, a spokeswoman for the school. She excelled in math and science and loved reading and writing, particularly when she could make the topic up herself. She certainly had a vivid imagination. Asha dreamed of being an illustrator when she grew up and in her free time, she enjoyed playing basketball with her brother and jumping on her trampoline.

Asha was a daddy’s girl. She bonded exceptionally with her father, Harold, when she was just a baby. Harold was laid off for two months and took over the late-night feedings. The father-daughter duo were very similar – both were very reserved and quiet except for when play wrestling with each other. “It’s amazing these walls are still standing, the way we wrestle in this house,” he fondly recalled.

Her parents were both extremely hardworking to provide the very best for their family. Harold worked as a dock loader at PPG Industries Inc while her mother, Iquilla, worked at Kawai America Manufacturing. They were a religious family and Asha never missed her weekly Bible study at church. Asha was an extremely timid little girl, in fact, she was wary of almost everything. “She doesn’t even open the front door for me without getting her mother’s permission,” said Patricia Banks, Asha’s aunt.

At approximately 6:30PM on the 13th of February, 2000, 9-year-old Asha went to bed at her family home on Oakcrest Drive. She had decided on an early night because she had stayed up late at a slumber party the night before with her cousins. At approximately 8:30PM that night, Asha woke up when lightning storms and harsh winds swept through the area. She sat in the living room with the family and watched TV before retreating back to bed half an hour later.

When Asha’s father, Harold, returned from work at approximately 12AM, he checked on his children who were fast asleep. He checked once again at 2:30AM. Asha slept in the same bedroom as her 10-year-old brother, O’Bryant. The brother-sister duo was extremely close; when O’Bryant got into trouble, Asha would cover for him. “We did everything together,” he said.

Her brother later recalled that he heard noises in the early morning hours but just assumed it was Asha turning and tossing in her sleep. However, in reality, Asha was actually packing her book bag with her two favourite outfits and her Tweety Bird purse. She then crept out of the house in the rainy night sky, locking the door behind her.

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞:

[3rdeyeblaque]

Today we venerate Elevated Ancestor El-Hajj Malik El-Shabaz aka Brother Malcolm "X" Little on his 98th birthday 🎉

A minister, scholar, orator, & legendary Freedom Fighter- who infamously bore the name "X" to signify our self-liberation from the shackles of a European legacy forced upon us during Slavery -, we elevate Brother Malcolm as one of THE most prolific voices of freedom, justice, self-determination, & Pan-Afrikan unity in modern history.

Born into a legacy of freedom fighters, Brother Malcolm was raised on the cusp between Black Nationalism unity & White Supremacist terror. His father was a member of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), in which he served as an orator publicly advocating for Black liberation before his murder.

Though a gifted student, Malcolm dropped out of school when a teacher ridiculed his aspirations to become a lawyer. He later drifted into a life of hustling on the streets of Harlem. He cleverly avoided the draft in WWII by making the outrageous declaration that he'd organize Black soldiers to attack their White counterparts which classified him as "mentally unfit to serve". After his burglary arrest in Boston, Malcolm faced 10 years in prison. Here, he found Islam via the NOI.

Upon his parole release, Malcolm took the name "X" as he began to serve in the NOI as a speaker, organizer, and minister. He quickly grew in his prominence & drew national attention after an expose on the NOI was aired on CBS. Both, Black & White Americans, saw the stark contrast in his/NOI views from that of other Black religious leaders/organizations of the time. Thus planting the first seeds of warped perception & fear.

Meanwhile, Brother Malcolm's personal views & interests slowly began to split from the leaders of the organization he'd come to love. Malcolm grew increasingly frustrated with the NOI's bureaucracy & outright refusal to join the Civil Rights Movement. His forbidden response to the assassination of JFK earned him a 90 suspension from the NOI; at which time he announced his departure from the organization.

In March 1964, he founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. Three months later, he founded a political group called, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Malcolm firmly placed Black Revolution in a global context of an anti-imperialist struggle here, in Afrika, Latin America, & Asia. This is what set him & his work further apart from any Black leader & organization in the U.S. at the time. And this is what sparked the breadth of his influence & mapped out the future of his work.

Brother Malcolm toured North & East Afrika as well as the Middle East Region in the late Spring of 1964. He met with heads of state from several countries (i.e.: Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria) before making his hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Here, he added "El-Hajj" to his Muslim name, "Malik El-Shabazz". This journey into the Motherland & Self brought Malcolm to the realization that his revolutionary vision/influence superceded any colour line.

Once he returned to the U.S, he infamously declared Pan-African unity amid struggle for freedom “by any means necessary.” This marked a turning point in Malcolm's life & revolutionary fight against White Supremacy on a global scale. He spent 6, albeit unsuccessful, months in Afrika petitioning the U.N. to investigate the Human Rights violations of Black Americans by the U.S. Government. From then on, threats to his safety and that of his family & the OUAA mounted. Still, he continued the fight until his assassination that was ultimately orchestrated & carried out by the CIA.

"If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary" - Malcolm X

Today, Brother Malcolm rests alongside his wife at the Ferncliff Cemetery in upstate NY.

We pour libations & give him💐 today as we celebrate him for his incomparable leadership, love, commitment, & sacrifice for the socioeconomic & sociopolitical freedom of our people.

Offering suggestions: libations of water, read/share his work, & prayers from the Quran

Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.

[lionofchaeronea]

Brass dupondius of the Roman emperor Didius Julianus (r. 193 CE). Following the murder of his predecessor Pertinax, whose stern discipline and fiscal austerity had turned the Praetorian Guard against him, Julianus was advanced as a candidate for the throne. However, Flavius Sulpicianus, Pertinax's father-in-law, desired the throne for himself, and so the two men held an impromptu auction, each bidding for the praetorians' support by offering them donatives. Julianus' final bid of 25,000 sesterces per man was more than Sulpicianus could match, and he was accordingly hailed as imperator. His rule was unstable from the outset; neither the Senate nor the provincial armies were fond of him, and when Septimius Severus, then governor of Upper Pannonia, decided to march on Rome, Julianus' support evaporated. He was murdered in his palace only sixty-six days into his reign.

The obverse of the dupondius features the bust of Julianus. On the reverse is the goddess Fortuna Redux, who, ever since Augustus, had been the tutelary deity of emperors safely returning to Rome after a campaign abroad. (There is a certain irony here, as Julianus' brief reign was spent entirely in Rome.) In accordance with her usual iconography, the goddess holds a rudder atop a globe in her right hand, while her left arm cradles a cornucopia. Photo credit: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com

[usedgingertwinkhole]

curious as to who hank is

Hank is local stupid boy of the JSA fandom, and a founding member of Infinity Inc. (subject to change probably). He is the only member of Infinity Inc. to not be the child or god-child of one of the members, because he is the son of their biggest (most commonly fought at the time of 1984, there may be others who are worse) villain.

Although he is also the nephew of the Star Spangled Kid (Founding Member of Infinity Inc. and long time JSA member) and the son of Merry, Girl of 1000 Gimmicks (Minor Superheroine around the same time the JSA were the big heroes).

On the same day that all the other Infinitors barge into the Christmas JSA meeting, Hank also goes, to ask for help not to demand to join, because he is a telepath and has picked up signs that his dad and other villains are going to break out of limbo, however, for unknown reasons he decides that he is going to introduce himself by pretending to be his dad and tearing a hole in their building with his psychic powers, which starts a huge fight. When his uncle (who doesn't know he's his uncle at this point) stops it, he is basically like "I will only tell you now *sulking*"

Anyway Infinitors end up solving the problem, but mostly because Hank's Dad decides that he actually loves his son more than he likes fighting the JSA, and then his former ally decides to kill his boy, and Senior dies to protect him.

Hank has a lot of issues with loving his dad while everyone else thinks that his dad was evil, and he also knows that his dad was evil, but still died doing good, and none of this is really helped by the fact that every time he gets a head injury an illusion of his dad pops up to talk to him, but he does do very well as a hero and (unfortunately) has a cute relationship with Green Lantern's daughter until about when his uncle gets murdered.

Hank leaves the team, has a mental breakdown and gets into a fight with the Justice League, loses, because Maxima recognizes that it is a mental breakdown and makes him recognize that his illusion dad is not actually real, and everyone talks about how he needs help and rest, at which point (for unknown reasons) Alan Scott Green Lantern shows up and locks him in a torture asylum. This is generally in the JSA fandom agreed to be a bad decision, and that maybe Alan should have let Jay or maybe Carter deal with the situation.

He does end up becoming a hero again (not before beating up Alan) by having a worm eat part of his brain (bad) and Jay Garrick spends all his remaining appearances before Flashpoint going "You seem as though you need a father. I can be a father." But the entire JSA got removed from the main DC universe for a decade.

Anyway he MIGHT appear in JSA (2024) because it's a very Infinity Inc. centred series by the looks of it but I am very uncertain about what form that might take, because Lemire is very new to writing JSA so unlike all the other writers we don't really know what to expect from him. Historically he has been quite good at writing mentally ill characters but I am a bit anxious.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

19th June >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings for Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time (Inc. Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18): ‘Your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you’.

Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 6:1-6,16-18 Your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Be careful not to parade your good deeds before men to attract their notice; by doing this you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win men’s admiration. I tell you solemnly, they have had their reward. But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right is doing; your almsgiving must be secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you. ‘And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them; I tell you solemnly, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you. ‘When you fast do not put on a gloomy look as the hypocrites do: they pull long faces to let men know they are fasting. I tell you solemnly, they have had their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that no one will know you are fasting except your Father who sees all that is done in secret; and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.’

Gospel (USA) Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

Reflections (7)

(i) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

In Murder in the Cathedral T.S. Eliot has Thomas Beckett say, ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason, To do the right thing for the wrong reason’. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is concerned with the tendency of religious people to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Almsgiving, prayer and fasting were important Jewish practices, which Jesus values. However, he warns against doing them for the wrong reason, in order to attract the notice of others, thereby receiving recognition and honour for oneself. Practices which seem God-centred and other-centred can be, in reality, self-serving. Writing to the church in Philippi from prison, Paul declares, ‘These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defence of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment’. Even the preaching of the gospel can become self-serving. Yet, unlike Jesus, Paul asks, ‘What does it matter?’ and answers, ‘Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true’. Paul is suggesting that the preaching of Christ can touch the hearts of others, even if done out of selfish ambition. He seems to be implying that doing the right thing for the wrong reason is better than not doing the right thing at all. Yet, he clearly favours doing the right thing for the right reason. It is always good to ask ourselves, ‘Why am I doing what I am doing?’ ‘Who is being served here?’ ‘Is my giving ultimately with a view to getting?’ In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul declares that ‘if I give away all my possessions… but do not have love, I gain nothing’. It is the self-emptying love of Christ in our lives, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, that gives value to all we say and do.

And/Or

(ii) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s gospel reading is taken from the Sermon on the Mount. The gospel reading begins with Jesus saying, ‘Be careful not to parade your good deeds before others to attract their notice’. Yet, a little earlier in the same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus appears to have said the very opposite of that, ‘Let you light shine before others, so that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven’. There seems to be a tension between both of these sayings. Yet, there is truth in both. We are not to hide the light of our faith, keeping it under a bushel. Rather, we are to publicly proclaim our faith, our relationship with the Lord, by the lives that we lead, by the deeds that we do. On the other hand, we don’t publicly proclaim our faith in order to attract notice, in order to draw attention to ourselves, to bring praise or glory on ourselves. Rather, our public living of our faith is with a view to bringing glory to God. Today’s gospel reading invites us to ask, ‘Who is being honoured by my public living of my relationship with the Lord? Is it myself or is it God?’ Another way of asking that question is, ‘Who is being served by my good deeds? Is it myself or is it the Lord?’ The opening petitions of the Lord’s Prayer points us in the right direction, ‘Hallowed by your name, your kingdom come’.

And/Or

(iii) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

There often appears to be a tension between the various sayings of Jesus in the gospels. At the beginning of the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus calls on his disciples to ‘let your light shine before others, so that seeing your good works they may give praise to your Father in heaven’. In this morning’s gospel reading, also from the Sermon on the Mount, he calls on his disciples, ‘Be careful not to parade your good deeds before others to attract their notice’. Do you let our light shine or not? The answer to that question has to be ‘yes’. We have been enlightened by Christ, and we must let that light shine by doing works inspired by the gospel, the kind of works Jesus himself did. However, today’s gospel reading raises the question of motivation. We do not let our light shine to be noticed; we don’t do good works to draw attention to ourselves. In all that we do, we work to bring glory to God and not to ourselves. One of the great temptations that people of faith come up against is the temptation to do the right thing for the wrong reason. As Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God’.

And/Or

(iv) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

The gospel reading this morning reminds us that there is always a danger that our good deeds can end up being quite self-serving, whether it is the good deed of almsgiving, praying or fasting. Jesus calls on us not to do our good deeds to attract the notice, the attention, of others. Our focus in doing what we do is not so much other people and how they see us but God. Three times the gospel reading refers to the Father who sees all that is done in secret. We live our lives in the conscious awareness of the presence of God with whom we have an intimate relationship through faith and baptism. The Father who sees in secret is not to be understood as a kind of a Big Brother watching us. Rather, Jesus, God-with-us, has promised to be with us to the end of time out of love for us. Our good deeds are our loving response to God’s love for us through Jesus. In all we say and do our focus is to be on the Lord who is always present to us, rather than on ourselves. In this way we give expression in our lives to that beatitude which declares, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’.

And/Or

(v) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

I have always been struck by that statement of Paul in today’s first reading, ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. He contrasts giving cheerfully with giving grudgingly or under a sense of compulsion. What is it that makes our giving cheerful rather than grudging and resentful? I think it is ultimately a sense of gratitude. We give cheerfully to those whose presence we have experienced as a grace and a blessing, whose love has touched our lives deeply. As we grow in our appreciation of the ways God has blessed and graced us, as we come to know the depth of his love for us, our giving to God will be a cheerful giving, and that giving to God will express itself in a giving to all those whom God loves. Paul was a cheerful giver. Even as he wrote his letter to the Philippians while in prison, with a death sentence hanging over him, he was giving cheerfully to that church. The highest concentration of the noun ‘joy’ and the verb ‘to rejoice’ is to be found in that letter. His cheerful giving at that time was rooted in his profound sense of the many blessings and graces he was receiving from the Lord. ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’, he wrote. Even if our situation leaves a lot to be desired, we can still give cheerfully, if we allow ourselves to appreciate just how much the Lord has blessed and graced us through his life, death and resurrection. In the gospel reading, Jesus warns against a giving to God and to others that is calculating and self-serving, namely, giving alms, praying and fasting to attract the notice of others. Such giving is at the opposite end of the spectrum to the cheerful giving Paul speaks about and embodies in his own life. Paul assures us in that first reading that our cheerful giving will bring down upon us God’s blessings and graces even more abundantly.

And/Or

(vi) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Three times in the course of the gospel reading Jesus speaks of God as ‘your Father who sees all that is done in secret’. Jesus is saying that God sees what humans often do not see. God sees the good we do that others do not get to see. Jesus saw in the way that God sees. He often saw the good people were doing that others never saw. He recognized the generosity of the widow at the Temple treasury. She put in two small copper coins, hardly making a sound as they were dropped into the treasury. She would have gone unnoticed by most people present. However, Jesus noticed her and drew the attention of his disciples to her extraordinary generosity; he recognized that in giving the little she gave she was, in reality, giving everything she had. Jesus often saw goodness in people whom others would have written off. He invited himself to the house of Zacchaeus because he recognized that there was more to Zacchaeus than his reputation would suggest. The human eye only sees so much. As the Jewish Scriptures declare, we look at appearances, whereas the Lord looks at the heart. The Lord always sees what is best in us, even when the goodness in our heart and the good we do is below the radar when it comes to human seeing. We are called to live as people who are always before the Lord, aware that the Lord is always seeing us, not with judgmental eyes but with eyes of love, eyes that recognize the good in us that others very often do not see and that, perhaps, we do not even see ourselves.

And/Or

(vii) Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

The poet T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.’ The teaching of Jesus in today’s gospel reading suggests that why we do what we do is just as important as what we do. Saint Paul expressed this conviction in his own way, ‘If I give away all my possessions… but do not have love, I gain nothing’. Paul is suggesting that what seems like a very generous act may not be inspired by love of the other, but by love of self. Jesus declares in the gospel reading that almsgiving may be self-serving, done to attract the notice of others and, thereby, enhance the honour of the giver. One way of ensuring that our giving to others is not self-serving, he suggests, is to do it in ‘secret’. In reality, a great deal of the good that people do is done under the radar. It may only be after someone has died that their generosity towards others comes to light. Yet, much good that is done in the open, in public view, is not self-serving but springs from a love that is truly self-emptying. Elsewhere in the gospel, Jesus recognizes the value of good deeds done in public, ‘Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’. When our good works are inspired by genuine self-emptying love, they can inspire others to do the same. If we let our light shine in this way, others can be attracted to the light, which is a reflection of the Lord’s light, and be moved to let their light shine more brightly. Before we go public, we may need to ask ourselves, ‘Is there anything in it for me?’ If our answer to that question is ‘no’, then there is surely a value in allowing the light of our generous love to shine brightly before all.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[phoenixinthefiles]

I was legit saying to myself, “oh I’m gonna make sure I’m not complaining or ranting when I post something because I want this to be a positive blog.”

THEN TUMBLR HAD TO SHOW ME A JAYT*M POSTTTTT

I don’t care who you are, where you live, or what you like if you don’t think that is inc*stuous/immoral Imma need you to go ahead and get off tumblr take that TikTok please and thank you.

“They’re adopted so it’s okay” Ummm NO adopted siblings ARE siblings, legally, emotionally, physically. They were raised by the same man for a good portion of their life and he adopted each of them legally or otherwise

Also when they first met Jason tried to murk Tim???

And literally most of the Batfam members have nicely sized aged gaps like you wanna ship him with his older BROTHER who was 17-18 when they met NAHHHHH FAM

Dick and Jason met when Jason was 12-13 to Dick’s 17-18 that’s quite literally gr*oming

Tim and Jason met Tim was 15 Jason was 18-19 and tried to murder him TOXIC and more gr**ming (the attempted murder hasn’t even been properly addressed between them)

Tim and Damian are at least SIX YEARS APART and they can’t STAND each other

DICK IS LITERALLY DAMIAN’S FATHER FIGURE AND OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE BEEN HIS BIO PARENT

and the trump card (not at all associated with Donald Trump)

BRUCE FREAKING WAYNE IS 16 FREAKING YEARS OLDER THAN DICK GRAYSON HE RAISED HIM 🤢🤢🤢🤢

If you partake in any of these ships or any combination of ships between the aforementioned characters; you are by definition, perverted. But thank you for reminding me that I forgot to block those tags 😁😁😁