#all the things in these last two episodes. a lot of things. war and cannibalism and sickness and isolation and death

[perfectfangirl]

notes after rewatching fallout s1 ep4

• cooper and lucy wandering the desert and mans starts coughin', somethin' settin' in • whoa i just realized you could hear roger roaring from outside • roger was at a clinic, probably trying to find something to help him ☹️ • i wrote a whole entire post on this scene but anyways can i say we see full blown uncooked cannibalism hardly ten minutes into episode four like is everyone ok • the fact this scene is presented with a lot of tension, like a horror film and truly it's just a guy named roger fighting to stay not feral • i wonder how cooper met him? ghouls tend to know each other after a while [on account of the discrimination], i'm sure he was checking with this man every now and then tbh. perhaps. a friend. • cooper asks roger how he's feeling and he says "you know... it's hard out here. dang smoothies can be so unkind" and i just 😞 • "i see you got a smoothie of your own" ding ding ding ghoulcy this one's for you • you know what's particularly sad about ghoulification is for example that roger has had to isolate himself from others, even ghouls, because he was turning • roger asking for a vial and cooper looking at lucy [cooper, you botched the using lucy for bait, come on] • firmly in the camp that if cooper had vials left, he would give one to roger. cooper has shown himself to be crude and cruel seeming at times but i just know he went there with purpose • roger accepting he's turning and telling cooper and lucy to leave as a warning, roger seemed so nice, why and how did he get like this

• "i did ok" 😞 • going from standard human to turning into a feral ghoul in less than twenty eight years in the fallout universe is insane and idk if there's a lot of lore on why someone could end up like this and someone like cooper not • the difference in cooper's and roger's symptoms are pretty stark--- not entirely sold on him coughing and passing out is from ferality and more inclined to think chem withdrawals but i digress • "say, you remember how good food use to taste?" post war life is so bad, nobody in the wasteland remembers when food use to food 😭

• because roger is really nice and having a conversation, roger turns, speaking to lucy. cooper using this as an opportunity to kill roger seems so sudden and a betrayal until • look at cooper's eyes and his reaction after pulling the trigger--- not exactly the expression of someone who is in it "for the love of the game", in fact, i have come to view this act as a mercy kill • which is ironic of course because as we've all come to see, lucy does the exact thing for her own mother four episodes later • once feral, ghouls roam the wasteland operating on two instincts alone: hunger and defense. they are a threat to all those around them and i don't recall much on reversal. that's no life. roger would've turned feral and harmed them or others, it is sad • cooper mercy killing roger was in some ways compassionate, he had a sweet conversation with roger giving his last thoughts something warm and nice. cooper then going on to butcher and consume his flesh was an uh choice 💀

• and lucy immediately confused was like "wait?, why'd you do that? he was sick." i don't know if she entirely understands ghoulification, seems she thought maybe he could be helped • lucy is basically confused, begging cooper to not like, eat this guy 😭 • i'm gonna have to agree that he didn't have to eat roger, radroaches is everywhere and for free, still pondering if he did this to fuck with her or because some reason i am missing • cooper asking lucy what her name was [hold on, why he care about that?" and lucy so nearly coming this close to finding out what hank did and who cooper is [since she didn't ask his name] • "sometimes a fella's got to eat a fella" is my all time favourite quote in season one of this show lmao • cooper be funny as fuck for no reason like this man's brain is cooked • i would personally like to ask walton whose idea it was to go "mmm. mmm." while eating irradiated human flesh like that, like why is the pre war actor cooper howard like this • lucy is incomprehensibly disgusted but then goes on a thing [a vulnerable thing] about vault 32 starving [in the great plague of '77] and that she lost her mother during this time and that her father never resorted to cannibalism. there's some time and memory discrepancies here • "well there's what people say they did and what they really did" i wanted cooper to be wrong so bad here when he went on to clown hank by saying "i'll bet your daddy was first in line at the cookout. i bet he had a bib with a drawing of his neighbour's ass on it" • lmao they gave all the best lines to cooper, i'm sick, he was right • lucy, having had enough and not finding cooper's humour being used as a way to cope like this asks this disturbed little man • "how do you live like this? why keep going?" and for the briefest moment, and i do mean brief, cooper feels the crushing weight of who he is when lucy confronts him like this • of course he shakes off a moral inquiry and transfers it to another as he asks "why the fuck am i doing all the work?... ass jerky don't make itself." and forces lucy to do it instead • twice now this man has talked about ass in less than ten minutes and for everyone's sake i'll move along 💀

• woody basically trying to interrogate the raider prisoners and getting nothing, meanwhile--- i think they already starting to be poisoned • ooo ok but betty telling norm he's the last standing maclean in the vault so his words carry and people listen. it occurred to me maybe he inadvertently inspired the poisonings of the raiders but it's also occurring to me that because they couldn't just all be shot outright, being poisoned was the best follow through method, nobody notices until it's already too late. now who is sneaky enough for that? • "when clever boys like you are angry, you're lucky not to have seen where that can lead." so... was betty present for shady sands? hmm • betty asking norm to tread lightly is very... not a threat, but she's watching him, right

• ok! we have that second water scene. it's confirmed here cooper is fetching water from an irradiated source [hence why denying lucy any makes sense] he puts it in his canteen and drinks it just fine. lucy is obviously mindlessly thirsty because she defeatedly drops down to drink the murky, stagnant irradiated water. it's so irradiated, her pip boy is going crazy, she literally gags in the scene • "now you're getting it. how does this golden rule jibe with what's going through your head now?" well i mean we knew cooper been fucking with her the whole time and showing her the wasteland streets but it is also unlikely she would have found a clean water source where they are, i guess her getting radiation sickness may have been inevitable but cooper denying her water kept her from being sick • after another insane string of sentences from this centuries old movie star, lucy finally asks "what are you?" and it's more like "what the fuck is wrong with you?" • "oh i'm you, sweetie, you just give it a little time" is majorly menacing after everybody just drank stagnant rad water like it's koolaid • cooper felt so smug then was zapped with karma again because he has a coughing fit directly after telling lucy this lmao • walton has such a good old man cough ❤️ • lucy takes cooper coughing up a lung as an opportunity to run [where i don't know but] • cooper uses his lasso skills he used to use at kid's parties to pull lucy back and then says some shit like "where you think you going? you ain't going nowhere."

• so we have arrived at the infamous and intriguing finger biting off scene--- can i just say she bit his finger off with such ease and then! cooper doesn't even act like it hurt, he seems... pleased he got that kind of reaction out of lucy. he's like into it 💀 • "there you are, you little killer" i'll keep this pg13 and say cooper really wanted to get a rise out of lucy, to bring the dog out of her, huh • he... then proceeds to cut her [corresponding hand's] finger off. ironically applying the "do unto others as you would have done unto you" tit for tat, if you will • i was surprised he did this because like ok, she spat it out? pick it up and reattach it, fella 😭 but there's more under the surface here because • cooper says "now that right there is the closest thing we've had to an honest exchange so far." and he's being framed in a close up so close, you can see his dainty eyelashes, sun shining in the background, his hazel eyes sparkling--- this is not on accident ☝️ gdgkdkfd • there's a lot of symbolism to be had but for now, i'll save that for next episode notes when cooper does the thing • ah chet! and steph. i kinda am of the idea she strategically got with him but anyways! who wouldn't! chet hot as fuck! and steph look like an assassin • bert's shoes so small gldgldfl • steph is definitely angry and sad dealing with bert's death in her own special way [trying to fuck chet] • excuse me but why they turned an almost sex scene into a birthing scene 😭💀 • lucy been walking the wasteland without a shoe, how she do it 😭 • i did not pick up on cooper bartering lucy for two months' worth of vials [thanks subtitles] • "mint condition" [looks at a bloody stump on hand] "near mint condition" now who fault is this?? lmao • "you got problems out here too, sweetheart" like, shut up 😭 • cooper every time he interacts with a mr. handy is one of the only few places he gets to hear a voice of this old friend • "best you try your luck behind that door" well at least he untied her • this is like the third time he's gotten instant karma with lucy because either he pretended to keep it together until she went in or genuinely didn't know he was going to pass out but • went through the five stages of grief trying to figure who he sold her to because i deadass was thinking the same thing lucy was 😭 • lucy being given the finger of like, a corpse or something because it's grey 😭 forever changed by the wasteland, always carrying a little bleakness and death with her ❤️ • lucy never experiencing real cotton [or maybe only rarely] • lucy calling cooper a creature 😭 • "he put a leash around my neck and made me drink from puddle water that i'm pretty sure was some kind of animal pee" sending 😭 she talking to this evil mr. handy like it's a person • her recounting her captivity with cooper like he was simply being mean to her is just • "and i thought i was here to be a sex slave." "what?! no! what a disgusting idea. i'm simply going to harvest your organs." damn, fallout which one is worse, like fuck---

• hope the jello cake veronica got wasn't poisoned... • "what are you looking at?" "a murderer in a cage, paying the price for what you did to us. for what you did to the innocent people in vault 32" and norm gets circumstantial evidence from a raider by accidentally cross examining one of them with it being more than anything woody could coax out of them • one thing about the macleans, they smart • i also think it's excellent writing that intrigue was spurred like this by a raider saying vault 32 wasn't innocent because they were running an experiment like all the vaults did, everything isn't so black and white • norm reads every situation correctly because why he read chet by saying chet came along to investigate because norm reminds him of lucy fkdgkdkg • still piecing together the full extent of vaults 31, 32, 33 together but at first i couldn't understand why it looked like so many took their own lives--- apparently them discovering what vault 31 was about started a rebellion but two years seemed so recent to me. curious how this overlaps with shady sands if it does • they showed the spooky ass rat utopia experiment still playing on the tvs in there but i wasn't sure if this was explicit about that being vault 32's experiment

• lucy being prompted to continue on because of a flashback from her mom upon awakening 🥲 • "lucy sweetie what are you doing out here?" and those were her memories on the surface [nevermind cooper calling her [[condescendingly]] "sweetheart"] • i did not realize the ghouls were being kept in the freezers but it looks like they either only sell ghouls or keep the ghouls "on ice" [not unlike how dom pedro would keep cooper and cut pieces off of him] and collect the organs of standard people right then and there • "sir, you can't do this. please, i need my organs" lucy, it's just a robot bulter, he's not a real guy 😭 • the way lucy got out of this pickle quick, almost got snip snipped but short circuited the murderbot • lucy putting her murdercap on and putting drano in the murderbot's syringes, clever girl • it was so "star wars" of her to treat mr. handy like a person and then the guys running the organ trafficking scheme going "you might as well be holding an air conditioner hostage" 😭 • the organ traffickers running the super duper mart ring are so dull and banal evil types, it's so satire

• i just registered those two organ trafficker guys got a camera and can see cooper laid out in front of the store • lucy freeing the ghouls 🥲and one even thanking her [even the feral ones 💀] • poor martha, i peep how we see lucy's grey finger and it being shown used to defend herself against martha in her feral state • organ traffickers got ate up bless • nothing lucy did besides shoot was going to honestly stop martha, sometimes your pacifist playthrough doesn't go as planned • the pip boys still being on and running on the not alive people in vault 32 • "death to management" and it's directly the reference to vault 31's experiment, right there

• lucy walking out of there with mismatched shoes but two shoes nonetheless ☝️ • i guess lucy sincerely did not comprehend cooper is a ghoul or ghoulification, i suppose most vault dwellers literally would never know, that's post war history, wow • lucy asking cooper about if the vials keep him from going feral and he cannot even speak, he can only nod, from a prone position, on the ground--- the power/framing trade off is excellent • lucy bends down, briefly rolls the gun in her hand, while cooper lies helpless, she delivers a fatal line • "i may end up looking like you. but i'll never be like you" harbouring not enough ill will against him despite mistreatment, she gives cooper several vials, directly near his hand. didn't have to do none of that shit! • if i was cooper, i'd be scared as hell of this lady, she took down an organ trafficking ring in a grocery store ran by two armed guys, a murderbot, with some feral ghoul hostages, all of the bad and dangerous people fucking died • she really could've ended cooper right then and there, his devotion in season two gone be unmatched lmao

• i truly think he had a hint of a smile on his face after she helped [save his life] by anyways • lucy walks into the proverbial sunset meanwhile this man shambles into super duper mart about to go on the biggest bender the wasteland has seen since the bombs dropped • cooper gets so fucked up, i lost count how many things he ingested, king said all of 'em • cooper is so goddamn famous, his film "the man from deadhorse" is just sitting next to a tv • you could say here is where cooper has a crisis of conscience whereupon he holds the tape in his hand but truly we know already he had that centuries ago when he filmed "the man from deadhorse"

• cooper watching the scene, the very moment in his life where things started to shift--- he tries to cock an invisible fun, being unable as he remembers his trigger finger is gone [neutral, disarmed, here's where i think he decides he wants to sew on lucy's finger to his hand] it's like he's starting over, a moral rebirth but with his trigger finger • they really made cooper say "you commie son of a bitch" in a western, just ugly propaganda • let's examine "feo, fuerte, y formal" again! "ugly, strong, dignity" does post war cooper have two out of three on that front? is this his step into regaining dignity again? • cooper was always playing characters, it was expected of him and he got paid for it. it feels like a wall is being torn down, something is being shed here. and maybe it's this character he's masquerading as • cooper and lucy both having revelations in the super duper mart--- lucy realising you can't always reason and logic out of a situation and cooper being confronted with the fact you can keep your morality and sense of self intact and a horrible place and situation doesn't have to change you

[guiltycorp]

I feel the most upset over Mel though... realised this when i saw how my fellow fujoshis have reacted to her involvement in jayvik jdfhgfd, the Viktor parallels that i have always enjoyed and pointed out before are now treated as Yaoi Proof and nothing else. ...because well yeah they lead nowhere else this season sadly, her relevance was cannibalized by her future league iteration and by fandom's reductive approach to shipping. To me the parallels used to be interesting because Viktor and Mel in s1 were polar opposites in social standing/background & physical health and visibly disliked each other BUT they were more or less on the same page when it came to their rather centrist but ultimately pacifistic beliefs, and they both were enamored by Jayce's ambition from the second they heard him talk about magic, inserting themselves into his life immediately. Those comparisons and visual symmetry were compelling because Jayce was lowkey trying to find a way to unite the two most important people in his life (telling Mel about Viktor's importance to him, trying to get Viktor to accept his involvement in politics, having them in the room together) while technically opposing both of them ideologically by not caring that much either about applying hextech for the benefit of the Undercity or about Piltover's participation in global politics and preserving its neutral status. While initially it seemed like he had to 'choose' between them, ultimately their separate character journeys (Viktor with Hexcore and killing Sky, Jayce with Vi and killing a zaunite kid, Mel with hearing her mother's justifications of war) led them to be on the same page in the last episode of the season which was a cool twist. So logically for character growth they either needed to improve their relationships further or to have sudden conflict, right? ...but s2 ultimately went for... just getting rid of both Mel and Viktor entirely! Viktor's motivation to give himself more time to leave more of a mark on the world (and finally getting to feel good about his own efforts by focusing on the Undercity rather than working for Piltover's financial benefit) was overshadowed by Hexcore corruption and a sudden inexplicable wish to transform humanity into a hivemind, that's a different guy entirely. Mel's motivations ended up not mattering at all, the only progression was her hardening into a proper warrior, like sure yay... her vision for Piltover and her identity as a Medarda was rewritten by sudden magical powers that ultimately, yeah, also make her into a different character. She did have a brief argument with Jayce over seeing him as an 'investment' of sorts but they didn't even get to finish it and their relationship is just one big ? before Jayce fucks off to die alongside his one true partner, like all of their previous loving interactions were just a situationship they both easily moved past without even acknowledging it. Like sure yeah we got our yaoi fanservice but at the expense of female characters and previously established relationships and plotlines... And btw there's a lot to be said about the cowardly approach of the showrunners to once again centering a 'male friendship and brotherhood' while getting pissy at anyone who might interpret it as romantic at the same time, as if a canon lesbian romance is a great excuse to be saying shit like that. Also imo timebomb pairing got more actual development and emotional investment compared to CaitVi in this season despite how hollow Jinx's character felt, so there's still a vibe that a hetero ship was more interesting to the writers... while the only things they wanted from queer ships were the aesthetic and the fan engagement.

[noangeleither]

"About the Blogger" Meme

Thanks for tag @bioloyg <3

Star Sign(s): Scorpio Sun (I literally never remember my other ones, I should probably memorize them)

Favorite Holidays: Christmas and Halloween. even tho i find it harder to feel the holiday spirit up until the very last minute i love christmas so much. and not even to be corny but its true that when you grow up you start to care less about the presents and more about the memories with family and friends.

i grew up in a religous family so my parents didnt let me celebrate halloween but i still love it with my whole heart. im a november baby so i love fall and all things eerie and spooky.

Last Meal: McDonalad's snack wrap and one of those new fruit splash drinks. its exam season so ofc im eating like shit. will probably eat some ice cream when i get home after my physiology exam in 30 minutes. so yay to junk food

Current Favorite Musician: currently ive been really enjoying pinkpantheress. her new album is literally 10/10. she has such a knack for melodies, and her lyrics are very eerie and poetic while maintaining a cutesy 2000s vibe. shes also a sampling queen.

honoarble mentions: ive been listening to a lot of janet, rosalia and red velvet these days too.

Last Music Listened To: feedback by janet Jackson. bro istg you have to clear the area when this comes on, i cant help but dance

Last Movie Watched: last movie i watched was bride wars. honestly a classic movie, so funny and i love wedding movies so i reccomend it. that was a month ago tho, which is crazy.

Last TV Show Watched: like the wonderful person who tagged me i watched the bear last. i just rewatched s02e01. ive been doing this thing where i'll either rewatch episodes for research, boredom or just because i get sucked in rewatching a specific clip that makes me want to rewatch the whole episode.

Last Book/Fic Finished: last fic i finished was keeping up with the berzattos by chefskiss40 on ao3. ive reread it like 3 or 4 times now and im patiently waiting for an update. its just so good, i love the domestic vibes. im not a fan of seeing my ships start families in canon but in fic? oh i could read that forever

Last Book/Fic Abandoned: not really abandoned but sorta modified? the sydcarmy high school au i started in the summer was a good concept but i didnt really have a concrete idea where the overall story would go. BUT im planning on maybe doing a series which is just a collection of one shots of them in HS? OR i plan on doing a multi-chapter shorter story that is an AU that also takes place in a high school setting but with a twist that i dont want to reveal bc that would mean i would have to commit to it. lol

Currently Reading: nothing. unless you count all these articles/research papers I've been reading for my health research studies course (think i aced the exam yesterday so maybe all the pain was worth it)

Last Thing Researched for Art/Writing/Hyperfixation: doesnt really count as research but basically i was on pinterest creating boards for 3 different fics. was researching wedding dresses for a nat & syd fic where they go wedding dress shopping (will be finishing after my last exam). also just creating two other boards to inspire myself to start the au i teased above and my bones and all AU/retelling i talked about last month. i want to watch some more cannibalism media and maybe research about 80s pop culture and politics before i dive into that one fully.

Favorite Online Fandom Memory: ummmm probably just being a menace on twitter with my friends that i made through being a reveluv. we talk every single day, and they are some of the best people i know. maybe the times we used to get up early or stay up late for comeback season, watch the kcharts being updated hourly and crack jokes about group we liked and didnt like

Favorite Old Fandom You Wish Would Drag You Back In/Have A Resurgence: technically THG is having a resurgence right now but im way too into the bear to really get back into it and also i havent seen the new movie. im excited to once exam season is done but i feel like the hype is already dying so i dont see myself getting too into it.

Favorite Thing You Enjoy That Never Had an Active or Big "Fandom" but You Wish It Did: uhhhh cant think of one tbh.

Tempting Project You're Trying to Rein In/Don't Have Time For: honestly every sydcarmy fic idea i have that would take multi chapters to flesh out. one shots are very safe for me. but im praying i'll commit to it. esp the bones and all AU lol

this was fun

tagging some ppl to do this too, only if you want!

@amieraisposting @chefkids @sennenrose @sydneys-adamu @sydneyscarm @happylikeasadsong @chansoooo1-blog

[equalseleventhirds]

ok so i’ve seen some stuff about like, what if we get one episode for each of the fourteen fears, and that’s cool and all but i would like to propose: there are no longer fourteen distinct fears.

in s4 we got a lot of blended statements (with 2 or more fears working together) as setup for jack magnum’s big ‘everything at once’ ritual, and i think that the new sort-of statements we’re getting are likewise combinations, but with even more blending and even less separating

the cabin was corruption (’moldy treasure’, ‘rotten sanctuary’, ‘as you putrefy, body and soul’, and the whole idea of twisted love), lonely (’something to fear the loss of’, ‘lonely companionship’, ‘it will not let you feel the warmth and joy’, ‘your voice does not echo when you call to them, and they find they sometimes cannot hear it’), spiral (the tea thing, ‘pretends to be a cabin’, ‘are the dimensions of this place quite what they were’, ‘were the curtains always stained that dull maroon’), possibly also web (’it is a trap’, ‘if you had need to eat no doubt there would be food’, ‘stay within my false defenses’)

the trench is an obvious slaughter location (war, bagpipes, etc), but it has TONS of flesh bits (’meat for the grinder’, lots and lots of society and the rich and powerful chewing you up and spitting you out, the horrible doctor and the many wounded, ‘the enemy will eat your body’), buried (charlie unable to move and then crushed into the dirt, ‘what there is tastes of cordite and sand’, ishaan imprisoned), desolation (’instead they fed him to it, tossed him into its burning innards and sealed the hatch behind him’, ‘whatever god of hatred and pain’, ‘a single flash of destruction’, ‘the white-hot agony of melted and crumpled metal’), a bit of beholding (’the drone’s camera blinks once, twice ... the thing makes no sound as it follows him), and even stranger (the twisted, inhuman faces of the enemy seen from both sides; perhaps even the smiling, friendly face of the man with the red flower)

(and beneath both of them, of course, the end. death in the trenches. the cabin as a tomb.)

even the tower the panopticon has become is not just beholding; it is enormous, huge beyond human comprehension, like the vast. walk, and you will inevitably reach it, as it pulls you in like a spider’s web. i suspect as we get closer to it, it may show more traits of more fears (you’re not special jonah)

so what does this mean? maybe it means that in this post apocalyptic world, the constraints humanity placed on fear, by separating and cataloging it, by breaking Fear apart into smaller fears, no longer apply. if they ever did.

(or as i like to say, robert smirke had no fucking business categorizing the fears, and his famous list of fourteen was arbitrary at best and really just the result of an upper-class academic white man trying to exert control on ancient and powerful things beyond his comprehension, and he was wrong. he was so very, very wrong.)

(and jonah magnus will be too.)

[beatriceeagle]

I was wondering - who are your top 5 TV characters right now? Do you have any TV show recommendations for stuff you've watched recently? I'm in something of a TV rut and trying to coax myself out. Thank you!

Oh man!

My top 5 TV characters may be a little different than they were last time I thought about this. I would have to say currently it's Julia Wicker (The Magicians), Donna Noble (Doctor Who), Britta Perry (Community), Ro Laren (Star Trek: TNG) and... Zuko, maybe? Julian Bashir? That fifth slot is so hard to pin down.

Unfortunately I've also been in a bit of a TV rut lately, but I can come up with a few shows from the past few years that I've really enjoyed.

Severance: I think everyone in the world has recommended this, but it's so unbelievably good, while also being extremely funny and watchable. Trippy near-future sci-fi starring Adam Scott. Season one is only 9 episodes, so it's not a big commitment. (Apple TV+)

Yellowjackets: Very fucked up, so don't watch unless you're cool with a lot of violence and cannibalism. Digs into trauma and the complexities of teen girl friendship, but is also just incredibly pulpy and weird. Stars Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Tawny Cypress. Season two currently airing. (Paramount+/Showtime)

Midnight Mass: An eight-episode miniseries from the same team that made The Haunting of Hill House. Very contemplative, emotional horror. Themes of religion, hypocrisy, and mortality. The central conceit of this one is so cool to figure out in real-time that I'm not gonna say too much more, but this is legitimately my favorite thing that Netflix has ever produced. (Netflix)

The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself: Already canceled, but the first season wraps up reasonably well. Urban fantasy about warring witch societies, with some cool ideas and very likeable actors. More-or-less canonical polyamorous relationship at the center. (Netflix)

Assorted Other Not-Necessarily-Recent Shows: Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street (astonishingly good live-action kids show on Amazon Prime, two seasons); Legacies (final show in the TVD-verse, similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in tone and execution, four seasons); Cobra Kai (intentionally over-the-top follow-up series to the already over-the-top Karate Kid movies, ongoing); 9-1-1 (watch if you enjoy the idea of a disaster movie every fifth episode followed by four Lifetime movies, ongoing); Looking for Alaska (very good miniseries adaptation of the book on Hulu); American Vandal (extremely funny and well-made true crime parody, two seasons); ER (it lasted a million seasons and covered every conceivable tone, and the first seven seasons are all-time great TV); Tangled The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (follow-up series to Tangled that I can only describe as "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for kids," three seasons); Farscape (weird brilliant sci-fi that everyone should give a shot at least once, four seasons).

[xebecatt2002]

"Gabrielle, Tell him. Do the Bard thing" Chariots of War

From the very first episode Gabrielle is introduced as a storyteller and straight away it is hard not to be impressed with the level of authenticity the writers give to Gabrielle’s skills as a Bard. Many of these stories she tells are based on fragments of authentic myths.

'Chariots of War', the second episode of the series, opens on Gabrielle telling Xena a story as they make their way to the bar in a village tavern. Though we only catch the ending of her story, there is still interesting details to unpick.

G: “And so, Zeus, in his appreciation, turned the two lovers into oak trees. And then do you know what happened?”

X: “Somebody built a boat out of them?”

G: “No-- their branches intertwined, and they spent the rest of their days in each other’s embrace.”

There are a lot of stories in Greek myth involving 'metamorphoses', the Greek word for ‘transformations’, with both gods and mortals turning into other things like plants or animals. The only story that comes close to the one Gabrielle tells is the story of Baucis and Philemon.

The complete version of the myth is only found in the work ‘Metamorphoses'. It is a collection of myths woven together into a narrative through their common theme of transformation. It was written by the Roman poet Ovid who lived between 43 BC and 17 AD, a period of Roman history which saw the end of the Roman Republic and the reign of the first Emperor, Augustus.

The gods Zeus and Hermes (known here in their Roman forms, Jupiter and Mercury) disguise themselves as mortals and travel across Greece. When they seek hospitality from the mortals they encounter, they find themselves turned away from every household until the come upon the simple home of Philemon and Baucis.

‘Looking for shelter and rest, they called at a thousand

homesteads;

a thousand doors were bolted against them. One

house, however,

did make them welcome, a humble abode with a roof

of straw

and marsh reed, one that new its duty to the gods and men.

Here good Philemon an Baucis had happily passed

their youth

and here they had reached old age, enduring their

poverty lightly

by owning it freely and being content with the little

they had.’

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.628-635

Here the couple greet the strangers and offer up what little they have, providing them with the best of the meagre food and wine unknowing their true divine identities. Ovid goes in to quite a bit of detail describing the hospitality the couple offer especially the dishes that make up their feast during. While they entertain their guests the cups magically refill with wine.

‘Meanwhile, whenever the mixing-bowl got empty,

it seemed

To refill of its own accord, with the wine welling up by

itself.

Stunned and scared by this wonder, Philemon,

trembling, and Baucis

lifted their upturn hands to heaven and fervently

prayed

For forgiveness after serving so poorly prepared a repast.’

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.679-682

Fearing they have offended their divine guest they seek to appease them by sacrificing their only goose. This leads to a comical scene with the elderly couple chasing the goose and failing to catch it. It appears to run towards to gods for safety which seems to work as the gods command them to spare the bird as they are grateful for what they have already provided.

They then proclaim that the couple will be spared from the punishment they will inflict of their impious neighbours who refused to honour the Greek custom of hospitality known as xenia (ξενία), a word derived from the Greek word for stranger xenos(ξένος). Sometimes referred to as 'ritualized friendship' the custom was based on generosity, courtesy and gift-giving that strengthen ties between people. In earlier times when it was thought that the gods walked among mortals it was even more important to respect these customs to avoid incurring the wrath of a visiting god. It would became seen as a moral obligation for both Guest and Host to show respect to each other.

Returning to Ovid's story, the couple leave their home with the gods and head to the safety mountains. There they witness the flood the gods send down to wipe out their impious neighbours. Nothing is spared except the couple’s home which undergoes its own transformation as it becomes a temple to the gods.

The gods offer to grant the couple anything they desire as reward. After deliberating with each other Philemon and Baucis ask to be guardians of the new temple and also, that when the time comes for them to die, that they die together so they don’t have to suffer the loss of their partner. After many years happy years together they are transformed into Trees. Philemon an Oak and Baucis a linden.

"We

ask

to be priests and to guard your temple; and since we

have passed our years

together in peace, let the same hour carry us off, so I

need not

look on my dear wife’s grave, nor she have to bury my

body."

Their wish was granted; as long as life was allowed

them, they served

as the temple’s guardians. When time had taken its

final toll,

and while they were casually standing in front of the

steps of the building,

telling the sanctuary’s history, both Philemon and

Baucis

witnessed their partner sprouting leaves on their worn

old limbs

As the tops of the trees spread over their lip sand concealed

them forever.

Still to this day the peasants of Phrygia point to the oak

and the linden nearby which once where the forms of

Philemon and Baucis.’ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.712-720

The devotion the couple have for each other is really endearing. You can really see why this story would appeal to a young Gabrielle who left her home and arranged marriage to find the true place she feels she belongs.

It is also an interesting choice of story to share with Xena, someone she’s just met who is aloof and independent. She’s eager to befriend the warrior but is finding her emotionally distant. This emotional distance is reflected in the physical distance between them. In these early episodes they have clearly defined personal spaces, such as sperate bedrolls, and they spend a lot of time apart as Gabrielle is left behind in a 'safe' location. You could read into this that just as Xena tries to keep distance between her and Gabrielle physically to protect her, she is trying to keep her emotionally distant for safety reasons as well. In some ways Gabrielle may understand this which is why she choses to tell this particular story to Xena. The old couple might seem weak and vulnerable but they are given strength by the devotion and support they have for each other. Gabrielle is trying to show her new friend that caring isn't a weakness but a source of strength by using this story as an example.

X: “What’s the point?”

G: “Come on, Xena. I believe everyone will find their tree in the forest someday-- even you.”

X: “I find the strongest trees in the forest stand alone.”

G: “You don’t have to be strong all the time, Xena; sometimes it’s good for the soul to be soft.”

This moment beautifully foreshadows the relationship that grows between Xena and Gabrielle throughout the series as both become entwined emotionally, spiritually and physically in a multiple of ways. There are moments that the imagery of the myth is invoked in such a way that Xena and Gabrielle symbolically become the lovers. Intentional or not by the writers it is a fantastic coincidence.

One episode that subtly does this is ‘The Abyss’ during one of its poignant cave scenes. After an encounter with cannibals Xena and an injured Gabrielle become tapped in a cave that is rapidly flooding. As Xena tries to get them out, Gabrielle tells Xena her final wish, that she wants to be buried with Xena.

X [Whispers]: "Gabrielle-- Gabrielle-- here-- here. The time's

come. We're getting you out of here, all right?"

G: "Oh."

X: "All right."

G: "Xena, I have a-- a last wish."

X: "I don't want to hear of it."

G: "No-- I'm serious. You don't want to know?"

X: "What is it, then?"

G: "I don't-- want to be buried-- with the Amazons."

X: "All right. Well, in fifty years, when the time comes."

G: "Xena-- I wanna lie with you-- with your family? In

Amphipolis."

X: "What about your family?"

G: "I love them-- but I'm a part of you. I want it to be like

that forever. I love you."

It is the climax of a series of intimate moments that are grounded in their love and devotion to each other. Gabrielle’s words cement their soulmate relationship. They are meant to be, and will be, together forever like the lovers of her story.

The context of this moment adds another layer to this allusion. As Gabrielle is affirming to Xena that she is a part of her, the warrior princess is preparing to save her injured partner by tying her to herself using vines. This nicely invokes images of Gabrielle’s story of the two lovers who becoming trees and entwining together. Also it connects with Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis as like the mythic couple, Xena cannot bear to witness the death of her partner. As Philemon and Baucis were spared that fate by being transformed into trees, Xena is using a plant to physically entwine her and Gabrielle to save her from death.

This climb up the ravine walls to escape the rising water could be reminiscent of Philemon's and Baucis' arduous climb up the mountain to escape the flood or just another coincidence. What perhaps isn't is that it is love and devotion that binds each couple together for eternity. Just like the lovers in the story Gabrielle tells in season one, and the myth it is based upon, Xena and Gabrielle will be together for eternity in each other's embrace.

Throughout the series there are a number of different ways Xena and Gabrielle become entwined together. As the emotional distance between them shrinks, the physical space seen in earlier episodes disappears and they begin to embrace each other. Not only is there a myriad of touches and hugs to connect them but while sitting, walking and even fighting they become inseparable.

They become so close that they pick up traits from each other and almost merge into one. This is such a vast topic to discuss it really needs its own post to explore in detail but the importance for this discussion is the idea that they merge into one entity. The idea that they become one is the connection with the myths and invokes the imagery of metamorphosis.

This metamorphosis becomes literal later in the series. In season 5’s ‘Succession’ during Ares’ contest to determine a worthy successor to Xena as his Chosen, he places Gabrielle and Xena into the same body. At dawn they discover that Gabrielle metamorphoses in to Xena and dusk, Xena into Gabrielle. This nicely alludes to Gabrielle’s story as they transform, much like the couple becoming entwine trees, two individuals become one entwined in each others bodies.

This physical metamorphoses happens in the series when it has become fully established that these two are soulmates, destined to be together for eternity. They are truly devoted to each other that they cannot be separated, just as the lovers cannot bear to be parted from each other even when they are transformed into trees.

As Gabrielle predicted at the end of her story, they both found their tree in the forest in each other.

Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Whoosh.org, Episode Transcripts

Screen captures by myself

Thanks to Simjay on the Discord Xena group for the Gifs!

[sagamemes]

the sheridan tapes  📼  part two.   here and under the cut, you can find over 130 lines of dialogue from the horror podcast the sheridan tapes, specifically from episodes four to six, edited for roleplay purposes. some of these focus heavily on survival, war, science, and spooky stuff, but a lot can be used by anyone.  tw:  war, unreality, a mention of cannibalism, implications of manic behaviour.

❝  god, i hate snowstorms like this. not just getting caught in them, but the storms themselves. it feels like the earth’s trying to bury me alive every time it locks in like this. like nature’s rightly pissed off at all of us and doing its level best to crush us to death.  ❞

❝  that’s what yom kippur means:  the day of atonement.  ❞

❝  that wasn’t the first time i’ve caught him in my office, going through my stuff.  ❞

❝  normally i’d be annoyed at someone calling me young lady.  ❞

❝  thank you… you are so warm… thank you for letting me in.  ❞

❝  suddenly, everything fell into place. i made more progress than i had in about half a year.  ❞

❝  the thing i remember most was catching disapproving glances from my father every time i went to the library.  ❞

❝  why does time only run forward?  why does cause need to precede effect?  ❞

❝  no one knows if they can trust me with casework or not.  ❞

❝  i didn’t say i was interested.  ❞

❝  [he/i] was taken off duty and sent for psychiatric evaluation the next day.  ❞

❝  coffee. i was making coffee.  ❞

❝  i didn't mean to get stuck out here.  ❞

❝  that just goes to show how small humans really are in the grand scheme of things:  take away our tools and our toys and our technology, and we’re still just as vulnerable as we ever were.  ❞

❝  she was good at that:  making you feel like you were safe, like you could open up to her.  ❞

❝  i’m just going to cover that one up. no harm in keeping it out of sight for the moment.  ❞

❝  maybe there was someone in the stairs.  ❞

❝  i think i did the lion’s share of the talking, which almost never happens.  ❞

❝  i couldn’t get to sleep... i figured i’d get a head start today.  ❞

❝  i’m afraid i don’t have all of the details of your involvement with the… tragic events in [place]. and i don’t think i’m the only one.  ❞

❝  i’m still not sure i understand the whole tradition.  ❞

❝  whatever it is, it’s chasing me. i can hear it’s footsteps in the snow, i can hear it—  ❞

❝  when you work nights here, the less you really think about them, the better.  ❞

❝  honestly, i just can’t get it out of my head.  ❞

❝  snow is one of nature’s simplest and most effective ways of killing you dead if you aren’t prepared for it.  ❞

❝  i wish you’d tell me what you’re doing here. i could lose my job if anything gets broken or if you end up getting hurt in there…  ❞

❝  would you say you… considered her a friend?  ❞

❝  would you mind saying your name again?  for the recording?  ❞

❝  if that was true, then there was something—and as a scientist, i hate to say this—supernatural going on in that lab.  ❞

❝  most of them didn’t make it. a lot of them died afraid and alone, too.  ❞

❝  i know you don’t like listening to these things, so i just wanted to help you out with…  ❞

❝  if i could sleep, then trust me, i would.  ❞

❝  i’m guessing the new owners are trying to make this place seem less creepy than it already is.  ❞

❝  my schooling was expensive and unremarkable.  ❞

❝  a lot of them died afraid and alone, too:  ideal conditions for the making of poltergeists, in my experience.  ❞

❝  look, i’m sorry, but this really isn’t a good time for anything, so if you wouldn’t mind…  ❞

❝  basically, i was picturing a slightly creepier morticia addams. i couldn’t have been more wrong.  ❞

❝  now i have to deal with [name]’s aspirations to write drama..  ❞

❝  i promise i won’t get you sacked.  ❞

❝  i’ve never been very religious, but for some reason… it made me think of hell.  ❞

❝  i think it may have been a thank you.  ❞

❝  i’m working the graveyard shift and i noticed the lights were on.  ❞

❝  i shouldn’t be here. no one asked me to come in this early.  ❞

❝  everyone around here looks at me like i’m some kind of leper.  ❞

❝  i had to go home for a few hours. i’m already on thin ice around here, and i didn’t want to get in more trouble for screaming obscenities up and down the wall.  ❞

❝  it was… darkness. no, that doesn’t do it credit, the whole place was dark. this was just... void.  ❞

❝  if i’d seen her anywhere else, i’d think she was an athlete or a backpacker.  ❞

❝  better scientists than me have been bashing their heads into that particular wall since 1927.  ❞

❝  i just want you to know that… whatever you really are... you’re safe here.  ❞

❝  goats being goats, it would just come back the next day looking for food.  ❞

❝  i would like you to leave my office now… and i’ll ask you not to tamper with evidence in the future, understood?  ❞

❝  no, of course, i don’t have signal out here, so i can’t just call triple-a.  ❞

❝  what are you doing in my office—at four goddamn thirty in the morning?  ❞

❝  you ever wonder where the line is?  you know, between human and not?  ❞

❝  the funny thing i’ve noticed about war:  no matter how terrible the fighting is, there always seems to be too much waiting. too much quiet. too much sitting around, bored to tears between fits of chaos and violence, lost in routine while waiting for the other shoe to drop.  ❞

❝  a lot of people condemn them for that. we’re so sure we’d never resort to that—that we’d rather die than cross that unspoken boundary.  ❞

❝  i’ve been at the [workplace/institution] for ten years now. that’s long enough to know that the ones who ask questions are the ones who can’t cut it.  ❞

❝  the program blew every fuse in the lab. including the lights.  ❞

❝  it was soon after they left that i began to have trouble sleeping.  ❞

❝  perhaps we never knew each other as well as most friends do, but… we cared for one another.  ❞

❝  most of her questions are a bit above my pay grade.  ❞

❝  i’m trying, i’m trying! i can’t get the door open!  ❞

❝  i don’t know why she needed my help:  i think she had a better grasp of it than most science fiction writers.  ❞

❝  we both had places to be afterwards, so we kind of rushed. i really wish i’d taken the time to say goodbye.  ❞

❝  i guess some things just… don’t want to stay buried.  ❞

❝  it was completely against orders of course, but no one really noticed or cared that far from the front.  ❞

❝  i offered to buy him a cup of coffee.  ❞

❝  newspapers praised them at the time:  saw them as heroes of exploration and paragons of pioneer courage.  ❞

❝  i signed a lot of big, scary nda’s during my time there.  ❞

❝  i did the only thing that came to mind:  i took a grenade from my belt, removed the pin, and threw it.  ❞

❝  i doubt this storm will last more than a couple of days, and once it lets up we can sneak out of here and get going again. very, very carefully.  ❞

❝  given enough time, everything will rot away to its elementary components, and that, you can’t reverse.  ❞

❝  i really can’t see anything from inside the van.  ❞

❝  i knew there were a few experiments that dealt with some pretty high-level theoretical concepts, but i wasn’t directly involved with any of them.  ❞

❝  it’s a strange choice, but then again, he’s a strange man.  ❞

❝  i know, it sounds ridiculous. trust me, i’ve done everything i can think of to make that conclusion go away.  ❞

❝  scared the bejeezus out of a bunch of skiers, but they were nice enough to let me in after deciding i probably wasn’t a ghost.  ❞

❝  please… it burns my skin… please…  ❞

❝  i forgot how fast storms blow in up here.  ❞

❝  it’s not like i felt out of control:  it felt more natural than breathing.  ❞

❝  i didn’t know what i was doing, not at any conscious level. but one step seemed to lead to another, then the next, and then the next.  ❞

❝  it’s called a butcher’s shop in some places, but a mortuary in others. as much as i’d love to imply there was some sweeney todd style recycling going on here, i think the place has just been a lot of things over the years.  ❞

❝  god, these things are creepy as hell.  ❞

❝  if you wouldn’t mind, please, tell us what happened? in your own time, of course.  ❞

❝  it took a few long, nerve-wracking days to work up my courage and visit the section again.  ❞

❝  it’s not that odd to think that people ate each other out there.  ❞

❝  i didn’t think there was a ghost in my room or anything like that, i just kept hearing noises whenever i was about to fall asleep.  ❞

❝  i downed half a dozen energy drinks at 6 and called it dinner—i know, i know, it’s a nasty habit i picked up in grad school.  ❞

❝  they told me that the cpu and motherboard had somehow been melted into a solid lump of plastic and silicon.  ❞

❝  i mean, [name] was a pain in the ass, but at least he didn’t…  ❞

❝  my schedule was full, but i had something else fall through at the last minute. i had your number on my desk, so i thought i may as well call.  ❞

❝  i wonder if it was afraid, or if it even realized what was going to happen. it probably didn’t.  ❞

❝  i need to get more coffee. or punch someone. whichever’s more convenient.  ❞

❝  god, if that’s really how i sound…  ❞

❝  people think i write horror, but i don’t really think that’s true. i just write fiction with all of the comfortable little lies taken out of it.  ❞

❝  i have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.  ❞

❝  i think he felt something about this place… some influence or power that needed to be destroyed, so he tried to do it the only way he knew how.  ❞

❝  well, it’s a tricky thing. the more realistic you make them, the more… unreal they start to look. i think it’s something about the eyes.  ❞

❝  i offered to stay late, just to smooth things over.  ❞

❝  maybe i can get some writing done while i’m stuck here…  ❞

❝  no child could grow up in a jewish home surrounded by books and not read at least one story about golems.  ❞

❝  i just wasn’t a good student, despite my love of reading.  ❞

❝  i have to say, i like your jane doe.  ❞

❝  she was a scientist herself.  maybe not formally, but her way of thinking, her insight, her methods... they were scientist’s qualities.  ❞

❝  seriously, what do i need to do to get a little privacy around here, a little dignity?  hang a  ‘ do not disturb ’  sign on the door?  change all my locks?  ❞

❝  maybe it was stupid, but i figured, ‘ hey, early december, not a cloud in the sky—should still be fine, right? ’  ❞

❝  jesus, [name], i wasn’t born yesterday.  ❞

❝  maybe doing this while it’s still dark outside isn’t the best idea.  ❞

❝  more than a century and a half have passed, and this place is still just as dangerous as it was then.  ❞

❝  now, [mr./ms./mx. name], i’m sure you know why you’re here.  ❞

❝  the [event] was a bust—only about a dozen people showed up all afternoon.  ❞

❝  i never put much stock in the idea of inspiration, but for the first time in my life, it felt like i wasn’t pushing myself through the muck of miscalculation and guesswork towards a solution. i was being pulled towards an answer that already existed.  ❞

❝  it felt like i was a few steps from finding out something fundamental. some truth about our universe that no other scientist had ever dared to dream of.  ❞

❝  huh. that’s… that’s weird. i could’ve sworn there wasn’t a sculpture back there before.  ❞

❝  apparently, no one had told them what i was doing, and i wasn’t actually cleared to leave.  ❞

❝  maybe he’s trying to make amends. keeping watch over these half-living things to make sure no harm comes to them.  ❞

❝  i expected the building to be wreathed in shadow and overgrown with cobwebs, but it's actually really nice.  ❞

❝  sorry, i was trying to get my recorder working, but it froze up on me so i had to find a tape for this old…  ❞

❝  okay. just… don’t get me sacked, alright?  can’t exactly retire on this salary.  ❞

❝  but if it was real—i don’t know if i somehow created it, or if it was feeding me information about itself before it appeared.  ❞

❝  i’ve never had a manic episode before, and i was well below the level of caffeine needed to cause intoxication. as far as i can tell, there isn’t a medical explanation for what happened.  ❞

❝  i don’t get the appeal of meeting real celebrities. it’s just a cheap shock of recognition, and nothing more.  ❞

❝  whatever this… thing was, it sounds pretty dangerous.  ❞

❝  are you familiar with temporal asymmetry?  ❞

❝  i just want to make that abundantly clear:  this /wasn’t/ the plan.  ❞

❝  right then, now let’s get started. please state your name and rank for the record.  ❞

❝  though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light.  ❞

❝  a cracker of a book, young lady.  ❞

❝  no wonder they’re keeping them in storage. they’d give anyone nightmares.  ❞

❝  i was just going to finish out my shift unless… you want me to stick around?  ❞

❝  i went to the university, but don’t remember much of the years i spent there.  ❞

❝  having to study textbooks and essays day in and day out took all of the joy out of reading for a long time.  ❞

❝  we call paradoxes paradoxes for a reason:  no matter how plausible they seem, they can never really happen.  ❞

❝  i don’t know what happened to me that night. i still don’t even know if what i saw was real.  ❞

❝  when we look into the void for too long, we find the monsters instead.  ❞

[magnusmysteries]

Part 4: The Sixteenth Fear

The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.

In part 3 I said every fear has an opposite. But the Flesh didn’t exist before the industrial revolution. So there would have been 13 fears then, an uneven number, and not every fear could balance against an opposite. So how could that be?

The answer is, there were only 12 fears before the Flesh. The Corruption and the Desolation used to be the same fear. 

Diego Molina of the Lightless Flame cult worships Asag. A Sumerian god of disease that could make fish boil. So Asag seems to be of both the Corruption and the Desolation.

In Infectious Doubts Arthur Nolan complains about it: “Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is. Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls the Lightless Flame Asag, like he was when he was first researching it. I just really wanna tell him to get over it; I mean Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church we very much settled on burning in terms of the – face we worship, and some fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it? Plus there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is way too close to Filth for my taste, but no, he read it in some ancient tome, so that’s that –“

Ancient is the key word. The tome predates the industrial revolution and the Flesh. Asag probably isn’t a thing anymore and Diego is indeed a prat for worshipping it.

In The Architecture of Fear Smirke writes “I know you say the Flesh was perhaps always there, shriveled and nascent until its recent growth, but to grant the existence of such a lesser power would throw everything into confusion. Would you have me separate the Corruption into insects, dirt, and disease? To divide the fungal bloom from the maggot?”

It is not random that Smirke uses the Corruption as an example here. The Corruption is the opposite of the Flesh, so the Corruption is the fear that Smirke believed had no opposite for hundreds or thousands of years.

In part 3 I said vampires where Corruption/Desolation/Hunt. This is a little far-fetched, but I wonder if the vampire’s we’ve seen have been old ones that predate the Flesh. And that’s why they are part Corruption, since Corruption and Hunt used to be next to each other. Maybe there are more modern vampires without the long sucking tongue. Maybe instead of sucking blood, when they bite you begin to burn or boil. Since the Hunt is now next to the Desolation instead of the Corruption-Desolation combo.

In Vampire Killer Trevor says “I have killed five people that I know for sure as vampires, and there are two more that may or may not have been.” There is a missing middle part of Trevor’s statement. Maybe there he talks about killing two vampires that are modern and therefore different so he’s not sure if they’re actually vampires.

Speaking of fears splitting up, why is the Darkness the opposite fear of the Slaughter? In Last Words we hear of the first fear “A fear of blood and pounding feet, a fear of that sudden burst of pain and then nothing.” 

And of the second fear “The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself.”

I think the first was a general fear of violence. It includes what became the Hunt “Blood and pounding Feet...” and the Slaughter “...Sudden burst of pain and then nothing”, and the End “The fear of their own end…” And the second fear was the Darkness. They were the opposite by default, simply for being the two first fears.

When the Buried became a fear, the Hunt split up from the Violence to oppose it. When the Vast became a fear, the End split up from the Violence to oppose it. All that was left of the Violence was Slaughter, still opposing the Dark. When humans began warfare, fear of war fit nicely with the Slaughter.

The Eye might have been part of the Dark at first. Still from Last Words: “...because they knew the dark held flashing talons and shining eyes…” 

When the Lonely became a fear, the Eye split up from the Dark to oppose it.

So what about the Extinction? Does it have an opposite? Yes! There is a sixteenth fear. And what can be the opposite of the fear of the end of the world? The fear that the world isn’t real. That we’re all just living in a computer simulation. If you think the world isn’t even real, you’re not gonna be so worried about it ending. I’ll call it the Simulation.

Here is how the fears are arranged on the wheel, with the two latest fears added:

Description of image: A circle with 16 spots similar to a clock. On each spot is a number and the name of a power: 1. Corruption. 2 Extinction. 3. Desolation. 4. Hunt. 5. Slaughter. 6. End. 7. Lonely. 8. Stranger. 9. Flesh. 10. Simulation 11. Spiral. 12. Buried. 13. Dark. 14. Vast. 15. Eye. 16. Web.

The Extinction is next to the Corruption. Disease and garbage are both gross. Possessive is an Extinction episode, even if not acknowledged as such by any of the characters. It’s about garbage. And Maggie is creating people out of garbage. She is making the inheritors mentioned in Time of Revelation. There are also creatures made of garbage in Concrete Jungle. And Maggie was full of moving insect legs, showing Corruption influence.

Quote from Adelard Dekker from Rotten Core: “I’ve spoken before about how keenly I’ve watched news of possible pandemics, which is where I suspect the Extinction may pull away from the Corruption during its emergence.” Adelard knows the Extinction is next to Corruption.

The Extinction is next to Desolation. That fits, nuclear weapons cause fire. Quote from Times of Revelation, describing corpses: “They were stiff, and desiccated, mummified by some process Bernadette could not begin to guess at, but that rendered their flesh like tightly packed ash” Ash as if they were burned.

The Simulation is next to the Flesh. The Flesh makes you think humans aren’t people, they are just meat. The Simulation makes you think humans aren’t people, they are just NPCs.

The Simulation is the next to the Spiral. Both make you question what is real. The Spiral makes you doubt your mind, the Simulation makes you doubt your world.

There are four episodes about the Simulation: Binary, Zombie, Cul-de-sac and Reflection.

In Binary Sergey Ushanka uploads his mind into a computer. He becomes a simulation and it hurts. There is influence by the Spiral, the statement giver isn’t sure if she’s going crazy. And there is influence by the Flesh. Ushanka uploads himself into a computer and then he eats the computer. So that’s cannibalism.

In Zombie the statement giver thinks other people aren’t real, they’re philosophical zombies, In other words they like simulations or NPCs. The man that follows her repeats the phrase “Just fine, thank you for asking” and says nothing else. Just like some NPCs in video games will say the same phrase over and over. The man is identical the three times they meet, except for his t-shirt changes color. Sometimes in video games some NPCs will be identical, except for some colors are changed. (Because it’s less work to recollar a character than to draw one from scratch.)

John thinks Cul-De-Sac is about the Lonely. And yes, the statement giver was lonely. But the people affected by the Lonely choose to be lonely, and the statement giver didn’t. His boyfriend broke up with him because of cheating and then he lost his friends because they sided with his boyfriend. 

I think the theme of the statement is unreality, not loneliness. In the Magnus Archives, when someone gets marked by a power it is because they made some wrong choice. The choice the statement giver makes is to return to the place he found dead and soulless. He drives back to his ex-boyfriend to deliver the moose, rather than send it by mail. He specifically wants to meet his ex. Not an act of loneliness, quite the opposite. Also he is returning a moose that is angular and creepy, in other words it is unreal.

When the statement escapes from the nightmare it’s because he got a phone call from his ex. And he says “I love you.” and that fits neatly with the Lonely. But it also fits with escape from the unreal. He escapes because he communicates with a real person.

The road signs says “Road” and “Street”. Generic and unreal. All the houses look the same. Like in a computer game. The statement giver wonders if they are the same house. Like in a computer game where one might reuse the code for a house many times.

The house he enters has stock photos. Unreal.

The people on TV have something wrong with their eyes, similar to the eyes of the zombies in Zombie. And it's a fake cooking show, and a fake infomercial.

The dead woman upstairs was someone who had social media profiles, and that nobody notices had died. Meaning she lived her life online. That sounds like she was lonely. But living online also makes her a good victim for the Simulation. Everyone she talked to was on a computer, she couldn’t know for sure if they were real.

The woman had killed herself with a mirror. I think what happened was she had looked into the mirror and seen that her eyes were wrong, like the eyes of the people on TV. And she had thought she was just a simulation, like everything around her. And therefore she killed herself. Or perhaps she wasn’t reflected in the mirror at all? Like in…

Reflection. Adelard speculated that this statement was about the Extinction, but I don’t think so. The protagonist was in a world that seemed unreal. A fun fair is artificial so that fits the theme. The people were playing games, which fits the theme via computer games maybe.

Adelard says “I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return.” It is almost at the end of Adelard’s letter, it’s clearly meant to be significant. The no reflection might be symbolic for the statement giver starting to think he isn’t real, which might be what happened to him after he gave the statement.

Reflection has influence by the Spiral, with the maze of mirrors. There is influence by the Flesh, with the cannibalism.

[saii-the-idiot]

Helluva Boss/ Hazbin Hotel spoilers,,, again

Okokok so I have arranged this into a theory. Starting with what we know for sure. Imps can kill other imps in the wrath ring. The overlords can be killed, but only by special weapons. We don’t know enough about the other rings yet but assuming that because they’re also only populated by imps and other natural born hell creatures with no way for humans to access them, we’re going to say for the sake of this theory that they follow the same rule and that since pride is run by someone who isn’t native to hell it’s the only exception (Lucifer was cast out of heaven in the bible). The two possibilities right now are that either it’s possible for sinners to kill imps and they’re just unaware of it so the imps built their city farther away as a means of protection and they have a mutual trust to not kill each other while there, or the imps that visit the pride ring are immune to being killed by sinners and other imps alike. For the purposes of this theory, I’m going to set angel weapons and the special overlord killing guns like Striker has in episode 5 aside for a bit as they aren’t common enough to add anything important to the body of this theory.

Ok first off before I start digging into the actual meat of this I’d just like to say, I believe the annual purge is something that only happens in the pride ring. Judging by the fact that the imps can kill each other off in the other rings and that their population doesn’t grow nearly as fast, they don’t exactly need an annual purge. Also from what we’ve seen of the wrath ring, they have plenty of room for farms. Wrath at the very least isn’t packed full of citizens in huge dense cities needing to be purged every year, and again assuming the other rings operate in a somewhat similar way (as in they don’t have sinners constantly flowing in) it’s a personal theory of mine that the only ring with an annual purge is pride. 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at our first possibility. That the imps are able to be killed by anyone, including sinners, in the pride ring. That the imps, in avoiding the murderous sinners, built their city far away to avoid any accidents. And that the imps have a mutual understanding not to kill each other. This possibility however is disproved by Helluva Boss episode 2; Loo Loo Land. I’m talking about the amount of people that survive the seemingly deadly theme park. Between the fires set by Blitzo in his battle against Robo Fizz, the deadly rides, and the assassins shown lurking around every corner, this isn’t exactly somewhere you would wanna take your kids for a fun day with the family. This is further supported by Loo Loo the mascot’s line “If y’all get hurt here, just try and sue us!” I know this seems like a bit of a reach considering it’s just one line, but Loo Loo did specifically say “get hurt” instead of “get killed”. While it’s easy enough to overlook if you’re not paying attention, in a series centered around death and the afterlife where every detail matters, I think it’s actually a clue as to the way death works in hell and what it means for the series. In the series in general imps and sinners alike are shown to survive really traumatic injuries in the pride ring without much more than a scratch or bruise to show for it. The exception in this episode is when Stolas turns someone into stone by just looking at them, but we’re not counting that as supporting evidence because he’s an extremely powerful overlord.

Another exception to this are Sir Pentious’s egg minions who are killed en masse in the turf war of the Hazbin Hotel pilot, but they don’t appear to be sinners or imps so we’re going to set them aside for now and theorize about them another time. The only ever confirmed deaths that take place in the pride ring are caused by overlords, and in a place literally crawling with murderous psychopaths this leads me to believe that regular imps and sinners are completely incapable of murder in the pride ring without angel weapons. The imps are also constantly exposed to the sinners, so surviving as a population for tens of thousands of years at least without any casualties at all is impossible. The imps are also violent beings by nature, the majority of which are completely unopposed to killing, so the chances of them living in harmony on the outskirts of the ring are next to zero. With all this, I think we can safely rule out this as a possibility for how the pride ring operates. This leads me to the next option. 

The other (more likely) possibility is that the pride ring is an immune zone to killing. First off, it wouldn’t make sense for the sinners to be able to kill one another and the imps here, as they wouldn’t get their eternal punishment that way. The purpose of hell is to punish sinners eternally, and if the sinner can just nope out whenever they want then it defeats the purpose entirely. Hell is also, you know, full of people that have committed horrifying acts in their lives. It’s full of every murderer, psychopath, and just all around asshole out there. This is the afterlife with no consequences and a lot of sinners would take advantage of this. There could and probably (knowing the demeanor of the sinners) would be imp hunting events set up by the unkillable human souls to prey on the In terms of the purpose of hell, the general immunity to harm displayed in this ring, and the way the ring has quarantined the sinners to only be able to live there, It’s my firm belief that imp or sinner you’re unable to die in the pride ring at the hands of anything other than an angel’s weapon. 

This would also make the pride ring a safe place for the imps to go to avoid being killed off by other imps. There is however a much darker side to this part of the theory. What if the pride ring isn’t this safe place that the imps are looking out for? Sure, some of them might be going there on purpose to try and make lives for themselves, but there’s also a possibility that imp city in the pride ring is a place for castaway and escaping imps to go if they can’t stay in their own rings. This would add to the overpopulation and increase their chances of being killed in the annual purge however. I feel like if imps are moving to the pride ring and it is a neutral zone they have nothing left to lose and are willing to accept the possibility of their deaths every year. It could also be a place for imps sent for execution/eternal punishment of their own to go, given that not a lot of people want to willingly move to the place with an annual purge. 

However, there is one thing that could potentially poke a massive hole in this theory, and that’s the official Hazbin Hotel comic “A Day In The After Life” in which we’re introduced to the concept of cannibals in the afterlife. In this comic, (for those who have no idea what I’m talking about) Alastor goes down to the part of town where the society of cannibals lives because he got word of a new butcher he hadn’t heard of before and wanted to try his products. Knowing this is a cannibal colony, they would have to be eating sinners and/or imps. You’re probably wondering “how could they be killing and eating each other if this is a safe zone?” but this also has a possible explanation. Angels are known to sometimes leave behind their weapons after the purge, as shown in the Hazbin Hotel pilot, so the butchers in the colony could have just picked up the weapons after a purge. This is further supported by Alastor hearing of a “new” butcher just after the last purge, meaning the butcher probably only got in business after getting his hands on an angel’s weapon. 

Another thing that could disprove this theory is the other official Hazbin Hotel comic “Chapter 1: Dirty Healings” In which Angel Dust kills several of Valentino’s “associates”. This is once again disproved by the fact that the angel weapons can be fashioned into guns, as shown in Helluva Boss episode 5. If Angel Dust had even one of those guns, he would easily be able to kill all the shark demons. (Don’t ask why Angel Dust can’t just kill Valentino if he has the gun(s), he’s extremely outnumbered and would be killed almost immediately if he did)

Another thing I was thinking about is because the imps can travel between rings, can they just go to a different ring for the purge? If so, then can all imps do this? But that’s yet another theory for another day.

These are all just theories of course, feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong. I’d like to see what y’alls opinions on this are. Watch a new episode come out and prove like,, all of this wrong. Sorry for this being so long and wordy lol

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Revelation.”

This needed to be done. I know I went a different direction than a lot of you were expecting, but I thought it was best. If you want my reasoning for anything I will be happy to answer. 

It took him a second to figure out what was going on. Ramirez let him go and stepped back his dark amber eyes crinkled with concern. Turning his head to look around the rest of the room, he saw the others, Sunny, Krill, Katie, Three adaptids, Maverick, Jackie, Narobi, and his dog all staring at him with expressions of concern and frustration.

Krill stepped forward to say something, but as the little creature was doing so, he felt something as his mind and body finally caught up with each other. Heat rushed into his face and head as he was overcome with near blinding rage.

He stepped away from Ramirez, chest beginning to rise and fall heavily. He felt his face contort as his skin reddened with blood. His hands clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. He was so mad he could barely think. How dare they invade his privacy like this, go into his room and search through his things, and then confront him.

He wanted to scream at them, to throw things to march across the room and grab one of them by the throat.

But he was too angry even for that.

The rational part of his mind, which was barely functioning at the moment gave him one more option.

He turned on his heel and marched right out the door. A red hue had taken up his vision encroaching in from the darkness bleeding into silhouettes. He felt like his arms begin to tingle. His body was too light as adrenaline rushed through him. His head was light, his legs were light.

Footsteps behind him, “Adam!”

No, he knew what would happen if they caught up, and he was at least rational enough to avoid that. He sped up his pace listening to the footsteps behind him, they sped up to, and he broke into a flat sprint.

No one could keep up with him in a sprint, the repurposed steel-eye prosthetic he wore would make sure of that. The only two people that had a hope of catching him were Maverick and Rmirez, and even they couldn’t match high performance machinery. 

He raced through the ship leaving the people he passed barely enough time to register he was there before he was gone again. He burst out into the cargo bay and pelted down the ramp. He ran as hard as he could as fast as he could until he could barely breathe and then skidded to a halt.

He had made it to the side of the launch feild, where there was nothing more than grassy knolls and distant electric fences to keep prying eyes away. No one was here and the closest figures were merely back dots moving about the tarmac  He paused here pacing one way and then the other. His hands shook.

WIth no relief he turned his head back and screamed, ripping the cap off his head and throwing it to the ground as he sunk to his knees on the grass and dirt. His uniform pants were likely to get stained, but he didn’t care.

Moving from angry to despondent, he stared out at the launch field as tiny black silhouettes crawled across it like ants on a nest. The Sun was growing low behind him casting his shadow long over the grassy knoll. 

A shadow appeared  distantly, and he watched it as it snaked its way up the tarmack turning towards him. He flipped up his eyepatch to get a better look zooming in on the figure.

Waffles zig-zagged over the tarmac, her nose twitching as she snuffled at the ground, her tail in a low wag her ears back.

Surprisingly he felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. 

She continued to follow her nose lifting it on occasion until she saw him silhouetted against the sky and ran towards him pausing a few feet away. He frowned watching as she tucked her tail so far between her legs that it was touching the underside of her belly. Her ears were back as she approached him, her nose still twitching ears flat against her head.

What was wrong with her?

She scooted forward some more crawling onto his knees and pressing her snout against him like she was supposed to do when he was having an attack. 

She must be malfunctioning, he was fine

He pushed her off, but she returned hesitantly a moment later trying so hard to get him to respond.

“I’m fine dumb dog.” He snarled pushing her away again.

Her big dark eyes didn’t understand. She was just trying to do her job.. 

She was worried.

He tried keeping her away, but ever time he moved, or pushed her away shed come right back behaving how she was taught when responding to significant mental distress. He tried scooting back, but she followed him forward eventually growing frustrated herself and using the last thing in her arsenal she had.

She crawled on top of him and then just lay down flat on his chest pinning him to the ground chin resting on his neck.

He could have pushed her off, but lying there in the grass staring up at the blue sky he was slowly coming to a realization. The dog whimpered from where she lay against him, her ears still flat against her head.

Dogs didn’t lie.

They couldn’t.

And she was acting like he was having a serious episode. He didn’t feel like he was but, then again what was he doing here lying in the grass after running away from his ship. The anger faded, replaced with guilt, first guilt for treating her so poorly, thinking about how hard she was working and how ungrateful he was being made his eyes tingle with moisture. 

“I’m sorry girl.” he whispered, stroking her ears, running his hands through the fur on the side of her neck, “I’m so sorry.” she whined, “Your not dumb, of course you aren’t. You’re the smartest girl in the galaxy and I’m….I’m the idiot.” He continued to stroke her ears apologizing repeatedly until she started nuzzling at his chest again.

Right, no obsessive thoughts, even if it was to apologize to your own dog who you were being a massive dick to.

He stroked her ears some more and told her she was a good girl instead. Slowlyher tail began to wag beating against his leg, and she stepped off of him letting him sit up, though she imposed herself right before him as he sat.

He continued to stroke his hands through her fur, and she closed her eyes.

“So, thinking about all of this, there was only one option.” He said to her, her tail thumped more at the sound of his voice, “You seem to think I am in significant psychological distress, but I don’t feel like I am, and the conclusion to that only means that I….. well it means you’re right and I’m wrong.”

She snorted as if she agreed.

Her ears had perked back up.

He looked up at the sky closing his eyes as he tried to take a few deep breaths. What did he feel?

“Well, I am stressed, out of my mind stressed. I don’t think it’s anything big honestly, but it all sort of compounded.” Waffles continued to listen, “Started with the Burg war and putting that suit back on, fucked me up, and it probably wasn’t the best idea.” He looked into her deep brown eyes, “We could have just set up some kind of rocket launcher at the opening and then killed them all without stepping foot inside. I never had to put the suit on.” his voice faded away as he continued to think, “It’s like I feel like I have to do everything because it's better if I die than other people do.” 

She grumbled.

“Yeah I know, doesn't make sense.” She rested her head on his lap as he continued to talk outloud to her, “Why do I feel like I have to save the universe single handedly. There are thousands of men and women, multiple ships and other captains who can help do all of these things .” He glanced down at the dog again, “I may be the fleet commander which by default makes all the things I said earlier true, but…. I keep trying to do everything myself. It’s not physically possible, and I know that.”

He listened to the sound of jets roaring overhead, “And while I’m at it, I blame myself for everything too. Took a freaky ass ghost or whatever the hell to tell me to knock that the fuck off. What else do I blame myself for?”

He sat there thinking for a long time waffles listening intently with her head cocked.

“I need to change things. I need a structure I can rely on so that I can do my job better, and everyone else has a chance to do their job too. I need people who are smarter than me to advise decisions and workout problems because next thing you know I’ll be trying to fix the ship myself, and that would be a disaster.”

The dog’s tongue lolled from her mouth as she panted. 

That was good, she only did that if she was relaxed.

“And I’m still not alright. I’m stressed and my PTSD is returning, but I think that has more to to with the stress than the PTSD itself. I got over the war years ago, and I can be over the cannibal if Iwan’t. I SHOULD be over the prison thing, and it isn’t my fault that someone took my DNA to create an entire herd of hybrids….. I will help them, but that doesn't mean I have to take care of them as much as it hurts me to say that since I still feel responsible.” 

He tapped his feet on the dirt, “I’m close to cracking, and if I crack….”

He stood rubbing his temples. “I need a different perspective, someone who is less emotionally attached than me.”

Waffles fell into step beside him, “No one who is too emotionally invested so that gets rid of Sunny, and Krill for sure. I want someone who can be serious with me without sounding like they are lecturing. Ramirez, Katie, Narobi, and Jackie are out. Conn was never an option. He can read my mind so maybe I’ll talk to him later about what my real problem is, but I think I need some blunt straight to the face advice. A second opinion that’s not afraid to crack down and tell me I’m being an idiot….. I don’t need understanding right now. I need to be told off.”

The dog looked up at him, “And I think I know just the person.”

***

The door to the ship’s chapell hissed open casting light over him as he sat contemplating the books stacked on on the self to the side of him, from where he sat on one of the pews. He reached out and picked the top one up flipping through it absently. 

Waffles lay at his feet napping.

The footsteps behind him paused as the door hissed closed, and then they approached up the aisle.

“How do you think he did it? Walk on water I mean? That would be a cool trick.”

Maverick paused at the end of the pew eyebrow raised, “Are you done with your little tantrum?”

He smiled as he turned to look at her, “Yes, I am done with my tantrum.”

She took a seat at the end of the pew hands clasped on her lap.

“In fact that’s why I came here to talk to you.”

She looked skeptical, “Talk to me or at me.”

He shook his head, “No… I… Waffles helped me realized that you guys are right, I’m not alright, and now I need a place to go from here.”

“Finally.” She grumbled.

He smiled, “Go on let's hear it.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Do what.”

“Give me permission to give you one of my lectures.”

He tilted his head, “Your what?”

“I have this habit of coming up with just what exactly I would say to people when I’m going on a run or taking a shower. They are really mean so I usually don’t say them.”

“Go on.”

“Your funeral,” She muttered as she stood, “Your being an idiot, a selfish idiot.” 

That was a good start.

“Everything with you is about me, me, me. I have to save the world, I have to win the battle, I have to get everything done all the time. It's a shitty way to act and it makes the rest of the crew feel like you don’t trust them, and then when we try to help you just blow us off like you can handle it. Which I might not care about so much if you had proven that you CAN handle it. But no you get all heroic and sad like no one understands what it means to worry about the galaxy. Like the rest of us don’t stay up at night wondering if the burg are going to come back, and this time with better weapons. I don’t give a ship about what you do with your free time or how you commander our ship, you can do it in heelies wearing a funny hat if that's what you need to stay relaxed, but right now you're not commanding a ship, you  you….. You know what you really are.”

He waited wide eyed.

“You are a total control freak.”

He blinked not having expected that.

“That’s it. You have to have your hand in absolutely everything don’t you.” he went to open his mouth but she held out a finger, “No, shut up and let me finish. You are a total control freak, yeah you are the Commander but that doesn't mean you control everything. You’re like the president, your job isn’t to control everything, its to veto dumbass ideas and make quick decisions, while everyone else does their job and reports to you on the more important stuff. You behave like a child wanting everything your way all the time, and then when it doesn't you throw a fit and run off to do whatever you want anyway. It makes it hard for the rest of us to work, and we worry about you, a lot. You are a good commander, and I think with some work you could be the best, but you need to figure something out soon because if you crack and go psycho, everyone else is going to suffer for it. We need you commander, but not in the way you think we do.”

She went quiet

He waited.

“I’m done.”

“Ok cool.” he took a deep breath, “First thing’s first. I need to rework our system.

***

He stood nervously at the head of the command deck a notebook in hand. He had tried to do his work on a tablet but found that writing by hand gave him more clarity. He had been up all night working, but not in a bad way, thi felt good, like he was moving towards something. A good portion of the crew had been assembled, most of the upper echelon officers and some of their seconds.

A soft murmuring rose up from the group, and scanning his eyes over them he could see where Sunny stood at the back of the room her arms crossed over her chest. Krill floated beside her with Dr. Katie.

As far as he could tell everyone was here, so he cleared his throat and allowed the room to quiet. They were sitting at the tables in the mess hall, and he tried to just stand in front of them but found he wanted to see their faces, so he stepped up onto the bench to get a better look.

“Alright everyone, quiet down. Now the sooner we get this over with the sooner I can have a nap.”

Half chuckle form the crowd.

“It has come to my attention recently that this crew needs a bit of an…. Administrative overhaul. We are a mess, and that is mostly…. Well no it is entirely my fault, and I know a lot of what I am going to say is probably a no brainer for most of you, but just bare with me for a few minutes.” He adjusted his notes, “I haven't been trusting you with your own work, and I am sorry for that. As you can probably tell, I have an issue with thinking things through before I do them, but that is something I will be working on.” He turned to look at them, “So what I have done, and what I should have done a long time ago is give the department heads complete charge of their departments.”

The group shifted, “That means all requisitions, staffing, internal problems, all of those will be covered by the department head. I don’t want to know about it unless there is a problem that only I can fix. So If you are missing equipment take it to the quartermasters and their requisitions office,and they, not me, will determine if we have it in our budget.” he turned to the chief quartermaster, “I am honestly putting the most work on you, because I am expecting that you acquire all the equipment this ship needs to keep running including food, ammunition and spare parts. You’ll have to work closely with engineering in order to get all of that done. I want all the departments speaking closely with each other. 

He lifted his head and looked back at Sunny, “Sunny.”

He lifted her head.

“As chief weapons specialist and one of our experts on close combat. I will be giving control over to you on battlefield tactics. That’s what Drev generals do isn’t it?”

SHe seemed surprised.

He turned to look at cannon, “Cannon the Drev clan’s needs are yours, I need you to make sure you guys have everything you need. If there are disputes, you determine how to settle them.”

He sighed, “I do expect full reports from each of the department heads where you will make it clear if there is anything you need me to do, but otherwise, this ship needs to be able to function without me sticking my nose in everyone’s business. If I do, you have full permission to tell me to fuck rite off. Though as commander I reserve the right to Veto any decision you make if I think it will be detrimental to the ship or two the mission, furthermore, there are a lot of people in this room much smarter than me, so I am going to use that, and i am putting together a council of sorts, kind of like the jedi council, and you are going to help me make decisions. I need all of your knowledge and perspective if I want to lead this ship correctly or even the fleet?”

There was a surprised muttering in the crowd.

“Now we will be on leave for the next few months, which give you time to think on this project a little if you are worried, but I have a feeling you guys can handle it alright. Anyway, get on out of her, go home, and make sure to get those psych evals and physicals sent to dr Krill in a timely fashion.” He looked over at the doctor, “You will be in charge of determining who is and is not ready for active duty, also I will be hiring a few new hands as an attachment to the medical department. We need to expand psych, get a real psychiatrist for how crazy you all are.” He smiled as the group chuckled, and he stepped down from his chair.

The room slowly emptied leaving only a few people left…. The same people for earlier.

Sunny was still quiet and Dr. katie had her arms crossed.

He sighed and walked forward, “I’m sorry about earlier.” he said to them.

“You should be?”

“And what about getting yourself help?” 

He turned to glance at Maverick, “I had a discussion with Mav earlier, because i thought she would be the most brutally honest with me…. She was. I will be doing a psych eval, but towards the end of leave.”

More frowning.

“I won’t be seeing a psychiatrist.” he raised his hands as the group began to mutter, “No it's alright, I've thought it through, and I have determined that for me it isn’t the best course of action. Medication has never been for me either. I know it's helpful for most people, but I just need to relax, clear my head and find a way to relieve stress. So, I’m going home for a few months.”

They still seemed skeptical, but they relaxed enough not to argue.

Ramirez seemed the first person to accept his apology and smiled, “Well good luck commander.”

A few other murmurs rose up from his friends.

He looked at Sunny, “I promise, when I get bac. I will be better, and I will do better.”  

“

[clexa--warrior]

In 2016, The 100 went into a metaphorical butthole. In the span of a few episodes the show murdered one of its most prominent Black characters in a brutal manner and then murdered its most high profile lesbian. The audience fled in droves, the show was critically panned, a national conversation about the wanton killing of lesbians on TV was had (again), and then... the CW renewed the show.

And then, the network renewed it again and again. Over the last four years, The 100 has shed its glossy CW origins and become more cautious about the murder of regulars, and become a fun little space opera full of wormholes and time travel. That brings us to literal alien buttholes.

I don’t think the fact that The 100 has become a fun show excuses what it did in the past. I know that I have zero desire to revisit the early seasons of the show, when it was about 100 teen space refugees on a nuclear war-ravaged Earth. When I picked it back up in season five I made zero effort to look up the season and a half of the show I missed after dropping it in season three. (I’m told what I missed involved a lot of weird AI stuff.)

Season five picked up five years later with a much more grounded cast of characters (for the most part). Clarke Griffin and her adopted daughter are the only two humans living on the surface of the Earth; Bellamy and a small group of survivors are seemingly well adjusted and mature people living on a ruined space station; and Clarke’s mom, Abby, and Bellamy’s sister, Octavia, are... cannibals who live underground. Also, Ivana Milicevic is Charmaine Diyoza,  a space marine turned convict from before the Earth was ravaged by nuclear war who spends most of the season battling Clarke and Octavia to claim the last speck of green left on the planet.

But by the end of season five, the entire cast is on a space ship and planning on sleeping for 125 years in the hopes Earth will revitalize itself. Instead, they wind up abandoning Earth to colonize a less desolate wasteland, Sanctum, that Monty and Harper found for them while everyone else slept. What they find there is a group of humans who are descendants of a colony created before the nuclear war, a handful of humans who download their minds to chips that effectively make them immortal, and a big green glowing maelstrom known as the Anomaly.

In season seven (the current season), the Anomaly is revealed to be a wormhole that anyone with the right equipment can use to travel between multiple worlds, including one known as Skyring where time moves much, much faster. Another, known as Bardo, was apparently previously inhabited by crystal giants who created the wormhole network, and is now home to human refugees of the nuclear war who live underground and are some kind of religious fanatics who call themselves Disciples.

The latest episode, “Nakara,” starts on Bardo where Diyoza is being questioned and held prisoner after she and Octavia were stranded on Skyring for 10 years and then dragged to Bardo as prisoners. The character has spent most of her time on the show being accused of being a badass, highly trained soldier, but we haven’t seen her in action much until this episode. She rips a man’s jugular out with her teeth, uses his bare eyeball to escape her Bardo prison, and proceeds to ruthlessly murder jailkeepers until she reunites with a small faction of regulars—including Octavia and her daughter who, thanks to the timey-wimey stuff, is now an adult.

It’s a bright and fun, if violent, sequence of events that sets up just how capable Diyoza can be. And you will want to cling to the fun of the sequence because most of the episode is about Clarke, Raven, and friends using the wormhole to travel from Sanctum in an effort to rescue their friends on Bardo. Only instead of landing on Bardo, they land on a frozen wasteland planet the Disciples use as a giant graveyard for their dead.

When Raven realizes the next Anomaly is underground and they’ll need to go spelunking to get to it and off the planet, Clarke and the others happily crawl into a hole they all note smells really bad, and keep crawling.

The hole makes noises.

And they keep crawling.

A spider monster attacks them and the hole behind them closes up.

And they keep crawling.

They find themselves in a room dripping with acid. And they keep going.

Raven notes that the acid is similar to digestive bile. And no one acknowledges it.

These fuckers spend an ENTIRE EPISODE in the belly of some kind of rock monster alien. And yet. They do not. Even ONCE. Acknowledge that they climbed down the anus of the monster and straight into its intestinal tract. Not one damn acknowledgment that they are in the butthole of a beast. At the very least, they finally realize they are about to be digested.

What do they do instead? Talk about whether they deserve to die. Raven notes they’re going to be digested and says it’s karma for all they’ve done. Clarke insists she doesn’t believe in karma—which is fair because given how many peoples she’s murdered, she’s absolutely due for karmic retribution if such a thing exists. But again, neither they nor the three others they’re traveling with say a word about how they clearly are spelunking in the asshole of an alien.

The 100 might have climbed out of its own ass to be a better and more thoughtful show, but it’s still capable of diving face-first into alien ass.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 5x04 Pandora’s Box

Another excellent episode, maybe a little less action-packed than Sleeping Giants but still fast, full of tension, new information, and many warm reunions and nice character moments - which are important to see before all these characters start having conflicts and many of these relationships get strained to the point of almost breaking later in the season. 

This one picks up immediately after the last scenes of both 5x02 (the bunker - cliffhanger with Kane as one of the fighters in the pit) and 5x03 (Eden with Bellamy, Clarke and the prisoners after Bellamy has negotiated with Diyoza, Raven and Murphy on Eligius 4), brings everyone together*, as the prisoners open the bunker and Wonkru finally gets out - and ends with the conflict that means that war between Wonkru and the Eligius prisoners is imminent. The Pandora’s Box has been opened, to use another one of Bellamy’s Greek mythology references. (Oddly enough, he makes that reference in the next episode, not in this one.)

(*Well, not everyone - Monty, Harper, Emori, Echo and Madi are MIA this episode. hiding somewhere in Eden, before they also reunite with the rest of Spacekru plus Clarke plus Wonkru in the next episode.)

If I hadn’t seen season 5 before, I’d be thinking “Will this be the best season of the show?” It is by far the season with the strongest beginning - before the plot starts to drag, building conflicts within both camps. so that war would not happen until the two-part finale. Strong beginning, strong ending, poor middle part.

After the epic Bellarke scene at the end of 5x03, this episode delivers their actual reunion, with another one of those incredibly intimate and intense hugs that Bellamy and Clarke are known for. They tend to grow in intensity, and I’ll just say this: when Tumblr flagged gifs of this hug as “explicit”, well - for once I could see why poor Tumblr bots were getting confused:

A reunion after 6 years, during which Bellamy believed Clarke to be dead, while Clarke didn’t know if Bellamy was alive but still called him on the radio and talked to him every day for 2199 days, has to be pretty epic, and this scene delivers. It seems almost like Clarke - who had been badly tortured - wasn’t entirely sure if that was really Bellamy who emerged out of the darkness to save her, of if she was imagining it, with the way she says “You are really here!”, while crying out of happiness. The intimacy in the body language and the way they look at each other is also reflected in Clarke telling him “And now you’re home!” This goes way beyond how platonic partners and non-romantic best friends interact with each other. The scene is not just acted but directed and shot in such a way that anyone who would see it without knowing Clarke and Bellamy’s actual relationship status, would get the wrong (?) idea. For a moment, they even look like people who have been caught making out, like they don’t want these strangers to witness such an intimate moment.

Even if she did not see this scene in particular, it’s no surprise that Diyoza assumed Clarke and Bellamy were a couple (“the hostage taker and his girlfriend”) after what she saw of their interactions. Really, who wouldn’t?

Bellamy quickly updates Clarke on how everyone is - Madi, Spacekru, acknowledges that Clarke has saved them all (something multiple people do in this early part of the season) and that all of the people who went to space are safe. (”Murphy, Monty, Raven?” “Echo and Emori”. - But why the Harper erasure? This is one of the very few lines in this episode that feel wrong. She’ one of the Delinquents both of them have known since they landed on Earth and Clarke would logically care about her more than Echo, who, she barely knew and who was her enemy 90% of the time. )

Another beautiful reunion happens by radio - Murphy and Raven learn that Clarke is alive. Murphy smiles the moment he hears her voice, and Raven, teary-eyed, thanks Clarke for saving their lives. The Spacekru have been criticized a lot in the fandom for not appreciating Clarke��s sacrifice, but it has to be said that, right after they learned she was alive, they all acknowledged it and expressed gratitude. (Some of them were just later angry at her and not so ready to try to understand her perspective after living isolated for 6 years.) This is one of the very few moments of happiness in season 5 (whenever I see that screenshot of Clarke and Bellamy’s big smiles, I mistake it for a moment for a BTS photo. That’s how rare it is to see characters looking happy on the actual show.)

…………………….

Meanwhile, over in the bunker, no one is happy. and everything is dark, sad and disturbing. Octavia is full Blodreina and acting like a Roman Emperor, deciding if gladiators get to earn their freedom or not. because even being “the last” doesn’t necessarily earn you freedom now - it all comes down to the Queen’s whim. Kane is forced to fight in the pit again tomorrow. I suppose they already have the next batch of fighters ready - it would be a bit weird if she expected a bunch of new “crimes” tomorrow. But things must have gotten progressively worse if they’re now having death matches every day. If they had been condemning people to the pits at that pace throughout those 6 years, even more than 1/3 of the Wonkru would be dead. 

One thing I had not noticed before - there is a singer, singing an anthem or ceremonial song before the fights start, and it is the same woman who sang the Coalition anthem in 3x03. This somewhat changes my views of the way Grounder clans chose 100 people to survive the bunker. At least one of the clans was smart enough to include a musician, rather than a bunch of warriors. There should have been even more musicians and other entertainers (you’d expect a culture like Grounders to have some sort of epic poetry!), as that would’ve helped the life in the bunker much more than warriors (and there could have been entertainment that does not include killing). But this was probably an exception, because this person probably had a high status as a ceremonial singer.

Our first look at Abby after the time jump - and she is obviously in a bad state and pill-addicted, and both she and Kane look tired and worn down. He is protecting her and taking the guilt for her crime - stealing pills, since Abby is obviously in no state to fight - and on her part, Abby wants to confess and spare him. But Indra - who has been helping them and is clearly unhappy with the way Blodreina is ruling - is more rational and knows Kane winning is the only way to save them both. Kane, however, is choosing to take a stand and refuse to fight.

Kane and Abby got a lot of flak from the fandom and were accused of hypocrisy for their attitude to Octavia later in the season - with the argument that Abby was the one who persuaded Octavia to go through with cannibalism and killing people for refusing to ear, and that Kane knew Abby’s role in it but blamed Octavia. All these arguments presume that they were blaming Octavia for the cannibalism and everything else that happened the Dark Year. But in fact, there’s zero indication that this is what they blamed her for, and it’s pretty clear that the reason why they - and others - have issues with Blodreina is that she’s been ruling by fear and throwing people into fighting pits for all sorts of reasons, and generally being a scary tyrant/leader of a cult of death and violence. Yes, as we learn later, Abby was a crucial part of how Octavia turned into that person, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is that person now, that she has absolute power in the bunker, and people have been living in fear of her. 

Kane tries to plead with Octavia when she comes to tell him he has to fight, and at this point, he seems to still believe she could change and start making better decisions. What feels a bit off to me is that he says he’s been silent for too long - this can’t be the first time he’s tried to change her mind? He would have probably had a lot more chance to succeed if he tried much earlier.  We get the first mention of the infamous “Dark Year” (this is also the episode where we first hear “All of me for all of us”) and see Octavia getting upset at its very mention (a reveal will be dragged out for 6 more episodes). It’s interesting that Jaha and Kane both mentioned Aurora Blake’s fate in their speeches to Octavia, but they used it to say completely different things. Jaha was saying that this is what you have to do, execute everyone who is the “enemy” because they endanger your survival in any way, even if it’s having one more child. Kane was saying that’s what they shouldn’t be doing anymore, she shouldn’t be doing what they did on the Ark, but do better. Octavia ended up taking Jaha’s advice, which shaped her as leader, for better or worse. (Mostly worse, IMO.) She could have maybe taken Kane’s advice years ago, but now it’s clearly too late. 

If anything, Kane’s refusal to fight makes her more determined than ever to break him - she doesn’t want to condemn him to death, she wants to break his resistance and his stubborn insistence on morality. I don’t approve of all of Kane’s later actions in season 5, but it’s really not hard to see why, after these experiences and everything in the bunker, he thought Blodreina’s rule was the worst thing that could happen.

And then - like a Deus ex machina, the bunker door opens and Bellamy is literally coming down from above, into the darkness of Octavia’s underground realm, as the savior, bathed in light, It’s the second episode in a row where he comes as a Big Damn Hero in almost dreamlike scene, from a POV of a woman in his life, this time his sister. For a moment, Blodreina is Octavia again and hugs her brother. Clarke comes down a moment later (but she is not bathed in light - she looks at the Blake siblings from the shadows.)

Instead of hugging, Clarke and Octavia greet each other with a forearm handshake - which is quite an interesting choice, particularly since (thanks @jeanie205) this is apparently a type of greeting associated with Roman generals greeting each other. (But only in Hollywood movies, It wasn’t a thing in actual Roman history.)

In addition to all the reunions, some characters meet for the first time - such as Octavia and Diyoza, who are about to become rival leaders on two sides of the war. Who could have known what their relationship would turn into in season 6 and season 7?

I love the way that everyone - Bellamy, Clarke, Diyoza and the rest of the prisoners - have the “WTF is this” look when they see the fighting pit (which is all covered in blood - apparently, they don’t wash it. It’s an aesthetic, I guess.) Bellamy soon asks Octavia what the heck she’s doing (and guesses exactly what inspired her: “Someone must have read Ovid one too many times). It’s an experience she hasn’t had in years - to have her decisions questioned by someone who’s not one of her subjects and not afraid of her.

More reunions follow: Clarke and Abby, Bellamy and Miller (another relationship that will turn sour in the rest of the season), Clarke and Kane. 

Meanwhile, on Eligius 4, Raven finds more info about Diyoza backstory - Colonel Diyoza was "something called Navy SEAL" (it makes sense that Arkers wouldn’t know about such things), decorated for valor three times, before turning into a rebel/terrorist, and leader of a movement called United Liberation Army. As we see in these articles, civilians died in these attacks, which is something Diyoza regrets in season 7 - even if her cause was right, her means were wrong.

Raven and Murphy have some fun playing soccer, but they’re also worried about the fact they may need to murder 283 people. Raven finds it hard, so Murphy offers to do it to spare her. It’s typical for their relationship that Murphy tends to see Raven as someone better and more moral than himself (in spite of the fact that she once tried to sacrifice him instead of Fin), while Raven often says disparaging things about him, even though she is fond of him.

One thing I found a bit odd that Murphy at one point says: “Why do you have to always be the one to sacrifice?” - even though this was just the second time Raven has decided to sacrifice herself, and he wasn’t even around for the first time - trying to blow the bridge in 1x10. But Murphy seems to have a somewhat idealized view of Raven, driven by his guilt over crippling her and his self-loathing. Or maybe he meant the others in the group in general. as he sees himself as the selfish cockroach as opposed to them. (Note: I initially wrote this in my 5x03 review, before I realized it was actually said in this episode. That’s what happens when you finalize posts after having seen two episodes ahead.)

Raven and her future love interest Shaw try to outsmart each other in hacking (Raven even kind of flips a bird at Shaw at one point - it’s like they are having a digital meet cute without having even met.) 

But when Diyoza finds a way to outsmart Spacekru by suffocating Raven and Murphy - Raven tells Murphy to pull the lever (usually Clarke’s job) and kill the prisoners; and when he hesitates, she goes into her fierce/ruthless mode and goes “Fine, I’ll do it”, before Murphy comes up with the smart solution that prioritizes survival and also doesn’t include mass murder - a win-win, except it also takes away Bellamy’s leverage. 

I wonder where the standoff between Wonkru and the Eligius prisoners would have led after Diyoza took Abby and Kane with her and announced her people were taking over Eden? Would war still have been inevitable? I can’t see Octavia giving up on Eden so easily. In any case, the war here was started by an idiot who shot an incredibly destructive weapon at Octavia just because her arrogant Blodreina grin pissed her off. (This guy, called Szybunka, is a part of McCreary’s faction, and here we first learn that they are preparing a rebellion against Diyoza, though McCreary thinks it’s still not time for it.)

A lot more deaths were prevented by Shaw, Major props for him in this episode both for that, and because he is the first person to finally make the point that there are so few people left of the human race and that it is incredibly stupid to kill more of them

Octavia immediately blames Bellamy for everything - even though he was the reason why she and Wonkru got out of the bunker instead of being stuck there forever/  And this time, I’m sure this was 100% meant to highlight that she has a habit of unfairly placing blame on Bellamy whenever something goes wrong in her life. 

Body count: I haven’t been doing these for a while, but now I’m doing the body count for the entire season 5 so far:

Wonkru - we learn in this episode that, out of the 1200 people in the bunker, there are 814 remaining. So, 386 - almost a third - died during those 6 years. That includes 3 people who died in the fighting pit. An additional Wonkru member is killed by the idiot Szybunka while protecting Octavia, leaving 813.

Eligius prisoners - two of the party on Earth were killed by Madi and Clarke in 5x01, Four more were killed in 5x03 - one shot by Clarke, another one mercy killed by Diyoza after getting into one of Clarke’s traps, two more shot by Madi to save Bellamy, Monty, Harper, Emori and Echo. On the ship, Kodiak, the big guy Diyoza activated as a weapon (”activate Kodiak!”) was killed in self-defense by Bellamy with help from Echo and Raven. And in 5x04, Szybunka is killed by McCreary for his stupidity. This leaves 282 prisoners on the ship and an unknown smaller number on Earth. 

Rating: 8/10

[analyzingadventure]

Catching up with Psi!

Episodes 37-41!

Episode 37, MIMI CHAN WARS, LET’S GOO

Tailmon is so intense about protecting Hiari... I love it... Patamon just wants to play... Agumon is helping with the food...

I love the wholesome interactions like these... I love them...

Sora?? WHY JUMP IN??

Dumbasses just fucking evolve Piyomon and- ah fuck it’s too late

YEAH IF YOU HAD JUST EVOLVED THIS WOULD’VE BEEN AVOIDED

And now the kids are all alone! (I mean Tailmon will protect them, I’m sure, but still) (Oh yeah Koushirou is with them too) (But Koushirou is also a baby so)

Hell yeah Mimi! Bring the justice in and save those Digimon!!

The stone castle reminds me of Vamdemon’s castle a bit...

Mimi says Capitalism Bad!! Hell yeah!!!

I like Golemon, Golemon’s a buddy :) (Please don’t kill him Psi)

I mean to be fair Greymon’s already evolved and can kick the Goblimon’s ass easily so

Mimi, what the hell are planning to do with these gems. I just. What’re you planning

IS IT BLASTMON??

XROS WARS RIGHTS?? PLEASE?

Nope, not Blastmon, woe is me ;_;

OH JESUS GOLEMON’S IN PIECES??? JESUS??

Oh god I though Mimi wanted Lilimon to eat the diamond dfkgjhsdfkghsjk

Ah, the sunset colors are super pretty, this is so nice and pretty

NEXT EPISODE, 38, BLAZING BLUE FRIENDSHIP

Oh is this the Gabumon crucification episode?

OH IT IS LMAO

Yamato how are you not dead yet

JYOU HAS FINALLY ESCAPED THE SPRING

WHERE ARE HIS CLOTHES??? JESUS

Mephismon is very cool, I love his vibes lmao

Jyou, I know how to solve this situation, you ust need a sutra-

WHY DIDN’T EVOLVE GARURUMON TO WEREGARURU???

Jyou is so happy I love him

dsfksjdfsdfgfxcjhvjxv

Awww, the divorce is still canon in Psi...

DO WE FINALLY HEAR THE BACKSTORY TO HOW YAMATO AND GABUMON MET

Yamato this is so unnececarily dangerous

BABY!!!

TSUNOMON!!! YOU ARE SO CUTE

TSUNOMON!! I am fighting my instinct to screencap every frame of him becase he is so freaking cute but oh my god... Baby...

Sassy baby...

Okay but the question is, how long ago did Yamato meet Gabumon? Was it like weeks before this entire thing began, or was it like 5 minutes before Taichi entered the Network??

This sparks joy

Honestly this whole climbing thing is so dangerous I want to argue that it would’ve been safer Zudomon had thrown his hammer at the mountain and Yamato had just rode it there

JDKFHSJKDJDF YEAH JYOU, CHANT!! DO IT!! USE THE POWER OF YOUR BIG BRAIN!!!

You’re both dumbasses ;_; <3

Oh Yamato... you lonely baby...

This is so cute y’all

OH THEY FOUND EACH OTHER TOO! NICE

Time for the POTATO HELL (episode 39)

Tailmon is CUTE ;w; <3

Yeees give me more cute Digimon hanging out

IS BURGAMON VOICED BY MOFURUN (MAHO TSUKAI PRECURE) (YES, IT IS THE SAME VOICE ACTRESS, I’M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW)

“Since fries are hard to grab” You’d think the Digimon would make bigger, easy-to-grab potatos by default then, but Gomamon’s point is valid jdfhsdg

Lunamon helps by washing Digimon, that’s so silly I love it

THERE’S A TANKMON

Are you sure this is Potato Hell? Jyou seems like he’s in Potato Heaven

IS POTAMON VOICED BY DOKAMON OH FUCK THEY ARE

I’M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW this combo of voice actors is so fucking cute I’m dying thank you so much Psi I’m in heaven

Potamon is Jyou’s Digisona jdskfhkjghdfg

This is so stupid and cute

Potamon is gonna dark evolve into Done Devimonsdjh WAIT I WAS JOKING I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO FINISH THAT SENTENCE

This episode is so fucking dumb I love it

PUSURIMON GOT TO DEBUT IN THIS EPISODE! :D (I mean like, animation debut)

This is so silly omg

YEAH JYOU, USE THAT FUCKING HAMMERDFIDHSFJDFGKLJ

This episode was dumb as balls, I loved it, 10/10

OH NEW ENDING!

Oh that was cute :3

EPISODE 40!

THEY’RE PLAYING SOCCER?! THANKS I LOVE IT

THEY’RE EVEN USING IKKAKUMON FOR THIS GAME?!

Poor Tailmon, getting stranded on the other goal... jdhfkjsdhfg

Oh that’s just a floating island, nothing unusual

Y’all really should’ve taken some cover from the stuff falling down

asdfdfgdfsgdf

Agumon how were you planning on getting the extra fruit without getting a lift from Birdramon (or did you assume you’d get a lift anyways??)

A FRIDGE

But is it filled with eggs?

oH MY GOD BABY TAICHI AND SORA WERE SO CUTE OH GOD

POMUMON! THE NEW BABY!

Turned into fruits and eaten?? I mean some Digimon just cannibalize others the way they are so IDK why they need to be turned into fruits before eaten but okay I guess

I love how the promise of juice swayed Yamato lmao

Pomumon is such a baby ;w;

WAIT DID TAICHI ALSO GET FRUITIFRIED

TAICHI HAS BEDFJSJKDFHDFGHJS HE’S A FRUIT NOW DJKFHSKJH

Pomumon, I love you, you absolute baby

Garudamon is so fucking cool in this episode y’all

Imagine having a giant bird monster tell you you’re cool

NEXT EPISODE!

Last one I can watch rn v_v 41 Mon-Mon Park in the Fog!

MONZAEMON! So the park is kinda like if they mashed the Toy Town and the random ass amusement park from Server together

OPOSSUMON!! Oh man, being reminded of Hunters is now reminding me of... him...

Man imagine if they also put references to that amusement park into this episode? That’d be wild, a true smorgasbord of references

"Land of Dreams” of fuck off don’t you tease me!!

GABUMON’S READY TO DRAG YAMATO FOR BEING AFRAID OF THE HAUNTED HAUSE JDSFHLSGHKJDFG

This is cute y’all

XIAOMON?! BABY!!? ;A;

Never gonna get tired of Pegasmon... Love the hoarse

bAKEMON?! MY BELOVED GHOST!

I call BS on Opossumon being a faster flyer than Pegasmon, c’mon dude

WARUMONZAEMON! :D

Angemon’s back yaaay

This episode wasn’t as good as the previous two but okay

Episode preview!

Nothing interesting except but Garbemon (long time no see!) and Raremon! (Last seen in Xros Wars but was redesigned, so fun to see the original design back!)

Yeah so, out of these five episodes I did enjoy 3 a lot but, yeah, the filler isn’t particularly thrilling or anything. But I had fun! And as per my previous post concerning episode 43 spoilers, while I’m not particularly excited about the next episode, I SURE AS FUCK AM FOR EPISODE 43

So I’ll see y’all either next week or two weeks from now (I might not be excited enough to watch episode 42 right when it becomes available so I might wait until 43)

[maryasmorevna]

16 17 18 for the ship ask?

16. Are there any ships you just can’t/don’t understand? What are they?

Yes. Usually they bore me, or I find them bland, or simply the dynamic isn't my cup of tea/is too vanilla/I don't get it. I have a few NOTPs, usually of the "I wouldn't touch this with a ten feet pole" kind that trigger my fight-or-flight response (no hate for the shippers, tho). The first ones that come to mind are Joker/Harley (I love them both, but not together. Just no), Littlefinger/Sansa and Th*amsay from ASOIAF, then blander stuff like Jo/Laurie from Little Women (apparently there's a 150 years long war going on in the fandom lol), F*nnrey from SW (I am a Reylo, and in another world I would have even liked them, but alas, antis exist and the shippers ruined the ship for me), Ichigo/Orihime from Bleach (I used to be a staunch IchiRuki fan, so you can guess my feelings about the manga ending lol, even if I've not been in the fandom for many years and now I don’t care that much tbh), Eleven/Clara from Doctor Who, Harry/Ginny from HP, Alucard/Seras from Hellsing (especially the manga/OVAs; the anime, maybe that’s a different story), Matt/Karen from Daredevil… But they're very few. I'm a multishipper and can get behind almost everything, especially if a fic is well-written. Believe me, I've read and enjoyed some weird stuff. Usually it's not that I hate some pairings or I am anti X ship, I simply don't care lmao. It's more of a *shrugs* whatever reaction than anything else, really. I don’t even block content, I genuinely don’t even care when they cross my dash. Go figure lmao.

17. Are there any popular ships that you just don’t like? What are they?

There are a few, yes! I deliberately avoided to mention them in the previous answer, so I wouldn't have to repeat myself. 

First of all, Jon/Daenerys from ASOIAF; I like both characters (I especially love Dany to death, she's one of my favorite female characters ever), but… I swear it's not for the incest (that should've made it a little more interesting in my eyes), it's just that I don't care lol. Also Dean/Castiel from SPN; I remember that when I watched the show I couldn't understand the hype. Also, most recently, Geralt/Jaskier from The Witcher.

And… please, please, @villainsmatter, don't shoot me, but I first got into the Hannibal fandom through The Silence of the Lambs when I was 14 and back then the NBC show wasn't a thing yet, so I've never cared much for Hannibal/Will. In the books their relationship is very different from the show; basically, it's Clarice Starling who plays this role for Hannibal (and again, the last Hannibal book where the titular cannibal and his favorite FBI agent hook up and live happily ever after was published in 1999). That said, no hate for the show, the shippers, or even the ship itself. (Also, multishipping is a thing! And it's great.) Hannigr*m is one of those cases of “I get it, I really do, but for some unfathomable reason I can't get behind it”. Probably because Clannibal has been such a formative OTP for me in my young teen years, so I can't ship them with anyone else but each other. Which is rare for me, I assure you that I can ship almost anything.

I also don't care for most of the usual romcom/YA pairings (for example, The Hunger Games love triangle was the least interesting thing about the whole trilogy): I love romance, but apparently my tastes are weird, and most of them are so boring anyway.

18.  What is your favorite unpopular ship?

As in, rarepair that nobody gives a fuck about? I have a lot of those, so I won't talk at length about them all, but if I'd get to choose only one… Tyrion/Daenerys from ASOIAF. I've been shipping them like crazy (me and like, 2 other people in the whole fandom) since the ADWD release, well before they officially met up in the show. They're probably two of the ASOIAF characters who share more parallelisms with each other, and in GoT it got confirmed that Tyrion harbored romantic feelings for Dany in the shitty last episode, but God, it was handled so badly (like everything else). It was also insane that no one could "see it" when Peter Dinklage had clearly stated in the interviews that Tyrion was "smitten" with Dany, and kept looking at her like that. I don't want to sound like the general anti and be like "if you don't ship this you're x-ist!!!!" because that's not the case, but I can't shake the feeling that had Tyrion looked more like his able-bodied brother, everyone would - not ship it, but realize that yes, he was falling in love with her, and no, it wasn't platonic. The general quality of the show's writing didn’t help, though, and D&D can’t, like, write romance (see also how they kept erasing Tyrion's sexuality and general complexity from Season 5 onward). But the subtext was there.

GRRM is famously a big fanboy of Beauty and the Beast, and Tyrion is his favorite character, so I wonder how different their relationship will be in the next books (if they ever get released, that is, which I'm starting to doubt). I don't expect any kind of happier or kinder resolution, though; I'm just curious.

Thank you, dear! ❤ (I hope my Hannigr*m reveal didn’t upset you lol)

[antihero-writings]

A Touch of Song and Salem 

Fandom: Hetalia (Firefly Crossover)

Summary: Earth got used up. They got used up. So the nations of the world had to flee into the black...but they'll only ever be half alive now.

America forgot how to smile at the academy...but maybe a day out planetside is all she needs. Hopefully the people on said planet won't try to burn her down.

(A fusion-style crossover with fem!America and Canada from Hetalia in the Firefly universe, cast as Simon and River during the dance and witch scenes of the episode "Safe.")

Notes: Written for my friend @ladynephthyss’ birthday!! The characterizations of the Hetalia characters are based on her characterizations of them!! (She plans on posting some Hetalia stuff soon, please go check her out!!)

We both love Firefly, especially Simon and River, and as I love writing fusion-style crossovers I thought this would be perfect!!

If you enjoy this fic, please consider commenting and/or reblogging!! It really means the world to me!!

Chapter 1:

She’s dancing.

God, Matthew thinks, how long has it been?

How long has it been since he last saw her dance?

When the war ended in some distant year—when German tyrants, and a bullet or two, were all they had to worry about? When they were children, and Earth was whole and they were more than ghosts flying through the sky?

She dips and twirls, like a mermaid in an ocean of sound, her blonde hair flickering, her pink dress fluttering, her cargo boots pounding like a heartbeat on the makeshift stage, her petite form tossed and turned with the waves.

He doesn’t know the song. Neither does she. They don’t have to.

There’s a fiddle, and a flute, and the stage is full of people whirling and beaming, like they’re on a ride at the state fair, like the world didn’t foreclose all those years—(too soon)—ago.

It sounds like an old folk song back home.

Home, the ground, without inanimate metal clanking beneath their feet every time they tried to walk.

Home, where there was a whole lot of dirt and magma between them and the dark. Now the only thing keeping them from endless, breathless vacuum is a piece of rusty metal and a dream.

Home, with it’s borders, telling you where to go, where not go, what’s me, and what’s you. Not here. Here there’s nothing to say ‘keep out!’ but death itself. And there’s no me, no you, when, where we walk. Just lawless, mindless black.

Home, where the sky was above their heads.

Home. Them.

She looks like she’s home too. The ground may not be her own, but any ground feels like a reunion with an old friend, and she can allow herself to—just for a second—breathe again.

She looks like she’s home.

She looks like home.

She is the only home he knows now. The only ground he can count on. The only safe place to rest his head.

How long has it been since they’ve heard music?

When the wars ended, girls in pretty dresses danced and sang, and everyone waved their flags?

When Papa took them to the opera and they fidgeted in their seats, trying to play games without getting caught?

When Arthur took them to see a famous singer or two, and they started to see what all the fuss was about?

It’s been so long since they heard music. Not a single, lonesome melody. The black didn’t provide much as far as records, radios, and mp3s go. All they had were their own voices out here, the echo swallowed by the stars.

Amelia would sing, sometimes, on the ship. He knew it. In the lone hours of the morning when she thought no one could hear her, she would sing Serenity to sleep. The witching hour when the nightmares and all-too-real-mares kept her awake.

The witching hour, when all the best witches were up.

A man in a brown jacket and sash comes to dance with her, and a smile holds her up, as if pulled on strings, pulling her back, back, tethering her to a time when she was an eager-to-please American girl. Well, no, not quite. There was something fake there, then. Something plastered on. This isn’t made of stitches, and glue, and expectations.

This is America.

This is free.

A smile begins to break across the Canadian’s face too, like all the masks they’ve put on—(and there are many layers to get through)—are cracking, and for a brief moment she is America again, and he is Canada, and it’s them against a world that still exists.

Wild thing. Wild, wild girl.

She didn’t like being caged. Didn’t deserve it. Being cooped up in a tin can hurtling through nothing but the dark, gravity a distant memory. She didn’t like being away from her land.

None of them did. It felt like taking a drug you’re allergic too—not allergic enough to stop breathing, but allergic enough to never feel right, to always feel a little sick, so long as you take it. And she wasn’t the only one who had bouts of not-quite-sanity because of it.

How long has it been since they’ve been out?

The others went on missions—(a funny image: the Nations of the earth, stealing from the very people they once called their own, once called themselves, in order to survive…what a sorry lot they were). But the Captain regarded America as a bomb two ticks from going off; he didn’t dare think that going out planetside would bring her back down to, well…Earth. Or what passes for it these days.

It is at this point that she catches sight of her brother, standing out in the grass—so much greener when your world has been grey for so long. Those eyes, glittering, reflecting the sky—blue here, now, not black and white…(Dorothy, do you think we’re back in Kansas now?)—that smile is for him now. It makes her face shine, and he doesn’t think he deserves that smile, this golden girl…

…How long had it been since he last saw her smile? Really smile. Not an ignorant, or a plastered, or a not-quite-sane smile, but really truly smile?

It always seemed to go back to wars ending. A nice president maybe. No personal happiness. Just that of the world, and being told we can stop fighting our friends now. We can stop fighting…because we made them too weak to stand.

Was there anything personal to speak of?

England and her remembering, in a house in the moors, like a childhood dream, they still cared about each other.

Papa and her baking pastries. Matthew and her eating them all by themselves.

There was them. Her and Arthur. Her and Francis. Her and…him.

They all smiled before. She smiled.

He has a photograph from some year starting with nineteen where he managed to get that million-dollar-sighting, of his million-dollar-girl, and that more-than-a-million-dollar smile. A gentle, flickering thing, like catching a sunbeam with a net.

She smiled when they ran into the forest at their borders, smoking weed, stealing moonshine, running from the rest of the world, and all their bottled happiness.

Whenever their world was about something greater than pursuing happiness…that’s when they seemed to find it.

But you can’t chase a negative, can you? And we always must be chasing something. So let’s chase a smile all the same.

They were children once. Before all the wars and all the victories. Before they needed herb and liquor to laugh. Before they were used up, stripped for their parts, they and their people shipped out, the address on the box a blot of ink.

“We’re in trouble!” a little golden head pops out from behind the coffee table.

Matthew continues writing.

“We got cut off!” she gets closer.

“Cut off? Cut off from what?” he asks with the air of someone who isn’t really paying attention.

“Our platoon, Matthew!” she says like they’d been over this a hundred times. “We got outflanked by the independent squad and now we’re never gonna make it back to our platoon.”

He doesn’t respond.

“We need to resort to cannibalism.”

Matthew still doesn’t look up, unfazed by the should-be-alarming phrase, as if they resort to cannibalism every other day.

“That was fast,” is all he says. Like the only difference from all the other times is it took longer before. “Don’t we have any rations or anything?”

“They got lost. We’re gonna have to eat the men.”

Matthew looks up now, impatience leaking into his tone. “Aren’t you supposed to be practicing for your dance recital?”

She pouts.“I can’t practice without a partner…But maybe…if a kind nation were to offer his help…” she twirls her hair, trying to make herself look like the pretty girls in the books and paintings.

“Papa’s in the other room.” He flicks his pen in that direction.

She jumps up on the couch like a cat, swiping the notebook out of his hands with the same air—

“Amelia—!”

“Dance with me!”

The Great White North blinks up at his sister.

They are small. So small they could follow foxes into their dens, and fit into hollowed out trees in neverlands.

He glares at her. “No,” he picks up the the book, brushing it off. “I need to work on this.”

“You can work on that tomooorow.” She puts her chin on his knee and blinks, giving him those puppy-dog eyes. “don’t you love me?”

He lifts up his knee, trying to get her away. “No, you’re the worst.” He says, sounding very much like a nine-year-old boy.

She starts crying, like any self-respecting nine-year-old girl should.

At this he casts the notebook away, looking at her with pleading eyes “Wait—no! I didn’t mean it! It was just a joke!”

“Mon dieu!” Francis deigns this as the moment to walk into the room. “Whatever is the matter mon petit cheri?”

“Matthew won’t dance with me!” she points accusingly at him, her other hand rubbing her eye.

“Aww...But, my dear, is that a crime?”

Amelia pauses, thinks for a second. Matthew can almost see the gears turning in her head. “Yes! I heard the king say so!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes! He said ‘by my decree, all brothers must dance with their sisters’!”

“Well, if the king said so, then there isn’t much I can do, is there?”

“But Papa!” Matthew stands to protest.

France is already setting the needle down on the old record on the desk. Amelia holds out her hand, smirking, checkmate, written in her eyes.

Matthew snorts, taking her hand.

They were children once. And she smiled, and she danced, and she joked, and she cried and made up laws to get what she wanted.

They were children once. They were happy once.

But that was before. Before the world burned, and the sky turned black. That was before the Academy broke her into bits and made weapons out of the pieces.

Now dancing, music, Earth, happiness, are distant memories. A memory within a memory, until you can’t remember what’s the dream and what’s real, if you made it all up, and what’s your dream, after all.

They were children once. But they grew up, and the earth got used up. And they traded their souls for smiles in dark alleyways and cramped quarters.

She looks so small. So weak. Sitting in the cargo hold of some ship with a name like ‘Dauntless’ or ‘S.S. Elizabeth’—(they all hated people who gave unbreathing things names that breathed). So small. But no trees and fox dens to hide in this time. Just a room full of boxed-up lives, in this purring, creaking bus, taking them to new universes where the grass wasn’t greener.

Their governments provided nothing but the best for their nations’ transport to new worlds. But they could never understand what it’s like to be ripped from yourself. And people could get insensitive at even the best of parties.

So small. Nineteen-but-not-nineteen-years-old, and she looks like she hasn’t eaten in months—(though he has eye-witness accounts that she ate more than one burger in the same sitting a few days ago). Her dress, hanging off her, bones that look like they could snap at any moment. She shivers.

They all look like this; like they’ve been used up.

They say it will be better, out there. Americans will be American on other Americas, and Canadians will be Canadian on other…well, you get the gist. But they know that while their people keep them alive, and their land keeps them alive, because it’s still there…their land is still there. America will always be America, on Earth, Canada will always be Canada…and these are just distant moons, and half-baked dreams.

And they will always only be half-alive now.

She asked them once, she asked them with a child-like yearning in her eyes, and a woman’s anger in her closed fists, if they would die. If, when their feet left their ground, they’d just float away. If this was what dying felt like, and they’d all been fading for a long time now.

Father said he didn’t know. That he hoped not.

Papa said softly that it might be better if they did.

And Matthew said if they did, they would die together.

So now she’s here, worse than dead; undead. A zombie, shaking in the cargo hold of some ill-named ship, because some politician said something stupid—like most of them do.

“Great party, huh?” Matthew spits as he rounds the corner.

Amelia looks up, then puts her head back on her knees. “Great party.” She repeats in the same tone.

“Good cake though,” he offers her the plate he brought from upstairs.

She blinks up at him, then shakes her head and lowers it again.

He sets the cake down on a nearby box.

“Dance with me.” He holds out his hand.

“W-What?” There’s something real in her eyes when she looks up.

“Amelia Jones, may I have the pleasure of dancing with you?”

She rolls her eyes. “There’s no music…Idiot.”

“Then…I’ll sing for you.” He swings back and forth on the rails.

“Really? You? Last time you sang it sounded like a dying cat.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes.

“Come on.” He holds out his hand. “Do you have any other plans?”

She takes a deep breath and stands. He puts one hand on her waist, the other on her shoulder. Her head falls easily on his shoulder, like it took all her effort just to hold it up, and he’s the last safe bit of land that hasn’t been taken from her.

And he sings a new song:

“Take my love

“‘Take my land

“Take me where I cannot stand.

“I don’t care, I’m still free

“You can’t take the sky from me.

“Take me out

“To the black

“Tell ‘em I ain’t coming back

“Burn the land

“And boil the sea

“You can’t take the sky from me”

And she cries.

They were children once. They grew up once. And they were used up, once. And all it takes is once to make it hard to smile, hard to dance, hard to sing, hard to find any solid ground to stand on, to hold on to.

But not today. Today is different. Today she’s found ground. Today she can dance. Today she can smile. And maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.

She holds out her hand to him, Come dance with me! written into her features, and he moves forward to join her—

And the black comes crashing back, pulled over his head.

And she isn’t smiling anymore.

[bookburnt]

a primer course on T.MA for my mutuals who followed me from other blogs and would like to know what the fuck i’m talking about!  (hi, guys.  love you.)  GONNA BE SPOILER-HEAVY IN HERE.

First off, big ups to the T.MA wiki, which you can consult on anything here, but this post is intended to serve as a very basic overview of the concepts relevant to this blog without forcing y'all to go into wiki levels of detail.  The first part of this post is some general TMA terms and concepts, and the second part is some characters who have been relevant to Gerry's story specifically.  If you're here for a better understanding of Gerry’s arc and don't care so much about the worldbuilding, scroll down to where I start talking about “who’s...?” and that should help you out.

what’s a “Leitner?”  A Leitner is a book but spooky.  They make bad things happen and, optionally, give you weird powers.  They're usually tied to one of the fourteen(ish) Entities, which I will get into in a bit.  Gerard hates these goddamn books, and has a knack for finding them and destroying them.  His mother, Mary Keay, ran an antique bookstore that did serious business in them.

what’s an “avatar?” An avatar is a (former?) human working closely with one of the Entities. Over time, the influence of their Entity changes them, often granting them certain powers in exchange for a psychological and physiological need to serve their Entity.

what are these “Entities?” / what’s this “Hunt?”  Put as simply as possible, the Entities are, like... fear elementals.  There are roughly 14 different entities, though the boundaries between them aren’t clearly drawn in all circumstances.  As follows, a quick overview:

The Eye. Fear of being surveiled.  The need to know the answers to questions that may destroy you.  The Eye is tied to the Magnus Institute. Its avatars can have the ability to magically Know things, understand all languages, and compel others to answer any questions they ask.  Gerry was tied to the Eye and had some capacity for Knowing stuff, but wasn’t fully its avatar - or if he was, he refused to feed it, which must have hastened his death.

The Desolation.  Fire, but without the warm fuzzy bits.  Pure unhinged destruction.  Desolation avatars can and will set you on fire with their minds.  Gerry’s extensive burn scars are the result of fucking around with a Desolation cultist and finding out.   (The cultist also fucked around with Gerry and found out.  He’s not around anymore.)  

The Hunt.  Being tracked by something that won't stop until it kills you.  The thrill of the chase.  Hunt avatars are capable of killing other avatars, even those who would otherwise be unkillable.  The possibility of Gerry being tied to the Hunt is never discussed in canon, but I’ve got my theories.  (That last phrase is a link to a post discussing those theories, it just isn't showing up like a link on desktop for some reason.)

The End.  Death and dying.  Manifestations of the End often involve disruptions of the natural processes of life and death.  For instance, the fucked-up necromancy book that Gerry got trapped in after dying was an outcropping of the End.

The Corruption.  Bugs, disease, rot, etc.  The Corruption's avatars may spread disease wherever they go, or they might just be chock full of worms.  Potential of controlling a worm army.

The Flesh.  The inherent weirdness of existing in a body.  Cannibalism. Flesh avatars may be hulking, twisted parodies of the human form.  They might steal your bones, turn you inside out, eat you, or all of the above.

The Distortion.  The inherent weirdness of existing in a mind.  Doors that shouldn't be there.  Getting lost.  Being unable to trust your own thoughts.  Distortion avatars look, well, distorted when seen in reflections or through glass.  Will probably try to get you to go through a door that wasn't there before.  You won't like what's on the other side.

The Slaughter.  War.  Violence.  Man's inhumanity to man.  The Slaughter often manifests in groups as well as in individuals, so you could get an episode of mass hysteria where an entire small town turns to butchering one another, or you could get an office assistant who just aches to do murder.

The Web.  Spiders.  Being controlled by external forces.  Can operate in extremely subtle ways.  Can also just be an unkillable spider who wants you to have a bad time.

The Vast.  Really big things.  Heights.  Your own terrifying insignificance on the cosmic scale.

The Buried.  Claustrophobia.  Being buried alive.

The Lonely.  Being completely alone.  Like, completely alone, and never coming back.

The Dark. What it says on the tin.

The Stranger.  Something that's not quite right.  A joke that you're not in on.  Clowns and/or mannequins that might kill you and take your skin.

BONUS: The Extinction. While the other 14 fears have been established for a while (the most recent is the Flesh, which only really came into its own with the advent of mass meat farming), the Extinction is a nascent entity born of anxiety around the idea of the human race destroying itself, and/or being replaced by something else. The boundaries of what constitutes an Extinction manifestation, rather than just a warping of one of the other fears, are unclear.

what’s a “ritual?”  Rituals are ways the Entities’ followers and avatars try to influence the world, usually with the end goal of making our world somewhere their Entity can live and feast full-time instead of just sporadically popping in.

what’s the “fearpocalypse?”  The only successful ritual to date, as of the end of S4.  Possibly the only successful ritual ever, given that it ended the world as we know it and let all 14 fears fully through the gate to fuck everything all the way up.  The sky is full of eyeballs now and that's not even the biggest problem.  This happened a while after Gerry’s death, but I have a verse where, due to his previous ties to the End and the general befuckening, Gerry is brought back to have a bad time with everyone else.

who’s Mary Keay?  Gerard's mother, founder and proprietor of Pinhole Books.  Had ambitions of starting a dynasty of supernatural power, starting with her only son Gerard, who ended up having other ideas.  Flayed herself in a ritual to make herself “beyond death” via the fucked-up necromancy book mentioned earlier.  Gerard was primed to take the fall for her seeming murder, but was let go after the book disappeared from evidence and several key witnesses retracted their testimony.  Despite the ritual being incomplete, Mary remained tethered to the world of the living for five years before Gertrude Robinson finally wrapped that up.

who’s Gertrude Robinson?  Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, and a stone-cold BAMF with a habit of sacrificing those close to her for (her idea of) the greater good.  The late Eric Delano asked her to look after his son Gerry, so naturally she let him live in torment with his abuser’s revenant for five fucking years, then swooped in when he was truly desperate.  She got rid of Mary Keay for good, and got Gerard to travel the world with her attempting to prevent various apocalyptic rituals.  The two would often pose as mother and son to strangers.         Being tied to the Eye, Gertrude seemed to be aware of Gerard’s impending death.  After he passed away, she bound him into that fucked-up necromancy book and left him behind.  (More on that here.) Gertrude was shot to death about a year later while trying to burn the Magnus Institute down and thereby prevent its head, Elias Bouchard, from doing anything apocalyptic.  (Tragically, she did not succeed.  SEE:  “fearpocalypse.”)

who’s Eric Delano?  Gerry’s father.  Died too early to ever really get to know Gerry, despite the sacrifices he made to restructure his life for fatherhood.  (We don’t need to go into the why of it here, but he did have to gouge his eyes out to try to be a stay-at-home dad.  And he did it.  We stan.)  Unfortunately, he’d fallen in love with Mary Keay, who used him to produce an heir for her planned empire, then murdered him with a pair of garden shears and bound him into that fucked-up necromancy book.  She later passed his page off to Gertrude Robinson, who spoke with him.  In that conversation, he asked her to look after Gerry and begged her to burn his page, as being bound into the book was a world of suffering. 

who’s Jurgen Leitner?  A rich, reclusive Norwegian who thought it would be cool and smart to start a library explicitly for corralling forces beyond human comprehension.  (He was wrong, and also stupid.)  Collected spooky books and put his name in them, giving them their common name.  Gerard hates this guy, associating him with the books that dominated his mother’s mind and indirectly ruined his life.  He hunted Leitner down and nearly beat him to death for personal reasons.  Upon meeting Leitner, he came away with the impression that this was just a scared old man, and couldn’t possibly be actually responsible for Jurgen Leitner’s library.  Ultimately, he chose to spare Leitner's life.  Unless we're talking about my canon-divergent Hunter!Gerry au, in which case he did not.

        Anyways, hope this has been helpful.  There's... a lot going on in TMA, but hopefully I've hit the parts that are most relevant to my writing here.  If you have any questions about canon, please feel free to ask!