#David Permut

[vertigoartgore]

Captain Marvel switching places with Rick Jones. Art by ChrisCross, Wayne Faucher, Tanya Horie and Richard Horie for the cover of 1999's Captain Marvel Vol.4 #0 (turning 25 today, feel old yet ?). Also used later as the cover of the tpb Captain Marvel: First Contact (2001).

[green-and-grey]

[thejaymo]

Autonomous Worlds: Misusing The Money Machine | 2339

Exploring blockchain’s shift from finance to creating games in digital universes. A look at this tech’s new role in gaming and virtual worlds.

[covid-safer-hotties]

As COVID Surges, the High Price of Viral Denial - Published Sept 3, 2024

COVID is surging once again and, if you live in British Columbia, you probably already know someone sick with fever, chills and a sore throat.

As of mid-August, about one in every 19 British Columbians were enduring an infection, with or without symptoms.

Although the media routinely dismisses all COVID infections as an inconsequential nuisance, that’s not what the science says. The virus remains deadlier than the flu and repeated infections can radically change your health.

An important new Nature study, for example, has now proven that the spike protein of the virus can bind with a blood protein, fibrin, setting off a chain of blood clots resulting in chronic inflammation and brain damage. Fibrin can actually form a mesh impeding blood flow in arteries to multiple organs in the body.

The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada Repeated studies show in the bluntest terms that the initial acute infection is only the tip of the iceberg. Even a mild bout of COVID can leave a legacy of blood clots, heart failure, diabetes, decreased brain function (see sidebar), long COVID (now affecting 400 million people worldwide) and immune damage that increasingly makes people more vulnerable to a plethora of infectious diseases and possibly cancers.

These problems can erupt three years after an infection and are especially prevalent in patients who’ve been hospitalized by COVID.

Which is why the U.S. immunologist and COVID specialist Dr. David Putrino emphasizes, “There is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 infection that does NOT have prolonged consequences.”

And yet the estimated daily level of infection in Canada now hovers around the highest points reached during the Omicron variant’s peaks in January 2022 and October 2023.

That’s the finding of University of Toronto infectious disease expert Tara Moriarty, whose team bases the latest COVID-19 Hazard Index on a combination of wastewater data and modelling. In a discursive and highly valuable X posting Moriarty adds “there’s not a fresh vaccine in sight.” In fact, they are weeks away.

That means about one million infections are occurring every week and that this “severe” level of infection translates like clockwork into more than 1,000 deaths per week from COVID-19 in Canada based on five-week average trends. Ultimately these infections will result in more cases of long COVID in both younger and older populations.

There is more bad news: on an annual basis COVID infections still account for 20 times more deaths than influenza.

The data is not complete but this death toll likely made COVID the second or leading cause of death in the country last month.

According to Moriarty’s data, the number of COVID deaths per infection remain highest in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan because they have older populations often compromised by serious medical conditions. They are also served by shrinking health resources.

Alberta, whose population is Canada’s youngest on average, claims the lowest infection fatality rate yet has already reported more than 700 COVID deaths this year. B.C. ranks somewhere in the middle.

These grim trends mirror COVID’s permutations south of the border. In the United States COVID infections hospitalized nearly five out of 100,000 Americans during the week of Aug. 4 to 10.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, one of North America’s leading COVID researchers, notes that, “This crucial, yet lagging indicator hasn’t been this high since February 2024.” In addition, spotty U.S. data indicates that COVID has hospitalized twice as many people than the flu since October last year.

Rocking the system

Meanwhile Canada’s hospital emergency rooms, many already stretched before the pandemic, continue to open and close with troubling frequency across the country due to chronic staff shortages and sick workers.

With little surge capacity, the continued presence of highly infectious COVID variants continues to leave many health-care systems in shambles year after year.

According to Moriaty’s data, Canadian hospitals are now spending about $37 million dollars a day on COVID hospitalizations, which averaged more than 1,500 people a day two weeks ago.

Here’s some more damning math: “On average, since the beginning of Omicron, people needing hospitalization for COVID-19 account for 14 per cent of hospital bed capacity (seven per cent if you admit only half of people needing hospitalization).”

The resulting bed shortage has created a circular crisis, says Moriarity. “A constant annual seven-per-cent increase in hospital beds required for COVID-19, in a very low surge capacity environment with a serious health-care workforce labour shortage, can have profound upstream and downstream effects on health care and health.”

The evidence is everywhere. Five Interior B.C. emergency rooms closed over the long weekend. In the last week five rural hospitals temporarily closed in Alberta, including facilities in Swan Hills, Fairview and Rocky Mountain House. In Ontario some rural citizens refer to ER closures as an “epidemic.”

Dr. Alan Drummond, a Quebec rural physician, adds that the disruption of “emergency medicine delivery in Canada continues unabated as our political leaders fail to recognize and declare the obvious crisis that it is. They do nothing, they pray for divine intervention, they obfuscate, they lie through their teeth.”

‘A recipe for forever burn’

The subject of how to respond to a slow burn pandemic remains taboo because most public health officials have already declared the emergency over. They’ve also stopped collecting critical data. COVID-19 deaths in Canada are not reported in a readily publicly accessible fashion. And most of the media pretends that an immune-destabilizing virus that can harm the functioning of your organs including your brain has little more import than a benign cold.

As a consequence, authorities can’t now turn around and admit to the breadth of their mistake, let alone acknowledge the growing disorder in public health. Nor do they dare collect critical data documenting the scale of their errors including the relentless march of long COVID.

Meanwhile the virus continues to out-evolve our response and vaccines. Two months ago, when new COVID cases exceeded 100,000 a day in Japan, the research scientist Hiroshi Yasuda imagined the following discussion in a hospital.

Nurse: COVID hospitalizations are increasing again. Doctor: I know. N: Are we fighting an endless, losing battle against SARS-CoV-2? D: No, you are wrong. N: Oh, you have different ideas, doctor? D: We are not even fighting. N: [Nods in agreement.]

Richard Corsi, the noted Texas indoor environmental engineer and creator of the Corsi-Rosenthal box, has summed up this predicament as a profound public health failure. “The general response to COVID-19 remains reactionary over precautionary. Wait until the fire gets hot and starts to burn rather than taking very simple steps to not fuel the fire in the first place. This is a recipe for forever non-containment, forever burn.”

He then points out: “The solution’s been with us since day one of the pandemic. We’ve [generalized] just lacked the will, determination and grace to make it end. Reduce inhalation dose of virus-laden respiratory aerosol particles. It’ll never end if we continue to run in the opposite direction, folks.”

The problem with running in the opposite direction, however, is that we increase the chances of landing in the arms of another COVID infection. And the reasons for avoiding such viral encounters just grow stronger by the sheer weight of evidence.

Why infection prevention still matters

Nobody sane really wants to play Russian roulette, but that’s how we should view every COVID infection. Although most people will get away with just an unpleasant biological disruption of daily life, others will take a bullet to their heart, brain, gut or immune system for reasons not fully understood.

No COVID infection is completely benign because each infection plays a role in deregulating the immune system. Even a mild infection, as one recent study noted, can increase “autoantibodies associated with rheumatic autoimmune diseases and diabetes in most individuals, regardless of vaccination status prior to infection.”

According to an increasing number of researchers, immune deregulation triggered by COVID probably plays a significant role in the dramatic global upticks in infectious diseases. The suspects include RSV, a variety of herpes viruses, whooping cough (now burning up the charts in Canada and England), scarlet fever, dengue fever, fungal infections and tuberculosis. Forty-four countries have now reported a 10-fold increase in the incidence of at least one of 13 infectious diseases compared to trends prior to the pandemic.

Although vaccine hesitancy, climate change and permissive travel have also played a role in this microbial wave, researchers strongly suspect that COVID’s disruption of the immune system has made it harder for many people to fight other infections.

Putrino, a COVID specialist at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, recently explained the situation this way. “For the longest time we’ve told people that if you get an illness and you recover, it just makes you stronger. What we’re seeing over and over again is that’s not the case with COVID. Every time you get a COVID infection, your immune system seems to suffer.

“It’s kind of like a boxer, every fight takes a little bit more out of them. And they’re not getting stronger with every fight, they’re not getting stronger with every hit that they take. Every single time there’s an increased chance that something bad is going to happen to the immune system and I think that this influx of illness that we’re seeing is related to that.”

Another significant risk posed by playing Russian roulette with COVID infections is that each one could result in long COVID, which has sidelined 400 million people around the world at a cost of a trillion dollars. Some manifestations of long COVID include heart disease, diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome, and a raft of autoimmune diseases that may last a lifetime.

The risk increases with the severity of acute infection but the majority of long COVID sufferers have had a mild infection. The more times one is infected, the likelier the next infection will trigger a bout of long COVID. “Cumulatively, two infections yield a higher risk of long COVID than one infection and three infections yield a higher risk than two infections, explain researchers published in the journal Nature.

Here, then, is where we’ve arrived. We’ve entered a vicious cycle where more infections generate more COVID variants. The new variants have become more immune evasive. At the same time society has generally abandoned masks, testing and basic public health messages.

We could slow and suppress the cycle by facing the challenge squarely. For example, by cleaning dirty air the way we once tackled the disease-ridden spectre of cholera-infested water.

But public health officials are afraid to talk about clean air let alone the obvious: avoiding infection.

Beating back COVID requires hard work, communal wisdom and clear policies that markedly reduce the level of infection in society.

To date we have chosen viral denial, dirty air and a triumphant reign for long COVID. [Tyee]

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O’Brien Sets ‘Twinless’ With James Sweeney Directing & Starring; Republic Pictures Takes Global On Three Point Capital & David Permut Production

EXCLUSIVE: Dylan O’Brien is set to headline in James Sweeney‘s dark comedy Twinless, which the latter wrote and will also star in. Republic Pictures has taken global rights to the movie. Cameras are currently rolling on the movie in Portland, OR. O’Brien will executive produce.

The pic follows two young men who meet in a twin bereavement support group. An unlikely bromance develops between them. Twinless follow Sweeney’s directorial debut, Straight Up, which notched the filmmaker a Best First Screenplay nom at the 2021 Independent Spirit Awards.

Three Point Capital is financing the film with Ali Jazayeri, David Gendron and Liz Destro also serving as EPs.

Twinless is produced by Academy Award nominated producer David Permut and Permut Presentations (Hacksaw Ridge, Face/Off) whose most recent Netflix movie, Rustin, garnered Colman Domingo a Best Actor Oscar nomination.

Miky Lee (Parasite) Vice Chairwoman of CJ and who most recently executive produced the Oscar nominated film Past Lives, serves as EP.

Permut Presentations Director Of Development Alex Astrachan co-produces.

Permut said, “I was absolutely knocked out by James’ first film Straight Up and was determined to work with him. I immediately responded to the originality and provocative concept of Twinless. The dark comedy depicts complex characters in such an irreverent, emotional and hysterical way. The chemistry between Dylan, who portrays the role of identical twin brothers, opposite James’ character is absolutely combustible.”

O’Brien’s most recent film is the independent feature Ponyboi, in which he plays a villainous pimp and small-time drug dealer, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He will next be seen in the upcoming films SNL 1975 (from director Jason Reitman) as Dan Aykroyd, Caddo Lake (from the writing-directing team of Logan George and Celine Held, and producer M. Night Shyamalan), and Anniversary (a thriller co-starring Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Zoey Deutch and Phoebe Dynevor). The $1.7 billion grossing star is well-known to audiences from his work in The Maze Runner franchise, as well as the hit MTV series Teen Wolf.

Permut also recently produced the Paramount+ series hit, Lawman: Bass Reeves from Taylor Sheridan, which stars SAG nominee David Oyelowo. His upcoming high priority slate includes Being Heumann written and directed by Academy Award winner Sian Heder (CODA) at Apple, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ (Little Miss Sunshine) film The Invite, and Face/Off II at Paramount, the sequel to Permut’s 1997 hit film, to be directed by Adam Wingard.

Sweeney is repped by UTA, 2AM and Brecheen Feldman Breimer Silver and Thompson. O’Brien is repped by WME, Principal Entertainment, and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Feldman, Rogal, Shikora & Clark and Permut is repped by John Tishbi at Pearlman & Tishbi.

Three Point Capital, established in 2009, is a financier and service provider in the film, television, and commercial industries. They have financed over 400 films, including The Butler, Clerks III and the Oscar-winning Manchester by the Sea. They most recently provided funding for the upcoming Michael Keaton starrers Know Goes Away and Goodrich, the Nicholas Cage starrer Longlegs, the Tina Fey/Jon Hamm comedy Maggie Moore(s) and the recent Sundance premiere Rob Peace.

Paramount Global Content Distribution is revitalizing the former Republic Pictures label, originally founded in 1935. The newly branded acquisition label will leverage Paramount Global’s vast worldwide distribution channels, across home entertainment and third-party distribution platforms to distribute a wide range of acquired films. Republic Pictures is an acquisition-only label under Paramount Pictures.

Source: deadline.com

[accirax]

DRDT Secret Swap AU: For Better and Worse

The following is an ask sent to me that, while numerically present in my inbox, is invisible and inaccessible, and thus, I was only able to read it through its corresponding notification email. Tumblr be a functional website challenge; level impossible.

What a great question! Up to this point, I’ve been more of an AU enjoyer than an AU creator (other than the BNHA thing), so this will be an exciting foray into the realm of possibility! The task of creating both the best and worst outcome also provides a lot to think about when it comes to characterization. I’m excited to get talking about this! But first, some rules.

(And the usual CW for DRDT spoilers, as well as mentions of murder, suicide, self harm, eating disorders, and implied homo/transphobia. You know, standard business for DRDT secret discussion.)

To keep things simple, I’m going to be assuming that the true owners of the secrets are as follows:

While I’m by no means asserting that this interpretation of whose secret is whose is 100% accurate, it’s what I see widely agreed upon by the fandom, and what I currently believe myself. Having to factor in a bunch of different permutations of secret distribution seemed terribly complicated, so I decided to avoid it. If anybody disagrees with where I’ve placed any of the secrets, please just consider it as another facet of the alternate universe.

Additionally, I’ve kept up the “rule” that no one is allowed to receive their own secret. I’m also assuming that everything is the same up until when MonoTV hands out the motives, such that Xander and Min are still dead. However, a different distribution of secrets could have changed the details of the Chapter 2 murder, so I kinda have to speak about it in hypotheticals. I was just talking about how I didn’t want to make things needlessly complicated, so I’m not throwing in a bunch of speculation about how the secrets may have factored into the AU killer’s motives when I can’t even say for certain who the canonical killer was.

I also decided to interpret the prompt as “what’s the best/worst overall shuffle” as opposed to “who is the best/worst recipient for each individual secret.” The latter seemed like it might repeat characters too many times, and “the ch2 secrets [getting] swapped in a different way” implied to me that each character was still limited to receiving one secret. Hopefully that’s what you were going for with your ask!

Okay, I think that’s it. Let’s get started with the best case scenario, given that I think that’ll be easier. I’ll go through the characters��� secrets in the order they’re listed in on the board, so that it’ll hopefully be easier to follow along.

The Good Timeline

Eden receives Levi’s secret

If someone was going to have remorse for the remorseless killer, I think it would be Eden. Even if the concept of someone killing in cold blood might frighten Eden, the pair is already off to a good start with the conversation they shared at the beginning of Chapter 2. Eden knows a bit more about Levi’s family situation (which may have been the cause of his callous killing) and how he is trying to be a good person, even if he feels like he might be failing. Compared to others in the cast, I feel like Eden might be more willing to hear Levi out.

Specifically, we know from canon that (under David’s encouragement, at least) Eden planned to share her secret– which was a pretty severe one already– in a closed environment with just her and the secret’s owner. Of course, we haven’t yet seen from canon how Levi would react to getting assigned this secret, so it’s possible he could flip out in a similar manner to how Arturo did when Eden confronted him. However, I think there’s a good chance that he would be more resigned or neutral, which might also give Eden hope that he isn’t a lost cause… again, under the assumption that he isn't. This secret does have a chance of backfiring, but I’m making the choice to have faith in Levi– much like I think Eden would if she saw his secret!

Nico receives David’s secret

Now this is kind of an unconventional one, but, hear me out.

I don’t know if there really is a “good option” for David’s secret in the sense that I think anyone who would choose to reveal the information to the group would be the type to do so in an accusatory, non-constructive way. Similarly, a lot of people who wouldn’t reveal the secret might face problems if it caused them to quietly simmer in their distrust. That suppression of emotions could lead to a big blow up in the future.

Because of that, you might be wondering why I didn’t assign this secret to one of my throwaway slots– namely, Xander, Min, or Rose. Well, it’s because I also wanted to consider what would happen if, even in this good universe, some number of students still needed to attend a Class Trial where the secrets are unknown. Certain secrets, if left unassigned, would lead to paranoia and distrust amongst the students. And, by throwing this secret away, this secret could basically never be confirmed as David’s other than by process of elimination or (highly unlikely) self-assignment. Therefore, all of the students would have to assume that anyone whose secret isn't known has a decent chance of believing that everyone exists to be manipulated. In my opinion, that would make productively discussing a murder really difficult.

So, I decided that the best course of action would be to give this secret to the person who would make the smallest deal out of it, and that turned out to be Nico. Nico already believes that socially interacting with other humans is a complicated and confusing process, the rules of which force you into expressing yourself in a specific, “acceptable” way. Basically, I think that Nico might already see a lot of conversation as manipulation, and themselves as the manipulee. The secret says that David is really good at interpreting those rules and acing the bullet points of “acceptable” conversation? No shit, he’s the Ultimate Inspirational Speaker.

I’m not trying to say that Nico is “dumb” enough to not realize that this secret is generally threatening, but I think that, if word of it were to come out, Nico would present it in a subdued enough manner that it wouldn’t make things worse than they need to be.

Hu receives Ace’s secret

Oh boy, this is a dangerous choice given Ace and Hu’s tumultuous relationship. Although, to be fair, I don’t remember exactly how established that rivalry was prior to the distribution of the canonical secrets. To the extent that they didn’t already hate each other to the point of no return, I chose this one because I think that Hu having the context of Ace’s secret might actually help to mend their relationship.

As I said up top, this AU is predicated on Hu having the “hopeless child” secret. Thus, in this AU, we can say for certain that Hu has a prior history of self harm/self destructive tendencies. If hopeless child Hu does turn out to be canon, it would support the theory that part of the reason why Hu won’t share the “harm yourself for fun” secret is because she knows that mental health is a sensitive subject, and doesn’t want to force someone to open up about it. Given that eating disorders are a form of self harm, we can rest assured that this isn’t a secret Hu would share, no matter how much David suggests that she does.

Given Hu’s history, she might be one of the people in this cast who could best understand Ace’s plight. With this additional context, his quest for power over something in his life might feel more sympathetic, and Hu might be able to muster more concern for him. And, I’m not gonna lie, part of this assignment was granted in the slim hope that the Ultimate Mom Friend Hu would be able to make a big grandma-style meal for Ace to enjoy. They could be an improbably wholesome duo if not for… The Circumstances.

Those circumstances won’t fade anytime soon in canon, but exploring hypotheticals like this are the whole reason why AUs exist!

J receives Eden’s secret

Compared to everyone else, Eden’s secret is a pretty nonthreatening one that, especially among this pretty queer cast, shouldn’t raise a whole lot of issues. The biggest problem I can see arising from it is if someone decided to out Eden, sort of like what happened to Nico. Therefore, I wanted to give Eden’s secret to someone who would be unlikely to share it without Eden giving the okay. And, J seemed to fit that description pretty well.

Obviously, some of J’s canon behavior was spurred on by the fact that Arturo non-consensually revealed her secret (which, spoilers, will not be happening in the blessed half of this AU). But, given J’s preference for privacy, I don’t think J would jump to sharing even a “harmless” secret. We directly saw that J only revealed Charles’ secret once he gave express permission for her to do so, which is what I would ideally want for Eden. Eden’s secret being given to a girl who would presumably be cool with her lesbianism is an added bonus to assuage her fears that (straight) girls who know she’s gay wouldn’t want to be her friend.

Unless, of course, J is also a girlkisser… then maybe the motive secrets could turn into a meet-cute…….. (/j)

Rose receives J’s secret

Finally, our first throwaway slot. After what J’s been through, I think she deserves to have her secret not be a topic of discussion at all– or at least not until all of them are listed out on the board.

There is also some logic behind which secret I gave to Rose as opposed to Xander or Min. We didn’t really see this in canon, but if Whit had let his secret go unclaimed, I could see some people being mad at Rose for inadvertently throwing away valuable information. This sentiment would only increase if Rose’s secret was something more relevant to the case at hand. Like, could you imagine how mad Teruko would have been if Rose had received the “murderer without remorse” secret? They could have had the answer to which person among them was a murderer without remorse, but Rose just carelessly threw it away because she was worried about people’s privacy?!

Therefore, I think the best case scenario for Rose is to receive one of the low-stakes secrets. In the case of J’s secret, it’s possible that someone like Arturo would be able to figure out that it was J’s secret without any confirmation from Rose as long as he had the information that someone in the cast was Mariabella’s daughter. No harm, no foul if Rose throws out the secret only for it to be instantly solvable anyway.

By giving J’s secret to Rose, J gets the blessing of privacy for as long as the secrets don’t become public knowledge, but Rose also doesn’t garner any backlash if they do, for one reason or another.

“Xander” receives Arei’s secret

Just to clarify, there isn’t any meaning behind which secret Xander vs Min got; they both just mean that the secret is un-confirmable.

Arei’s secret is a good one to bury because of how easily it can be misinterpreted. From the phrasing of the secret, nobody would know that Arei’s sisters abused her unless Arei told them herself, and without that context, Arei appears quite villainous. Hell, some people believe that learning of this secret was a reason why Levi would have chosen to kill Arei! If this information about Arei just isn’t out there to be known, then nobody could make that fatal oversight.

Also, Arei already knew what the vague contents of her secret would be, presumably without having seen the actual text. In Ace’s flashback, she quotes David’s secret from memory (because she read it), but when she unveils her own secret, she throws in the detail about reform school which isn’t at all present in the secret’s text. I think it was really important for Arei’s development that she had the agency to reveal her secret at her own pace. By making her secret inaccessible, it removes the possibility that someone else would reveal it before she’s emotionally ready.

Arturo receives Min’s secret

Look at me, pairing Arturo and Min together yet again. What is it about these two that causes me to keep coupling them…? Well, at least this time, they’re paired up because they, like, never talk in canon.

Arturo has proven himself to be a problem when it comes to revealing secrets. Even if he hadn’t been handed Miss Rosales’ dirty laundry, I would believe that he would air out the secrets of whichever nobody he learned about simply due to disrespect. Therefore, I think that giving Arturo a secret that really doesn’t matter is the best course of action. Whether he reveals it on the day the motives were distributed or the day of the Class Trial, most people probably wouldn’t make much of a fuss about an already-dead student’s secret, least of all Arturo. If he doesn’t care about what Min was up to, he wouldn’t stir up any drama by revealing or concealing information.

David receives Xander’s secret

Not gonna lie, I mostly gave this one to David as a form of damage control. I don’t know what he’s going to do with the secret he did canonically receive in the future– whether it belongs to Teruko or someone else, or whether he’s dying immediately or in it for the long haul– but giving David the silver bullet of “the killing game is all your fault” seems like way too much power to hand over. With a dead student’s secret, he doesn’t gain much by telling the truth or have much of a basis to execute a good lie.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that David received Xander’s secret, which is all about the tragically heroic backstory that probably led him to find comfort in David’s speeches in the first place. (And it does paint Xander in a decently positive light– “it wasn’t your fault” erases the possibility that Xander killed his family or whatever.) I imagine that, had David received this secret on the first day, basically a little buffering symbol would appear over his head and he would have to go lie down and stare at the piece of paper for a few hours. Or days.

By distracting David, we can hopefully avoid any of the decidedly negative side effects that him attempting to deduce and reveal everyone else’s secrets caused. While everyone else is growing as a person and whatnot, David can just be… looping the Literature Girl Insane MV in his head, or something. Is that really good for him? Probably not, but these are the heights you can reach when you set out to cause problems.

Arei receives Whit’s secret

Arei already didn’t reveal whose secret she had to anyone, as far as we know. So, if she had the secret belonging to Whit, arguably her closest friend at the start of Chapter 2, I really don’t think she would say anything. That’s good for Whit, because, similar to what I said about Arei herself, I think it’s better for him to have the ability to come forth with his secret when the time is right. Anything else and it might shake up his persona too suddenly and send him fight or flight mode.

I think the biggest potential flaw here is that we don’t know how Arei felt about her mom. Arei is willing to go confront other people about their secrets, so if Arei either really loved or really hated her mom, maybe that would lead her to go confront Whit about what his secret meant. And then, that could lead into him deflecting and looking shady.

That’s not really a huge liability to me, though, so I think this one will be fine.

Veronika receives Charles’ secret

Veronika is a weird case, because whether or not she reveals a secret seems to be based solely on entertainment value. In canon, we’ve seen that she hasn’t yet revealed the “hopeless child” secret because, for whatever reasons, she thinks that’ll make the killing game more interesting. But presumably, if she thought that revealing someone’s secret would make the game more interesting instead, she would have done that.

Because Charles doesn’t remember his brother’s death himself, I don’t think Veronika would see much value in holding it over his head, saving it for a dramatic reaction down the road, or whatever the hell she was trying to accomplish by not revealing Hu’s secret. Therefore, I think Veronika would find it most entertaining to see Charles’ reaction to learning about his amnesia, and tell him pretty quickly.

On the surface, that seems bad. However, I actually think that Charles learning about his secret is… for the best? If you assume that Charles is going to have to learn about this factoid someday, it’s probably better for him if he does it before a Class Trial is called, so that he can be in a more stable mental state. It’s also better for him to do it while he has Whit there to support him, and who knows what could happen between those two in future chapters? Much like Arturo’s assignment, we defuse Veronika’s chaotic power with this one, with the added benefit of potentially helping Charles on his journey to self-understanding.

Levi receives Arturo’s secret

Arturo’s secret was a hard one, because I think most people would react to it pretty negatively, especially with the confirmation that it belongs to Arturo of all people from the start. You could leave it with Eden as someone who seemingly didn’t judge, but given how poorly that situation played out in canon, it felt wrong to leave it in her hands.

Therefore, I gave it to someone who could potentially relate: Levi. He, too, came from a tense family background which he had to leave, and as such, he might better be able to put himself in Arturo’s shoes. While it is possible that Levi could resent Arturo for “ruining” a “good(?)” relationship with his sister (given how Levi struggled to coexist with his siblings), I don’t think it would irk Levi so much that he’d take drastic action against Arturo.

At the very least, we saw that Levi didn’t spill the beans about Arei’s similarly anti-sister secret. By that logic, he probably wouldn’t tell anyone about it, possibly including Arturo. In that case, we avoid Arturo blowing up on whoever was unlucky enough to have to break the news. And, even if Levi did tell Arturo, and Arturo decided to attack, I trust that even an injured Levi could defend himself far better than Eden could.

Ace receives Veronika’s secret

I just don’t think anything particularly bad would happen here. When I imagine Ace receiving this secret, I kinda just think of him going, “what the fuck?!”, and then putting the paper away. As someone who cares immensely about his own safety and image, I can definitely see this secret confusing Ace, but I don’t think to a point where it would really mess him up. It might make him think that Veronika is dangerous and weird, but… well, he already thought that.

Speaking of, especially with this information, Ace is too afraid of Veronika to try to bully her in the same way that he did with Nico. I don’t see any reason why Ace would benefit from revealing this secret, so it would likely remain hidden, which is probably for the best. Honestly, I don’t know if Veronika would care if this secret of hers got out, given that the main reason why people think this is hers is because of the similar sentiments that she already shared with Teruko in a public location. But, regardless, it takes away any ammo Ace might have by making his only target someone who he’s too afraid to take shots at.

Teruko receives Hu’s secret

Completing our little triad of sadness, this is the third instance of me giving a secret involving self harm to someone else who engages in self destructive practices– first Hu with Ace, then Ace with Veronika, and now Teruko with Hu. It obviously sucks that there are so many people in this cast who are struggling with this same issue, but I think it works out well to have them overlap. They’re probably the ones who best grasp the severity of each other’s problems, so they understand the gravity of sharing the information and would take steps to avoid doing that unnecessarily.

But, yeah, there wasn’t much of a reason beyond that for me to assign Teruko here. As a further extrapolation of the above point, though, if Teruko decided to ask Hu about her secret in the same way that she did with Rose, maybe Teruko could provide Hu some comfort about the situation and they could become friends.

Although, thinking about it more, that would actually have a decent chance of backfiring, as Hu might not appreciate having to take on the role of the helped as opposed to the helper, and Teruko might freak out if she felt herself letting her walls down around Hu. But that’s only if Teruko chose to talk to her about it, which is dubious in the first place. I don’t think Teruko would intentionally use this as any sort of weapon against Hu, which is the main criteria I was looking for.

Charles receives Rose’s secret

More unproblematic people being unproblematic. I don’t know if anything weird would happen as Charles’ upper-class upbringing came into contact with Rose’s cash-strapped past, but if it did, it would probably be a positive development for Charles. Y’know, like “realizing that it’s not only wealthy academics who can have talent” or “further learning to recognize his privilege and have sympathy for other people.” Much like what Charles canonically did with Eden’s secret, this one would probably go under the public radar until a Class Trial occurred, at which point Charles would reveal it. And, hey, that’s kind of like Rose’s secret’s canonical fate as well.

I also don’t think that we’d run into any trouble with Teruko possibly learning this one from the note that Charles passed her either, because… again, this was Teruko’s canonical secret, and nothing bad happened. Sometimes no reaction is the sweetest reaction of all.

Whit receives Nico’s secret

Yup, like you implied, Whit receiving Nico’s secret would probably be one of the best options for them. It’s not too much of a surprise. Whit seems to be a pretty securely out bi guy, so he would obviously support of Nico’s identity, and possibly even be someone Nico could look up to for being confident in who they are. On top of that, Whit greatly values privacy, and thus wouldn’t go around immediately shouting, “wow, Nico, it’s so awesome that you’re nonbinary!” He’d only do that if Nico wanted him to, after asking them first. I’m not even sure if Whit would contact Nico about it directly, but even if he didn’t, I feel like Whit would try to find ways to subtly encourage Nico so that they would feel safe coming out themselves. At least, that’s what my bias is telling me.

As a side note, I’m still playing with the rule that Arei sees whatever Whit’s secret is over his shoulder, which is actually what gave Nico’s secret the nod here over Eden’s. We saw that Ace, along with some others, were confused about what exactly the text of Nico’s secret meant. Meanwhile, if attached to Eden, her secret is pretty explicitly about her being sexually attracted to women, and therefore homosexual. I’m not at all calling Arei homophobic (in fact, the concept of doing so makes me very uncomfortable, so please don’t joke about it), but given that the two had been fighting beforehand, it’s possible that Arei would have tried to use the content of Eden’s secret against her somehow (but again, not in a homophobic way).

At the very least, Arei would know something about Eden that Eden might not want her to know, which is bad. I’m not sure if Arei would inherently understand Nico’s secret enough to gain anything of use from it, while Whit and his intuition would definitely understand what’s going on.

“Min” receives Teruko’s secret

Here we go; our other throwaway secret! Part of the appeal of leaving this one in the dark is because… well, we don’t know if it’s true. While the secret doesn’t explicitly state that its owner is the mastermind of the killing game, it’s definitely designed to make you think that’s the case. And, uh, I don’t know if Teruko is the mastermind or not. I recently wrote 1000 words about it, which is equal to one picture.

So, let’s explore both avenues. If Teruko isn’t the mastermind, then sharing this secret around is obviously bad. It would cause people to unwarrantedly distrust Teruko, and possibly even cause Teruko to distrust herself. That could impede the progress of Class Trials, if people don’t trust Teruko’s reasoning anymore, and the progress of deducing the actual mastermind. Therefore, by taking this secret out of circulation, we stop the misinformation from spreading.

Alternatively, if Teruko is the (evil) mastermind, then… aren’t I doing a disservice by not allowing the students to encounter this information? Well, yes, and no. I am preventing them from accessing the deus ex machina of David just outright saying, “oh, and by the way, Teruko is the mastermind!”; that much is true. But, by leaving that information out… aren’t I just leaving them in the same position that most killing game casts are in? They know that one of them is the mastermind, they just don’t know who. And, actually, they have a leg up on the other casts because the mastermind’s identity would still be a logically deducible fact that they could basically confirm if they all worked together. I don’t think it’s too much of a blow to the innocent students if we leave this one out, is what I’m saying.

So, that’s the good ending! A quick graphic to show how everything shook out:

(I swear, I didn’t mean to make it look like Whit was laughing at Nico’s identity. I just reused the sprites from my archetype analysis because I was too lazy to go get new ones…)

Now, on to the bad ending. This one was a lot harder to assign. Given that these secrets were meant to sow discord, there are only so many ways that things can play out well. There are lots of ways that things can play out poorly.

But, hopefully I’ve found the aggregate worst answer! Given that this is, you know… the one where things go horribly wrong, things may get pretty dark in this section, so proceed with caution. Nobody’s going to die or anything like that, but know that your faves may not be depicted in the most positive light in this section. Grab something comforting and put on some happy music, or lean hard into the angst, ‘cause we’re about to get started.

The Bad Timeline

Ace receives Levi’s secret

Look. I 100% agree that the whole Ace/Nico situation is a Major Yikes Situation /pos. However, I’m hopeful (in the sense of trying to craft the worst possible outcome) that we could still get a More or Less Yikes Situation even without the pair obtaining each others’ secrets.

Although Ace revealing that he was in possession of Nico’s secret closely preceded Nico’s death threat, that wasn’t actually what specifically led Nico to intimidate Ace. It was Ace’s comment that Nico was such a weakling that they could only solve their problems by getting people like David to help them, as well as the culmination of several days of Ace’s torment beginning in Chapter 1, which led them to do it. What I’m saying is, Ace and Nico were already rivals before the secrets even came out, so even without the direct connection to one another via the motive, it’s possible the high tensions would still cause similar events to unfold.

All that preamble hopefully helps to justify my choice to put Ace on Levi’s secret, because, my god, you can open a whole other can of worms with this one. Ace gaining the knowledge that Levi is a killer without remorse the day after Levi threatened to kill him would freak Ace out like nothing else. Being as loud as he is, I would think that Ace wouldn’t be able to stop himself from sharing this one with the class, starting a conflict right from the start.

While do I think the other students would believe Ace in the end– especially if he showed them the paper on which Levi’s name was printed– I also think that some people might doubt Ace’s words at first, thinking he’s overexaggerating as usual. However, that moment of being Boy Who Cried Wolf-ed by everyone else would also really fuck with Ace. He’s literally right, and has the paperwork to prove it, and yet people are still disinclined to believe him because they see him as a fool. It would draw an even deeper wedge between Ace and his classmates than we saw in canon.

Tying back around to the beginning, I think that this extra layer of powerlessness would just make Ace even more inclined to seek out a feeling of power elsewhere. So, I’m thinking that would still result in Ace bullying Nico, and, assuming he still keeps it up for long enough and calls Nico a weakling, we might be able to loop back around to Nico’s death threat anyway. Major Yikes Situation not averted!

Veronika receives David’s secret

Here’s a chaotic choice. Given how open-ended and accusatory David’s secret is, I definitely think it’s one that Veronika would have chosen not to reveal. However, just because she doesn’t want to reveal it doesn’t mean that the information won’t get out… in a way.

We’ve seen time and time again that Veronika is fascinated with morally questionable people, first with Arturo and later David himself once she knew about his secret. Therefore, if she knew about David’s secret from the start, I don’t think she would be able to stop herself from following him around and making some clever comments here and there. Can you imagine how concerning it would be to watch David try to give hope speeches and guide people while Veronika is peering over his shoulder and grinning at him, refusing to elaborate?

It would definitely be worrying, but I don’t think it would fully stop everyone from listening to him– but in this case, that’s a good thing! David’s tactics wound up causing more harm than good, so it was important for me to give his secret to someone who wouldn’t call him out immediately and stop him from enacting these bad policies. Veronika is a great choice for allowing that to happen, but also causing a lot of stress and doubt speculating as to what exactly Veronika could know about David that would make her act this way. Honestly, it might be the worst for David himself…

Levi receives Ace’s secret

This one isn’t that terrible on its own, but in the context of Ace also having Levi’s secret, I think it gets pretty hairy. I can’t really see any scenario where Levi knowing Ace’s greatest secret goes over well for them. If Ace blows up at Levi right out the gate, there’s a definite possibility that Levi can’t keep his cool and winds up firing off Ace’s secret in front of everyone else as retaliation. Betraying Ace’s trust like that (even if Ace was the one to mouth off first) would make their relationship even more unsalvageable.

Even if Levi did manage to keep his mouth shut, knowing Ace’s secret would just generally make it harder for Levi to talk to Ace when explaining himself or trying to make amends. Like I discussed with Hu in the good timeline, there’s a lot you can learn about Ace in the contents of his secret and the way it’s phrased. I feel like Levi would be able to pick up on some of that knowledge, but he would then find it even harder to interact with Ace without accidentally spilling the beans on some of that newfound understanding. This secret shuffle would make their relationship basically irreparable in my opinion, and the increased frustrations from both boys might make one of their tempers flare and lead them to do something inadvisable.

“Xander” receives Eden’s secret

First of all, giving “Xander” this one means there’s one less problematic person who could draw a relatively harmless secret, which is a pro in this scenario. Leaving this secret unconfirmed could also cause problems in a Class Trial. Given that this secret doesn’t include murder, blackmail, manipulation, etc, it’s a pretty nice secret to claim for yourself, even if it can basically only be claimed by one of the girls. This means that, even if Eden tried to be truthful about her secret, people might believe that she’s lying.

Furthermore, the DRDT cast seems to be a pretty queer group of people overall. 6/15 of the non-Edens are confirmed LGBTQ+ themselves (even if not all of them are out), and everyone has treated Nico and Whit’s identities with respect since learning about them. Canonically, I would say that Eden has nothing to worry about with regards to the other girls treating her differently for being a lesbian.

So, by making Eden’s secret far less accessible, it becomes less likely that she’ll ever get that moment of recognition and affirmation. Instead, as Eden’s secret remains hidden and irrelevant, it becomes easier for her to stick to what she knows is safe. An accepting environment was right there in front of her, but with the convenience of periphery, she might not ever see it.

Arturo receives J’s secret

Yeah, I agree with you on this one– J truly did roll a crit fail. I did consider giving J’s secret to someone else, as long as they would definitely publicly spill the beans, if it meant that Arturo could learn the content of J’s secret while receiving an additional bad secret as well. However, I couldn’t think of anyone who would be so guaranteed to tell everyone about J’s secret that I could be confident Arturo would hear of it, nor could I think of any particularly catastrophic secrets I’d rather give to Arturo. So, this one stays. J really is living in the worst timeline already– like if you cry every time.

Hu receives Arei’s secret

Hu was a tough nut to crack, because I think the ideal bad situation for her is that she gets a secret that’s problematic enough that it would cause major issues if news broke, but not so problematic that she wouldn’t be willing to share it as a part of David’s “let’s tell each other about our secrets” plan. Operating under the logic that the mention of self harm was the reason why she wasn’t willing to share the secret she got in canon, 3/15 options immediately disappear. More options vanish when you start eliminating not-super-problematic secrets like Xander's family, Charles’ brother, or Rose’s debt.

After some consideration, I landed on Arei’s being the best balance of thorny and not. It’s a secret that discusses a serious crime without incorporating murder, and there’s lots of room for public interpretation that could cause things to go really poorly for Arei if folks jump to conclusions. Given that Hu already didn’t super like Arei (I’m basing this off of her chastising Arei for bullying Eden), I could totally see her being willing to share this secret publicly in order to help everyone see that Arei is someone not to be trusted.

Making Arei’s secret publicly aired also removes the very important aspect of Arei’s agency that I wrote on in the good section. If Hu is sharing this secret, it’s probably pretty early in the chapter, which means that Arei might not be prepared whenever the news drops. The context of the secret sharing doesn’t involve Eden at all, so Arei might have a harder time putting two and two together about why she acts the way she does and how she wants to change. Not to mention, if Hu shares the secret in a way that directly agrees with David’s scheme, it automatically pits David against Arei, which means that he can’t offer her any help (to the extent that what he said helped her canonically). It’s just bad all around. But that’s why I’ve come to feel pretty confident in this choice.

Rose receives Min’s secret

Following up on Rose’s last entry, this is not one of the secrets that the rest of the students could either easily deduce or ignore. It would be very easy to assume that the owner of the poison secret was a murderer– possibly a mass murderer, and even one who didn't regret what they did. Even if poison wasn’t used in the Chapter 2 murder, people might suspect this person of being the killer, and/or it could throw suspicion on Charles as the only one (who we know of) who has a poisonous custom weapon.

Now, obviously, this secret did not cause much of a scene in the canonical Chapter 2 trial, but I think at least part of that is because it was Xander’s. Everyone knows that the person who has that secret can only be determined by process of elimination no matter who they ask. The same would be true if it were the secret Rose got, but people might grow upset that Rose threw away such a valuable piece of evidence. And, with Min incapable of claiming her secret, it might appear even more that someone was trying to hide something when nobody spoke up to claim it. It’s not much, but Rose made it difficult to come up with something bad.

Teruko receives Xander’s secret

Funnily enough, the logic behind me giving Xander’s secret to Teruko is quite similar to the logic behind me giving it to David. Much like how David would be taken out of commission by reading this secret, I think that Teruko would act the same– it would just be worse for her and the group as a whole.

Like I said for David, Xander’s secret paints him out as a tragic hero. He loved his family to pieces, and regrets their passing so much that he wishes he could have died with them. Even though it was textually not his fault, Xander still beats himself up every day for not being around to do the right thing and save people when it counted. …What does it mean that the guy with this secret was the one who felt he had to kill Teruko for the greater good?!

Reading Xander’s secret would only pull Teruko deeper into anger, self-hatred, and confusion. She was already pretty off kilter in this Chapter from trying to ignore her mixed emotions regarding Xander, and I think that having to relive her trauma and his betrayal any time someone brought up the mere concept of secrets would basically take her out of commission. I mean, check out how many times I was able to say the word secret in these three paragraphs alone. I don’t imagine Teruko would be able to fare much better in the hellish environment of this terrible swap, which might lead her to hole up in her room all day and grow increasingly bored and bitter.

Now, I’m not saying that Teruko needed to be up and at ‘em in the daily life because her running around and pressing knives to people’s throats was just so helpful. But at least, unlike David, she wasn’t actively making the situation worse. Her presence may have even made potential friends like Eden, Charles, or Rose feel better. At the very least, Teruko learned some key social context in the Chapter 2 daily life prior to the Trial, so removing Teruko from those interactions would make it much harder for her to fully grasp what was going on should she be forced to solve a murder once again.

Charles receives Whit’s secret

I agree with you here as well– Charles acquiring Whit’s secret is probably the worst case scenario for Whit. As one of two people who actually heard Whit talk about his mom in Chapter 1, Charles is one of the only people who would know that Whit doesn’t just “omit that truth” by not talking about his mom, he actively talks about her like she is alive. This would raise a very big question for Charles at a crucial point in their friendship. Charles has just come to start trusting this guy, so what do you mean he was lying about something so odd…?

There’s a chance that the reveal of this concealment of the truth would cause Charles to determine that he couldn’t trust Whit anymore, and it would drive them apart. But, I think that’s pretty unlikely. More likely is the option where Charles (who’s in a fragile state from his meltdown yesterday and only JUST started learning how to be a good friend) tries to question Whit about it, only for Whit to panic. I don’t really think that Whit would try to keep the ruse going, seeing as Charles literally has the answer right in front of him, but he still might be full of deflections, or try to avoid the subject with jokes. (“Huh? No, I totally said that my mom passed away a few years ago! You must’ve just not heard me– did you fling some detergent into your ears with that laundry machine?”)

I’m not sure if this distribution of secrets would fully split them up, but it would definitely cause a rift in their conversation and bonding that might stop Charles and Whit from growing as close as they did. And, all this isn’t even taking into account that–

Whit receives Charles’ secret

Did you ever notice that Whit and Charles’ secrets are both about a hidden dead relative? I didn’t put two and two together until now, but boy does it work out poorly for purposes of this AU.

Much like Levi with Ace’s secret, I don’t think this is an inherently bad draw for Whit, but it kinda sucks in this context. Whit gets placed into a really weird trolley problem: do you tell and comfort Charles about his dead brother when it’ll definitely segue into discussions of your own dead mom, or do you keep it hidden, not helping Charles and leaving yourself open to the possibility of him feeling betrayed later that you kept this secret from him? It’s these kinds of questions that Whit would be forced to ask himself in the moment that Charles first confronts him, and the time needed to process would only throw him off his game and make him appear more suspicious to Charles.

To be fair, a lot of this does depend on how deep in the lie Whit is. Is he usually pretty quick to admit that his mom is dead to anyone who digs deeper into the issue, or has he been lying about his mom’s status to everyone, his father included? If it’s more like the former, then maybe the two of them could actually come to bond over the tragedy of losing someone you care about. But, if it’s more like the latter, then this distribution of secrets could get in the way of one of the (seemingly) most stable and healthy relationships in the killing game.

Arei receives Arturo’s secret

At first, I actually considered giving Arturo’s secret to Arei in the good universe, because I thought that Arei could understand having complicated relationships with your sisters. But then I remembered something critically important. Arei herself is the younger sister. She wouldn’t relate to Arturo; she would relate to Felicity. And then, all hell would break loose.

Arei knows what it’s like to be a younger sister who, even if she never considered it herself, had other people try to pressure her into committing suicide. So, to have a younger sister lucky enough to actually have a big brother she cared about, only for him to leave her alone and cause her death? Arei would be furious. She would absolutely call him out for it immediately, and use all of the bullying tactics she learned to make his life a living hell.

Despite all that I wrote about what Hu would do with Arei’s secret, I don’t actually know if Hu would be more or less likely to share Arei’s secret if Arei was acting this way. Would Hu take it upon herself to join in shaming Arturo for his actions, or feel that Arei was being a hypocrite and want to share Arei’s own truth? Either way, with both of these secrets, I think that the option of Arei’s character growing at all (or becoming friends with Eden) any time soon is pretty much dead.

And then there’s Arturo himself. While we’ve seen that Arturo does genuinely seem remorseful and haunted by Felicity’s death, I doubt Arei would know or care. I also totally think that J would join Arei in absolutely demolishing the man. Having Arei’s offense be backed by the Julia Rosales might just break him. Whether it would be in a victim way or a killer way I’m not sure, but it would definitely be bad for funni beauty standards man. The good news is that it might stop Arei from dying…? Unless Arturo just decided to kill her. There really isn’t a lot of good news.

David receives Veronika’s secret

Alright, back to David and Veronika. This is the third time I’ve had two people just swap their secrets, I guess? And, it’s kinda for the same reasons again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Since we’ve been through a lot since we last discussed this pair, let’s get a quick recap: Veronika knows that David is a manipulative bastard, but won’t tell anyone that yet because she thinks it’ll be more interesting if she keeps her mouth shut. Thus, everyone is kind of wary of David, and David is definitely wary of Veronika, but not so much that it stops David from doing his information-seeking “let’s all share our secrets” plan.

I think that learning this about Veronika would make David pretty confused, very concerned, and extra conscious of Veronika in a way that would be hard to conceal. He could probably guess from the way Veronika was acting that she had some kind of dirt on him, and therefore conclude that, if he ever tried to share her secret, she might just fire back at him. David does not want that. So, the two of them remain at an uneasy stalemate that would make everyone else increasingly troubled.

Furthermore, I think that Veronika’s secret is a good balance of an unexpected yet potentially relevant piece of information about a living student that David would want to seek more of, while also not being so grim that it would appeal to whatever morals David may have. (Don’t get me wrong, Veronika’s secret is very worrying and tragic, but at least the inclusion of “for fun” makes it less grim than Arturo’s or Hu’s, to me.) David would be inclined to continue on his quest of acquiring the most knowledge-as-power as possible, and Veronika would be thrilled to watch! Both of them would just be giving off… really weird vibes about it.

Nico receives Hu’s secret

(extra suicide TW just in case)

If I say anything offensive or incorrect in this section, I deeply apologize. I don’t mean to portray either of these characters, their issues, or people who relate to them or their issues in a bad light, and I definitely don’t mean to demonize mentally ill people. The reasoning behind why I think it would be bad for Nico to get Hu’s secret is complicated, and may be based on uninformed thoughts or unfounded projections. However, based on what I do “know,” I think it makes sense, so I’ll try to explain myself as best I can.

Basically, I think that receiving Hu’s secret would be bad for Nico because it might make Nico less likely to speak up for themselves when Hu talks over them. If I were Nico, I might be worried about reacting too strongly to what Hu is doing, and accidentally sending her back into the hopeless state of her childhood. Just interacting with Hu in general might lead someone (like David) to start questioning Nico about the secret they received, and cause the information to accidentally leak out. It would make Nico saying anything on how Hu was acting difficult.

Again, I am not trying to villainize Hu, or mandate that you have to walk on eggshells around suicidal people because they’re loose cannons or whatever. I just think that, especially for someone as uncomfortable with socialization with Nico, navigating the sensitive subject of past suicide attempts in this incredibly hostile bad AU environment might prevent them from speaking up for themselves when they’re feeling belittled. And, that would be bad for their personal development.

I wish we could move on to something happier to combat these bad vibes, but unfortunately, we still have a couple more to go.

“Min” receives Rose’s secret

Well, at least we can cool down a little bit with this one. Not a ton going on here; basically just that Rose’s secret is pretty lowkey and I could cause more damage with other secrets elsewhere. I don’t think it would cause a particular stir with either other students becoming paranoid or Rose’s characterization and growth. I suppose that, without the excuse of being able to explain her past, Rose probably wouldn’t have had that chance to vent to Teruko, which was probably a good experience for her? The conflict-avoidant Rose will be suffering enough with all the turmoil going on around her, methinks.

Eden receives Nico’s secret

Make no mistake, this is not a decision made to hurt Nico. It’s meant to hurt Eden. With her compassionate heart and non-judgmental attitude, Eden is a great draw for any secret-holder to have in order to not cause trouble. That’s why I thought that the best move here was to use the secret as an offensive weapon to lessen her impact, as well as preventing a more problematic secret from being absorbed into her positive vibes.

Eden’s greatest secret is that she’s a lesbian, and she fears that people will come to hate her or discriminate against her if they find out about her identity. Therefore, the worst thing to do to her is to affirm those fears by shoving the homophobia someone else suffered in her face. Learning that Nico was mocked for their identity would make Eden less confident in hers, and might dampen her spirit enough that some of the good effects of her optimism are negated. She might become more hesitant to discuss secrets and more fearful of her peers, knowing that one of them probably knows about her identity and could use it against her at any time. Little does she know, it’s actually in the morgue alongside the Ultimate Rebel.

But, the fact that is just further feeds into my idea from Xander’s section. If Eden has just been reminded of how cruel the world can be to LGBTQ+ people, she wouldn’t be jumping at the opportunity to reveal which secret was hers. This would 1) allow another troublemaker to perhaps successfully claim it as their own, 2) make Eden look suspicious as she tries to come up with a solid lie of her own, and 3) postpone or deny (if Eden dies on a short timeframe) Eden’s ability to feel comfortable in herself.

Also (not to say that David forcing Nico to share their secret was a good thing), if Nico’s secret never becomes available to the public, they might have to go through the rest of their time in the killing game getting misgendered. Diversity loss!

J receives Teruko’s secret

J could stay quiet for a lot of things, but I feel like if she knew who the mastermind was (assuming she doesn’t know that she herself is the mastermind), that’s something she wouldn’t stay quiet about. I think that J at least wanted to see Teruko as her friend, given that she approached Teruko on the day she tested out her universal remote and roped Teruko in as part of her plan to get away from Arturo. Teruko double-crossing J by “being the mastermind” would, I think, be enough of a betrayal that J would set out seeking answers. Publicly.

Teruko, having just seen Xander’s secret, is also in a terrible mood, meaning that her ability to defend herself against J’s accusations and keep a cool head would be lessened, and possibly devolve into a screaming match. This would send the students down the incorrect(?) path as to the mastermind’s identity, further encourage Teruko to distance herself from everyone else, and cause J to lose faith in one of the few people she liked just before Arturo starts to get on her ass. Needless to say, the group would be in shambles.

That was rough, but we’re finally done. Let’s take a look at how things shook out.

(Once again, I really didn’t mean to make it look like Whit was laughing at Charles’ dead brother? A little treat for everyone who believes Whit is evil, I suppose.)

Blech. Even though torturing characters can be fun sometimes, speculating about the worst case scenario isn’t usually the kind of energy that I like to bring to this blog. Hopefully I was able to deliver something satisfactorily devastating, though!

As a final note, assigning all these secrets to everyone did get me thinking a little about what would have happened in this chapter if the motive had gone as planned, and everyone had gotten their own secrets. While it obviously wouldn’t have been as good as the good universe, I do think that people learning of their own secrets is a lot better than many of the bad scenarios that could have been created with a shuffle. Charles and Teruko definitely would have been a bit thrown, but at least in Charles’ case, I don’t know if it would have resulted in murder.

In my opinion, I think it’s probably most likely that David or Nico would have killed? David obviously cares a lot about his career and the prospect of his secret being shared with the world, so he could have tried to ride his good social graces and fake “family history of depression” secret to a Class Trial clear. Nico also has a lot to worry about with their secret getting out, and, already facing pressure from Ace’s bullying, it’s possible they would have made the same decision to kill Ace if Ace’s harassment continued. I suppose this is a question I can ask back at ya, Gremlyn, if you feel inclined to answer! :D And, thank you for the ask. Even if it got a little bleak, I had fun with it.

Stay safe and happy out there, everyone, and make sure your deepest, darkest secret doesn’t get handed to your worst enemy. Or really, just try to avoid entering a killing game at all. Until next time~

[haveyoureadthishorrorbookpoll]

Have you read...

note: If you did not finish but feel you read enough to form an opinion, you may choose a ‘Yes’ option instead of 'Partly' (e.g., Yes, I didn’t like it). Interpret "neutral or complicated" however you like, I intended this category to be a broad option between like and dislike.

John Dies at the End is a comic lovecraftian horror novel written by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) that was first published online as a webserial beginning in 2001, then as an edited manuscript in 2004, and a printed paperback in 2007, published by Permuted Press. STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me. The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.

submit a horror book!

[sinni-ok-sessi]

Five ships in five fandoms

with thanks to @tallangrycockatiel for the tag

Well, there's the Enterprise, obviously, the Surprise, the Terror, the Indefatigable...

OK no, I will do this properly

1. Lin Chen/Mei Changsu/Xiao Jingyan (Nirvana in Fire)

Coming in first and surprising absolutely nobody! I am so very onboard with any and all permutations of the Greater Liang Polycule, but I have a special fondness for Guy Who Is Very Invested In Mei Changsu and Guy Who Is Very Invested In Lin Shu becoming jointly Guys Who Are Very Invested In Keeping This Idiot Alive In Spite Of Himself. Also I love angst and this ship offers the incredible buy one get one free deal of grief that your best friend now has someone else who knows more of his secrets and grief that your best friend is burning his life up in service of someone else, all turning on the fulcrum of a man who would probably just die on the spot if he let himself feel one tenth of the things he's been repressing for the last decade. Also, I love characters who won't say what they mean, so. You know.

2. Charley Pollard/Eighth Doctor (Doctor Who Big Finish Audios)

God, they're so weird about each other. It's not romantic but it's not not-romantic and also at one point they eat each other's corpse in an anti-time universe (I think? It's been a while since I listened to Scherzo) and I remember experiencing a lot of confusing and proto-aromantic feelings over them when I was seventeen, so they deserve a mention

3. Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames (The Terror)

YES I FEEL WEIRD ABOUT IT OK. Constantly I am playing this game with my brain where a fic can neither be too historically inaccurate nor too obviously Just Straight-Up RPF and let me tell you, this narrows my options considerably. BUT. Hhhh. The fact that they're doomed from the start. The way both of them, through sheer effort of will, put aside the selves they've been playing and better, truer people, in circumstances that really would have justified the opposite. They're doomed and they keep trying anyway. I'm going to go stare at a wall now and maybe bite something.

4. Kirk/Spock (Star Trek TOS)

I know, I know, I'm basic, but look, I didn't get an E in C4 maths because I was too busy writing k/s fic to revise to deny this truth of my heart now. What can I say, I love a man who is repressing a planet's worth of emotions at any given time. I love gentle bickering, I love putting your life in someone else's hands with absolute trust, I love this simple feeling. Ok, gonna go stare at a different wall for a bit now

5. Crowley/Aziraphale (Good Omens)

This one's dedicated to last summer, when I spent three months losing my goddamn mind, having been a casual Good Omens enjoyer for years at that point. I love all the permutations of these characters, but I do especially love watching Michael Sheen and David Tennant's faces do things. I think I mentioned before my love of characters who won't say what they mean, and I especially enjoy SIX THOUSAND YEARS OF IT AND COUNTING. Also, as someone who didn't so much break with the church as saunter vaguely away, GO fic sure does tap some long-buried part of my psyche.

~

I have all the object permanence of a concussed goldfish, so I'm almost certainly forgetting some personality-defining ship, but! I have done my best and no one should criticise me!

tagging @betweencrossedblades @trans-cuchulainn (you can count each tain recension as a separate fandom if you like), @cendiar , @bitterflames and anyone else who'd like to do it

[cipheramnesia]

Hi! How’re you? I love your blog and never know how to write asks.

Any chance you’d be willing to dish out a quick (or long) list of your favorite techno horror/techno punk movies? Don’t know if those are the right terms.

If not thank you anyway for reading and I hope you are having a good night.

Full disclosure, I wasn't familiar with these terms, beyond what I could figure out intuitively, which turned out to be correct, as far as I can tell! Which is not very far so you know, bear with me. Nervously looking over my shoulders for a bear. OK.

After a crash course, I think it's safe to call Tetsuo The Iron Man and Tetsuo The Bullet Man the quintessential technohorror technopunk type movies. They are lean and mean structured around shocking violence and jaw dropping effects on a budget. In the same vein, but which you might not have heard of, is Tokyo Gore Police. It's, y'know, not for everyone, look it up and you'll have a pretty clear idea what you're in for. If you're on the bubble, let me just say "sexy crocodile vagina legs," and leave it there.

It looks like David Cronenberg is big in the subgenre and what can I say except good call. Kind of a horror pioneer across quite a few subgenres including splatterpunk and body horror, his fascination with permutations of the flesh and technology makes him a no-brainer. Obviously you should know about Crimes of the Future and The Fly, and potentially the lesser know but exception Videodrome and Existenz. However, also consider checking out his adaptation of Crash (an essential movie for anyone intrigued by trans humanism) and his adaptation of Naked Lunch. For all purposes, virtually everything in his oeuvre prior to Naked Lunch in some way invokes body horror and some degree of technohorror, so you may as well sit down and take your time with his filmography. Then follow up with with everything Brandon Cronenberg, his son, has released because that specific apple is not far from the tree.

Also mentioned is Terminator, which I guess is sort of horror and punk(ish) and techno, which sort of throws Alien and Aliens in but honestly those feel more like science fiction horror personally, whatever you know them already. And you're not here for stuff you can pull in any online search so lets get down to the weird shit.

I've mentioned it before, but Death Machine (1994) is an absolute joy to watch. Magnificent use of practical effects, tongue in cheek but never boring, if you want to see an absolutely gorgeous murder robot, this is a must-watch. Kind of the western answer to Tetsuo Iron Man with a less manic pace and heavy handed satire. Think RoboCop on a worse budget using the plot of Aliens but inside an office building. This one and a similarly impressive work of practical effects called Hardware (1990) are both difficult to unearth. If you see them anywhere, grab a copy, drop everything and watch.

There's this whole collection of AI movies that range between hard scifi and gloppy horror, but I'd like to direct attention to somewhat over looked Automata (2014). For me it has just the right blend of real world trash and futuristic dystopia, with a plot that's part mystery and part big ideas. It rides this lovely line that drew me in by featuring robots that do not feel human at all, disappointingly blocky and clunky, and led me into feeling the necessary empathy for the story to succeed. It is by turns abstract and violent, and feels almost as if it could be a precursor to Blade Runner in its visuals and story design.

Now let's rewind back to 1977's Demon Seed. It's been quite a while since I saw the original, and it's by no means the best movie out of the 70s but it is a buckwild, extremely fucked up AI gone haywire film. Content warning for an extremely disturbing sexual assault by a robotic shape shifting dodecahedron. It belongs on a technohorror list because it's the kind of movie where you'll say "wow, it sure went there." I can't tell you if it's good, only that you'll probably wish you could forget some scenes. And if you want to keep the ball rolling with slow paced science fiction movies about killer robots obsessed with sexual assault, you can check out Saturn 3 (1980).

But enough about robots, let's talk about zombies with Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014) and Wyrmwood: Apocalypse (2021). Both of these have punk vibes, very in line with most Ozsploitation movies, and the gimmick is that, as a zombie apocalypse begins, a group of survivors discover the zombies belch up methane - and they can rig up their engines to run on the stuff. The pair of movies escalate continuously in their excess and weirdness. If the first leaves you wanting more, the second will leave you absolutely demanding it. Frankly anything low budget and vaguely weird from Australia tends to be over the top of over the top. See also SheBorg (2016) about an evil alien cyborg who comes to Earth to eat puppies (very unrealistic stuffed animals) and turn people into more evil cyborgs. The only hope is punk loser teenage girls. Is it badly made? Yes. Offensive? Pretty much. But it's evil alien puppy eating cyborg versus punk rock teenagers so like you gotta see it.

Not gonna sugar coat this - quite a lot of the "best technohorror" recommendations lists I'm turning up in searches to job my memory aren't great. Seems like mostly it's more "hey here are some movies that use an technology" versus anything that gives me a real sensation of the movie being either intrinsically about the interaction of the human, the horrific, and the technological, or where the tech aspect is a kind of break-out rogue element, getting away with something daring or weird or simply grotesque through having the sort of budget and distribution (or lack thereof) that keeps sticky fingered producers from leaving notes all over the script. Anyway this is kind of a prelude to suggesting Frankenstein might be the original technohorror, and to check out Depraved (2019), a take on Frankenstein with a fascinating direction, where the titular scientist is an ex-army field medic with PTSD and his monster is made from soldier parts which, themselves, are not entirely free from the memories of their own traumatic pasts. It may only loosely follow the original story but it's a hell of a gut punch and I think exactly the sort of filmmaking that you want from any genre appended with "punk."

Lastly of course we all know the recently released M3gan, but I'm going to suggest a second Frankenstein movie, which I have not seen as yet so this is a blind recommendation, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, directed by Bomani J. Story. If the title alone doesn't give you a frisson of anticipation about what might be in the movie, the trailer should have you hooked. I'm dying to watch it, personally, but saving it to watch with one of my partners.

[racefortheironthrone]

What do you mean Quicksilver “falls between two stools” ?

The idiom "falling between two stools" means to try to do or be two things at the same time, and thus fail at both.

I think a big part of Quicksilver's problem as a character is that Marvel has never really been sure where to put him: he was introduced as an X-Men anti-villain, but left the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants after seven issues. He then becomes an Avenger as part of Captain America's "Kooky Quartet" and there for a couple years - but then goes back to the Brotherhood for a bit, then goes back to the Avengers, then kind of falls into the Fantastic Four and Inhumans' orbit when he marries Crystal the Inhuman princess.

Unfortunately for Pietro, his wife turned out to be a drama-seeking narcissist who deals with boredom by having affairs, and his in-laws were a bunch of racists - which causes him to become an Avengers villain under mind control.

Then Marvel went with the retcon that Wanda and Pietro were Magneto's kids - which I rather like as a progression and complication of their tortured relationship since the Brotherhood days - except that Marvel kept changing its mind about it and started retconning and re-retconning Quicksilver's backstory, which mired him in an endless loop of bad, repetitive storytelling from 1979 through to 2014. While the core group of Magneto, Pietro, and Wanda is a solid vehicle for soap opera drama, there are only so many permutations that you can do, and it was surrounded by an endless parade of Mount Wundagore, the High Evolutionary, and "the Whizzer" bullshit that no one likes or cares about, except for Bova the bovine midwife - Bova is cool.

Then Marvel shifted Pietro over to the X-books by having him become a founding member of the government X-Factor team in 1991 - which was the first time that he'd been a sustained part of the X-Men's world since 1965 - and he stuck around even after Peter David's run ended. However, in part because Pietro is, to be charitable, an aloof and anti-social dick (incidentally, why is it that speedsters in the Marvel universe are all assholes with anger issues whereas speedsters in the D.C universe are usually kindly goofballs?), his mutant identity was never really developed beyond his connection to Magneto until the Decimation when he went fully crazy and did some really unforgivable stuff to his daughter under the influence of Terrigen.

It also didn't help that in the interim between leaving the Brotherhood and joining X-Factor, the X-books got another arrogant hot-tempered speedster with a co-dependent relationship with his twin sister - except that Northstar is much faster and more powerful than Pietro, and has a way more interesting character arc as the first openly gay Marvel superhero, dealing with issues like coming out of the closet, AIDS, and gay marriage as well as more standard comic book fare like Quebecois separatist terrorism, whether his use of mutant powers during the Olympics constitutes cheating, and whether he has Ljósálfar heritage.

Sadly, I think Northstar ate Quicksilver's lunch while Marvel couldn't make up its mind where to put Pietro.

[shoelacesunday]

ok systems i need to know do any of you hyperfixate on a source and then manage to split either the entire cast of said source OR hyperfixate subsequently on an actor in it and get literally every character they've ever played? because i have a tennant collection in my brain. crowley, tenth doctor, alec, actual literal david tennant (staged flavored), raphael (some weird permutation of crowley) and maybe theoretically campell bain. who the fuck invited all of these guys

[vertigoartgore]

2001's Captain Marvel Vol.4 #22 cover by ChrisCross & Anibal Rodriguez.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

“I’m not even sure bisexuality exists. I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown,” Carrie Bradshaw famously said in the offensive, misinformed 1998 episode of Sex and the City in which she dates a bisexual man. These words are still painfully seared into my brain. How could a sex columnist, a character written predominantly by gay men, have such a limited view of queer identity? Nearly ten years later, a 2016 episode of HBO dramedy Insecure sees Molly (Yvonne Orji) finding out that the man she’s seeing, Jared, nonchalantly had a sexual encounter with another man. After exposing her biphobia to her friends, another character declares Jared to be gay. Ultimately, Molly and Carrie both decide, despite the chemistry and their attraction, that they could not get past their own compulsory monosexuality to continue dating a bisexual man. Why does television, a medium primed for long-form character development and storytelling, continuously fail at representing bisexual men?

Twenty-five years after that infamous Sex and the City scene, bisexuality (for the purposes of this piece, I am using bisexuality as a term that encompasses all people with the capacity to be attracted to more than one gender, including those who identify as bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and more) on television has made significant strides—from young-adult programming like Euphoria, Riverdale, and Gossip Girl, to adult dramas like Game of Thrones, The Magicians, and obviously, The Bisexual. Bisexuality is no longer relegated to a very-special episode, and is slowly leaving the realm of bad, misinformed jokes. According to GLAAD’s 2021-2022 Where We Are on TV report, queer representation on television is at an all-time high. After two consecutive years of decreases, bisexual representation increased by one percent over last year: nine non-binary characters, 124 women, and sadly, only 50 men. Fifty may seem like a solid number at the outset, but consider the quality of these representations. Aside from a few stand-out examples, like Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) on Netflix’s much-loved Heartstopper, many are relegated to supporting and recurring characters, at best, and stuck in tropes, at worst.

Maria San Filippo is an associate professor at Emerson College whose research focuses on screen media’s intersections with gender and sexuality. In 2013, she published The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, a pathbreaking monograph on the state of bisexual representation in both mediums. “Bisexuality was only beginning to be central and recurring, rather than peripheral and episodically one-off or short-lived,” she said over email. “Bisexuality’s representational legibility has been expanded; it’s less easily deniable as ‘just a phase’ when bisexuality becomes an ongoing character trait.”

Broadly speaking, on-screen storytelling has struggled to construct bisexuality in ways that reach beyond the word landing at the butt of jokes or framed through the lens of disgust and abjection. Nowhere does it fail bisexuals more than television, a site of endless discursive possibilities. Television’s long-form narrative offers unique opportunities to watch sexuality unfold over time, but rather than exploring and showcasing every permutation of bisexuality, bi men on television are far and few between.

“Bi+ male representation has always been the biggest challenge,” San Filippo said. “Bisexuality threatens heteropatriarchy and phallic authority, and so must be hidden or, if acknowledged, desexualized and disparaged through mockery or else hypersexualized as in porn (and even then bisexuality is rebranded as ‘gay for pay’).” She said it’s not unlike the uncommon sight of male frontal nudity on screen, which she explores in her 2021 book, Provocauteurs and Provocations. “Dan Levy’s character David on Schitt’s Creek is one high-profile example of recurring, more nuanced male bi+ representation,” she said. “We need more.”

The phallic authority, as San Filippo calls it, is not as threatened when it comes to the representation of bisexual women characters, who were more than double as numerous in the 2021-2022 television season. Nate Shu, a bisexual comedian based in Boston who spoke with me over Zoom, suggests that feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s work on patriarchal ideologies in film still applies here. Mulvey’s seminal 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” uses a psychoanalytic lens to look at the way women have been depicted in film primarily for the pleasure of the male viewer. She coined this theory the male gaze.

“Lesbian and bisexual characters are more attainable when they’re female because there’s something for male viewers to hold on to,” he said. “A bisexual woman is still an attainable woman to a straight man, whereas a bisexual man is both a threat and an anomaly.”

These conventions are sewn into the fabric of on-screen storytelling, a part of the canon of cinema that queer storytellers are working hard to reform. But despite this hard work, bisexual stories are still too-often made palatable to viewers through a handful of storytelling tropes: the coming out story, reasserting the status quo of a relationship or identity, or hinting at a character’s dishonesty or shiftiness (it pains me to bring it up, but Frank Underwood on House of Cards is a great example here).

The CW’s 2015 musical-dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend showcased one of the more fleshed-out bisexual men on television, Darryl Whitefeather, played by Peter Gardner. His unapologetic musical sequence on how he’s “Gettin’ Bi” was an audacious and refreshing moment for a middle-aged character embracing his sexuality—despite his entire storyline being framed around coming out. We tend to see these coming out narratives again and again, to the point where it begins to feel like viewer manipulation. The coming out scene will only lead to the catharsis of Heartbreaker-level tears if it feels earned through a character’s arc of self-suppression and pain. However, the gay blueprint has already been established, and thus the coming out story is relatable and palatable, rather than depicting a character already living their truth.

Shu, who identifies as bisexual and biracial for the sake of alliteration in his comedy (as opposed to pansexual, a term to which he more closely relates), asked me poignant questions: “What is queer representation? Having a character make an off-hand comment and it’s never acknowledged—that is a queer character, but it’s not a queer story.” His ideal bisexual representation allows characters to be authentic people living outside of constructed narratives that are more viewer-friendly like the coming out story. He could only name one example of an Asian bisexual character on television that he felt somewhat seen through—Magnus Bane, played by Harry Shum Jr. on the Freeform supernatural drama Shadowhunters. “It’s tough to get out of the boxes of what culture, film, and TV have defined for decades,” Shu said.

Marvel has been a site of critique around its inability to flesh out queer characters in an authentic way, awkwardly suggesting that all superheroes are heterosexual. The 2021 Disney+ series Loki made headlines for a 20-second scene where the titular character confirms his bisexuality after admitting he has been with princesses and princes in his past. This kind of casual bisexuality has become more commonplace in the streaming era, to the point of forgettability: Bill Pargrave on Killing Eve, playing Eve’s MI5 boss until he was eventually stabbed by murderess Villanelle, also identified as bisexual in a passing conversation. Other examples include Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) on Halt and Catch Fire and the titular character (Tom Ellis) on Lucifer. Does the off-hand knowledge of a character’s sexual fluidity, without an in-depth exploration of his sexuality, qualify as queer representation? Perhaps a better question would be, does it make bisexual viewers feel seen and understood, and add to monosexual viewers’ understanding and empathy of bisexuality?

At the end of October 2022, Kit Connor came out as bisexual in a bitter tweet after months of being hounded and online bullied by Netflix Heartstopper fans, some of whom accused Connor of queerbaiting for playing a bisexual character. The fall-out made me wonder why any actor, let alone a bisexual actor who may still be processing or figuring out his sexuality, would want to play a bisexual character in the social media age. “I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye,” his tweet read.

Not to center myself in the discourse, but I can’t help but wonder how a more thorough cultural understanding of bisexuality would impact my own dating life as a gay man, what the dating pool might look like if there was a more rigorous acceptance and visibility of bisexuality and fewer “discreet” men refusing to send you photos of their faces on dating apps with fear of being outed in their real life. The latest 2021 Census data coming out of the United Kingdom suggests there are currently nearly as many bisexual-identifying individuals as gay and lesbian survey respondents combined. These numbers feel hopeful, to me. Previous generations grew up dissatisfied by the range of representation on television, leading to iconic shows like Pose that shifted the course of television at the intersections of queerness and race. I can only imagine what the landscape will look like in 10, 20 years as the bisexual-identifying Gen Zs—the queerest generation yet—make their way into creative fields. We’ll have to watch and find out.

[oneefin]

ec puzzle hunt 2

ecph2 write-up time! spoilers a-plenty - avert your eyes if you care, keep reading if you dare

for those out of the loop: the enchanted castle puzzle hunt, or ecph2, or ecph2024, was a very hard, decently long puzzle hunt featuring 45 puzzles at or near the difficulty of mit mystery hunt. i solved this with my group of friends on huh?, but we merged with a subteam of the mathemagicians for extra firepower (and to see what solving with them was like!). this turned out to be a very good decision

i thoroughly enjoyed this hunt and thought the puzzles were all written very elegantly, although some of them are definitely not for the faint of heart. there was enough tough, grindy, deduction-y, research-y stuff in the hunt for me to say that it's not really small team material, at least at my skill/knowledge level - so i'm glad we tag teamed for this.

what puzzles did i do/like?

anyway, let's talk specifics! here's the list puzzles that i personally made a major contribution to:

artifacts (game id + what to do)

oil and water (logic + extraction)

choose your own permutation (black box behavior)

sauce code (figuring out everything)

dichotomous key (fitting things into the second key)

musical numbers (logic)

ziggurats (coding the whole solution)

no clue matchmaker (first two extractions)

solution: meta bingo (4/5 of the subpuzzles)

music of the spheres (grunt work)

take me home, country roads (logic)

the escape artist (routes for both parts)

the tower meta (mapping + what to do)

chanel (solving for the variables)

quentin (finding the real solution)

escape the castle (this was just a big team effort at the end)

and the puzzles that i specifically admired for how stupidly hard they looked were:

a very long integer (lots of tough steps, esp for the second round)

the library meta (really tricky mechanic for the second round)

musical numbers (really difficult-to-track number theory logic)

on-site only - sorry! (astronomy knowledge check)

take me home, country roads (geoguessr knowledge check)

piece by piece (insane modern tetris logic)

THE BEAST (insane cursed scrabble logic)

there's plenty else i could name for other reasons, but let's just stick with that!

some images from the journey

rainy's taskmaster submission for "transform a work of art in the great hall in the most unexpected manner":

while thinking about the armoury meta, i spent 15 minutes creating a joke while a teammate was availlessly trying to get my attention in vc:

niv made the prisms for duality, which imo look way better than the prisms on the solution page for this puzzle

on piece by piece, david had an incredulity moment from having never seen a t-spin before

we heard teams found lots of ways to map out the tower meta, which took place in hyperbolic geometry, on google sheets - niv and i decided to tackle this by taking an image of the geometry and drawing arrows showing in what direction all the puzzles were. no spreadsheet necessary! this worked great for us

my miscellaneous solving stories

on the armoury navigation, right when we unlocked the ability to submit lists of states, the first thing i randomly tried (for no reason in particular) was sending in all-white followed by all-black in front of the sign that said 0, 63. this serendipitously turned out to be the exact thing you needed to do to solve it. you cannot imagine how i felt upon realizing that after doing it

another thing that happened: i cranked out the work for the first part of the escape artist, but i was having trouble parsing our extracted phrase FOES S WAS B-WARDS. i thought about it for like a full day and then it dawned on me while i was in the shower what this was actually supposed to say and what the second step was. i finished showering asap and we cranked out the second part before i had to leave for work that morning

THE BEAST was luny's biggest win during the hunt. we found some of the part-two answers (most notably STRYCHNINE) fairly early into solving, and we were having a hard time believing that there was a second, less good answer also hiding in there somewhere. we were eventually convinced after figuring out the hidden pawn promotion mechanic, which i can only describe as a monumental team aha effort given that we didn't have the armoury meta solved at the time! it looked like:

luny notices that every board has a p

...and that the p can be removed and the board still works

i notice that STRYCHNINE would work if there was an extra b on the board

i suggest changing the p to one of b/n/q/r, like in chess

david sees that the b spot is vertically above the p

david takes the p on each board, promotes it to the top, and starts finding working alternate solutions

we profit

okay, now about that final meta

this solving story is long enough to get its own header!

i think a lot of teams didn't notice that the answers to the metas in each round could be applied to their corresponding ghost puzzle until they solved everything and unlocked the hunt finale. so there were teams who were stuck on the last puzzle for a while because they essentially had to solve five brand new puzzles to get five brand new answers. we had the fortune to see this early!

for our team, we didn't crack any of the ghosts until quite late in the hunt - so we have a 106 hour solve time on chanel, and a 133 hour solve time on trelawney. the first ghost we managed to solve legit was midway through the fifth round, when we finally took down quentin. immediately after we solved it, david was thinking about all the state and element abbreviations we saw, and made a connection

we didn't know what to do with it yet, but it was obvious that this was related. the other two meta answers we had at the time, ENLIGHTEN ME and LIBRARIAN GETS ZIP, would obviously work for re-interpreting chanel and trelawney specifically - even if we didn't know how to solve those yet.

our first moment of actually getting both solves was on THE BEAST, where as i previously described, we found something that worked (crazily!) as the secret mechanic. we worked out what both answers would be, and we made sure to enter the second one first to see what would happen. sure enough:

unlocking the final puzzle requires all 5 metas and all 5 ghosts solved. the last of these to fall was the tower meta, and by the time we did this, we already had four of the alternate ghost answers written in our sheet - the only one we didn't know was ☄, for which we had just gotten the answer MAXED IT OUT. so we knew that we had a decent shot of completing this meta extremely quickly - we just had to speedrun the alternate ☄ solve, and then figure out what to do next.

luckily, niv knew exactly what to do with this answer, and the final meta we unlocked after locking in all 5 ghosts was straightforward for us. we ended up finishing the whole thing in just over 30 minutes, and when the hunt ended, that was the fastest solve time for the finale!

so we're all pretty happy with how that went, even though the ordinary answers for the ghosts took us such a long time :)

[gollancz]

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