#all I need now is a meat-pun name for him

[darknymfa]

I have acquired some delicious @barksbog meat. Delightfully huge monster. Everyone in the family has enjoyed giving him a pet, many compliments on how soft he is. I knew how big he was gonna be and yet I'm surprised every time I see him, big ol chonker.

[thessalian]

Thess vs TLOVM S3, Ep 12

Well, Arcane S2 comes out in just over a week, and I wanted to get TLOVM all watched before then, so I think it's safe to say that I Have Done It. Or I will have in the next half-hour or so. That said ... let's go!

'Glorious' new body, huh? Well. It's a look. I guess. I'm sure someone's into that. Rule 34, y'know.

Y'know, Thorshan ... Raidak ... whatever ... that's not what Krishna meant about becoming death. I mean, I guess you're going for the Oppenheimer thing, but ... seriously, they meant time-- Oh, never mind, fuck it, whatever.

GROG!

YES! GO, PIKE! YOU-- Wait. Why is your shield hellfire-orange now?!?

...Good outlook, Grog, buuuuuuut...

This body what-now?!?

Ofuck THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN UNTIL THE WHISPERED ONE FIGHT AT LEAST A WHOLE STORY ARC FROM NOW!

Wow. I just got a screen snip at the best possible time.

(Also, screen-snip is a STUPID-ASS NAME FOR IT.)

YES! NICE SHOT, VEX!

Yeah, no, Pike-- nononono... Fuck.

WaitWUT?!? WHEN DID THIS BECOME TETRIS?!?

That's not going to comfort the man who made an open-ended deal with a death god because of a recent "chance taken"!

Actuallyyyyyyy ... she was more fuelled by ... like ... not having a whole bunch of people die, but ... you know...

Can ... can he actually punch through magic? I mean, hopefully that's not some Prismatic Wall shit...

GOIN' MINXIE! YES! Haven't seen that in, like ... most of a season!

Message for anyone counting uses of Wild Shape right now: FUCK OFF AND ENJOY THE SPECTACLE!

Oooooooooooooooooh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit...

Did ... did you actually plan to get fired there? ...No pun intended?

...I guess he can punch through magic.

.........She has. A plan. ...And I think I know what it is. Feeblemind wouldn't work here. But... She's learned a few things about connections and roots...

She has. A plan. And she has an Earth Elemental form. Buuuuut that's still gotta hurt to see.

'Fancied?!? You do know how weak a word that is, right? 'Fancied' is "you thought she was hot and wanted to hit that"! ...Then again, what would Raishan know about anything else?

Oop.

Here we go.

Roots ... and connections.

WAIT WAIT WAIT NOT WITH THE ORTHAX-GUN!

At least the Orthax-gun probably didn't kill her. Them. It. Whatever.

Oooooooh, Percy...

To quote Marisha herself... "It's a power play; I love it!"

...Ooooooor maybe not-- OMG YOU WENT TO THAT CALLBACK!

I don't know if the Raven Queen's going to like this...

Yeah no.

He's not returning to the After! He needs to be released to get to an after!

...Was ... what that an answer?

That's what you think, Allura.

Kima is so done with this shit.

...Which ... yeah, you have and you did and you will, Champion of the Raven Queen.

Heh. That's going to come into play later, that little feather...

"Against"-- Yeaaaaaaaah.

...Ooooooooh this is creepy.

...They're all trapped in there?!? OH EWWWWWW!

Oh, shut the fuck up, Orthax.

Orthax ... shut. The fuck. UP.

Come oooooooooooon...

Oh. Ooooooooh no. Nonono poor Percy...

...WHAT?!? NO!

.........oh, Percy, nooooooo...

FUCK. OFF. ORTHAX.

Come on, Vex...

No, not to HIM; to PERCY!

Thank you!

brb crying

Aaaaaaaand the feather.

N'awwwwwwww, Vax!

Yes! YEEEEEES!

FUCK YOU, ORTHAX!

WHOA. Literally, apparently.

WOOHOO! BRB CRYING SOME MORE!

ALSO LAUGHING OMG DE ROLO!

Emon being rebuilt and-- Statue of Uriel awwwww!

OMG VEX ILU SO MUCH!

That's ... ominous... WTF?!?

That is ALSO ominous.

AND SO IS THAT.

GROG, SHUT UP. Yeaaaah okay.

We had to have the entire group cheer "GILMORE!" at least once. Something was missing with Gilmore's involvement until just that second, and now it is all complete.

...I am going to find out who wrote this and I don't know what I'm going to feed them for that Meat Man reference but it will probably not be JUST bees. (...possibly also some wasps. And if you get that reference, hello, fellow cross-fandom person!)

I'm sure they've spent Winter's Crest at Whitestone at least once in the campaign. Or possibly that was Emon; I think they had like two Winter's Crests in Emon. Wasn't one of them something about chasing some kind of demon? Meh, anyway, this is a very off-season Easter egg hunt, this entire scene.

...Like Grog talking about loving shopping, when Travis has been known for several campaign to hate shopping 'episodes'.

...Okay, what's he gonna do? Ah ... he's going to leave in a less ... antagonistic way.

And the Aramente ... with Vax?!? And ... a squire to the Voice of the Tempest as the wrong character?!? BWAHAHA.

Ooooooh here's the song.

N'awwwwww. Montage of happy.

...Except for that yick on his wrist...

...aaaand except for the cultist chanting--

...the eyes ... or lack thereof-- GAH FUCK!

Well. Who's glad they announced that their S4 got greenlit after THAT last frame or ten?!?

Now. WHO WROTE THIS?!? Brandon Auman, and Sam. I've talked about both of them before, but I think I'm starting to get a feel for when there's an episode that Sam had a hand in writing? I think it's the trolly little Easter eggs. That's just ... a very Sam thing. But he and Brandon, particularly together, seem to be able to get you laughing, ram a dagger into your heart while you're laughing, and then make you laugh again while you're sobbing with the pain of it. (Also Meredith Kecskemety, whose name I will learn to pronounce.)

Well, that's that. I so very much want S4. I need to see what they do with the Whispered One arc. I really do.

Oh. And. Before I go watch Omn1's take on this ep and then take a week or so's breather before hitting Arcane S2? That screenshot I mentioned:

I mean. Did I or did I not pause at the best time?

[skratchytheclown]

hey :) what information do you have on Koopalings' parents? i noticed you made these ocs in the fusion post and now I'm intrigued. Also, happy spooky month!

Not much yet (I haven't even thought of names for them), but I do have made some designs for them!

I'm still working on finalizing the designs.

The mom: She resembles Iggy, Lemmy, and Larry the most. She is a policewoman, and wear a badge all the time as a sort of panopticon surveillance (?) She has been seen on-duty before on the blog

I'm not quite sure what her personality is, but she might be a bit on the overconfident and reckless side. She's also pretty talkative, social, and jokes around, though she knows when to be serious. She is very tall and skinny like Iggy (she is even slightly taller than Iggy). Her "fangs" consist of three on the top, and two on the bottom. She also has a little moon marking on the right side of her head (something none of her children have, but they still inherited their markings from her). Her build is thin, but with muscle still (unlike the green skeleton that is Iggy).

(I also drew her in that one wolf post)

The Dad: There is even less information about the dad than there is about the mom. He only really showed up in the two pictures in this post. He resembles Roy, Morton, Wendy, And Ludwig. He works as a butcher, providing food to his fellow Koopa citizens within the harsh environment of their home. He has a few pals that hunt wild animals for him, but he has to step in a few times in order to not run out of meat. He has a few scars from both wild animals and perhaps some unsatisfied customers/thieves. Personality-wise, he's probably rather quiet. He doesn't really express himself that much. He listens quite well, but usually just doesn't have anything to talk about. His wife helps him get out of his shell a bit (pun not intended). Not that he's shy, or even that he hates people, it's just that he doesn't tend to start conversations. (I thought this could be a good contrast to the mom's personality?) He's pretty strong, though he doesn't have the best metabolism, unlike his wife. He likes to wear some cloth around his body or around his wrists just in case he needed it (cleaning, covering wounds, carrying things, etc.). He is also pretty short, with short legs and short arms (something most of the Koopalings have). He doesn't have much when it comes to the "fangs", just two barely peeking out on one side. He may also be missing some teeth.

The Koopalings' parents convinced Ludwig to take the Koopalings and move out and go to Bowser's Kingdom while they were still young. Ludwig and Lemmy have probably just become adults at the time, and Roy was probably around 17 years old? The home they grew up in wasn't the greatest place to live, and there are few job opportunities and good places to live, which is why they wanted them to move out as soon as possible (hoping they would live a better life than them). The younger Koopalings don't remember this all too well, and Larry believes they were kicked out, and that his parents didn't care about him. They have not contacted each other for years.

Edit: Happy "spook month" to you, too!

[fatfables]

Too Fat to Fuck

A new short, punk rock, fat fable.

“Went to a party. I gorged all night. I ate 16 slices and looked a sight. But now I’m stuffed. You’re out of luck. I’m stuck on the sofa, too fat to fuck.”

These were the first lyrics that I ever wrote. I was fifteen and thought that I was gonna be a rockstar. It was 1982 and my band was called “The Fat Bellamys.” We thought it was the coolest name ever because Bellamy kind of sounds like bellies. Fat rockstars and fat punkers were unheard of back then. We all pretended to be brothers when really we were just best friends. I was the lead singer and took the name, Jelly Bellamy. Malcolm was not a good name for a frontman. Jelly suited me well. In my skin-tight ripped jeans and stained wife-beater vest, ass and belly a-bulging, I thought I was the dog’s proverbials, wobbling around on stage like a rolly-polly lunatic. I would spit half-chewed pizza crusts at the disgusted audience as I screamed out my shitty lyrics, diaphragm visibly vibrating. I was determined to be the most popular fat kid in the valley.

The rest of the band consisted of Kevin (Tubby Bellamy) on guitar, Jay (Chubby Bellamy) on bass, and Killian (Kill the Bellamy) on drums. Killian was the fattest of us by far and the best looking. I was always secretly jealous of him. The drummer is always the fattest guy in the band. He also got to sit down all the time which I thought was hella unfair.

We practised in the store room out the back of my Dad’s pizza restaurant. It was also the only place that we ever performed. The restaurant was called “Do Littles” a pun on our surname, Dolittle, as in the doctor who could talk to the animals. Not that anyone in my family ever tried to talk to animals, we were too busy eating them and living up to our moniker by being as lazy and idle as possible. Dad was not a hard worker and neither was I. 

The restaurant was located on a side street off the south end of Ventura and was famous for its large greasy pies, large greasy owners, and large greasy customers. We played there every Saturday night for three years in return for free pizzas and sodas. Who needs paying when you’ve already got all the free food that you need right? I must’ve gained a hundred pounds or more in the few years that I was playing at the restaurant, as did the rest of the band.

We used to pull in a sizeable regular crowd of chubby punk kids, geeks, gluttons, and other assorted fat losers. Our fans were all the kids that would rather fill their faces than get high on crack and PCP with the “cool” kids at the Whiskey. We all thought that it was way cooler to die of diabetes than an overdose. We were the Chris Farley to their River Phoenix. We were ahead of our time.

Every weekend we would stuff ourselves stupid for hours on slippery slices of deep pan pepperoni, melted gooey four cheeses with stuffed crusts, and massive 20” meat feasts. We’d slurp down bucket loads of free refillable sodas and slushies until we were fit to burst. Then we would go on stage for twenty minutes. Huff and puff as we attempted to thrash out a handful of two minute songs, betweens our burps, before exhaustedly stumbling off stage and back to our booth to refill once more.

I wrote a few other songs during that period that we added to our weekend menu. “Eat the Poor,” was interpreted by some as being a satirical take-down of the Reagan administration's economic policies, but really it was just my personal desire to eat, digest, and excrete poor people. “California Uber Bellies,” was our theme song, and just generally spoke to how we saw ourselves. “Give Me Convenience Foods of Give Me Death,” speaks for itself, as did “Ice Cream Truck.” But it was with, “Too Fat to Fuck,” that we finished every performance. That was our masterpiece. That was the cherry on the cream, on the cake, that sat on top of the sundae, that was our set.

I wrote it when I was fifteen so had never had sex for that reason. I didn’t know that I was writing my own prophecy. Anyway, girls were kind of hard to come by in the fat geek punk scene. Or at least they were until Melissa showed up.

She was beautiful with curves as wide as the horizon. Her dumper truck ass and thighs looked so succulent trapped in her multi-coloured leggings. She was as wide as the door with the silverest cellulite and fattest cankles that I had ever seen. Her belly hung soft and low and appeared to wave, with every step and breath, as if it were made of melted chocolate. It hung limp like a bumpy deflated tire, in comparison to mine, which was round and smooth, and ballooned out like an over inflated beach ball, due to the years of excessive intake of carbs and sugar, with which I’d joyously glutted it on a daily basis. I was in love. And that was before she even ordered.

I saw her looking back at me and she smiled as she told the waiter, Merrill, that she wanted three twenty inch Seafood pizzas with extra cheese. I waved Merrill over and loudly copied her order to insure that she would notice me. She did and it worked. We matched each other for hours, meat feast after meat feast. I’d never seen a woman devour so many recently living creatures, of land and sea, flattened out on thick greasy, cheesy dough before. Eventually it was time to play and I shook my giant hips and ass at her. She lapped it up and when I took off my 4XL t-shirt in order to show her my sweaty glistening love handles I swore I could see that she was getting wet.

After the show I got up the guts to go and talk to her and we sat for hours talking about our favourite foods and restaurants while we continued to fill our bellies. By the time we snuck off to the store room we must have been drunk on at least ten pizzas a piece.

This is where it went wrong. As hard as I tried I couldn’t get it in her. Our bellies were just too large and incompatible. With my 48” pants around my ankles and my massively bloated beach ball belly bouncing around, my dick just didn’t reach far enough. My boulder smashed into her soft wobbly beachfront but we couldn’t make the all important connection. We tried it standing, we tried it sitting, we tried it every which way but loose, but it wouldn’t work. I had just turned eighteen years old and was already too fat to fuck.

After about fifteen minutes of immense sweating and effort she noticed that I was starting to lose my boner and became upset. This agitation turned into real anger and she eventually stormed off, leaving me alone in the store room with my sad semi and over 200 lbs of pizza dough. As she left she swore that she would get me back for the humiliation. She slammed the door shut and I was left to satisfy myself with the dough.

The next weekend I was shocked when she turned up with her “cousin” Enrico. He was huge and muscular, over 6 ft tall, and 300 lbs. I nervously ate my own weight in pizza wondering what was going to happen. He raped me in the store room after the show. Apparently, you can be too fat to fuck, but not too fat to be gay.

I went off punk music soon after that. It’s funny how the most aggressive sexual violence possible can affect you. Also, a copycat band had just come out. They called themselves the “Anarchy Burgers (Hold the Salad)” and were based at a burger and hot dog joint in Pasadena. They totally ripped off our idea. The final nail in the coffin was when I got a ‘cease and desist’ order from some company called ‘Alternative Tentacles,’ which I thought was strange. I always believed that was an entirely different kink.

Read more fatfables at www.fatfables.com

[sihaya74]

NEW The Lessons of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal S1: E6 -- HOPE IS THE THING WITH SURGICAL TROPHIES

Lessons of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal

S1:E6 – HOPE IS THE THING WITH SURGICAL TROPHIES

Hello readers and #FannibalFamily! Yes, it’s been a hot minute since I have updated this blog. What can I say? Life has a tendency to intervene. A few real-life events knocked me out of my daily writing pattern and I am just now beginning to regain my balance. This blog is, however, something I am committed to finishing no matter how long it takes, and so, I am digging back into the scripts of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and prepared to create my next installment – an analysis of the theme, the message, the universal lesson in the happenings of Season 1, Episode 6: “Entrée.”

I must make an important note that at this point, I have rewatched the show some five or six times. But this is my first time delving into the scripts for all the episodes. I have to occasionally remind myself about scenes in these episodes or lines of dialogue that wound up being cut or moved to a different episode. But since I am approaching this project as an English major and analyzing both the show and the scripts as a TEXT – (my literary theory professor, Dr. Hogue, always said that everything in life is a TEXT and he was damn sure right about that) – then I see no issue with the fact that sometimes the words I am analyzing didn’t always make it to the screen in the exact form they started out in. Hannibal is a series that is a feast for all the senses – its visual beauty, its soundtrack and score and sound effects, the effort put in to rendering the most beautiful depictions of food on the screen and so perhaps the viewer can imagine their taste – (I have dreamed feverishly about those High Life Eggs more than once, I can tell you) – but all of it begins where good stories start – on the page. And so, it is to the page and the words that I remain loyal.

This episode of Hannibal, “Entrée,” had two authors. Kai Yu Wu conceived the story and Wu and Bryan wrote it together. The episode was directed by Michael Rymer.

In the order of our French dishes, by which each episode of the first season is named, at this point in the series, we have partaken of the following: a pre-dinner drink, a little bitty appetizer, a bowl of hearty soup, some eggs, and a chicken or fish dish baked in a sauce and served in a scallop shell or scallop-shaped dish. And so now, a viewer must ask, “What’s next?” That or: “I need to take a break because I’m full.” At which, Bryan Fuller points at the viewer’s plate and says, “You’ll clean your plate and you’ll like it. You’ll love it. You’ll beg me for another season when we’re done.” Just trust him. He’s the chef. You always trust the chef. They know what they’re doing.

In a classic French meal, the entrée is not necessarily the main dish and it is not always served – sometimes they skip courses. When it does appear, it is usually a meat dish, in a sauce (GOTTA HAVE A SAUCE), and with sides. In American cuisine, entrée has come to mean a MAIN COURSE always. And what an entrée is in American cuisine varies wildly by what is on the menu, who is eating it, and how many fried cheese sticks and jalapeno poppers the person had prior to the entrée arriving at their table. Still, the idea holds. When you say the word “entrée,” people expect a main course – something substantial, something that sticks to your ribs. And in this episode, there is definitely a lot of meat – meat that has been rubbed and aged over the last five episodes and is now sliced and steaming from the oven. This episode is mostly about advancing the MAIN storyline – that of the Chesapeake Ripper and the FBI’s and namely, Jack Crawford’s, attempts to catch the seasoned killer. (Seasoned… see what I did there? YOU GOT PUNNED!)

And on a thirsty side note: After viewing the scene in which Will Graham reenacts the murder of nurse Elizabeth Shell, the fact that the episode is named “Entrée,” makes complete sense. Hugh Dancy in that scene is an entire meal with ample meat for leftovers. (Seriously – JFC – if you haven’t seen it, or seen it lately, do yourself a favor and have some GOOD FOOD.)

We start the episode with our introduction to one of the series’ completely original characters, Dr. Abel Gideon, a former transplant surgeon, who after being convicted of the murders of his wife and her family, has been incarcerated in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, for the last two years. The character is portrayed with amazing skill, subtlety, and awesomeness, by Suzy Eddie Izzard. I have been a longtime fan of Izzard’s work and was insanely pleased to see the actor amongst the cast members.

I must point out the literary significance of the character’s name – Abel Gideon, a smorgasbord of Biblical allusion. The import of the Doctor’s first name is obvious – Abel, in the Biblical version of things, was the first murder VICTIM, slain by the hands of his jealous brother, Cain, who was angry that God liked Abel better and had a right fit about it. The character of Gideon is slightly more complex, but basically it goes as follows: Gideon was a prophet in the Old Testament. He destroyed the idols of Baal and others in his town’s temple because the townspeople were worshipping false gods. An angel told him to. Then, Gideon led the Israelites against other “heathen” tribes and won. They wanted to make him king, but he told them their only king was God. Still, he had them melt down the golden earrings of all their enemies who had fallen in battle and they wove the golden thread into an ephod, a priestly garment that is worn under the breastplate. Gideon put it in the temple and the people started worshipping it as an idol, because I guess, it was gold. Old Testament people always seem really impressed by gold. The Scripture is unclear, but it does say that the ephod was “a snare unto Gideon, and to his house” (Judges 8: 27).

You could say Gideon was a hypocrite, or more accurately, a terrible fool because he tried to stop the people from worshipping false idols and then he just led them into doing it again by creating something they would see as a sacred object. At best, Gideon was naïve. At worst, he was a fraud.

Dr. Abel Gideon’s name therefore could translate into something like: Dr. VICTIM FRAUD – or Dr. VICTIM FOOL. Despite his intelligence, he is lured directly into Dr. Chilton’s trap to believe and admit he is the Chesapeake Ripper solely because of Frederick’s needy ego – Frederick wants more feathers in his cap – he doesn’t have near enough and Hannibal Lecter’s are brighter and bespoke and where the fuck did he even find a custom featherer in Baltimore?

Then, later in the series, Gideon is led directly into the trap of the true Chesapeake Ripper and probably desperately wishes he had stayed in the BSHCI and eaten his stewed apricots and minded his own business.

Poor Abel is nothing but a puppet for two different egotistical psychiatrists. Unfortunately for him, one of them happens to be Hannibal Lecter.

And so, we begin the episode with the scene of Gideon passed out on the floor of his cell in the BSHCI and a team of prison guards approaching his limp form very cautiously and eventually shackling him, hand and foot, to a gurney, and wheeling him into the hospital infirmary, where he is treated by the aptly named Nurse Shell.

As evidenced by my previous discussion of Gideon’s name, I have come to realize the significance of character names in Bryan Fuller’s work. They are often allusions or tributes – homages to the work of other writers, directors, artists, scientists, and so on, that Bryan admires. For example, one has to assume that the surname of Bryan’s beloved Bedelia (another original character), Du Maurier, is a tribute to author Daphne du Maurier, author of many books and film adaptations of suspense – such as Rebecca, which Bryan and many of his horror colleagues discuss in the fabulous AMC/Shudder series Queer For Fear, on which Bryan was an executive producer and director. Basically, Mrs. Danvers was either literally or only metaphorically all up in Rebecca de Winter’s undergarments and when the woman died, Mrs. Danvers decided to make it everyone’s problem. The movie is awesome. Go watch it if you haven’t already. And then watch Queer For Fear. I believe they discuss Rebecca in both episodes two and four.

Anyway, Nurse Shell is correctly and tragically named because a shell of her former self is what she winds up as when the deluded Gideon is done with her.

As Nurse Shell turns her back, Gideon extricates the broken-off tine of a fork he has hidden in an incision in his palm. I believe this scene is an homage to the scene in The Silence of the Lambs when Dr. Lecter unearths a metal fragment from the back of his jaw, the inner workings of a ballpoint pen that has fallen into his hands. He uses this makeshift lockpick on his own handcuffs, much to the chagrin of Lieutenant Boyle and Sargeant Pembry. Classic scene.

Anyway, Gideon uses this tine to pick the lock on his handcuffs and when Nurse Shell turns around upon hearing the heart monitor hit a flatline, it’s lights out for the poor woman. We do not see Gideon kill her, but we see the results of his work soon.

Next, we see Jack Crawford and Will Graham vaulting up the front steps of the hospital, Jack explaining that based on the method of Nurse Shell’s murder, Freddie Lounds has run an unconfirmed story suggesting that Abel Gideon is the Chesapeake Ripper, which would explain the lull in murders for the last two years. Will is indignant that he is “fact-checking for Freddie Lounds,” but Jack coddles him with the statement, “You’re fact-checking for me” (Wu and Fuller 2).

There is heavy foreshadowing in the following exchange between Jack and Will before they enter the hospital:

WILL GRAHAM: I’m always a little nervous going into one of these places. Afraid they’ll never let me out again.

JACK CRAWFORD: Don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you here.

WILL GRAHAM: Not today                         (Wu and Fuller 3).

I really do recommend you watch the series more than once so this dramatic irony is not lost.

            Once Jack and Will enter the hospital, we see the first appearance of another of our main characters and one of the most important in the Hannibal canon: Dr. Frederick Chilton.

            In Fuller’s series, Chilton is rendered flawlessly by actor Raul Esparza, a deep daddy of mine (see ADA Rafael Barba of Law and Order: SVU fame). Esparza is another Fuller Favorite, having appeared in one of Bryan’s previous masterpiece shows, Pushing Daisies.

            There have been three actors who have portrayed the petty and obsequious Dr. Chilton, starting with Benjamin Hendrickson in 1986’s Manhunter. The second actor, and perhaps the most well-known portrayal, is that of Anthony Heald who took on the role in both 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs and reprised the role in 2002’s Red Dragon.

            Heald’s portrayal of Chilton is masterful – the Doctor is intelligent, but smarmy – officious and gladhanding – his pass at Clarice in the early moments of the film immediately puts the viewer off on him. Hannibal only seals the audience’s hatred of the Doctor by regaling Clarice with Chilton’s petty tortures of him, which are effectively contrasted by the treatment Hannibal receives from the ever-present orderly, Barney Matthews, played by awesome Frankie Faison, who treats Hannibal with a cautious respect, as a zookeeper might treat a venomous reptile. Barney never forgets what Hannibal is capable of. Chilton supposedly knows as evidenced by his relation of Hannibal’s biting attack on a nurse – he left only one of her eyes, ate her tongue without his pulse getting above 85 – but still, Chilton prods and humiliates Hannibal in unnecessary ways that LITERALLY come back to bite him in the end.

            Esparza’s Chilton is as intelligent as Heald’s, but slightly more savvy, ounces more petty, a bit more of a drama queen, and as opposed to Heald’s Chilton, who is ostensibly tortured and eaten by Hannibal at the end of The Silence of the Lambs, Esparza’s Chilton, in Fuller’s hands, is the favorite whipping post of killers and law enforcement alike – being practically disemboweled by one murderer, shot in the face by a traumatized Ripper victim, and later suffers the fate that Harris’ original Freddy Lounds suffers, a lip-ectomy and burning at the hands of Francis Dolarhyde. Freddy Lounds dies in both Manhunter/Red Dragon from this attack, but in Fuller’s Hannibal, no matter what, Frederick Chilton continues to survive, almost Fuller’s own version of the endlessly respawning Kenny of South Park fame.

            By my calculation, at the end of Season 3, Chilton is down 3 lives, so logic dictates that he has 6 left. If Fuller ever gets to make the full 7 seasons of Hannibal he imagines, if Chilton averages a death per season, he should survive the completed series with 2 lives left over, proving him to be the true winner of The Hannibal Games.

            But, once again, I digress…

            As Jack and Will sit in Chilton’s office, Chilton can barely seem to contain his curiosity about Will. Chilton’s open is clunky and obtuse; he says, “Doctor Bloom just called me about you, Mister Graham. Or should I call you Doctor Graham?” (Wu and Fuller 3). From his first line, Chilton seems to embody his later Season 2 remark, a gem from Harris’ canon, that attempting to analyze Will “makes [him] feel…like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle” (Fuller and Lightfoot 20). Chilton’s questions are telegraphed from a mile away – his overtures for more information are blunt and tasteless. Chilton’s questioning of Will, throughout the series, is contrasted with that of Hannibal – the difference is like watching a skilled surgeon with a scalpel as compared to a poorly trained medical student with a plastic spoon. Chilton can’t cut it, in any fashion. Will seems to understand this from the beginning – he sizes Chilton up correctly from their very first meeting.

            In their conversation, Chilton betrays himself a little, saying of Nurse Shell, “I can’t help feeling responsible for what happened. I had sessions with Gideon for years…I had no idea what he was hiding. And now one of our staff is dead” (Wu and Fuller 4). Of course, this is foreshadowing of Hannibal ascertaining later in the episode that Chilton is indeed COMPLETELY at fault. However, the most interesting thing about this exchange is Jack Crawford’s reaction. The script indicates that after Chilton’s remark here, it “strikes a chord with Jack…who can relate” (Wu and Fuller 4). Undoubtedly this “relation” is about Miriam Lass, Crawford’s lost trainee, who is first introduced in this episode.

            This is all important because of our lesson in this episode and because it highlights one of the driving motives of Jack’s character. In Episode 1, Jack and Alana agree that one of Will’s deepest motives is fear. If that is the case, then we can say that one of, perhaps the most, significant of Jack’s driving motivations is GUILT. Jack’s guilt is so present, so prevalent, so real, it is almost tangible. He feels guilt about Bella, about Miriam, later about Beverly, about Will, about Pazzi. His guilt is so weighty, so integral to his being, that often it overwhelms him, wobbles his sense of reason and the health of his psyche. Our lesson is not about guilt, but it is about an emotion Jack Crawford will not allow himself. In his position as Special Agent Jack Crawford, head of the FBI’s storied Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, Jack does not allow himself much in the way of the easier emotions in life – laughter, joy, wonder – these are not things he can traffic in. Jack Crawford lives in a chapel of death. He is a chronicler of pain.

            As Chilton continues to prod Will for information, Jack finally states, “Graham isn’t here to be analyzed” (Wu and Fuller 5). It’s funny to me how people in the show, including Will, keep insisting that he’s NOT THE ONE to be analyzed, but since the very first moments of Episode 1, even the murders seem secondary to everyone else’s analysis of Will. It’s ironic, but I imagine purposefully so. Chilton retorts that “perhaps” Will “should be” analyzed; Chilton wants Will to speak to his colleagues in the hospital, but then he stops himself, saying, “no, no, not this trip. Dr. Bloom was very severe with me on that point” (Wu and Fuller 5). I also find it quite ironic how no one listens to Alana’s advice about handling Will. It speaks to the usual patriarchal pooh-poohing of women, even when they are extremely accomplished members of professional fields. Thankfully, Bryan saw to it that everyone who discounts Alana’s advice winds up paying for it.

            Just before escorting Jack and Will to the infirmary where Will can view the crime scene, Chilton says, “Next to a battle lost, the saddest thing is a battle won” (Wu and Fuller 6). This sentiment is attributed to the Duke of Wellington, and later to writer Robert Jordan, but to me the importance of it here is how it so perfectly illustrates the difference between Harris’ Chilton and Fuller’s Chilton. Every once in a while, especially in Season 3, Chilton seems to disinter these gems of wisdom from the muddy bottom of his intelligence. Often, lines like these, coming from Frederick are like an icepick of truth stabbed into the temple of the scene. A viewer who is familiar with all of the Hannibal canon can see – Fuller’s Chilton is smarter and more poetic than Harris’ Chilton, who is a slick, sad functionary who is both out of his depth with Hannibal Lecter and out of his league with Clarice Starling. Fuller’s Chilton is never in Hannibal’s league, but at times, real insight flashes up from the shallows of his brain, and it makes his character more sympathetic to the viewer. We feel sorry for Fuller’s Chilton. Harris’ Chilton never arouses such pity.

            When Will and Jack finally view the nurse’s body, it is described as follows:

She’s IMPALED on the BROKEN FRAMES of several PRIVACY CURTAINS that have been fashioned into SPEARS. They PROTRUDE from wounds over the entire canvas of her body. Additional shards of wood and metal prop her organs above her corpse, giving them the appearance of floating outside her body.                              

(Wu and Fuller 6)

The visual of this tableaux is important, as it will contrast with the Chesapeake Ripper’s actual rendering of the famous medieval Wound Man shown later in the episode in a flashback. Later, Will calls this murder “plagiarism.” The viewer, especially one who has watched the entire series at least once, can understand Will’s assessment easily. The Chesapeake Ripper is an artist – even when his tableaux are deconstructionist in nature, like Beverly Katz’s murder scene in Season 2, there is still a lingering sense of the whole that once was. The essence of the thing that has been taken apart is still suggested by the Ripper’s composition. Gideon’s attempt at mimicry is just that – a sad parody. He merely skewered organs like Nurse Kabob. He merely jabbed implements in her like Nurse Pincushion. There is no whole left to be had.             In Act One, we see the replaying of the gurney scene at the beginning of the episode, except this time with Will in Gideon’s place. This time, we see the attack on Nurse Shell; this time at the hands of Will, who is doing his mental recreation (pendulum swingy – this is my design-y) of the scene.

            Will’s recreation here is filed very lovingly by the #FannibalFamily under the title, “THINGS THAT HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING INSANELY HOT,” but Goddamn it… it is.

It’s not just Will’s torn open shirt – it’s not just the visible sweat on his muscled chest and furrowed brow (although those things REALLY HELP) – it’s the power and the confidence Will exudes when he is in the mental guise of the killer. In truth, every time Will does a mental recreation of a crime, he becomes inordinately hotter because he is not the unsure, confused, flinchy Will Graham of outside-his-mind – he is the take-charge, aggressive, Will Graham with some goddamned agency, that he only seems to be able to muster when he slips into the minds of other people – that is until the end of Season 1, anyway. Will’s agency gets a glow up in “Savoureux,” just wait.

            I will say that when Will gouges Nurse Shell’s eyes out with his thumbs, that’s a major ick for me. Eye stuff always deeply bothers me. I had two very invasive eye surgeries as a child and I think it makes me sensitive. The needle in the eye scene in Fire In the Sky is a trauma from which I will never recover.

            After Will’s recreation is finished, the viewer is then treated to a flashback three years earlier when the character of Miriam Lass enters the series. It is well known that Miriam Lass, played astonishingly by Anna Chlumsky, is Bryan’s substitute for/homage to the character of Clarice Starling, who, because of copyright issues, Bryan could not use in Hannibal. This, of course, is a damn shame, because Clarice is a god-level character and I would love, love, love to see what Bryan could do with her. (I would also like – if we ever get future seasons – to see Ardelia Mapp, Barney Matthews, and Multiple Miggs show up, but I digress…)

            Miriam and Clarice share similar backgrounds – they were both FBI Forensic Fellows – Clarice had the great distinction of studying under fingerprint examiner par excellence, Jimmy Price – but they both came through the same program there and at the FBI Academy. Their university degrees differ a little – Clarice is the daughter of a lawman, which Miriam does not seem to be – but both women are the same with regards to their stunning intellects, dogged determination, and their fascinations with and devotions to “the Guru,” Jack Crawford. It reminds me of a passage from The Silence of the Lambs. At the end of the chapter, (I tell you, Thomas Harris knows how to end a fucking chapter) – after Starling and Crawford return from the Potter Funeral Home in West Virginia, Harris writes, “She watched him walk away, a middle-aged man laden with cases and rumpled from flying, his cuffs muddy from the riverbank, going home to what he did at home. She would have killed for him then. That was one of Crawford’s great talents” (96).

            Jack tells Miriam that he has culled her from the herd of FBI hopefuls to work for him in the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) because she is at the top of her class, has impressive credentials, and wrote him a fan letter when she was accepted into the Academy. When Jack brings up the Ripper, he says, “The Ripper is very hot right now” (Wu and Fuller 10). Jack is, of course, indicating that the Ripper is on a spree, having taken “his last two victims in six days” (Wu and Fuller 10). But I can’t help but think of Zoolander every time I hear Jack make this remark. “Ooooh, that Ripper – he’s so hot right now…” And let’s be honest, if there’s anyone who could pull off a perfect “Blue Steel,” it’s Mads Mikkelsen.

Miriam impresses Jack with her assessment of the Ripper – not a “true sociopath,” but a killer with “some of the characteristics of what they call a sociopath,” but that in truth, “they don’t know what else to label him” (Wu and Fuller 10). Jack then begins briefing Miriam on the case and we are flashed back to the present and find ourselves sitting with Alana and Will in Frederick Chilton’s office.

Alana and Will are both there to interview Gideon – they will be conducting their interviews separately and then comparing notes. Chilton is “convinced” Gideon is the Ripper (when he knows damned well he’s not), Will is convinced Gideon is NOT the Ripper – Alana is unsure. Chilton informs Alana that even though she only had two sessions with Gideon when he was first admitted to the BSHCI, Gideon has “given [her] a lot of thought” since then (Wu and Fuller 12). It ups the creep factor and of course mirrors the novel Red Dragon, like much of this scene does, except that the inmate is Hannibal Lecter and the person he’s “given a lot of thought to” is Will Graham. Hannibal thinking a lot about Will is deep canon. Always has been. Always will be.

Alana goes into interview Gideon first – when she does, the script indicates, “The STEEL DOOR of the maximum security section closed behind Alana Bloom. She hears the bolt slide home” (Wu and Fuller 13).

I’m always deeply thrilled at how often the writers of Hannibal return to the “Forward to a Fatal Interview” from Harris’ Red Dragon and snatch little phrases from it they leave like glistening Easter eggs for fans to find. This is one such bejeweled egg – a Faberge of one, in fact. This forward is about how Thomas Harris came to create the characters of Will Graham, Clarice Starling, and most importantly, Hannibal Lecter. In the final paragraph, he says, “When in the winter of 1979 I entered the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and the great metal door crashed closed behind me, little did I know what waited at the end of the corridor; how seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home” (XIII).

An adaptation is a beautiful thing when you have such beautiful source material to work with. I am forever fascinated by what different filmmakers and actors have done with the Hannibal canon, but we cannot, should not, ever forget the mind that created it and created such compelling characters that withstand the test of time and are enriched every time a new generation of writers and viewers return to them.

The interviews between Alana and Gideon and Will and Gideon are now intercut with each other, a wonderful technique that allows the viewers to compare and contrast for themselves, the differences and similarities between Alana and Will in their questioning, the differences between Gideon’s reactions to Alana and to Will. The most important fact that seems to arise from the interview is when Will says to Gideon about the death of Nurse Shell, “Brutalization of the body was done posthumously. The Chesapeake Ripper usually does that sort of thing during, not after” (Wu and Fuller 15). Will never buys Gideon as the Ripper. His other murders were spontaneous, not planned. Gideon is not an artist; he’s a plagiarist. What Will can’t figure out is why Gideon is copping to murders he didn’t commit.

We begin Act Two with Jack Crawford arriving unannounced at Hannibal’s office, just as the Doctor is about to leave for the day. Hannibal asks if Jack was just “in the neighborhood?” – Jack answers, “Something like that” (Wu and Fuller 16). This line is one of those TV/film chestnuts that you hear over and over and it never actually happens in real life. I have never in my life had someone show up at my door saying they were “just in the neighborhood.” Just like I have never had a cat suddenly jump on me from some unseen elevated position when I am in a darkened alleyway or corridor and things feel all spooky. It’s film logic. It’s kooky, but it works.

Bella is out of town and Jack has come to Hannibal to pry some sort of information out of him about Bella’s cancer – how she’s feeling, what she’s saying, what she thinks – all of which she is not telling Jack and all of which Hannibal cannot tell Jack due to doctor-patient confidentiality. Jack becomes angry. Their conversation is enlightening with regards to Hannibal’s character:

JACK CRAWFORD: You talk to me about Will Graham.

HANNIBAL: Will Graham isn’t officially my patient. We have conversations.

JACK CRAWFORD: What do you consider this?

HANNIBAL: Desperate coping.

                                                                                    (Wu and Fuller 17)

The line here – “desperate coping” – is such a wonderful illustration of how accurately Hannibal is portrayed as having some sociopathic tendencies or at least the tendencies of a narcissist. Throughout the series, Hannibal shows how he can go cold at a moment’s notice – how he can so easily shift from a seemingly caring, compassionate individual to a nightmare of stone-faced, murder-eyed calm. It’s terrifying. I was once very much in love with a man who could do this – he was not a murderer, but he could go dead-eyed and cold on you like this in seconds – and you never knew when it was coming. It scared the shit out of me.

            Some might say that Hannibal’s line here is compassionate, that he feels for Jack and his attempts to handle the imminent death of his wife – but I think the line is meant to cut Jack to the quick – he slices right into the meat of Jack’s pain here – as if to say, “Yeah, your wife’s dying. Pull it together, wimp.”

            It is canon that Hannibal prods people to cause pain – it is entirely for his own pleasure. A good example is from The Silence of the Lambs. When Hannibal meets with Senator Martin, supposedly to tell her the “real name” of Buffalo Bill (ha ha), he makes a cutting remark about the Senator breastfeeding her daughter when she was a baby. Then this happens: “When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today” (201).

            The man drinks pain. What else is there to say?

            Then Hannibal immediately “salves” the wound he has created (“Salve” is the word used in the script directions) – saying “I’ll offer this one insight: she thinks she married the right guy” (Wu and Fuller 17). See Hannibal playing with Jack? Always playing.

            Jack then says, “I look at her side of the bed and wonder if she’s going to die there or where she’ll die and I feel myself going uncomfortably numb” (Wu and Fuller 18). I believe this to be a reference to Jack’s actual, canon death that Thomas Harris wrote for him in the novel, Hannibal. It is a death that I completely understand but hate like fire because I think a character like Jack deserved a lot better. I feel that Bryan was writing a better end for Jack.

            The end in question is as follows. Clarice Starling has already been drugged and hypnotized, pulled into a strange “relationship” with Hannibal – they live in Buenos Aires together under assumed names. Clarice finds out that Jack has died from the FBI website. Apparently, “after Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife’s side of the bed” (483).

            I understand it, but dammit Jack deserves better. I believe Bryan was going to give him better. At least he gets to go to Italy and kick Hannibal’s ass. At least he gets another chance.

            Jack and Hannibal have a conversation about loss, which leads Hannibal to ask, “Who else couldn’t you save, Jack?” (Wu and Fuller 18). Once again, Hannibal pokes at the wound, tugs at the scab. We know full well that Hannibal has Miriam Lass hidden in a damp, darkened oubliette of a well in a secret farmhouse – all wet and cold with a missing arm in a dirty nightgown and in desperate need of some wet wipes and dry shampoo. We know this – which means all of this questioning about “the lost trainee” is just Hannibal enjoying himself, just Hannibal savoring Jack’s pain. I really do think he lets Miriam live because he likes her – (the same reason book/film Hannibal lets Clarice live – she’s a “deep roller”) – but I also think he lets Miriam live solely to give her back to Jack – just like he gives Bella back to Jack when he thwarts her suicide attempt. Just as he takes Abigail away from Will, then gives her back, then takes her away again – Lucy and the football. Hannibal is “curious” what will happen, but also because he loves the pain. Pain is so much more than hum-drum everyday life – and Hannibal doesn’t like mundane pain – like the worries and neurotic spoutings of Franklyn Froidveaux or Neal Frank, no. Hannibal wants Greek tragedy level pain – a boy who wants to be a killing monster, a girl who wants to kill the brother who has been raping her all her life, a man watching his wife die, a man torturing himself with guilt because he lost another girl, and Will Graham, whose pain is beautiful in its kaleidoscopic, ever-changing qualities – it is always the pain of the killer he is profiling, the victim he is investigating, and sometimes, Will’s own deeply buried pain, abandoned by mom, distant from dad, outcast at school, outcast among colleagues, always alone and beautiful, always alone and confused – in terms of pain, Will is 31 Flavors.

            At this point, Jack refuses to tell Hannibal about Miriam Lass – but later on he breaks. The breaking is always Hannibal’s favorite part.

            We are now flashed back again to three years earlier; we see Miriam and Jack surveying the Wound Man tableaux rendered by the authentic Chesapeake Ripper. The victim is lashed to his worktable, and all of his tools from the peg board on which they once hung are dug into the man’s body in varying places all over the corpse.

            This is not an unfamiliar moment. Jack with a whip-smart profiler assessing the carnage of a crime scene; he has also cleared the way for that profiler by sending all “the others” – the crime scene techs and photographers and forensic creatures -- away. Jack seems to understand that the brilliant ones need to be unfettered by noise and stimuli, even before Will Graham joins his pack. Miriam concludes several important things about both the murder and the murderer, namely that the victim was awake during the attack, and that the Ripper was selective about the organs he harvested. Miriam calls these organs “surgical trophies” – in this way, she is half right (Wu and Fuller 19). It is Will who will determine that the Ripper’s trophies are edible and et. The Ripper is a medical doctor, male, and – and I love this line – “exotic somehow” (Wu and Fuller 19). I believe the “exotic somehow” is meant to refer to the fact that Hannibal Lecter is European. I assume Europeans do not consider themselves “exotic,” but most Americans are flabbergasted by anyone with an accent different than theirs, so… If “exotic” is referring to the fact that the Ripper is being played by masterful and devastatingly beautiful actor Mads Mikkelsen, then yes, he's EXOTIC AS FUCK. Point is, he’s not your run-of-the-mill American. He owns a cravat – more than one probably. He probably has a bidet – he calls sedans “saloons” – and he buys all his table linens and china at Christofle. Miriam compliments Jack’s “peculiar cleverness” and we move out of the scene back into the morgue at the BAU, where Team Sassy Science is examining Nurse Shell’s body and Will is observing (Wu and Fuller 20).

            The team is discussing the similarities between Nurse Shell’s murder and the Wound Man murder. They are attempting to rule Abel Gideon IN or OUT. They are unsure how Gideon could have known about the wound patterns the Ripper inflicted on his victims because those details were kept away from the press. Will says, “I see the Ripper but I don’t… feel the Ripper. He’s an artist. This is… plagiarism” (Wu and Fuller 21). Will has his finger on Hannibal’s pulse from the very beginning of the show – whether it be Hannibal as the Copy Cat or Hannibal as the Ripper – when Will finally realizes the two are one and the same, it seems like something that has been on the tip of his tongue since the very beginning. And Will is also very correct in assessing that the real Chesapeake Ripper is not going to let Gideon take credit for his work.

            We end Act Two with Jack Crawford at home, asleep in his bed alone, his wife still out of town at a NATO summit. The phone rings. Jack shakes awake and picks up the phone. The clock reads 2:47 A.M. Clocks are an important motif in Hannibal, especially in Season 1. I will address what I think the motif means when I get deeper into Season 1, when Will’s encephalitis begins to worsen, but needless to say – clocks are humankind’s desperate attempt to not only measure but control time – and quite frankly, time rarely cooperates.

            When Jack answers the phone, he doesn’t recognize the voice at first – or perhaps he doesn’t believe what he is hearing. The words said by the caller are important because it is these words used to torment Jack for the rest of the episode:

MIRIAM LASS’S VOICE: Jack… Jack… Jack… It’s Miriam. I don’t know where I am. I can’t see anything. I was so wrong. I was so wrong. Please… Jack… I don’t want to die like this.                                                            (Wu and Fuller 20).

And then the line goes dead.

            We start Act Three back at the BAU. Beverly Katz has checked all the online databases for telecom systems and says she cannot find a trace of any call to Jack’s home at 2:47 AM. As Brian Zeller continues to question Jack’s skills of perception and memory (that maybe Jack dreamed it, that he doesn’t remember what Miriam sounds like), Jimmy Price points out, “whoever called could have tapped in from that little box outside your house. Or the junction in your neighborhood. There would be no trace signal to track” (Wu and Fuller 23). We, the viewer, know this is exactly what the Ripper – Hannibal Lecter – has done, solely because he is Hannibal Lecter, the James Bond/MacGyver of serial killers. He is a psychiatrist, a medical doctor and a surgeon; he speaks/reads/writes at least four languages that we know of. He is a world-class chef, butcher, snail cultivator, beer brewer – he can tie knots, sew, handle a variety of weapons. He can fist-fight – he can ballroom dance. He can give lectures on Dante in the medieval Italian. Obviously, he knows how to tap a phone line. I also feel very certain that Hannibal can fly a plane, hack into any computer (although he finds it distasteful), make his own soap (Fight Club style), and he knows at least one martial art, if not more.

            Incidentally, tapping into phone lines is also something Francis Dolarhyde can do – both later in Season 3 when he taps into the phone line at Hannibal’s office and calls Hannibal in the BSHCI with the call masked as Hannibal’s lawyer. But, according to Bryan, the Marlow murder in “Apéritif” is one of Francis’ early murders, and he had to tap into the Marlow phone line to record Mrs. Marlow’s call to the security company. It occurs to me that being a serial killer must create endless hobbies, solely based on things you have to learn, like phone tapping, lock picking, glass cutting, tree-climbing, and “this-is-my-designing.”

            Will points out that the 2:47 call obviously didn’t come from the BSHCI, and therefore, could not have been Abel Gideon. When Brian Zeller again suggests that perhaps Jack dreamed the call, Jack shouts at him, “I know when I’m awake” (Wu and Fuller 24). The script then indicates, “Will reacts to that, not always sure he knows the same” (Wu and Fuller 24). Poor Will’s encephalitis is worsening. It only serves to isolate him from others who might possibly help him. And the only person he thinks can help him is actively worsening his condition. I forgive him later, but from this point through the end of Season 1, I am mad as hell at Hannibal. My loyalty is to Will. Hannibal not only doesn’t help my poor baby, he purposely alienates Will from the people who could help him. Grrrrrrr…

            Next, we see Will in his classroom at Quantico. Soon, he hears the clacking of hooves on the floor of the corridor. When he looks up, he sees the Black Stag sidling toward him – then this vision morphs into the reality of the circumstance, Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford walking into the room. Jack floats the idea of baiting the Ripper with a well-placed story in the media, a story that will anger the Ripper because the reporter will heavily suggest that Abel Gideon is the REAL Chesapeake Ripper. Will thinks the scheme is dangerous. He says, “You might push the Ripper to kill again just to prove he isn’t in a hospital for the criminally insane;” to which Jack replies, “I have to push, Will” (Wu and Fuller 26). Jack’s statement is very telling – not just about his relentless pursuit of the Ripper, but of himself as a person. Jack does indeed “push.” He pushes everyone. He pushes Will so hard he practically has a nervous breakdown. He pushes him into the hands of the Ripper himself. He pushes Miriam so hard, he pushes her into that same man’s hands. He pushes his wife so hard, she flees to that same man for advice.

            Considering that Hannibal and Jack don’t officially meet until Episode 1, Hannibal is already WAAAY involved in Jack’s life and already deeply embedded in Jack’s head. It’s funny upon their first meeting in “Apéritif,” that Jack is meeting his nemesis and doesn’t know it. The man who took Miriam from him, who will take Will from him, who will take Beverly from him, who will almost take Jack’s own life. Talk about “a bolt of fate sliding home.”

            Will is disgusted with the idea that Jack is going to cahoot with Freddie Lounds, but you know how Jack has to push, so the next scene reveals Freddie Lounds entering a conference room at Quantico to meet with Jack, Will, and Alana. Jack and Alana are amiable and friendly to Freddie; Will is cold and bitchy (and insanely hot…) Jack tells Freddie he wants her to confirm her story about Gideon being the Ripper. Alana promises to talk to Chilton to get Freddie an interview with Gideon. In one of my favorite of Freddie’s lines, she says, “Not to snap bubblegum and crack wise, but what’s my angle? Is he the Chesapeake Ripper or you just want me to tell everybody he is” (Wu and Fuller 28). Jack suggests he could be because Gideon is a surgeon. The three then discuss the fabled list of professions which psychopaths most favor – journalists and law enforcement being two more. I often wonder if there is also a list of professions that psychos LEAST inhabit. Like, in the bowels of the BAU, a criminal profiler is saying, “Well, we know he’s not a pet psychic, a cupcake baker, or a crossword puzzle author, so we can rule those out! Thank God!”

            We are then transported to the high security sector of the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane and see stylishly dressed and coiffed Freddie Lounds entering the prison and introducing herself to Abel Gideon.

            When Freddie’s story is finished and published to Tattlecrime.com, we then see Hannibal at his desk with his little tablet reading it – his face as close to “bothered” as you ever see Hannibal come. This is the same face he makes when Franklyn leaves a soiled tissue on his end table, when Mason Verger stabs his chair. I like to call it Hannibal’s “I’m About To Cut a Bitch” face. This is one thing I will say for Mads Mikkelsen over and over again – he acts with every part of his body, including his beautiful face. Fannibals love to discuss Mads’ microexpressions – the little twitches at the corners of his eyes, the dead-eyed, yet sarcastic stares, the tears that appear from nowhere, the minute turnings of his lips into wry smiles – and the most prized being the MIKKELSNARL, the King of All Expressions. The look on his face when reading Freddie Lounds’ story makes you fear for her. Amazingly, she survives. It’s actually insane.

            We then see Dr. Chilton and Alana dining with Hannibal at his home. Hannibal says that the dish is a lamb tongue served with Duxelle sauce and mushrooms, created by famous French chef Auguste Escoffier. After some tongue wagging amongst the diners, Hannibal says to Chilton, “Don’t give me ideas. Your tongue is very feisty and as this evening has already proven, it’s nice to have an old friend for dinner” (Wu and Fuller 30). This line is, of course, a tribute to the ending scene of The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal’s phone call to Clarice in which he implies he will be soon killing and eating the bumbling Dr. Chilton. As previously stated, Fuller’s Chilton stubbornly survives every season.

            Alana, Frederick, and Hannibal begin discussing Abel Gideon. Frederick proudly claims Gideon to be the Ripper. Alana begins questioning Frederick and asks, “Is it possible that you inadvertently planted the suggestion in Gideon’s mind that he was the Ripper?” (Wu and Fuller 31). Frederick replies, “Psychic driving is unethical” (Wu and Fuller 32).

            I have to admit that I NEVER heard the term “psychic driving” before Hannibal. Truly, it sounds like a Cronenberg video game for the Atari 2600. Hannibal says that psychic driving is allowable “in certain circumstances” and actually seems to arouse some gentle suspicion from both Alana and Frederick (Wu and Fuller 32). They don’t seem suspicious that Hannibal is the Ripper – we are a looooong way from that – but they both seem a little shocked that Hannibal might condone the practice, even in narrow cases. Hannibal so desperately wants to play, I think he actually overplays his hand here. He so rarely gives anything away and usually only does so on purpose – perhaps Hannibal’s admission is just to facilitate the conversation Hannibal has in the kitchen with Frederick, in which he states that he believes Frederick already has “psychically driven” Gideon, but it seems a little haphazard to me. Perhaps he’s still amped up because Freddie Lounds has landed a hit on him.

            Speaking of Gideon, we now see him in his cell at the BSHCI, this time being questioned by Jack, who states point blank to the prisoner, “You’re not the Chesapeake Ripper” (Wu and Fuller 33). Gideon tries to convince Jack, tries weakly to explain why he, supposedly as the Ripper, takes surgical trophies, why he didn’t display the bodies of his wife and her family, and so on. Gideon ascertains that Jack is not concerned with those prior crimes.

            DR. GIDEON: But you’re not here to talk about my wife or even the night nurse.

            JACK CRAWFORD: What am I here to talk about?

            DR. GIDEON: Your trainee. Miriam something.

                                                                                                (Wu and Fuller 34)

This minor detail, the fact that Gideon does not know Miriam’s last name, proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Gideon is not, cannot be the Chesapeake Ripper. The real Ripper, Hannibal Lecter, has a meticulous memory palace built in his mind. Thomas Harris explains the grandiose proportions of the Doctor’s psychic estate in both Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. In Hannibal, Harris even treats us to a description of the palace’s interior. It has a “Great Hall of the Seasons… [a] hall of looms and textiles…[and a] Hall of Addresses,” just to name a few wings (252-254). Hannibal actually retrieves Clarice Starling’s address from this cognitive library, buried in a mental construction that Harris says, “is vast, even by medieval standards” (252).

            I know for a fact that Hannibal Lecter remembers the name of every victim he ever killed, how he killed them, what organs/limbs he took, what dish he made with them, and how they tasted. There is no way he forgets a victim’s name. With the exception of the incidental goons from the Questura in Season 3 or Mason Verger’s goons, Hannibal knows the name of every victim he chooses. No way he would forget Miriam’s last name. Gideon is an amateur.

            As their conversation continues, Jack’s phone rings. He walks out of Gideon’s cell block to answer the call as the caller ID announces the number as “HOME.” Jack misses the call and redials. He believes the caller to be his wife, having returned early from her trip. Whoever answers the phone (you know who), then plays the same haunting recorded message – Miriam Lass scared, alone, and begging Jack to help her.

            Immediately, we are in Jack Crawford’s bedroom, where Team Sassy Science is pulling and processing evidence from Jack’s bedroom carpet, bedside phone, and even his wife’s pillow. Will is once again observing. Jimmy Price pulls three sets of prints from the phone – the first two sets are identified as Jack’s and his wife’s. The third set is later identified as belonging to Miriam Lass. Beverly even finds a long blonde hair on Bella’s pillow. Will, of course, asks questions: “Did Miriam Lass know where you live?... Did you know you were sending her after [the Chesapeake Ripper?]…” and then states, “Whoever made that phone call thinks you were close to Miriam Lass and feel responsible for her death;” to which Jack replies, “She was my trainee. I am responsible for her death” (Wu and Fuller 36). Jimmy Price floats the idea that Miriam may be alive since her prints are on the phone. Jack cannot accept the idea.

            This new evidence spins Jack into another flashback – the circumstance of Jack’s last meeting with Miriam – the last time he saw her alive. They are back at Quantico – Miriam has skipped a class called “Exclusionary Rules of Search and Seizure” to ask Jack’s opinion about a report she left on his desk (Wu and Fuller 37). Jack seems needlessly cruel to Miriam in this scene. He tells her “go back to class” and “Frustrated, Lass? Better start forming a callus or frustration is going to wear you through” (Wu and Fuller 37).

            This is perhaps one of the reasons Jack feels so guilty about Miriam’s death, or what he believes to be, death. In their last conversation, he wasn’t very nice. This is one of the unfortunate things about life. The last time I saw my father, the night before he died, the last thing I said to him was, “Dad, don’t eat all that ice cream.” My father was a diabetic and my mother and we children fought him tooth and nail to eat better. Towards the end of his life, he merely circumvented us – he hid Snickers bars in the clothes hamper, peanut butter crackers in the visor in his truck – he finally just broke down and started buying all the sweets he wanted himself since my mother refused to buy them. He was unstoppable. The last time I saw him, he was digging into a half-gallon of Blue Bell chocolate ice cream, and so I told him not to eat it all. All he said to me was, “Bye.”

            If I had known that was the last time I would ever see him alive, I would have told him that I loved him. I would have told him that even though he was a shitty dad, abusive and obstreperous, that I still loved him, and I always would. I have to content myself with the idea that either my dad knew that I loved him or he just didn’t care.

            Miriam’s report makes a smart but dangerous suggestion in the hunt for the Chesapeake Ripper. She explains, “If the Chesapeake Ripper is a surgeon, we should look at medical records of all the known victims” (Wu and Fuller 38). Jack points out that this search would obviously be illegal – medical records fall under very tight privacy laws. Then, the following conversation proves yet another thing to the viewer about Jack’s character:

JACK CRAWFORD: It’s one thing for a trainee to go poking around private medical records without a warrant, very much another if “The Guru” did it…

MIRIAM LASS: Better for a trainee to ask for forgiveness than an FBI agent to ask for permission?

            JACK CRAWFORD: In my experience.

                                                                                                (Wu and Fuller 38).

There is something to be said of the fact that this is exactly the way that Jack “loses” people. This strategy is how he loses Will, how he loses Beverly – sending subordinates to do things he can’t do. I suppose it is a comment on larger patriarchal culture – how men in power get little people to do their dirty work for them – everything from cleaning their toilets to fighting their wars. It is not lost on me that two of the people that Jack “loses” this way are women. Strong, stubborn, beautiful women who went off doing things Jack couldn’t do because of “rules.” I love Jack Crawford with all my heart – but he should feel guilty. The loss of Miriam Lass IS very much his fault.

            After this conversation, Miriam wanders off to begin her search of the medical records and we are flashed back into the present where we see Alana Bloom again at the BSHCI, again interviewing Dr. Gideon. Two scenes here at the end of Act Four and the beginning of Act Five, one where Will has a conversation with Chilton, and one where there is a lockdown in the prison were cut from the final episode, so I shall skip them.

            The scene we alight upon is Jack, back in the present, walking down a hallway at the Academy, and once again his phone rings. Jack accepts the grim possibility that the call might once again be the Ripper taunting him and answers it. It brings us to one of the most interesting and important locales in the series, the abandoned observatory. The real location is the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. We see the observatory several times in the series – it is always a place of gruesome revelations.

            We see Will, Beverly, and Jack approaching the building – Beverly explaining that the last call Jack received from the Ripper “traced here. Or within a 100 feet of here” (Wu and Fuller 42). Jack then redials the last number the Ripper called from – one that wasn’t masked or anonymous. They hear a distant ringing coming from inside the observatory.

            They enter the building, and underneath a bunch of discarded equipment, at the base of the main telescope, they find a severed arm, the hand holding the ringing cell phone. A note on a card beneath the arm says, “What do you see?” (Wu and Fuller 43). The viewer understands that this is Miriam Lass’ arm – it explains the fingerprints on the phone in Jack’s bedroom.

            I must say, I do find the image kind of funny… Hannibal in his squeaky murder suit – which I affectionately call his “garment bag” because DAMMIT that’s what it looks like – a garment bag with sleeves turned sideways – in Jack’s bedroom, opening a plastic bag and tweezing out one of Miriam’s head hairs, laying it on Bella’s pillow – making the call from Jack’s bedside phone and then laying Miriam’s decapitated hand over the receiver – pressing the finger pads down with his own to make sure the prints stick. I always imagine Hannibal waving Miriam’s arm around with a dramatic flourish when he’s done – like some morbid maestro conducting an insane symphony all of his own composition.

            The episode ends with a flashback – Miriam Lass showing up at Hannibal’s office door to question him. The Wound Man victim was a “Jeremy Olmstead” Hannibal had treated for an arrow wound in his thigh the man received while bow hunting – when Hannibal worked in the emergency room, most likely at Maryland Misericordia Hospital in Baltimore. Hannibal says he doesn’t remember the man (he totally remembers) – but under the guise of going to retrieve his notes from the years he worked in the ER, he leaves the room, removes his shoes, and then in his stocking feet creeps up behind Miriam, just as she discovers Hannibal’s own Wound Man drawing and begins to realize the trouble she is in. Hannibal begins choking Miriam – this is the episode’s second installment of “THINGS THAT HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING INSANELY HOT.”

            The script describes the scene as follows:

Hannibal is like a column of marble, motionless as Miriam twists and throws, trying in vain to knock him off balance. She reaches behind her head, clawing at Hannibal but he presses his face almost sensually against the back of her neck to protect face and eyes from her slashing fingernails. Miriam’s eyes roll, defeated, tear-filled, knowing she’s going to die. She begins to go limp in Hannibal’s arms.

                                                                                    (Wu and Fuller 48).

This scene is an homage to the same scene in Red Dragon when Hannibal attacks Will from behind, just as Will spies a medical book on Hannibal’s bookshelves that contains the Wound Man drawing. Will’s gut is slashed by Hannibal in this attack – in Fuller’s Hannibal, Will’s gut is spared until the end of Season 2.

            This is why I adore Bryan’s Hannibal so much – it is not just an adaptation; it is a remix. Scenes are moved and laid in the hands of different characters. Conversations are shifted – things Hannibal said to Clarice, he says to Will – characters are gender-swapped or their fates are interchanged. Much of Bryan’s remix remains the same – like the tiger scene between Reba and Francis in Season 3 – but so much of it is recut, reimagined, broken down and put back together. Hannibal is an artist of deconstruction and reconstruction and so is Bryan. I still say and always will that Hannibal is the best show ever on television. Good God, it is that fucking good.

            But, you ask, “JESUS CHRIST! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET TO THE LESSON?” I shall now deliver.

            The lesson takes place in the scene just before Miriam��s attack. After having discovered Miriam’s decapitated arm, Jack is badly rattled and goes to see Hannibal at his office. When questioned by Hannibal as to what he believes the Ripper’s motives are for trying to convince him that Miriam is alive, Jack responds “Hope. The Ripper wanted to cloud my vision in the fog of hope;” Hannibal then says, “It can sometimes be brave to allow yourself hope” (Wu and Fuller 44).

            Hannibal then asks Jack when he gave up hope that Miriam would be found alive and then makes the leap from one woman in Jack’s life to another saying, “Don’t give up hope for your wife. Not yet” (Wu and Fuller 44). At the end of the scene, Hannibal coaxes Jack into telling him about Miriam, even asking what her name was. I have to say it, but making Jack tell him, as if he is absolutely unknowing of the details, about Miriam Lass and her disappearance seems almost masturbatory to me – Jack is talking dirty to Hannibal and doesn’t even know it. Hannibal sits there, absorbing every minutiae, every crease of pain in Jack’s face, every flutter of guilt in his eyes, enjoying every moment knowing exactly where Miriam is, and how she disappeared. Perhaps it is in this discussion with Jack that Hannibal decides to spare Miriam’s life. Perhaps that was always his plan. Hannibal couldn’t have known he would be called in to consult with Jack on his beautiful, but twitchy profiler, so who knows how long he was willing to wait, keeping Miriam alive, bleeding her for info that would bring him directly into Jack’s domain. All of it is devious and cruel.

            It is perhaps the cruelest of things for Hannibal to talk to Jack about hope. The viewer knows that Hannibal is the one who has given Jack this “false kind” of hope (Wu and Fuller 44). It is important to remember that on a first time viewing, an audience member is not aware that Miriam is still alive. Just as on a first time viewing, the audience does not know that Abigail Hobbs is still alive after her ear turns up in Will’s gullet and then his sink. This “give the desperate loved ones a piece of their missing people and taunt them with hope” like a sadistic kidnapper, but one with no asking price, is a pattern Hannibal uses twice in the series – both times to manipulate people he cares for – to spin them in circles and watch the motion – no doubt in this spinning, Hannibal searches for weak spots, but he also delights in their pain and confusion.

            It is interesting to think that the people Hannibal seems to care most about are the ones he plays with in this way. Will, Jack, Bedelia – he offers hope; he yanks it away. He lies and lies until suddenly, at the precise moment it will make the greatest impact, he tells the truth. A colossal tease is Hannibal Lecter. But he plays with these people because they interest him enough to invest time and effort into them, into both their pain and their pleasure.

            Hannibal pokes at Jack’s hope not just about Miriam, but about Bella. As a surgeon, Hannibal knows the hope for Bella is even more of a longshot than for Miriam. But he wants Jack to hope because without hope, there is nothing to lose. It is best that Jack, Will, Bedelia, Alana – that all of them have something to hope for, something to lose. They will all become truly dangerous to Hannibal if they don’t. Which is basically what happens with most of Season 2 to Will, and for Jack and Alana in Season 3 – vengeance arcs – when Hannibal has stripped them of hope.

            Our lesson resides in Hannibal’s line: “It can sometimes be brave to allow yourself hope” (Wu and Fuller 44). Leaving aside Hannibal’s qualifying statement of “sometimes,” the most important diction in this line is of “brave” and “allow.”

            Mostly, we allow hope for others. For a sick friend, a family down on their luck, a whole group, a whole country – a sports team or a heroic dog – we can give our hope to them. That makes sense. And it feels good.

            But often, hope is not a thing we are willing to give ourselves. It seems like something only for other people, like compliments or compassion or birthday cakes. Hannibal says it’s “brave” to allow ourselves hope because when our lives are in abject turmoil, hope is the last thing we want to give ourselves because… hope hurts. When things don’t turn out as we want – when we don’t get the promotion – we lose the contest – we fail the test – we screw up the date – or worse yet, our loved one dies – when we crash and burn, utterly crash and burn – we remember the hope we had beforehand and say, “You fool. You stupid fucking fool. How did you even dare to hope?”

            And so the lesson, dear reader, is this – as he often is – Hannibal is right (the bastard…)

            It is brave. Let yourself have it.

            ALLOW YOURSELF HOPE. BE BRAVE.

            I know it seems easy for me to say. It’s not. It’s hard for me too. Some days, I just can’t do it. But you and me… we’ve got to keep trying. I deserve hope. And so do you.

            It seems impossible is this world full of pain and death and smiling villains.

            But if Jack Crawford can muster hope from a decapitated arm and a dying wife who won’t talk to him, you and I can too.

            Here endeth the lesson…

References:

Fuller, Bryan and Steve Lightfoot. Writers. “Kaiseki.” Hannibal, season 2, episode 1, Chiswick Productions, 2014.

Harris, Thomas. “Foreword to a Fatal Interview.” Red Dragon, by Harris, Berkley, 2000, pp. IX-XIII).

Harris, Thomas. Hannibal. New York, Delacorte Press, 1999.

Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

“Judges 8:27.” King James Bible Online, www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/

Judges-8-27.

Wu, Kai Yu and Bryan Fuller. Writers. “Entrée.” Hannibal, season 1, episode 6, Chiswick Productions, 2012.

[kafkaoftherubble]

Dear Lyndis,

Here are some suggestions for playing this ask game: https://www.tumblr.com/kafkaoftherubble/753608772078977024/ask-game-for-someones-ocs

❤️ - Ada, F, Emily

🥊 - B, C, D (if they have distinct personalities)

✂️ - Emily

💚 - Ada

🍎 - All (do they have parents? How about their "creators?")

🧠 - F

Signed,

— A Mysterious Stranger

Mysterious个毛。

Look. 2015 Lyn(s) left the most barebone stuff. It has so little meat that if a meat-lover calls it their diet, they are legally required to declare themselves a vegetarian.

I'm basically gonna weave whatever shit this brain can think of using whatever data 2015 versions of Lyn left. And then pretend that this is so totally part of the canon now. It's not like I plan to write it as a real story, right, Future Lyns?

---

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

They love to be alive. They hate to be dead.

Okay, see. You already know how A, B, C, D, E, and F are created, but maybe Future Lyns need this recap (I ain't gonna be like 2015 Lyn who did not even leave a long-lasting record):

Six tubes, each with ten genetically modified embryos, are involved in Project Ghoul/Gu.

In the first phase, every embryo has to fight the other nine embryos for survival. The embryos have only two means: fight their rivals to the death or forcefully absorb the latter. The fittest, most powerful embryo—the last one standing—will stay in the tube for incubation.

Sounds familiar? That's because this technique is based on traditional Chinese +/ Japanese folk magic called 蛊毒。 The Wikipedia page linked has a detailed process of how "the strongest venomous magic" can be cultivated according to Gudu. It's also a method to cultivate antibiotics! Neat.

The leader of the project has a Chinese background (or whatever made-up culture inspired by the Chinese culture. Really, kinda don't have much thought about it yet). That background is in the undertone of the project, including the name: the "Gu" in Project Gu is from the word "蛊"。

(The actual Chinese name should be 人蛊计划, "Human Gu Project")

Project Ghoul is its "internationally known" name; the surviving embryo is called a Ghoul. Because puns are funny!... But also because the experiment subjects echo a creature from pre-Islamic Arabic folklore, "Ghul." Researchers see a Ghoul as a flesh-eating human because their first "diet" was the other embryos they shared in the tubes.

Like the most famous ghul in Arabic folklore, the Ghouls are on the female end of the sex spectrum. Except for one, anyway.

Unfortunately, Tube B, C, and D were a failure. The struggle between embryos was lethal, and the survivors of B, C, and D died shortly after. Hence, they never have anything they love or hate to do. They simply never got to live enough to have that.

--------

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Ada is mediocre at her core. There is nothing particularly exciting about her appearance or traits, especially if compared to the other two surviving Ghouls... and even other humans.

Ada is female. She's an inept straight.

By "inept," I mean she doesn't seem to charm anyone that way (per her admission), doesn't know how to socialize with other genders that well, and doesn't know if she has charisma or how to improve her charisma. She just doesn't possess rizz (per her admission). You can say she's Asa without Yoru.

It's frustrating for Ada to find out she isn't aromantic. A kind blind boy had befriended her that one time; it was hard to determine if it was a youth's idea of a joke, a genuine relationship, something done out of pity, or a "we can try to get along and see if actual love sparked" situation à la arranged marriage—but they dated for a while.

Ada had felt genuine romantic feelings for the boy and had grieved when he died slipping off a banana peel and tumbling down the stairs leading to a busy road. Even if the stairs didn't kill him, the oncoming truck certainly sealed the deal. A new construction began shortly after, and rails and walls were installed in that town. Thanks to this new infrastructure, only Blind Boy was ever transported to another world to become an all-seeing seer by being able to read the script of a story, therefore never falling victim to banana peels again.

The point is, Ada simply isn't aromantic. Above all else, she yearns to be loved and for a person to belong to, which is why her inept straight-ness hurts. She believes the only person who could even love and accept her is someone who's passionately, romantically in love with her. She often fantasizes about the dead boy secretly wanting to be with her for the rest of his life if not for that fucking banana peel, but the Others have waaaaay less faith in that.

Hey, at least she's asexual. Dodge the femcel bullet!

-------

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like? (do they have parents? How about their "creators?")

Every researcher on Project Gu is technically their caretaker, but the Lead Researcher (LR) is considered the "real" parent.

(1) Ada

Ada has no relation with LR because, before F goes missing, LR has no fucking idea "A" survived.

Prior to their lab being destroyed by anti-Ghoul activists/terrorists, A was constantly near death after her Pyrrhic victory against other embryos, so most people didn't really think much about her. The team hastily salvaged E (a fetus) and F (still an embryo) and left for safety; nobody really thought A would live.

A (fetus) survived long enough until a pair of disillusioned ex-researchers discovered it while scavenging for documents after the coast was clear. They brought A home and incubated it further out of curiosity, and to their surprise, A grew up. These people were her first adopted parents.

They were pretty good teachers and parent figures, but they never planned to keep her for long—they believed they were not equipped to train and raise a human weapon and feared being found out by their old research team and LR. When A was 5, they gave her away to a foster home.

To win emotional appeals from voters, an aspiring politician and his wife made a big show of visiting the foster home and choosing one child to adopt. He picked A—his aide had told him that the child was given away by researchers who used to be involved in Project Gu, and the politician thought she might be politically useful someday. Just like that, this politician and his wife became A's second adoptive parents. They named her "Arete" when she told them her name was "A."

Arete's new parents were decent toward her—and she liked them enough—until the wife gave birth to a pair of twins. Arete became sidelined very quickly and showed up less and less with the family. Then two things happened: Arete was found talking to herself all the time. She also sees ghosts and macabre creatures when there aren't any. It was the subject of tabloids and rumors before culminating in an incident that left her parents humiliated at a state dinner.

Her relationship with her parents deteriorated. They started to call her "A" again, distancing themselves from her and giving her just the bare minimum of care. When she was 18, they got her to be emancipated but told her to remove any connection she had with the family, including changing her name. So, A just grabbed a name she found on a book or something and forgo a last name altogether.

(2) Emily

Emily enjoys an affectionate relationship with LR and the rest of the team. Everyone coddles her because she's the success story of Project Gu and is genuinely as impressive and competent as the Ghouls were supposed to be. In public, Project Gu was stated to have only one success, "E." That success brought a ton of research funding and a sterling reputation to the researchers who participated, which made them love her even more.

Without F in the picture, Emily is the princess. LR tolerates her spoiled brat's attitude and usually allows her everything she desires, including acknowledging the human name she had given herself despite insisting they had already given her "a name."

(3) F

F is LR's true golden child. He's the secret 6th Ghoul that not even Emily and many on the research team know. LR treats him as their greatest success and legacy. Nonetheless, they're very guarded about his existence. They're controlling of him and do all they can to make sure F obeys them, as F is a psychic and the most powerful Ghoul. He's their trump card.

F doesn't return LR's fervor. He respects them and treats them well, but he's rather distant. He also treats other researchers in the know about him similarly. F had tried training himself to dampen his psychic empathy however ways he can to avoid being overwhelmed and pained by conflicting emotional states, but that caused him to be aloof to his "parent."

Nonetheless, until he went missing, he defers to LR's commands. He is also the only one who responds to the name LR gave him.

Subfolder: Extra Name Lore Related to LR:

LR believes themself to be the parent of all 6 Ghouls, so they gave them names displaying their well wishes. Unfortunately, they see the Ghouls as weapons and not people, so their wishes are... well.

A: 碍(ài) "hinder, obstruct"

B: 别(bié) "split, break apart"

C: 袭(xí) "sneak attack"

D: 毒(dú) "poison"

E: 扼(è) "chokehold, control"

F: 伏(fú) "subjugate, rule"

Ada had no idea she had such a name. Emily hates it. F is the only one who will respond to it even after they run away.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2.I RAMBLED TOO MUCH. I COMPLAINED ABOUT NO MEAT, BUT IT NOW HAS TOO MUCH MEAT.

[pancake-breakfast]

I still have Thoughts on Volume 2, but I think it's time to start Volume 3. Maybe the Volume 2 thoughts will sort themselves out better in the meantime.

Archive

Trigun Volume 1: Covers + 1-3, 3 Detailed Thoughts, 4, 4 DT, 5-6, 5-6 + DT, 6 DT, 7-8, 9-10

Trigun Volume 2: Covers + Extras, 1, 1 Supplemental Research, 2-4, 5-6, 7-8

TriMax Volume 1: Covers + 1-2, 2 DT, 3-4, 3 DT, 5-6

TriMax Volume 2: Covers + 1, 2-4, 5, 6-7

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts for TriMax Vol. 3, Chapters 1-3 below.

TriMax Volume 3 Covers

Eyyyy! It's blonde Milly!

I kinda miss Meryl's long hair....

His life as a what?!?!

Whyyyy is Vash getting punched on the alternative version of the cover?? Hasn't this boy been through enough pain???

LOL, Milly eating the food from Meryl's chopsticks.

I just wanna point out that the kanji all over the alternate front cover just says "meat" over and over again. Sasha Braus would be proud.

Nooooo, send the puppet guy awaaaaaaay! No more puppet guy! *cries*

Yes, the puppet guy bothers me more than the otherworldly horror on the bottom of the back cover. And more than Legato, who is arguably also a puppet guy.

I'm a lot less sure about all the untranslated Japanese on the alternate back cover, but it looks like Wolfwood is saying something about meat, and the text bubble on the bottom left just says, "Meeeeeeeaaaaaat."

LOL, tiny poorly drawn penis on the giant monster-guy.

Chapter 1: Reservoir Dogs

Awww, look at everyone being deceptively happy! Even Kuroneko's making an appearance! (Also, yes, this is Wolfwood's happy face.)

I love how calm Vash looks here despite everything. Wolfwood, on the other hand, seems to have some different thoughts. But... he's actually onto something. That level of calmness despite everything is and should be terrifying. (I colored it because Vash is so pretty.) (Also, I legit forgot the smudge on his face was blood until I started coloring this.)

Pretty sure this guy is giving Wolfwood major tit window envy.

Heh, the real reason Wolfwood is swearing is because everything Vash has told him is messing with his head. What would normally be a point-and-shoot choice for him has suddenly become complicated with Thoughts.

Not sure what happened here. Something exploded... and... Wolfwood threw up??

Well, that cleared some stuff up for WW. Though I get the idea this guy can eat a LOT of lead before it gives him an upset tummy.

LOL, "Takin' out his hands is like disarmin' him." I'm not sure if the pun works in Japanese, but it's funny in English.

No no no no no! Put Puppetman BACK WHERE HE CAME FROM!!!

I don't even mind his horrible body-moosh-horror abomination as much as I mind Puppetman himself. (I know he's "Puppet Master," but he doesn't deserve enough of my respect for that.)

Is... the abomination trying to do a video game cheat code on Vash?

Shoot all the things, Vash! I dunno what you're shooting, but as long as you do, that's what matters!

Cool guy pose.

Awww, sad Vash. When this battle is over, someone needs to give him the biggest of hugs. He's earned it. He needs it.

WTF, bat wings??? From where?!

Oooh, creepy comparison shot of Vash plus Knives. I approve.

Dude. Now the creepy guy is digging trenches in his own face with his own hand. While wearing gloves. What the hell. Please get rid of him.

Untainted material?! Make him your puppet?!? Where's Wolfwood with his murder-cross? I need some murder to happen here.

Oh, he's in a hole.

"Yer name might remain, even long after ya die... but yer ideals join ya in the grave." I love this line. It reminds me of a favorite of mine from Mass Effect's Samara: "Only your actions will be remembered. May you choose them well."

I like how, all throughout this scene, Wolfwood's got the Punisher on a little leash like it's a boogie board or something.

Holy crap, the girls are here, too??? This is not a safe place for the girls. Or for anyone, really. But particularly people without some sort of superhuman something going for them.

Saved, by terrified toma causing delays!

Chapter 2: Cement

Legato, you freaking dork. Glad you're enjoying being carried everywhere in your weird coffin-iron maiden thing.

Heheheheheheh. Wolfwood the traitor. <3 you, Wolfie....

LOL, Wolfwood's absolute casualness at this accusation is beautiful.

Dude. Ninelives needs some dental work pronto.

For as much as he resents certain aspects of his life, Wolfwood really seems to revel in certain kinds of carnage. He's nothing but focus and falling bullets in this fight.

One must wonder, does the Punisher ever run out of ammo? Does Wolfwood even know that machine guns are best used in short bursts, or is he just that good at "pray and spray"?

Ninelives clearly ate ALL his vegetables as a kid. WW's looking a bit worried.

RIP Wolfwood's ribcage.

And the Punisher is so far away, too....

Ha! Pocket Pistol!

I just wanna say that despite this guy having a cat-like name, Ninelives is a disgrace to cats everywhere. He's nothing like a cat and that's not a compliment.

You know... using a big-ass industrial factory-type door to keep out the giant murder monster is a pretty good plan at this moment.

LOL, Wolfwood, you cheeky bastard.

I dunno if taunting Ninelives is a great plan, even if he's missing an arm. Congrats on finishing your disarming procedure, though, Wolfie!

Or is he the dumbass who dove right in and is now torn apart in this place...?

I don't have any idea why this chapter is called Cement. Like, usually I can make some sort of connection, but this one is lost on me.

Chapter 3: No Escape

Wait wait wait. Did that disembodied arm just CRAWL ACROSS THE ROOM AND OPEN THE DOOR?!?! Gods, someone kill it with fire, please.

This is just... so Wolfwood. You do you, my lovely foul-mouthed murder-friend.

I feel like Vash heard all that and is mad because Wolfwood is trying to kill someone again.

Gods, why did Nightow have to make Vash SO PRETTY in this arc??

Ew, Ninelives is gross. He's just gross. Puppetman is creepy. Ninelives is gross.

He's called Ninelives. Maybe you just have to kill him nine times....

Uhhhh... Ninelives has EYES in his belly?? PEOPLE IN HIS BELLY?!?! LIVING BELLY PEOPLE?!?!?!?!

For some reason, Wolfwood cocking the Punisher here amuses me. (The sound effect is "ga-kin".)

Scenes like this make me kinda glad this isn't in color. Then again, I got through Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Hellsing Ultimate despite all the guts and stuff, so *shrug*.

SO. MANY. GOOD. VASH PANELS. Ugh, I just want to pour them on pancakes and eat them all up.

Ugh, Vash knows as soon as he sees them. He has no choice but to know. The situation means there's no way it could be any different. But part of him would still hesitate.

Also, the baby pulling a gun is REALLY darkly hilarious.

This whole business is really mucking with Vash's instincts, and Puppetman knows it. Can we please throw Puppetman into Mount Doom now???

Wait, who's Emilio??

Ugh, I have to call it here for the night. I just want to get past this. I want Vash to get past this.

[galar-abortion-clinic]

*sends all of the oc ask game asks* jk jk I'm not THAT evil.

BUUUT 🎹 🥊💎 for Jules!

And just to be funny also 🌺

ZZZAP its the jules-clusive post

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

Meat Loaf in rocky horror picture show, The Scorpion from the devils carnival (the hairstyle in particular), team yell’s Fat Boy Swag™, and the overall fashion and attitude of the psychobilly scene. One of my favorite things about pokemon is the gimmick characters with pun names, I thought it’d be funny to make an electric-type specialist named after joule units. Geddit? Greased lightning?

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

Outside of being a big stinkin gearhead? I think he very casually styles his pokemon from time to time! Doesnt think much of it, he just enjoys hanging out with his lil buddies and often finds himself spiffying em up by default. It’s one of those hidden talents that’s so hidden even he isn’t aware of it

🥊 - What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

I can’t think of very much Jules hates, he’s not the sort of guy who vocally dislikes much at all. The only thing i can imagine him saying fuck no to is desk work lmao. He’s a mechanic because he loves keeping busy, he needs the noise and sparks and excitement. Ask him to calmly sit still and focus on papers and watch him lose his mind just from imagining how boring that’d be

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Honestly my first impulse is to say yes, absolutely. I can picture his last words being “LADS WATCH THIS”. At the same time tho, i feel like hes too dumb to die. Hes always in the right place at the wrong time

🌺 - Do they have any love interests?

Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, stinker

🎓- How long have you had the OC?

FUCK okay so jules is TECHNICALLY my oldest oc of the bunch, i just changed him up to fit a new fandom. Believe it or not my man used to be a steven universe fangem i made as a sweaty 15 year old, then he went through a whole bunch of revisions before I settled on what he’s become now. Unfortunately (but also thank fuck) i dont have the first scribblings id ever done of him, but here are some early design concepts i bounced between while figuring out how he fits into the pokemon fandom:

(Again, i do NOT take very good care of my sketchbooks)

[goldemas1244]

Zhask and Yve headcanoons time!

Okay so we all have seen this

ZHASK X YVE MOONTON CANON

So, with inspo from @astrowarden I'm making a headcanons and ideas list to jot some stuff down because I need to infodump. Hey, Yve mutual, (I can call you that, yes? Because you're the astrowarden?) you can reblog and add more below (or argue against mine). We can infodump a lot here. Let us build this Zhask X Yve ship together!!

Man I just need to infodump-

-- Headcanons under the :readmore: --

Equilibrium (Placeholder ship name)

Zhask and Yve got together after many forced team-ups against the ever-present problems threatening to destroy the Land of Dawn. Because if the planet gets destroyed then Zhask, now comfy with the place, will find more planets and that'd suck for Yve.

Just imagine Zhask shielding Yve from an attack... and the other way around... ehehehehe

There were lots of witty banter between them and many more insults but they gradually softened and became cool beans with each other.

"You want some pizza?" "No thanks, it's got meat on it."

*Yve eats the pepperonis for him.*

*He finally eats the pizza and asks for more.*

Zhask got really injured during a fight once AND IT WAS YVE WHO CALLED FOR HELP AND HELPED SAVE HIM

He was grabbing on to her arm for dear life at this point (which is when she realised 'Oh God he needs me').

They can both breathe, talk to each other, and hear each other in space. Which is weird because space is a vacuum.

Zhask is the idiot. Yve is the only one who can accept that.

Zhask lets Yve control Domorey (his staff) sometimes. He will NOT admit she's better than him.

Since Zhask is the only one of them with a canonical place to stay, Yve bunks with him. She has a set of pyjamas and everything.

Pillowfights (GAH)

Zhask's love language is acts of service. Yve's is listening. They're both secretly touch starved.

This planet was meant to be his Kastiya II, like an extension of the place. Yve doesn't have the heart to tell him what happened to Kastiya I.

They both love the wildlife. But Yve is usually the one to drag him out of his trance when he sees bugs. He gets an identity crisis.

Yve is Zhask's personal leash. She usually stops him from violently dropping his head into a nearby bush and eating it.

They both have eating problems. Zhask overeats. Yve doesn't eat enough. They criticise each other until their diets eventually cool up.

Imagine again, Yve comforting Zhask through his nightmares-

Zhask

Zhask likes coconut milk. He steals snow from the Northern Vale to build himself a mini fridge for his coconut shakes.

Kastiya II has a bunch of coconut trees. It's mentioned that he's building a swarm army there but it's mostly just a pet-type thing now because they KEEP. EATING. THE COCONUT TREES.

People mistake Zhask's forest of coconut trees for the actual Swarm.

He makes a living somehow by... selling the freshest coconuts known to the world???

Of course it isn't just the swarm who keep eating the trees. Zhask takes a bite out of every single type of plant he finds and if he likes them he'll suck out their juices. Like a beetle.

He sometimes does this to his own coconut trees when he's sleepwalking. He has no recollection of this and starts blaming his spawn beans again.

Yve recorded it and is now saving it as blackmail.

He's a traditional medicine kind of guy. Feed him a ginger root and he'll be all good in three hours.

The Land of Dawn uses his services to clear land and stuff. It's disturbing to see the usually composed and upright king going full-on feral when he's specifically requested for though.

A swarm can clear the intended land in minutes. But if he's hungry he'll take seconds (lol it's a pun).

We all know he can hear people's thoughts. Oho, he has the juiciest gossip if you can crack him open.

'Anything is edible if you're brave enough.'

He's not brave enough.

He's homesick.

He has a good relationship with Badang because Badang makes the best rice (he's Malay of course he does).

Yve

Unlike Zhask she is omnivorous which means she's the one who usually eats the shrimp in his mac and cheese.

She cheats at tag.

Zhask is her FIRST friend.

She likes fish. She can swim for hours. Which terrifies Zhask because he's seen one of his spawn young get eaten by a creature in the water and he's NOT taking risks.

She's actually very good at videogames.

She's not very social. But she DOES get invited by Aurora for tea every two weeks.

She still thinks Aurora should beat up Zhask and then some. As a treat and revenge.

Of course, coming from Mithlora, she is a great hunter. She and Helcurt have hunting battles occasionally when they cross paths.

One of Mithlora's veteran hunters keeps watch on Martis. So she still has family to communicate with in close quarters.

She likes sour cherry sweets.

She has a favourite of Zhask's spawn. Its name is Edem. Zhask's favourite is Meric.

She can light up like a glowstick. Just without the cracking and shaking (but you can do it to her; only once).

Her bestie is Pharsa.

[jubilantwriter]

Well heelllloooo my beloved~

Let's go wiiiithhhh 4, 8, 16, 26, 55, and 68!

Helloooooo my darling~

4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Usually through music, but nowadays I've been drawing inspiration from hefty quotes on tumblr and comics where there's a certain Flavor to it that I really like and wanna try with my own takes.

8. Do you prefer the beginning, middle, or end of a story?

The middle! That's where the meat of the fic is, and where my general creativity really goes loose and uncontrolled lol. You can bet that my excess writing collects in the middle and just continues to unravel from there. Beginnings tend to be rough, but once I get a start, I manage to keep on chugging.

Endings are where I really struggle. Don't- [grabs your face to look away at my incomplete but published fics] -don't look over there.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Oooohh so many. Granted, all of them tend to be centered around my and my friends' OCs, but the one I'm nursing right now is:

Clay (from Pokemon Black and White) has to deal with the grief and guilt of his younger cousin going missing (my OC, Rod, of whom you know), and processes it as healthily as he possibly can. Which is to say, he processes it poorly. There's blame tossed around and angry jealousy/envy towards another figure who's lost a family member.

Takes place just before Legends Arceus truly kicks off, but is set in that universe. I've actually been working on this fic for AGES, and it's only recently returned to bother me in the corners of my brain.

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

GOD. I would have to say... "The Space Between". It was my first true horror fic where I pushed myself to really experiment with my writing. Building the atmosphere, figuring out how to word things just right to drive home the pure terror David was in was a struggle, but a well fought one! I remember putting myself in David's headspace and freaking myself out with horror stuff to get me to really feel and experience what David felt to properly translate the terror into words. I even thought about reading a Stephen King book or two to understand how to write horror! Needless to say, I didn't end up doing that LOL

After all that build up tho came the downhill climb from all that horror tension, which honestly is what got me put into a standstill. Like, how do you write a satisfying conclusion to all that build up? That's still something I need to work on for that fic, and one that's been nagging at me for ages. Hopefully, I'll figure something out. I know how it ends, after all.

55. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

...........r Od, my pokémon OC. loL. Writing my own OC has been a pleasure and a joy, just because I can put him into so many situations and throw him into so many AUs with my friends. But also, the biggest appeal of Rod is that he's my own character. I know who he is and why he behaves the way he does better than anyone else - his motives, his drives, his weaknesses. Not only that, but he's a character who can change and grow into something else! He used to be a cis man before my friends and I talked more and more about him until we realized... no, actually, he's a transman. He leaves so much room for experimenting, for discovery and building that it's so much fun to work with him! It's less constraining to work with him than with established characters, and it's also SUCH a breath of fresh air!

My friends DEFINITELY had some part in my choice to write about him. They all just... loved him so much??? Right from conception when he was nothing more than a sock puppet with googly eyes and a fishing pun for a name. They loved him so much that they all breathed the life into him, until I actually had something to work with.

And then they kept playing with him!! Lord did they play with him. So I played dolls with their OCs as well, and this interconnected world with OCs just kinda grew and expanded and became so much fun to explore that I just couldn't not enjoy writing fics about him and their OCs falling in love or being a family or struggling together. A lot of the fics I write of Rod tend to be shared only amongst my friends, but maybe... some day... I'll post something here.

68. What, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

Listen to songs in hopes of getting my writing spunk on. That, or daydreaming! Daydreaming scenarios really helps.

The other thing I do is write my fic on minecraft which is a sane and nor Mal thing to do,

[halothenthehorns]

Spoilery goodness on TSatS below!

I want to preface this by saying I've never been active in the PJO fandom before when something first came out. His books have always been on and off my radar every five years or so since I was in middle school and I binge read to catch up then move on to something else, but since I've been actively writing fanfiction for these books lately, here are my first, fresh thoughts.

First the good!

I actually really liked Will was a big ol' doofus damsel in distress. Not everybody needs to be a big action hero and 'useful' on a quest. Will was there purely for moral support because Nico was going back to a most dreaded place, and he fulfilled that roll with moderate success while the two worked on their issues. I will now forever laugh at Care Bare Powers activate, and Will punning his own name and just being happy to be along was all I wanted from him.

I don't know why anybody would say him and Nico were ooc. You do know characters adapt and change over time, right? Of course Nico's going to be slightly different than before, this is the first book we've ever seen him actively trying to be happy.

I did laugh at some parts, I did have whole chunks of chapters were I was invested and curious what was going to happen, and I can not say enough how much I love Bob and Small Bob!

The Gorgyra's parts were some of my favorite, I can't help but laugh there was a scenic route through Tartarus on the happy friendship boat by sharing memories, and that's what I really wanted out of this book. A little background on these boys, a good promise of their future, and that is exactly what I got.

The Cocoa Puffs are a hilarious addition and I hope Nico and Will name every one of them and they make terrifying additions in continuing novels.

It wasn't a great shock or twist or anything he left his darkness behind. I half expected it to be their treasured objects that were invented for this book, so the fact that it was instead a piece of Nico he always clung to was a fairish way out of it without having to dramatically kill somebody, or break up Solangelo, or worse, make it Bob.

Chapter 24 was probably my favorite. I really loved Persephone's talk with Will;

but this chapter also kind of highlights some of my bad.

I really get why a lot of people are saying it reads like preachy bad fanfiction. Persephone could have shown up and had that talk with Will without the whole, oh if somebody's forcing you to be in a bad relationship you should runaway as fast as possible detail.

There's whole chunks of the book like that.

I was genuinely bored on some of it, Epiales  nightmares went on way to long when a first grader could figure out that's what was going on from the moment they reached the bottom the first time and mysteriously found their way at the top with a 'shadow' lurking behind them.

I like the sidequesty idea, the RR books had always been bad about doddling around to get to the real meat of the story with his sidequests and exploring more of the Underworld is always fun. The update on Geryon getting a boyfriend made me freeze up and mind blank for a good minute in shock, so I'll give it that.

I don't know, I think a good sideplot would have helped some of the structure problems. I've never written my own novel, I'm not going to pretend to think I can and should fix this, just my first thought.

The almost last bit where it was Hades who put all this together was another good example of why this was kind of cringe but mostly in line with the general RR series. The gods can never be OOC because they're gods. They can do whatever they want from book to book and it's just their mood for that moment. Hades breaking his rules to give Nico a moment with Bianca and Bianca (that's not a typo) was a sweet gesture and him using his son to get Bob out because his yelling got to loud was sweet and amusing.

But then they didn't do anything with the moment. It was just a quick shot, Bianca (actual Bianca) barley even got to say anything, and it was just over :( You spent whole pages of them just walking around like a Tolkien novel, you couldn't have given a little more emotion to Nico finally getting to talk to his mother and sister for the last time...

My only major complaint was the camp.

Dionysus was OOC. Him just sporadically being a good counselor and listening to Nico and caring is just, so, ugh. Not everybody needs to be nice and sweet and rainbows. I don't care I'm contradicting myself, Dionysus was written in previous books to care about the kids but in his own salty way about being stuck there, you didn't have to make him share his popcorn.

Chiron's always been like that. Oh, another big bad prophecy where my campers are off to do the most dangerous and world perilous things?

Cool, yeah, I'll be over here teaching archery, have fun with that.

The fact that there were no campers was?! I call absolute bull the 80-100+ kids that are supposedly there all have happy homes lives they went off to. Why would you even want to write it like the place was empty and barren? I wasn't even hoping for more OC and intense background, just a little casual time of Nico being accepted in camp which we only got on the first pages and then- Just, so much, !?

Thing two was Piper getting the check-up call at the end instead of Reyna. Yes authors, highlight the recently found out gay chick instead of Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, Jason's best friend you keep forgetting existed and is now possibly exploring her Aro/Ace life with the Hunters and Jason's sister Thalia! This choice just personally infuriated me because I want a Hunters book sooooo bad, and I was desperately hoping when the scene started we were going to get a 'jump off' point for them like this book was at the end of ToA

If we get a Piper book next, maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be a team up book wit them, but I am not holding my breath at this rate.

5/10, would only recommend to hardcore RR fans. Will probably reread again someday, but years from now when I convince myself it might not have been as bland as I remember it.

[nutria--oscura]

heaven heist! heaven heist! heaven heist!

new ep, more incomprehensible ramblings

~spoilers for s2 ep42 below~

family guy impressions? this early??? what was that intro?

artificer or rogue taylor? cool. cool cool cool

love that they're confirming that the teens are all still married

(about link's fact) ah yes, it all comes full circle

ancient roman gods, scary? really? (<- greek mythology fanatic)

RON FACT!

HERMIE FACT! (his dad??? which?)

rotting meat? like their heart?

ah yes. the most important heaven lore - bathrooms

"if you did leave [heaven] you'll be in a lot of trouble if they found out" "just like north korea dawg"

love ron so much <3

"like obama" "like when they killed bin laden"

"normal's secret stuff" is it just water? like michael jordan's secret stuff in space jam?

"do you see the chicken that crossed the road in here?" "no but you do see the family guy chicken that fight its way through the background"

HERMIE!!

SEA CREATURE PUNS!!!

"you gotta piss into hell! YOU GOTTA PISS INTO HELL!"

"the dolphin nods" "the dolphin shrugs" "the dolphin rolls it's eyes" "the dolphin shakes it's head" "the dolphin shrugs and goes 'it's a living!' " hELP-

in order to SNEAK inro heaven they have to go to hell? fun

link is half way to being darryl

NICKY!!!

in order to SNEAK into heaven they have to SNEAK into hell? even better

spirit halloween plain? seasonally the ethereal plain becomes a spirit halloween plane?

i was gonna include the goth guy quotes but- well no-

"what do you do?" "well- i'm a teenager sir"

THE RETURN OF PISSFOOT!!

oh lincoln. you poor poor pissfoot

"with the precision of a us ranger sniper" grant is horrified~

ITS HOLY WATER

the piss thing is gonna be next eps into isnt it?

NORMAL I LOVE YOU BUT NO WILL WHY (honestly same. id do that. for science)

oh gawd

darryl died via pitbull??? mr worldwide???

oh a ladder- HIS HEAD WAS SPLIT OPEN??? DARNELL FOUND HIM???

"did he go timberrrr" FREDDIE-

he takes the christmas lights down in february??? and puts them back up in march??? (cough closeson cough)

"we have an entire room where you can use q-tips in your ear with no consequences" (ok now i know what MY heaven looks like <- literally used a q-tip like an hour ago) "so do i its called my bathroom" "oh-"

"when you assume you make an ass out of you and some guy named sune..."

freddie spaghetti? cherry cheesecake? fufuwelder flam? so close to all being food related names (flan - flam?)

carol's not dead?

DARRYL'S WAITING FOR CAROL AND GRANT??? OH GOSH IM CRYING OH GOSH MY HEART

DARRYL AND GRANT HUG

MARKIE AGH GOSH

scary defending link <333

oh gosh darryl's so excited to see ron gosh oh gosh

GRANT AND DARRYL CONVO BEFORE THE WEDDING! i swear i just read a fanfic with this premise the other day, i cannot remember the name or by who but they sorta nailed it

SCAM I LOVE YOU BUT IM CRYING RN I DO NOT NEED THE EMOTIONAL WHIPLASH OF YOU BEING HERE IN THIS SCENE

THE FUCKING TITANIC????

anthony really knows how to end an ep

[apatheticcrossovers]

Hey i was wondering if you could do a one shot fic of Bob velseb martha from helluva boss and it's love at first bite? (pun intended) what if Bob was a canon character in Martha's universe?

Of course! I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I hope you like it! Fic will be under the cut!

Love at First Bite

Fandoms: Spooky Month, Helluva Boss Ship: Bob Velseb (Spooky Month)/Martha (Helluva Boss) Characters: Bob Velseb (Spooky Month), Martha (Helluva boss), Martha's Family (Helluva Boss, brief mention), I.M.P. (Helluva Boss, Brief mention) Tw: Cannibalism, Murder, Romanticization of one's own death Summary: Bob Velseb remembers the say he met the love of his life. A beautiful southern belle, the sweetest lady ever, and had the most beautiful laugh when she tried to eat him. If only he could've gotten her name before she killed him.

Bob liked to remember the day he met her. He hadn't known her for long, he didn't even catch her name, but he already knew they were both soulmates. He had been sneaking into her house on another hunt, assuming that he could take out one of the kids, and if not, then the whole family would work too. What he didn't expect was the family being far more prepared to deal with a break-in than he expect. Next thing he knew, the mother had him pinned to the ground, pinning him down with her shoe to his chest and a shotgun pointed to his face. He would've attacked her, but, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, everything about her was just perfect.

"Say your prayers you, lowsy-" Just before she could finish her sentence, a look of realization crossed her face, her eyes widening slightly as she seemed to recognize him, costume and all. "Oh wait, your that Bob Velseb fella, aren't ya?" She let out small laugh as she lowered the gun slightly, putting a hand to her chest. Her laugh was the most beautiful thing Bob had ever heard, it made him feel something he thought he had never felt before.

"Wait, you... you know me?" Bob tilted his head in confusion, letting out a small chuckle as he looked up at the southern belle.

"Oh of course! Me and my family are huge fans of your work!" she had said, smiling at him sweetly. Bob was confused for a moment, fans? How could someone ever be a fan of him when he was not only a cold-blooded killer, but a cannibal? "You don't know how excited I am! I can't wait to tell the kids we'll be eatin' their idol for dinner!" That's when Bob realized, this lady, and her whole family, were cannibals just like him. Though he did question it for a moment, raising an eyebrow.

"Uh, don'tcha mean you'll be havin' their idol for dinner?" suddenly, the barely of the gun was pointed right back at Bob's face, his eyes wide as the lady's smile turned sinister.

"Eatin', havin', same thing isn't it?" Before Bob could even respond, she pulled the trigger, killing him and sending him off to the deepest parts of hell. It wasn't too bad though, to his surprise, he could practically do whatever he wanted down there without repercussion. Plus, the ram horns were kind of cool, like a permanent reminder of the costume he wore when he was alive.

So, he became a butcher, with the meat he sold being the best quality he could find, which was hard, not many demons down in hell had alot of meat on their bones. In his free time though, when he had nothing to do, no customers to help, and no need to slaughter anyone, he would sit in his butcher's shop, and daydream about the southern belle, the wild look in her eyes, the sweet saccharine of her voice, and the butterflies he felt in his stomach right has she shot him in the head.

It was just another slow day in the shop with he heard a familiar voice call out from the doorway to the shop. "Well well well, long time no see~". Bob looked up, and despite how hell may hay have changed her appearance, he could still recognize that sweet southern belle that killed him. She looked much different now, looking more similar to a lamb, though, her eyes and snout were more wolf-like than anything... 'A wolf in sheep clothing' was all Bob could think, quite fitting for a beauty like her.

"Well what a surprise! Did the police finally catch up to you?" Bob tilted his head, leaning his arm on the counter gently as he smiled at her. She was surprised by such a warm welcome, she would've thought he'd be at least somewhat vengeful for what she did to him.

"Oh now, it was actually some other demons that were paid to kill me! It's a long story though, you probably wouldn't care." She waved her hand dismissively letting out a small chuckle as she approached the counter. Bob only smiled wider as his expression softened, letting out a sigh. He had seen adverts for a company in hell that did that, but he never thought someone would actually pay to have their enemies killed, it seemed like such a waste of money.

"Well, That's certainly not a way to go out, I can't imagine anyone hating a pretty lady like you that much..." Bob's voice was sweet and soft. He was trying to flirt with her, thought= he wasn't sure if it would work, he almost felt like she was out of his league. "But I've got nothing better to do today, so I'm all ears. I'm sure the stories mighty interestin' anyways." Bob let out a laugh, straightening his back slightly before crossing his arms. "Oh, by the way, whatcha name? I never caught it before I died!"

She was still surprised by how welcoming he was being, but she certainly wasn't one to turn it down. He was still her idol after all, even if they were both dead. "Oh, I'm so sorry darlin'! I guess I should've told you, I was just so excited to finally get to eat my idol, I just couldn't wait! The name's Martha~" She held out her hand for him to shake, which he happily took without hesitation.

"Martha..." Bob repeated, almost left breathless. He would've imagined that name belonging to an angel, which in his eyes, she was an angel. He pulled his hand away and dusted himself off. "Well Martha, How about you tell me whatcha want from my little shop here, and then you can tell me all about your little encounter with the demons, alright?"

It might've been the fact she was in hell, but Martha felt a bit warm around Bob. She had grown a fondness for him over the years, she might as well call him a crush if it wasn't for the fact she had eaten him. Still, Martha felt a warm feeling in her chest, and she knew that she'd enjoy knowing Bob as much more than just a meal.

[absolutebl]

Okay we on the Tumblr bug reblog portion of this trashiness. Shall we proceed apace?

Episode 7 - We Have A Diaper Blow Out, People

It’s fascinating that Charlie uses chan with Jeff instead of phi (for the I pronoun). What an odd little relationship these “brothers” have. Ah ha, of course, as is revealed, they are not blood brothers. And Charlie has GUTS.

I am intrigued by Charlie finally. That took a while. Still suspect his motives, but also, I'm not wild about Babe, so bring it on puppy. Let's see whatcha got.

Way + Arrow Boy! Apparently, his name Pete. Argh don’t make him a bad guy.

Ooo Way’s place is nice. Belongs in a Cdrama. Never seen that location in a BL before.  

Meanwhile the mpreg has broken like the first mpreg.

Blowing out tumblrs diapers like the secodn cumming.

I'm losing my damn metaphors but ya'know what I'm on about.

And Charlie is Rogue (or maybe Leach is a better Marvel mutant), huh. Nifty.

That forgiveness and reconciliation was awful fast, boys.

Bummer, Pavel is a particularly good crier. I would’ve liked more. 

Not enough suffering. 

Grumble. 

Episode 8 - My Allegiances Have Morphed

Honestly I needed a bit of levity today so let’s do this.

Love the Jeff & Alan focus this ep. Look at them with the adorably foray into actual communication! Dip the meat, share your feels, very nicely done. Would have preferred the communication had mroe nudity, but ya can't have everything.

Way & Pete get screen time too!

I really like Pete. I hope he’s not evil.

Or do I hope he’s the best kind of evil? 

Meanwhile, Jeff gets kidnapped while Babe & Charlie enjoy a honeymoon phase. Cute, little show, very cute. I see you and your parallels and raise you one KP version of Pete in the basement while KP frolic in bed with bread (never forget the great crumb tragedy of 2022).

Would this Pete wanna go to a basement with Way, perchance?

Pressy for the kinksters? 

To pull a conclusion out of nowhere...

I have now switched allegiances from Way to Alan.

Alan is best boy.

That is all. 

Episode 9 - Dramatic Equations

Charlie & Babe = honeymoon phase 

Jeff & Kim = forgotten 

Pete & Way = riddles wrapped in alphas but actually enigmas 

Everyone else = gang bang phase…. Apparently

Aw my Way is a baddie.

Oh well I still have Pete. 

Ooo. Charlie is a badass as well as a leach. 

Meanwhile there’s a lot of tears and discontent and betrayal. 

But lots of Jeff and Alan = yay!!!

Also Alan:

Please everyone teach me how to flirt with him.

Episode 10 - Yes yes doomydoomydoom BUT AlanJeff supremacy!

I LOVE Alan’s house.

Love it. Adore a kinda ikea-made-me-do-it rich-kid dorm-room chic only with more flor space that any Scandinacian country would EVAH.

Expedit that ektorp baby. Jeff is waiting.

I did figure Charlie would die for a bit to give Babe back his powers.

Pavel did a very nice job with the denouement. This idea that his gift has been returned to him but he knows exactly the cost that he’s paying for it. I like that.

The support cuddles are really cute, too.

Frankly? I'm kinda happy to take a breather from Charlie & Babe's brand of BL for a while. It cool, let me dwell in some age gap action of the slow burn variety. You 2 pretty boys are EXHAUSTING.

Gotta say Nut is also doing a GRAND job. Who would have thought he could go from Oxygen to this. (I think Oxygen was my first BL watch-along... ah youth.)

And NOW, what we have all been waiting for.

Well, me.

Me and maybe 10 others on Tumblr.

ALL THE ALANJEFF!!!

YERESSSSSS

My little heart is so happy about the flirting.

And the age gap mention.

And the happy splashing.

And the adorable smile!

Now THAT is how you execute a cheek kiss.

Or expedit a cheek kiss.

OMG I made an Ikea pun. I should go to bed.

Next week: AlanJeff REAL KISSES!!!

Good ones!

Proper smooching.

Excellent!

Expedit!

On a side note, I’m liking AJ so much I may need to rewatch this darn show. But I refuse to do this on icky. Grumblesinbittorrent.

Episode 11 - MOAR AlanJeff supremacy!

Alan is best boy.

There is no contest. 

Oh do the police exist in this universe? Where they been all this time? 

Could we PLEASE have enigma-on-enigma action?

Wait.

Can enigmas get each other preggo? Is this a snail shifter sitch? (It is snails that can do that, right?) Sexy slimy? (Kinda like Him in that other show airing right now.)

Holy a/b/o Batman, I spotted what appears to be females in the background. Who knew? 

OMG Babe is SUCH a drama queen. 

Meanwhile, Dias ex Papa Beard & Charlie is still alive.

This is my shocked face. 

Meanwhile Alan 

Kids! What’s the matter with kids today? 

(Yes, I'm musical theater gay, how dare you doubt me.)

OMG a meta trope call out. I see you, Thailand, poking at yaoi.

And then the matching wardrobe trope as well. Ah, those slow burn side dishes: they take forever and then suddenly they U-haul lesbians.

So.

In conclusion. (Wait, did I have a premise or a thesis statement? Not really. Eh whatevs...)

IN CONCLUSION!

This was my ep:

Very little Babe & Charlie.

Lots of Alan & Jeff.

And a hearty dose of arrow boy! 

Baby Kenta and Pete were cute, right?

Also GOOD KISSES!!!!

And a markedly tender sex scene.

Lovely. 

No trash talk this week, I was charmed and delighted. Who knew I would actually enjoy this show? Certainly not me.

Episode 12 - And NOW I want a thrupple

Is enigma-on-enigma action the gay of the omegaverse?

Asking for a friend.

Oh noes! I love Kenta + Pete now.

LOOK at the way he looks at him. My heart, it squeezes.

Argh. What about my Way + Pete dreams?

Obvs there is a solution! 

Way + Pete + Kenta!

Pretty please?

Also, I would like to remind the world that Nut still has my favorite voice in all Thai BL. 

Meanwhile, another kidnapping.

I love how casual everyone is about it. Oh has Jeff been kidnapped again? Here, let's throw fruit at Babe and think about it for a bit. Tra la la.

Kidnapping is to this show, as the “crash into me” trope is to Taiwanese BL. 

And we finally get to see Way’s power. Nice. Wonder why he never used it to talk Babe into bed? I mean dub con up the wazoo, but that never stopped a Thai BL before.

Episode 13 - Not with a bang, but with multiple whimpers

It’s a solid reunion scene.

Was I emotionally invested and did I tear up? No.

Should I have? Yes.

I am a sap.

Look.

If this whole thing was going to be a redemption arc for Kenta then it should have focused more on him from beginning and we should’ve gotten even more backstory.

Always a personal pleasure tho: To see a knife take down a gun. 

I wish Way had died in a slightly more heroic manner. But you can’t have everything.

I did like the part with Alan and Jeff, where Jeff finally realized that Alan had developed (through life experience) the same philosophy that Jeff’s talent had forced him to realize at a young age. "Sometimes we can make no mistakes and still lose." 

I did love that we got them as the final tender sex scene and the primary as a jokey raunch sex scene. It was kinda dismissive of Charlie tho. He existed in this narrative, throughout, only to serve Babe'

Although I also wish, we’d gotten a lot more of Jeff’s talent in action. I feel like it was under utilized by the narrative as a character trait . 

I don’t think the Babe's father-figure character should have been introduced at all. 

And... a very sweet very Thai ending. 

How to rate this?

It was… fine. 

I liked the sides more than the mains, which I shouldn't have.

Did I enjoy it? Sure.

Was the found family stuff sweet? Sure.

Were the sex scenes good? Sure.

Will I remember much about it except the a/b/o? Probably not.

Will I rewatch? Probably not.

Is it a significant BL? Not as much as it wants to be.

Thailand brought us the world's first omegaverse BL but then failed to lean into the courage of its a/b/o convictions by not emphasizing the difference between our world & theirs, adding & subtracting characters & allegiances + a weak ending. With earnest performances, enthusiastic sex scenes, a fantastic side couple, and some delightful scenery chewing - the actors tried... poor things. It's just the story failed both them and their parent genre. Frankly? I just wanted it to be more outrageous and trashy, since I never expected it to be good. Instead, it was just... meh.

7/10

(Imma remind all the newbies that this is not unprecedented from me with hugely popular BL.)

(UPDATED source)

Pit Babe - it's time for a Trash Watch!

I had to. Well, no I didn't, but COME ON. It's like Thailand is negging me. Let's burn rubber, shall we? Burn rubbers...?

The things I had been told going in about this show:

it's about car racing (this bores me)

it stars Pavel (my BL ult bias, he is my icon for a reason)

it started as an omegaverse y-novel but the A/B/O aspects would be stripped from the BL series

it's high heat

(There some chatter about whether point 3 was a mistranslation of something the author said, but don't bother me with trifles.)

Here's a definition of omegaverse:

Omegaverse, also known as A/B/O (alpha/beta/omega), is a subgenre of speculative erotic fiction, and originally a subgenre of erotic slash fan fiction. Its premise is that a dominance hierarchy exists in humans, which are divided into dominant "alphas", neutral "betas", and submissive "omegas".[1] This hierarchy determines how people interact with one another in romantic, erotic and sexual contexts.[2] (Wikipedia)

In my experience and opinion, omegaverse archetypes and tropes are often used to strip out female characters (and The Feminine) and as a tool to excuse extreme hyper-masculine behaviors without a critical feminist lens (leading to lazy characterization). Just as heat is an excuse to get nkd quickly, A/O/B is often an excuse for taboo and dubious consent actions and behaviors. Do I get why writers/readers enjoy it? Yes I do. Do I personally like it? Not particularly. (Although there are always exceptions.)

Putting all that aside, the above represents my foundational knowledge before Pit Babe started.

Oh and that the familiar BL faces appearing in this show were follows:

Pavel Naret (aka Pavel Phoom) from 2 Moons 2 & Coffee Melody - Pavel is a fluent English speaker, a bit of a drama monger, and a motorcycle rider/car-dude, this role suits him

Nut Supanut from Oxygen & Something in My Room - has an amazing voice, his somewhat wooden acting has improved steadily since Oxygen

Pon Thanapon - one of Star Hunter's stable first seen in the Gen Y series (where he stole the appeal of an intended pair), also v good in Make a Wish, I wish he'd get a lead role as he has a likable screen presence

Pop Pataraphol from La Cuisine - he's playing the Alpha rival and I'm not convinced he's suited to this role

Michael Kiettisak from Love Sick, Oxygen, Call it What You Want, Till the World Ends - playing the comic relief this time rather than his usual tortured stoic... huh

All the rest are either fresh faces or older experienced actors. Interesting mix. They must have some money behind this.

And now, get out your marshmallows! The dumpster is on fire! Let's start the roast.

Episode 1 - Platypus, Pickles, Pavel, & other Smoking Hot Problems

This first segment told with a 4 day retrospect, because I decided to do a trash watch only after @aliceisathome said I should.

My initial reaction:

the sheer audacity of Thailand being like "PitBabe is not omegaverse" and then serving "Alpha" to us on a platter in the first sex scene is

how dare

but also

what the actual fuck is going on? what world are we living in where a/b/o is LIVE ACTION ON OUR SCREENS?

we getting heat, knotting & mpreg next?

apparently this is my reality now

I'm not sure what weird quantum time stream I've jumped into but someone was all,

yes the whole world is hella screwed, but also...

Thailand has decided live action mm fanfic is gonna win it the culture wars

and I'm beginning to think they may be right

BL is now the platypus of the film industry

4 days later:

Considering how much chatter this caused there's a part of me that wondered if it was all intentional and a marketing ploy (to say it wasn't omegaverse when obviously it is). In which case... brilliant Machiavellian tactics, production.

But Thai studios are rarely this calculated in their promo. So I think it's all accidental. But it certainly caused a raucous few days on Tumblr.

On a completely different note, Babe's house looks like it started life as a particularly inventive Olive Garden. Or is that just me?

More random thoughts:

Pavel has had work done, why honey? You were the definition of perfect.

The smell thing is great, I love stuff to do with scent and necks. If omegaverse brings this to the table, fine. But...

Being all Alpha perfect butch manly man = I do not like Babe at all, I kinda want him to be brought down a peg. (Woo... pegging!) I never like narratives that glorify the captain of the football team (side eyes Cdrama CEO romances and Love O2O), Babe better have depth and damage (forget the pegging) of some kind or his behavior will get old FAST, faster than he drives (also, forget the pegging idea)

Nut is ideal in the Beta role. I mean, that's Way's character right? We all can see that. If it's not intentional, it's a miscast. I love how soft he is as as screen presence. He's great in this part.

None of the other characters are sticking out to me yet, but I'm prepared to love the side dishes in this, please make them swoon worthy!

I'm glad they didn't hold the Charlie = trickster reveal off, I like knowing he is a double agent up front.

Finally, with respect to an adequate trash watch, I'm in a pickle.

How am I going to drink for this show when there is so much else airing on Frigay? I can't keep track, if I'm drunk.

I need a strategy for this trash fire if the puns and snark are to spout forth! (HA Fourth!)

Controlled burn?

Anygay, see you all next week.

Episode 2 - Side Dish Addiction + Second Lead Syndrome are both infecting me at once

[FYI I gotta have my backup computer to watch this so that's why Imma sometimes be delayed getting the trash out to the curb.]

3 minutes! 3 minutes in and I needed to pause and wax snarkful. (Ouch, bet that hurts. Is waxing snark similar to a Brazilian but for BL? Is that why they all so hairless in The Sign?... I digress, where was I?)

Okay so the subber said Daddy but I don't think that word means what they think it means. Because Way said simply nong paa.

Usually they'll use the English word Daddy (pronounced Dah-deee) for, ya know, Actual Daddies (tm).

Wait wait:

Calling Daddy Actual

(My dumb sci-fi loving arse will see myself out the back before I start drawing Battlestar Galactica = Pit Babe connections. TOO FAR ABL. Too far.)

Look, I like the tension in this show. It's good to set up an unlikeable Alpha dog and then immediately turn him into an underdog, makes him a bit more likable. I still don't like Babe, but now at least I'm on his side.

Charlie = cute but v sus. Fortunately for him, Babe = cute but v thick.

Everyone calls Charlie Babe's dek. Yes sounds a bit like what you think but also means kid/child and SHOULD be translated as boy in this show. Why doesn't the subber get that? They a sub...ber after all. (I'll see myself out.)

Honestly, the script writers might know what they are doing with abo but our eng sub translator sadly does NOT. I'm so glad this is coming now in my BL watching life. When my ear and knowledge of Thai is so much better than it once was. Others much be SO CONFUSED.

Snicker. They just fucking with us, but it's fun to watch the mpeg speculation abound.

File this one under: Thailand's trouble with ESL plurals and also "you should have Pavel helping with these subs" sweethearts.

Production knows entirely what it's doing with this show and its omegaverse shizz (even if the subber doesn't) and I am very much enjoying the online carnage that results.

This dumpster fire continues off screen into the blogosphere and I continue to roast things over it.

Meanwhile, hi Pon! You so adorable! When you gonna lead out a BL for us?

Is Idol Factory stealing all of Star Hunter's talent? Are they the Red Racers of the BL world? These are the questions I ask myself as I watch this.

Is that AGE GAP I smell before me?

Is the 20 yr old college kid meant for the pit boss? Cause you all know I am a slut for age gaps.

Moment of a/b/o: Jeff's fear of touch/heightened personal space would be a plot marker for "baby doesn't want Alphas close cause he smells like an omega" but of course this show it not omegaverse. Not omegaverse at all.

nuh-uh

Linguistic corner!

Lung (sounds a bit like loo) is uncle(ish) it means basically a male relation older than phi. So Alan is the oldest in the crew.

Alan calls Jeff nu (which the subber translated as boy I would have gone with cutie or little one). Nu is a diminutive affectionate term that's technically gender neutral but is most often used by/on cute girls/women. Jeff did NOT like it. Then Alan sort of dodges through pronouns/particles settling on phi for I, ger for you, and ja for a particle. This is interesting because ger & ja kinda lower his age and status into a casual sphere. Not more intimate more equal to jeff... fascinating.

I love the new "Korean" red racer, he drinks my brand of soy milk. He is now my baby snake in the grass.

Get it? Snake.

He and Babe should end up together.

The fight wasn't bad, do both actors have kickbox training in their backgrounds?

Who am I kidding, I care only about Uncle Alan and Nu Jeff now. All others are irrelevant to me.

Also...

WHERE IS A BOY FOR WAY?!!! Or a Daddy. I do not care. (Methinks nether does he.)

I am now captain of the Way Appreciation Society. Let's all find a way... to get him some dick.

Also the BTS stingers are tons of fun. Looks like the set was a blast.

Finally, and I mean this kindly. Why isn't Noh Phouluang in this? He should have been cast as Winner. Bah. I'm biased.

But one should be with Noh.

Episode 3 - Side Dishes Delux

Gayest bridge n Thailand has made its obligatory appearance.

How much do I love uncle & nu? They are SO damn cute. Also nu flustered is the best kind of nu.

I could not care less about Babe and Charlie. Except I do love the smell thing.

Way will break my heart by getting his broken. He is right tho.

Tra la la. I feel like this is a bit like KP 2.0.

Charlie is a such a princess (and ace manipulator). Good thing Babe clearly likes being buttered up.

Babe's backstory was more interesting than I expected, I didn't think we would go so far into the paranormal side of a/b/o. I like it and I hope they lean into it quite a bit more. Make it part of the plot.

Unlike the kissing thing which seems to have been gotten over rather quickly.

I gotta say I'm enjoying the corporate sponsorship jockeying and tension more than I thought I would. I'm curious as to who Jef and Charlie are working for and what their motivation is. The plot itself is keeping me intrigued and that is rare for me with BL.

So no trash talk this ep, I was largely absorbed and entertained. I didn't event need booze. Shocking behavior on my part.

#giveWayaboy2023

Episode 4 - I (who never ship) am shipping the impossible

Here’s the thing. I just want this to be a better story than it is. Right now it’s kind of like a soap opera. I don’t hate lakorn, I really don't. To Sir With Love is a glorious chewing of the diamanté scenery (completed with death glitter). But...

If this is gonna be a soap opera it needs to lean into the messy side more than the tailored high concept side. Support characters and evil needs more screen time.

Instead, right now, I don’t know where I am with this show because it doesn't know where it wants to be. I’m kind of dangling in the middle of a dirty situation. It’s uncomfortable for me, and the show feels uncomfortable for the performers. 

Also... I have questions.

Yes, of course I want to know what Charlie & Jeff are up to. Why can Jeff see the future?

But more importantly I NEED to know why Babe has a flying saucer bed?

That kind of lighting makes nobody look good, especially not at that angle. It’s very traumatic and I’m not wild about the shag rug either. I have concerns about Babe's taste. I guess is what I am saying. 

On a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT note:

There’s absolutely no chemistry to justify this, but I have decided that I am going to personally advocate for, and ship, Way and the interloping not-really-Korean. They are both sort of own-moral-code types. I have tiny crush on Kim, and Nut is the prettiest, and Way is Best Boy so there it is, I would like them to hook up, please & thank you.

#giveWay2Kim2023

Arrow guy is cute, too. Will we get to see him bone?

Is he going to be another one of the adopted alpha super-kid pets?

What the hell, throw Arrow Boy a bone! All hot boys in BLs deserve bones.

Plot thickens.

Hah.

Thickens.

(I am an immature idiot.)

Episode 5 - wait wait way-t, can arrow boy have Way?

Look, BLabies, I didn’t get any screen caps this episode because frankly there wasn’t anything worth capturing.

I guess Charlie really does love Babe? Very dramatic if idiotic saving from the burning car. But Babe has gone to the broken Alpha place of extremely unlikeablability (frankly he was almost there at the start). If I were Charles B Spectacled I would be OUT by now. 

Is that?

NO.

Don't get the plastic bowl.

No white towel sponge bath. Please kill this trope.  

I mean, it's not as bad as singing, but that's because NOTHING is as bad as singing in a Thai BL.

AND the main boys are back together.

I don’t find their relationship or Babe’s lack of senses a particularly interesting aspect of the plot.

Unless, of course, Babe is pregnant and that's why he lost his Alpha sniffer.

BUT I do love the sides.

Jeff = the introvert precog who can’t/wont do people and Alan = the extrovert people person who WANTS but doesn’t understand him. 

Were Jeff and Charlie ALSO raised by Evil Daddy MacEvilPants? 

I liked the way Arrow CEO & Way looked at each other. Way, hon, give up on Babe (he sucks) and get thyself a billionaire bf with great aim and BDE.

On a completely different note, the best thing about this show is the blooper reel. That thing with the green smoothie going down his pants was hilarious!

In conclusion, this was a green smoothie down the pants episode. I was entertained, and it’s probably gonna be good for the plot in retrospect, but it was kind of squishy and unpleasant at the time.

Episode 6 - Are they actually listening to us now? Is Tumblr bugged?

This was a fun ep full of like actual racing and shizz.

Whatever.

Charlie is on the team now. All the teams, apparently.

Can we talk about Jeff and Alan?

The apology scene! Did you hear that Alan dropped to chan/ger? Eeeee!!! So cute. (He equalized their relationship in a soft way.)

Get it with that language play hottie. Next up: lengua play.

Please & thank you. 

Meanwhile, as all of the Internet knows, they went fully in for omegaverse - no bars.

I have to say, one of the greatest typos (or whatever) in existence is enigma instead of omega.

That's where I personally would rank in the omegaverse.

Hello, my gender is... enigma.

 Apparently it's a/b/o and sometimes e!  Also sometimes switch-ee 

Oh I'm very proud of myself with that one.

Funfunfun

Charlie. Babes. When a man asks to be thrown up against the wall. You throw him against that wall.

OMG is that arrow boy looking at Way in the bar?

3 seconds later.

Noooo.

Wait come back.

Noooooo.

That’s what I actually want to watch! 

OMG. Who said nu was the first step to teelak?

I flipping love Alan. 

Ah the boyfriend ep. Thank you, but I still don't trust Charlie.

Poor Way.

But nice crying jag, and I don’t say that often in Thai BL.

Now let him go, Way.

A boy with his arrows is waiting. 

(source)

Note for the future: tumblr has a bug that stops allowing edits after a certain time/number, thus my full trash often occur in 2 segments as a result. Click on the "abl trash watches bl" tag for the full thing if you're reading this and later episodes are missing.

[sunfish-studies]

Celebration

✄・・・ Feathery Ink [Karasuno Manager Series]

➜ Pairing: Karasuno x Manager! Reader

➜ Warning: none

➜ Notes: This is a separate series from Crisp Leaves. Similar to Crisp Leaves, manager in this story will be portrayed as a girl. She will be tall. This is just my appreciation towards tall girls, you guys are amazing.

Previous:  ‹ Cogs › | Next:  ‹ Let The Games Begin! ›

↷ SUMMARY ↶

Last day of training calls for celebration for everyone’s hard work, so it’s barbeque time!

“All right, meat!”

“I’m starving!”

While the boys freshened up after practice matches, the managers were already on the move to prepare for the barbeque. Since there were quite a lot of people, the coaches decided to held it on the backyard of the gym, where the sharp hill stood just beside it. The coaches helped setting up the grills while the managers divided to cater different things.

Yachi decided she would get the utensils they needed; paper plates, chopsticks, paper cups, trays for rice balls, and other things. Shimizu would cover for the rice ball making, Yukie and Eri were in charge on cutting the vegetables in bite-size, Kaori and Mako would clean the vegetables before it was cut.

Meanwhile, you’re in charge of preparing the condiments and sauces, unwrapping the meat cuts, and arranged them on a bigger plate. Aside from that you had to make sure the meats searing on the grills weren’t charred.

“[Name]-chan, please replace me for cutting the onions,” Eri sobbed, reaching out to you with grabby hands.

“Alright, senpai,” you giggled in reply because Eri was clearly needing a break and watching the meats seared was a great break for her. Quickly, you stood on her place and started slicing the tear-induced-menaces after washing your hands.

It didn’t take long for you to suffer the same fate as the Ubugawa’s manager–the first seven slices went through without a hitch, but when you reached the tenth your eyes started to sting and blurry from the pain. Then tears began trailing down your cheeks, and you wiped it you’re your shirt sleeve.

“D-Don’t cry, [Name]-san!!” you looked up, seeing Hinata with his place face quivering on his feet. “W-what should I do!?”

“It’s fine, Shoyo-kun, it’s just the onions,” you sniffled pointed towards the bowl full of it. “It hurts my eyes.”

“I can take your place, Otohaku-chan!” Lev popped up beside Hinata.

“Instead of cutting the onions, you’ll chop your fingers off,” Yaku deadpanned before offering. “Here, let me do it.”

“No, it’s alright, Yaku-san,” you shook your head. “It’s time for you to have a break, not working.”

Being persistent sometimes has it’s perks, it took numbers of rejection to finally have Yaku gave up. You knew he was just trying to help, but you didn’t want to rob his time relaxing. When all the preparations were done, the boys were already surrounding the grills with hungry faces. Coach Nekomata gave them a light speech along with praises for their hard work over the week, and they dived to grab on the meat straight from the grill.

“THANKS FOR THE FOOD!”

Just like Kaori, you brought a plate of rice balls to offer and managed to witnessed Yukie’s enormous appetite. She practically inhaled four rice balls in one go and you’re not the only who was dumbfounded from it.

.

.

Konoha and Komi almost had their souls went to heaven from the frightening circle Nishinoya, Tanaka, and Taketora made. Well, they did elbow each other to encourage one another getting close or at least having a talk with Shimizu. The girl walked pass them holding a paper plate with food–looking extremely gorgeous and she didn’t even try.

“That was scary,” Konoha muttered underneath his breath. The three finally stopped because of Karasuno and Nekoma’s captain scolded them–the three immediately shrunk.

“They really had their guard up, huh,” Komi added, feeling his energy drained from such a scary encounter.

“Uhm, excuse me,” the two turned to look over their shoulder and that’s when they noticed–Karasuno’s other first year manager who’s Bokuto constantly talking about. The owl captain wouldn’t shut up about her much to their annoyance and now they knew why.

“Would you like some rice ball?”

“Sure,” Konoha replied dumbly.

“I’ll take two,” Komi followed with a daze. You placed one on Konoha’s empty paper plate and two for Komi upon his request. Smiling at them, you proceeded to excuse yourself so you could offer to someone else.

Following your figure dazedly, they noticed how the light shone even brighter and basked you in a beautiful glow. That’s when they thought of a conclusion.

A goddess just graces us mere mortals! They screamed in their head.

.

.

You tried to calm Yachi down from her traumatizing experience being surrounded by absurdly tall boys (“Titans, [Name]-chan! Titans!”). Thankfully, all of them were nice enough to made room so your friend could reach for some meat. Yachi almost cried in happiness from the real taste of meat.

From the sidelines, Shimizu and the other managers were watching the two of you while talking about the boys sometimes.

“How much are you going to eat?” Kaori questioned because Yukie was having a ridiculous amount of food towering on her plate and she just kept munching away without care.

“The third-years in Karasuno all seems pretty mature,” Mako commented.

“Our ace is weak-willed, though,” Shimizu smiled sheepishly.

“What? Really?” Eri replied in surprise. “Even though he looks that scary?”

“Though, I think that’s still better than our simpleton ace,” Kaori commented. “Still,”

Their eyes were directed towards where the said simpleton ace was standing and placing meat until it towered on your empty plate.

“Eat more, [Name]-chan! Or you won’t get even taller!” he stated.

“And eat more vegetables!” Kuroo added, placing cabbages and carrots to your plate, adding even more food.

“Have some rice balls, too.” Somehow, even Akaashi participated in this whole fiasco and put a rice ball onto your plate. Now, there’s a ridiculous amount of food on your plate.

“…I can’t eat this much,” you commented, staring at the food filling your plate.

“Nonsense, I don’t see you eat anything even when the others are,” Akaashi stated. “You’re too busy handling other things nonstop.”

“Have a break will you,” Kuroo patted your back. “Everyone’s having fun and you should too.”

“Have more meat, [Name]-san!” Hinata said.

“You can have my share, Otohaku-chan!” Lev followed and you immediately shook your head.

“At least he and Akaashi took care of our baby manager well,” Kaori sighed in relief.

“[Name]-chan is close with Fukurodani’s captain and setter, huh? Even Nekoma’s captain,” Mako giggled. “She’s drawing everyone in.”

“Well, it’s rare for a first-year to be as tall as her,” Eri grinned. “The boys are especially poles so it’s probably great not to strain their neck once in a while from looking down.”

“Karasuno’s pretty lucky to have her, huh?” Yukie said after swallowing her food.

“Yeah, we are,” Shimizu smiled.

.

.

“Did you have fun?” Sawamura asked you when you’re helping other managers to clean up the remaining plates left behind on the table along with other scraps littering around. He picked up a few paper cups and placed it into the trash bin.

“Definitely,” you answered without hesitation. “Everyone’s so nice, it’s probably the most fun I’ve had.”

“Thank goodness, then,” he gave you a smile.

“I’m really glad I joined the volleyball club,” you commented, grinning.

“And we glad to have you here,” the captain chuckled and replied.

Everything was over by the time the sun started to sink into the horizon–time truly flew by when you enjoyed it. Since Miyagi was quite a distance from Saitama, they needed to depart first or they would be back extremely late at night. Yukie and Eri were fake-crying and joking about refusing to let you go–in the end, you’re all exchanging numbers so you could keep in touch.

“Did you have fun, Otohaku-san?”

“Coincidentally, you asked the same question as my captain, Akaashi-san.” The Fukurodani setter, like before, helping you on carrying the extra luggage in hand although you did tell him it’s only until you reached the stairs. “And to answer, I am. These one week of training camp is fun. Somehow, I don’t want this to be over.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll meet again,” Akaashi replied. “At the Spring Interhigh.”

“I’m sure we will, Akaashi-san.” you smiled. “And thank you for helping me with luggage.”

“[Name]-chan!!” Bokuto bounded over with a grin plastered on his face. “We’ll be waiting at the nationals!”

“Karasuno, Bokuto-san. Otohaku-san doesn’t play volleyball.” Akaashi deadpanned.

“Just agree with me once, Akaashi!”

“Well, whatever he said,” Kuroo piped up, approaching the three of you. “Made sure your team go to the nationals so we could meet again and make the battle came true.”

“I’ll do my best, Kuroo-san.” Then Kuroo reached out to ruffle your hair, it’s been a while since he did that and you weren’t even going to lie about enjoying it. The cat captain was similar to an older brother now.

“Off you go then, [Name],” he removed his hand from your head. “And don’t miss me.”

“How could I when I have your phone number, Kuroo-san?” you snickered. “You’re probably going to bombard me with chemistry puns at 10pm.”

“Then, I’m gonna call you every day so you won’t have to deal with Kuroo!” Bokuto declared before laughing victoriously.

“Please block his number immediately, Otohaku-san,” Akaashi stated. “Or you won’t be getting any sleep. His talking is endless.”

“Why, Akaashi!?” the said boy whined.

“Aside from that, be careful on your way home,” Akaashi decided to ignore the captain and gave you a small smile.

You returned his smile. “Will do, Akaashi-san.”

With that, the whole week of summer training camps has come to an end. The whole team watched you guys drove away into the other way back to Miyagi.

.

.

“You have a match tomorrow, don’t you?” former Coach Ukai questioned, brows creased from the insistence of your combi. “That’s probably enough, then!”

“One more! Just one more!” Hinata pleaded.

“We’ll finish after this one!” Kageyama added.

Two days of practicing to prepare for the preliminaries, just a day before the match Sawamura dismissed them early to get some rest. Since it would be impossible to use the gym unless getting an earful from him, Kageyama and Hinata needed to look for another place. Former Coach Ukai lent them the court only for a bit, just until the others who wants to practice comes.

And you were there to hold a leash if they’re being stubborn or something.

“This is the last, alright?” you scolded the two. “We shouldn’t bother the others who wants to practice here. And you should rest before the match.”

Thankfully the older man letting them had the court just one more time and you couldn’t help but feeling grateful of it. You sighed before turning to face former Coach Ukai and bowed down. “On their behalf, I apologize.”

“It’s fine.” Former Coach Ukai dismissed it. “Their eagerness is a great thing, but even eagerness isn’t going to magically give them energy. It would be bad if they burnt out even before the game started.”

“[Name]-san! Can you throw us the ball?” Hinata called out.

In the end, the two managed to successfully killed the quick–and sure enough, it also impressed former Coach Ukai which added more reassurance that your team would be more than okay to face the entire preliminaries and became champions.

[ranboo5]

Here's the thing here's the meat (pun intended) of the matter. Neither Tubbo's murder nor Techno's was actually about eliminating a threat.

Leans into the microphone. It was about power

Schlatt kills Tubbo for treason (which Tubbo DID commit. Tubbo (and Ranboo, whose rhetoric I see you echoing) was in fact actively providing a tap into the cabinet to at least one active dissenting party. Schlatt may not have had a reason to consider Pogtopia a threat yet, but finding out that they had a mole In his cabinet could have changed that calculation. This isn't accounting for the emotional aspects of it, either. Point is, Schlatt's power was threatened. It was in question.

So he kills Tubbo and, here's some key point, he doesn't just kill him he has him murdered onstage in front of everyone. There are ways easier and more discreet ways to shut Tubbo out, or to neutralize him as a threat, or even to kill him. But Schlatt doesn't do any of that. He doesn't even do the deed himself. He publicly and intentionally brutally has Tubbo murdered by someone whose allegiances are also Up In The Air.

This is not an elimination. This is a power play. Tubbo's actual role in Pogtopia matters almost not at all. What matters is what Tubbo represents in that moment as a potential threat to Schlatt's power, and Schlatt makes an example of him, and shows off he has power over Techno too, in an attempt to reestablish that currency. There's a reason lamb to the slaughter metaphors for this scene seriously go, yk?

And now we consider this apparent "humane" alternative with the Butcher Army. Unfortunately, the name alone disproves that

I am baffled by commenter trying to claim with their whole chest the Butcher Army was more humane and efficient. Hello?? What did you watch????

Bc there are ways easier and more discreet ways to shut Techno out, or to neutralize him as a threat, or even to kill him. But the NLM cabinet doesn't do any of that.

Like . Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that the NLM cabinet had a legitimate reason to consider Techno a threat, which I can't even entirely disagree with. Let's also accept for the sake of argument that they had a legitimate reason to believe killing him was the only option, which I CAN disagree with, but whatever

If they were just trying to eliminate him for the safety of the country, then why did they hype the event up? Why did they worry about branding it? Why make it public? Why not even bother to spawn trap him or anything? Why vandalize Phil's house? Why bring Techno, who they think so dangerous, back to the middle of their country, in direct proximity to a Phil they've made their enemy??

They intentionally do it publicly. They intentionally do it in the middle of their fucking country. They intentionally do it in front of Phil, also a threat. They dehumanize him brutally and repeatedly. They *literally use suboptimal weapons* for the branding. An efficient elimination doesn't need a PR campaign.

And it's because it's done for the same reason that Schlatt murdering Tubbo is.

New L'Manberg's social power is in question. They kill Techno not just or primarily to eliminate a threat, but to consolidate power. QUACKITY SAYS THIS, WITH HIS MOUTH (before it is split open in his fight with his attempted murder victim)

And you may say actions speak louder than words, and I certainly agree! And in this case, Quackity and friends' literal dehumanization PR campaign and baffling decision to apprehend Techno with diamond axes (for the branding) and kill him in the middle of New L'Manberg (in front of Phil's house!!) does not just speak but screams. They act in a way that suggests that it's not just important to kill Techno it's important to do it publicly, flashily, not just kill him but do it easily! Butcher him as a pig!

It's an attempted power play. And the thing is whether they believed Techno about his pacifist arc or not is irrelevant in universe; you will note that they don't even say they don't believe him as much as they say they don't care. Techno's intentions don't matter to the show, and if it was about Techno's intentions, then as aforementioned, they would've done something else.

Techno's actual intentions irt New L'Manberg matter almost not at all. What matters is what Techno represents in that moment as a potential avenue to increase New L'Manberg's power, and so the cabinet makes an example of him, and shows off they have power over Phil too, in an attempt to establish that currency.

(And just like Schlatt's attempt, it is stupid and doesn't work, lmao)

OP's point (which seems to have gone over commenter's head) is that if one accepts the justification for Techno's attempted state murder as "he was a threat to the nation" because of past action, then one MUST accept the same justification for Tubbo's state murder because of Tubbo's current action. The paralleling of Tubbo's murder, which is generally considered unacceptable, is done to make OP's extended point: there IS no justification for this. OP is not saying "it was okay to kill Tubbo but not Techno"; OP is saying "if Techno's murder was justified, so was Tubbo's, even moreso. We recognize Tubbo's murder was not justified. Thereby, NEITHER murder can be considered justified."

And I not only agree but want to add that the thing is, for both cases, "was he actually a threat" is a distraction. It's like arguing if Ranboo deserved to be killed by Sam or what would have been a proportionate punishment in the stead of Exile. It's accepting the premise not just that it's okay to kill someone if the answer is yes (which OP is correctly arguing is not the case) but also that the justification was the actual reason, rather than the reality: what was actually done or risked didn't matter. What mattered was what the murderer(s) thought could be gained in the social currency of power in exchange for slaughtering someone.

TL;DR:

"HUMANE" WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABT COMMENTER ??

The justification and means of Tubbo's and Techno's murders are, as OP suggests, actually generally equivalent. This is proof that both were unacceptable

And not only that, but the public and brutal nature of both executions proves that they have less to do with the actions of the victim and more to do with the murderer(s) having something to prove

drop the president tubbo take i beg

Alright, here it is, the President Tubbo Take:

Schlatt executing Tubbo is more morally justifiable than Tubbo executing Technoblade.

First, lemme clarify: this is not an anti-Tubbo take. I love Tubbo. This is also not a pro-Schlatt take. This is an anarchist take.

There's two reasons for this opinion: motivation and jurisdiction.

Motivation: Schlatt executed Tubbo because Tubbo was a spy feeding information to an organization that was actively fighting to depose him. Getting rid of that spy was necessary for the national security of Manburg.

Tubbo executed Techno because he was worried that Techno would be able to do a lot of damage if Techno decided to attack New L'manburg. By this point, Technoblade had already gone into retirement and there was no information to suggest that he was planning to attack New L'manburg.

Jurisdiction: Schlatt arrested and executed Tubbo on Manburg territory for crimes committed in and against Manburg. Tubbo arrested Techno in Techno's own territory, which does not belong to any nation, for crimes that Techno had not committed nor showed any intention to commit.*

Schlatt's reasons for executing Tubbo are better motivated and are actually within his authority to carry out. Going into someone else's land with an armed force because you think some people there might possibly act against you later is, in fact, a bad thing to do

Now, I know what you're probably thinking: Schlatt executing Tubbo was also really fucked up though! Just because he was president doesn't mean he should have the right to just murder someone because they acted against him!

Yes. Correct. You're right. Welcome to Anarchy 101.

*Tubbo didn't execute Techno for betraying L'manburg. First, the Butcher's Army's explicitly stated motivation was to get rid of Techno before he could become a threat, not punish him for the perceived betrayal. Second, from a legal standpoint, Techno was never a citizen of or loyal to L'manburg, Manburg, or New L'manburg. He was a member of Pogtopia, an organization formed for the explicit purpose of ending Schlatt's government of Manburg, and he made it clear from the start that he was hostile to all governments.

Tubbo has a lot of very good reasons to be hostile towards Technoblade at the time of the Butcher's Army, but the President of New L'manburg does not and using the apparatus of state to settle a personal grudge is also pretty fucked up.