#a lot of their relationship revolves around escapism and in little wives... they were only trying to hold on to that for a little longer

[lilacerull0]

Whatever you do, don't you ever think about Jo and Laurie and how the idea of romantic love affected both of them, just don't. do. that.

[ryuumarsart]

Alright...hear me out...

What if Bojack and Mr. Peanutbutter were bisexual rather than straight? Like many of my recent ships, this came to me towards the end of the series when [spoilers] Bojack moved in with Mr. Peanutbutter and I realized that I needed this stupid ship. I thought, "Let's get these predatory men away from women by shipping them with each other lol" and this happened. I know a lot of their arcs revolve around being straight as hell and it's questionable to make such flawed characters queer, but this is just for fun. Basically, in this AU Bojack is bisexual, with a preference towards men. His childhood is made even worse as a queer child in a highly homophobic household, especially from his father. Thanks to this and compulsory heterosexuality, he has to suppress his love for other boys and only let himself like girls. He is a little more free once he escapes his family, but not by much. He ends up in a secret relationship with Herb, the first time he can embrace his sexuality fully. This makes his later betrayal so much more painful as Herb is not only hurt by a friend, but heartbroken. When it comes out that Herb is gay, he begs for Bojack to come out and stand with him in solidarity, but he refuses for his career's sake. Furious, Herb tries to out him, but Bojack plays it off as an act of desperate slander. After this incident, Bojack falls back into the routine of only letting himself date girls, although he longs to pursue his male crushes. This routine of cycling through women to convince everyone, including himself, that he's straight contributes to his belief that he can never truly love someone. The only person that he comes out to is Diane (definitely after she finishes writing his book) who keeps his secret no matter how infuriating he is. Meanwhile, Mr. Peanutbutter is bi as well, with no real preference either way. His family was low-key homophobic, so he never really came out to them, especially since he had a habit of moving through relationships quickly and ignoring his same-sex crushes. On the way to stardom, he quickly learned that queer people were not welcome in Hollywood, so he continued his facade. He definitely had a celebrity crush on Hank Hippopopalous. He falls pretty hard for Bojack, but since Bojack is so clearly straight, he moves on to Katrina. Every time his love dies for one of his wives, he finds himself back at Bojack. This makes his little obsession with Bojack a little more reasonable, like how he always wanted to hang out with him and made Diane hang up the phone "in case Bojack calls" and defends him despite all the terrible things Bojack does, since he is not just trying to force everyone to like him, but is in love with him. He worries about Bojack each time he spirals, but feels like there isn't much he can do to help. He too comes out to Diane, partly as "proof" that she is different from his past two wives who he didn't come out to. This backfires though once they drift apart as she starts to understand why he cared so much about Bojack and she questions the validity of their relationship. Mr. Peanutbutter truly loved her, but she can't believe that someone like him could love someone like her, using his sexuality as an excuse (making her a little biphobic in this, but she learns better later don't worry). Once she's over him, she's just annoyed that these two gay disasters should just KISS ALREADY and leave women alone. When stuff hits the fan and Bojack is losing everything, the only one still by his side is Mr. Peanutbutter, who is secretly happy to be in that position. He desperately wants Bojack to just forget the outside world, forget everyone else, and live happily with him, despite knowing that it isn't realistic. He goes to Todd's party, worried about Bojack when he is kicked out, but wanting to be there for his best friend. He ends up leaving early to return to an empty home. After many failed calls, he checks Bojack's old house, finding EMTs already there. He is devastated and comes face-to-face with his feelings for Bojack as his death hits harder than he expected. He is overjoyed when Bojack lives, even if he has to serve time in prison. He visits him in prison when he can, although he can tell that Bojack wishes that his other friends would as well. Bojack comes to value these visits though when Mr. Peanutbutter has to miss a couple because of work. Mr. Peanutbutter continues to support him when everyone else continue to live better lives without Bojack, giving him a home after his release. (The rest of this is me forcing a happy ending lol) After SO LONG, Bojack realizes that he has someone to love him unconditionally and finally accepts his love for men. He comes out publicly because it's not like people could hate him more than they do. Mr. Peanutbutter does as well, but less dramatically. I imagine that Bojack still has so much trouble saying "I love you" so he uses some drawn out reference to say it to Mr. Peanutbutter. They live out their days as an old gay couple trying to improve themselves with each other for support (and LOTS of therapy oml). tl:dr In this AU they're both bi and suffer from compulsory heterosexuality, but end up together as two flawed people trying to move on from their pasts and improve themselves.

[sparklyjojos]

[THE CHILDISH DARKNESS Recaps, Chapters 1-2]

Note 1: As this book is a direct sequel, it requires good knowledge of the events of Smoke, Soil or Sacrifices (recapped here).

Note 2: Please be aware that the book revolves around a dysfuntional family, bad relationships, heavy depression and self-harm, and that the narrator might not be a very morally upstanding man.

Note 3: Do not believe his lies.

Note 4: Or do. It’s your call.

Note 5: Different people want to believe in different stories, after all.

[tw: gore, body horror, csa, suicide, sorta homophobic undertones?]

---

ONE

[Our narrator is Natsukawa Saburou, a writer of trashy mystery novels and one of the older brothers of Shirou, the narrator of Smoke, Soil or Sacrifices.]

Saburou recalls his time in middle school when he was concerned about possibly being gay and in denial, since he liked to suck girls’ fingers and that’s ALMOST like blowing a guy, RIGHT? But his actually gay friend Okamoto Yasuhiro, known as Okachi, said that Saburou didn’t seem to be actually gay. On the other hand, their mutual friend Kaede seemed to him to have some lesbian vibes. (The three often hanged out together.) Okachi also claimed that while there is a line between straight and gay, it’s faint and sometimes cannot be seen clearly.

--

When they were In high school, Kaede’s father died in a work-related accident, and she reacted to it by eating a tremendous amount of food and falling into a few days worth of sleep. While she was sleeping her left arm started to swell unnaturally. As it turned out, a womb-like structure had developed there, along with a fast growing fetus, which was cut out in surgery and then cut out again when the same unbelievable event repeated. Kaede’s family claimed that maybe it was the dead father trying to come back to help Kaede, as she had a stalker called Araki Kazuo.

Whether the dad thing was true or not, Saburou decided to solve the problem by beating up Araki. The two engaged in a lot of fights escalating to using weapons. After learning about the problem, Saburou’s brother Shirou said that maybe their older brother Jirou was right: just beating up a guy wasn’t enough, you had to use much more drastic measures. Saburou followed this advice as far as cutting Araki’s two fingers off, internally horrified at the act and how much the threats coming out of his own mouth sounded like something Jirou would say. Upon returning home he popped the fingers in the fridge in case one of Araki’s buddies asked to get them back (nobody did) and sat down to play the piano to calm himself down.

At that time Saburou loved to play the piano, but only a single piece: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. No other music resonated with him so much, and as the result he was a rather poor pianist. One day when he heard the musically gifted Jirou play Beethoven, he was struck by the artistry and emotion heard in the piece. [By struck I mean he even popped a boner and had to go deal with it, because this is Maijo Otaro’s book.] The difference in skill between them was obvious and depressing. Then Saburou noticed that Jirou in all his genius seemed to get quickly bored with each piece and just randomly choose what to play. Maybe Jirou had genius, but Saburou had just enough skill to play the one piece he loved. Maybe their approaches were both okay. It was hard to judge.

While playing, Saburou thought about how Araki had yelled that his stalking was the proof of his love for Kaede. Surely there was a ‘love’ there, much like both sides of an abusive relationship may be convinced of their ‘love’. Maybe Kaede’s dead father also tried to return out of ‘love’, oblivious to the fact that each time he only hurt his daughter more and more.

[And then Saburou tried to lick those cut off fingers in the fridge and was like ‘well, I’m disgusted, and since these belonged to a guy that clearly means I’m not gay!” ...Whatever you say, narrator.]

 TWO

What is a story?, the narrator is wondering. Why does it exist? Why don’t we employ our power of imagination solely to think of new ways to find shelter or food, but we need stories? Why do we need to give birth to fiction, something that doesn’t exist in this world? Why do we need the lies called a story?

The narrator believes that it’s because you can’t tell the truth using anything other than lies. Every writer knows that using a lie will make something seem more real than just faithfully recreating reality; will make deep emotions deeper. A story is a truth you want to tell, but told in lying words. Something that can ellicit joy greater than just plain laughter, or suffering greater than just normal pain. It’s not really something you explain as much as something you feel.

Maybe it’s not that the writer chooses a story, as much as the story has a chance meeting with the writer and can be transferred to others through him. Maybe that’s why no one can write just any story or pass down just any truth. The story is the one who conveys the truth by using the writer as a tool.

Certainly when Saburou was writing two novels in high school, The White Forest (白い森) and The Hymn (賛歌), he did want to convey truths: about commitment and detachment, and how one could at once be with others but still stay separated from them. When he came to write cheap mystery novels later, he ceased to be the tool of the story. Focusing on monetary gain, he wasn’t able to write something more real than reality.

Shirou noticed that and kept criticizing how stupid Saburou’s new novels were, how he’d sold himself out and that he’d become a factory producing the same thing in a different package over and over again, and even snapped one of Saburou’s books in half once. Saburou understood the point: he should be writing more important things and give his life some value. There was value to someone like Shirou, an ER surgeon saving lives every day, but Saburou didn’t really do nothing special.

After the recent case and Nozaki’s attack [see: Smoke, Soil or Sacrifices], 29-year-old Saburou started to feel like now that he had witnessed a true case, he wouldn’t be able to lie convincingly in his novels, and therefore would be unable to convey the truth. He gave up on the idea of turning the Nozaki case into a book, even if it’d bring a lot of money. Or maybe that was just his attempt to escape the reality of what happened.

Saburou called his editors and announced he’s not going to write anything anymore. He had stable income from a cram school he had once established (with an apt acronym of NAPS), and since nobody there really liked him coming around and trying to help, he could fill his time with whatever else he wanted.

At first he focused on sleeping with women. Many women, who tended to be the girlfriends and wives of his friends. So many women that in an attempt to take each one to a different hotel, he sort of ran out of all good hotels in Fukui, and only then realized how ridiculous this whole way of living was and maybe he should focus on something else.

For some time he was playing the piano in a club called Super Dash Penguins [clearly the greatest club name ever] near the Fukui station. He was doing pretty good when imitating famous jazz pianists, and maybe that was precisely what he was best at: not doing anything original of his own, just putting a little twist on something created by others.

--

Around that time, in March, Saburou accidentally witnessed a teenage girl burying a mannequin in the middle of a field. Quite suspicious activity, seeing as the case of Nozaki burying multiple women was still fresh in everyone’s mind. So when the girl then rode her bike past his car, he decided to stealthily follow her [while commenting about how pretty she is in a highly creepy way. Er, narrator? Please stop?]. She was circling between what seemed to be her house and various places in Nishi Akatsuki, each time taking a mannequin from the shed, riding to some remote place and burying it. Saburou decided to investigate the shed while she was out, but during his first attempt he was almost caught by a thin bespectacled man wielding a hoe – probably her father – so he had to return to the car and wait for a more opportune time.

At the more opportune time, Saburou managed to sneak inside the shed and found a map of Nishi Akatsuki with fourteen red pins. Six of them marked the locations of Nozaki’s attacks, and eight pointed to the places where the girl had buried the mannequins.

Unable to do a lot more, Saburou returned home. His mother was still in a coma, his father Maruo and oldest brother Ichirou were still hospitalized, and Shirou spent a lot of time at his girlfriend Atena’s place, so Saburou was usually completely alone in the Natsukawa house. On that day, though, Shirou was home and slammed a news article on the table in front of him. Together with a bag containing a pair of real human legs.

The article provided the names of people who had gone missing since February, all having the surnames Aoki or Aikawa, which fit the pattern that Nozaki used to choose victims. What’s more, the disembodied legs that probably belonged to a missing person were found buried in a location that would lie on top of Jawakutora’s spiral on the map of Nishi Akatsuki.

Saburou remembered the girl burying mannequins. While the points on her map seemed rather randomly chosen, she might have something to do with the copycat. Saburou was a little afraid that Shirou’s impulsiveness would result in him trying to punch the truth out of the girl, but it’s not like all Natsukawas didn’t have this sort of temper.

They arrived at the girl’s house. Shirou invited himself in and by being loud, flashy and acting like he had the full right to be here, got the girl’s father (who’s not the thin guy Saburou saw earlier) to show them her room. The father stated that the girl – Fuse Yurio – hadn’t shown any changes in behavior recently, but to be honest, she had always been a strange child in the first place.

Shirou in his chaotic investigation of Yurio’s room carelessly threw a lot of books on the ground: a lot of weird mystery novels in the vein of Nisio Isin and Seiryoin Ryusui, as well as a plethora of paranormal trash, mostly about UFO. (“Oh, look, now these are some really stupid books,” Shirou said throwing Saburou’s entire Runbaba series to the ground. Fair enough.)  Finally Shirou found a suspicious bundle of volumes held together with a rubber band saying DON’T TOUCH ME, using hundreds of tiny kanji for ‘death’ to make the letters. How very teenage. The bundle contained several tomes with novel-like titles, one of them called Runbaba Notebook and featuring a poor picture of very effeminately looking Runbaba.

Shirou noticed aloud that the first character of each title put together created a message: Dad comes into the room at night. The possible implication made Saburou so outraged he wanted to jump at Yurio’s father with fists before they even tried to make sure there’s really abuse going on, but Shirou managed to stop him. The father claimed that he had no idea what the message was about. Yurio was apparently weird enough to do a creepy thing like that randomly. Shirou decided he’d want to hear the explanation from the source, but it seemed Yurio didn’t have a cellphone he could call.

Further investigation revealed a file titled ‘suicide note’ on Yurio’s PC, containing a description of her being abused sexually by her father, and: “I just want to know that at least my life is my own. My body will soon disappear from this Earth.”

Saburou really did punch the father this time and Shirou had to hold him back to prevent carnage (“Sorry Mr. Fuse, this guy here loves kids and snaps when he hears about child abuse”). While Shirou acknowledged the abuse might really be happening, he also couldn’t ignore the possibility that this could be just a kind of a cry for attention on Yurio’s part, or that it may be a sort of self-harm done in one own’s imagination.

Shirou then found a set of school books and a middle school uniform, all unused, and only then did Saburou realize that the girl had been out in the fields during school hours. According to the father, Yurio had been homeschooled even since she’d refused to attend classes, probably because her unusual personality had made her a target for bullies. Shirou asked for a way of contacting Yurio’s peers that still were friends with her.

While the father left the room to put together a phone number list, Shirou scolded Saburou for punching people without thinking. “Seems you haven’t used your head properly in years! Is it going to take another dead Runbaba and closing yourself in that damn warehouse for you to actually think?!” Saburou didn’t have an answer to that. Shirou asserted that right now the most pressing issue wasn’t figuring out all the family’s issues, but finding Yurio, who might have really been planning suicide.

And so Saburou had to focus on thinking. He couldn’t afford another Runbaba, couldn’t just close himself off from the world in some dark place. Finding this girl was all that mattered, this girl who smelled of citrus fruit and would surely grow up into a beautiful woman one day [um, narrator, your focus on those things in a thirteen-year-old girl is kinda creepy].

Shirou got a call from his friend Sanbonsugi, who had been watching the place that those disembodied legs had been found at. Sanbonsugi witnessed the murderer coming back to the crime scene. The man’s description exactly matched that of the man with glasses that Saburou had seen snooping around Yurio’s house earlier.

Shirou found a mostly destroyed notebook in an oil drum used to burn trash, which could mean Yurio got rid of the evidence for whatever plan she had in mind. The map in the shed had a new addition that Saburou hadn’t seen earlier, a sentence scrawled on it: YOU CAN’T FIND ME.

The two brothers got moving through the town. Shirou called each person from the list that the father had provided and learned that apparently Yurio had a boyfriend. [“Don’t look so down about it, you lolicon,” Shirou said towards Saburou. Thanks for recognizing the creepiness, dude.] The boyfriend was a sixteen-year-old Hashimoto Takashi. (“Seems you’re not the only lolicon around, huh?”) The brothers split, Saburou searching for the boyfriend and Yurio, while Shirou went on to catch the glasses-wearing murderer.

Saburou was unsuccessful in getting any information from Hashimoto’s parents. They didn’t seem to be interested in their son’s life in the slightest and had no idea who Fuse Yurio was.

Meanwhile, Shirou and his friend caught the murderer while he was checking on the buried body parts. The guy was Takano Yoshiki from the neighboring town Nanjou, and when Shirou arrived at his house, inside he found Yurio’s boyfriend Hashimoto Takashi, dead from suffocation, still tied to a chair with tape.

After beating the shit out of Takano, Shirou discovered yet another map of Nishi Akatsuki covered with pins, this one portraying what Takano had been attempting to do by burying the body parts: draw a giant monkey similar to that of the Nazca Lines. Jawakutora’s spiral would create the monkey’s tail.

After Shirou called Saburou, and after they beat the hell out of Takano once again, they asked him about the reason for drawing the picture. Takano answered,

“For Great Jawakutora.”

This time it was Saburou who had to pull his brother away to prevent murder.

Saburou then found Hashimoto’s sports bag. Stuffed inside was an array of nine balls used in different sports as well as a globe. The soccer ball had a paper ring around it. It must have symbolized Saturn, the globe – the Earth, and the rest – the other planets and the Sun. Why would a high schooler lug those around? Why would the same high schooler be killed? Maybe he and Yurio planned to do something that interferred with Takano’s little project. That would explain why Takano had been hanging around her house with a hoe: to follow her and dig up the mannequins so they wouldn’t mess up his Nazca monkey design. But what image could be created using ten “celestial bodies” and eight mannequins... and six buried women?

Saburou couldn’t figure this out, but Shirou put two and two together as soon as he saw it, running to the nearby computer to search for it (using awful dial-up Internet, because this is early 2000s) and make sure.

The Pioneer plaque was sent to space twice, on board of Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Aside from a drawing of two humans and the Pioneer probe, it also featured a message for the aliens on how to find the probe’s origin. The pulsar map using 14 pulsars -- that starburst shape on the left side of the plaque -- could be used to calculate the position of the Sun, and the drawing of the Solar System below pointed to the third planet from the Sun.

Ten objects of the Solar System, fourteen pulsars. Ten balls, six buried women and eight mannequins. A strange girl obsessed with UFO could definitely come up with something like this.

Shirou said that the pulsar map could be pointing them to where Yurio is. Her writing YOU CAN’T FIND ME might have meant that she desperately wanted to be found. Clearly, this was the time for Saburou to step in. Saburou replied that he wasn’t the one who had managed to find all those clues, but Shirou retorted that it had been Saburou who had already found Yurio once, and Shirou wouldn’t be able to figure the situation out without that.

So Saburou started to think about where Yurio could be. Maybe she and her boyfriend Hashimoto had planned to kill themselves so that their naked bodies would symbolize the man and the woman from the Pioneer plaque. If so, then maybe the additional fifteenth line of the pulsar map – the galactic plane – would point to them, just like it seemed to point to the two humans in the drawing.

Saburou put on his warmest clothes (even March is quite cold in Nishi Akatsuki) and walked deep into the dark mountains, moving along the ‘galactic plane’ towards the Hand Pond, called so after its characteristic hand-like shape. The lake seemed like an appropriate place for a meeting between two teens.

The mountain forest at night was cold and frightening, mostly because of the possibility of walking into a bear. But also because of an urban legend claiming that a family of cannibals known as Chiuhi lived in secret underground tunnels stretching all throughout the mountains, and that they’d be more than ready to pull a lonely wanderer like him into a hole and eat him.

Although what really scared Saburou was the possibility of Jirou somehow being there, that horrifying man ready to enact revenge on the family starting from his younger brother.

Finally Saburou caught the distant glimpse of the pond glinting with moonlight. Finally a spot of light in the oppresive darkness. Was Yurio still alive? Dead? If she had already died, then maybe exhausted Saburou could just lie next to her instead of Hashimoto and die too so her efforts wouldn’t be in vain, or something.

Upon arriving at the moonlit lake Saburou turned off his flashlight and became one with the darkness.

It wasn’t a bad feeling. Maybe once you’re caught by the very thing you’re afraid of, there’s no further point in fearing it.

In the quiet darkness, Saburou heard music coming from within him. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. He whistled to the tune and in response heard a small sound somewhere in the darkness. Was that Yurio? A bear? The Chiuhi? Jirou? A UFO full of aliens? He continued to whistle until someone asked, “Who’s there?” A girl’s voice with no discernible emotion.

Saburou thought that maybe it’d be better if aliens really showed up right now, responding to “the Pioneer plaque” or maybe “the Nazca monkey”. People had killed or were planning to die just to make these images. That’s why the aliens really should notice them and show up.

If Saburou was writing a novel about all this, he’d certainly make that happen.

A story passed from an enthusiathic creator to the recipient in the sky...

Even if it’d be a lie, that’d be okay. After all, it was the known truth of stories that a person’s great effort would without fail be noticed by someone else.

[>>>NEXT>>>]

[twdmusicboxmystery]

8x02: Details and Themes

Morning Everyone! Today I’m going to go over details from the episode I didn't mention on Monday, and some themes I saw running through the episode (which might also end up running through the entire season or at least 8a).

Details:

In the first scene with the Saviors, there's some kind of belt or possibly dog collar on the table. The woman, Mara, also calls her people "fishies." Oceanside reference? When she got on the walkie talkie, she calls three people. The first two don't answer. The third one does. (Once again, lots of threes in this episode.)

At one point during the fire fight, we see a 101D on the building in the background. Kind of interesting as this was episode 101.  

It occurred to me Morgan's "I don't die," might have actually foreshadowed the deaths of Freddy and Andy. I think so mostly because of what Lennie James said on TTD. He said in the moment, Morgan was trying to warn them to stay away from him, because he doesn't die, which means people around him might. They did. I know a lot of people think it's foreshadows his death, and it still might, but it definitely foreshadowed the deaths of the two men he said it to.

Dwight's Note:

It also mentions "Browning." That's a type of gun Dwight is telling them to look for. The interesting this is Beth's knife (the one that's been missing since S6) was also a browning. It's looking more and more like symbolically, Beth is the weapon they're searching for. It's also very interesting that, for right now, the weapons seem to be missing.  

Oh, for the Xs? There were two sets of 8 Xs each. Kind of interesting.  

Someone suggested not everyone might understand what I meant when I said Shepherd was a big deal. Remember there was an Officer Shepherd at Grady, played by Teri Wyble? She's one of many of the Grady crew who've put suspicous things on social media in past months.  

Here's another cool detail I missed but @wdway caught: the ceiling above Daryl is broken and open in this shot. 

It looks very similar to the ceiling here in Still. 

Remember my Hole in the Roof Theory? Check it out HERE. Because we've seen this during key episodes and sequences around Beth and her arc, this gives me tons of hope that this situation with Daryl is about Beth and will lead to her.  

Female Room  

Wanted to give some screenshots of this room. Originally I thought the little red flowers on the pillows were lady bugs. They're not, but I'm still side-eyeing them. 

Lots of candles on the tables and a covered (hmm, could that be “hidden”?) lamp. Three of those big ones can be seen, but two sets of three hanging on the wall in sconces. Then there are those red/green curtains.

Gracie’s Room

I wanted to look more closely at the baby's room. @wdway caught this picture. 

We're pretty sure the back of the chair, seen in the mirror, is painted with three hanging POSSUMs. *coughs Beth*. Now that I’m looking, I think there’s also an eagle with spread wings above them, much like we saw on the wall in Still. 

There’s also a yellow truck of some kind. There are many animals in the mural on the wall and in the mobile hanging over the baby's head. I mentioned on Monday the dog and the frog, both of which are Beth symbols we've seen before. Others we could read into, but most I can't connect specifically to Beth's arc. The tiger could = shiva. Various meanings for lions and elements. One super-interesting thing is that the 8th thing on the mobile is this: the same symbols we saw made by the Scavengers when they surrounded TF in the junk yard. Hmm.

Rabbit  

This has been circulated a lot in the past few days. I'm sure many of you have seen it. As far as I'm concerned, we're looking at a few distinct possibilities here. Remember that we’ve seen the rabbit motif around Beth a lot. (X)

1. Possibly this little girl is Gracie rather than Judith. If so, it's possible certain spoilers I posted about HERE are wrong, and Judith may die. Let's hope not.

2. The little girl in the flash forward could still be Judith. Maybe Rick takes care of Gracie too, and Judith is just playing with Gracie's doll. Gracie's in another room or with someone else.

3. Maybe Gracie dies (Gimple alluded to something ominous on TTD) and Rick takes the doll and gives it to Judith.  

4. Could be purely symbolic. I actually like this option the best. Why? Because I think it makes a great case for Beth. By showing the rabbit in the dream/flash forward with the girl we'll assume for the moment is Judith, it creates a statement about the relationship between Rick and Judith. Judith is Rick's daughter, but not biologically. They went out of their way to tell us that last season. He just began caring for her and now she is his daughter. If the same is true of Beth and Gracie, the doll could symbolize that. Another sheriff (the new one in town) is taking care of Gracie and is pretty much her parent, or will be, even if the child is not biologically hers. Just a theory. And a head canon. ;D

5. @Brynn_81 (IG) also suggested it could be a link to Sophia. I've talked before about the "missing girl" theme that connects Beth and Sophia. Remember Sophia had a doll Daryl found in the river. I think that option has a lot of promise as well. Will be interesting to see if Daryl actually picks this doll up out of the crib. The river he found Sophia's doll in in S2 could feasibly be linked to Oceanside.  

6. Then there's this:

They COULD be lying purposely about this being Judith, but I kinda doubt it.

The thing is, we have pretty good evidence that the Old Man Coda isn't reality any more than the picnic scene was. It's Rick's vision of a perfect future. I don't think we should necessarily take the stuffed rabbit's presence as entirely literal. Just my two cents.  

As far as the handcuffs Daryl found, @thegloriouscollectorlady pointed out that, in order to get out of those cuffs, the person's hands would have to be small. Merle cut off his hand in S1 because it was the ONLY way for him to get out of the cuffs. Men generally have bulkier hands than women. The blood shows that whoever it was probably scraped up their hands seriously pulling them out of the cuffs, but they managed it without lobbing off a limb, right? It just stands to reason the prisoner was either a woman or possibly a young person/child. Though honestly most young people/children would be too intimidated by the situation to break out.  

And yes, if you hadn't figured this out yet, we're hoping the person who was in the cuffs and who possibly stayed in the Happy Room is Beth. She escaped/is missing and, though they don't realize it, is probably the "weapon" Rick and Daryl are searching for. Hopefully. ;D

Another thing we discussed was Sherry's pregnancy test in S7. It was negative, and obviously not enough time has passed for Sherry to have had a baby. I'm not saying she's the mother. But it may have been symbolic of something. I think it was a necessary element in 7x03 for Daryl to completely understand the situation between Sherry, Dwight, and Negan, but even so. We often see symbols operating on many levels, and I think it also may have foreshadowed this arc. That one of Negan's other wives got pregnant at some point, perhaps? That he's hiding a baby who would come into the narrative? Will probably make more sense as we go along.  

Horse Picture

I think this is pretty well-circulated too. I totally missed it and @katkhaos pointed it out to me. We see the picture taken from Hilltop in this shot. Why is that important? Horse Theory. Black horse = Daryl, white horse=Beth. The taking of the picture was obvious a purposeful plot device, since it was totally necessary for Simon to confiscate it. What are the chances it randomly shows up in this shot a handful of episodes later? If white horse = Beth, I think someone's about to stumble upon her.  

Episode to Episode Parallels

So here's something we talked about in the Safe Zone, and most of the credit for putting it together in a cohesive way goes to @katkhaos. It occurred to us how many parallels there are between S8 and S1. Yes, we already knew that. I don't just mean with symbols and repeated sequences/shots. I mean episode parallels. Check it out.  

Episode 1x01: Rick at gas station and meets Teddy Bear Girl.

Episode 8x01: Rick and Carl at gas station. Repeated shots. Meets Teddy Bear Girl (same actress).

Episode 1x02: Rick meets Morales in Atlanta.  

Episode 8x02: Rick meets Morales on the 4th floor of the Savior's compound.

Episode 1x03: Rick meets Daryl. Morales is there.  

Episode 8x03? 

Obviously Rick and Daryl already know each other this time around. But I think it's interesting that Daryl specifically wasn't present when Rick first saw Morales, to "echo" (Gimple's word) season 1. We didn't see Rick, Daryl and Morales all in the same place until 1x03. I'm assuming the same will be true in 8x03. Daryl's not far, after all. It's just a matter of time before he sees Morales too.  

Another thing to take into account? Episode 3 is where Rick reunites with Lori and Carl. A.k.a the sheriff reunites with his long-lost family after a journey to find them.

So I'm gonna throw this out there. I know I've said pretty strongly I think she'll return in episode 4. I still think it'll be an important episode because of the Alone head stone, and she may still return in it.  But I'm cautiously hopeful about episode 3. We have a lot of things pointing to it, and then there are these absolutely perfect episode parallels, the callbacks to Merle, etc. I won't be bummed if we don't see her this week (not any more than with any other time we haven't, anyway ;D) but I think it's a real possibility. *fingers crossed*

What @katkhaos suggested is that, especially as Gimple said the things about episodes 1-4 melting our brains, maybe the plan was always to parallel 8x01-8x04 with 1x01-1x04. Episode 1x05 is when TF gets on the road and goes to the CDC + leaves Jim behind. All of episode 6 is with Jenner at the CDC. Episodes 1x01-1x04 revolve around Rick waking up, finding his family, reunions, and Merle going missing. It'll be very interesting to see what episodes 8x03 and 8x04 bring us.

Re-Watching, I noticed this picture. During his fight with the savior, this cabinet ended up across the door of the Happy Room. That’s super-suspicious to me. Again, I think maybe Beth was staying in this room at some time. The first thing this reminded me of was when Daryl pushed the shelf over-top of Noah in 5x06, and he became trapped, with a walker trying to get through the door to get him. The other thing it could parallel to is Shane pushing a bed in front of Rick’s hospital room door. If that’s the case, you can see how this might parallel Beth and be a S1 callback.

Themes:

I noticed several times throughout the episode, various people mentioned things about how their friend or comrades weren't there, but would be soon. It was said several times by the various groups. @thegloriouscollectorlady and I also talked about how Rick and Daryl climb up to the fourth floor of the building. Now, there were a lot of parallels to Grady here, just in terms of the building/spatial layout. They climbed up an elevator shaft. It definitely wasn't on the ground floor. They were searching through lots of hallways and closed or locked doors. (We saw lots of keys and locks at Grady.) 

But Beth was kept on 5th floor of Grady, not the fourth. I'm wondering if this is part of the same theme: Almost there, but not quite. If Beth is running around here somewhere (like she was in the cuffs or staying in the Happy Room, it might also explain (symbolically) why she's not there. Why everything's empty and Rick and Daryl haven't found what they're looking for yet. They're almost there. Almost to where someone will return, but not quite yet. I don't know if this is just a theme for this episode, or if it will keep going for a handful of episodes.

The other theme had to do with confidence. There was a lot of talk of confidence or the lack there.  There was all of Ezekiel's talk and speech to Carol about being confident, even if you were faking it. We saw this theme in actions too.  

It specifically showed Freddy shaking before they opened the doors, and then he was killed. And then there was Eric. There were several times in the first part of the episode where Eric got this determined look on his face and did something brave, like shoot more saviors or provide cover for the others in his group. As time went on, things got worse. Francine was killed and Tobin was shot in the shoulder, and Eric started to look very scared. It was only after his lack of confidence took hold, that he was shot.  The idea is that confidence is more likely to win out, and usually does. When people give into fear, they're more likely to be injured and/or killed.

I actually really love this theme because there's so much truth to it. If you know anything about the law of attraction, you'll know what I mean. It's definitely something the writers are pushing this season. It actually goes hand in hand with other themes I've mentioned before, such as characters not actually dying until they accept their own deaths. Anyway, just really interesting.

One final thought from @bluesandbeth about Morales being alive. She said it's obvious Gimple doesn't like loose ends. If he just HAD to tie up Morales' story line, then Beth's must be driving him nuts. Even if we're totally wrong and she isn't alive, at the very least we'll have to see those missing 17 days/unexplained scenes at some point.  

But @bluesandbeth was reminded of Abraham's line in 6x06 (major Beth-symbolism episode). "Loose ends make my ass itch." Kinda thinking Gimple penned this line with an evil grin on his face. ;D

Okay, that's it for today. Anyone have anything to add?