#back to my original point. compartmentalize.

[seafoamreadings]

week of november 10th, 2024

these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)

aries: significant nodal transits this week mean all you have to do is walk, and the path appears. the full moon this week also points to (likely positive?) developments around money and your deepest core values.

taurus: the full moon this week is the yearly full moon in your sign. it can be a highly emotional time and yet, the moon is so happy in your sign that it's hard for this to go badly for you. just make sure you're meeting all your needs as much as possible.

gemini: a full moon across your 6th/12th house axis this week pushes you to integrate the multiple parts of yourself that sometimes disagree with each other. sometimes as you go about the routines of daily life it's easy to forget that you even have some of these parts. quiet introspection, especially if you can actually have the moon in view as you do so, is likely to bring about fruitful results psychologically.

cancerians: while full moons may typically have you feeling moody and broody with lots of mood swings, this week's feature in taurus is likely fun and friendly. if you're up for socializing a bit it is a fantastic time to do so, and if not, at least send off a few texts to strengthen community bonds.

leo: if you've had any changes you'd like to make at home or to your more public-facing image, this can be a good time for it. just be cognizant of mercury and mars doing their impending retrograde things.

virgo: earth energy amplifies a bit with venus into capricorn plus a taurus full moon. this is good news for you, overall, especially if you're looking for fun or a new flirtation, or if you're trying to work out an academic plan or spiritual leveling up.

libra: while the vibes are not particularly libran, your ruling planet venus is quite busy all the same, and this is broadly beneficial to you, especially in your home life and/or if you want to reconcile with a family of origin or ancestry. meanwhile a merging of households or a sharing of resources or expansion of intimacy can also be a really good move now, being mindful of course about upcoming retrogrades and possible associated hiccups.

scorpio: creative pursuits or flirtations that seemed to fizzle out in the last few months (and similar endeavors) may pop back into existence this week. you get to choose what to actually follow through with, but if you've wanted a fun fling or artistic undertaking to come back and get a little more permanent, this is the time.

sagittarius: work you've done on your inner world, like shadow work or therapy or a dream journal, starts to pay off big time with this week's full moon, in such a way you can see benefits on the earthly plane. meanwhile a household problem may begin to resolve by the end of the week - rent issues, a roommate search, repairs, etc.

capricorn: venus moves into your sign to grace you with timeless elegance, attractiveness to money, and similar. if you're seeking a charming benefactor this may also come to you in the next few weeks.

aquarius: you can let this week's full moon act as a sort of bridge between your private and public life. of course, if you want to keep these compartmentalized you can, but if it helps you to live authentically to dissolve the boundaries or just make them a little less impermeable, this is a great time for it.

pisces: make new friends and build your close-knit community. it doesn't have to spontaneously appear over night or even in a week or a month. but it is built brick by brick. place a few tetris pieces about it this week.

watch the transit posts in real time to have the best guide through your week. want a little more? have a look at my patreon or ko-fi.

check out my etsy for a private reading or dm me to set up a reading through venmo, cashapp, or paypal.

[silverwhittlingknife]

the reason why nu52 Dick is so simultaneously messy and yet boring is because they don't let him be bitchy enough whilst simultaneously making him a little bitch

sdfsdfdsfs I don't totally understand what this means and yet I feel like I agree with the spirit, anon <3

Outsiders 21 - preboot Dick yelling at Bruce my beloved

Yeah, caveat that there's plenty of nu52 Dick stuff that I haven't read and I don't think it's all bad, but also... man, he is not for me. As far I'm concerned, the main good thing that came out of n52/Rebirth is some setups for sad!Dick fanfic. And yeah, "Dick is not bitchy enough" is actually a pretty good summary of my complaints sdfdsfs

The thing is, nu52 Dick has some similarities to preboot Tim, in that he'll sometimes be insincerely fake-cheerful even when actually upset, plus he periodically seems uncomfortable with direct confrontation so instead he lies to avoid confrontation. And mmm I mean, I like these qualities in preboot Tim, so it's not like I think these are terrible traits to have!!

BUT :

1) Preboot Tim has no authority. But preboot Dick does, and it's frustrating to take it away from him in nu52.

There's some post-2011 panel where Dick lies to Batman and is cheery about it, a la Tim bragging to his friends about lying to Batman in Teen Titans, and I had to stare at it for ages trying to figure out why it felt like such a record scratch moment to me.

But it's because there is a huge difference between a presumably independent superhero lying to another superhero vs. a sidekick and his sidekick friends secretly joyriding in Batman's car.

Like, Tim lies to authority figures more-or-less constantly, because he doesn't want to be told what to do, but also because - importantly!! - those authority figures reasonably assume they have authority over him that he has to evade. Of course he tries to avoid direct confrontation with the JLA / Batman / Red Tornado / Starfire - they're not his equals and a direct confrontation would end badly!

Whereas Nightwing lying to Batman feels like putting him in a subordinate position in a way that preboot Dick never is. Preboot Dick always tells Batman off to his face, because preboot Dick cares about being equals and refuses to accept being subordinate. He doesn't sneak around behind Bruce's back - he fights back! If he doesn't agree with Bruce's position, he tries to argue Bruce into his own. He'll do stuff without asking Bruce's permission, but he won't conceal it; he'll make a point of making sure Bruce knows what he did and also that he isn't sorry.

2) Preboot Tim's lying / tendency to be fake with people is a consistent personality trait that's also consistently problematized. nu52 Dick's characterization is wildly all over the map.

In preboot, Tim is a liar and obsessive compartmentalizer, which is both a strength (disguises, sneaking around authority) and a problem (loved ones who are hurt by it). He's self-aware about his lies, periodically resolves to lie less, and generally fails at it.

Tim's consistent enough that you can track this character trait in all his relationships: he lies to his dad. He lies to Batman. He lies to his girlfriends. He refuses to tell Babs his real name for ages for basically no reason. He stalks Dick and then tries to run away from him in his origin story and then tries to avoid telling Dick his name. And this evasiveness consistently causes him problems!! Dick's suspicious of him. Ariana's suspicious of him. His dad is suspicious of him. Young Justice and Steph get annoyed with his secret-keeping. Young Justice want him to take off the mask. Steph wants to know his real name. When she finds out and calls him by his real name, he has a panic attack and literally runs away. When upset, he insists he's fine and fake-smiles at people. In Teen Titans, when Tim's busy being fake-cheerful and Conner is startled to see him there right after his dad died, Tim gets upset and angry at Conner and demands that he not tell anyone about Jack. Fine, Conner says, I guess it's another secret. In AC 3, he's lying to Conner again and Conner accuses him of having an insincere "Starfire voice," which is a hilarious callback to Tim being fake-agreeable-yet-secretly-bitchy at Kory when he first meets her. I feel like I get that the lying is a Tim Character Trait which is sometimes endearing and sometimes less so and which all the people who love him are gonna have different feelings about.

By contrast, nu52 Dick spends a ton of time lying but it's hard for me to model his characterization in the same way? He's sometimes fake and ... sometimes that's totally cool and sometimes people punch him! also, does it say something about him? ehhhhh maybe? no? who can say!! At the end of nu52 Nightwing, he doesn't want to go undercover and Bruce beats him up, but then in Grayson he seems totally on board with his mission and willing to actively lie to everyone, and then in Batman and Robin Eternal he carries out a whole secret mission behind nuTim's back because he thinks nuTim is maybe a spy and is scared (?) of confronting him directly, but also he's so sloppy about it that he gets followed and the bad guys find nuTim's parents. Oopsie! He represents The Heart and is super-caring but also somewhat ditzy with a tendency to leap before he looks, and also he's very very very goodlooking and Grayson would really like you to know that.

You can try to make sense of this character's internal motivations and I have read various enjoyable fanfics that do, but in the comics I don't feel like he's clearly characterized.

3) Dick should be a convincing team leader

I know I kind of talked about this earlier but it bothers me SO MUCH that I have to talk about it again dsfdsfds

Preboot Dick is a natural leader: he seizes control of the feuding personalities in the Fab Five; he does the same thing in the NTT; he stands up to Bruce. He can overrule strong personalities like Pantha and Roy; he can hold his ground against the Outsiders. He doesn't back down and he doesn't quit. He's got instinctive authority, and he's a forceful and aggressive enough leader that he can lead teams even when his teammates are feuding or difficult or arguing with each other. Sometimes he's a little too forceful and it backfires on him, but for the most part, it works!

By contrast, nu52 Dick often comes off as kinda... hapless? He's definitely not a force to be reckoned with.

Like, just to take one small example, in post-Crisis's Red Robin 14, Tim and Damian are fighting and Dick wants them to cut it out, so he throws a batarang at Tim's staff and snaps at him, and the fight stops immediately. By contrast, in nu52's Batman and Robin 10, Tim and Damian are arguing and Dick wants them to cut it out, but nuDick is incapable of confronting anyone over anything so he just sighs about it, passive-aggressive and ineffectual.

And "ineffectual" is too often the vibe I get from n52 Dick in general. You put that man with Pantha, and he'll probably be bemused, but he won't be able to make Pantha do anything, and he wouldn't be able to make Danny Chase do anything, and he can't or won't stand up to Bruce so he has to lie the way Tim does, and he would never have a fistfight with Roy over the proper way to lead a team.

And in a lot of ways this makes sense, because n52 Dick isn't a team leader, because they've deleted the Titans. He's just a guy. He's nice, I guess.

But even though he gets all kinds of excellent woobie plotlines that I'd normally enjoy (an evil organization is stalking him personally! his dad is beating him up and forcing him into becoming a spy! he's losing his memory!) his personality is usually so far off from the character I like that I struggle to get invested.

Because the thing is, Dick's leadership instincts aren't incidental to what I like about him. They're all wrapped up in his outsized sense of personal responsibility and instinctive belief that if anything is going wrong anywhere near him then it is his obligation to handle it and if anything goes wrong then it's his fault if he was involved and also his fault if he wasn't involved and actually if you have ever gotten within five feet of him and unrelatedly something bad happened to you then it's probably his fault and he FAILED. This belief gives Dick a lot of control issues and makes him bitchy sometimes and is not great for his mental health, but it's also very endearing and an outgrowth of how much Dick cares!

Anyway, re:bitchiness, I have similar feelings about various choices in Batgirls and in Tim Drake: Robin and in current Nightwing; like, I don't think any of these stories are bad ipso facto, I don't begrudge anyone who likes them, and I certainly enjoy fluffy fanfic sometimes - I don't always want the same things in transformative fandom that I want in canon.

But in comics, I often want the characters to have a bit of edge, to be cranky and difficult and just... y'know, clearly the kind of people who would choose to be vigilantes. I want them to care enough to be bitchy about it. And I often feel like I'm missing that, post-2011.

[42ifonly]

Originally, I only wanted to address the rumors about Will and Season 18, but it turned into a whole rant, and I am a little embarrassed, that I spent so much time writing this about a fictional character, but these thoughts have been swirling around in my head for ages and now is the time to get it out of my system. And sorry if I went a little overboard and it’s probably all over the place. (Because I am upset!) I don’t mean to offend anyone. Everyone is entitled to their own thoughts and feelings about something. These are just my thoughts on some of the negative comments I read about the character online. English is not my first language, so forgive any mistakes I may have made.

When I think about something happening to Will I feel an actual pain in my heart and dread in my stomach. It would be so incredibly lame for them to kill yet another significant other. It makes me so angry and sad. And now that everything points that way, I have to protect my heart and not watch the new season, even though I have loved Criminal Minds for so long. It is just no way to treat a character that has been around for almost all the running time, to just take the easiest way out. And if they don't kill him and they separate then what the hell where the writers and show-runners doing for 15 seasons other than repeatedly reinforcing their relationship and reinforcing how they were both always set on making it work no matter what.

And don't get me started on all the missed potential, with him being a cop and working together with the team. Josh Stewart is such a great actor and gives great nuanced performances. And if he truly did leave on his on terms and it wasn’t due to budget or scheduling then that is totally fine of course, but they could still find a million different ways to go without destroying everything we have been trough with these two.

I am going to address a few of the points people made about why they don’t like Will:

JJ's character is reduced to her having a family:

I love her vulnerable side, she is great at her job and she has to deal with horrible things, and to see her open up to Will and let go of her mindset to not show how affected she is by some of the things that are going on is truly great. She is puts up a front and compartmentalizes to cope (like when she told Hotch she didn’t need time off and she was fine in season 12x2), and I love that Will is able to break through those walls to keep her sane. And just because she is a badass FBI Agent, she is not allowed to rely on other people sometimes and have a family that she actually loves and that love her back? Where else would she be able to show that side of herself, and it doesn't mean that she's only defined by her family. It just means that we get to see her outside of her professional demeanor and personality. I really don't understand why people are offended. It just gives her more depth because we rarely get to see characters outside of their work environment. I always loved the fact that Will was not the obvious choice for a character like JJ and her being with him really adds another dimension to her character. And in fact her family rarely makes an appearance and/or is mentioned throughout the series, she is a just as good a character without them. Seeing her with Will and the boys just makes her more relatable and tangible and I love that.

Season 3: Will is pushy, whiny and doesn’t respect her boundaries

I get why some aren't fond of his actions in season 3. They are calling him out for not respecting her boundaries and I can somewhat be on board with that. But it doesn't make him a bad guy for eternity with no coming back from it. Some criticize his lack of self-respect/confidence when he confronts her about it in the sense of "he is so whiny and insecure”. How would you feel if your boyfriend/girlfriend pretended to all their coworkers that you aren’t dating after being together for a year. Imagine putting all this time and effort to date someone long-distance and then they want to keep it a secret and leave you hanging when you confront them. Wouldn’t that hurt your feelings and make you a little sensitive? I would feel a little insecure if the person I was in love with acted like they didn’t really know me, all while I am mourning a friend and would actually need some support from this person. He is asking perfectly reasonable questions to make sense of the situation, and he knows her and probably knows she is holding something back.

Both people were entitled to feel the way they did. JJ is allowed to be scared, and Will is allowed to ask for commitment. People forget nuance exists.

And when she said she wanted to break up with him he showed some self-respect, respected his own boundaries, didn't make a scene, accepted her decision and let her go. But then those same people come along and say he didn't even fight for her ... so you want him to be toxic now?!?! You want him to push her?!?!

And turns out he was right all along it had nothing to do with her hiding it from her co-workers and protecting her private life. She was scared of getting hurt....that's it. So I just don't understand what the fuss is about.

Revealing her pregnancy on the other hand, was a bad decision and I don’t think he should have done that. But he is just a human being, a young guy who suddenly had to make some pretty big decisions about his life. He was going to be a dad sooner than he thought he would and he was probably a little out of his mind and scared, about the future and about JJ and their child. He made a bad decision and acted a little impulsive. I am sure we all have done things out of fear and against our better judgement that we regret.

I think he has proven enough times, that he respects her boundaries and her job. But somehow, after almost 20 years, people still can't get over it, which is beyond me…

And to be honest, it seemed to me that JJ was more relieved that the cat was out of the bag than anything else, that she no longer had to carry this secret around with her.

JJ settled because of the baby:

JJ decided to stay with him before! She found out she was pregnant. There was no settling. And it is not like they plucked Will out of nowhere. It’s not like she was flirting and letting her guard down with detectives all the time, and Will was just the latest in a series, so they made him the father of her son because the actress was pregnant. There was an obvious connection between the two of them and SHE gave him her card, SHE made that move. They’d known each other for a year before she got pregnant, and SHE decided to stay with him before she got pregnant. So even if her becoming a mother was due to AJ’s pregnancy, their relationship was not completely out of nowhere and the writers chose that story line with her kissing him in front of everyone to make a point of: She wants to be with him with or without a baby.  

Will doesn’t respect her jobs, wants her to quit all the time and shames her for her career:

Season 7x7: I think it is only human to get upset when you where looking forward to spending time with your partner and they have to leave in the middle of the night leaving you with your sick child. Even if you knew what you were getting into!!! It doesn't mean you can’t get upset or be disappointed every once in a while. He is just always supposed to sit back and be meek and mild about it all? He is probably very aware that her job comes first, and he just wants to spend time with her and have her home. And every single time (Season 3, Season 5, Season 7, Season 12, Season 13, Season 14, Season 16) JJ considers leaving work for her family it’s Will who encourages her to stay and/or keep going. If anything, he is a little to nice about it sometimes.

Will is bland and boring and doesn’t show any emotions:

Anyone who says he is boring and doesn’t show emotion would probably be the worst profiler of all time. The way his emotions are conveyed is subtle and it hits deep if you are susceptible to it. Just because Will isn't loud, and exaggerates his emotions, screams, cries, jumps up and down or acts like freaking emoticons, doesn’t make him bland, I am sorry, maybe you need to work on your empathy. I love his quiet strength and grounding presence. JJ always knew where she stood with him, no games no childish behavior. He wears his heart on his sleeves and is always open about his feelings and even when they get the best of him, he takes a step back and puts everything into perspective and looks for solutions. He doesn’t act like a fool and completely irresponsible (like Morgan), when his wife goes missing, putting the investigation and the people’s lives at risk. It was so refreshing for me to see that and just speaks to what a mature and sensible person he is. He does what he knows is right and trusts the team to save her. He is sensitive and self-reflective and dotes on his sons.

And in no way is he a boring character, we have seen him in something like 10 episodes and yet I know more about him than some of the main characters. He accumulated his fair share of trauma: His dad, who he was very close to, died in Katrina, his partner/friend was murdered a year later, in Season 7 his partner was shot right in front of him. He had to leave his son with a psychopath. He has been kidnapped, assaulted and strapped to a bomb. And his wife was kidnapped, shot, assaulted, tortured and they lost their baby.

He is one of the very few cops/detectives who actually play a role in hunting down the suspect and talking successfully talking them down – hence he is a pretty good cop before he even turns 30. He left his hometown and family behind to live miles away. He played the drums, had a dog, sings alternative rock in the shower, loves to cook and doesn’t like flowers 😉

Everyone on the team likes him. Despite what Jemily stans say, Emily is probably their biggest advocate. She urged JJ to go after him, and toyed with her secrecy when she pointed out Will was something fun to look at. She joked with him about his accent. She describes him as the last viable donor, she saved him from the bomb, even though he told her to leave. She seemed genuinely happy to see him in Season 16.

Rossi witnessed them getting engaged, he hosted their wedding. He held the speech at their wedding. Will stayed with Rossi at the hospital in season 13. Will asked how Rossi was doing in season 16. He is on first name basis with Prentiss, Reid and Rossi. He watches Jack for Hotch in Season 11. He agrees on making Garcia and Spence the godparents of his first born. He turns a blind eye in season 14/15 to the confession ordeal. He let Reid come over all the time when he was mourning Emily.

The Will-haters also just start making up things like: “he is so annoying because he kept asking her to marry him, proposing over and over”... for all we know he asked her once to show her that he was here to stay, to make sure she knew he would be there for her and baby, and then he asked her again when she asked him to.

And lastly, I cannot believe the people hating on Will calling him dull, because he looks the way he looks. I am sorry but that is just plain stupid and incredibly shallow. Or the ones complaining about his accent... is that really all you got?!?!

I could probably write a dissertation about Will, but I will go cry now because I am heartbroken, and I just wanted them to have a happy ending.

[notacatdown]

What would be the novel's Mu Sheng's non-magical health condition?

For context, early on in the novel, Liu Fuyi tells MiaoMiao that there are demons called Charm Girls/Enchantresses. They're powerful monsters that prefer to stay away from humans. If they're ever betrayed, their souls will split into Resentful Women that will bring about mass destruction. I find it really interesting that these apex entities are the ones going out of their way to avoid humans.

MiaoMiao sees this as a split personality.

Much later on, we find out that the Enchantress Clan also has magical tools to curb their emotional instability, which I think makes a lot of sense.

In the novel, Mu Rong uses this tool to help Mu Sheng when he was a child. Before his memory was wiped (and he wakes up without memories in a clan of hostile demon hunters), he didn't need to wear a hair ribbon. Much later on, his hair ribbon gets destroyed, and for a while, he is struggling to gain control of his body from that mindless bloodthirsty side of him. (But even when he loses his mind, he still cooks for MiaoMiao and does all the housework.)

Anyways, back to my original thought, I think the novel versions of Mu Rong and Mu Sheng's non-magical health condition could be dissociative identity disorder. I suggest this because the author doesn't have Mu Sheng permanently gain mastery of his demon side.

We're told there's always a risk the demon side will win, so Mu Sheng has to keep wearing the hair ribbon just like people with dissociative identity disorder need therapy and possibly medication for depression. People with this disorder may also suffer memory loss/the non-magical version of amnesia spells.

Plus, at the beginning of the story, Mu Sheng has such distinct personalities. Puppy mode when his sister is present and black lotus mode when she's not around. He so strongly believes this set of behavior is not him, but he must act this way to be loved. Later on, when MiaoMiao has successfully convinced him that there's no point and no need in hiding his darker tendencies, these two sides sort of bleed into each other. he gets better at not compartmentalizing himself.

Edited to add: Thank you for the comments! Really fun to see other people's views on this topic (and also learn more about mental illness).

[thebardbullseye]

Steel, Scrying, and the Presumption of Death: “Who Knows What” and “Who Knows When”

From the desk of TheBardBullseye

Editor's Note 3/17/25: I originally privated this post on 3/6/25 bc I was concerned about spreading potential spoilers even with the lengthy disclaimer below, but then I couldn't share it with ppl who just wanted to read it. So I've turned off reblogs. Carry on/enjoy :)

TL;DR: Alright, I think I’ve unraveled some secrets and put some pieces together. I have to talk about Steel as of episode 43 of The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One, “Speak With Animals.” But first, I have to talk about scrying. And how absolutely crucial it is to consider the compartmentalization of information: “who knows what” and “who knows when.” And further, “who says what” and “who says when.” Episode spoilers abound; major plot-relevant speculation and theorizing afoot. Do not read this essay if you do not want to read about potential future reveals about Steel (if I am correct in my speculating and theorizing). I have done my level best to be fair, balanced, accurate with citations, and not misconstrue information in my analysis (except where it is explicitly noted as pure speculation). And here’s my caveat that this essay is a crunchy analysis of transcripts and mechanics, and I fully acknowledge that this story is written with improv and dice rolls: things can change, be walked back, or recontextualized in the future for any number of reasons. Strap in, this is a very long essay (over 11,000 words with footnotes, please read those too!).

An extremely critical note before you read this essay: First, thank you very much for reading! 😊 I welcome any and all constructive comments, and please point out anything that I might have not considered. I thought long and hard about posting this argumentative essay publicly after I finished it, even though I put a lot of time and effort into researching, writing and editing it. This is a very, very long essay, and please take time to read it carefully (if you decide to read it). I feel like I put a lot of pieces together that could be revealed in the near or distant future (depending on how the rest of Arc 4 goes), and this will be a fun time capsule for me to revisit in the future. If I am correct, I do not want to spoil this for people who don’t want to be spoiled, and I hope the warning in the above TL;DR combined with the length of this essay will hopefully scare those folks away. As such, please take care if/when you discuss my theory with others publicly who have not read this essay, so as to not potentially spoil others if I am correct (i.e., if this breaches the containment of this essay in the comments/reblogs/and other online discussions—there’s a lot of nuances in here that will get lost if watered down, and I stress that none of this is yet confirmed and you should not take this as gospel). You have been warned; this is not to be self-aggrandizing; I am just Too Aware that you can't un-ring this bell. Further, if I am right, I don’t want to spoil Brennan’s plans to reveal things about Steel at a later point, but all of this information was gleaned and cited directly from the transcripts and episodes that have been publicly released and contextualized within the rules of D&D. He doesn’t strike me as a ‘Game of Thrones (HBO)’ kind of storyteller to throw away a narrative that has been built up just because someone on the internet (maybe) figured it out before it could be fully revealed. And if I’m wrong about Steel, then I just had a lot of fun with some red string and a corkboard. And that’s what makes this podcast so damn good—there’s so many strings. 🧡

You can support and listen to Worlds Beyond Number at: www.patreon.com/worldsbeyondnumber and can use the transcripts to check my work on the fan wiki: https://worldsbeyondnumber.miraheze.org/wiki/The_Wizard,_the_Witch,_and_the_Wild_One_episodes (these are available on the public patreon feed as well, but the wiki is easier to navigate imo).

If you don’t want to be spoiled but want to read a different essay I wrote about this show, you should check out my literary essay praising Just the Recap at the beginning of Episode 10, “Of the Reaching Green.” (FYI this does have spoilers for all of Arc 1, but not speculative)

I also recently posted an arrangement I wrote of The Rain Road and Auld Lang Syne, if you want to give that a listen: https://youtu.be/Z2Hv6p70r7s

Twenty-two Scry spells. Twenty-two failed Scry spells. How many times do you try the same thing before giving up hope? But it turns out that hope is not lost. Then why haven’t you said anything?

I started writing and outlining this essay several months ago when episode 33 of The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One aired, but it has been sitting buried and unfinished because of life stuff until now—it took the earthquake that was “Speak With Animals” to unearth it. In “The Witness,” Suvi cast Identify on herself to see if there was any magic affecting her because of her inexplicable shenanigans with the music box. In this scene, she discovers a lot of magical information about herself, notably (for the immediate moment) the modify memory and the Geas, that we the audience (and Aabria) already knew about. But there was one monumental reveal reminiscent of “Barbarian Healing” (see footnote 1, warning for D20 spoilers) to me: there are many failed scrying spells cast on her from the Citadel, four aimed at her father’s Ring of Aerith that she uses to pull and store spells and “two and twenty” (i.e., 22) aimed at her heart; the former set of spells as old as yesterday, the latter from months ago before she arrived in Port Talon, and, why didn’t someone follow up on that? Suvi learns that her necklace with the flawless sapphire pendant stops scrying from not only Great Spirits like Orima, but also the Citadel and was crafted by Wren, Stone, and Galt (see footnote 2). This, combined with the modify memory and Geas (and everything else up to ep 33), is cause for concern and kicks off Suvi’s questioning of the institution of her home. But there’s a more concerning and an important difference to unpack about the two sets of scrying orbiting her ring and heart: what is the question being asked by the Citadel?

Identify and Scry: Who Are You and Where Are You?

The four scrying spells around her father’s ring are mentioned first in the Identify spell and are about a day old. This is because Suvi had cast magic without the reflexive indicative (i.e. a shortened, quicker way of casting using a ‘null clef’ that removes the self from the casting of the spell, at least as I understand it) and had pulled the spell slot from the Aerith (the big communal pool of wizard juice) the previous day. Thus, it follows that the Citadel would have scried to see who was casting these spells, and (pure speculation) perhaps this kind of alert system is automatically triggered (i.e., by a high-level Tamori?), or maybe it was cast by a higher-level (at least ninth) diviner in Kabani. (I’m sure that this will come back at some point and certainly not cause any problems for Suvi…) This is a red flag, a blip on the radar, asking “Who are you?”, and the Citadel gets no reply.

The 22-odd spells from months ago are much, much bigger red flags, the question being: “Where is Suvi?”, and the Citadel gets no reply. To complicate things further, nobody ever mentioned to Suvi once she made contact that the scrying had failed. You would think it would be a Big Fucking Problem that the (first-level-at-the-time) Apprentice to the Archmage Silence is unable to be scried upon or located, especially with so many failed attempts and discovering that in fact she was Alive. Further, it is alarmingly pointed out to her that someone at the Citadel should have mentioned the failed scrying or followed up, but as of episode 43, no one has. I’ll get to the meat and mechanics of this in a moment, but let’s back up a bit.

Checking the Transcripts

Now, this is episode 33. Suvi first met Galani and had the mirror conversation with Steel in episode nine. More than a year of IRL time between episodes (and about two-ish months in-game). My gut reaction was, “Wait, really? Did no one really mention scrying or even just in passing, ‘we looked for you magically and nothing came up’? Hmm. That was so long ago. I’ve done a couple Arc 1 relistens and it doesn’t sound familiar, and I vaguely recall it being a little odd that they had presumed her dead at the time, but it was hand-waved as ‘we’re at war, probably some evil guy got her.’” I checked the transcripts: Nope. No mention of scrying nor an allusion that the Citadel even tried (and failed). Interestingly, the only time “dead” appears in the transcript is when Suvi asks “they all think I’m dead?” Odd. The only word Galani and Steel use to describe her is “alive.” Did they not presume her to be dead?

Looking back on episode nine now, Suvi’s first conversation with Galani is immediately recontextualized. She expresses surprise that Suvi is alive, noting that “[w]ord went out through the Citadel's private channels to begin searching for you about a week and a half ago,” to which Suvi references her broken speaking mirror and replies with indignation that being in the backwoods of Akham couldn’t contact the Citadel until now (“…they all think I’m dead? [Yelling] How little do you all think of me?!” p.19). Galani justifies that with the reason that there’s a war going on and their enemies kill high level wizards all the time, not that they think little of her in particular. Going no-contact for weeks resulted in Steel assuming the worst (due to the tears streaking down her face), and one would assume the Citadel at-large would too, if they knew. Galani then casts dispel magic and arcane sight, to make sure Suvi isn’t under the influence of any nefarious magic, presumably coming up all-clear. In the moment, it makes sense why failed scrying attempts might not be mentioned by Galani: if Suvi was compromised, then it would not be strategic to reveal that in public (or to her).

Then, in Suvi’s conversation with Steel, scrying doesn’t come up directly in her chewing-out (see footnote 3). It might have been alluded to, “and how CLOUDED do you think my eyes are, here in the Citadel?” (p. 43). At first glance, I think the obvious meaning is, “how oblivious do you think I am?” In hindsight, using “clouded” and “eyes” as hyperbole is very evocative of a Scry spell, but I don’t think it’s the first thing that comes to mind or a definitive mention of scrying, and certainly not from Suvi’s perspective (of one being castigated). Steel is justifiably angry and mostly appeals to Suvi to empathize and put herself in Steel’s shoes in this moment (“Do you think it might have been difficult for me? Sending you back to Silbury? Do you think there might have been anything challenging for me, about wondering what might have happened to you on that island? Do you think that there is any part of me, that might have been worried or concerned?” p. 43). Now, for the beginning of this conversation, Steel was not alone on her side of the mirror, so it’s likely she wouldn’t have wanted to bring up the failed scrying since she would see her in person in a few days (and it was not necessarily the most urgent thing to discuss). I’ll get to the flow chart options of “what Steel knows” and the implications later on, but for right now, put a pin in the now glaring omission from Steel anywhere in this conversation, especially when it is just them: she doesn’t say, “Suvi! Thank god you’re alive! How are you alive? I tried to look for you but it never worked! I thought you were dead or captured or worse! Why didn’t the scrying work? I tried so many times.”

So there’s some narrative reasons why scrying wouldn’t be explicitly mentioned, and I’ll expand on the implications of that later, but this story is not told just by four people yammering into microphones with wonderous sound design, it’s a game of D&D. I know WBN can and does edit out dice rolls and filler for narrative purpose (and it’s one of the many, many things I love about this show). So it’s possible a saving throw for Scry was edited out (I am reminded of the ominous “give me a wisdom saving throw” from Neverafter) or that it wasn’t even asked for in the first place, presuming Brennan has known from the beginning the properties of the amulet. In terms of D&D mechanics, the math really ain’t mathin’ here.

Mechanics, Math, and Motivations

To start, how does Scry work in D&D? It’s a 5th level divination spell, can only be cast on a creature on the same plane (e.g., it does not work on dead people), and the target makes a wisdom saving throw (against your spell save DC and modified based on your connection and knowledge to them). If the target succeeds, they are unaffected, and you can’t cast it on them again for 24 hours. (There are other details about how it works, but this is all that is relevant in this particular scenario, since it will never succeed.) It is very important to note that wizards only unlock the fifth level spell at level 9, so only high-level wizards in the Citadel would be casting it. You also need verbal, somatic, and material components just to cast the spell: “a focus worth at least 1,000 GP, such as a crystal ball, a silver mirror, or a font filled with holy water” (Player's Handbook). (This quite possibly explains the four Scry spells on Suvi’s Ring of Aerith: in episode 18, the Aerith depository in the Tower of the Glove is described as, “a massive…emerald gemstone set into a brass basin within the wall… [i]t stands just inside the doorway, almost like a receptacle of holy water… in the shape of… a bird bath or some other kind of basin.”).

Thus, it is easier to cast Scry on someone you know well and have the closest physical connection to, and even if it fails the first time, you get to try again the next day. For the hypothetical number crunching, I am going to assume that Steel was the one casting Scry every time, because of anyone at the Citadel, she would be the one most likely to succeed (or make it so that Suvi is more likely to fail the saving throw). We also know Steel travels with a mirror, presumably silver. This. Has. Plot. Implications. Because of her knowledge (familiar), Suvi subtracts 5 from the roll. Steel would also have the highest connection (like a lock of hair) for -10 to the roll, or at the very least second highest connection (possession or garment) for -4 to the roll at a minimum. At level one, Suvi’s wisdom saving throw modifier is a +5 (very impressive). Added together, at worst she has a -10 or at best a -4 to the twenty-sided die roll. Already the chances of a successful Scry is looking pretty good.

What is the spell save dc for Steel casting Scry? To calculate this for a wizard, the formula is 8 + proficiency + INT. Unfortunately, I have to make more assumptions than I would prefer to answer this question because we don’t know what level Steel is or what her intelligence modifier is. So, basically all of the variables are unknown. Great. For the purpose of math (because the values do standardize somewhat over a range of levels), I’m going to make a couple of educated guesses, based on Steel’s age, rank, and station.

I think it’s safe to assume that Steel is at least between levels 13 and 16; she’s the highest-ranking non-arch-war-mage, is the Sword of the Citadel, and is probably in her late 40s/early 50s given the age of her biological daughter Cadilla (and Suvi is 21). This would give her a proficiency bonus of +5 and two fifth level spell slots. You can definitely make the case that she is a higher level than 16, but this would only increase the difficulty of the roll, and I want to make fair and reasonable assumptions given the missing information. Steel is also a wizard (she may have a second class, but this doesn’t really affect the numbers), so she probably has a very high INT score to be able to cast magic. At this point in leveling up, let’s say she has at least between 16 and 20 INT, so she adds a +3 at the lowest, +5 at the highest. Again, it could be higher but trying to keep it fair.

I would be remiss not to mention that Steel would hate to know that she is in a D&D game and that I am using made up numbers to infer anything about her. As such, she obviously would not think about Scry in terms of these specific die rolls and ability modifiers, instead she understands that Scry only works a certain percentage of the time when you cast it, especially when cast on people who may have a naturally high wisdom modifier and/or have magical means to avoid it. But she also likely recognizes that Suvi is her daughter and a young un-namecloaked wizard (and would know her full name, Suvirin Kedberiket) and should be fairly easy to successfully scry upon. She could maybe scry on Ame (since she knew Suvi was going to see her), but she would probably know that she wouldn’t have nearly enough connection to her (i.e., enough to subtract from the roll), might realize Ame has high WIS, and on top of that, Steel is also actively involved in war and may not want to use that spell slot. At level 13-16, she has two fifth level spells, and would already be using one of them to scry on Suvi. (NB: You can cast Scry on a location you’ve visited before, like Grandmother Wren’s cottage, but they left soon after Suvi’s speaking mirror broke, and it’s likely the cottage has wards against that anyway.)

Steel’s spell save DC (8+ proficiency + INT modifier) would be anywhere from a 16 to 18 DC for Scry. Subtracting either 10 or 4 from the roll overall, Suvi would have to roll a natural 20 for Scry to fail (in the best-case scenario, i.e. lowest modifier and lowest DC, if she rolled a 19, the save would be a 15 and would fail). The probability of Suvi passing the wisdom saving throws for a single Scry is 5% (1/20). It should almost always work, unless something is interfering. As Steel casts it again and again, the chance of it not working approach zero. The probability of Suvi passing TWENTY-TWO wisdom saving throws, consecutively over as many days, or rolling 22 natural 20s in a row is 2.384186e-29. That’s a lot of zeros following the decimal point. If Suvi has advantage on the roll, the odds improve ever so slightly, but not enough for this to be credulous. (Above the table, we also know that Aabria’s dice were rebelling against her, especially in the first arc!)

How would one mechanically avoid Scry if you don’t have a one-of-a-kind magical amulet blocking it that the caster may or may not know the properties of?

There are a couple of ways. The most accessible spell to counter it is a third-level Nondetection, which explicitly blocks scrying and divination but only lasts 8 hours (and Suvi doesn’t have access to it and won’t for a while). An even more powerful spell is the eighth-level spell Mind Blank, which grants immunity to divinatory spells for 24 hours. There’s an edge-case where Grandmother Wren cast Nondetection or Mind Blank as a precaution when Suvi first arrived, for some unknowable reason, but Wren was also gravely ill (see footnote 4).

But for this to be the case over twenty-two castings, then someone close to Suvi (as the range for both is Touch), would have to be continually casting either one 3rd level spell every 8 hours, or burning one 8th level spell slot per day. This is not a logical conclusion—what insane circumstances would have had to arise to warrant burning those magical resources?

Occam’s razor says that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. As each Scry fails, it becomes more and more likely that the creature is dead or not on the same plane: the primary conditions for the spell to succeed.

One final thing to consider about avoiding scry with a magical item in D&D. We know that the Citadel and Empire keep records of magical items (e.g., Suvi logged the items taken from the Azure Battalion in episode 8), and Suvi’s amulet has a powerful abjuration on it, above anything that would be standard issue. Steel, at the very least, would know what items had been issued to her by the Citadel (like her staff). Suvi is very protective of her amulet and has stated multiple times throughout the show that she keeps it hidden and has not mentioned it to anyone.

The Compartmentalization of Information: Who knows what and who knows when?

Following that summer at Grandmother Wren’s, it is established that Suvi has not left the Citadel in the intervening time. There would be no need to scry on her when she is there for obvious reasons (and we know they did not because there were no older spells mentioned in the Identify). When she teleports to Silbury, this is when the Citadel would have first discovered that they could not scry on her. They try again, and again, and again, to no avail, and after 22 attempts, start search efforts. Now here’s something you may have noticed: I’ve been using Steel and the Citadel somewhat interchangeably, and that’s on purpose. The Scry spells described in the Identify are marked as from the Citadel, not a specific person, which (purely speculating) may have to do with the reflexive indicative, or a similar identifying/obfuscating component of the lingua arcana, marking and masking the individual user as being a member of the Citadel. I think there is a case to be made that someone other than (or in addition to) Steel cast Scry, but I do think Steel cast the first one, at the very least. I will elaborate on this, but let’s break down the information available to Steel:

Steel now knows the following when Suvi turns up alive at the Chantry in episode 9:

Suvi is not dead or on another plane,

Because of Galani’s abjuration checks, she is not under the effects of any spell and is who she says she is,

Grandmother Wren is dead (i.e., someone who could’ve repeatedly cast Mind Blank or Nondetection),

She was not traveling with a high-level caster who could have cast either of those spells,

There is not a standard issue magical item given to Suvi by the Citadel to prevent scrying,

And the 22 scrying spells failed not for any of those reasons.

We now know, of course, that Suvi’s necklace blocks scrying from the Citadel and Great Spirits. So, this raises several crucial questions, especially if you haven’t been relistening or combing through transcripts (like I have):

Q1) Does Steel know about the necklace?

Q2) Does she know what the necklace can do?

Q3) Why didn’t anyone mention the failed scrying?

Q4) Does the Citadel proper or anyone else at the Citadel know about Suvi’s necklace or the failed scrying?

Let’s go down the line and examine each possible answer.

Question 1: Does Steel know about the necklace?

Yes. Stone told Suvi not to show the necklace to anyone, and she has not, to her knowledge, done so on purpose, except for one time: when Suvi showed it to Steel when she picked her up from Grandmother Wren’s cottage at the end of the Children’s Adventure. And although she didn’t outright say “my mom gave this to me,” it is heavily implied. When Steel gave her Soft’s ring, Suvi showed Steel the amulet, and put the ring on the same chain. So, Steel absolutely knows that this necklace exists and inferred that it was from her mother given the context and significance of the moment. But Suvi herself did not know any of the properties of the necklace when she showed it to Steel and wouldn’t find out until the end of Arc 1 (great spirits) and in the moment of the Identify casting (the Citadel).

Question 2: Does Steel know what the necklace can do?

Before I can answer this directly, I need to revisit those assumptions from the earlier Scry calculations.

Question 2a: Who cast Scry twenty-two times on Suvi?

I keep repeating myself, but 22 is a really large and specific number of castings for such a high-level spell, and it borders on excessive. Obsessive, even. Wizards don’t unlock their fifth level spell slot until level 9, so whoever was doing this is definitely high(er) ranking at the Citadel. Let’s start from the framework outlined earlier, that Steel cast all twenty-two Scry spells. This means that while at war, for twenty-two days straight, she burned a 5th level spell slot (of which she has two) to cast Scry. This is not trivial. Consider the sequence of events and headspace that Steel would be in that would lead to her casting it this many times.

To me, the first Scry reads as a mother’s worry, “Oh I’ll just check on her, make sure she got to Wren’s OK.” Check the speaking mirror, no answer, “I can cast Scry, so no need to bother Kabani with this.” It fails. “Ok, well if she’s with Grandmother Wren, then maybe Wren took precautions, no big deal, I’ll try again tomorrow or in a few days.” Second Scry fails. Even more concerning. Fails a third time. The speaking mirror still isn’t working, so Suvi can’t even be ordered to submit to the spell. Scry again. And on and on and on. At what point does she divulge this information to anyone, to the diviners in Kabani, or to Silence? Suvi is her daughter, an extremely valuable and high-ranking member of the Citadel, and now she is a ghost on the wind. Steel let her go, Steel gave her the staff, Steel went out on a limb and let her leave the Citadel for the first time since she returned from Grandmother Wren’s. And the only plausible reason it fails twenty-two times is if she is dead or on another plane, or a very-high level magic user is casting magic to prevent it (for good or evil is moot), and let’s first presume that she does not know that Suvi has a one-of-a-kind magic item to specifically prevent Citadel scrying. Regardless of her duty as Sword of the Citadel to report the loss of an asset, does she? Let’s assume she doesn’t know about the necklace and doesn’t report the failed scrying to anyone. What are the implications of this, and is there circumstantial evidence to support this idea?

After twenty-two Scries (cast by only Steel), we know from Galani that a private order goes out to begin searching for Suvi, and Galani makes no mention of whether that order included anything about her presumed status (that field of the BOLO could have been left intentionally blank). But the timeline is a little fuzzy, so it’s possible that twenty-two days had elapsed before the order went out, which was a week and a half before Suvi showed up in Port Talon. Let’s say that a week and a half is 10 days, for a total of 32 days, or just over a month since Suvi left the Citadel/ Grandmother Wren died. I think, if Suvi had been gone for over a month, Galani and Steel would say, “Suvi you’ve been gone for over a month,” not “weeks.” But they don’t, because she hasn’t been gone that long.

Galani: “What have you—so you've been traveling around Akham for a week and a half? Two weeks? For a long time.” Steel: “I am glad you are alive. Now, the last time we spoke, I said "No rush in getting back to me. Take your time." Because I was sending you to see Grandmother Wren, who I had heard was deathly ill. So I said, "Oh, I want to give her a day, or two, to settle in." It's been weeks, Suvi. It's been weeks.”

So, given the timeline, Steel is likely not the only one to be casting scry. Let’s divide twenty-two into a couple parts to see what fits the timeline:

If two people cast Scry on Suvi per day (maybe at alternating intervals to catch her unawares, to catch a missed Nondetection or some other reason), then that is 11 days of casting, plus ten days of searching, for 21 days (three weeks) since Suvi left the Citadel. That seems plausible, and for the best odds of success, the other person casting it would probably be Sonder. If this is the case, Steel may have cast the first Scry, and in a normal conversation with Sonder about their surrogate daughter and her first solo adventure, mentions the failed Scry and asks for a second opinion.

If three people cast Scry on Suvi per day, then that is 7 days of casting, plus 1 for the first failed casting by Steel, plus 10 days of searching, for 18 days (two and a half weeks). Building off of that, then the three wizards would probably Steel, Sonder, and a closely trusted diviner in Kabani (who may have other means of boosting the chances of a successful Scry). This could be Scholar, who was the diviner that Steel visited to ask about Ame’s prophecy about the coven (episode 18, Steel: “I talked to Scholar. I talked to the Wizard Scholar, she's been—she was very clear.”). This is also highly plausible given the timeline. Any larger number of people casting Scry is possible but not plausible given the restriction of information, the timeline, and the resources needed (e.g., the ability to sacrifice a 5th level spell slot on a failed attempt).

Now, I reiterate that if we presume that Steel does not know the properties of the necklace, then the reasons for Scry to fail so many times spell disaster for Steel and the Citadel (i.e., death, abjuration of the Scry by a high-level caster, or a magic item they don’t know about). And, the compartmentalization of the information that Suvi cannot be scried upon is extremely important and sensitive: if the Citadel’s enemies or others wishing to kneecap the next Archmage of the Citadel found out not only that she is missing, but also cannot be magically located, then that is a Big Fucking Problem.

And word of Suvi’s disappearance did go out, but only through private channels, and it is notable that Galani was the one who showed up at the Chantry (rather than literally any other wizard). Galani must be at least level five, since she could cast two third level spells (or maybe she has some souped-up Citadel magic items to allow multiple slots of that level as an abjurer, anything’s possible), and she is characterized as “the Head of the Des Moines Agricultural Bureau” to Suvi’s “intern at the White House.” It is revealing that Galani is trusted with that information, not just because of her level and rank, but it shows that she was the most trusted person nearest to Akham/Port Talon, and that she knew (or at least knew of) Suvi when training at the Citadel. Basically someone (Steel) went, “who do we have on the ground, preferably an abjurer, in Akham that can be trusted not to divulge that the Archmage Apprentice is missing and can get to Port Talon to check out this rumor quickly? Also, who would Suvi know and feel safe reaching out to?” That Suvi was missing (or even had left the Citadel) probably wasn’t disclosed to many others, given that Akham is on the fringes of the Empire’s influence. Even more importantly, Galani claims she only knew to look for her in Port Talon because Morrow blabbed to anyone who would listen. Steel then made a beeline for Port Talon by air from wherever she was on the war front, since teleporting to Silbury would be even slower. So, considering all of this information from episodes 9 and 33:

Back to Question 2: Does Steel know that the necklace prevents Scrying by the Citadel?

Based on the above evidence, I can conclude that no, she does not, if she presumed her to be dead (see footnote 5). If she did, then why attempt to scry in the first place if she knew it would fail every time? Why attempt to scry another twenty-one times? If you argue that she does know the properties of the necklace, then Steel is either the biggest idiot on the planet to waste a fifth level spell during wartime (and possibly repeatedly) or the most conniving manipulator, which is so blatantly disrespectful to her character and relationship with Suvi (what, she scried knowing that it would fail so that she could drop everything to go yell at Suvi? And manipulate her into doing what exactly? And to guilt trip Suvi into feeling bad that Steel thought she was dead? To what end?). Besides, we’ve already met a wizard who has shown themselves to be one of the most conniving manipulators: Keen.

Question 3: Why didn’t anyone mention the failed scrying?

This is the question that prompted this entire essay, and I’ve been slowly teasing it out. Once again, it boils down to “who knows what” and “who knows when.” I am very confident that at most, three people at the Citadel know that the scrying failed as of episode 9: Steel, Sonder, and Scholar. The compartmentalization of that information is likely very high, so it’s possible that more people may know or have figured this out by episode 43, but we can’t know for sure. However, there’s even more context needed to answer why none of those three mentioned it to Suvi.

Q4: Does the Citadel proper or anyone else at the Citadel know about Suvi’s necklace or the failed scrying?

Given the reasons outlined above, no, apart from anyone who may have assisted Steel with scrying in the intervening weeks (i.e., Sonder or Scholar). All of the scrying spells aimed at her heart are two months old, from the time between the speaking mirror breaking and “when [Suvi] was on foot, with Ame, in Akham” (ep 33). No other pending scries, no other wizards attempting to scry on her before or after that time period. I suppose, it’s possible that they expire after a year or something, but I highly doubt that anyone tried or had any reason to, since she had essentially lived at the Citadel her whole life apart from that summer. We know for certain that once the search for Suvi began, no one from the Citadel attempted to scry on her again. Finally, given the mechanics of Scry, it is clear that there are not random unnamed wizards going, “Hmm, I wonder what the Archmage Apprentice is up to right now” and actually casting Scry.

The only other thing I’ll briefly mention here is that Sly was also seen in Suvi’s Identify (he fits the description to the letter). Sly appears to be able to divine things about her: he refused to give Suvi bad news, knew that she was key to success at the coven meeting, and knew that if Eursulon didn’t get a shield, both Ame and Suvi would die within the year. There’s an important difference here that scrying looks at someone in the present time. On a successful Scry, the following happens (from PHB):

“On a failed save, the spell creates an invisible sensor within 10 feet of the target. You can see and hear through the sensor as if you were there. The sensor moves with the target, remaining within 10 feet of it for the duration. A creature that can see invisible objects sees the sensor as a luminous orb about the size of your fist.”

Since Sly specializes in catastrophic futures and prophecy, he likely wouldn’t be attempting to Scry on her in the present-day. I can’t say for certain whether he would know about the necklace or its properties or not, for other divinatory reasons.

However, Identify was 10 episodes ago, and a Citadel wizard could have attempted to scry on her in the intervening time. I cannot say for certain whether this has happened or not (e.g., during the rescue mission or after Suvi left Bracken with those two failed luck checks, though I’m sure the literal and metaphorical fog of war doesn’t help), but this neatly brings us to Eioghorain.

Scrying, Eioghorain, and the Presumption of Death

Okay, I’m far enough into this essay that I’ll let anyone reading this know: if you were expecting me to speculate about Steel’s involvement or responsibility (or lack thereof) in Soft and Stone’s deaths, you’re out of luck. Instead, I must talk about her behavior thus far regarding Eioghorain, because he is a HUGE wrinkle in all of this scrying business (see footnote 6). So far, I have assumed that Steel does not know the properties of the necklace, and as I have outlined, it is logical to conclude that by using “Who knows what” and “Who knows when.” However, I have mostly been using evidence from episodes 33 and 9 so far, and we still have the unanswered question of why Steel hasn’t mentioned the failed scrying yet. With all of this information, we must now consider what was revealed about Eioghorain in episode 16 (“Everything”), when Steel finally has a conversation with Suvi about him. (see footnote 7)

In episode 43, Suvi asserts that Eioghorain killed her parents, and that Steel was the one that told her that on the day that she picked her up from the cottage:

Suvi: “The last time I saw you, they sent me away, you went off to do whatever you do, and then a six-year-old girl was picked up by Steel, and told that her parents died at your hands. And I’ve been waiting to see you ever since.” Eioghorain: “If I had, we would settle it here and now… I betrayed your parents, but I didn’t slay them. I don’t know how they died.” Eioghorain: “Steel told you, point blank, that I killed Soft and Stone?” Suvi: “Yyyup.”

Unfortunately, Suvi is partially and meaningfully wrong here about what Steel told her. First, Steel did not mention Eioghorain by name or refer to him or his culpability when she picked Suvi up from the cottage, only that her parents died as heroes. Eioghorain is briefly mentioned by description in episode 2 and doesn’t get mentioned again until the very end of episode 14  (although I could be wrong). In a flashback, Suvi finally has her conversation with Steel on the balcony of the Tower of the Sword in episode 16, “Everything”:

Steel: “It is my belief that Eioghorain is responsible for the death of your parents…” [Steel explains why she thinks that, and the circumstances of Soft and Stone’s final mission. Further, she admits that she doesn’t have definitive proof, except that she claims she wasn’t there and Eioghorain was. Until recently, she thought Eioghorain was dead, which is why she thinks he was responsible in some way.]

It’s possible Suvi is misremembering given everything that has happened, but strategically, it’s also a more forceful accusation to say, “Steel said you killed my parents and I’ve been waiting to see you since I was a child,” to get a reaction and answers from Eioghorain, than to say “Steel said you were responsible and she only told me this a month ago.” Further, I believe that it matters less what Steel said about Eioghorain’s culpability; because while discussing Eioghorain, Steel told Suvi about an instance when scrying failed to work and Steel knew that the reason was NOT because the target was dead:

Suvi: “I’m going to ask the questions now that I think are why you didn’t tell me this story earlier. You think he’s still alive? You haven’t found him? Do you know where he is?” Steel: “I’m telling you this now because I have come to the certainty that I cannot find him… I think that there are means at his disposal to keep him hidden from the Citadel. Obviously, we have tremendous power at our disposal…” [Suvi mentions the diagrams of Eioghorain that she and Ame looked at in Episode 2, that Steel had given Suvi to show to Grandmother Wren] Steel: “Several weeks ago, I made the determination that Eioghorain was still alive, something that I was unsure of up until recently. [Steel asserts that him being alive means that he had to be responsible because he is violent and deranged.] Steel: “The diagram that was going with you to Grandmother Wren was me conceding defeat and asking for help from one of the world’s most powerful witches… If magical power could solve this, then the Citadel could solve this. What we’re dealing with is something outside our sphere of understanding. He has some form of abjuration on him, but we have probed around the edges. We’ve talked to all of the Diviner’s College. We’ve seen everything we can trying to go after him. We’ve found locked doors, which is not the same as finding a wall… So it’s just about who has the key… And Grandmother Wren, when she was still alive, there was a chance that she would tell me it was impossible. In which case, I never would have told you to have you go berserk with something like this hanging over your head.” Steel: “Instead, with her gone, we’re left with an open-ended question. Perhaps a witch could find Eioghorain. Perhaps a spirit could find Eioghorain. Perhaps Soft and Stone gave some ability to you to bypass those locked doors. I don’t know. What I do know is this, and I need you to hear me, Eioghorain would kill you, as you are today.” Suvi: “I hear you.” [Aabria has stated that she meant this as a challenge, or at the very least that Suvi would need to level up a couple times before she should go after him for answers.] Steel: “…So I’m out of options. And there’s elements of this left to explore, that we can explore when Ame is awake again.” [They did not explore this with Steel because of the attack at Fort Kieran and WitchCon.]

Um, what the fuck. Before I pulled up this transcript to check the facts about what Steel said about Eioghorain, I did not recall this many specifics about Steel’s attempts to find Eioghorain, only that she thought he was dead and realized he wasn’t. I completely forgot that Steel mentioned scrying (while the spell was not explicitly mentioned, the evidence that she tried to scry is plain as day) to Suvi’s face, IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the events in Port Talon and Suvi’s return to the Citadel. Not only that, we now know that the EXACT CIRCUMSTANCES of the failed scrying on Eioghorain and presumption of death were the EXACT SAME for Suvi, and though we now know that it failed for Suvi because of the amulet, we don’t know what made it fail on Eioghorain (other than he also has a powerful abjuration on him).

Further, something changed Steel’s mind about Eioghorain being dead BEFORE Suvi left the Citadel to see Grandmother Wren.

Until I looked back at Episode 16, I thought I had put most of the pieces together, and had an answer for this open-ended question:

Why hasn’t Steel mentioned to Suvi about the failed scrying attempts on her? She’s had so many opportunities to say something, but it hasn’t been the right place, the right time, or the right amount of information.

It is really strange that Steel talks about scrying and abjuration in episode 16, with (presumably, as I’ve argued) full knowledge that she had scried on Suvi several times, but Steel explicitly wants to wait to talk about abjuration and scrying until Ame is awake. Why not mention it now? Any number of reasons intersecting with her role as mother and member of the Citadel: she just dropped a bombshell allegation against Eioghorain, she doesn’t want to scare her, she doesn’t want to overwhelm her, she doesn’t want to plant a seed of disillusionment. And if she didn’t make the leap in logic that the reason Suvi couldn’t be scried on was the necklace, we know that Steel, by her own admission as with Eioghorain, would not want to divulge that she only had part of the picture to anyone else until she was desperate or exhausted all options.

Following episode 16, several relevant things and conversations occur. Shortly after Ame wakes up, she and Eursulon essentially flee the Citadel before any conversation with Steel can happen about Eioghorain. Then in episode 23, Suvi has another conversation with Steel about divining, concerning the prophecy (Steel: “We just always have to—we just all have to always be saying what we know.”—I don’t know if she recognizes the hypocrisy here). Scholar, a diviner in Kabani, is name-dropped. Steel appeals to Suvi about “wizards are known by their secrets,” then immediately bites her cheek until it bleeds, and Suvi insights Steel, gleaning what Steel thinks: about how diviners can be tricked or be wrong, and how there are “all these edge cases and marginalia” (to be clear, Steel does not say that, Suvi learns this on an insight check). Gee, I wonder what Steel was thinking about in that moment. No mention of Suvi’s failed scrying. They talk about Sly, among other things. Then Suvi is off to WitchCon, with a Geas and a Modify Memory in tow. No time to explain anything. WitchCon is not fun for anyone. Suvi casts Identify on herself. Shit hits the fan: fleeing the Conclave, rescuing Silver, getting through Hallicker Forest. The next time Suvi talks to Steel is in Bracken in episode 41, but that’s neither the time nor the place to reveal that. Steel will be there in a couple days, so just stay put, and we’ll have that frank conversation. But the cracks in the justification machine are widening, and so Suvi heads to Twelve Brooks, gets half-arrested by the Empire for abandoning her post (Silver, you RAT), and then is abducted by Eioghorain. And then these pieces fall into place.

Now, like Steel, I am left with so many more open-ended questions, but instead of asking them, I will lay out the timeline and facts regarding Eioghorain, Suvi and Steel.

A Timeline to Remember (What We Know and What Can Reasonably Be Inferred)

Since Soft and Stone were killed, Steel has been unable to find Eioghorain, by scrying or other means. Steel and all of the diviners in Kabani presumed him to be dead because they could not scry on him. Stone’s necklace protects Suvi from scrying by the Citadel and Great Spirits. Prior to the events of Episode 1, Suvi has lived at the Citadel her whole life and the only other place she had ever been to was Silbury (where she got the necklace) and Toma, where she was under the protection of Grandmother Wren. It is very likely that no one at the Citadel attempted to Scry on Suvi before she left the Citadel for the first time since that summer. Several weeks before Suvi went to visit Grandmother Wren, Steel changed her mind about Eioghorain being dead. Steel sent Suvi to see Grandmother Wren and show her the scroll case and book. Suvi did not have time to show these to her. After Grandmother Wren died (and the interaction with the Man in Black), Suvi’s speaking mirror broke, and Steel discovered that she could not scry on Suvi and that she is alive. In Episode 16, Steel does not mention that to her, but does mention that scrying does not work on Eioghorain and he is alive, and does not explain how she knows this.

Logical Conclusions and Mechanics

Mechanically, in order to scry, you need Knowledge (Secondhand, Firsthand, or Familiar) and Connection (Likeness or picture, Possession or Garment, Body Part or the like). It will always fail if the target is dead, but if you have imperfect information (i.e. not adding the highest modifiers to the roll), then concluding the target is dead could be false. What components did the Citadel have in order to attempt to cast Scry on Eioghorain? His Likeness: which is a 150-year-old document depicting a garran, a similar creature to the one Eioghorain shapeshifts into (giving a -2 modifier) and some variance of Knowledge: Citadel diviners would give +5 (secondhand if they never met him, unless it was cast by a diviner who was a member of the Acadator, who would have a higher bonus) and Steel would give -5 (familiar). At worst, the modifier is +3 and at best, it is -7. We know that Eioghorain succeeded on every single save. As outlined, it would be reasonable to presume that he was dead, but this is not conclusive.

In the weeks leading up to Grandmother Wren’s death, something changed Steel’s mind about Eioghorain’s presumption of death. Logically, the thing that would have changed Steel’s mind would be a change in the components available, and mechanically, the modifier. What would give you definitive proof of death? A body part or the like, not just his likeness. Thus, we can conclude that until this point, the Citadel did not have a body part or the like to cast Scry with.

Moreover, if Steel casts Scry with a body part or the like on a dead person she knows well, the spell AUTOMATICALLY fails because it cannot target them. So, what happens when you cast Scry on a PRESUMED dead person you know well with a body part or the like? It doesn’t AUTOMATICALLY fail: something else happens (per Steel, “we have probed around the edges… we’ve found locked doors, which is not the same as finding a wall.”). This is a false negative or type II error in reasoning, where something is declared false when it is actually true.

What body part or the like of Eioghorain’s was just discovered?

In episode 18, “Between the Lines,” Suvi, Eursulon, and Ame investigate the scroll that the Citadel was using for scrying on Eioghorain, though they do not explicitly glean that this could be its purpose, but they get close. The document is 150 years old, depicting a garran, and there is a NEW smell that has been added to it, and Ame can discern that it was added recently. Eursulon figures out that it is biological in nature, with the scent of blood and bile, mixed with the scent of iron, which taken together doesn’t smell exactly like a garran, but it is similar to it. It makes sense to conclude that in sending that document with Suvi to show Grandmother Wren, Steel wanted her to check her work and confirm that Eioghorain was unable to be scried on and alive (and Suvi posits this as well in the episode, “maybe Steel replicated his smell so Grandmother Wren would know him specifically?”), and to see if there was a way around the powerful abjuration (a “key”).

Missing Pieces and Limitations

Editor’s note: I cut an entire section of this essay right here and changed the above heading, because it was quickly and dangerously veering into off-topic speculation about the connection between the curse and the smell. There is too much to unpack and too little definitive information about either at the moment, and I realized that any theories I might have now shouldn’t be included in this essay that is fundamentally about Steel and Scrying. However, the fact that Eioghorain has the same smell as the contingency expectorant of Ame’s curse is going to be very important, and there’s certainly another full essay I could write using the “who knows what and when” framing when we have some more information.

With all of that said, there’s definitely Steel-involved interactions that I have omitted from this essay: basically any other interactions in other episodes not mentioned here or other parts of her conversations that I did not include for relevancy’s sake. I also did not discuss the other characters’ (Suvi, Ame, Eursulon, etc.) perspectives or views of Steel, such as how trustworthy she is, what they believe her values to be, or her relationships to them. This is because of the framing of this essay, which is to look at what Steel knows and when she knows it (and why she doesn’t disclose it). In admitting this, I leave open the possibility that I may be cherry-picking evidence or reading way too much into this. I’ve tried to be as balanced and thorough as possible in my analysis, and I think my logic and conclusions are sound. I also want to acknowledge how insanely good Brennan is at burying plot details in plain sight and inconspicuously in an improvised medium, and now he has free reign to do this in a long-form campaign (see footnote 1). We’re only 43 episodes in and the characters are only level four; there’s so much more to come, including the rest of Arc 4, which has been teased as, “a series of the *wildest* sessions [they’ve] ever played” (per Brennan’s Instagram). I don’t think I’m ready for that, but I’m beyond excited to see what happens next.

Discussion

On that note, if I am correctly reading between the lines of Steel’s conversation in episode 16 and understand that the mechanics of Scry on both Eioghorain and Suvi failed due to some kind of powerful abjuration (whether or not these abjurations are related), then my earlier conclusion that Steel definitively does not know about the properties of Suvi’s amulet (that it can protect from Citadel scrying) is almost certainly false, presuming Steel has put all of these pieces together (by episode 16). To throw fuel on the fire, Steel definitely knows about the abjuration on Suvi protecting her from Great Spirits, though she may not know these are related. In episode 12, “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Suvi tells Steel that Orima could not hear her but does not know why (this is before Suvi figures it out on her own with Orima, and as far as I know this interaction regarding Orima has not come up between them since).

The reason Steel knows about the properties of the necklace (beyond what Suvi has told her) is that she would have come away with the same answer about Suvi that she did with Eioghorain, especially if she maxed out the Scry modifier and cast it enough times to be certain that the probability of failure without magical interference was zero. Remember, neither Steel nor Galani said outright that they presumed her to be dead, just that they were glad she was alive. Why didn’t they presume her to be dead or mention that presumption? Galani may well have presumed Suvi dead when she first received the search orders, but upon hearing rumors that Suvi was in Port Talon (before confirming she was alive), she may have concluded that Suvi was under the control of powerful magic or had means of obscuring her location from the Citadel. However, to rub salt in the wound, for Galani, just like Silver, questioning orders like that is above her paygrade. (Editing-Bullseye remembered something important about the presumption of death, although it doesn't really change the conclusions that Steel would have drawn. Word may have reached the Citadel or the Empire she was alive when the party tried to charter a boat in episode 3 using the Citadel's name with Captain Karkoth. This might change the math of who was casting Scry, but I don't think there is enough evidence to support that right now. Worryingly, Captain Karkoth was headed to Carrow, where the Glass Coronet is. There are SO many factors at play; it's insane!).

Steel would not have presumed Suvi dead when she issued the search orders because she had magical evidence that contradicted that assertion, and thus would have known that Suvi was alive but missing, because she couldn’t scry on her. Since Suvi was not dead, when scrying was attempted, Steel did not hit a wall, and instead found a locked door. As outlined earlier, she knows that Stone gave Suvi the necklace, and Stone was an abjurer. Only a powerful abjuration would manifest like this on a failed Scry. (Steel, episode 16, “Perhaps Soft and Stone gave some ability to you to bypass those locked doors. I don’t know.”) So, she quietly issued search orders to contain that information. Further, this may be why Suvi’s namecloaking was expedited, not just to get around the court martial when Suvi threatened the Azure Battalion, but also to stop anyone from probing into the time period when she went missing. Thus, the focus of the Citadel and the Empire at-large shifts from how Suvi ended up in Port Talon to thanking her for minimizing the casualties and being honored with a namecloak. I may be reading too much into this, honestly, and also find myself obfuscated by this compartmentalization of information: “who knows what” and “who knows when,” especially when crucial pieces of the picture are left out.

I started writing this essay as a deep dive into Steel’s psyche to figure out why the scrying still hasn’t come up yet. She is Suvi’s adoptive mother and so far, has not turned out to be the mustache-twirling evil villain that some claim her to be (with little to no supporting evidence). Withholding this knowledge from Suvi is not damning of her character, but it is fascinating, given the number of opportunities to divulge it. Steel is characterized as being methodical, rational, intelligent, and tactical, but she is human (obviously), and displays genuine emotions: care, anger, laughter, sadness, joy, pride, disappointment, concern, etc. (Steel, ep. 14, “I just hope everybody’s thinking carefully.”). She was a member of the Acadator and a true friend of Stone. Part of me thinks that she wouldn’t keep this hidden from Suvi unless she had a very good and logical reason, but she is human (and played by one), and even very intelligent humans do dumb things for not very good and illogical reasons. Especially given the conversation with Suvi in episode 23 about ‘wizards being known by their secrets’ and then very obviously holding something back (biting her cheek until it bleeds), there is part of her that wants to be forthcoming and not keep this secret. In her mind, it just hasn’t been the right place, the right time, or the right amount of information to be able to share what she knows (Steel, ep 23, “When you have all the information, that's when you can make the right decision.”) Unfortunately, I don’t think there was or will be a “right” time or place, or if there was, she may have already missed it, since Suvi has essentially found out for herself with the Identify spell. What could be the reason to not say something? I think it is that Steel is missing or hiding an additional important piece of information, and she is protecting Suvi by not telling her and by compartmentalizing “who else knows what” at the Citadel, especially from its leadership.

This is my absolute pure speculation about what that might information be related to. Consider the Acadator’s discovery: that the League of Whispers was both sanctioned by the Citadel and believed to be warping its mission. Suvi, the daughter of two former Acadator members, and surrogate daughter to another, is now on the leadership track of the Citadel. Soft and Stone were remembered as heroes. Why and how do you think Suvi got to her position as Apprentice Archmage at such a young age, apart from her own innate talents and hard work? I think this could connect to why Steel has not said anything to Suvi about the scrying, but this is purely speculative and I cannot know for certain. Again, her reason to withhold this could be very good or very bad or very ignorant.

Finally, I must stress that the nature of The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One being an actual play show means that it is difficult to point to the specific wording a character uses and read between the lines and go, “this is canon and will never change or be retconned,” but in order to do any kind of analysis like this, you have to assume that, and also assume that the storytellers are paying as much attention as you are. There’s a through-line in several episodes regarding Steel and Scrying that has too much evidence, both plot-wise and mechanically to be dismissed outright as of episode 43. The thing about WWW is that these seeds can be planted now and grow in the long and short term, and we’ll just have to wait and see what crops up when. We also may never know, depending on the choices the players make and the direction the story takes. For now, I have written over 11,000 words about this with supporting evidence, and I understand a lot more about Steel, except that I’m left with no definitive answers to the question:

“Why haven’t you said anything?”

Concluding Thoughts and Asking Questions

The audience for this essay is me: I wanted to explore what makes Steel tick because it is so easy to make a snap judgment and proceed with looking for evidence to confirm, not disprove it. It is a reminder to myself to not jump to conclusions, to think critically, to read charitably first and cynically second, and to look for all sides, but I acknowledge that I am posting this publicly. So, dear reader, I’ll leave you with this advice: the next time you feel the urge to post anything divisive or reactionary about this show (…or really anything), take a second (or more) and stop and think about the whole picture. Relisten, look at the transcripts, take care, and pay back the respect to your intelligence the story is showing you. If things don’t make sense or don’t line up, take note of it, and know when to start and stop speculating. Assume the best before assuming the worst. Maybe that rumination will spawn something like this, because you need to fill the gaps and the space yourself with supporting evidence and not with implication or vibes (albeit maybe not with this many words). And honestly, I find that a more fun and fulfilling way to engage with this show (see footnote 8).

Footnotes:

1) Spoilers for Fantasy High Junior Year: “Barbarian Healing,” the five-years-long reveal from Brennan on a natural 20 investigation from Riz, answering the question, “How did Ragh get that curse? How did Ragh actually become able to see Kalina?”, and plays a clip from Sophomore Year, that Porter had put the curse on Ragh through “barbarian healing” and immediately after, was able to see Kalina for the first time. Barbarians can’t heal mechanically, but a multi-classed barbarian can. As the barbarian teacher, Porter was assumed to be just a barbarian. And Brennan reveals a lot more plot-relevant information and setup/payoff that I won’t spoil here. All I’ll say is that Brennan is really, really good at dropping hints through both story and mechanics, not pointing out the players assumptions about those hints, until the exact right time: then he asks the players a simple question, challenging their assumptions, that contextualizes everything prior. It looks like the exact same thing he did to Aabria/Suvi in episode 33; he just hasn’t fully revealed everything yet.

2) FWIW, Ame/the audience knew that the amulet was crafted by Stone, Wren, and Galt already, but it had not yet been revealed to Suvi at this point because of interpersonal drama (objectively).

3) The first thing Steel asks Suvi is “Where in the firmament, across the wide world of Umora have you been?” Now, I’d like to think that I have a pretty good vocabulary but sometimes you think you know the definition of a word but you look it up and it’s different, like meaningfully different? I thought firmament meant “earth” or “the world” (like terra firma). It doesn’t. It means “the sky” or “the heavens”, and I just think that’s really lovely and evocative of Steel’s relationship with the yet-to-be-namecloaked Wizard Sky (even if it was yelled). Just wanted to shout out Brennan’s adept word choice here.

4) We learn that Wren and Stone worked on the enchantment of the flawless sapphire in the amulet, and that Galt is the one who sourced it (in episode 23). My personal theory mechanically is that this is a version of the wondrous magical item, “amulet of proof against detection and location.” Wren crafted it as a permanent talisman (witch class feature) using the Mind Blank spell, cast either simultaneously or as part of a ritual with Stone using the lingua arcana without the reflexive indicative.

5) This is a shining example of how game mechanics enhance the story being told. In any other medium, you couldn’t use reverse-engineered (made-up) numbers to figure out a character’s motivation, perspective, or amount of knowledge. You can analyze what the characters say and do and infer their motivations in any story, but the mechanics of an actual play story (in this case D&D) add a sliding scale of confidence: it’s impossible, it’s 50/50, it’s an absolute certainty (and everything in between). For example, examining mechanically how things (like Scry) work or fail, so that reveals like this aren’t hand-wavy or not set up within the constraints of the game. There’s a codified magic system baked into the game and the story. It further demonstrates how a close examination and interpretation of the rules in the context of a story can lead to very compelling story beats and character motivations. After all, the WBN tag line/motto is, “we play games to make stories out of sound.”

6) This essay is so long already, but I needed this much space to fully flesh out all of the moving parts and what is known (and I likely still didn’t mention everything). I had originally added this footnote (“This essay is long enough”, i.e., I’m almost done) because I was only going to briefly talk about Eioghorain, and then I checked episode 16, and my brain exploded. I have often audibly gasped when listening to the episodes on first listen, but NEVER when reading the transcript!! When I started this essay last year, I was mostly looking at episode 9, since ep 9 was the first time scrying could have come up, and the fact that it didn’t immediately get mentioned was really strange. I didn’t get any farther in my research than that, until I reopened this draft (more of an outline, really) after I listened to ep 43. Had I finished this essay before then, it’s likely I would’ve checked episode 16/other Steel conversations eventually, but the reason I looked up ep 16 was to check exactly what Steel said about Eioghorain, and then I kept reading…

7) This isn’t as relevant to the scrying business, but it is relevant to Steel’s character. I wanted to mention the other part of Eioghorain’s story from ep 43, which involved the situation with the League of Whispers and offers insight into Steel’s motivations and morals. That I can speculate on, since he provided a lot more context (and at the very least, the perfect Nat 20 insight check means that he wholeheartedly believes this information to be true). The compartmentalization of knowledge and of the Citadel itself (through its courts, academic tracks, roles, responsibilities, and its connections to the Empire) makes speculating on how Steel factors into any of these situations a black box, because we just don’t know all of the moving parts. It’s likely that she is not entirely in the dark, given her station, but she’s also not one of the Archmagi, so she likely also doesn’t have the full picture. Her title illuminates her place in this: she is the Sword of the Citadel, she is the one to take action, to do the striking down, perhaps to cut out rot, but at any given moment, what actions she can take rely upon knowledge, time, and space. She’s a really interesting mirror to Suvi’s arc of being able to take action when everything lines up and there is time. This is really demonstrable too, of this story’s underlying moral philosophy: you may know (or think you know) the right thing to do, but will you do it? If you don’t have the knowledge, time, and space, is it even possible to do the right thing? If not, what should you do with what you have? For example, Steel had a plan for how to handle Port Talon: free Naram without destroying the derrick or flooding Port Talon, arresting Morrow and his collaborators, and figuring out who in the Empire sanctioned it. Instead, quest fever happened and she missed her window to enact her plan, so she could only “[write] a letter to the Imperium saying that the Citadel disavows magic this dangerous… handling it fast and dirty got us a letter.” We will never know if Steel’s plan would work, if it was a morally good plan, or if it would have resulted in a better outcome. As we learn from Eioghorain, the Acadator (including Steel) was successful in their mission of exposing the League of Whispers (a suspected cabal in the Citadel doing research that would warp the mission of the Citadel) outside of the chain of command, only to find out that it had been sanctioned by the “leadership of the Citadel” (i.e., the Archmagi).

This is why it is so fraught to assume ANYTHING concrete about Steel’s involvement (or lack thereof) in Soft and Stone’s death right now (i.e., for those of you that heard Eioghorain’s story and went, I knew it! Steel is the Bad Guy!). There is barely any information so far about “Who knows what” and “Who knows when” regarding where, how, and when they died, to draw any sound conclusions on the matter right now. This doesn’t even consider the possibility of memory modification or erasure, given that it has already happened to Suvi, at Steel’s hand. I do think theorizing and coming up with wild speculation about that is really fun and cool and am not saying you shouldn’t do it! There just isn’t a lot of evidence to support it right now because we’re missing almost all of the information about what was happening in the rest of Umora during the Children’s Adventure.

8) Ok, I’ll get off my soap box. I know I am just a tad obsessed with analyzing this show (three lengthy essays and counting), but it is ASTOUNDING to me that just a handful of episodes and a couple pages of dialogue can birth the depth of character analysis like this. This show is a gold mine.

*Final Disclaimer: I wrote and formatted this in MS Word, converted to RTF/HTML, then pasted this into Tumblr and made final edits/formatting to the paper for readability. I pray to Enzo that there no weird formatting or spelling errors (and my apologies if there are, I proofed this so many times). Thanks for understanding!

[acetypeface]

Hi Billy! 2, 14, 20, 22, and 25 for Bart?

BART!! A Bart ask?? For ME?? Yes, thank you, I will talk about Bart on main and be very annoying about it because I adore him.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Looking you dead in the eye, everything. /hj

More seriously, I adore his original character design with the big hair and the big feet and I think Bart stopped being written correctly when they stopped doing that. It was so silly and iconic and now, he's usually just drawn like a Wally Jr. and it makes me sad. I also receive psychic damage whenever they give him blue eyes and not his yellow eyes. Give him back his yellow peepers, please.

Favorite silly little fun fact would be that he hates the snow. He and Tim met while both on a ski trip, and Bart was Not Having It with the snow the entire time.

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

Admittedly I don't know enough about fashion to assign a specific aesthetic to him, but maybe cottagecore?? Or like, goblincore. Something earthy with big sweaters and funky colored rainboots and overalls so he can have rocks and cool leaves in his pockets.

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

I mean. I gotta push the Timbart agenda. There's a quote from Waid somewhere about how they're perfect foils-- Tim constantly thinking with his head, Bart constantly thinking with his heart, and they balance each other out. Plus, I adore how Tim is one of the few people who consistently respects Bart and takes him seriously. Sure, Bart gets on Tim's nerves--he gets on everyone's nerves at some point--but Tim will actually hear Bart out rather than just dismiss him right off the bat. And then Bart forces Tim not to take himself too seriously, something which Tim sorely needs.

I will give a shoutout to Kon and Bart as besties tho because I do adore them, I'm just really obsessed with Tim and Bart's dynamic.

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

When fic writers acknowledge his trauma!! While I firmly believe he's probably the king of compartmentalization, he has gone through a lot and I adore when people recognize that and have it affect his character. He's had loved ones die, he's died, he got written out of continuity for a bit-- let that affect him. And stuff like that does affect him in the comics; I mean, he quit Impulse for a bit after one of his scouts got killed in front of him. He isn't lighthearted and goofy all the time. Which leads me to what I don't like...

When writers infantilize him. Yes, Bart can be immature as all get-out, but to characterize him as just that ignores years of character growth that Bart went through in Impulse '95, YJ '98, and TT '03. I know it doesn't help when DC itself is determined to keep Bart as the silly immature little kid, but there's still a lot more to him than his impulsive nature.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

In full honesty, I watched the YJ cartoon before I read any comics-- that was my intro to DC. So my first encounter with Bart was his character's introduction in the second season. I don't honestly remember what I thought? I do think I remember being annoyed by the overuse of the word "crash". I still hate it, actually. If there's one reason I can't watch the YJ cartoon after having read the comics, it's that. (In reality, it's how wrong Kon's character is in it, but that's neither here nor there).

Now? I fucking adore him. I would die for him. There's three characters I literally do not shut up about and he's one of them. A combination of Bart and Tim gave me a gender crisis. Like. Him.

[lonelychicago]

made my way to a life i would choose

buck/eddie | explicit | 3/6, 21.5k words

In which Eddie transfers from his station to the Dispatch Center to be the LAFD Liaison, change is hard, staying away from Dispatcher Evan Buckley is even harder and not falling in love with the man is god-damned impossible. Eddie makes his way to a life he would choose and to a family who will choose him back. or affectionately called the buddie at dispatch fic <3

read on ao3

CHAPTER THREE

He's trying to stay calm; he's trying to hold it in; to push the fear down and compartmentalize like he usually does. Surely Buck is fine.

Maybe he went back upside, back to Maddie and Josh or back to his desk to continue answering calls. Surely Buck is fine and probably already evacuating the building after Eddie made the call over the radio.

But Terry would've told him if that were the case, right?

"Mayday, Mayday, this is Firefighter Eddie Diaz on a department-wide channel. We have a fire at Metro Dispatch downtown. Point of origin appears to be on the second floor records room." Eddie speaks on the radio. "All non-essential personnel begin evacuation procedures. Repeat. This is Firefighter Eddie Diaz. Metro Dispatch is on fire."

or:

Certain feelings are stronger than ever and impossible to ignore, but things get complicated when the dispatch center burns down... and almost takes Buck down with it.

Eddie saves the day.

[likeburningcoal]

So I watched the first two episodes since they’re in English now. Live reaction:

LMK Season 5 spoilers under the cut:

Fun training session! Let’s go!

Tired MK is tired. Somebody get this boy the therapy he needs!

Wukong is trying to be responsible about the monkey form at least.

“I’m compartmentalizing!” XD me too MK, me too

MAC MAC MAC!!!! Also “Bud” not in a mocking way!!!!

“This mountain’s been by home just as long as yours” I’m screaming!!!

They’re working together! (Sorta)

Wukong confirming he didn’t know about MK!

Referencing Mac’s death and resurrection!

Ominous stone crack!!

Mei!! My girl!!!

THEY BUILT HIM A NEW HOUSE!!!!

Tang continuing the tradition of shirking the hard labor. Good to see he’s still himself.

THE PICTURES!!!

The origami!!

Even Mo gets a picture!!

HUG HUG HUG!!!

MK please chill, like even 2% calmer would be a major improvement. You need to rest and get therapy.

“Sleeping with the noodles”

Dadsy give him some comfort. Also send him to therapy. Or teach him cooking.

MK backstory! Noodles! Sleepy noodles!!!! That is so cute oh my god!!

MK is a heavy boi. Also sleepy.

“I love you, son” I am not emotionally prepared for the sheer amount of MK and Pigsy fluff in the last two minutes.

Mac sleeping with the little monkeys!!! At the tree!!!

Spooky goings on. References to Monkey King getting kidnapped to the underworld perhaps??

Stop blaming the monkeys for the things they’ve been trying to stop please. That’d be great. MK needs a nap. You could’ve waited for him to sleep.

Wukong throwing shade about the underworld situation. You tell ‘em!

Smug smile. Good monkey.

Mac canonically appears in the Monkey King Ace Attorney TV show? What?

Fillet?? Fillet??? Nezha?!? “Nezhie”?!??!?

Li Jing, hey, can’t say it’s a pleasure to meet you. Maybe take some parenting classes and then we’ll talk.

Mac trying to stop the fillet!!!

MK losing it a bit at that, love the concern for Wukong! They is a family!!!

Also Nezha trying to plea for them!

Underworld jail.

Grumpy Wukong and mopey Mac, I can just feel all the angst fics being written.

MK is trying so hard to free his mentor!

“It’s tense in here.” Gee I wonder why.

Secret plan with the fur? Secret plan with the fur? The nods?!

(I think I should interject here to point out, I rarely watch things without also doing something else to distract my hands, and yet my crochet has been forgotten because I’m having so many thoughts!)

Nezha providing exposition

Tang!Wukong, glasses is a must

Painted art style my beloved it’s good to see your return!

“My father is not the enemy” I mean he’s not exactly a pillar of goodness either my dude.

“I’m a clone”

Okay the running animation bit was actually pretty nice, love the movement. I like how they’re really trying to keep close to the original style of animation even though they’re working with a totally different tool set.

Mac, are you…are you Naruto running?

Wukong keeps doing the cutest smiles. I’m gonna have to go back through and grab some many screenshots.

Wukong and Mac just…knowing exactly how to fight together with no communication when they’re actually both on the same side.

Sandy got a new truck…

…And it’s gone, poor guy

MK worried that they’re just the harbingers of chaos when they have directly caused so few of the problems they’ve faced. Like, I get it, but maybe have some perspective. You know what would help with that? Therapy.

Just don’t explain anything. It’s fine. They’ll figure it out.

MK building powers!!

Fillet use!! Mac stepping in!! Mac sacrificing himself?!?!? Oh the angst fics will be legendary!!

“He always gets away, right?” Followed by sad face?!? OH THE ANGST FICS WILL BE LEGENDARY!!!

Monkey in pagoda. This feels familiar.

I’m sensing a later “boiling rock” style episode. Or else they all get trapped in there and have to bust out (Nezha helping them escape possibly?)

That was so good! I can’t wait for the actual proper release for better audio quality and more importantly MORE EPISODES!!

[soleminisanction]

Can you lay out what the problems were with TimSteph relationship (in canon terms)? On both sides. Because I’d like to have something I can point to in reference when people get mad when I say the relationship seemed unhealthy

You'll excuse me if I stick to summary instead of citations, otherwise it'd be way too much for Tumblr; I go into more detail on a lot of these in some of my other posts.

From Tim's side, most of the problems stem from or tie back into a... I almost want to say power dynamic, but I don't think that's entirely right because it's not that he "has power" over Steph, he's not her boss or her superior officer or anything. But he does have legitimacy, experience and acceptance within the sphere of masked superheroes that Steph very much does not (or at least, not while they're romantically involved), and that leaves their relationship imbalanced.

Tim and Steph are both pointedly aware of this, and Tim sometimes holds that over her head, particularly when it's brought up that he knows her secret identity (having figured it out after their first meeting) but she doesn't know his for the longest time. He is also sometimes condescending as a result, though what counts as "condescending" is very much up to interpretation -- like, I don't count him ordering her around while they're on patrol together as "condescending" because he is legitimately the one who knows what he's doing and she is the untrained amateur. That to me is like claiming it's "condescending" for an EMT to order around some rando with basic first aid training when trying to save someone's life.

Then there's the complication with Tim's need to keep secrets and compartmentalize his civilian life away from his superhero one. The rule about Batman forbidding the secret ID sharing was added after Zero Hour to up the drama a bit, but the core of the issue was originally all Tim. He had a psychological need to keep the two parts of his life separate, and that required keeping big secrets about his true identity and forced him to keep Steph at arm's length. He knew everything about her, but she knew basically nothing about him, and that's not a recipe for a healthy relationship.

Though, to be fair, Tim himself was very aware of this, which is why, right at the beginning of their relationship, he laid all of that out for her in explicit terms and made it clear that he thought the two of them getting together was a bad idea for that reason. And Steph told him that she was okay with that and wanted to try anyway, explicitly agreeing to allow him the boundary of keeping his identity.

Which is why it's such a problem that she goes back on that and starts going behind his back to uncover his secret identity for herself, in plain violation of the boundary she agreed to. Like, that's the thing that makes it actually bad for me -- if she wasn't involved with him and didn't know the penalty he'd suffer for breaking the rule, it'd be one thing, but the fact that she not only knew but made a verbal agreement to respect her boyfriend's wishes and went back on it, that's the thing that makes it a relationship deal-breaker for me. Especially because once she finally does find out, her reaction is to mock him, so delighted that she's getting one over on him that she's completely oblivious to the near-panic attack he's having as a result; that doesn't indicate that she cares much about his feelings or well-being.

This isn't the first or the last time that Steph will make a verbal agreement that she has no intention of keeping, either -- that's what got her fired from Robin. Tim might keep secrets and have to lie about his activities as a result, but Steph is actively deceitful, you can't trust her word, she'll tell you what you want to hear, do whatever she wants anyway, and then be offended when you try to hold her to the terms of the agreement she knowingly made.

And she assumes that the people around her, including Tim, are going to be the same way, which means that she's also intensely jealous. If Tim so much as mentions that he knows another girl, Steph immediately assumes that he's cheating on her and lashes out in a rage, refusing to talk it out with him and focusing instead on getting revenge on him -- she does this at least twice.

Steph is also very willing to hurt Tim (and other people, but Tim gets the brunt of it) to get what she wants. She wants Batman's approval and attention, so when she comes back from faking her death and he (in the midst of outside manipulation in the lead-up to Final Crisis) tells her to test Tim first by stalking him, then by hiring an assassin to attack him, and then by working with one of his arch-nemeses to challenge him, she goes along with it without a second thought.

And then she refuses to apologize or even acknowledge responsibility for any of it, blaming other people (mostly Batman) and acting like she didn't have a choice or any agency, in spite of half her characterization being built around telling Batman to go fuck himself. More often than not, she bullies Tim into apologizing to her for being upset about the thing that hurt him in the first place.

Also: Steph hits her boyfriends. She has dated two men and has been shown hitting them both, not in the acceptable context of training or a superhero throw-down, but because they made her angry and she wanted to shut them up. Sometimes it's played as a joke, sometimes for drama, sometimes it's an Empowering Feminist Moment, but it's always bullshit because it's never portrayed as a bad thing.

There's also a subjective argument to be made that she is emotionally abusive, using insults disguised as mean-spirited "jokes" to cut down her partner's self-esteem and bully him into doing what she wants. In a similarly subjective space, it's very easy to argue that their relationship began with a good 50 issues of Robin full of Steph sexually harassing Tim, forcing kisses, physical affection and pick-up lines on him even while he repeatedly asked her to stop.

Tim did "start it" by kissing her, once, while deprived of oxygen, in thanks for saving him from suffocation, but for a long while after, every time she tried something like that, he would ask her to stop.... and she wouldn't, laughing off his protests and insisting that he wanted it in a very, "your mouth says no but your body says yes" rape culture kinda way. Which then brings us back around to the lack of respect she has for Tim's boundaries, which is really the heart of the problem on her part of the relationship.

---

TL;DR -- From Tim's side, the issue is mostly that he has a status over her that he wants to maintain that keeps their relationship unbalanced. From Steph's, the issues stem from a lack of respect for her partner's boundaries, which extends to some controlling and arguably abusive tendencies.

And that's not even getting into the very subjective interpretation that Tim might not even be attracted to Steph at all, he just feels compelled to have a girlfriend so he doesn't have to confront how deep in the closet he is and thus gives in after she makes it clear she won't take no for an answer. But like I said, that one's super subjective and up to interpretation.

[henrysglock]

Dustin's relationship with his father in The Dustin Experiment is, in my opinion, very much like Jon and Will's with Lonnie, and I'd like to use some excerpts to talk about it.

I saw this talked about by threemanoperation, so I can't claim that this evidence is an original finding, but I'd like to provide my own take on interpretation of it, because I think there are more excerpts that, when put in context, change the message.

(This is, of course, ignoring everything else about the book and taking it as canon for the sake of argument.)

1.

"When I was eight, my parents came home to find me with our radio broken up into parts and spread all over the living room. My dad was pissed, because it was brand new, and I'm sure it wasn't cheap, but I promised I'd put it back together. Took me three days, but I managed to get it working again in time for his Sunday night football." While speaking, I've already removed the broken cap and cleaned out everything the best I can, though I could do it better if I had more materials at my disposal. "Damn, Henderson," Eddie says. "My dad would have beat my ass." "Oh, he wanted to," I say. "But my mom? She took one look, and she signed me up for science camp." She also divorced my dad a few months later, and shortly after that, moved us back to Hawkins where they had both grown up. (pages 35-36)

2.

"The only life lessons I learned from my dad were how not to act" "I'll drink to that," Eddie says, taking a swig from his can of Coke. Then, "You don't mention your dad that much." I shrug one shoulder. My dad's not something I talk about much or even dwell on. "He lives in Illinois now," I say. "We don't really keep in touch." "Ah, a fellow member of the deadbeat dad club?" Eddie asks with a sympathetic wince. "I mean, kind of? He was more just...an asshole?" I say. "He cheated on my mom when I was a kid, they divorced, she moved us back to Hawkins where they'd both grown up, and that's kind of it." I was too much of a mama's boy at that age to forgive my dad, and he didn't care enough to work past that, and now our relationship is nonexistent. Eddie lets out a low whistle that seems to say sheesh. "Sounds like a dick," he says. "Eh," I say. "I'm not really bothered." As far as I'm concerned, my dad has nothing to do with me. If anything, the way he treated my mom makes me more determined to treat my mom better, and Suzie too. I don't want to be anything like him. Everything that makes me me, I owe to my mom, and my friends, and myself. Walter Henderson gets no claim in how awesome I am, thank you very much. (pages 144-145)

threemanoperation used excerpt #2 to draw a connect with this quote:

To call Lonnie the same kind of asshole as Walter in conjunction with an excerpt from the Hopper novel about compartmentalized memories of trauma—seemingly to paint a picture of Lonnie being a source of buried trauma for Will in a similar way to El's purported dissociative amnesia surrounding the 1979 massacre.

With the added context, I have to wholeheartedly disagree.

Walter was an asshole, but D'Amato makes a point to specify that Walter did not beat Dustin the way Alan beat Eddie, and that Claudia divorced Walter a few months after he even came close to wanting to hit his son. Walter is now entirely absent from Dustin's life, and Dustin doesn't consider him a major influence, let alone a negative influence. In fact, he re-frames Walter as being a source of motivation to be a better person.

We see this same type of effect coming through with Lonnie and Jon:

Lonnie, Jon, Dustin, and Walter are almost beat-for-beat the same. Neither Jon nor Dustin want to become their absentee asshole dads who are worse to their wives than they are to their children—specifically because their wives left them before things could get any worse than they were.

Hell, Lonnie and Joyce separated around the same time Claudia and Walter did in The Dustin experiment:

Claudia left Walter when Dustin was eight. Will, pictured above, is no older than twelve. "Should I Stay or Should I Go" came out in 1982, so realistically, he's no younger than eleven. Given that Joyce is sick of Lonnie's excuses, it's fair to say he's been out of the picture for a decent amount of time, meaning there's only about a two year difference between the two story lines.

Not to mention Lonnie and Walter are also, supposedly, both sports guys. Walter was concerned about his Sunday night football, and Lonnie is a baseball guy:

If we're using the books as source material, then we have to acknowledge the full context.

Walter was not physically abusive, he was just an asshole, mainly to Claudia, and he didn't care enough to be present for his son. I feel the Byers family is much the same—Lonnie was an asshole, mainly to Joyce, and he didn't care enough to show up for his kids in any way. Dustin doesn't have any repressed memories of his father, so it's really hard to use his relationship with Walter to craft a case of Will having repressed memories of Lonnie, let alone Lonnie having actively beaten his sons.

(Again, ignoring the out-of-character portions of the novel and the fact that the novels are loosely canon at best.)

[mumblingsage]

I keep picking at the "cozy" discourse, despite or maybe because it was a trainwreck of terminology, since depending on how you slice your terms I am a big cozy fan or an equally big cozy hater. Weird place to find myself!

I do feel like one point of difference I have with some other readers is that...I don't find grief, trauma, conflict or stress to be inherently unpleasant to read about? I know, I know, put that way it sounds groundbreaking. Most people want their stories to start in an unsatisfying place and move to a satisfying one; some argue it's the core definition of "story" (personally I'm not interested in wading into yet another terminology debate). But the division within self-identified cozy fans of "I find it comforting when characters overcome challenges to reach a place of coziness" vs "I'm only comforted by stories where things start off and remain cozy throughout" is pretty sharp! And the latter camp actually strikes me as a more stressful place to be--I have enough to worry about in real life without fretting about whether the fiction I read is going to contain conflict. (Of course--and unlike some in the debate, I don't say this in a tone of judgment--people can often reach this point by glossing over details of existing conflict. Back to the original cozy mysteries: they're fun stories made fun by the audience and author's agreement that the person who was murdered doesn't really matter. The self-evident fact that fans of cozy mystery stories are not moral monsters shows that the "You're a bad person for enjoying/not enjoying this genre" is a rather empty debate. Score for compartmentalization!) Meanwhile I actually find it comforting to read about characters with Lousy Experiences similar to ones I've gone through--if I were to get therapeutic about it, I'd say I like having this fictional character in my support group. Or I like seeing examples of how a Lousy Experience isn't the end of the world, how life goes on and can even be pretty sweet afterwards. Or it's that some painful experiences are actually part of happiness (love and grief are the same thing; mistakes and apologies are part of the learning process; a lot of hobbies will take their toll and even put you in physical pain but are still rewarding to do!). This is setting aside angsty catharsis entirely; while I enjoy a good cry and will press my face to a window while wearing a "Sickos" shirt with the best of them, right now I'm talking only about fiction that gives me a consistently warm, happy, fuzzy feeling.

It's not that I don't sympathize with aversion to specific content. Erotica is the ultimate genre designed to give the reader a good time. I just about never willingly read erotica about female submission. Meanwhile I know two separate women whose husbands died of two rather different illnesses who will never read or watch a story that prominently features that illness. Makes sense! People have preferences for a whole ton of different reasons. There are a couple of real-life topics I don't think I could find entertaining in fiction, that I might even find it in bad taste to attempt to make entertaining in fiction; this list will be completely different from someone else's, and it might even be the polar opposite of someone who is more affected by the real-life topics than I am! (Also, from a writer's POV: you only have so much room to unpack various issues, so you'll pick and choose how much detail to get into, what specific challenges characters will face in the story, and so on. I have a pet peeve about characters, say, having their best friend die in their arms in chapter 15 and going about their days normally in chapters 16 and 17, not even "in the denial stage" so much as "not affected". But I get that the author won't necessarily have the pagecount to spend on the characters going catatonic with grief. So we gotta move on quicker than is realistic. Likewise, most characters in most historical fiction will have more "modern" attitudes than is entirely realistic--it's a sliding scale from "pretty grounded in historic mindsets" to "practically an AU" and writers land where they land from a mix of deliberate decisions, what they learn from research, what they're capable of depicting, and what they can do without completely bewildering or turning off their audience.)

But I can't relate to the idea that, say, mention of a character grieving a loved one makes a story un-enjoyable. And okay, I do take it kinda personally, for the subtextual message that "Certain Kinds of People are just bummers I don't want to think about and can't imagine living happy lives." But also, the idea that a bit of friction or loss will cancel out all the comfort of the rest of the story seems to lack resilience. I have no clue if it works out that way in people's real lives; their psyches aren't really my business. But this post is mostly about my psyche. The appeal I find in hurt/comfort, angsty romance with its guaranteed HEA, horror novels where a protagonist survives, and mysteries where the murder isn't graphically depicted and where a clever amateur saves the day is that these are all opportunities to microdose on frightening and sad things while knowing I'll get the fantasy of it mostly working out in the end (I prefer stories that don't go completely Just World on me, but "what if things mostly worked out?" is very nice!) It's more comforting to entertain that possibility than to remind myself of how nice it is when things are never bad. I just don't find that reminder very helpful; at worst, it's taunting.

But at the end of the day, so long as people who seek Nice Things Only in their stories can respect differing opinions and don't, like, ding books in reviews for including characters with traumatic backstories (they're totally within their rights to say they'd rather not read the book and advise readers with similar tastes about the content; my sympathy ends where they take on a tone that implies the writer shouldn't have written it that way in the first place), I'm pretty sure we can live peacefully on opposite sides of a demilitarized border. I'm also sharing a peaceful border with the angst and grimdark folks who complain about stories having overly happy endings, and sometimes I'll even cross over for a day trip to complain about how everything wrapped up too suddenly and neatly in the final chapter.

(For all my attestations of "I think we can all get along splendidly!" if this post sounds like it's protesting too much/overexplaining/defensive, it's probably because I spent too much time yesterday reading a sprawling and acrimonious debate. Life lesson: someone on your timeline is arguing a) a new subgenre exists and b) it sucks/it's the only thing that doesn't suck? Don't get into it! They're wrong on b. and a. is probably questionable too, in that no one but no one will be able to agree on the supposed genre's features or example titles!)

[ncisfranchise-source]

NCIS: Origins returns from a brief hiatus with a new episode on Monday, March 24, and we’re finally going to learn more about Mary Jo (Tyla Abercrumbie)!

In “To Have and to Hold,” the team works the case of an investment advisor found dead shortly after her release from prison. Plus, Mary Jo is left reeling by an unexpected development in her personal life. Below, Abercrumbie previews the episode and discusses how the person who helps everyone else does when she’s the one who needs to lean on someone.

Mary Jo is left reeling by an unexpected development in her personal life. What can you tease?

Tyla Abercrumbie: When you least expect it, the things you feel are safely tucked away in your past can suddenly just catch up with you, and it catches up with Mary Jo.

How does she handle that?

Well, initially, I think she tries to handle it the way she handles everything she compartmentalizes. She feels very much like, focus, you can get through this and everything’s okay, but sometimes you realize that you can’t do it all by yourself and you might have to turn to some friends just to help you through your emotional journey.

Speaking of that, because she does so much for everyone and we really see that in this episode on and off the clock, she is helping every single person that she crosses paths with. So who does she lean on?

When we were talking — [showrunners] Gina [Lucita Monreal] and David [J. North] were wonderfully collaborative with this character in particular, Mary Jo —one of the things I really wanted and I asked for was that I wanted to see a reflection of myself in my friends and who I would go to. And so even though at the dinner party you see all of these friends and she’s helping them, I wanted to build in that this is her community outside of work. Because I believe we do have two communities. We do have our work community and we have our family. I think Mary Jo leans on that community at home, but she can also — and we find out in this episode that maybe she didn’t know it — lean on her coworkers like Vera [Diany Rodriguez] and Lala [Mariel Molino].

Yeah, I love that scene at the bar with the three of them.

Me too! It was really enjoyable because I don’t get to work with them in that capacity. So it was really great to — at that point, we had done 13 episodes and we’ve seen each other many times personally —then have this scene with them because now you’re connecting not just as actors who just showed up and you’re like, hello, I’m going to do the scene with you. You have history with each other as people, and now you see this history live in those characters and you can feel it. You can feel that these women know each other, they’re friends, and yet there’s still so much they don’t know about Mary Jo because sometimes people forget to ask.

How is she though when it comes to leaning on someone else? Because she’s the one that others lean on, how is that switch for her?

I think that’s not ever going to be easy for Mary Jo. Even if we reflect back to [Episode 4] when she was talking to Gibbs [Austin Stowell] … that became way too vulnerable for her. And so it was one of those moments where you saw her want to share but then pull back because that’s not a comfortable place. “I can help you. I don’t want you to know that I need help.” And so when we fast forward to Episode 14 and she’s literally talking to Lala and Vera and they’re hearing things they never heard before. It shows you that this doesn’t come to work. Mary Jo doesn’t bring her personal life to work. And so the way I see her and what makes her character interesting and gives nuance is that we know she has a life, but she doesn’t share it. So we want to know more. And that’s always going to be something, I think, that’s going to be hard for Mary Jo, to share more.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Almosts | Seventh Virtue

So I’ve been doing evil things (printing & binding a copy of Seventh Virtue) & I was flipping through the textblock today & landed on this! Because I’ve been MIA, here’s this giant excerpt lol! What if… Lonan and Harrison were kind of normal???

Fun fact: this scene is a rewrite from the OG book 5 (or 4?) where Reeve cuts Lonan’s hair. The dialogue structure is the same!

Text transcript under the cut!

Lonan’s ears twitch, and when Harrison says nothing else, his gaze unfocused for a moment, he turns around. “Is something wrong?”

But nothing’s wrong, or maybe everything is, because Harrison’s hands are suddenly shaking to the point where he puts the scissors down onto the counter.

“It looks nice,” Lonan says, an attempt at reassurance, touching at the shorter frontmost strands. “The hair? You’re doing a good job.”

Harrison struggles to breathe. “It’s not that,” he says. Suzanna is less than a perfect mother. But in moments, she was there. Who was there for Lonan?

“Who cut your hair for you when you were a kid?” Harrison asks.

Lonan’s getting up now, blinking in surprise. “If you’re worried I don’t like it—”

“Who cut your hair for you when you were a kid?” Harrison presses.

Lonan’s face flashes with something—surprise maybe? Shock?—and then it’s gone in an instant, compartmentalized. Harrison wants to tell him to stop that. Beg him to stop hiding things from him and tell him everything—what breakfasts were his childhood favourites, if he was ever a team captain at school and if it was for chess or football or both, who showed him tenderness when he skinned his knee or cried during a thunderstorm, what happened to him during his captivity—if those wounds at all are something Harrison can fix.

“My mother,” Lonan says slowly, referring not to his biological mother, Izzy, but the woman his father eventually married. She’d died young, when Lonan was four or five—the original owner of Harrison’s drop earring. “And when she died, my father. Why are you asking?”

Harrison braces himself against the counter. “Do you miss your mother?”

Lonan’s lips quirk. “No.”

“No?”

“I didn’t know her well. I remember her in bits and pieces. I honour her. But I don’t necessarily miss her.” As if sensing Harrison’s confusion, he adds, “I want to, sometimes. But most of the time, I can’t.”

Harrison nods, gulping. “I think I miss my mother.”

Lonan’s face softens. He slips his hands into his pockets, takes a step toward Harrison. And then there he is, touching Harrison’s hand, so close, Harrison can almost hear his heartbeat. And Harrison lets him, the way his fingers trail up his wrist, the way their faces get closer. Harrison looks down at the scissors, and then up at Lonan’s eyes, down to his mouth.

And then he turns away.

“Do you feel like you have a family?” Harrison asks, tightening his arms across his chest.

Lonan settles next to him, leaned up on his palms. “I have Reeve. I have Chris.”

“But do you feel like you have a family?”

Lonan seems to understand what he means. Of course Reeve and Chris are Lonan’s family members, but in terms of family, what does he have? A fragmented whole? It’s like Harrison and Suzanna. Of course she was his mother. Of course she was his family. But does he feel now like he himself has a family? His father is as good as dead to him. Suzanna is now gone. He and Lonan used to have each other, but what about now?

“Sometimes,” Harrison whispers, “I forget how lonely it is.”

From Harrison’s periphery, he watches Lonan nod, his mouth ajar like he wants to say something but doesn’t know exactly what. Lonan must know exactly how he feels. How much time did he spend alone for nearly two full years? How intimately was he forced to confront the contents of his brain, because if he didn’t, he’d be driven to death by his boredom? Harrison is lucky to have had Foster in this time, and Foster’s the closest thing to a brother he’s ever had. It’s strange, how having Lonan back is an uncomfortable, foreign thing, but also simultaneously, the most normal thing Harrison’s experienced in weeks, his body buzzing next to his, electric, alive.

Harrison nudges his hand across the counter until it touches Lonan’s. Their contact jolts them both, their eyes both wide, familiar, afraid.

“I should go,” Lonan says, then goes to walk away. The instant he does, Harrison finds his fingers, grips tight and pulls until he’s close again. Here. Real.

“Why did you come looking for me?” Harrison whispers, veering his forehead closer to Lonan’s. How much time had they spent looking at each other? At dusk walking through an open field, their elbows catching switchgrass, or over a pool of persimmons at the supermarket, or in a silent, lightless room, nothing as arresting as the other’s reflection. Back then, Harrison couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and now, he’s desperate to be like that again: in need of someone, and maybe that’s where he is now, in a state of craving. “The real reason. Not for the haircut. Not to talk.”

Lonan meets Harrison’s gaze, his eyes, for once, as unguarded as they are blue. He shivers when Harrison slips his free hand up his chest. “I had to see you.”

Harrison twists one Lonan’s dress shirt buttons until it comes undone, revealing a patch of skin. How often had they spent evenings doing this to each other—one breathless task after the other? Harrison shuffles even closer to Lonan, and Lonan does the same to him. Harrison traces a hand up Lonan’s neck, and Lonan does the same to him. A weft of clouds passes over the sun, blueing the bathroom, their lips. One man’s hand becomes another, their actions mirrored as their joint touch finds the other’s, their pulses rising so fast it’s hard to tell whose heartbeat belongs to who. Perhaps even their wounds are mirrored. A man within a man within a wound within a wound.

Harrison bows his head. Lonan bows his.

And then a knock at the door jerks them apart.

[whisperingrockandroll]

WR&R MYSTERY KIDS LORE & WORLDBUILD MASTER POST

Gear up, kids, because this will be a long one.

It's been a while since I posted a new comic. Pretty soon there'll be a bunch, because I've been sitting on a mountain of scripts and just started making progress on actually making them into comics. I wanna build up a nice little backlog that I can queue up and not worry about for a long while. In the meantime though, I have something I hope will tide you guys over.

There's been a problem with my comic from the very beginning I've never really thought to address for years, and until now, I never found a good place for it. That problem is "worldbuilding." Originally when this comic started out, it was just a Psychonauts comic. Then I got into Mystery Kids, and the MKs just showed up out of nowhere.

If you're still interested, click under the cut. If you already find this post boring and kind of long, just skip it.

We never got any information on how the Mystery Kids club started or how they all met. For the longest time, I kind of just defered to the collective fandom's various disorganized headcanons and ideas and stuff. But I think enough time has passed that those ideas have all changed, been forgotten about, or branched off into their own individual works.

So, it's finally time for me to fix that by giving this comic its own set of lore and backstory. In this post I'm going to explain how everything happened, how the kids came together and what order everything happened in. This is kind of written for my own personal amusement, but also as a guide to keep in mind when I'm writing new stories in this setting, to keep things consistent.

PART ONE: THE CANON HISTORY

The first step for this little exercise is to figure out when all the stuff in the original "canon" happened. This is where things get a little messy, because we have to figure out a proper order for everything so all the pieces can fit into place.

First, we have to come up with a system for naming the different eras and phases where things happen, so we can more easily compartmentalize the different events. So we'll call the first year the Mystery Kids are together "Year One." Anything before that we'll call Year -1 or -2.

Year -2 is where we'll put the events of Paranorman. They happen in Fall, around Halloween probably. Nearly the end of the year. It's important to set this part the furthest back for reasons we'll get into later.

Year -1 is where we'll put Coraline and Psychonauts. Dipper and Mabel are still in Pidemont. There are a few references in the comic to Raz still having a water problem due to "the curse." But in PN2 he conquers the curse. We'll chock that up to lingering after-effects and him trying to get past the mental block.

Near the end of Year -1, Aggie returns and reunites with Norman in events identical to how they played out in Ask-Norgatha. A lot of things that happen are very similar to that old blog, with the exception being Norman and Aggie don't get together. That comes later.

Year 1 is when Gravity Falls happens. Coraline and Norman are family friends (or cousins? I haven't decided, maybe not. Maybe 'honoary cousins'?) Anyway, so: things play out pretty much how they did in that fan episode people made. Doctor Loboto (during a villainous relapse, or a manic episode) comes to Gravity Falls, Raz and Lili chase after him, Coraline and Wybie come with Norman's family on a vacation to Gravity Falls. Aggie stays behind because Norman doesn't want her to get lost. At this point, her Poltergeist powers haven't kicked in yet and other people can't see her, meaning she'd have no way to get home.

So, during Loboto's shennanigans, the kids all come together to stop him. That's when we move into…

PART TWO: THE FANON HISTORY

Note: in this period, my comic has a lot of Holiday specials. We're operating on Peanuts rules here, where the time-scaling slides around to keep the characters from aging. But we'll say in the "real" canon, the stuff that happens on Holidays actually happen on regular days, for the most part. If things "have to" happen on a Holiday, they'll all happen on the same one, just at different times. We'll try not to think too hard about this, because it's just a cartoon. We're out to make a consistent world, but not to arbitrarily restrict ourselves. None of this stuff happened in the "real" world anyway.

Anyway, moving right along to the rest of "Year 1." This is for the comics I made while the show was still airing, so things all kind of click together.

This is where the first Mystery Kids Adventure happens. The kids are all united and save the day. All of this happens right in the middle of the events of Gravity Falls. From then on out, the kids have adventures together on and off, but its a little hard because they have to travel a pretty great distance to hang out together. They keep in touch on social media and stuff, occasionally finding ways to fake excuses to go out and travel together. But mostly, the group is pretty disorganized.

Dib is also a mindless fanboy of the group and wants to join, but everybody thinks he's weird and annoying, so they try their best to politely blow him off. Then he builds a teleporter that lets the kids get together easier, but the thing just barely works. Dib is made a "junior member" and just sort of hangs around.

The kids have a "clubhouse", but it's just a shanty shack built by Soos, half a mile away from the Mystery Shack.

At some point during this period, the Bedlam returns and the kids have to team up to stop her. Aggie helps somehow with her newly-emerging poltergiest powers. The Bedlam is defeated, and that's the last "real" adventure they have for a little while. They don't have a reliable way to meet up anymore, so they only get together for parties and stuff. This is where the Season 3 Finale happens, if you've read my archives.

PART THREE: THE CURRENT SITUATION

From Season 4 and onwards, everything that happens to the Mystery Kids happens in Year 2. That's where we are now.

It starts with Dib on one of his own little adventures. Somehow, he ends up stumbling on an abandoned treehouse that used to belong to the Kids Next Door. It hasn't been populated in years, but its full of still-functional tech that just got left behind. With it, Dib's able to power-up the teleporter technology and now the Mystery Kids can come together whenever they want. You need to stand perfectly still for like five minutes for the teleporter to work, so it isn't a "get out of danger free" plot device.

Seems like a REALLY important development to happen offscreen and go totally unmentioned, right? Well… I thought of it retroactively, so, whoops! But it's fine. We'll just have to make a flashback comic later where the kids find it.

So, from now on, everything that happens in the comic happens here, in Year 2.

If you've read this far, I'd like to thank you for humoring my nonsensical fanfiction ramblings for my silly mspaint webcomic. I hope you had fun and got as much out of that as I did. I'm really happy I was finally able to put it all together in one coherent place.

[compressednerve]

🖌, 📺, and 🍂 for the ask game?

HELLO! Richard 🐔 welcome to the askbox thunderdome 🌩️⚡. Thank you for sending me this ask I have appreciated it greatly to be asked these emoji questions :~)

🖌 - Do you have/want any tattoos? Yes, I have two tattoos. One is of a wasp on my shoulder/back that I got when I was 17 (regret, mostly, want to get this covered up ASAP), and my other one is a Sunrise/Sunset over the ocean with a palm tree in the foreground that I got when I was 19, on my right bicep. I won't post a picture but here's a drawing of them. The wasp was because I wanted a tattoo so bad so bad so bad so my mom hooked me up with a tattooist who happened to live down the street from us... I don't like it because it's just, very small, on the large expanse of my back, right next to some cigarette burn scars??? it just feels. out of place... The sunset was because @parasitefun and I had made life plans to live together within like, two months of us talking, and the original plan was for Florida. Because we met thru the Hotline Miami fandom, and also there was this band I was obsessed with that originated in Tampa and this article I read about them made it seem so romantically warm and humid and hazy... gosh. So the same tattooist who did my wasp also did my sunrise. It's not nearly this vibrant IRL because she was doing my work directly on my skin, and at the time I was only working in watercolor?! so it actually looks faded as fuck 😭 but other than maybe touching it up, I want to retain the meaning and build around it. my favoritest part has to be the lines in between, they're really broken up like that so the skin shows through!!!

as for if I want any more tattoos, yes, of course I do! I want more tattoos every day, but I've gotten more picky in the past few years... I can't really decide on any one design, and Parasite has been the sole earner for our entire relationship >_< so there's not usually any fun money set aside for things like body mods, unfortunately. Here's a design I've wanted since 2016- it's the cover art for Oneohtrix Point Never's "Garden of Delete" which is one of the only things that saved me that year ;_;

This morning I read an article about how heatwaves affect Train Tracks, which for some reason I can't find the article now but I'll try to find it later, but anyways heat causes train tracks to "buckle" which is just ludicrous to me, I had no idea, very terrifying. Railways are beasts... so beautiful... so feral... augh.

^aspd mantra.

so anyways, then I fell into a 3hour nap and woke up to the sound of Parasite cooking dinner/lunch (pork chops n rice a roni), banging the spatula against the pot <3. And the first mental image that came to mind was of a tattoo design for a buckled rail, as a metaphor for having a hard time with your body, and doing what you're supposed to do especially when under heat and stress >_< cripple metaphorz, I guess...

📺 - Favourite show? This has been answered here:

🍂 - What’s your favourite season? ah god.... oh fuck.... *falls over and clutches my chest and sobs and weeps*

I'll attempt to keep this a little short, but mainly: my system is so fragmented, so compartmentalized and so blacked out of Sense Memories, and seasons are senses. My mom has bipolar (or schizoaffective bipolar, or Sadistic Personality Disorder + HPD + ASPD, or god knows what else) and Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I ended up with Seasonal Affective as well v_v I think most people end up with a Strong Sense Memory attached to, usually, only one season, usually Winter or Summer... that's at least what I see most often when people talk about it, if they talk about it at all, but I ended up with serious trauma that seemed intrinsically linked to each of the Seasonal Changes 😓 It doesn't help that I'm exquisitely sensitive to temperature/air pressure changes, and I'm more or less "severely" agoraphobic both on a physical level (outside is way too large) and on a mental level (i am so small and there are so many people out there, people who can and will stare at me, and the architecture, oh god!)...

I have a lot of good memories attached to each season, and a lot of bad memories as well... so I guess it's more about the minute moments contained within each swirling maelstrom of seasons. Going out to the city with my mom in late October on an unusually crisp, sunny day so I'm sweating under my leather jacket but the air is stinging my face. Laying down on the concrete in the middle of the road in early March, feeling the sun on my eyes. That first breath of fascination upon waking up to the first snowy morning, at any point in Winter, except for most of my life I lived in Washington so, sometimes there wouldn't even be snow :/ These are flash in the pan memories that stick out like little shimmering crystals in a sea of lead and blood.

Most of my positive associations with seasons also has to do with how nature changes alongside with it, seeing the trees die and regrow, rain falling or sun shining or clouds moving, animals present or not, etc... it's all very magical and wondrous. Listening to birdsong calms me down, and it's one of my nicer hallucinations usually when I'm awake in the early morning hours... god there is nothing better than being awake at 4am in the middle of summer and seeing the very first slivers of sunlight followed by birds waking up 🐦🦆🕊️🌅

[rogalion]

‘meteorology is the only job you’re paid to be wrong in’

Oooh if you’re a aspiring meteorologist of any kind you’ll hear this a lot and it’s making me recognize, along with my own personal experience, that the general perception people have of science based jobs is completely wrong!

I was originally in Fine Art, which is often contrasted as like, opposite to math and science heavy professions, and switching from fine art to meteorology was in fact a huge shift, but it also prepared me for it in ways I did not expect.

There’s this idea that science is purely fact-based and objective, and it’s easy to see how people en masse have come to this conclusion. Many people may have learned of the ideas of hypothesis, theories, and laws, and that hypothesis are proven through experimentation, become a theory if a large enough body of research appears to back them up and becomes so well established that no new facts are likely to disprove them. Laws are similar to theories, but the difference is that Laws can be used to predict the behavior of variables, while theories describe a feature of nature supported by a large amount of observations and experimentation.

Newton’s laws of motion describe the general tendencies of motion and allow us to make predictions of how something will move if a force is exerted onto it in xyz environment.

The Big Bang, Evolution, everything about Atoms, those are Theories. 

The caveat that is difficult for us to realize is that none of these are objective facts. Laws allow us to predict the behavior of something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean our prediction will be correct. Theories, despite large amounts of evidence backing them, are still theories. It’s up to the individual to decide if there’s enough evidence that they believe the theory is true or not.

I don’t say this to make you doubt that evolution is real, or make you think that everything you learned in Chemistry about atoms is fake. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. As humans we love to compartmentalize into simple categories, and “True” and “False” are two of those categories we love to sort our thoughts into. It’s a lot easier to say something is Completely True or Completely False than have everything be in a murky gray area that takes much more work to sort out.

The best way to see science is that it is attempting to reach an unattainable goal. We want to decipher and clarify how the universe works and want to get as close as we possibly can to the truth. Unfortunately, the universe has a metric fuck ton or so of variables, many of which we probably still do not know about and many of which may suddenly exist or not exist. It’s all chaos, and as scientists we are doing our best to get as close as humanly possible to the ‘truth’ of how things work.

Which brings me back to meteorology being the only job you’re paid to be wrong in. Technically, all scientists are paid to be wrong. We meteorologists just get the most flak for it because our job is incredibly important for literally everyone. If there are more people paying attention to you, there’s gonna be more people giving you shit for getting something wrong.

Another thing people need to understand about weather forecasting is that it’s literal witchcraft. Weather forecasting is literally-- we are attempting to PREDICT THE FUTURE. Not only that, but we’re often trying to predict the future weather of relatively small areas, and since you all have perhaps existed on this planet, a large portion of people have experienced just how acute and localized weather can be. You can live in a town that spans four miles, and meet up with a coworker and tell them ‘how about that rain on sunday?’ and they’ll be like “what rain?” because despite living in the same town they did not get any rain.

Weather is a fucking nightmare to predict, and while we have a lot of radars out there, they are not placed very well in many situations (Hi, Burlington VT) and are tilted half a degree upwards because people didn’t want to get hit by the spooky radar beams because they might cause problems with people’s health (they wont unless you get within a super small distance from them, something along the magnitude of ten meters or less). This means that radars can completely miss weather if its far enough away. There are also a lot of blind spots where we have no radar coverage, even in the USA! Not to mention our current radars are getting pretty old, and if they go offline we do not have backups. Grey Maine’s radar had to undergo maintenance for four days and we just could not see anything on radar here in Plymouth for those four days. 

One of the most important things I have learned about weather and meteorology is that there’s a lot of science that we actually know, for a fact, is not correct. The entire concept of an adiabatic process, for example, is technically useless if we want to accurately assess real life processes. Nothing is truly adiabatic-- literally NOTHING. But it gets the job done good enough, so we use it.

Now, why would we use concepts that we know are incorrect but are ‘good enough’ in science? Because, well, it’s a lot better to have a weather forecast that’s close to right than no weather forecast at all. So many things depend on the weather forecast-- if you’ve ever planned or attended an outdoor event, been to a graduation of some kind, a 4th of July fireworks show, parties, sports games, parades, you name it? The people planning those have to know what the weather is going to be like on the days they’re able to actually hold the event. If you’re traveling, you need to know the weather. If you’re going outside in the summer, the UV index is helpful for deciding whether you need sunscreen or not. For many people, it helps them plan when to turn on the heat or AC in their building. Weather forecasts are important!! So it’s better to be able to predict things as close as possible and still get it wrong than to not have a forecast whatsoever.

That’s not even getting into the amount of work and stress meteorologists go through when the weather gets life-threatening-- heat waves, supercell thunderstorms, hurricanes, polar vortexes, snowstorms, even just systems with a lot of water that get stuck over one area. There is a tendency to over-forecast these events-- it’s a lot more likely that your meteorologist will overstate the intensity of severe weather events. This is a good thing, because I’d much rather have someone tell me bad things will happen and then they don’t, rather than not be warned about bad things happening and they DO. 

Meteorologists have a really difficult job and all things considered, we do PRETTY GOOD. So if you got through this whole rant, thanks, you now hopefully know better than to make the joke that meteorologists are the only job that’s paid to be wrong.