#also i have casting speculation

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

if anyone wants to hear an infodump about frankenstein lmk bc i'm vibrating rn. all dressed up and nowhere to go

[hinamie]

I dive into the water and struggle on the surface where I can't stand

jjk atla!au with @philosophiums

[sleepyorchidmonster]

Soo, remember in Glorious Masquerade, when Malleus came up with the story that the cause of the Crimson Lotus was unknown, and Rollo was actually trying to save everyone alongside the NRC students?

What if that's another bit of foreshadowing for the end of Book 7?

Briar Valley is in a really precarious position now, still recovering from the Silver Owls, with the Senate mostly taking over while Maleficia grieves, so Malleus overblotting is just another blow to the fae, even if students like Leona, Kalim, Vil and Idia manage to advocate on his behalf.

So why not spin the tale of how there was an unnamed threat on the island that was so Dire (pun intended for Crowley) and all-encompassing that Malleus had to go all out?

To avoid collateral damage and prevent the issue from reaching the rest of the globe, he had no choice but to use his UM to cover the whole island, keeping everyone safe in a peaceful slumber while the threat was dealt with. Luckily, STYX coordinated efforts with the rest of Briar Valley and they managed to subdue the threat both inside and outside the barrier, and everyone is safe now!

That way, the world can see Malleus not as an uncontrollable monster, but as a fierce protector who might go a bit overboard, but means well (also he's a dragon and his remaining family was on the island, so his protectiveness is understandable). Therefore, it's best to befriend the fae and Briar Valley than make enemies out of them!

The only problem is the rest of the student body and staff that saw the overblot at Lillia's farewell party, but I'm pretty sure STYX's Lethe program is back on to deal with the mobs, while the rest of the cast can be sworn to secrecy in exchange for having Malleus owe them a favour (they can use Azul's UM for the NDA).

As for the problem, NRC has been dealing with overblots at least once a month, not to mention the STYX invasion, and the Phantom Dwarves back in the mines, and how Book 7 might introduce the true mastermind and that's what we have to deal with in Book 8... They just have to pick ONE of the options above.

As a sidenote, having Sunset Savanna become Briar Valley's fiercest allies because Leona told his brother that Malleus is his friend would be so funny. Falena sees his depressed brother going to the trouble of making a whole Power Point presentation to convince the council on the benefits of allying to Briar Valley, all to save a school friend, and just decides that Malleus Draconia will have his unending support. Kifaji too.

(Leona has been ignored and belittled so many times that he prepared for the worst and made a whole slide presentation in hopes of defending his point well enough. Shoud've just led with "Malleus Draconia is a friend of mine who just went through a very traumatic experience and I want to help him" Kifaji and Falena would accept in a heartbeat).

BONUS:

Leona: *Practicing his Power Point presentation at 2AM*

Cheka: Unca, what are you doing in the middle of the night?

Leona: I'm just practicing, no one (my dormmates aside) ever likes my ideas and I have to make sure this works...

Cheka: Why?

Leona: Well you see... [starts explaining the inportance of supporting Briar Valley at theur moment of need and the benefits an alliance may bring to the table] ... also the Lizard would love if-

Cheka: Why do you keep calling Malleus Draconia "Lizard"? Is he your friend? Do you want to help him?

Leona, sighing: Yeah kiddo, he is my friend. He's been going though some tough times, almost lost his father and brother, and as much as we butt heads, well, no one deserves that...

Cheka: So why don't you just say that he's your friend and you wanna help him instead of talking about those "tweatwies"?

Leona: First of all, it's "treaties", and second, well, Briar Valley is in trouble, and helping them might get us in trouble too. Also I'm just the accursed second prince, people never listen to me, I need to back up my proposal with facts.

*random noise that sounds like a mix between a growl and a sob (Falena and Kifaji are eavesdropping lol)*

Leona: What's that?!

Cheka, panicking: Probably the wind....

*THE NEXT DAY*

Leona, finishing the presentation: And that's my proposal, any questions?

Random councilman: Well I-

Kijaji, smiling menacingly: I think it's a splendid idea, Leona. Briar Valley has been a longtime friend of ours, so it's only right that we help them in their time of need.

Falena, also smiling menacingly: Agreed! I'm so proud of you, my brother!

Leona: Wait, seriously!?

Falena's wife, smiling and sharpening a knife while subtly observing the other councilmen, marking targets: Of course, Leona! You have a sharp mind and this is a good plan. Briar Valley will have Sunset Savanna's full support for the coming criais, isn't that right, councillors?

Other councillors: Yes Ma'am!! Don't kill us pls

[langernameohnebedeutung]

thinking about how Ravi once mentioned that 'all the zombies we met had blue eyes' after meeting Liv, Blaine, and Lowell and I just imagine him doing his zomb-doctoring and he realises they're all looking at him like-

[danwhobrowses]

Okay so this'll be the last post I make regarding Critical Role until c3e119 airs since while the antipathy and, for lack of a better word, deflation revolving around 118 has been a little disheartening, I do want to throw a few things that continue to bounce off the inside of my head out there before we get to the next episode;

I don't think it's needed (as someone who very much wants them all to survive - including ones I like less than others - and be able to continue figuring themselves out) for BH to die or be betrayed or be subject to additional punishment to justify what's happening. This fight IS their punishment, their consequence, their Finding Out after Fucking Around

Also, if the gods refuse to help BH - if asked - it proves Ludinus right. Refusing aid would indicate that they really are picking favourites out of self interest, plus the taking on Predathos option was only proposed to BH by one of their own, so it'd be double scummy

Campaign 3 has still had some great, funny and heartbreaking moments that we shouldn't forget about just because these current events are fresh, plus C1 and 2 weren't perfect - worth reminding that too

Honestly, if FCG were alive the same thing would've happened anyway; Matt would've made the coin flip be indecisive so the cast could make the choice and Imogen would've chosen the same way

While we definitely could've built to this better, this fight will provide the floor for BH to confront a key character motivation; be it preventing the overtaking and corrupting influence of a malicious or feral psyche, having to decide whether to trust that their ally can overcome it or follow through with what a superior entrusted them to do as a countermeasure, or simply trying to protect and prevent another friend from dying - which, alongside the likely map change and expected unique minis, is actually kinda exciting

Just, let's go into 119 with an open mind, okay? They have to earn it for sure but it's not over until it's over.

[mermaidsirennikita]

https://x.com/yukitsunaurda/status/1859357803392950434?t=15mdHebDx_zZmZRWVSUBnA&s=19

did you see this...

YES.

Emerald is officially one of the hackiest hacks to ever hack in my book. And honestly? I don't know what to call this other than blatant racism.

Edgar Linton is not "the nice guy" (though I do think a lot of modern love triangles unconsciously or consciously take a cue from the Heathcliff/Cathy/Edgar love triangle). He is symbolic of everything Heathcliff is not or perceives himself not to be. He's also aspirational for Cathy, who views him and his family as what she SHOULD aspire to, even though she's denying her true nature.

(Which plays into the Romantic themes of the novel, of course; Cathy is probably denying the natural self and world on a symbolic level. On a more basic level, Cathy basically no set identity, or is perhaps completely muddled because she does have an identity and won't accept it. I always say: Remember that Catherine Earnshaw dies between... what? 20-22? She's not a fully formed person and never gets to be, and this is why casting someone in her thirties as Cathy is absolutely not something that works. I also find that Cathy, while not a good person, gets a bad rap when people equate her behavior with Heathcliff's, because a) Cathy did not abuse/rape anyone (edit: Cathy doesn't rape anyone but she is abusive to Heathcliff at first) b) Heathcliff continues his bullshit for decades, where Cathy dies so young and her behavior really reads as that of a very troubled young woman, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. I JUST HATE THIS WHOLE PROJECT.)

Heathcliff literally refers to Edgar's whiteness when (very, very sadly—like, whatever Heathcliff becomes, it's an extremely sad passage) discussing how Heathcliff can't be what Edgar is simply because he's "low", doesn't look like Linton, doesn't act like Linton (by no fault of his own, as Hindley treated him like an animal and he never had the opportunity to learn Linton's graces).

In another story, Heathcliff is the bootstraps guy who kind of admirably comes back, somehow having made a sizable fortune, where Linton is the product of soft generational wealth. And frankly? Never has Heathcliff's strength of will (whatever that will was used for).

But because Linton is white and upper class and Heathcliff is neither of those things, this is an immeasurable block, a ceiling on Heathcliff's rise. Linton is representative of that ceiling. And he's also representative of the way that society essentially perverts peoples' true natures. Catherine does not think to be anything other than what she is—wild—until she gets stuck with the Lintons for a while and comes to see what she is as WRONG and puts the Lintons on a pedestal. This is why I think it's important to remember that while the Earnshaws have this land and money, they're not *THAT* high. Catherine is marrying up when she marries Edgar. And while she's very much a white woman, she is not a white woman who comes from exactly the same type of class as Linton, because the Earnshaws are, essentially, messes.

(Insert Heathcliff and Cathy are half-siblings theory here,)

And marrying Linton and caving to the pressures of white society basically has her dooming the lot of them. Including Linton and his sister.

Which—by the way. WHO IS PLAYING ISABELLA.

Part of the "Heathcliff is meant to be read as a man of color" argument lies as well in the way in which everyone acts as if Isabella and Heathcliff's marriage is like, this total aberration. And yes, Linton just hates his ass, and yes, Cathy is both jealous and very aware that The Boy Ain't Right and Isabella is signing up for suffering. But there's an underlying tone that says... Perhaps.. There is another reason why Heathcliff and Isabella *cannot* marry (even though they do it anyway). Is it perhaps because Heathcliff... is not white?

I mean, yeah.

So now you'll presumably have Isabella as a woman of color. Which is just as narrative-fucking as Shazad as Linton. When he could've EASILY been Heathcliff.

Worst take on colorblind casting EVER.

[threewaysdivided]

The Shaper of Minds and its possible consequences for a certain character

I have finally joined the rest of the internet in losing my mind over a D&D Podcast - in my case, the wonderful Dan Jones & Dragons.  With Episode 26 due to stream on Dan’s Twitch this week, I really want to talk about some of the stuff that came up across the just-finished Gala sessions because the fallout from that has the potential to be incredibly fraught.

THE SHAPER OF MINDS

The relic the Flower Crowns were going after this mission – The Shaper of Minds – is a potentially fascinating narrative device that might as well have been lab-engineered to be my exact brand of personal nightmare fuel.   It’s a small, ornate brass key that can alter any part of the target’s mental faculties/thoughts/memories at will should the wielder touch it to any part of their victim’s skin.

Now, on one hand, there are a heap of interesting (and even benevolent) applications for a tool like that.  It could instantly grant access to skills, languages and knowledge that would otherwise take a person years of study to learn.  It could be used to sort through and resolve memories that had been faded by time, muddied by trauma or forcibly supressed by magical/medical means.  But on the other…

As described and used in campaign so far, the primary function of the Mindshaper is to alter memories (and the attendant personality) with the target having no awareness that their mind has been changed.  It’s basically gaslighting on steroids, except that where a gaslighting victim still retains their original recollection – and has to be manipulated by their abuser into doubting their own perceptions and instead accepting the alternate telling of events (a cognitive dissonance that can eventually lead the person to recognise the manipulation) – the Shaper of Minds entirely replaces the original recollection of events with the version the wielder wants their victim to perceive.  There is no internal conflict between accounts, no inconsistencies that could alert the victim that someone has broken into their head and rewritten their perceived reality.  The person they reshape you to be is the person you believe you always were.  And all it takes is a single touch.

That is a brand of existential horror that had me on edge all throughout Session 24 (basically from the moment it was implied the key was in play).   Reality may be objective, but each individual person’s internal reality is governed by their perception – their memories – of the events in their life, no matter how incomplete, biased or otherwise skewed that personal perspective may have been.  You have value just by being you because you are not replaceable, but the thing that makes you unique is, in large part, the sum total of those inimitably specific personal memories.  No-one else will perceive the world in exactly the same way you do, and even a few minor changes to just a few of those perceptions can flow on to massive differences in ideals, values, priorities and future choices.  In that regard, the use of the Mindshaper Key isn’t so much an alteration as an obliteration of the victim’s former self and replacement with someone new; even if that new stranger is largely indistinguishable from the original.  And, again, all it takes is a single touch.

[Sidenote:  This made Mister Wick an especially effective antagonist to wield the key, since his Galas functionally trap even targets who are aware of the threat within the rules of high-society behavioural expectations.  Otherwise-innocuous actions like a handshake or private conversation suddenly become incredibly dangerous, while being nigh-impossible for the Flower Crowns to extract themselves from without committing an atrocious faux pas and potentially tipping Wick off.  Perfectly designed stage for a psychological horror-thriller encounter.]

Which of course, brings us to a certain character who fell victim to the key in Episode 24…  [put under the cut for spoiler reasons]

MORENTHAL

This poor Drow, he can never catch a break…

Morenthal may not have been the most mechanically dangerous party member to fall victim to Mister Wick’s manipulations although, given that the key was revealed to let its wielder read existing memories during the alteration, and that all of the Flower Crowns were fully briefed on the locations and nature of the Eversteel artefacts, him getting a hand on any of them could have been very bad plot-wise but from a character point of view I think he’s the one who the key’s effects had the potential to be most personally devastating for.

The way things ended up playing out across Session 25 was precisely the nightmare scenario Gamb was fretting about out of game: Mister Wick forcibly implanted Morenthal’s mind with false memories of being his lifelong trusted confidant and supporter, then – before the Flower Crowns could reverse the key’s effect – Morenthal discovered that Mister Wick had been killed in combat with Coil and Preston, leading to the Party having to physically restrain him so they could use the key to undo the damage, thus confronting Morenthal with the realisation that not only was everything he thought he knew about Jonathan a lie, but in actuality Jonathan had committed possibly the most invasive violation he’d ever been subjected to in order to forcibly make Morenthal into one of his loyal tools.  That level of emotional and mental whiplash would be rough on any character, but for Morenthal it’s particularly brutal because…

Based on what’s been revealed in-game so far, the core of his character is that Morenthal is an abused child.  This most-clearly came up in his conversation with Gelnek in Session 14; he was a child who grew up with nothing, raised by the Bloodletter Mercenaries as a tool instead of a person, and taught to see faces only as targets – with him also mentioning to Hobson in that their “combat training” involved being relentlessly beaten down until he learned to fight back.  During his Session 21 visit with the Nightmother, he openly admits that “nowhere feels safe”.  From that it’s pretty clear to read that Morenthal has never felt unconditionally loved, safe or respected around other mortals.

(This also helps contextualise why he’s so devoted to the Nightmother.  From what little we have seen of his visits to her, Iris is a fond “adult” figure, who does not threaten, does not judge, asks nothing of him aside from his company, and cares equally for all the souls that pass through her domain.  For a child “growing up with nothing” but violence, that would have been everything.)

But then, enter Jonathan fucking Wick.  And now, just for a short while, Morenthal has all these “memories” of Jonathan being there to confide in, encourage him and support his escape from the Bloodletters.  Suddenly he believes someone was there for him and, while the memories might be fake, the feelings of unconditional safety they would have brought were very real.  Little wonder that he started acting like a Trilby-level naive goober around Mister Wick to the point of accidentally snitching on the rest of the group.  Only, then it turns out to be a lie and those memories are gone.

For me, I think one of the worst things Morenthal might end up dealing with in the aftermath of having his memory fixed isn’t the specific feeling of personal betrayal or the potential shame at having been caught: it’s the realisation that he was always alone.   That there was no mortal on the outside who cared or came for him when he needed them – just him and the distant fondness of a Divine.  That would be awful beyond words, and yet the Flower Crowns were forced to inadvertently inflict it upon him in order to restore his mind.  No wonder he wouldn’t look any of them in the eye before the session closed.

Worse still, the nature of the key makes it incredibly hard not only to trust others, but to trust your own mind.  The players and audience above-table know that Morenthal is back to experiencing and remembering reality as it happened, but the question could very well linger for him, bringing with it a hefty dose of paranoia.  Sure, Morenthal correctly remembers that Coil is a straightforward, loyal person who wouldn’t be tempted to tamper with his mind beyond undoing Jonathan’s manipulations… but he “remembered” that about Mister Wick too, and wouldn’t that be a beneficial thing for the Party to have him think?   To Morenthal, people were already Not Safe™, but now the one person he ever believed might be had actually violated him worse than anyone else in order to force and abuse that trust.  How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t trust the authenticity of his own recollections.  (I get the feeling that Morenthal probably isn't going to be capable of relaxing until the Shaper of Minds is confirmed to either be locked back safely in the Vaults of Eversteel or fully removed from the Mortal Plane by Six).

It makes it really tragic that all of this came directly on the back of Episode 23, where Gamb revealed during the above-table break chat that - even if Morenthal didn’t recognise why – he unconsciously trusted Trilby and Gelnek enough to jump off the airship without checking that his rope was secure, because deep-down he knew they would catch him.  To go from that high-point to the whiplash of him first thinking the Flower Crowns had killed the only person he was ever “safe” with, then them inadvertently subjecting him to the most painful realisation he could ever experience and potentially leaving him wondering whether he can even trust his feelings about them is absolutely gutting.

I think the thing that scares me most about how the aftermath could potentially play out is another trait that Gamb and Dan have established for Morenthal: he's a flight-risk.   He shies away from letting people get close and, if he feels unsafe enough, he runs.  It’s already been mentioned/implied that he’s considered fleeing the group at multiple different points across the sessions.  And with him likely not feeling safe even in inside his own mind right now, that risk is probably at an all-time high.  The poor lad is staring down the barrel of a potentially-impending multi-level emotional crisis, where a lifetime of instincts will probably be urging him to run hard and fast because People Are Not Safe™.

And the thing is, that instinct isn’t a good one for him either.  Morenthal might have gotten by on his own “just living to be” up until Filgrove, but that feels a lot more like surviving out of necessity than having an actual life.  It’s pretty obvious that he pushes people away as a defence mechanism:  if you don’t care about anyone then you can’t be hurt by them or have those people used against you.  But if you don’t let yourself care and feel things, you’re not really living.  The truly tragic part of his running being a potential foreseeable outcome is that the Flower Crowns are good for Morenthal.  (I doubt Morenthal realises it and can’t speak to Gamb’s above-table thought process but it’s interesting that one potential interpretation of Morenthal’s cynical, faux-apathetic, “stinky” behaviour is that of a former abused child quietly testing the boundaries of whether he’s allowed to exist in a way that’s inconvenient for others, to which the answer from the Party has largely been yes provided he isn’t actively encouraging Trilby to get himself killed, or killing people without explaining himself).  He survived alone before because that was all he knew, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t do so well if he tried to go it solo again after being with people (he’s already confessed that the idea of Feyli being gone makes him miss her).   That’s not a road to walk on his best day, let alone with his current headspace and tendency towards self-destructive choices. 

It reminds me a lot of this article:

“Still, it’s easier for us to keep blaming ourselves because it’s preferable to facing the unthinkable: the fact that our parents don’t love us. …  Most people would rather do anything than accept this as the truth. Not only is it painful; it’s humiliating.”

So yeah, suffice to say I am incredibly concerned about how Morenthal’s arc is going to play out over the next session(s).  Here’s hoping that Gelnek and/or Coil have enough emotional savvy to keep an eye out, and enough patience to stick to him even if he lashes out in attempt to drive them off.  Even if it all works out okay, I get the feeling that this one’s going to be ugly.

Can’t wait to see how everyone chooses to play it ❤️‍🩹

[baflegacy]

.

[sysig]

Okay but what if (Patreon)

[chirpsythismorning]

Interview with Gaten recently:

"A lot of people have projects they're working on at the moment. But I know they're kicking into high gear with writing and I can't wait to finally get back into it. I don't know when, but it'll be fun for sure," Gaten Matarazzo told USA Today in an interview published Monday.”

Okay so to be clear, I do think it's accurate that a lot of the main cast are working simultaneously on other productions. We know this for a fact, with Finn who is currently in London filming, Sadie who will be filming out of the country starting in May, and David who has said he will be juggling both ST and another production simultaneously once filming starts.

However, do I believe that Gaten has no idea when filming starts? Absolutely fucking not.

Reminder: ACTORS ACT!

This video is a perfect example of a cast-member lying, and then admitting to lying in a matter of seconds about what they just said!

The reality is, the cast needs to know when filming starts bc they need to have their schedules with other projects align with their filming schedule for s5.

So yes, Gaten saying he has no idea, isn't accurate in the slightest. He 100% knows.

Hell, David Harbour was talking about filming for ST5 starting in summer 2023, all the way back in late 2022, meaning they could have all known as far back as then. I don't think like 1-2 actors get special treatment and the rest are just told the day before like HEY clear your schedule for the next ten months starting NOW! The main top billed cast have serious contracts that guarantee this is well planned out to accommodate them.

However, this does make what David said recently, about getting in trouble for saying June was the filming start date, going as far as to admit Netflix emailed him, is interesting to me...? Because if it's actually something that he got in trouble for, he wouldn't even say that he got in trouble for it, as I feel like that in and of itself would be a breach of contract?

And Noah has also been saying summer 2023, since late last year, and as of the last few months has been more specific by saying May. And then Finn made a point to say May on the record recently as well.

So it does make me wonder what they are being told to say right now. I truly don't think Noah would be out here saying May not once but multiple times, if he was told to not say it. And I don't think Finn would say it if he was told to not say it.

They know for a fact that every single thing they say and do gets hyper-analyzed, so that's why I just feel like the way things are going on rn, could actually be intentional despite me having heavy doubts up to this point...

We'll have to wait and find out.

[quibbs126]

Actually you know, if Earthspark Season 4 or other future seasons/episodes (I think I recall seeing they plan to keep making the show, though that could change) plan to introduce Cybertron, I’m kind of interested in what they’d do with Megatron

Because yes, Megatron is working with the Autobots now and he’s changed, he still wears the Decepticon symbol and no one on Cybertron has witnessed any of his growth. And even then, he still has all his crimes from before then

I know Earthspark isn’t at the same writing quality as it was in Season 1, but Season 3 did acknowledge Megatron’s situation in Prowl’s debut episode and Prowl in general, and also with all the more references to Cybertron, I don’t feel it’s unlikely that the story at least addresses this, and does something with it. I kind of want to see that, especially with how attached the kids are to Megatron, as well as Dot being his best friend

[unproduciblesmackdown]

speaking of the horrors brian goosebumpsphantomoftheauditorium is still So funny for being like yeah i'm a ghost i know i'm a ghost. & he's befriended the horror fan menace duo who are giggling clutching each other like omg omg okay. we're fine. we're breaking into the school at night to investigate the horrors aaaa what if there's a ghost eek ok ok!!! & brian ghost who knows he's a ghost is like omg guys aaaa stopppp ;;m;; suffering thee Most but he's not putting on an act to conceal his phantomly destiny. he's just like that

[pynkhues]

#really want to see more of delainey getting to play baby claudia?#i thought bailey was great too don't get me wrong#but i love delainey a LOT and we only got glimpses of her baby claudia and i selfishly want a lot more!

Same on all counts, I LOVED Delainey's performance so much and I so so want to see more of it, and seeing her play baby Claudia and teenage Claudia would be so fascinating. And I will never stop finding it adorable how much Jacob and Sam clearly love her and how fond she seems of them, and to see her and Sam really acting together would be amazing.

(x)

Yes! She was just so good! I was nervous about the recasting but she blew it out of the water, and I love that they all seem invested in keeping her / Claudia in the show in whatever form that may take. I really, really want to see her and Sam in more scenes together, and her dynamic with both him and Jacob off-set seems so lovely too. Like the fact that she went to Jacob's Raleigh Ritchie concert like, what, three minutes after getting back from the US for Comic Con is sooo sweet to me.

[gio-cosmo]

Guys I am so excited for LIS Double Exposure but I am also so so nervous

[arolesbianism]

Man oni can't do this to me I'm supposed to be preparing for artfight but all I can think abt is Them™ from the second I wake up to the moment I go to bed how am I supposed to prepare in these circumstances 😔

[thatlittledandere]

Man I dreamt I was Mickey Mouse trying to deliver Minnie something she forgot home while leaving for a friend's party, but when I got to the event venue it turned out to be this HUGE multi-storied building, like, the floor area was probably measured in kilometers, and it functioned as basically an authoritarian micronation with a strict, color-based social caste system. The most common way to identify someone's current standing was by wristbands or watches; upon entering I was given a white one, the lowest of them all and the only one permitted to visitors.

I had never even heard of this THING before and tried my hardest to piece together the laws and rules from the fragments of context clues I got from trying to talk to people, all the while also trying to hide the fact that I wasn't one of them (my initial entering caused quite a stir and I got the idea that turning up uninvited was frowned upon, to put it lightly.) For example I quickly learned that, while the biggest in numbers, white was technically below the ranking altogether, and its holders didn't enjoy the same rights as even the lowest of the castes. Whites were like interns to the society; they had to prove their piety to and knowledge of the customs before being fully admitted as citizens.

Minnie had left house carrying a purple hood so I assumed that to be her color, but when she eventually found me, it turned out to be fuchsia instead. And fuchsia was one of the higher castes, if not the highest. She told everyone in the room I was with her, and we started making our way to more private quarters somewhere in the upper floors. The floorplan was ridiculously convoluted; we passed SO many staircases, hallways, elevators, doors, and escalators. Minnie tried to catch me up to speed with what it was all about; turns out the community had been there functioning for over ten years, unknown to the outside world, most of its inhabitants living there full time in its many living quarters. The ones like Minnie who had a life in the outside too lived a double life, keeping the house a secret. The community was almost religious in how its residents treated it; it was basically a theocracy. I kept asking Minnie to please list the ranking order of the colors, as everything seemed to revolve around which caste you were, but she always had something that in her mind was more important to teach

Then we got separated. We had been moving in pairs in a group of about ten to be less conspicuous, and I couldn't see Minnie all the time with all the apparent hurry we were in. So when some of the people in the group started stuffing themselves into an elevator, I wasn't facing Minnie but figured that's where we were going. That was not where we were going. She didn't enter the elevator, having also lost sight of me. But the elevator took us back to the lobby we started from, so I started following our pervious footsteps to the best of my memory. Every time someone stopped or acknowledged me I told them I was a fuchsia's servant and had been summoned by her and had to get to the upper floors posthaste. I had no idea if higher ranks having personal servants in the lower ones was a thing, but people did let me through.

We also stopped being Mickie and Minnie Mouse at some point. You know how dreams go.

I found out the wristbands weren't the only way to express one's color; anything that stood out enough to serve the function was a go. At some point I stepped into an elevator only to come face-to-face with my brother, from real life, who was indigo, and it was apparent from the accents in his otherwise black outfit. I was happy to see a familiar face, even though I knew he was NOT thrilled to see me lol, and would absolutely not help me on my quest. He would much prefer not to be associated with an outsider. And as Minnie, who was no longer Minnie but just a nondescript friend I was looking for, hadn't explained the caste order to me, I didn't know where dark blue stood. But from the way he carried himself and how the other guy in the elevator reacted to him, I deduced it must have been closer to top than bottom, at least.

Another thing was that these color assignments CHANGED. They were frequently reshuffled, and you had to figure out a way to quickly switch to displaying your new color, and adjust to your new social standing in your behavior and relationships. When I finally found my friend, she had switched to green by quickly dying her hair with spray dye. As she was now one of the lower classes, she conducted herself with a certain shyness and shame, posture hunched and eyes withdrawn.

She showed me to a lounge for people of various lower castes, where I found another nondescript friend who is not a real person that I know, and two who are and who I've known since childhood but haven't been in touch with in YEARS. Talk about a happy reunion! We got to talking, some about this place and its culture, some just regular chitchat.

And that's when I brought Homestuck into it by mentioning there's a webcomic I read that also has a color-based caste system. One of my childhood friends was delighted to hear there was something else with a similar system. I used a word for the system that I don't think really exists; the other childhood friend thought it was too long and difficult to pronounce. So I suggested "How about hemospectrum instead? That one is shorter and easier to say." I note that the Finnish word would be hemospektri, which is shorter by one letter! Yahoo! My friend was pleased. I woke up happy to no longer be stuck in Hotel California for discount homestucks.