#I think she probably helped some people who might never have sought therapy

[allthoseotherworlds]

Ugh, vision therapy makes me so angry.

For those who are not familiar, vision therapy is basically the idea that you can do eye exercises to fix certain conditions, mostly eye related ones.

Some of the more obviously scammy vision therapy stuff comes up in situations where it's pretty clearly never going to fix the thing it says it will fix- for example, eye exercises will never make you less nearsighted because nearsightedness is caused by the shape of your eyeball.

But I mostly see it come up in strabismus communities, and it's especially frustrating for me there.

(Strabismus is misaligned eyes - one eye pointing forward and one pointing in or out, for example. It can cause double vision, vision loss in one eye, and/or lack of depth perception)

The thing that makes it so frustrating in strabismus spaces is that there is some evidence that some vision therapy can help with some specific types of strabismus, as far as I can tell. But I haven't found evidence that it can help with other types of strabismus, such as the one that I have, and some people have reported that it makes things worse for them.

It's also expensive and not generally covered by insurance, or not covered very well.

When I first sought help for my strabismus, the optometrist I saw did try to get me to do vision therapy, which I declined because it was expensive, time consuming, and I didn't think there was enough evidence that it would help in my specific situation. She also prescribed me bifocals that did absolutely nothing, but acted very friendly and understanding and knowledgeable.

I eventually did get help that was actually effective - prism lenses and then eventually surgery, which is helping so far but there's always the risk I'll need prism again in the future because we don't really know why strabismus happens in some cases.

But I feel so bad when I see people saying things like how they're paying $1,000 a month for more than 2 years for their kid to do vision therapy and it isn't working.

They're under significant financial strain because they want to do the right thing and provide appropriate medical care for their kid, and it's being offered by people in regular optometry places that give you your normal eye exams, so it seems trustworthy.

But at the end of the day it's $1,000 a month for something that, as far as I can tell as a lay person, seems pretty controversial among experts and even if it might be helpful I think people probably should have more context than they're getting about that.

It just seems frustratingly easy to take advantage of people when it comes to medical conditions that don't have clearly understood causes and where all of the methods of treatment are at least a little bit risky and uncertain. Particularly when the current gold standard is surgery, which people are understandably wary of.

I'm not judging or frustrated by anyone who chooses to do vision therapy - like I said, it can be helpful for some specific situations. But I am frustrated at people trying to sell it as a one-size-fits-all solution without providing any appropriate context and while charging people exorbitant amounts of money for it.

(Disclaimer that I'm not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. I'm just a person with strabismus who has looked things up on the internet and spoken to multiple doctors about this stuff)

[anchanted-one]

I never thought Valkorion lied about Vaylin learning to hate at a young age, nor that she was growing out of control. Senya says so as well, she says that Vaylin needed help. That she was volaitle. But that isn't the same as saying the Vaylin we see was always going to be her personality.

Particularly the part about her post-recovery self. The removal of her conditioning just freed her from old restraints and code words, like Cipher Nine breaking free of the Castellan Restraints.

Her personality was something that was developed over years of torture, pain, isolation, and sense of betrayal. She likely developed her cruel sense of humor to cope. She became angry with the world thanks to feeling stabbed in the back at every turn, and each one made her worse. I think there's a big difference in her character between Kotfe and Kotet. Like she was wounded by Arcann not taking her side in that last chapter. She did seem to trust and care about him to a degree, until that happened.

She was never going to get better unless she made a conscious decision that she needed to, and sought out therapy. She was still chained by her immense trauma.

As to why Arcann changed, but she didn't; I think there are two reasons for that. The Voss Healing ritual might have healed some of his insanity. The second is that he decided he had to change. He was capable of it. But Vaylin is too damaged and cornered to do so, at this point.

What might she have been, without Valkorion's conditioning? Probably still Sith-like, I think. Enamored by her own power, or sometimes controlled by it--like we saw when she killed all those Knights. Dark Side is seductive, after all. But she could've been more than that, too. She could've been motivated by more than anger and hate. Or capable of changing from within. I'm one of the people who believes she'd have still been an entitled, snobbish, and maybe even dangerous princess. Still prone to looking down on plebs. She might have been a callous killer. But not nearly as vicious.

I just thought: there's also a chance that snapping out of her trance after killing those Knights might have horrified the young girl, and allowed her to accept to be disciplined in a reasonable manner.

Regarding Vaylin and Valkorion

This is one of the most important exchanges in the game, as it potentially informs on who Vaylin was prior to the conditioning and to Valorion’s motivations.  Let us be clear - What Valkorion did cannot be justified. The decision to commit a child to a legitimate psychiatric care facility should be heart-breaking. There’s no question here that he was in the wrong. But there is a question: If Vaylin’s only issue was a negligent, uncaring father and a mother who couldn’t handle the breakdown of her family, would she still have grown up to be the “crazy sociopath” we all know and love? Valkorion is a liar. But is he lying to us here? Senya loved Vaylin, but she believed she needed help. Look at her expression in the trailer when Vaylin cripples those Knights. Its painful. That’s a point in his favor.

After Vaylin breaks free of her conditioning…. her personality is basically unchanged. When/if you free her with the holocron.. same deal. She doesn’t have any revelations like Arcann did at the end of KOTFE. (Nor a revelation like Vader did at the end of Episode 6.) That’s another point in his favor.  Vaylin apologists will insist that Valk is lying here. Or that the writers were a**holes for not writing the redemption story that the apologists wanted.  Maybe they’re right. But at what point do we stop being the product of our parents’ mistakes? (Hell, I can’t even figure that out in my OWN life, and my parents were nowhere near as bad as Valk.) This is an honest question. I want to start a civil, rational conversation about Vaylin and what happened to her. Please - let’s not have any personal attacks. Just people explaining their points of view, and then showing examples in the story about .  What are your thoughts? 

[luckthebard]

I am like very curious if there are more Psychic Secrets that you've learned and are willing to share?

Sadly it’s not that complicated. According to Molly (my sister-in-law’s sister), most of her job is done by her clients.

She has training as a psychologist, and being a psychic mostly meant: using her heightened empathy (which she developed as a child in a household where she had to be the peace-maker between fighting parents who later divorced) to pick up on her clients’ emotional states, and then making vague, leading statements about how their life was going or people that might be contacting them until the client latched onto something.

So, she’d say things like “I sense you’re having difficulty with finding your purpose” and a person who was dissatisfied with their career would immediately say “Yes!” and then she would move more in that direction. Stuff like that.

[inhonoredglory]

another character based question - how do you feel about mikasa? a lot of fans dont like her, im curious about how you feel! - armin anon

Hellooooo Armin Anon. OMG it’s been forever since I had the time to sit down and do a proper meta, and I apologize.

First off, I finished the manga!!! (So, spoilers ahead for anyone else reading this.) I had to lie down after reading 139. It’s a tremendous story and I’m still taking it all in. The set pieces and personal/emotional stakes of everything that happens is just astounding. If it’s one thing Isayama does good, it’s the gut-wrenching personal anguish that underlies the action. I’m absolutely floored. My favorite bit was probably the timey-wimey stuff in Paths and Eren. That blew my freaking mind. But onto Mikasa!!

A Cruel Yet Beautiful World

I remember way back when I started the anime that I started liking Mikasa first out of the group. I liked how sullenly silent and no-nonsense she was, and I liked her loyalty to Eren. Her emotion, especially when Eren died in Trost, was palpable and terrifyingly beautiful. Her grief was incredibly realistic––rushing off with a death wish that even she couldn’t succumb to in the end, because of the drive to fight that she got from Eren. In a world like SNK, her relentlessness breaking through her grief was incredibly moving. And her philosophy is basically the driving theme of SNK: “This is a cruel world, and yet so beautiful.”

This is the same moral message she gives Eren when he can’t find the strength in him to fight Annie––and gives him that warm, understanding, inscrutable smile that allows him to finally accept his own monsters, fight Annie, and save her and Armin. (One of my favorite panels of her from the manga, actually.) Mikasa is basically the first character we meet who embodies this contradictory morality, which grows to engulf SNK and other characters as well (Levi, Reiner, and Armin especially come to mind). Which could be why I was drawn to her at the start, since the complex moral outlook of SNK was the primary reason I fell hard for this story.

(And gosh, it’s tragic to realize that it’s teaching moments like the scene above that made Eren into the person who could influence his own child self to murder, the person who could wipe out so much of humanity, the person who could take Ymir’s challenge to free her by destroying the love of the person who cared the most about him. I’m still processing yo.)

Acker-parallels

I started really analyzing Mikasa when I had to defend her from a friend of mine who accused her of resenting Levi (for beating up Eren) and that’s why she attacked him so violently in the RTS serumbowl. Because of my research into rebutting that, a lot of my affection for Mikasa now comes in seeing the little ways in which she cares and trusts other people, including Armin, Levi, Gabi, and Jean. And her quiet sensibility that goes beyond her love and protectiveness of Eren.

With Levi in particular, I find a lot I like about her. Because you can definitely see her annoyance at him, but she also trusts him more than anyone else in the Corps outside of Armin. After Levi’s violent encounter with Historia, she was the only one who implicitly trusted Levi’s judgement, backing up Armin’s more reasoned logic. She sees beyond her own emotions and even moral feelings and realizes the world is cruel enough that sometimes people have to do dark things to help others and survive.

This is very much the same statement Levi made to the 104th when he had asked them to follow Erwin’s orders when the commander’s plans were questionable on the surface: “Do you trust him? Those dumb enough to say yes… come with me.” These two understand each other on a moral level, and they ask for their comrades’ loyalty without demanding it, because they each know that everyone’s conscience is their own.

There’s a clear parallel between Mikasa and Levi, not only because of their Ackerman heritage and sensibilities (loyal to a fault to their chosen person, impossibly strong, quiet and grim), but their frustration when they cannot protect the people they are responsible for. They both know they are the strongest around, and if they cannot fulfill on that power, a lot of people will die.

There are many moments in which Mikasa puts aside her personal feelings to do her soldierly duty, from leaving Eren to help with the evacuation of Trost to leaving Eren and Armin to fight the Colossal Titan alone in Shigonshina.

And then there’s the fact that Levi’s the one who could break past Mikasa’s headspace and distraction so that she can do the right thing. He understands her strong emotion, he respects it, but he also knows when that has to be put aside for the greater good. But he doesn’t put her down for having those emotions, either.

Strength from Eren, Humanity from Armin

Mikasa’s love and loyalty to Eren challenges her tremendously after the timeskip and her sorrow at Eren’s change is what really stands out to me about her character in the Marley arc. The absolute grief in her eyes when she tells Eren what he’s done is devastating, and it shows just how much goodness and compassion she does have.

And yet she longs to understand Eren, to trust him, to believe there can be something redeeming, and not merely jaded and tired, in what he taught her so many years ago––to fight, to win, to live.

There’s such a difference between these same words said here by Mikasa, so many years later, after so much heartbreak, to the anger and flame that were in them when she first heard them, back when she realized that this was the way of the world. That death and killing happens in the natural world everyday and that’s how you survive. That the world is both cruel and beautiful.

And yet as the years wore on, as Mikasa grew closer to others, found purpose in protecting others, sought a life with Eren… as she wandered further into the forest of life and society and relationships, she lost some of that simple injunction... to live is to fight, to fight is to win. She, like so many of the 104th and the others on this journey, found that it’s not enough to just fight and live and be satisfied. We really want it all to mean something, to have our actions be redemptive. To allow ourselves to believe that we do what we’re doing because we’re not just saving ourselves, but saving others, “saving the world” like Yelena points out (in the forest therapy session pfff). And it’s that drive for something bigger in our actions that grieves her so much with Eren, because as she wants her own actions to be fundamentally good and selfless, she wants his actions to be moral as well.

So while Eren is the person that frustrates Mikasa and motivates her to become stronger and braver than she ever was, Armin is the person who humanizes Mikasa and allows her the space to be gentle and vulnerable. She comforts Armin, confides in him, puts her faith in him, and puts her life in his hands.

She trusts Armin with Eren, and she values Armin’s intellect and compassion, qualities she doesn’t have in nearly as much quantities as he does: “There are only so many lives I can value. And… I decided who those people were six years ago. So... you shouldn’t try to ask for my pity. Because right now, I don’t have time to spare or room in my heart.”

This bit from her confrontation with Ymir and Historia was a defining moment for me with Mikasa. It’s honest and realistic in a way that few of us care to admit about ourselves, and it’s just super chilling and badass coming from her, too. It also shows how much she fights for Armin and Eren both. They are the two people she loves the most in the world, and she never gave up on saving either of them––from death or from themselves.

I’m looking back on Trost now and finding so much irony with the ending to SNK. In Trost, she was the one to give up on Eren, telling Armin that it was hopeless to try to extract Eren’s personality from his Titan form. And yet, like in the end, it’s always been between Armin and Mikasa to try to salvage Eren’s humanity. In Trost, Armin tells Mikasa to leave––to go do what she’s good at (saving lives)––and to entrust Eren to him.

It’s a huge expression of both Mikasa’s trust in Armin, and her belief in Armin’s abilities and friendship for Eren. And in the end, it’s the two of them again debating on if there’s any humanity left in Eren. The bond they share is intimate and deep. With all the military doubting Eren and scheming to take away his Titan (with even Jean and Connie unavailable to them emotionally), it’s only Armin and Mikasa against the world––the only two people who can truly consider Eren’s actions and hold off on judging him. And you can feel their love for him even as they doubt him.

And like back then, it has always been Armin who understands Eren most, the one who recognizes his own evil and Eren’s and finds a redemption in having others stop you, because you cannot stop yourself.

And that’s the thing I really take away from SNK and from Mikasa’s journey, that we all have devils inside us, and yet there is still beauty to be found, within us and in the world––from the natural wonders that Armin dreams of, to the comfort of purpose and companionship that Mikasa has in Eren. Love and wonder is what redeems us of our devils. And yet love itself is complicated, and can turn ugly in its obsession. That giving up that love is what makes the love selfless and beautiful, what absolves us of the selfishness within us. That’s what Mikasa learned. And in the end, she was able to release that love for the good of the world.

So I guess to sum up, I really love Mikasa. I can see why her dogged loyalty to Eren might annoy some fans, but I think there’s a lot more to her than simply that, and in fact, her journey and growth is heart-rending and one of the most symbolic arcs of SNK and fundamental to its entire theme. She’s a badass with a lot of emotion and depth behind her cold mask.

[neworleansspecial]

Dysregulation

Summary: Carlos thinks it's time to address some issues.

WC: 1.4k | AO3

Warnings: discussion of mental illness

-

They never talk about what happened at the firehouse after Owen got arrested.

To be fair, there’s a lot more going on, Carlos can admit- their home and the firehouse burned down, Tommy’s husband died, there was a massive dust storm- there hasn’t been a lot of time to talk about anything that wasn’t happening in the immediate moment. That does not mean, however, that Carlos has forgotten.

It’s not the first time he’s had to restrain TK to calm him down. While it’s not a daily occurrence, it’s happened enough that Carlos needs more than one hand to count them off. Part of him wonders if anyone else has even noticed the issue, or if it’s just him trying to hold TK together when he comes dangerously close to flying into pieces. He knows of at least two other occasions TK sought out poor coping mechanisms. There was his fight at the bar where he got arrested, and an altercation with Judd over some stupid call.

Carlos does research about it before he even thinks of talking to TK. He likes to know all the facts of a situation before he gets into it, and he figures that if he can find some answers or coping strategies online, this might go easier than just trying to shoot a shot in the dark about helping his boyfriend. What he finds describes TK’s behavior as emotional dysregulation, and it’s not uncommon in a variety of disorders, at least two of which he knows for a fact TK has been diagnosed with.

He calls Gwyn one morning alone while he’s meal prepping for the week. TK, Owen and Mateo have already gone to start their shared shift, while Carlos’ isn’t until the evening. While he doesn’t know much about Owen- seeing as TK mostly refuses to talk about his father and the two of them are rarely in the room together long- he knows him well enough to recognize a lot of the same neuroses between the two. If that doesn’t help, at least Gwyn has known TK longer than Carlos has.

They spend a few minutes on pleasantries and catching up before Carlos drops the questions on her. “I wanted to talk to you about TK.”

“He’s not hurt again, is he?”

“No, no, nothing like that, he’s fine.” Carlos double checks his mother’s recipe card and pulls out the next vegetable to dice up. “I think he is, anyway. I just wanted your advice on something.”

“Of course.”

Carlos takes a second to gather his thoughts. He doesn’t mean to just dump TK’s business out in the open, but he needs someone to help him figure this out, and he figures someone who raised TK would have some guidance on how to approach this. He wants to help TK in the same way TK helps him when he’s overwhelmed or anxious.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes TK doesn’t exactly… manage his emotions well.”

“Oh, definitely not. He gets it from Owen. Between the two of them, living in that house was just constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“That sounds familiar.” He considers the time they fought after the farmer’s market. TK acted like the world was ending, even going so far as to remove some of things from Carlos’ apartment. It had felt like an insane overreaction, but one that he couldn’t really say anything about when he didn’t know what it felt like to be in TK’s position. “How did you deal with that?”

“I spent a lot of time in therapy figuring that out.” She pauses. “Probably should have been the two of them in therapy, come to think of it. But what my therapist told me was that I have to realize that it’s real for them.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“TK’s blown up at you at least once, I assume?”

“Once or twice.”

She hums. “When he’s that upset, it’s like it’s the only emotion he’s ever had. It’s real to him. The best advice I can give you is to step inside his head with him. The thing people like you and I have to understand is that if we want to be with them, we have to understand that it's a mental illness and we aren’t going to be able to fix them. We can only support them in recovery and try to understand when they’re having an episode.”

“That’s very insightful, Gwyn.”

“I’ve been dealing with Owen Strand for almost thirty years. I picked up a few things.”

He laughs, but only because he feels like he should. They chat for a few more minutes before he hangs up and finishes his meal prep. It makes sense. Carlos isn’t a therapist, and he won’t try to be, but he can be there for TK.

When he and TK both sat down and had the conversation about their health, it had been maybe two weeks into their relationship. It was something they had needed to speak about. Carlos talked to him about being autistic, and TK told him about having ADHD and the series of inconsistent diagnoses he’s been given by the laundry list of doctors he’s been through. The current diagnosis is borderline, he had said, but he’s been diagnosed with everything from bipolar to psychosis since he was first seen by mental health professionals in his teenage years. Every doctor has a different opinion, he had said. Whatever the case, he knows what Gwyn means when she says to keep in mind that it’s not coming from a rational place in TK’s mind.

Now that they’ve moved back in with Owen while they hunt for a new place to live, things have become more tense. TK doesn’t like being here and it shows. He and Owen are constantly on edge with each other, on the cusp of a fight or actively having one that winds up with Owen drinking outside in the backyard- and pressuring Mateo to join him- while TK paces in their room and Carlos tries to convince him not to hit something. It can’t be healthy for any of them to keep living like this.

He waits until they have the place to themselves to talk about it, both for TK’s comfort and in case things blow up, as they sometimes do when TK and Carlos fall out of step with one another. They’ve had their dinner and washed up, and are now tucked under a blanket together on the couch while a documentary plays on the television.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

They fall into a short silence after that. TK fidgets in what he undoubtedly thinks is a subtle way, bouncing the leg that’s not pinned beneath Carlos’ weight and tapping his fingers against each other. Carlos feels bad for bringing him anxiety, but they do have to talk about it at some point.

“I love you,” he starts, “I really do love you, TK, and I’m not going anywhere, but I need you to be more aware of yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

This is the difficult part; finding a way to phrase things without making TK feel like he’s being attacked or cornered, something which will only lead to a fight. Carlos recognizes the irony of this tone-policing when he’s trying to talk to TK about the very root issue.

“I feel like you don’t have a good handle on your emotions and it’s upsetting me,” he tries. “It makes me feel like I have to walk on eggshells and like your emotions matter more than mine. I’m sure that’s not your intention, but that’s what I feel like, and I was hoping we could figure out a way to deal with this.”

“Like what?”

Carlos shrugs. “Ultimately it’s up to you, but one thought I had was about therapy. Maybe trying a different approach with your therapist, or even getting a new one. Or, I thought we could try couple’s counseling.”

“Couple’s counseling is for failing relationships.”

It is at that moment that Carlos knows he lost him. Whoever put that in his head- and Carlos’ money is on Owen- has won out over reasoning for right now. They don’t have to do that, of course, and if TK needs time to come around he can have it, but the mere suggestion has effectively shut down the conversation for now.

This is going to be a long road.

[cavehags]

i realize this will probably bring up old drama so you might not want to answer it. but do you ever regret, however on purpose or on accident, bringing all that unnecesary hate towards Katara? i'm really sad and dissapointed tbh. i'm a woman of color and katara was so important to me growing up. my favorite animated woman ever. and then this resurgence comes and theres so, so much unnecesary hatred for her and everyone ignoring everything that makes her a good character.

(2/3) 2- and you know, i expected this from the male side of the fandom. they were misogynistic to her and the others even back then so i would expect it to be even worse with how internet culture is more mysogistic now that ever. and i wasnt wrong. male atla fans had some truly horrible takes and views that just came across as racism and misogyny. but, i expected these circles to be better. to be a safe space for us woc who love this character. but i found the same weird hatred for her.

(3/3) 3-i just, i cant believe i feel less welcome now that i did even back then. and back then i didnt even paricipate really. but at least i could enjoy fandom content without stumbling into misogyny and racism every other post. also sorry for sending this to your personal blog b i just wanted to let you know you controbuted to that too even if it wasnt your intention. at least you realized that and arent contributing to it anymore right? cause honestly the hate has only gotten worse not less.

hey anon. thanks for asking this question, because i hadn’t addressed this topic previously and this gave me an opportunity to do so. 

no, i don’t regret publicly interpreting a character whom i love through a nuanced and human lens. and i don’t regret combating the one-dimensional interpretation of this character, which posits that she’s merely an vaguely defined object of attraction for some boy or another, and a singularly gentle, mature, maternal figure whose sole purpose in life is to nurture others. those interpretations suck. they rob her of the humanity and complexity that make her character unique and they stem from misogynistic tropes that reduce women to the services they can provide to men. the thing in the world that matters most to me is fighting misogyny, and this trend to diminish a proud and powerful and angry teenage girl by exaggerating only her most socially acceptable traits is misogyny. 

unlike you, i did not grow up watching avatar: the last airbender. the shows i watched growing up did not have a lot of girls who felt real to me. the girls i saw on tv growing up were simple. they were the main characters’ crushes. they were simple, desirable, usually sweet and loving, and not much else. if they had a flaw, it was that they were, at best, “awkward.” whatever that means. or if they were the protagonists, which was rare, they were nice enough and tried to do the right thing, but they never had strong feelings like resentment and anger. they weren’t allowed to be unfeminine which meant they weren’t allowed to be bitter, angry or in any way flawed. they didn’t look like the version of girlhood i knew to be true for me personally, which included a lot of anger and frustration and powerlessness. 

that crappy representation left me with internalized misogyny that chased me for longer than i’d like to admit. i did not learn to think of girls as humans who could be as interesting and flawed and messy as the boys were. i did not value myself as a girl, and later a woman, because i thought the best thing a girl could be was... bland. boring. pretty, but empty. passionless.

it would have meant the world to me to see a character like katara. 

because katara is angry. she has every right to be: she’s had so much stolen from her, including her mother, her people, and her childhood. katara has a short fuse. she yells. she snaps. she fucks up. sometimes she makes mean jokes! i never saw a single one of those dreamily perfect cartoon love interests make mean jokes when i was a kid. she is extremely idealistic--it’s her defining character trait--but we see the bad side of that as well as the good. we see that her need to help others  leads her to act rashly, to get herself into danger, to put others in danger too. 

and she has her very own arc. it’s not about her love for another person, either (what a snooze of a storyline); it’s about growing up and learning to break down some of that stubborn black-and-white thinking that we all indulge in as children. it’s a true coming-of-age arc and it belongs to a fourteen-year-old girl. 

when i, to use a phrase i find crass, “entered the fandom,” i quickly realized that other fans’ perceptions of katara did not line up with the things i valued most about her. other fans seemed to valorize her most socially acceptable feminine qualities: her generosity, her kindness, her dedication to helping others. and of course i love those parts of her--i love everything about her--but what is really remarkable about avatar: the last airbender is that katara’s many important virtues are also counterbalanced by equally significant flaws. a good character has flaws. katara is a good character, and a deviation from the characters who made up my formative media landscape, because she has flaws. her temper, her idealism, her stubbornness--these are flaws. flaws make her seem real and human and challenge the mainstream sentiment that girls are not real or human.

it simply did not occur to me that celebrating these aspects of katara that make her a realistic and well-written teenage girl would spark ire from other adult fans. it absolutely did not occur to me that i would then be blamed for somehow causing misogynistic interpretations of this character, particularly given that misogynistic interpretations of this character are the very thing i sought to correct when i began to blog about this television show.

i’m told there are “fans” on instagram and tiktok who think katara is whiny, annoying, and overly preoccupied with her trauma. i do not use instagram or tiktok, so i wouldn’t know, but i’ll take your word for it. respectfully, however, they didn’t get that from me. misogynistic takes on katara have existed since before i came along. i have never, ever called katara whiny. and seeing as i have been treating my own PTSD in therapy for nine years, you can safely conclude that i don’t think anyone, katara included, is overly preoccupied with their trauma. that’s not a thing. do i think she’s annoying? of course not! as a character, she’s a delight. does she sometimes find real joy in aggravating her brother and her friends? yes, because she’s 14. i, an adult, am not annoyed by her. sokka and toph often are, because that is katara’s goal and katara always succeeds in her goals. she’s not “annoying.” 

if there are “fans” who are indeed following lesbians4sokka and somehow misreading every single post and interpreting them to mean that we hate katara and they should too, i don’t really know what you want me to do about that. l4s has over ten thousand followers and we have already posted so many essays disavowing katara hate. our feminist and antiracist objectives in running the blog are literally pinned with the headline “please read.”

furthermore, you cannot reasonably expect my co-blogger and me to control the way our words will be received. we should not have to, and are not going to, add a disclaimer to every post saying that when we critique or make jokes about a teenage girl we are doing so through a feminist lens. our url is lesbians4sokka, and we are clearly women. if that alone doesn’t make it obvious, then refer back to that pinned post. 

it is indescribably frustrating, and really goddamn depressing as well, that people are so comfortable with the misogynistic binary of Perfect Good Women and Flawed Wicked Bitches that they perceive any discussion of a woman’s flaws to be necessarily relegating her to the latter camp. if that is how you (a generic you) perceive women, then i’m sorry, but you’ve internalized sexism that i cannot cure you of. and it’s unjust to expect my friend and me to write for the lowest common denominator of readers who have not yet had their own feminist awakenings. we do not write picture books for babies. we write for ourselves, and with the expectation that our readers can think critically. reading media through a feminist lens is my primary interest; i have no intention of excising that angle from my writing.

as i go through my life, i am going to embrace the flaws of girls and women because not enough people do. as long as the dominant narratives surrounding women are “good and perfect” and “unlovable wh*re,” you’ll find me highlighting flawed, realistic, righteously angry women in the margins. and for what it’s worth, it’s not just katara. i champion depictions of angry girls in all sorts of media. that’s sort of my whole thing. my favorite movies are part of the angry girl cinematic universe: thoroughbreds, jennifer’s body, hard candy, jojo rabbit, et cetera. on tv, in addition to katara, you’ll find me celebrating tuca and bertie, poppy from mythic quest, tulip and lake from infinity train, korra, and more. i adore all these women and see myself in them. i hope you find this suitably persuasive to establish that i have sufficient Feminist Cred, according to your standards, to observe and write about these very flawed and human fictional women. 

what i’m saying is this: i decline to take responsibility for the misogynistic discourse orbiting a children’s cartoon. as someone who writes about that series from a perspective that seeks to add humanity and nuance to the reductive, one-dimensional, overwhelmingly sexist writing that already exists, i am pretty taken aback that i am the one being blamed for the very problem i sought to address. except not that taken aback because i am a woman online, haha! and this is always how it goes for us. 

finally, i think it sucks that you’ve chosen to blame me for a problem that begins and ends with the patriarchy. i can’t control the way this response will be perceived, just like how i can’t control the way anything will be perceived because i am just one human woman, but i do hope you choose to be reflective, and consider why you’ve chosen this avenue to assign blame. 

[lichbarry]

A host’s perspective on Molly, Lucien, and approaching identity (spoilers for c2e117)

This is NOT going to be as eloquent as I want it to be and I can only speak for myself and my own opinions, but this is for @creativside and anyone else who wants to hear this particular perspective. Again, I’m speaking only for myself, not for every single system, especially not for Molly or Lucien fictives. I’m also referring only to DID systems here but OSDD systems, I see you. 

I don’t really advertise it on this blog (or anywhere), but I’m the host of a DID system. My relationship with the system is not quite the same as other systems we’ve gotten to talk to but nevertheless communication has greatly improved since our diagnosis and I dare say that I feel “valid” enough to try to sludge through how I’m feeling about the whole situation with Molly/Lucien. Put under a cut b/c it’s long 

For anyone who might not understand the connection I’m trying to draw: a situation where there is one body that has been inhabited by two different consciousnesses who are not otherwise aware of each other and who have different personalities, abilities, and ambitions is a situation that directly parallels the textbook DID experience. Having people call you by a different name, talk about things you supposedly did with them but have no recollection of, and having people ask or expect that they will be able to talk to this other person in your body whenever they want are all things that pretty much every system goes through. I’m not saying that Lucien has DID, but there are a lot of identical and/or incredibly similar terms and concepts being thrown around regarding him, so for the sake of this thinkpiece I’m essentially going to be acting like he does.

I’m going to make some bullet points and just try to give my two cents on how everyone is approaching this situation:

Molly was a real person, just as much as Lucien. This was discussed by some of the characters, but I’m just validating it. Lucien called Molly a “fragment” of himself-- fragment is a term systems use to describe a certain “type” of alter. DID fragments are alters who typically aren’t as “developed” as some of the others in the system, meaning that they may only exist to feel a particular emotion, store a certain memory, or carry out one very specific function. In my experience, fragments do have names just like any other system member, but likely don’t have much distinguishing personality beyond that. From what we know about Molly when he first “woke up”, calling him a fragment would be accurate. He was, originally, a consciousness who only knew a singular feeling-- emptiness. That’s all he was. But he was still his own consciousness, his own unique person, and as we all saw, he was able to grow beyond his emptiness and develop into a fully realized creation (to borrow a term). His being a fragment wouldn’t have invalidated him as being his own separate person in the first place, but the Molly we knew was no longer a fragment; he was just... a person! By the time we parted ways with him, he was just as complex and unique of an identity as Lucien is. He is not as simple as Lucien is making him out to be, we know this. 

Lucien implied that Molly integrated into him and is not dormant. What do these terms mean? Dormancy (or becoming dormant) is experienced a little bit differently for each system, but generally an alter becoming dormant means they no longer appear in the headspace/inner world, cannot communicate or interact with any system members, and will not be able to front/switch out (take control of the body). In our system, becoming dormant is equivalent to becoming comatose. Due to the way our inner world is constructed, we do know where the “body” of our dormant alter is, but we cannot interact with her in any way, nor does she interact with us or appear anywhere else in the headspace.  Integration, on the other hand, is better explained in the context of fusion from Steven Universe. A few years ago, I (the current host) integrated with our gatekeeper & primary protector (basically the one who managed the functioning of the system). Where once we were two separate consciousnesses who inhabited the same headspace, we are now joined together into someone who is a little bit of both of us, just like when two gems fuse in SU. I also happen to be the core (the consciousness who was in the body when we were born), so it could be seen as her simply “returning” to me, or fusing back with me after having broken off during her formation. Complete system integration is the end goal of some therapies, but there are some alters who view integration to be the same as dying, since the alter as a singular unique consciousness no longer exists but is instead “merged” into the consciousness of another system member.  Lucien said something along the lines of his soul having been fragmented but now fused back together. He appears to believe that he is the only consciousness currently in his body. This means that Molly is not “trapped” inside somewhere waiting to be set free. It also implies that it would not be possible to “get Molly back” as we remember him without finding a way to fracture Lucien’s soul again. Depending on your view of integration, you can view this two ways: 

Molly is Lucien, and/or Molly is dead. Matt’s slips of the tongue in continuously calling him Mollymauk further supports the idea that Molly is integrated, not dormant, and therefore is Lucien in one way or another. Molly was, after all, a part of Lucien all along, and despite having developed into his own personality in the wild 2 years he was fronting for, all that he was are now part of what Lucien is. That being said, it is clear that Lucien, just like Mollymauk, is his own person with his own goals, quirks, abilities, and personality traits. Aspects of Mollymauk do live in him, but being fused does not mean that we’re going to recognize all parts of who Molly was in who Lucien is now. Lucien (we’re assuming) is the core, the original consciousness of the body, and is thus far more developed than Molly ever had the chance to be. They’re the same person in the sense that Molly is no longer a separate entity, but not the same person in that Lucien has any of Molly’s memories or would suddenly feel compelled to start acting more like him just because they integrated. 

Mollymauk is not back; Lucien is. The Mollymauk we knew is not there anymore, and it’s a good time to mourn him. I don’t know what kind of DND fuckery Matt or the cast might be able to do, but from my perspective of what’s going on, Molly isn’t going to suddenly pop out or break free or anything like that. Mollymauk as an individual died when we saw him die, and I think the Mighty Nein are at least starting to realize that. Lucien even genuinely offered his condolences. Again, it’s DND, there’s always some chance that they might find a way to talk to their friend again, but by this point the idea is making me uncomfortable. Trying to separate Molly from Lucien again at this point feels... unnatural and disrespectful. No one has ever sought to de-integrate the alter that I integrated with, but I would be very disturbed if they did, and the idea of doing that even in this context unsettles me. Find hope in the possibility if you want to, but I’m probably never going to support it. Molly is a part of Lucien now and I think both we and the Nein need to accept that. Lucien may be evil, but he has just as much right to be in control of his own body as Molly did (arguably more, but I’m not getting into that debate). Whether you like Lucien or not, it’s his body, now only his, and no one has any right to take that away from him.  I know it’s not exactly the same and it’s probably not how people mean to come off, but I can’t help imagining me in this position. If someone was very close with the alter I integrated with and did everything in their power to try to make her split off again, even if it meant harming me or making me lose autonomy over my mind & body... you can see how that’s a very uncomfortable thought, at the least. Again, I’m not saying anyone is inherently bad for wanting Molly back or missing him, I’m just saying that the situation we’re being presented with is that it’s only Lucien now and we & the m9 should respect that. If you want to mourn Molly, now’s as good a time as any. You even have Lucien’s blessing. That being said...

Lucien doesn’t want to know about Molly, and that’s fine. As someone pointed out (I think Jester?), Molly didn’t want to know about Lucien either. As is the case with a lot of systems who don’t have well-developed communication, they’re practically strangers to each other. All they knew about each other is what was on their body when they woke up and what other people (also strangers) told them they supposedly did once. Again, parts of Molly exist in Lucien, and I’m sure aspects of Lucien existed in Molly, and even now there are some similarities to draw. But neither Lucien nor Molly have any obligation to feel kinship towards each other. In their eyes, they are two completely different people who have never interacted. Systems only start to feel like families after a long time of having good communication, of developing relationships, of working through trauma or the complications that come with having DID. From what we’ve been told, Molly and Lucien likely never even developed a headspace or been in a situation where they would’ve had the possibility of actually meeting. People are just talking to them about someone they didn’t know and honestly the typical response is to just nod along in the moment and decide if you really want to unpack that later. And not wanting to explore who this stranger who inhabited your body was is a completely valid response! Especially given that Lucien doesn’t explicitly have DID-- he doesn’t have the goal of trauma recovery, nor does he have any reason to find out more about who Molly was given that he’s now supposedly fully integrated.  Again, it’s more a matter of autonomy. Lucien is his own person, and to him Molly might as well have been something he called himself when he spent 2 years blackout drunk (which, let’s be real, is a pretty accurate comparison). Sometimes it’s fun to hear accounts of what other system members got up to when they fronted, but that’s only after years of therapy and working through my own feelings about having DID. Before that, there were times when it felt like a frustrating invasion of privacy, or an unnerving sense of losing control of not only what I did, but what it meant to be me. I don’t really see Lucien struggling with these things, but I’m just saying that there’s only so much he can be expected to care about who Molly was given his circumstances. 

This got super long and I’m never sure how to conclude these things, or if that’s even all my thoughts on the matter. Send me asks if you want to I guess, just please be respectful. I’m not trying to start any arguments, I’m just giving my perspective/how I feel about this situation as a system host. 

tldr; Molly integrated with Lucien and it’s more respectful/probable to assume that he’s not coming back the way people wanted him to. Getting Molly back the way people expected is incredibly unsettling to me because it takes away Lucien’s autonomy and basically says that Molly is more important than Lucien’s control over his own body because we like Molly more.  Their situation does resemble the experience of being part of a system in a lot of ways and I don’t know how to feel about it besides just kind of awkwardly going “ahaha” and looking around to see how singlets are approaching this. 

Again, not saying there’s a right or wrong way to feel about this, nor am I “diagnosing” Lucien with DID. Just talking about connections I’ve made and the things that I relate to/make me uncomfortable. Whether Matt is aware of how much this situation resembles DID or not, I think that he’s handling it incredibly well and have no complaints about Lucien or Molly’s characterizations. 

[sukirichi]

read the new chapters and aAAACKKKKK BESTIE???

y/n - ‘I was born to make everyone’s life a living hell’ maam this LINE?! JAW DROPPED, TIME STOPPED being insecure all her life and wanting to live up to the expectations to her dad just to have that sliver of attention from him, that sentence gives us a glimpse on how little she felt despite being accomplished, rather successful actually because she always cleans her boss’ mess have a lot of baggage to unpack. and when the secret was confirmed, her anger rejects all of the entity that ties with her past because both her parents deprived her for the things she was supposed to have– becoming greedy to fulfill those. then eventually, somehow, going back to her roots aka being humble after having the talk with her dad. As most of her insecurity started because of him and how she had to be the bigger person for his other family, clearing out the misunderstanding between them brought a sense of peace  while she’s settling in the restless turn of events.

and with our main man gojo, this guy, it is not wise to- 😤😤 how can you say you’re engaged after doing the body tango huh? esp when you said you want y/n to be your wife? oh gee and the revelation of his past relationship with mia and how he sees her in y/n is so fucked up. can’t help but think that satoru wanting to marry and be this lovey-dovey with y/n is just him reliving the moments that mia never gave him in the past. and y/n accepting that their current relationship is based on how they’re filling up the cracks in their needs and settling for the sake of familiarity. imagine how deep in love our girl is to keep satoru in her life 💔 im still in it for the second lead agenda

needless to say, everyone here needs a therapy so they can get their shit straight together 🤧🤧 (ノ•̀ o •́ )ノ ~ ┻━┻

BUT i know you mentioned this many times but laywer! naoya all poised and in his best behavior while helping y/n in her new situation has my heart go💕💕 winning lots of cases and is known in his field, he proved that he is both beauty and brains. and the pen spin??? man be pulling those fast spins either to distract or impress the person he is talking to flashing those perfect white pearls wtf now i can’t get that out of my head naoya brain rot 🥵🥵 also celebrity chef! sukuna in charge of all those delicious, exquisite cuisines? imma make myself broke just to taste his masterpiece🥲 ooh but how about him being a michelin star chef and owning a michelin-starred resto?! no doubt, left and right you see this man appearing on some high food magazine on the cover 😊😊 oh oh i also saw that supermodel! choso?? also his face is plastered on magazines AND luxurious advertisements ex. shibuya crossing! where most people be drenched in his glorious presence yea weird shibuya arc ref pls kill me and everyone talks how handsome and intimidating he is while he just have a rbf and only the closest people in his life get to see him drop that front 😌😌

with that in mind, imagine supermodel! choso being a godfather to the baby of y/n?? he would go soft immediately at the sight of the child and would probably love giving lots of branded clothes it will be good enough for more than a year ☺️🥲😭

oh and there is this one scene in chp7 that reminded me of the recent korean movie i watched i dont wanna say it in case you wanna check it out its called sweet and sour and oh god idk why but watching it, mind keeps on prompting your fics 😬😬 maybe bcos i some of your fic always had med related topics and the main actress role there is a nurse. i remember that you’re on your clinic training so maybe thats why 😳oohh pls don’t forget to take breaks and be safe heart and oh ur a psych major too? oh wow hi ig in relation to one actress in the sweet and sour fic, she was also in a kdrama the heirs- which was popular at the time with it being packed with some solid household actors and actresses. sky castle tho, ig it relates to the theme of reckless more because its mostly how parents from the upper class will mindlessly destroy someone’s life to attain their materialistic desires  🤧🙂

this fic, easily in my top 3 ‘heart belongs to who it dictates’ so many twists, so much drama and ANGST! YES BESTIE GIMME THOSE ANGST 🥲😌

i hope you’re doing well nowadays :’)) we need to find gege the best chiropractor to take care of his back, so good that it’ll make naoya respawn to life 🙂 suki i don’t think i’ll get tired of saying how much i love your work that it feels illegal im reading it for free 💔. i don’t really have much to offer, but im wishing you good health and success in your life :’)) aah i’ve mentioned this already but take care always 💕💖😊🥰

- 🍳

read the new chapters and aAAACKKKKK BESTIE???

y/n - ‘I was born to make everyone’s life a living hell’ maam this LINE?! JAW DROPPED, TIME STOPPED being insecure all her life and wanting to live up to the expectations to her dad just to have that sliver of attention from him, that sentence gives us a glimpse on how little she felt despite being accomplished, rather successful actually because she always cleans her boss’ mess have a lot of baggage to unpack. and when the secret was confirmed, her anger rejects all of the entity that ties with her past because both her parents deprived her for the things she was supposed to have– becoming greedy to fulfill those. then eventually, somehow, going back to her roots aka being humble after having the talk with her dad. As most of her insecurity started because of him and how she had to be the bigger person for his other family, clearing out the misunderstanding between them brought a sense of peace  while she’s settling in the restless turn of events.

and with our main man gojo, this guy, it is not wise to- 😤😤 how can you say you’re engaged after doing the body tango huh? esp when you said you want y/n to be your wife? oh gee and the revelation of his past relationship with mia and how he sees her in y/n is so fucked up. can’t help but think that satoru wanting to marry and be this lovey-dovey with y/n is just him reliving the moments that mia never gave him in the past. and y/n accepting that their current relationship is based on how they’re filling up the cracks in their needs and settling for the sake of familiarity. imagine how deep in love our girl is to keep satoru in her life 💔 im still in it for the second lead agenda

needless to say, everyone here needs a therapy so they can get their shit straight together 🤧🤧 (ノ•̀ o •́ )ノ ~ ┻━┻

BUT i know you mentioned this many times but laywer! naoya all poised and in his best behavior while helping y/n in her new situation has my heart go💕💕 winning lots of cases and is known in his field, he proved that he is both beauty and brains. and the pen spin??? man be pulling those fast spins either to distract or impress the person he is talking to flashing those perfect white pearls wtf now i can’t get that out of my head naoya brain rot 🥵🥵 also celebrity chef! sukuna in charge of all those delicious, exquisite cuisines? imma make myself broke just to taste his masterpiece🥲 ooh but how about him being a michelin star chef and owning a michelin-starred resto?! no doubt, left and right you see this man appearing on some high food magazine on the cover 😊😊 oh oh i also saw that supermodel! choso?? also his face is plastered on magazines AND luxurious advertisements ex. shibuya crossing! where most people be drenched in his glorious presence yea weird shibuya arc ref pls kill me and everyone talks how handsome and intimidating he is while he just have a rbf and only the closest people in his life get to see him drop that front 😌😌

with that in mind, imagine supermodel! choso being a godfather to the baby of y/n?? he would go soft immediately at the sight of the child and would probably love giving lots of branded clothes it will be good enough for more than a year ☺️🥲😭

oh and there is this one scene in chp7 that reminded me of the recent korean movie i watched i dont wanna say it in case you wanna check it out its called sweet and sour and oh god idk why but watching it, mind keeps on prompting your fics 😬😬 maybe bcos i some of your fic always had med related topics and the main actress role there is a nurse. i remember that you’re on your clinic training so maybe thats why 😳oohh pls don’t forget to take breaks and be safe heart and oh ur a psych major too? oh wow hi ig in relation to one actress in the sweet and sour fic, she was also in a kdrama the heirs- which was popular at the time with it being packed with some solid household actors and actresses. sky castle tho, ig it relates to the theme of reckless more because its mostly how parents from the upper class will mindlessly destroy someone’s life to attain their materialistic desires  🤧🙂

this fic, easily in my top 3 ‘heart belongs to who it dictates’ so many twists, so much drama and ANGST! YES BESTIE GIMME THOSE ANGST 🥲😌

i hope you’re doing well nowadays :’)) we need to find gege the best chiropractor to take care of his back, so good that it’ll make naoya respawn to life 🙂 suki i don’t think i’ll get tired of saying how much i love your work that it feels illegal im reading it for free 💔. i don’t really have much to offer, but im wishing you good health and success in your life :’)) aah i’ve mentioned this already but take care always 💕💖😊🥰

- 🍳

y/n becomes a real baddie when she’s pissed off 😫

hmm y/n wasn’t really working hard for her dad’s attention, it was more like she felt so left out and unwanted (she feels unwanted wherever she goes) that she just decided to pack up and support them from afar bcos to her, she’s so alienated in her dad’s family that she felt like she had to work hard to earn a spot in their table. she knows she’s the outsider but she wants to feel like she can be part of them, that she is also a child deserving of love and care, but becos her stepmom focused more on her actual kids and her own dad was too busy with his new family now, it made y/n feel that she had to do something to be worthy of that.

that’s why most of the money she made working in tokyo was still wired to her family; she put her brothers in school and supported them, all because she hoped it would make them accept her more. now, things are different because she finally found her biological family, but even if valeria and co. still don’t want her, y/n is now more focusing on building something that’s truly hers that no one can take away. yes yes, she did become greedy, but more for power than of acceptance. she got to a point she doesn’t care as much vying for her parents’ approval and now thinks her luxury gives her comfort; only because at least she has that much. like she said in the latest chapter, happiness was not what she needed, it was stability and money - all things she lacked before.

and yea she did go back to her roots! all of her issues started with her dad anyway but that part is slowly patching up 🩹💔 oooh actually your theory is right bestie 🧐 gojo found y/n interesting bcos she reminded him of mia, so the more she pushed him away, the more he’s like wait, i’ve been here before, let’s not repeat past mistakes but i can do better now. on the part where gojo talked to mia while she was asleep, notice how he said he’s given a second chance to do better now, all because he couldn’t do them with mia but he could with y/n.

ohhh actually y/n was the one who established that ‘fulfilling mutual need and settling for familiarity instead of being lonely’ type of relationship. gojo avoided her for weeks and he’s pretty settled in keeping his distance, but she was the one who sought him out. deep down, y/n is afraid if she doesn’t at least use him as an anchor to her more humble roots, then she might spiral out of control and end up like valeria, thus using him as a ‘distraction’ but in reality, she needs his comfort to be grounded.

SECOND LEAD AGENDA OMG LETS GOOO 🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️ geto the fine fine option.

NO BESTIE MOMENT U MENTIONED LAWYER NAOYA I JUST KNEW I WAS GONNA SCREAM. okay but lawyer! naoya is so fine, i love his character so much bcos he’s a pure bean. originally, i was gonna make him an antagonist but i found he had more potential as a good, supportive character. HIS PEN SPIN HELPPP WHY COULDN’T HE JUST BEEN OUR BABY DADDY 😫 he pulls them fast spins bcos he’s nervous btw HAHAHAHA y/n can be quite intimidating and lawyer! naoya is sometimes too precious.

celebrity chef! sukuna is MEAN! he was pictured after gordon ramsay so lmao. omgggg sukuna being famous not only for his food but also his handsomeness 😳 he gets so cocky over how no one can get in his level while popping a battle of champagne, listening to ‘careless whisper’ while dancing to his reflection in the mirror 😤

also yoo supermodel! choso is THE hot shit 🥵 he’s so famous his schedule is packed for an entire year and a half and those are just for very selected brands and designers! ugh imagine going to work on the subway when you see supermodel! choso with rbf posing sexily and you swoon because he’s so sexy. plot twist that choso doesn’t know how to drive bcos as a kamo family member, they grew up with drivers taking them to and fro, so when his driver got sick and everyone else was busy, supermodel choso takes the subway himself and hides behind a face mask and cap while still wearing extravagant clothes that makes him stand out more. he does not have ‘subtle’ on his book at all.

and yeah people say he’s intimidating but its more his height and build + rbf! in reality, he’s just as soft and sweet as naoya, but both of them go into protective mode when someone they care about is being crapped on. and boy when they DO get into “what did you just say?” mode, better run away 🏃🏻‍♀️ supermodel! choso is also an heir to the kamo empire though not after the business, but he still has enough power to take you down in a second.

meanwhile, lawyer! naoya didn’t become this successful without being so savage yet composed he makes you question your entire existence before he drags you to court. lawyer! naoya is so scarily convincing that he can make you plead guilty even tho you did nothing wrong 💀

aaaah omg supermodel! choso LOVES babies actually! as the eldest child who looked after his brothers bcos the kamo parents are always away for work, being a father figure is so natural to him. i can picture him being the one who cries harder than gojo if the baby is born bcos he’s so excited, then reads poems to the baby before sighing that childbirth is such a beautiful thing 🥺

omg i know sweet n sour, the actresses are one of my faves tho i haven’t watched it yet! oooh they’re a nurse? i didn’t know that 🧐 i actually finish my short training in a week so i’ll be heading on to heavy majoring in psychology! wait bestie are YOU also a psych major 😳💕 oh and i see i see, sky castle *jots that down for future references* reckless actually has lots of significance in terms of the parents’ roles so i’m excited to see that! and aww thank you so much, can’t believe i made it in someone’s top three 🥺💕

HELP AHSKWKW i’m gonna call the best chiropractor in the world and send them gege’s way, i’ll cry a river if that’s what it takes to bring my boo back to life 😭 and noo baby the support already means a lot to me, i’m just happy to indulge in my hobbies and share it wih you all so thank you very much for everything 🥺 please take care of yourself too n have a nice day!! kith MWAH 💕

[seasonofthegeek]

Here comes a personal post because this week has been a doozy and I want to get some words out. Also please don’t reblog this post. This is just for me to get some thoughts down and there’s no reason to spread it. Thanks. :)

Back in May, I began having passive suicidal thoughts and knew I needed to get some help. I didn’t want to actively hurt myself, but I thought it might be better for everyone in my life if something happened to me and I died. After a visit to the doctor, I started an antidepressant that worked for me and I got back to a mental level I was more comfortable with. A few months later, something happened to someone I love dearly and it showed me that I was just teetering on the edge, even with the meds, so I sought out a therapist to have someone outside of my life to talk to.

It’s been a great experience and my therapist is easy to talk to but also good at keeping me accountable in the tasks I’ve set for myself, while also reminding me that it’s okay to fail. She listens and offers advice when it’s warranted and some sessions I’ve just walked in and word vomited for an hour and that’s been fine. A few sessions ago, she suggested I start seeing a psychiatrist to get to the root of some of my issues. She was wondering if I had bipolar disorder (my brother was diagnosed with it ) and put the ball in my court to contact someone if it was something I wanted to explore further.

I was an anxious mess but called one of the psychiatrists my therapist recommended and set up an appointment. That appointment finally came up this past Tuesday and after battling an angry child not wanting to go to school, no time for breakfast, construction traffic, and school traffic, I finally made it to my appointment twenty minutes late (I called on the way, of course). 

I was a wreck and almost didn’t get out of my car when I pulled into the parking lot, but I forced myself out into the cold and then into an unknown office. After a few minutes, I was taken back to meet my psychiatrist and he was one of those people who can immediately put others at ease. He recognized the My Hero characters on my hoodie and told me his daughter loved the show. He smiled and made small talk.

And then he read aloud the notes my therapist had sent him with my consent.

I’m going to be honest, it was ROUGH hearing everything I’ve been dealing with read by someone I just met in the span of a few minutes. He went through it simply, not commenting, just relaying information. I took a big breath when he finished and told him it was hard to hear it all at once. And he smiled and suggested we just start from the beginning.

And that’s how the rest of the appointment was. He was pleasant and kept things simple and asked questions that led me down different paths of conversation. He told me that I would be diagnosing myself with his help and that I had all the power.

It was refreshing.

My therapist is great and she has helped me with a lot of issues, but she can mainly just offer advice on how to deal with things.

My psychiatrist led me to understand why I deal with the issues I have and where they stem from. It was something I’d never given much thought to honestly. I’ve had bad things happen to me, I think everyone has in different degrees, but I didn’t think any of them really shaped the person I am. I was wrong.

After discussing things, we both decided that I’m not bipolar because it didn’t fit for me. I do have depression and anxiety though and they were manifesting in ways that can mimic some of the symptoms of bipolar disorder. I have a feeling I’m always going to remember how he explained my level of anxiety too.

Dr. S: If I said to you, Kayla, do you think most people deal with this level of anxiety in their day to day lives? Would you say “no” or would you say “duh”?

Me, thinking my high level of anxiety is completely ordinary, laughed: I’d say duh.

Dr. S with his nice smile: Ah, see, that’s not the case.

Me: ...oh. Ohhhhhhh.

It was a bit of a revelation to find out this brain stuff I deal with constantly isn’t the norm for everyone else. I didn’t realize most people don’t think when they tell their family goodbye in the morning that it might be the last time they see them because something horrible is going to happen or that their house is going to catch on fire when they go on vacation. I didn’t know most other people didn’t check for their keys three to four times before locking their cars in the fear of locking themselves out. It didn’t occur to me that a lot of people don’t think their friends hate them just because they haven’t spoken in a few hours/days/weeks. 

It was almost a relief to find out and at the same time there was morbid fascination in realizing how off my thinking is because of the anxiety. 

He helped me trace it all the way back to being a child and what caused it and how the depression came into play because the anxiety was fear and fear made me feel helpless and that made me angry. I used to have angry outbursts and temper tantrums out of the blue up to adulthood. I learned to monitor myself better and get things out before they blew up as I got older, but with Dr. S’s help, I could go back and see where it had started and that I’ve carried it my whole life. 

I’ll probably always carry it, but now I know and now I can start working on it.

So that’s what happened with me and my brain stuff which is more than enough for one week, but my son’s brain stuff came into play on Friday.

My son is, goodness, he’s just amazing. He’s my world. He’s funny and goofy and creative and a butthead and moody and loving and better than I could’ve ever imagined. For the past couple of years, it’s become more and more obvious that he wasn’t quite like other kids his age. He was developing slower and didn’t start really speaking until he started doing speech therapy.  Even after a little over a year, a lot of his speech still comes from mimicking. 

He started school this year and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I was called back in on the first day after he’d been there for two hours. He’d had a meltdown in the cafeteria because it was too loud and his speech therapist (who thankfully was the same person he’d been working with the previous year as a private student) picked him up from his class and took him to her room as a safe space for him to calm down. He adores her and was able to soothe himself as soon as he was in that familiar setting. I went to a meeting on the first day of school to find that my son was not going to be able to make it through the whole school day, but the school wanted to work with him so he’d still be able to attend. We cut his days down to two and a half hours and went from there.

A month or so after that, a meeting was set up with the district psychologist who wanted permission to observe him and see what further help might be needed. She suggested letting an occupational therapist and physical therapist observe and test him too and I consented to all it. He was having issues connecting to the other kids in his class and he couldn’t seem to follow the schedule. The teacher worked with him the best she could, giving him a visual task calendar he could follow and use to point to and other similar things, but she also has seventeen other students. I knew more help was needed.

So for the past couple of months, he’s been going to his general education class and his speech therapy while also being observed by a psychologist on some days. He did a couple of sessions of testing with an occupational therapist and a physical therapist (who cleared him with a laugh that he is definitely strong and super fast). It was all coming down to the meeting we had on Friday.

Seven women sat around the table and showed me how each of them wanted to help my son. I’m tearing up just thinking back on it, to be honest. The psychologist broke everything down for me and made sure I could see every step of the process they’d all gone through while watching my son. At the beginning of the year, he’d started with paperwork stating that he was receiving help with speech and language but that was being moved to a secondary position because he was now being categorized as mild to moderate on the autism spectrum.

I’d had a feeling about autism. I’d wondered about it from time to time. He fit some of the indicators. Like with finding out about myself, it was a bit of a relief. There’s something about knowing that is just so helpful because then you can ask, “Okay, what are the next steps we need to take?” 

They suggested moving him into the special education class. It’s half the size of the class he is currently in, he’s already familiar with the teacher, his speech therapist works in that class a lot, and he knows two of the students from his group speech sessions. 

LIfe is kinda funny how it works out sometimes. My mom has worked with special ed kids most of my life. I went into her classroom all through high school and got to know the students in there. We’ve discussed the past year or so that my son might need that kind of help, even if it is only for a little while. So when this group of teachers and therapists and the psychologist recommended moving him, I felt comfortable agreeing. I know from the other side of things that it is not something done lightly or suggested easily. 

The psychologist even said it might be something he only needs for a year or two and if they can get him coming to school for longer periods of time, they want to get him back into the general class he was in for short periods. I know they’re looking out for him. They’ve already done so much to accommodate him and I can see they truly care for his development. I feel really lucky that he is going to the school he’s at.

I’m relieved and I’m worried. He’ll start his new class on Monday and I know it’s going to be a tough transition, but I hope it’s for the best. He’s such a smart kid and he’s got a great imagination and I know he’s got a lot going on in that lil noggin. I just want to do the best I can for him.

So I’m watching out for him and I’m trying to take care of me for me and for him (and for my husband and my best friend and my parents). It’s been a lot to learn in the span of a few days but I feel hopeful for the future. <3

[downsbeatrice]

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[thedeadflag]

so this is something I've been mulling over for a while now - do you reckon it'd be possible to make a version of a/b/o that isn't fundamentally transphobic, or would it reach the point of "this is so different that you might as well not call it a/b/o" before that? off the top of my head you'd have to take out all elements of g!p, mpreg, and biological essentialism, and it'd probably be possible to write a version of a/b/o with that framework, but I don't know if I'm missing anything.

a/b/o is a reactionary trope that relies on cissexism-derived biological essentialism to function. Like, that’s the engine that powers the bdsm/power dynamics, cisheteronormative breeding/family building, “dub/non-con”, etc. elements that draw people to it, and led people to create it in the first place. 

Like, my best attempt at describing a non-transphobic, non-shitty typical a/b/o adjacent fic would include:

Werewolves (let’s face it, werewolves can be really cool if written well, and there’s a lot of really good ways to write them, a lot of ways to subvert tired subtropes within the trope)

Found Family-focused family/pack building (because wolves often adopt wolves from other packs into their own, blood lineage isn’t really a thing; much like vampires being created, newly turned werewolves of any age can be considered their sire’s child; if it needs to have a pregnancy arc between two men or two women, there’s IVF/IUI, or magically/spiritually-induced pregnancies, and of course writing a fully fledged complex trans character with their own non-pregnancy arc and virtues/flaws/goals/etc. and getting relevant trans beta writers who aren't your friends to keep it on track if you’re a cis writer)

A flexible, non-binary gendered society (rather than the rigidly structured biology-is-destiny a/b/o society) that’s trans inclusive either explicitly, or implicitly if it’s a new social universe with different rules. 

If mating seasons have to exist, they’re cultural more than biological, and no biological processes that could impede or trouble a person’s ability to properly consent. 

No inherent, glorified or reified power dynamics, certainly none rooted in or fostered through biology. 

That doesn’t seem very much at all like a/b/o to me. It’s a werewolf AU, which is the reason why a/b/o was created in the first place. It wasn’t enough. It needed something more than just a supernatural bent

I’ll continue on below for a bit on some simplified functions of a/b/o, but it’s mostly just some ramblings.

-

Like, to quote the originators of the genre/trope:

I'd like to see Alpha male Jared, and Bitch male Jensen. Jensen is a snotty prude (think Lady from lady and the tramp) he may be a bitch male but he's not just going to let anybody take a go at his sweet little ass...until he meets Jared...then prudey little Jensen turns cock slut for Jared. Bonus points for J2 being OTP, Jensen was a virgin before Jared, and now that they met each other, it's for life.

...

There are three types of men, alpha males, beta males, and omega males. Alpha males are like any ordinary guy with the exception of their cocks, they work just like canines (the knot, tons of cum, strong breeders, etc) The beta male, is an ordinary guy without the special cock. Omega males are capable of child bearing and often called bitch males.

Like, I want you to look at that real close and see what’s going on in there.

This was created to be a trope where there’s a world where women, as we explicitly know them, don’t exist, but where a subgroup of men take up the functional role of the woman in the heteronormative social structure of the world. It’s also not surprising that (assumedly cis) women created and initiated the spread of this trope.

Look at the language used. This is heavily, explicitly gendered for a reason. If you’ve read much of anything about how the male gaze impacts female sexuality, you’ll know a common response is for women to position themselves out of the proverbial frame entirely, so that no part of them can explicitly exist as an object, where they can take on the role of a subject. There’s no women whose experiences will directly link to her own and her own perceptions, comfort/discomfort/etc.

However, many of these women also have been heavily affected by the male gaze and heteronormativity, and that combined with not knowing what a real gay male relationship is like, what it looks like, what experiences might be unique to it...they fill in the blanks with their own conditioning. 

And maybe seeing a lot of that toxic masculinity in media content was unsettling because of how women get treated in that content, and how they in turn might feel in those shoes. But if a MAN, even if it’s a heavily female-coded man, were to undergo that...well, it’d be easier to appreciate those tropes and dynamics they’ve been force-fed to believe were arousing, hot, desirable. Especially if they can have two hot men in it. They can enjoy that self-created taboo, bypass their own discomfort and insecurity, and project it onto a type of person different enough to suspend their disbelief and maintain that difference, even if they’re pumping that guy full of all the typical misogynistic tropes and experiences they’re not comfortable having directed towards them and other women.

In short, it’s a way to get off on heteronormative norms/tropes, using another as a vehicle in order to keep up their cognitive dissonance.

Of course, this eventually spilled out into the Het fandom (makes perfect sense, since many of the a/b/o originators and proponents were het women), and then worked its way into Femslash fandom by piggybacking on g!p in order to meet the necessary criteria for PiV sex. 

Just, in this case, you necessarily shift some of the puzzle pieces around. Trans women take the place of the “alpha”, acting as an acceptable vehicle for a toxic masculine cis man, since lesbians aren’t into men. Even if the trans woman is generally written, in nearly every way aside from part of her body, as a toxic cis man. The original a/b/o’s “Bitch Male”/Omega Male is swapped out for the  Omega Female, usually a spunkier, more in your face version outside of romantic/sexual contexts in the media content, but let’s be real here, she’s still by and large submissive when it comes down to it. 

In a world where more wlw grew up feeling predatory for their attraction to other women, for feeling sinful, for being rejected from female intimacy het women enjoyed with each other after coming out, etc., it’s pretty common for a lot of lesbians to lack initiative, not be able to read or communicate romantic/sexual cues between each other...to essentially be “useless lesbians’ as the joke goes,and to feel isolated and undesirable. 

So writing a F/F fic where some hot woman modeled in the image of some hot cis woman pursues you? Takes the initiative sexually/romantically? Doesn’t beat around the bush, but is blatant? Who can’t control her lust around you? Who can give you the perfect nuclear family you’ve been conditioned to want in order to feel value in our heteronormative world, but were told you weren’t worthy of or could never feasibly attain? Who gives you a sexual encounter you have some education in and some emotional stake in due to common conditioning of PiV sex > all else? Who can give you plausible deniability for a number of contexts due to a lack of ability to explicitly consent? etc. etc.

Like, yeah, that’s going to feel comfortable for a lot out there. That’s going to seem pretty hot/arousing. It’s a way to get off on the norms and expectations thrown on women in society, but in a way that lets them distance themselves ever so slightly from men by shifting it from text to subtext, explicit to implicit.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here’s a few snippets from one of the most popular g!p/omegaverse femslash writers (if not the most popular) that help illustrate how/why this trope has found an audience

Why Do I Write G!P?The elephant in the room. It arouses me, but it’s also a form of self-comfort. I grew up in a very fundamentalist home. Women being with women was at first unspoken, and then derided, both by my church and at home. I felt insanely guilty for my attractions, so I developed ‘cheat codes’ to deal with it.

It was okay if the woman I had sex with in my dreams had a penis, for example. It was okay if she forced me to have sex with her. It was okay if we basically simulated heterosexual sex.

Because of my childhood (which included conversion therapy), I found myself falling into heterosexual roleplay patterns, at least sexually. It was a lingering thing from my childhood.

It’s still there, and I know I’ll never be rid of it.

...

I associate penetration with power. You know, being steeped in sexism from an early age turned some problematic thoughts into kinky lemonade. And since I’m a femme sub, taking power away from the top by ‘penetrating’ them can ruin the mood for me. I mean, I can write power bottom scenes with the best of them, and I enjoy them, but… *shrug* if I’m going to write omegaverse or g!p, someone’s getting fucked, and it’s not the top.

There are rules to a/b/o. There are specific reasons it’s sought out, read, and created, and that’s why it’s hard to imagine a version of it without those harmful elements, because the trope requires them for the audience to be satisfied.

It’s why all gay male a/b/o fits a pretty specific pattern. it’s why femslash a/b/o fits a very specific pattern. There’s nearly no deviation as a rule, because there are so many parts that have to be in play and functioning in a specific way in order to get the desired result. 

I could go on for hours about this, and the above is all a pretty damn simplified take of what’s going on in a/b/o for it to exist in the way it does and meet the needs of the audience, and I’ve already written a lot about this in the past, so I’ll try to cut it short here.

[nerdygaymormon]

Maybe you've answered this before, but why don't you just leave your church? Doesn't it bother you being part of something that rejects you? Don't you want love? I don't understand why gay people ever stay in that church.

I get these questions from time to time. Never sure what to make of them. I get that it’s unusual for a gay guy my age to still be part of church. I hope part of this is they like me and want me to be happier. But it also feels like they are looking down on me, idk.

I don’t have a short, simple answer, so strap in, it’s going to be a long ride.

1)   I was a teenager in the 1980’s. It is hard to be gay now, but it was so bad back then. Being gay was shameful. The 80′s was the AIDS crisis, so mostly what I heard about being gay was death. There were no legal protections, society was against us. Actively hostile, bigoted statements were common. My own dad told homophobic jokes to big laughs. Coming out looked like I’d be condemning myself to a terrible life and strip all the good things from me.

Also, with no role models, I was having to work through what it means to be gay. I also did manage to get ahold of a gay porn magazine (this is long before internet was a thing). I was crazy to think I could hide it. I shared a room with three brothers so no privacy. Despite my denials, my parents knew this was mine and they were so upset. My dad now tells me he wishes he sent me to conversion therapy once he learned I had this magazine. Can you imagine?

2)   I grew up believing in this church, which included the terrible things taught about me as a gay person. At age 19 when my bishop challenged me to pray about going on a mission, I instead prayed to know if God could possibly love me (which is really sad that a kid could grow up in church and not know that). I felt love radiate across my body as a voice in my ear said “You are not broken.” That experience sustained me for a long time

3)   I went on a mission in the 1990’s. If you haven’t been on a mission, it’s probably a surprise that it can be a relief. There’s no pressure to date. I could form close bonds with other men, and even though these are non-romantic relationships, they are intensely close.

4)   I was still in the closet when I went to the church schools in Rexburg & Provo. At the end of my first semester, my roommate came on to me and let me feel him up and stuff. I went to sleep thinking maybe the two of us could leave the church, transfer to a different school, say goodbye to my family and we could have a life together. It would be a huge sacrifice for both of us and I thought he felt the same, but the next morning he turned me in to our bishop. I thought I was going to get kicked out of school, be sent home in disgrace, maybe disciplined out of the church, but instead I was put on probation and had to stay the summer in Rexburg. I was heartbroken and swore off love and focused on school. At the end of the summer, to my surprise the bishop made me the elders quorum president.  

That first roommate, we were best friends. He is Bi and decided a life with a woman would be easier, and considering it was the 1990′s, he was correct. He left school a few days later, met a woman and got married. I hate how he ended things, but I don’t blame him for the future he chose for his life.

5)   BYU in Provo was my backup school, and reluctantly it’s where I transferred to. It turned out that I genuinely liked BYU with 2 exceptions, the severe restrictions the Honor Code placed on LGBT students (which was the same as at the Rexburg campus), and the fierceness with which the Honor Code Office sought to enforce those restrictions. Occasionally I’d hear rumors of sting operations they had done to catch gay students. There was this low-level fear always of getting caught whilst a student in Provo. My roommates also expressed their dislike of anything remotely gay. Even though I kept the rules, I didn’t dare tell anyone that I’m gay because the potential cost was high.

While at BYU I had a major faith crisis. I no longer believed a lot of the truth claims of the church, but I wasn’t about to lose all that tuition money. I stuck it out. So not only was I pretending to be straight, I also had to act as though nothing about church bothered me.

6)   The same voice that told me I am not broken would occasionally tell me that it’s okay to pursue relationships. It gave me great hope. I still get that message. Being a good Mormon, I thought this meant that somehow God was going to change the church. In the temple I’d hear that it’s not good for man to be alone and the law of chastity was presented in a way that could include me if I was married to a husband (the temple says no sex except “with your husband or wife to whom you’re legally and lawfully wedded”).

7)   After BYU, I should have come out and gotten on with life, but I didn’t. My first job was working for a Mormon boss. A landlord who is LDS gave me a deal on rent. Coming out seemed like it would disrupt my life in really negative ways. Plus YSA Wards were a source of friends and support network.

8)   In my 30’s I was no longer in YSA wards, and the world was getting better for gay people. The fight for gay marriage was in full swing, and so many of the people in my life were very opposed to it. It bothered me that the church was so opposed and fought gay marriage because in my head, it was a way for me to follow God’s promptings and pursue a relationship.

Being a Mormon is very much an identity. It’s hard to peel off. It’s my social network, it’s what much of family life revolves around, It’s a belief system and way of viewing the world. it’s a map of what one’s goals in life should be, and so on. Staying in the closet kept the rest of my world intact.

I know you’re thinking wtf, you’re a grown man, own your life!!! I grew up in an unstable family situation (we had many financial troubles and moved frequently), so I crave stability. Remaining in the closet and in the church were keys to maintaining that stability.

9)   Squashing all my romantic and sexual feelings also shuts down most other feelings. I spent most of my 20’s & 30’s feeling numb, like I was watching life but not a part of it. I spent those years wishing I was dead, that a bus would hit me or a major disease would strike. Those kinds of deaths would end my misery and also be okay for my family because they wouldn’t have to know I’m gay. I recognize now how messed up that is.

10)   The great source of happiness in those years was being an uncle. I’m the oldest of 7 children, my siblings had lots of babies born in those years. The joys of being an uncle only increased the pressure to stay in the closet and in the church because if I didn’t, my only source of happiness might be taken away.

11)   I finally reached the point where I was tired of going through the motions of having a life. I was ready to come out. Rather than make some grand announcement, I decided to be honest with anyone who asked about my life. When someone tried to set me up with their friend, I would ask if she had a brother. As these sorts of situations came up, I was coming out to people one by one.

I didn’t exactly “come out” to my family. I figured since my parents had found the gay porn mag when I was a teen, and then gay porn malware on the computer when I was college student, they probably already knew (and they did, but were in denial). Also, I thought coming out would be saying I’m not trustworthy and an awful person for having pretended to be something I wasn’t for so long (not true, but that’s how I thought of it).

12)   I’m such a late bloomer that I sometimes am embarrassed about it, especially now that so many people come out in their 20′s and even as teenagers. At the first Pride parade I attended, someone told me that we all come out when it’s right for us, and this was my time. I think that’s true.

13)   Most of my adult life in church was being pianist in Primary. Shortly after I started telling people I’m gay is when I was called to be in the stake young men presidency. My stake president says he looked over at me playing piano one day and thought, “that man has much more to offer.” I wonder if it’s because I was more confident, my identities were less in conflict than they’d been in the past, I wasn’t afraid and hiding.

As stake young men president, I made sure I knew by name and something about every youth in the stake. I wanted them to know they were seen, they were heard, they were loved. Teens go through such hard things and I wanted to be a kind, supportive person in their life. Most youth don’t know who the stake youth leaders are, but they all knew me. Several told me about hard things in their life and some even came out to me. Parents of gay teens would come speak to me and I’d let them know life in church is hard and unfair, ways they could help support their teen, and prepared them that their child’s likely path would be out of the church. I felt like I bloomed in this calling and made a difference.

14)   In 2015 marriage became legal for same-sex couples across the USA due to a Supreme Court ruling. I thought that finally the church would have to come to terms with it and accept it. But then came the November policy banning the children of gay couples from being members. It felt like a punch in the gut and I nearly walked away. I was still stake young men president and weighed whether the difference I made in this calling was worth putting up with how church clearly didn’t want me. 

15)   To help my parents buy a house, I had a bunch of their debt put into my name and I lived in the house with them. At the time it seemed a good way to avoid the loneliness of being on my own. But living with them also made walking away from the church tricky.

16)   A month later I hit the 3-year mark of serving in the stake young men’s program, I was released from that and called to be stake executive secretary. My stake president told me that anyone can make appointments, but he wanted my unique viewpoint in all the highest councils of the stake. In this calling I occasionally meet general authorities and I speak with them about being gay in the church. My stake President recently joked that he has twice been a counselor in a stake presidency and now is a stake president, and in those years he’s met many general authorities, yet I have way more impact on them than he ever has.

17)   Shortly after getting this new calling, in 2016 I started my tumblr blog. Eventually I used the blog as a way to examine, explore and record what it’s like to be gay in the LDS church. In some ways this blog is one giant pep talk to myself.

18)   In 2017 my blog exploded, one of my posts went viral. It’s almost like God got tired of waiting on me, now I was out to everyone who knows me, and many more.

All of a sudden I had so many hurting Mormon LGBT people contacting me, most were teens and twenty-something’s. I’ve tried to help them, to affirm them. In many ways it feels like the years as stake young men president working with teens, the years I spent developing a spiritual independence, the studying & thinking about how being gay can work with the gospel, the fears & worries that are part of being in the closet, all of that prepared me for this.

19)   Later in 2017 my mental health dived. I became suicidal. I started therapy. I finally had to face how harmed I’ve been by my time in church. I also had to admit I will never be enough in this church, I can never reach the goals & purpose of life as laid out by the church,. My therapist helped me see that I need another framework for what a successful life looks like and what would make for a joyful life.

In 2018 I was still in therapy and was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, which partly explains why coming out and leaving the church were so difficult. The major driving motivation of this disorder is wanting to not disappoint people.

20)   My therapist says I feel things more deeply than most people, but because I’d pushed down my feelings so long, it’s actually a bit scary to feel so much. I also started dating and trying to get gay friends. These sorts of big changes were hard for me. The psychologist said, in an amused tone, that I fully examine a path before I’m willing to take a step down it, meaning I’m cautious and slow to get going, but am certain when I begin of where I’m going.

21)   Some of my family openly embraces me as gay and loves me no matter what. Some make their love and access to their children conditional on my being in church.

22)   I thought 2018 would be the year I leave the church. There’s a personal reason I haven’t; I feel there’s one more thing to do, a friend whom I can help. That I came ahead to pave the way for this friend.

I know this all sounds crazy, talking about a voice telling me it’s okay to have gay relationships or that I have some missions in life to accomplish. That’s part of faith, I guess.

23)   It’s unfair to say I’m still attending church for my friend. First, I don’t want him to feel any pressure. Second, it’s my decision, not his. I also am working on paying off debt so I can more easily live on my own, I’ve joined Affirmation and met a lot of LGBT Mormons/post-Mormons and feel like there’s something of a potential support group/friendships there. I’m thinking of changing jobs, even moving to a different university. In other words, I’m laying the groundwork to make any shift more smooth. Whether I take a breather from church or not, these are good things to do.

24)   I’m in my 40′s and can see that in some important ways I’ve lived a stunted life. But I’m also able to use my voice to speak up for LGBT individuals inside the church, to try to make this little corner of church kinder and more receptive.

25)   I can’t even imagine what you’re thinking of me. A hypocrite, someone who stays with an organization that contributed to my own mental health crisis. Someone too afraid to live. I can’t undo my past and all that lost time. I’ve made a lot of progress and am moving forward. I also believe and hope that things I share on this blog and things I say in my local church help LGBT members.

Maybe you can understand, maybe you can’t, why my life went so differently from yours. I’m certain you won’t agree with a number of decisions I made, but they were mine to make and they explain where I’m at now.

[moonwest]

Full Ben Whishaw Interview in Sunday Times Magazine

Ben Whishaw, the voice of Paddington, the millennial Q in the Bond films, the next generation of Mr Banks in Disney’s epic Mary Poppins reboot, is fresh off the plane from LA. He is wearing a navy shirt, dark wool trousers and a fluffy knitted hat over his lush curls. It’s a strange combination of quirkiness and elegance. At the start of the year he won a Golden Globe and a Critics’ Choice award for his captivating portrayal of Norman Scott opposite Hugh Grant’s Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal. Of course he says he didn’t expect to win, and of course he says it feels great, but when I ask if this recognition from Hollywood means he’ll spend more time out there, he says: “No idea. I don’t feel it’s my world. I just sort of dropped in and it was a lovely thing. I would like to drop in more often. Maybe it opens doors. I guess we’ll see.”

For now, it’s back to the day job. Whishaw, 38, is rehearsing a play called Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, in which he plays a man who likes to dress up as Marilyn Monroe. “We just got the costumes,” he says. “I wear a dress that’s a replica of the one she wore in The Seven Year Itch — the white one where the wind comes up. They’ve also given me the bum, hips and breasts. I don’t think they’re as big as Marilyn’s, but they’re proportionate to my body. It’s a strange thing. I’m not playing Marilyn, I’m playing a man who’s infatuated with her. The play is set in the year she died and he’s in mourning for her. Apparently there was a spate of copycat suicides that year.”

To research the role, Whishaw has been reading a book called Fragments. “It’s bits of Marilyn’s diary, notes on hotel paper, poetry,” he says. “She writes beautifully. Arthur Miller was here with her when they were doing the film The Prince and the Showgirl, and she opened his diary and read about how disappointed he was with her, how embarrassed he was being around his intellectual friends with her. Apparently this was devastating to Marilyn. All these men say how difficult she was. It makes you want to strangle them. But she really was amazing. She had a lot going on, a lot of sadness on her plate, poor darling. To be a star in that star system and those men.”

If she had been born 50 years later, does he think she would have been part of the #MeToo movement? “I’m sure she would have. I’ve been listening to interviews with her. She doesn’t seem afraid of anything.”

Fearless and vulnerable. It’s a contradiction that could possibly describe both of them. “Yes,” he smiles.

Almost 15 years have passed since Whishaw, fresh out of Rada, was acclaimed as one of the best ever Hamlets in the Trevor Nunn production at the Old Vic. His portrayal earned him an Olivier nomination and opened the door to film and television roles. He voiced Michael Bond’s Peruvian stowaway bear in the two recent Paddington films and is lined up for a third, as well as an animated TV series for Nickelodeon. Perhaps his best known role is Q in the Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015). As soon as he’s finished his Marilyn, he will begin shooting the next one, though no one in a Bond movie can tell you in advance what it’s going to be like. “I think they’re probably trying to figure out what to do with the storyline,” he says. “At least I know that my character is the same. Someone did tell me there might be a scene with Q’s cats.”

I immediately want to sort out an audition for my cat Roger Moore.

“Does Roger travel?” he asks. “Could he go to Pinewood? And can he cock an eyebrow?”

Yes, he can. That’s why he’s called Roger Moore.

“I’ll get onto Barbara Broccoli about it,” he says.

Whishaw has created an ever-widening niche for himself — he has made room in film, theatre and television for malleable, sensitive male characters that are sometimes described as androgynous, but what they really are is sexually ambiguous.

“Do you think I’m androgynous? I think I’m quite male-looking. Androgyny is different to non-binary, but I hate all these labels. I get mixed up.”

It’s true, there are many labels; nonetheless Whishaw is a 21st-century man. When you think of those macho actors of the last century, men like Rock Hudson, who revealed he was gay only when he was dying of Aids, it seems so different now.

Whishaw entered a civil partnership with the Australian composer Mark Bradshaw in 2012, but for a long time he did not discuss his private life. He would say things like, “An actor shouldn’t reveal their sexuality because it pigeonholes them.” Once he had come to terms with it himself, however, hiding it became difficult in a different way. “People assume there’s some juicy secret,” he says. “But I don’t agree any more with that statement [about being pigeonholed]. I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all, and since revealing my sexuality I haven’t had any negative effects.”

Perhaps that’s because he is such a skilful actor, perhaps the pigeonholes aren’t as rigid as they used to be, or perhaps the revelation has actually helped him. He shrugs. He doesn’t mind talking about it now, it’s just he can’t be conclusive.

At one point, Whishaw was lined up to play Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, although he was never given a contract or confirmed officially. Various versions of the biopic had been on the cards for about 10 years. Sacha Baron Cohen was in the frame first of all, then Whishaw, and ultimately Rami Malek. The film has been accused of not being “gay enough”, but, for all the criticism, Malek’s career-defining role won him an Oscar.

We talk about how hard it was for Mercury to admit that he was gay and how he would refer to himself as bisexual. But then perhaps he was. He certainly had sexual relationships with women. “I think it’s very unfair when people say they’re bisexual and they’re accused of being gay really,” Whishaw says. “If we’re honest about these things, perhaps most people are on a spectrum.”

Whatever the risks he took in revealing his sexuality to the public, Whishaw found it much harder coming out to his family. “I’ve gone through a few difficult things,” he says. “There was a moment in my early twenties when I did not feel very good about myself. It was to do with my sexuality and not knowing how to be myself and hating myself. I did know [my sexuality], I just couldn’t tell anyone.”

When he eventually told his parents, they weren’t surprised, but he still struggled. He sought therapy. “It really did help,” he says.

He carries himself with such a sense of otherness that I am surprised to learn he is a twin. “We were born on the same day and we came out of the same place at the same time, but we are totally unalike,” he says. “Perhaps you can see we are related, but we don’t look alike. He’s blond. He came out first and was very pink and chubby. And I was this squashed, dark thing that popped out a few moments after. We were so different, but we were always dressed the same and taken everywhere together, even to things I was not interested in, like football. So I’ve always defined myself by him, but in opposition to him. I like everything different to him. There’s not a single thing we have in common, except we both liked the scary rides if we were taken to a park.”

Don’t twins normally have a kind of supernatural understanding? “No. No understanding, no telepathy. When I told him [about being gay], he wasn’t surprised, of course, but still.”

He notices a black crystal around my neck and I explain that it was given to me by my hypnotherapist.

“I’d like to try hypnotherapy,” he says. For what? “Smoking,” he says. “It’s so frowned upon. You feel ostracised from the world if you smoke. And there’s the hair twiddling thing.” He starts twiddling his hair. “I’ve probably been doing this for the whole interview.” He hasn’t, but apparently it’s been a lifelong habit. “I’ve done it since I was a baby. I don’t know why I do it.”

I recall the title of a Peter Cook anthology: Tragically, I Was an Only Twin. That’s what Whishaw seems like. I can’t imagine him with a brother. “My dad says if my brother and I were one person we would be an amazing, perfect human,” he replies.

It’s often reported that his father works in IT, but that’s not true. “He lives in the countryside and raises chickens behind a farm. He used to be a footballer and he now works in sports with young people. He’s not an IT person at all,” Whishaw laughs. His mother works in cosmetics. They split up when he was a young boy, but he has good relationships with both of them. He talks about them with love.

The last time we met, Whishaw told me he was afraid of meeting people. “I haven’t got over that,” he says. “I love people, but I’m just shy of meeting new people, especially when they’re famous.”

In particular, he was bashful around Meryl Streep, whom he starred alongside in Mary Poppins. “I’m so completely left speechless when I’m in the same room as her. Do you never feel that speechlessness come on you?” he asks sweetly. “Even though she seemed to be the nicest person, I was very timid and shy around her.”

It’s odd how someone so shy can look so confident — smouldering even — on screen.

He walks off in the furry hat that makes him look part man, part mole. It’s certainly a statement. But perhaps the most curious thing about Whishaw is we’ll never entirely know what that statement is.

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is showing at the Shed’s Bloomberg Building, New York, April 6-May 19; theshed.org

[clamydomona]

Veronica Mars Season 4 (Spoilers)

I had zero expectations going into this season, didn’t watch any interviews or trailers or look up spoilers because I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Most revivals I watched in the last years were ony so-so and most of the time when I was looking forward to something I ended up disappointed. Wth that in mind, I enjoyed a lot of what I saw.

Positive stuff:

- I loved that Veronica had a new dog that she named Pony, but I’m disappointed that he didn’t get to go on any of her snooping adventures with her like Backup in the old days.

- I’m glad that Wallace ended up married and with a cute baby and a good job and that he seems genuinely happy, that guy deserves it.

- I could listen to Cliff for hours and still enjoy his relationship with Keith and Veronica immensely. I like that he seems ridiculous but good at his job at the same time.

- Same goes for Vinnie. I can understand why the police chief is reluctant to trust PIs if most of her interactions are with Vinnie. Less so with Keith and Veronica. But at least she seems more qualified for her jobs than the Lambs ever were.

- I enjoyed what we’ve seen of Dick, but I’m glad that it wasnt more than that.

- Big Dick’s right hand man reminded me so much of Mike from Breaking Bad I sometimes confused those guys.

- The thing I enjoyed most of all was Veronica and Keith’s relationship, their teamwork and their banter. That was one aspect of the show I liked the most and I’m glad this season had so much of that.

- Logan’s character development was great as well. I loved that he ha help working through his issues to move beyond his anger and resentment that drove him so much of his life, while still being enjoyable and recognizable as a character. I also absolutely loved the scene where Logan came home with blood on his shirt, acting like nothing happened. And that Logan seemed to have very positive relationships with Keith and Wallace, after their earlier animosities.

- I also liked that scene where the murder heads were all arguing about who really killed Lily. Seems very reflective of all the True Crime culture nowadays.

- The mystery was interesting enough and not as convoluted as some of the previous mysteries.

- I also enjoyed many of the Leo-scenes, there was some pretty good banter and I liked how they snapped out of their drunkenness to draw their guns withing two seconds. Could have done without the sex dream, though I never for one second thought that thing was real.

- Nicole was a very fun character and I’m sad that her storyline ended the way it did.

So-So stuff:

- While pizza guy Penn was an interesting character, after a while he became very annoying being featured so heavily.

- Matty was interesting as a mirror of Veronica’s teenage self, though I’m not sure I would have let her be unsupervised in the office after some of the stuff she pulled beforehand.

- While earlier seasons were certainly violent enough, I could have done without so much casual beheading. Seemed way over the top for me.

- After watching Jason Dohring in iZombie, I was relieved that his head didn’t look as tiny in comparison to his very defined torso as it did in that show. For some reason that was extremely off-putting to me last year.

Negative Stuff:

- Why so little Wallace? They could have found something for him to do, it can’t be that hard. Also I’m disappointed that he was treated as so disposable by Veronica. She treated spending time with him more as an obligation than anything else. Was that the same in the show, it’s been a few years since I saw that.

- No Mac. She was missing so much.

- Why they felt the need to rob Weevil of every positive thing in his life and regress him to the character he was in season 1 I will never understand. I understand that the falling out between him and Veronica was described in the books, but without knowledge of those, their relationship this season just seemed very weird.

- Why the hell did we spend so much time in the first episode with the spring break kids before the bombing, when nothing of that seemed to matter, the scenes could have been cut out and the story would have been just as easy to follow?

- Why did none of these people, except the brother of the congressman and Matty, seem in any way trauamtized or sad that they lost their friends/family in a bombing when they instead expected to have fun partying?

- Why was Veronica belitleing Logan’s therapy so much? Didn’t their relationship fall apart numerous times because of his destructive tendencies? Shouldn’t she be happy that he sought help, even if she is incapable of getting it herself (when she, let’s face it, probably needs it more than any other character apart from Logan)? After a while I honestly didn’t understand why Logan wanted to be with her, when in earlier seasons it was mostly the other way around.

- Is Logan an addict of any kind or not? I thought he was, since he was a sponsor in the movie, but he drank (and did drugs, did I understand that “E” correctly?) with Nicole, Veronica and Dick in one episode, so I guess not?

- If for some reason the show gets another season, it’s reasonable to expect that they will drag out Duncan again, right? He’s the only ex-boyfriend they haven’t used in any of the newer incarnations of the show.

 And then the ending:

I wasn’t spoiled, but it did not exactly come as a surprise to me, because Rob Thomas so fas has been incapable of writing a relationship that survived a whole season intact (at least on Veronica Mars and iZombie, I don’t know about any other products of his. I learned not to get attached to any of Liv’s reationships, because why bother when he kils all of them off anyway?). I honestly thought there was a bomb in her car when Logan reminded her on Skype to move it and expected the bomb to detonate when she went to move it while the cartell guys were watching her apartment. I expected the other shoe to drop the whole episode, so I couldn’t even get into the wedding because it was so obvious to me that the whole thing was far from over without any explosion in the finale.

I wasn’t surprised that the bomb went off, though I am surprised that the show seriously went there and appearantly killed off one of the main reasons people still want to watch the show. After watching so many supernatural shows (and a few soaps), I remain highly sceptical that he’s actually dead without showing the explosion itself, the body, the funeral or anyone mourning at all. Especially after they did something similar in season 2 but didn’t kill off Keith.

But after catching glimpses of interviews going around, I am stunned that the death at least seems to be intended to be permanent and I don’t get that argument at all. Why the hell is it necessary to kill of one of the main attractions of the show in order to “save” it? Who wants to tune into a show that killed off one half of a couple that became an essential part of that show? Seemed to me more like he wanted to make sure he would absolutely not get another season, and providing extremely shitty closure in the process. It just didn’t seem like the show to me. In previous finales, while Veronica went through harrowing experiences, the show still managed to end on a somewhat positive note (which might arguably be the case with Keith getting healthier and Veronica willing to see Logan’s therapist, but all of that seemed extremely hollow to me). Plus, the death was so tagged onto the case storyline, not intrinsic to it at all, but just added after the resolution. Random deaths might be true to real life, here it just seems to be shock for shock’s sake, but not necessarily good storytelling. Furthermore it’s just depressing to pile on more and more trauma onto Veronica without any of the relief of healing.

Also, I completely disagree that the show would not be interesting anymore with a married Veronica. Why couldn’t the conflict and drama come from the cases itself, while her private life was stable for once? I’ve really grown to hate this notion that couples are not interesting once they are in committed relationships, so they have to do will they/won’t they, cheating and love triangles. I’ve read tons of fanfiction that somehow managed it, why are so many showrunners incapable of seeing any appeal in that at all? Honestly, the show would have been more innovative if it had let Veronica be married and at least a little attempting to overcome her trauma. But I guess a happy Veronica is not an inspiring Veronica to the showrunner.

I honestly think Rob Thomas overestimates Veronca’s appeal as a character without any of the other elements. No Neptune, not Keith, no friends, no Logan, just Veronica going around solving cases does not sound appealing at all to me. If he wants something like that, it would probably be better to create a whole new show based on that kind of premise, or write this season like that to begin with. Just kill off Logan off screen in a war and start Veronica as a lonely and depressed PI somewhere other than Neptune if that’s what Rob Thomas wants to write so much.

I really have to thank the absolutely terrible finale of HIMYM. After completely screwing over my favorite couple, I just stopped being invested in any couple to the degree I was before. I never assume anymore that the story will go in the direction I expect it to go, no matter how obvious that outcome seems to me, because who knows how differently the showrunner envisions their work and what they see as “good storytelling” (which somehow often means killing someone off right before the end, how fun!). I am kind of surprised by how angry I am about Logan’s death despite my low expectations and diminished investment in the couple since I first saw the show. At least here I can ignore the ending much more easily than in HIMYM.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG136!

- In a very interesting way for an episode dealing with The Web (both as an active force outside of the Institute and… very close to it: Annabelle sending Alison there, Jon being unable to focus on his lighter), this episode dealt, in a lot of small ways, with the idea that members of the Archives team are… regaining control of themselves and their lives?

Melanie is attempting therapy! She’s cautious about it but she’s taking measures to try and get better, she’s putting efforts into it, she wants to feel better!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I shouldn’t have– MELANIE: Just… forget it. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s good, though. I–I’m glad you’re getting help. MELANIE: Yes, well. We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there. ARCHIVIST: I guess. Still, it–it is a good step.

Jon is right on this and… there was already something hopeful in the way that Melanie didn’t explode at Jon for accidentally compelling her; she wasn’t pleased by it but… she could have shut the conversation down. Instead, she tried to minimise a little what Jon had done and asserted her boundaries, which she did again with the therapist, but without cutting either of them out. She’s clearly not in the bestest of places, was uncomfortable with the topic… but I’m so glad and proud of her for taking this “step”, for deciding that she had to deal with her demons – possibly from way before she even came to the Institute for the first time?

Meanwhile: it wasn’t so much about Jon’s actions but about what he finally admitted – that he’s aware that he made a choice, that he’s actually had… a very twisted and casually self-destructive way of facing the coffin and of considering his own life since he’s woken up:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is.

It has been a process for Jon, too; the theme of “choice” has been sneakily prevalent in season 4 so far, following up on season 3:

(MAG087) Georgie: [SIGH] Look I’ve, I’ve got work to do. You listen, or don’t listen, or cross-record, or whatever you want, just… just think about it first, okay? You can choose to leave it alone. [DOOR CLOSES] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [TAPE PLAYER IS LOADED] [CLICK]

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: I never chose this! ELIAS: You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.

(MAG111) GERRY: Thing is, it’s harder than it looks. What’s out there doesn’t care about blood. […] But they care about your choices, your fears.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean…

(MAG121) OLIVER: The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off for a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge where The End can’t touch you – but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices; now you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.

(MAG132) DAISY: I don’t want t–to be a s–sadistic predator again… I–I don’t want to… hobble around, like some pathetic, wounded prey either… I don’t know which would be worse. And I’m sc–scared, now, that I’ll never get the choice… ARCHIVIST: One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one.

(MAG134) PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to. It won’t even work unless you’re willing to commit.

(MAG136) DAISY: Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices – we all made ours. Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming?

So, although his memories are still missing and he might not remember Oliver either (Jon has never mentioned him so far, and given how Jude had been able to kick Jon out of her dreams, he might have done the same thing despite giving a live-statement), Jon is aware that he made a decision – maybe without knowing in the details what was at stake (there could be a few things we could still scream at Elias in MAG092 re: informed consent :w), but he was faced with two options and elected one over the other. It has its own shades of tragic undertones and heartbreak, but it’s also… his own choice, this time around, and still more controlled than “sign papers to become Head Archivist of an eccentric Institute (sells your soul to a Fear god that you’ll now have to feed through other people’s terrors or your own)”. By pushing and questioning Jon, Daisy had been able to make him say what he chose to do (and as seen above, why), and his handling of the coffin was one of such things. Even if, indeed, the Web sent him in that direction (leaving MAG131’s tape for him, maybe manipulating him to some extent through the lighter), Jon, like Martin, is still appropriating what they did as being his own decision:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection [CHUCKLE] between free will and humanity. Still trying to figure that out myself. [SILENCE] DAISY: Jon… when you went into the coffin. Was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was… that something telling you to do it? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: It was me. I was… drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision.

Jon agreeing to Daisy’s proposition to go get drinks may also be going in his own right direction – back in season 1, Jon would have probably shrugged off the offer? But as Helen told him, “people change” and right there, Jon had a micro-choice; he could have refused and, still, after a small hesitation, decided to go along with it instead.

Of course, when it comes to reclaiming their life back in this episode, the most striking was Daisy; Daisy, who had already explained who she wanted to be (MAG132: “I d–, I don’t… I don’t know who I am without, without the chase… I just know… that I… I don’t like who I was back outside. I don’t want to be her again. I want… to be… better…”) and who, so far, has managed to stick to that; Daisy, who handles herself as best as she can even (especially!) though it requires other people because she wants to avoid being alone for PTSD reasons:

(MAG133) [CLICK–] DAISY: You sure? ARCHIVIST: No, uh, it’s, hum. It’s fine. DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy.

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. […] DAISY: [QUICKLY] You’re not babysitting me, alright?! I know that’s what the others think, sometimes, but… that’s not it. I just… don’t like…  being on my own if I can help it. You know. Flashbacks, panic attacks, the usual. Just trying to avoid it if I can. ARCHIVIST: I know, Daisy, I–I do. It’s hard. DAISY: Yeah, well. Don’t let me get in your way.

There is currently something so strong in what we’re seeing of Daisy? In the way she’s aware of her limitations and manages to prevent the conditions leading to potential breakdowns? I feel like she’s following the same logic as when we knew her as a Hunter: when she was seeing a problem, she would just… neutralise it. Hence beating up Mike, hence immediately going for Jon’s voicebox; hence her Cold Factual Violence overall against spooks/vampires/“monsters” of various kinds. Basira had said that she liked Daisy because she was “solid”, because of her certainty, and this is still the same Daisy – though not hurting others anymore! And she pulled an incredible power move:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: It, uh… Hm. Is, uh… Weird question, but… I… [EXHALE] I haven’t seen you in my dreams? The last couple of weeks? DAISY: … Oh, uh, no. I… I work here, now. I figured it seems to protect the others, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right, so… Wait, did you talk to Lukas, or…? DAISY: [CHUCKLE] Broke into Elias’s old office. Found an employment contract; filled it in, and signed it. ARCHIVIST: And that worked. DAISY: Seems so. ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you. Not gonna be going anywhere anyway. ARCHIVIST: … I suppose not. So… no more dreams. DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes. Just the coffin. ARCHIVIST: Is that better…? DAISY: ’T’s mine. ARCHIVIST: … right.

She weaponised what they have gathered, through experiences and guesses, to get free of the dreams she hated! It’s not absolutely clear whether she signed to become an Archival assistant or a regular staff member; on the one hand, Jon’s concern hints towards archival assistant, since as far as we know, the Archives seemed to be their own business, including trapping their staff (though damn, I remembered MAG102 being more explicit on the matter but: actually, no, since Martin saying that regular crew are able to quit was immediately followed by “Hannah just left to have her baby, though.”: was that “though” a “by the way” or a way to tamper what he had just said, and this is the most they can do, but still not quite quit…?); on the other hand, Daisy hasn’t specified what it was.

Anyway: it’s such a POWERFUL MOVE to… 1°) break into Elias’s office, 2°) just sign herself up like that?, 3°) ESPECIALLY given how Elias had initially coerced Basira into signing herself up to avoid turning the scene into a bloodbath, even before being told of the repercussions (that she couldn’t quit, that Elias dying meant that they would die too). What Daisy did sound like a direct answer to MAG092, and I’m loving it, loving that Daisy… just used what they had learnt of the dreams’ mechanism to protect herself and chose to bind herself to the Institute while exactly knowing what it meant, without anything blackmailing her into it. Elias hadn’t bothered to tie her down for who she was? Watch as she’ll decide that for herself.

This is also the first person of Extended Team Archive to… have given herself to The Eye fully knowing what she was doing. You better be grateful for the gesture, Big Eyeball!!! The others had to be misled or coerced into serving you, and Daisy, of all people, chose to give herself to you!!!

(- If Daisy became an Archive Assistant: I hope that she’ll get to read a statement at some point? Well, technically, best thing would be for nobody to read a statement but. Martin did it a few times (and read one in MAG134!), Tim ALMOST did it, Melanie did it twice, Basira did it once… it’s a bit of a Tradition. (And who wouldn’t want to hear Fay Roberts for almost an entire episode outside of Daisy’s own live-statements?! I’m a simple woman, okay.))

- I’m really curious about how Elias and Daisy would interact, now. Would it be biting/tense/mutual snarling, or taunting about Daisy still being a “rabid dog” at heart…? Or precisely not anymore: because Daisy acknowledged in front of Jon that Elias had not been that off about her (MAG132: “Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life.”)…? I also… get the feeling that maybe, the current Daisy might be perceiving her encounter with the Institute as a chance, since it ultimately led to her snapping out of the Hunt (though she would have reasons to want to break Elias’s arm for the fact that Basira got trapped because of him).

- I wonder if Martin saw Daisy’s name pop up amongst the new staff members? Or if Peter just told him right away what she had done? Is Daisy now actually getting a salary from the Institute? (I’m not sure that Elias “We really don’t have the budget for that” (MAG067) had even bothered to pay her when he was using her ~services~ so… drain Peter’s money, Daisy, gogogo!! And Use Your Powers to give everyone in Team Archive a raise, Martin :w)

- The fact that Daisy said that she had broken into “Elias’s old office”… Well, Elias’s office had been characterised by the clock in the background; since we could hear one in MAG126, I was assuming that Martin and Peter were in there (especially since Martin was doing Peter’s directorial work) but had noticed that there was no such sound in MAG134. Were they outside of the Institute? Or has Martin stopped working in Elias’s office since Daisy had forcefully gone inside of it, deeming it unsafe?

- Anyway: Jon-Melanie-Daisy seem to be creating an awkward support network, right now, and it’s ADORABLE and good (+ extra cookies to Melanie for seeking therapy!). They still have trouble talking: there were sooo many pauses and silences when Melanie was in front of Jon; Daisy is still not… super at ease speaking about how she feels (while she’s way chiller when it comes to describing how she broke into Elias’s office. Daisy, ilu.); Jon searched for his words a bit to describe how he was perceiving himself at the moment… But they’re trying and still getting those words out and explaining themselves to each other a bit. And it’s PRECIOUS, godsdamnit.

- ALRIGHT, NOW TO DIVE RIGHT INTO THE SILK-STICHED MEAT OF THIS EPISODE:

(MAG111) GERRY: Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then? ARCHIVIST: What? Oh! Er, no. I-I never really, uh… I never really thought of it. I–I’m Jon. I’m with the Magnus Institute.

(MAG136) DAISY: [SCOFF] She’s… Web. Spider’s sneaky like that. [PAUSE] Like that lighter you’re always using. Where’d you get that? ARCHIVIST: Mm. [STATIC] Good point. We should keep our eyes open. Anyway, how’s Basira doing?

………………. It was impossible to tell whether or not there was static back in MAG111 (at least for me: there was a constant static-y background due to Gerry being there), but here, yep, there was some. So something is DEFINITELY preventing Jon from lingering too much on the lighter (like an oily surface his attention keeps slipping on?) and what it means. … And apparently, he still has it with him – I had wondered if he hadn’t lent it to Martin for MAG118’s plan, burning statements? I mean, maybe he did and the lighter found its way back to Jon anyway, or it was still with Jon during the Wax Museum explosion, but Jon still has it with him at the moment.

How many silken strings have tied around Jon’s body and head without him noticing, I wonder… the episode was about a “Puppeteer”, after all (or… maybe a bit more about the puppets.)

……………….. Sounds like Jon is back to smoking again, too, given Daisy’s comment? And Jon’s smoking habits have been Smelling Like Web Spirit: he had apparently stopped around the time he began to work at the Institute (since he told Leitner he had “been quit for five years now” in MAG080, in February 2017); Elias had ranted about Jon smoking in MAG039 (“He’s not smoking again, is he?”: was it because he knew of Jon’s smoker history? Or because Jon had gone back to… smoking a lot since he discovered that the lighter had been delivered to him in MAG036?); Tim implied that he might have noticed that Jon had been smoking again recently at the end of season 2 (MAG079: “he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be bad. And I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad. Like properly bad.”); Jon ~conveniently~ felt the urge to smoke a cigarette and left Leitner alone to face his death (Elias.) in MAG080 (Jon minimised it at the time, but… it means that he had cigarettes on him.); and after that, we only got the mention from Daisy digging through his stuff in MAG091, and him offering Gerry a cigarette in MAG111.

One thing that makes me Hysterical every time:

(MAG091) DAISY: One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design.

OF ALL THINGS, JON SMOKES “SILK CUT”

“SILK

CUT”

COME ON, SPIDER, COULD YOU TRY TO BE A BIT SUBTLE WITH THAT BOY?!

- Actual footage of Jon forgetting about his lighter (ft. Daisy):

- I find it very interesting that Daisy was able to notice the lighter and Jon’s lack of oversight about it since… when Daisy was introduced through Basira’s words, Basira explained that Daisy had first been sectioned over a Spider-related case:

(MAG043) BASIRA: […] Daisy was sectioned years before I was even on the force. She’s never been that forthcoming about any of her own experiences. Takes Section 31 very seriously. The most I could get out of her was that she was originally sectioned for something she referred to as “spider husks”. The way she described it, it sounded like she’d found a bunch of shells. The sort crabs leave behind when they grow, but… I could never figure out if it was meant to be the husks of people-sized spiders, or the spider-like husks of people? And Daisy never seemed like she wanted to clarify. I’m sure she mentioned vampires once as well, but… I think she was joking. … Probably. … Maybe…

We have learned, since then, that it wasn’t exactly true: Daisy’s first section’d case had to do with the coffin, but Daisy also told Jon that only her superior had known about it prior to Jon's pulling the story out of her (MAG061). So Basira couldn’t have known that Daisy had lied or dodged to tell the truth, but still… one of Daisy’s first cases had to do with Spiders.

(And Daisy has been ~taking care~ of the vampires, too, which are known for their mind-controlling powers. When Trevor had met a Spider-Woman, he had mentioned that his experience with vampires had probably helped him to identify that the compulsion to get out and get high wasn’t his own… So it seems like Hunters might have a little immunity or at least resistance to manipulation. I’m EVEN MORE RELIEVED that Jon got Daisy back.)

(… And afraid, oh so afraid for Daisy’s life-expectancy, since she’s already so important when it comes to potentially dealing with threats, and being a presence which allows the Archive team to re-form a bit.)

- MAG110 and MAG136 are quite good to listen to one after another, besides Neil Lagorio’s existence – they dealt with the same movie-making world, of Web apparently, and there were some tiny things which were quite interesting? Both statements were given by women isolated from their peers and put into a situation they probably wouldn’t have picked if they’d been allowed to retain more options and Choices:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I’d held some ambitions about directing myself one day, but it soon became obvious that that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe if I’d got a feature under my belt before I was outed as trans, it might have been different, but… as it was, this revelation burned too many bridges, and when the dust had settled, it was made abundantly clear to me that I was never going to get a movie of my own. And it was either cinematography, or nothing. So I stayed.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned […]. Anyway, even once I’d sorted out childcare arrangements, I found myself… more and more unwelcome in the industry. It wasn’t that people weren’t willing to hire me – by this point I had a hell of a special effects resumé – but the hours you were expected to be working, the way shoots were set up, the culture of drinking, networking… none of it was really possible alongside parenting.”

There was, also, the obvious theme of… the fictions reshaping reality, or becoming a reality: Dexter was obsessed with a Spider that seemed to only exist in his dream of a story, and he recreated it on the set in the end. Neil managed to finally recreate his last story with himself:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “he would twist his fingers into all sort of bizarre, intricate shapes, until I could see the strings flowing over them… ‘We made them dance,’ he would say, wonder and nostalgia in his voice. ‘Oh… how we made them dance.’ […] He told me later his… greatest regret was not being able to finish his final film. An arthouse piece simply titled Dancer. He never explained what it was about, nor do I think it actually… came out in the end. […] And as I walked away from Neil, the last time I saw him alive… he was dancing. The cables shifting, and moving him in a graceful, sweeping ballet. And he was crying with joy.”

On the theme of “smoking” as related to the Web, it’s ~curious~ to note that it was also present in MAG110 and MAG136’s statements, and not in moderation either:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “[Brandon Alma] took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers.” (MAG136, Alison Killala) “I had to fight every instinct inside me, everything that wanted to burst out in admiration for his work and his… profound effect on my life. But instead I chain-smoked and laughed, trying my best to come across as my hero’s peer…!”

So, hum. Smoking hadn’t been exclusively a Web-thing before (there was of course the Anglerfish’s baiting, and its shells smoking to disguise the odour of death), but I still find that noticeable.

- There is an OBVIOUS problem with the timeline of Neil’s death, from MAG110 and MAG136’s given mentions:

(MAG110) MARTIN: Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0121403. Statement of Alexia Crawley, given March 14th, 2012. (MAG110, Alexia Crawley) It seems like a sick cosmic joke that that was the day the press broke the news of Neil Lagorio’s death. Half an hour after the cast walked into that building, one of the grips stumbled across the news story whilst idly checking his phone. Lagorio had been privately suffering from Parkinson’s for almost a decade, and had been bedridden in his Connecticut home for the last year.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Alison Killala, regarding her time as friend and carer to special effects artist Neil Lagorio. Original statement given 1st December, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. (MAG136, Alison Killala) “It was almost six months ago when the woman came to our door. […] I don’t know how long I was watching those films. They don’t… It was hard to keep track of time. According to my daughter, I was missing for five months. When Annabelle let me out, Neil was dead. […] She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you. I resisted for some time, but I’m done now. She’s won. And I’d… very much like to go home.”

If Annabelle visited Neil’s house six months before Alison gave her statement, it should have been in June; while Alexia’s statement put Neil’s death before March (presumably February, since Martin added as part of the follow-up that “Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach.”). It’s not clear either if Alison lived in the UK but she did mention the “UK press” at some point; while according to the official version given by Alexia, Neil had lived and died in the US.

So what happened…? Has someone in the Archives been purposely messing up with the dates regarding The Web…? Were there two “Neil Lagorio”s towards the end…? Did The Web messed up the files a bit through someone? (Noticeable, too: Jon who ~listens to all the tapes~ didn’t mention the echoes with MAG110’s statement, which was read by Martin. Did he listen to this one, or had the tape… disappeared when he went back?)

(I know that the popular theory regarding MAG114’s statement and what was happening in Hill Top Road is “parallel worlds”, but it always sounded textbook Spiral to me – we also have been demonstrations of entities rewriting reality to erase people or twist people’s memories, see the Not!Them and what happened to the statement-giver’s husband in MAG038. But I’m a bit short on explanations regarding the obvious problem of timeline in MAG110 and MAG136……………..)

- Relistening to MAG110, I just realized that someone had completely flown under my radar: Brandon (Brendon?) Alma, the main actor, who… was the one controlling the story and the set, actually?!

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “Most impressive to me though, was a guy named [Brandon Alma]. He was playing the closest thing the film had to a protagonist, a… homeless ex-Methodist minister who’d found himself on the island by chance and served as a connecting thread, wandering between the scenes and the vignettes of the inhabitants, after each ended with their march to the Spider. Brandon took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers. It was a shame because, for whatever reason, he also seemed to be the only one that Dexter would listen to. I only saw them talking once or twice but every time, Dexter would be wrapped, nodding at… whatever Brandon might have to say. […] [Dexter] then gathered up the cast and, with Brandon leading them, took them through a small door in the side of the workshop. And they disappeared inside.”

He was playing a character who was the “CONNECTING THREAD” between people getting eaten by the spider, Dexter “would be WRAPPED” and agreeing to everything Brandon told him, and Brandon was the one to lead the actors into the workshop where they were all killed/consumed/drunk hollow, UHUHUHUH. Maybe the book that Dexter had found wasn’t actually the (only?) thing that messed up everything? Or did Brandon come from the book? Was he actually the spider himself, or just there to ensure that the spider would emerge and be fed…?

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I don’t know when he first mentioned his spider film. It didn’t… bubble out into a full obsession until two years ago, but I know he talked about it plenty before that. […] [蜘蛛が食べている] (Kumo ga tabeteiru). I think that was the name, anyway, something like that; he was normally slurring quite badly when he said it. He thought it translated to “The Spiders That Devour” but a Japanese friend once told me it was actually closer to just “Spiders Are Eating”. According to Dexter, Kumo was an old tokusatsu movie which, he believed, had come out sometime in the mid-to-late sixties. It was about a Spider – just the one, despite the title – that grew to a colossal size and terrorized a small unnamed island off the coast of Kagoshima. What struck him about it, though, was the utter absence of anything resembling a hero or a protagonist. No one fought against the monster, and although there were vignettes in the lives of those under the Spider’s shadow, they all ended the exact same way – with the character in question marching slowly, and calmly, into its waiting jaws.”

(And it would sound EXTREMELY Web to have all the attention focused on Dexter… while the true puppeteer would be somewhere else, hidden.)

- Something striking in many Web mentions is that: it likes Order (… and apparently drinking people hollow – requiring the fluids to sustain itself? To be able to moult and grow in size?)

(MAG127, Breekon) “We had some luggage once. A thrumming, silk-wrapped thing of The Spider, hiding away in an old steamer trunk. We stepped heavy through the dining car and found an old woman near the caboose. 'Something strange in the luggage car,' he said, and I finished as was our way. 'You should come and see it.' She stood and walked with us readily enough, though tears flowed silent down her cheeks and pattered onto the faded carpet. The Spider’s always an easy job – no fuss, no complication, everything planned and prepared. It knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure. We knew she wouldn’t scream as she was hollowed out and drunk.”

(MAG110) MARTIN: Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach. It will be a shrivelled husk, with all moisture and internal organs apparently removed.

(+ Daisy’s early Section 31 case with the “husks” of people/spiders/etc.)

On the matter of order: the victims in Kumo (MAG110) also weren’t making a fuss when they marched off to get eaten, it was the same behaviour as what Breekon described. Regarding Alison’s story, it seems like although she was officially the puppeteer of Neil’s body… SHE was the one who had been puppeteered around:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “I became his carer a few months later. It just seemed to make sense. A frugal life, lucrative career and… prickly personality had left him with lots of money but no real support; while my life had left me in a position where I cared… deeply about his well-being and was in… desperate need of money. Everything just… lined up so neatly. […] he threw himself into a new project, one I would never have expected, but that suited my engineering background perfectly. […] I protested, of course! This man was my hero, I–I loved him, and there was no way I could subject him to this… awful indignity. But my objections were ignored, as always, and Neil insisted that this was what he wanted. So I built that… strange contraption. Using the skills I had developed across my whole life, to fill every corner of Neil Lagorio’s house with wood, and steel, and cable. […] I barely even noticed when the harnesses were no longer necessary; when the loops for those hooks were now embedded directly into his body. I must have asked him about it. But at the time, it just seemed like… such a natural progression.

Neil had exactly the Right Person available for what he needed when his body started to shut down; Alison wanted to refuse and ended up accepting. Even before Annabelle came in, it… doesn’t really sound like Alison had been the one in control in that whole situation.

And on the matter of people being at the right place at the right time for The Web’s purposes: SQUINTS at the fact that 2012 was when Jon started working at the Institute. We witnessed Melanie, Basira and Daisy’s first steps there, we know that Tim went to get a job there because he was looking into his brother’s death, Sasha might or might not have been interested in the supernatural for years (it could have been the Not!Them rewriting that bit; we at least know that Sasha wasn’t particularly well-off so… maybe she just plainly needed the money); we know that Martin just happened to be hired after submitting his CV everywhere he could (the question of why ELIAS, who PERSONALLY INTERVIEWED HIM, hired him is… another Big Question), but… why did Jon start working at the Institute? He didn’t particularly expect to Georgie to identify what the Institute was, so it wasn’t a life-long dream of his that he would have mentioned many times as a student…

(Re: the Web and Order, SQUINTSSQUINTSSQUINTS again towards the one particular person who has mostly been associated with that: “loves scheduling”, has specific days on which he eats lunch with the Institute’s librarians, insisted on Tim doing the paperwork for his absences, That One Thing About Keeping Receipts If You Want To Claim Your Expenses (Unless You Die)… that guy.)

- I still wonder how the Web works on people exactly, though… especially given all the talks about making choices and decisions, it would seem a bit odd to end up concluding that “anyway, the Web will make you want and do whatever IT pleases, you can’t do anything about it”…? (Though yeah, THAT is frightening.)

Given that Alison compared herself to Frankenstein, I wonder, in her case, if despite her ~adamant refusal~ to puppet her friend and idol…

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “Even pyrotechnics, while… impressive and visually spectacular, they just didn’t give me the same sharp joy as making something that could move, that came alive, directed and controlled by my hand… I always felt Frankenstein should have been an engineer, not a medical student, as reading that book I couldn’t help but see myself in that obsession. But I suppose everyone’s already done the-monster-as-the-robot, haven’t they?”

… some parts of her didn’t actually want it? And this is how The Web might operate overall? Humans are complex, we’re always mixing up emotions and different desires at the same time; maybe The Web mostly just brings to the surfaces the ones it needs to push people in the direction it wants…? (In that case, re: Trevor and the Spider Woman… it wouldn’t be surprising, as an ex-heroin addict, that some part of him would still feel the tinge of the craving…)

- What was Neil, in the end? Was he a Web avatar who found a way to feed his god mostly through fictions? Was his ex-partner “Gabe” Gabriel, the Spiral’s Worker-In-Clay…? Was he a plain person, able to use some powers here and there? The thing is:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “his satisfaction with his latest and… as it turned out, last… foray into horror, with The Harvestman. He’d always had a fondness for spiders, he told me. And I of course reminded him that harvestmen… weren’t technically spiders.”

She is right! Though this could be a case of misleading us to focus on the symbols rather than their effects; Neil’s work was… indeed clearly linked to the idea of hidden control:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “he claimed to be working with Neil Lagorio to make the Spider. Now you might never have heard his name before, but I guarantee you you’ll have seen his work. From the mid-seventies right into CGI, Lagorio was THE name in Practical Creature Effects: suit work, stop-motion, animatronics, whatever the method, he was the master. […] I’d had the pleasure of working with him way back in 1989 on Orbit – a medium-budget sci-fi vehicle for some… aging action star. Neil was working on a twelve-foot tall animatronic robot that featured heavily in the climax. The picture was, unsurprisingly, a flop; but I still remember his work. How he brought a… lump of wood and steel to life. Th–the huge, intricate mechanisms that allowed his crew to puppet it into motion that was so natural you could forget that the back of it was completely hollow…!”

On the one hand, he sounded pretty harmless. On the other hand, there were these “original cuts” (and the cruel broken SMILE you could hear on Jon’s face when he mentioned them while reading the statement was… gosh.). Was Dexter Banks invited to one of those screenings, and is that why he was haunted by the memories of a movie he couldn’t find again…?

-… So, what does it mean for ANNABELLE to send these original cuts to the Institute?

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “There were two sorts of people in the world as far as Neil saw it: those who were worth his time, and those who were not. And if you were in the latter group, he honestly couldn’t care if you lived or died. Not that most people could tell which side of the line they fell on; there were even days that… I wasn’t sure myself! Sometimes, I remember, he would invite people over to his studio that I was sure he hated, for screenings of his “original cuts”. I was quite… jealous of this at the time, as I’d never got such an invitation. But it was probably for the best. I didn’t… realise it back then, but… [SIGH] those guests… they never quite looked the same afterwards. […] She told me to take the films. His… “original cuts”. She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: [INHALES] Statement ends. Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(…………. You could HEAR that Jon was dangerously close to going to check them out if Daisy hadn’t reminded him that Jon, No.)

At the time, Gertrude was still running the Archives… but, again, it’s also around that time when Jon integrated the Institute as a researcher. (He said he had been working there for “four years” in MAG001, which was set sometime in the second half of 2015 – though I wouldn’t past it s1!Jon to round up, like, 3 years and 20 days to “four years” to sound… more impressive. However, we know for sure that Jon was working at the Institute in 2012 (MAG051: “One of my first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012”).) So why did Annabelle send the “original cuts” to the Institute, and who were they for…? Was it to send a message to Gertrude? Was it because the Web was veeeeeeeeeeeerrrry aware that the boy who had ~gotten away~ (el-o-el) was now working there (and was apparently a bit versed in Neil Lagorio’s work)? Was it a way to sneak into the Institute? Was it for Elias? Was it to avoid the “original cuts” affecting innocent bystanders? Was it a proclamation from Annabelle – demonstrating that the older generation was fading out and now she was taking over?

That last point is something that I really felt with Annabelle’s visit and Neil finally dying (… or moulting like a spider). It’s interesting that in both MAG110 and MAG136, there was something about the character the story was about… not having a keen relationship with modern technology:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “And so it was for the first few weeks. Dexter… clearly wasn’t sleeping. He had insisted on using old equipment and avoiding digital almost entirely, to the point where several of the crew were using pieces of kit they’d never even seen before. This meant that workprint had to be made manually for the dailies, something he refused to let anyone else do.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “We stayed in touch over the next few years, even worked together on the Wire-Runner, his one, underwhelming foray into CGI.”

We saw in MAG123 that Annabelle had started working using Internet, though using someone else to achieve it. I don’t have many theories or speculation about that one – I only find it curious that, given how MAG065 had introduced the idea that tape recorders… are digital, too, we’re still not sure about what it is that prevents Spooks from recording on Jon’s computer. Gertrude had commented that the tape recorders were a bit ~old-fashioned like her~ to defend her use of them to Lucia (MAG130), so… I don’t know! But potentially, I wonder if there might be something about the younger generation of avatars being more fit to use modern technologies, because some elements are their own idiosyncrasies while older techs were their predecessors’.

- Hi, do you sometimes get just PUNCHED IN THE GUTS by Jon.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is. DAISY: Did you know the coffin wouldn’t kill you? ARCHIVIST: I– guess I thought imprisonment wouldn’t… wouldn’t be as bad as it was. DAISY: [SHAKY SIGH] ARCHIVIST: And it’s a lot easier to make that choice than it is to actually… endure the result. You might have noticed when I was in there with you, I… I had regrets. DAISY: Yeah. I remember. ARCHIVIST: Plus, I thought… [PAUSE] W– [SIGH] Well, I didn’t know what being down there had done to you. DAISY: You thought I was gonna kill you? ARCHIVIST: I was a possibility. DAISY: Guess so. […] ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira– ARCHIVIST: Traumatised; traumatised; and paranoid, because of me.

;; I’m worried about these missing memories and what it means / what happened… Jon had told Basira that he could remember most of The Unknowing:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: My turn. What… what happened to me? BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming. BASIRA: Dreaming. ARCHIVIST: Yes. …

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t.

Back in MAG122, I had feared that he would have gotten something cauterised in the process, probably guilt, hence Tim’s death being erased… But no, it’s FAR from being the case: Jon has been a guilt-ridden ball of softness and caring and heartbreak since the beginning of season 4. So why are these memories still absent…? What happened in his dreams, for him to not remember exactly how he got to choose…?

(EXTRA-WORRIED since Elias had told Basira that Jon was “at a very delicate stage right now” in MAG127; and as much as I think that Elias probably doesn’t want to risk Jon managing to successfully compel him or extract a statement out of him right now… I’m Really Worried about the fact that he described Jon as being in transition. Choosing should have been the end result, right? So… so what is the next step……………)

Sobbing a lot about the fact that Jon isn’t sure that coming back was worth it, and that he’s been very casually self-destructive about the coffin. He kind of finished his sentence from MAG132 here:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m scared. [SHORT CHUCKLE] When does the fear go away…? A–anyway, I–I’m sorry. You too, Basira, if you’re hearing this. I know you’d… stop me. You’d be right to, but… But if this goes wrong, all you lose is– …  I’m not risking anyone else.

“If this goes wrong, all you lose is” / “worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster”. A o u c h. He’s been the most outrightly emotional we’ve ever seen him in season 3 and 4, he was so afraid of becoming inhuman starting MAG092, he finally chose (and is aware of it) the avatar option because he was afraid to die (that’s one of the most human things he could possibly admit…?), and, since he’s woken up, he has dealt with rejections one after another: Georgie was thrown-off by him badly enough to leave (clearly dissatisfied with… the fact that Jon kept saying he was “fine”, when a normal human being shouldn’t have been), Basira was extremely cautious and still refuses to trust him, slaughter-infused Melanie BLAMED HIM FOR TIM&DAISY’S DEATHS, Martin avoided him time and time again:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Honestly, I… I, I think I’m alright? I mean, that’s… good, right? I… GEORGIE: After a six months coma? No. It’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I… What? Y–you, you’d prefer I was… brain-damaged? Dead? Or– […] Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira? BASIRA: We can deal with that later.

(MAG123) MELANIE: Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! MELANIE: Something has been in hospital. Something that’s got your face like– I warned Basira, I said not to let you back in here, but she just doesn’t listen! [STOMPING? AND FURIOUS STRANGLED NOISES] ARCHIVIST: Melanie, Melanie: it’s… it’s me. MELANIE: Oh! Okay, so what, “Hi Jon, how are you, get anyone killed lately?” ARCHIVIST: … I… MELANIE: Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening. Like you’re any better than– ARCHIVIST: [MESSY STUTTERING] MELANIE: –than him! ARCHIVIST: Basira said Elias was gone!

(MAG124) MARTIN: … Look, Jon, I, I’ve really got to go, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh, er, okay… MARTIN: I’m, I’m sorry that you– ARCHIVIST: Wowowow, it was… good t–, it was good to see you. MARTIN: … Yeah. [STEPS LEAVING] ARCHIVIST: … yeah… [CLICK.]

(MAG129) MARTIN: Please, stop finding me. ARCHIVIST: … What happened, Martin? [SILENCE] MARTIN: You died. ARCHIVIST: I came back. MARTIN: Yeah. [OPENS DOOR] I’m not gonna let it happen again. ARCHIVIST: … wait… Wait! W– [DOOR CLOSES] [SIGH] [CLICK.]

(YES, GRATUITOUS QUOTE-COMPILATION, BECAUSE THAT’S A LOT.)

It’s been a rough two months since he woke up, alright. I’m so glad that he managed to get Daisy back: not only it was a victory that actually felt like one (the removal of Melanie’s bullet meant that things got… strained), but Daisy has been asking the right questions and they’re so… like-minded? kindred spirits? lately, two Survivors able to understand each other, that it feels good and… a bit more hopeful.

(- I still want Jon to get the chance to have a discussion with Georgie, to explain himself and what happened, to explain that even though he decided something she’s disapproving of… he still wants to do some good, as much as he can? é_è To thank her for having watched over him and having given him so much valuable advice? For Georgie to accept that Jon did the best he could do in the situation he was in? Basira used to listen to Georgie’s podcast while in the car with Daisy so maybe Daisy heard some bits of it. Let Georgie and Daisy meeeeeet too!!)

- So much for Jon getting a stronger hold on his power, he still accidentally slipped and compelled:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway.

Still too curious and not the best at self-restrain, though… he had been doing way better lately. I think the last time he had accidentally compelled was in MAG114, with Tim? On the other hand: it looks like his Insights are a bit more controlled since, unless he reveals that he has Known for a while, he… doesn’t seem to know about Basira’s activities. So maybe sternly forbidding him from peeking worked with that one, given that he had motivation to not screw things up (even more) between them…? He was a bit more relaxed with Melanie this time around! (Well. And Melanie was way more relaxed around him too, which… says something considering their previous exchanges.)

- What is wrong with Jon’s body. This makes the second mention of casual weirdness, after Jared commenting about Jon’s rib:

(MAG131) JARED: Huh. That’s a weird one. Not sure I like it. Still. Mine now.

(MAG136) DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes.

Too many eyes, or something else…?

- I’m so emotional over the fact that Daisy is… currently giving back to Jon? Telling him that his way of thinking or his overall situation is “messed up”; reminding him that he’s not responsible for everything that’s happened to Melanie, Basira and herself; pushing him to snap out of it and have a nice time…? The fact that she included herself in the (short) list of people around Jon, and that:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you.

She listed him alongside Basira when justifying why her decision to tie herself to the Institute was worth it – they’re in this together and it’s not only just “with Basira” in her mind. It includes Jon.

- … and not Melanie there, BUT!! PROGRESS:

(MAG112) DAISY: Yeah. Couldn’t find Tim, but he’s gone with Martin and… the other one. BASIRA: Melanie. DAISY: Sure.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

She marked a verrrry slight pause before saying Melanie’s name but still: Melanie is now her own person in Daisy’s mind!

- And I’m SO EMOTIONAL OVER MELANIE OVERALL but also so proud that… apparently, she took it upon herself to take care of Daisy, and went as far as to go ask Jon to replace her when she couldn’t do it?

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. MELANIE: W–well, I’ve kind of got to… uhm. I’ve got somewhere to be. Do you mind if, if… she hangs around, with… […] [IN THE DISTANCE] Hum, yeah, he’s, he’s fine with it. So… […] DAISY: I didn’t ask her. To do that. ARCHIVIST: I–it–it’s fine.

I’m glad that Melanie makes sure that Daisy doesn’t end up alone, and that… she went to Jon for this ;__; Melanie knew better than everyone how it felt to be not emotionally supported by someone, namely Basira (MAG131: “Basira is… um. Basira deals in ‘intel’ these days, in usable data, assets. Not feelings. Not people.”), so I find this super-sweet that she… is apparently making extra efforts to not replicate the situation with Daisy? Some feeling of community/teamwork has been recreated lately, all around Daisy, and aaaaah… I’m so glad ;; Really sad that Martin isn’t there and that Basira is still closing herself off, but so glad about the faint Melanie-Daisy-Jon dynamic… (And so worried. Because now, I wonder how Jonny is planning to rip it away from us.)

(Though: Melanie didn’t try to set-up for Helen and Daisy to stay together. Is Helen mostly absent/can’t get out of her door much…? Or was it because Melanie didn’t absolutely trust Daisy’s Hunter instincts to not kick back in, if she was too close to a Spook-she-doesn’t-know-yet for long…?)

(I wonder if it’s Helen who suggested therapy to Melanie, or if they talked about it? In any case, having Helen around seemed to have helped Melanie a bit, overall ;__;)

- Though logistically: it’s hilarious that Melanie&Basira probably still live in the Archives, that Daisy is probably doing the same (unclear whether or not Jon Still Has A Home outside)… and that Daisy didn’t even mention that hi, she had signed some paperwork and was now an Official Member of the Institute. It took Jon two weeks to learn about it, and only because he asked about his dreams. (Daisy must have done that quite fast after getting out of the coffin? For someone who “missed dreaming”, she reacted immediately x”))

………………… I’m not sure that Basira will take that the news that Daisy is now tied to the Institute kindly, though, given the current state of things.

- Elephant in the room, Melanie’s ~therapist~ is ringing SO MANY warning bells:

(MAG136) THERAPIST: Right, have a seat. Do you mind if I record our sessions? MELANIE: I do mind. Yes. THERAPIST: Ah? I mean, it’s just for my own notes. MELANIE: I categorically and completely do *not* give consent for you to make any recording of me, ever. Turn it off. Please. [SILENCE] THERAPIST: I… I see. Yes. Of–of course. [CLICK.]

…………………. See, even besides the use of a tape recorder (who would use that in 2018 for very professional, serious and health-related purposes, if they’re not spooky?!), it’s how the therapist handled the act of recording in itself which makes me shiver. During a first session, a first encounter, when you’re supposed to not make the patient uncomfortable, turning it on before asking Melanie if she would be fine with it. Trying to argue with Melanie’s refusal when Melanie explicitly said she would be bothered by it. That small silence before complying – while Melanie was just stating her rights… (Though on that last one, Melanie’s background as a podcaster is showing; she was very efficiently able to state her will without leaving room for any loophole!)

There are many options for What The Deal Is With That Therapist:

1°) A totally normal person who just happens to use tape recorders in 2018 and was startled by Melanie’s professional-sounding declaration.

2°) Someone tied to the Lonely…? It would be a terrifying job for a Lukas, totally twisting the purpose of a therapy by… cutting you off from others? ;; (Peter had mentioned the possibility of therapy to Martin back in MAG120: “Oh! And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost.”)

3°) Someone tied to Beholding: Gertrude had the contact information for one (MAG130: “If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like […]. Hang on, let me see if I can find you the number for that counselling service. They’re actually quite good.”), and that last “I see” was quite striking, Avatars tend to make small references to their patrons all the time – though this one could have also been a nod to Melanie’s…

4°) … since the therapist seemed so taken aback by Melanie offering a resistance: … W e b…? Annabelle was even created during, specifically, a psychological experiment (though we don’t know if she was a psychology postgrad herself, or just a random test subject with a different background; the voice sounded maybe a bit too old for someone who still looked like a “student” in 2012, but then Elias is supposed to be middle-aged so, eh). It wouldn’t be the most subtle thing ever but then: given that Jon didn’t give any reason, why did he pick this specific statement this time around? Outside of the statement, who is a “puppeteer” in this episode? Which would raise, once again, the question of What Is Behind tape recorders; and, if Web, what allowed Melanie to not obey: was it because she used to be Slaughter-infused…? (I had wondered, especially after MAG125, about the relationship between the Slaughter and the Spider: the way Elias had specifically mentioned that Melanie had a “visceral hatred of being trapped” in MAG102, was run by “the self-determination you prize so highly” in MAG106, and the fact that Melanie had described him as “pulling all the strings” in return, had left me with the lingering of impression that… potentially, there was more something about Web than Beholding at work here, and that obviously, The Slaughter, being uncontrollable violence and chaos, wouldn’t be the best of pals with the Eight-Legged-Mrs.-Order Fear entity…)

The way Melanie described therapists at the beginning of the episode (“We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there.” and it’s true, and she’s still trying!!! Good!!) already introduced cautiousness about the whole process; if this one turns out to be Bad, it wouldn’t be representative of every one of them. Still, kinda hoping (for Melanie) that unless this one manages to prove that her first few seconds were absolutely not representative of what she can offer, Melanie will try to find another one elsewhere ;; I’m impressed that she didn’t just go “Nop ahaha bye” when the tape recorder began to get used… without her consent. It wasn’t good when Jon was doing it, but from a therapist, there is something very, verrrry chilling, and this new character absolutely managed to sound as untrustworthy as Peter in just a few seconds ;;

- On the list of worrying things: URKKKKK that… Basira apparently still hasn’t told the others about her visits to Elias. She’s likely doing her own researches, as Elias had suggested, to check if there were some truths amongst what he told her about The Dark’s activities… but URRRKKK that she hasn’t said a word about it yet. Not good, Basira ;; Elias is spilling his poison and she’s drinking it raw – it will most likely mess her up… and mess up the others, too, if they’re not aware that Elias still has, in all likehood, Plans.

… On the other hand, I got the impression that her relationship with Daisy had improved a bit? Daisy sounded less… heartbroken, this time, giving me the impression that, yes, things aren’t perfect, but not excruciating either?

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I haven’t seen her much since… Well, she seemed a bit… tense, the last few times we spoke. How are you guys– DAISY: [CLEARS THROAT] ARCHIVIST: –doing? DAISY: N–no, Basira, she’s… She’s been good. We’re… together so it’s good. [SIGH] Wish she wouldn’t keep treating me like a china doll. But it’s alright. ARCHIVIST: That’s understandable, I suppose. DAISY: [BREATHING HARDER, FASTER] Yeah, well… What do you think?

See, I can’t really decide whether Daisy’s awkwardness was because it was a touchy subject and she was aware that no, things aren’t fine… Or if it was a matter of “oh lord, no, I can’t tell Awkward Nerd Guy that YES, things have been super-steamy in the tunnels lately, he would probably faint if he knew we were doing it in his Institute.”

(… reminder that in this episode, Jon had to read “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned, but while I may not have had much time for make-up and monster suits, the bodies inside of them were, er, a different matter.” with his own tongue.) (That’s not topping Timothy Hodge’s statement and Jon’s annotations from its patreon Deluxe transcript, but eh, it was still a beautiful line <3)

And the parallels between Daisy&Basira and Jon&Martin keep piling up! First Basira and Martin both were “busy”; now, it’s the single-minded longing for the other when they’re separated – Daisy having thought that she would never see Basira again when she was in the coffin, and now… Jon’s first reaction when Daisy taunts him about acting like he’s alone being to say that YES HE IS… because Martin isn’t there.

Holy Arceus on top of Giratina, Jon, what would your season-1 self would say about the Current You. (“Things change. People change.” Helen told him a few episodes ago, AND YEP. Y E P.)

- I’m… a bit worried about how Daisy handled Martin, however. It fits her and the… individualistic? bits of her that we had seen: if she sees a problem, she’ll try to deal with it through her own actions – Jon is sad because Martin isn’t there? Then no, she’s not going to drag Martin kicking and screaming back to Jon if she wants to cheer Jon up; she’ll push him to stand back up on his own.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m not “swanning around”– DAISY: “Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster!” ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

1°) She’s partially not wrong? Though I still feel like, without knowing what Martin is doing behind the scenes together with Peter, there would be causes for concern and that Martin… is not in a good place nor there on his own: his lines in MAG124 and MAG129 sounded, more than anything, like he was straightforwardly blackmailed into not talking with the others (we know that, from Martin’s point of view, it’s a bit more complicated and not the end-goal; but still, his insistence to Jon about how he couldn’t hear what he had to say, had to leave, etc…. weren’t reassuring at all). Daisy might be projecting a bit on that one since she has deepened her network since she came back, probably because Basira was astray: she now remembers Melanie’s name, she listed Jon together with Basira as people trapped within the Institute (implying that she would not leave them behind). She might see Jon as hyperfixating on something that can’t be resolved right away, like her situation with Basira…? Unless it’s plainly because “Blackwood” hadn’t impressed her much in season 3 (she doesn’t know him! Even if Jon cares for him, maybe she doesn’t see him as all that valuable), or because… spooks are happening and the Lonely is managing to cut the ties that Martin die have with people, who are now just not finding him relevant anymore…?

2°) So nowadays, people are aware that Martin is doing “paperwork” – are they aware that he’s basically doing Peter’s work as an ~assistant~? Or are they plainly assuming that “Peter Lukas” is his alias…?

3°) ;; I’m super happy about Daisy inviting Jon for drinks, and Basira possibly joining them… but also worried about how Peter might just rub that into Martin’s face? Jon used to not be… social with the assistants. It would be so easy to tell Martin that it’s finally happening because Martin is not there… (And yes, Martin made his choice to protect the others, presumably Melanie&Basira, because Jon was away! And nowadays, it still stands, the fact that it would also protect Jon was only added to the pile! And he was told by Peter in MAG126 that he might “not want” to share what had happened with Jon at the end of it, implying that he would change; Martin knows these aspects of the deal! But Martin is not absolutely selfless either, and there could easily be some envious outbursts at the idea that Jon seems to be… happier, nowadays…?)

(… Martin had been so snappy to Basira in MAG088, and there was the whole talk between Basira&Melanie about how Martin seemed to think they would “steal his precious Archivist” in MAG106; who would have thought that Daisy and Jon would ultimately be the ones to go out for drinks together.)

- ANYWAY, Jon & Daisy & potentially Basira are going out for drinks and I don’t know if it will be an awkward mess or a nice time for all but. The potential for silly Tipsy Activities is strong – trying to make Jon guess ridiculous trivia facts through his Insights? Basira noting that Jon is behaving exactly like Martin presumably did at the end of MAG098 (talking a lot about a certain someone who isn’t really there at the moment)? Daisy sharing cop stories?

(… I also can’t help but think about the whole assistants-and-assimilated gang going for drinks during Jon’s kidnapping between MAG099–MAG102. Worst moment ever until they’re too inebriated to Coherently Think about why their lives suck and… see, that episode from Brooklyn 99? Going out of their way to find the most ridiculous kinda-harmless ways to exact revenge on what’s pissing them off at the moment, ie Elias? … Going to his office to wrap his whole desk in cellophane. While he’s standing there, just unable to do anything (they’re too many and too far gone for his power to work). While Tim is throwing serpentine streamers everywhere, Martin is crying because Elias’s paperweight suddenly reminds him of Jon, Daisy is seductively slurring the worst pick-up lines to Basira, and Melanie had stolen a spoon in the bar and tries to recreate “The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon” on Elias, again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN– (maybe Basira told the truth in MAG106 and Melanie had indeed managed to make Elias cry, she just can’t remember about it). Basira was absolutely sober through it all, but when Elias tries to get explanations from her passiveness, it’s a mix of Her Iconic “I don’t know.” and the fact that she’s trying to get better at this new job of watching without doing anything. Elias would almost begin to regret Gertrude.)

Title for MAG137 is out and W O W is that an interesting one?! I have no idea if it will deal with one of the current threads or give information about other ones; it’s… a broad title which works for a lot of things. Tied to a very small mention we got in MAG105, so could be dealing with Gertrude’s studies on The Slaughter (and possibly her dealing with that one’s ritual)? If dealing with The Dark again, there are many angles which could work: attack on the Institute (get to meet The Creature, Jon.), Julia in present-time, Robert Montauk in the past, orrrr even something about the Elias-Rayner relationship that we now know was a Thing? (Though I feel that, if we get some information about that last one, it’s likely to be given in Ny-Ålesund.) Could also work for Hill Top Road, specifically Agnes and Ray? Could work for The Corruption (since The Hive had… personal feelings about The Institute) and maybe shed some light on whatever it was trying to achieve in the tunnels with the ring of worms (ritual attempt, or had Gertrude taken care of that one already?), or even something about John Amherst (Melanie… ;;)? Could work with Gertrude’s activities overall – with Elias, with Peter, with Jude… (Would be hilarious if it was about Elias and Peter, what the heck are you to each other, you terrible beings.) Could also work for Annabelle if it’s about balance? Aaaah, so many possibilities!! And it’s probably not even one that I thought of! =D

… and we’ll be getting a mid-season break, after all. Given how the break had been narratively inserted in season 3 (matching Jon’s kidnapping), will it be the case again and, if it is: what could possibly go wrong that we wouldn’t get a recording in-universe for three weeks? Four episodes left, a rushed trip to Ny-Ålesund could still happen before that and… leave them (/the surviving ones) in tatters afterwards, uuuuh…

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Of Scientific Interest

Summary: Stretch  needs someone who can help him. He gets Sans. ...yay?

Notes: Oh, my spicyhoney fans. I feel that I should apologize for the implied kustard in this. It just worked out that way. Forgive me. I promise there’s still plenty of our boys. Also, mentions of therapy.

Also on AO3

By Any Other Name masterlist

~~*~~

When Monsters had first left the underground, the feeling had almost been indescribable, particularly for the skeletons who’d only been in this universe for a month. Their first sight of the sun came directly on the heels of learning they were never going home again. At the time, Stretch hadn’t been in much of a position to care. That came later, when the nightmares started to ease their hold. 

The first six months or so had been spent in cheap housing provided by the Human government; they had still been negotiating for asylum and while there had certainly been some wariness if not outright fear, Monsters had certain technical advances that had gone a different way during their banishment than humans. Scientists at least knew a good thing when they saw it.

So, for a while, most of them had lived in cheap manufactured homes and even those had been highly sought after. They’d had to set up a sort of lottery and families had moved in as soon as the paint was dry. Monsters had been so eager to see the sun and they’d been willing to live in whatever was offered.

By the time they had an official sanctuary the shine had come off that, but money from their various patents and deals had been rolling in by then. New New Home had been carefully designed, every square inch of the land they’d been granted had been utilized, and every Monster family had been given an opportunity for a new home, no pun intended. Most had taken it.

Red was one of the few who stayed in the Oldtown part of New New home, and seriously, Asgore needed to start letting other people name shit.

Where Sans and Papyrus, as well as Blue and himself, had chosen to live together, Red had stayed behind when Edge moved into his new house.

Stretch wasn’t sure why; at the time, Red had only shrugged and said he needed his space, and Stretch hadn’t been on good enough terms with Edge to ask. Bringing it up now seemed like more like ripping off a band-aid just to satisfy his own curiosity, so Stretch let it be. Whatever issues Edge had with his brother, if he wanted to talk about them, he knew where to go.

Today, though, Stretch needed a favor and he was hoping to catch Red at home; even more hopefully he’d be in a good mood. A text was a no-go. All that would do was give him a heads-up, along with a chance for little bastard to flee, so Stretch figured he’d just stop by. New New Home was small enough that he could shortcut through most of it, anyway, so it wasn’t like he was committing to a hike up Everest or something.

Besides, if Red agreed, they’d be doing enough heavy lifting later.

The contrast of Red’s house to their own was stark. Grass overgrown through a layer of fallen leaves, no flowers or welcome mat to soften it. The only reason he even had curtains was because Edge had left them. Stretch hadn’t been inside in ages, not since Edge had moved out and started hosting their movie nights in what was now their house.

It was, in a word, unwelcoming, which was also a pretty good word to describe Red. Fucked up worked too, but eh, that was two words and the house wasn’t that bad.

There might be regret for visiting, later, and it was probably just as well that Stretch wasn’t prone to nausea. He had a pretty good idea of how disastrous his house would be if he lived alone, and Red wasn’t the type to tolerate a cleaning service in his space.

If there were any crawly critters, he was out of here before they could infest him.

Bracing himself, Stretch knocked firmly on the door and waited. Minutes ticked by into five and he tried again, knocking harder. Another five minutes and he was going to give it third times a charm before going for the fuck it option and asking someone else.

When he reached up to knock, the door swung open, his knuckles connecting with air as a voice grumbled, “keep your fucking shirt on, waddaya want…stretch?”

It wasn’t the voice that clued him in, or the clothes, but looking down into a face that was unmarked by a crack threw him. Stretch blinked down at the other skeleton, in black shorts and a red T-shirt but unmarred by any cracks or damage; white eye lights, their teeth as blunt as his own, and he wondered if he’d finally tipped over into crazy.

“sans?” he asked, doubtfully, but then that was sort of correct no matter who it was, wasn’t it?

The lazy smile cleared things up a little more; Red always kinda smiled like he was about to take a bite out of you, Sans was a little less…sharky.

“what’re you doing here?” Stretch asked, warily. He didn’t add what he was thinking but it was probably written on his face as clearly as a dick in sharpie after a sleepover.  Sans, wearing Red’s clothes, in the late morning? This was a sleepover and whatever dicks had been involved probably hadn’t been the artsy kind.

“considering the side of the door you’re on, shouldn’t i be asking you that?” Sans yawned. “c’mon in, get off the porch.”

He peered around the door and was relieved to see none of his nightmares had popped to life and settled into the living room. There was a dirty dish or two laying around and the floor could use a vacuum, but it wasn’t even as bad as Stretch managed when Edge was out of town. It still felt uneasy walking inside. “i didn’t know you two were together.”

“we’re not,” Sans sounded amused, climbing up on the sofa and sprawling out. He wiggled his bare toes thoughtfully, “red and i aren’t real interested in your version of happily ever after, but we like to have a good time.”

Yeah, Stretch shouldn’t be touching this subject with a forty-nine and a half foot pole. He didn’t want to know about this, not even a little, and his mouth apparently had other ideas on the subject because he blurted out, “you’ll sleep with that asshole and not me? when I asked, you told me no.”

If anything, Sans only looked more amused, since he was also a special kind of asshole. But then, weren’t they all. “aw, you’re plenty fun, sweetheart. you of all people should know better. i turned you down because i could tell you didn’t really want it. just as well, anyway, seems like you like ‘em a little past waist high.” Sans gave him a narrow look, one that sent prickles up Stretch’s spine because that was the look of someone who saw too much, “that was years ago, why’re you bringing that up now? you okay?”

“yeah,” Stretch said sourly. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a lie. “that therapist of yours is all about digging up shit i don’t want to think about and dangling it in front of my brain. trying to get into your shorts qualifies as something i didn’t ever want to think about again, but here we are lingering on it like a fart in an elevator.”

“she does have a way with the gray matter, especially considering we don’t have any,” Sans agreed. “so let’s open a window and let out the stink. what do you want? red’s at the embassy if you need him. probably.”

“nah, i wanted red but you’ll do.

Sans’s grin went a little sharper and it ratcheted the whole uncanny valley resemblance he had to Red up to an uncomfortable level. “good to know we’re interchangeable.”

“yeah, i don’t need to hear anything about you two interchanging,” Stretch scoffed. That required a bare minimum of alcohol to even toe open the door. “what i need is help shortcutting something. the mass is more than i can handle alone.”

“what the fuck are you trying to move?” Sans sounded bored but that was normal. Stretch knew him too well not to see the glint of rising interest. “and why?”

“it’s a surprise for my hubby and if you come with me, i’ll show you.”

“nope.” It was impressive the way Sans managed to pop the ‘p’ without the benefit of lips. “i need to know if this is worth showering for.”

Stretch told him.

“are you shitting me?” Sans shook his head. “can’t be done.”

“yes, it can, i’ve done the equations.”

“the mass of the water…”

“i took it into account, it isn’t an issue,” Stretch said patiently. “you know i’m never wrong.”

Sans sighed. “your math is never wrong, i’ve seen you do equations in your sleep. you, on the other hand…and there’s always a first time for your creepy mental calculator to fuck up.” He hesitated, then warned, “if this doesn’t work, it’s your mess to clean up. you’re the one who wanted to marry the edgelord.”

“deal,” Stretch grinned at him. Not that he’d doubted for a second that Sans would help. He liked stupid experiments as much as Stretch and the only reason he’d gone to Red first was he’d known Sans would agree.

Red wasn’t his brother, was nothing like Blue but…he was a Sans. It was good to check on him from time to time, make sure everything was okay. Knowing that he was boning Sans was a little bit of a relief, if Stretch were honest; at least he wasn’t constantly alone.

Sans stood up with a groan, scratching at his hip where his pelvis was peeking over too-large shorts. “lemme shower and we’ll see what we see.” He paused at the bottom of the stairs, unusually serious. “do me a favor in return? don’t mention to the edgelord that i’m boning his brother.”

“i won’t lie, but i won’t bring it up,” Stretch told him, “i don’t have a bone in this fight.”

“good enough,” Sans shrugged. “it’s up to red to mention it if he wants, as far as i’m concerned.”

“yeaaaaah, so, do you think that’s more along the lines of a snowball’s chance in hell or leaning more towards hell freezing over?”

Sans grinned and held his hand out for a fist bump. “i think i’m too tired to come up with a pun to go with that, but i do know red would be chilly about me doing a big reveal.” He started making his way towards the stairs. “have a seat, don’t smoke in the house.”

Stretch eyed the sofa, “have you two fucked there?”

“not recently,” Sans called down, “can you say the same about yours?”

“i can say mine is scotch-guarded,” Stretch grumbled, and gingerly sat on the edge of the cushion to wait.

 ~~*~~

 Edge was the planner, he loved his spreadsheets and pie charts, whatever the hell he used. Stretch was more of a fly by the seat of his pants kinda guy and hoped he didn’t end up bare-assed by the end.

In this case, Stretch wasn’t ashamed to say he cheated. He’d turned on the tracking app on Edge’s phone and kept an eye on it until he was almost home. Then he darted downstairs to the basement and stripped, readying himself for what was to come.

He didn’t have to wait long. Barely, he could hear the front door open and close. Only a few minutes later there were boots on the stairs and Edge calling down. “I have to say, I appreciate your tactics more than I would breadcrumbs. Thank you for leaving the flowers whole rather than scattering the petals.”

“hey, romance ain’t dead but it can be tidy,” Stretch said as Edge came into sight, carrying the roses Stretch had laid out in an arrow to guide him. He swirled his hand through the heated water before raising his dripping fingers in a wave. “what do you think?”

Truth be told, Stretch wasn’t all that confident about this. He thought a hot tub was a little slice of awesome, but he wasn’t sure how Edge would feel about it. Anything that tipped the scale past neutral would be good enough, and hell, it wasn’t like they ever used the basement, anyway. It was finished, the walls painted and the floor tiled, and completely empty, not so much as a cardboard box tucked into a corner.

Until now. now it had a very nice hot tub tucked into a corner, the water steaming warm, with all the appropriate precautions for the humidity taken.

Probably the basement had been intended as a lab for Red. Probably. Stretch was gonna add that question to the list of ones he’d ask on the tenth of never. But this was his house too, so he figured they could use the basement for something else. His own lab would be a pain in the ass to move and he could just shortcut to it, anyway.

Usually, Stretch was an expert at reading Edge’s expression, but…right now he seemed oddly blank, his eye lights passive as he carefully set the roses down on the bottom step. “How did you even get this in here?”

“i’ll never tell,” Stretch declared. Taking refuge in silliness was automatic, a longtime source of comfort. “my mouth is sealed, you can’t torture it out of me. sans helped.”

Edge raised a brow bone. “You pried him out of my brother’s bed long enough to help?”

That was one question to check off the never-bring-up list. “why did they even think you didn’t know?”

“I have no idea. If they were trying to keep it a secret, then they should make sure their room isn’t next to mine the next time we are in a hotel,” Edge said dryly.

“okay, so as much as i would love to have a long discussion about sans and your brother screwing, you haven’t answered my question.” Edge only looked at him and Stretch tried to keep his face from falling, knew his smile was wobbling, “you don’t like it.”

Any growing disappointment was instantly converted to a squawk of surprise when Edge abruptly strode forward and climbed into the tub, clothes and all. His suit was sagging and clinging in an instant as he sloshed through the water to pin Stretch to the side of the tub, straddling his lap.

“Hm,” Edge nuzzled at his jaw, “it seems nice enough.”

“you nut,” Stretch could barely talk through his laughter, giggling harder as Edge licked ticklishly along his cervical vertebrae.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Edge asked, and yeah, there was no way his voice could ever sound anything close to innocent. Sexy as fuck was better anyway.  

“something close to it, yeah.” Stretch struggled to unbutton Edge’s sopping shirt. His bare toes found something that gave him a pause, “are you still wearing your boots?”

“I have more,” Edge ducked his head, his teeth grazed Stretch’s collarbone and abruptly he didn’t care about boots, clothes, or anyone screwing anybody who wasn’t him.

This experiment was getting marked down as a success.

  -finis